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
The singers, who collected themselves around a square, conical-
headed table, in a shy-looking corner, gave vent to their feelings
without music books. They had hymns before them, and these they held
to be sufficient. Their performances were rather of a timid
character; but this might be to some extent accounted for by the
fact that the conductor was absent. When they started a tune they
sighed, blushed, held their heads down, and looked up shyly into
their eye lids; but when they had proceeded a little and got the
congregation into a sympathetic humour, courage came to them, and
they moved on more exactly and courageously. About a dozen preachers
have been tried since the pulpit was vacated by the Darwen
gentleman; but the exact man has not yet been found, and until his
advent the congregation will have to solicit "supplies," and be
content with what they can get. None of the members can preach;
nobody in the congregation can preach; and their only hope at
present consists in the foreign import trade. The congregation has a
homely, unpretentious, kindly-hearted, social appearance, and when
in the midst of it you feel as if you were at home, and as if the
tea things had only to be brought out to make matters complete.
There are no loud talkers, no scandal-mongers, no sanguine souls who
get into a state of incandescence during prayers or sermons here. A
respectable, homely, smoothly-elegant serenity dominates in it.
Two services are held in the chapel on Sundays, and on a Wednesday
evening there is a prayer meeting. A Sunday school, opened in 1855,
is held in the building, and is attended by about 50 children. At
present, the general business of the chapel is rather dull; and
there will be no perceptible improvement in it nor in the number
attending it until a regular minister is appointed. Listening to
stray sermons is like feeding upon wind--you may get filled with it,
but will never get fat upon it. We hope the Zoarists will by and by
be successful; that, having escaped to their present quarters, they
will keep them,--an effort has been once or twice made to purchase
the building for a public-house; and that they will never, like the
party who first fled to Zoar, become troglodytes.
ST. LUKE'S CHURCH.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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