Mexborough and Swinton Times September 28, 1928

Woman Missionary
Mexboro Girl to Teach in Madras
Dedication Service.

The members of the Mexborough Congregational Church and their friends last night gathered for a very solemn service. The occasion was the dedication of Miss Margorie Sykes, BA., the eldest daughter of Mr. and Mrs. W. E. Sykes, of ” Copmanhurst” Church Street, Mexborough, to the missionary field of Southern India.

Miss Sykes, who is only 23, and is a graduate of Newnham College, Cambridge, sails for Madras on October 13th, and is to teach in the Bentinek High School of the London Missionary Society.

She has been connected with the Congregational Church for some years, at Mexborough and at Cambridge, And the dedication prayer last night was offered by the Reverend H.C. Carter.

India, he said, was changing in its poitical life, its religion, and most of all in its social customs. New life was stirring in this vast collection of communities, especially among the women, and the Christian Church in India had a tremendous task before it. The work of a missionary was terribly hard, and terribly wearying. There was always too much to do and too little time in which to do it. To spread the Gospel there needed patience and faith and love—nothing counted, in India so much as personal love—and especially hope. There was the difficulty of language, and when that had been overcome there was the problem of getting to know the People.

Miss Sykes said there was a danger in big meetings of this kind that the audience would go away feeling overwrought and excited, and never realising the true significance of the event. She asked them to go through this service in real quietness of spirit. It was a real miracle that God should let us feel so much of His spirit and know as much a we did of His will. In the last few months she had learnt that the guidance of God was a very real thing. Gods call when it came  it was unmistakable if we were listening and ready to receive it.

She did not think the service will be of any value if they looked upon it merely as the dedication of one life to Christ service; he wanted them to make it an opportunity for all of them to give themselves more directly to God’s service. She did not want it to be regarded as a farewell, but rather as the beginning of a new bond between those whom she left behind to carry on the work at home, and herself who had been called to take it up overseas.

The Rev. H. C. Carter, M.A., said that what Miss Sykes was about to do was to give, through the London Missionary Society, the two great gifts which were inseparable from one another, the gift of the Gospel teaching and the gift of herself. Christianity meant the giving of friendship.They had not gathered there to say farewell, but to speed her on a very glorious enterprise, on which God’s faith would go with her.

Mr. Carter then pronounced the dedication prayer, and the service closed with the Benediction by the Rev. W. Simpson.