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 congregation was of the working class species. At the north-east
corner seven or eight singers, somewhat vigorous and expert in their
music, were stationed; a female who played a little harmonium was
near them; and in one corner, in a small pulpit run up to the wall
as tightly as human skill could devise, was a condensed Irish
gentleman, whom nobody seemed to know, but who turned out, in the
end, to be an Oswaldtwistle minister, who had exchanged pulpits with
the regular clergyman. He was a cute, well-educated little party;
but awfully uneasy--was never still--moved his head, arms, and body
about at the rate of 129 times a minute (we timed him with a good
centre-seconds watch), talked much out of the left corner of his
mouth; was full of rough vigour and warm blood; would have been a
"boy" with a shillelagh; and yet he got along with his work
excellently. We couldn't help smiling when we saw, during the
preliminary portion of the service, another surpliced gentleman join
him. Just when the lessons came on a stout, plump-featured, and most
fashionably-whiskered young man stepped into the pulpit, crushed the
little Oswaldtwistle party into the north-eastern Corner of it, and
poured out for about twenty minutes a sharp, monotonous volume of
sacred verses. The scene underwent further development when, during
the singing, both stood up side by side. The pulpit, would hardly
hold them; but they stuck well to its inner sides, cast tranquil
fraternal glances at each other, once threw a Corsican brother
affection into the scene, looked now and then fierce, as if feeling
that each had as much right to the pulpit as the other, and finally
marched off with a twinly love beaming in their eyes, to the vestry
adjoining, from which in a few minutes the Oswaldtwistle minister
emerged in a black gown, and entered the pulpit, whilst his
companion followed, in a buttoned-up black coat, to the front of the
communion rails, where he took a seat and became very quiet. The
sermon was briskly condemnatory of unbelief, for ten minutes, then
got immensely pungent as to Popery, and ended in a coloured star-
shower concerning the excellence of "the good old Church of
England." We couldn't help admiring the preacher's eloquence; and a
man who sat near us, and at the finish said, "Who is that fellow?"--
a rather vulgar kind of query--seemed to be fairly delighted with
him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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