Our Churches and Chapels: Their Parsons, Priests, & Congregations: Being a Critical and Historical Account of Every Place of Worship in PrestonAtticus
History
Our Churches and Chapels: Their Parsons, Priests, & Congregations: Being a Critical and Historical Account of Every Place of Worship in Preston
Atticus
Preston (Lancashire, England) -- Church history
We have visited Zoar Chapel twice. It was exactly twenty minutes to
seven one Sunday evening when we first entered it. The lights were
burning, the blinds were drawn, and there were 23 people in the
place. In a pew on the left-hand side a little old man was holding
forth as to the "prodigal son." It was the first time he had ever
talked in the chapel, and he has never said a word since. He had a
peculiarly free and easy style. Sometimes he leaned over the pew
door, and beat time with one foot whilst talking; at other periods
he would stand back a little, push his right arm up to the elbow in
his breeches pocket, and scratch his leg quietly; then he would turn
half round, and look up; then make to the pew door again; then leave
it, and so on to the finish. He was an earnest, plain-spun sort of
individual, but he got through his parabolical exposition very
satisfactorily. We fancied he would afterwards ascend the pulpit,
which was lighted up; but he kept out of it, and nobody ever went
near it at all, except at the finish, when a man quietly walked up
the steps and put the gas out. We could not exactly see the force of
lighting the pulpit when nobody ever went into it; but others in the
place might, for there are shrewd men amongst them, and they may
have found out some virtue in lighting gas burners when they are not
wanted. The music we heard was moderate; the praying which followed
was mildly exhilarating.
When we turned into the chapel the second time--this was during a
forenoon service--there were located in it an elderly, fatherly,
farmerly man, who occupied the pulpit; eleven middle-aged men, with
subdued countenances; six young men with their eyes and ears open to
every move; nine blushing maidens with their back hair combed up
stiffly and their mastoid processes bared all round; nine matured
members of the fair sex with larger bonnets and more antique hair
arrangements; five little girls; four small boys; and seven singers;
making in the aggregate fifty-two. The person in the pulpit was, we
learned, a Fylde farmer; but he must at some time have lived in the
north, for he said "dowter" for daughter, "gert" for great, "nather"
for neither, "natteral" for natural, and gave his "r's" capital good
exercise, turning them round well, throughout his entire discourse;
and he cared very little for either singular or plural verbs. If he
got the sense out he deemed it sufficient. He spoke in a
conversational style, was more descriptive than argumentative, was
homely, discreet, and neither too lachrymose nor too buoyant. This
preacher, we have been told, was Mr. James Fearclough, of Hardhorn,
near Blackpool, who was the original organiser of the church.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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