The Northern Guardian. — 1897-02-15 (Hartlepool, Cleveland, England)

THE LATE REV. A. F. SIM  MASONIC MEMORIAL WINDOW.  A special dedication service was held at St. Aidan's Church, West Hartlepool, yesterday, when a memorial window, which has been placed in the south aisle of the church by the local lodges of Freemasons to the memory of the late Rev. A. F. Sim, was unveiled by the Rev. Canon Kynaston, DI)., Durham. There was a large congregation, the following lodges being represented :—Harbour of Refuge No. 764, Stranton Lodge 1,862 (of which Mr him was chaplain), Clarence Lodge, Eclectic Mark Lodge 39, Fawcett Chapter 764, and St. Helen's (Hartlepool) 531, and there were also present officers and brethren from other lodges. The unveiling ceremony was to have been celebrated by Canon Tristram, D.D., who was unfortunately prevented from attending by illness, and his place was taken by the Rev. Canon Kynaston, who is also a past chaplain of the order. Canon KYNASTON, in the course of his address, spoke of Mr Sim's most successful work in the Universities' Mission at Kota Kota. What that work was they in St. Aidan's parish had good cause to know and remember with great thankfulness. They could never forget his work in their own parish. How cheerfully and loyally, and yet how quietly he devoted himself to the personal instruction, the companionship, and the guiding of the young men and boys of the parish, attracting all to him by an almost irresistible force. What his work was there it had been also, previously, in the parish of St. John, ' Sunderland. Their late Bishop, when he ordained Mr Sitn, said of him that his face would be a sermon wherever he went. Some tried to do everything, and be able to do everything they tried to do. Mr Sim's one object was to help other people, and all the time he WitB doing this he was doing it without any parade, without any fuss, and those who knew him knew that this was his great characteristic. Anything like public recognition of his noble deeds he never could abide. All these qualities Mr Sim took with him to the mission field, and there his personality was felt as strongly as at home. The window that had just been unveiled represented one typical act in Mr Sim's work in the Kota Kota Mission. It represented the baptism of his first convert, a man who was under sentence of death for murder. He (the speaker) was able to speak of Mr Situ's many qualities, because Arthur Fraser Sim, Edward Lambert, and their present Vicar were at Cheltenham College when he (Canon Kynaston) was headmaster there, and Mr Sim was the embodiment of honour, loyalty, and purity in his connection with masters and pupils. Was he not one who knew how to raise a fallen brother? The description of the window is as follows The window has two plain lancets, and represents incidents in the history of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa. In the left-hand light Bishop Steene is represented holding a model of Zanzibar Cathedrel in one hand and compasses in the other. (This cathedral was designed and built by Bishop Steene himself, on one site of the slave Inasket, where 20,000 slaves were sold annually.) Close to the Bishop stands an African priest holding a ground plan of the cathedral. In the background are seen palm trees and other African foliage with the sea and native boats is the distance. In the right hand light Mr Sim ii represented in the act of baptising a native who had murdered a Makua soldier, and was under sentence of execution (p.p. 240 and 241 of "The life and letters of A. F. Sim "). Beside him stands the Chrisian native teacher holding a native bowl used as a font. In the background is the stockade enclosing the fort and a Sikh mounting guard. The inscription at the base 18 as follows :—" Erected in memory of A. F. Sim by his iMaionie brethren, 1897," and in each corner are the proper Masonic emblems. The window has been executed by Messrs Percy BNCOII Bros.. of 11, Newman Street, London, W. The portrait of Mr Sim is a very good reproduction of a photograph taken by Mr T. Braybrook.