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
do the greatest portion of the talking and praying, others break
through the ring fence of Quakerdom's silence periodically. One
little gentleman has often small outbursts; but he is not very
exhilerating. All the "members" attending the meeting house are very
decorous, respectable, middle-class people--substantial well-pursed
folk, who can afford to be independent, and take life easily--men
and women who dislike shoddy and cant as much as they condemn
spangles and lackered gentility.
The aggregate of the people connected with the place are calm,
steady-going beings. We have a large respect for Quakerism. Its
professors are made of strong, enduring, practical metal. They never
neglect business for religion, nor religion for business. They
believe in paying their way and in being paid; in moral rectitude
and yard wands not the millionth part of an inch too long; in yea
and nay; in good trade, good purses, good clothes, and good
language; in clear-headed, cool calculations; in cash, discounts,
sobriety, and clean shirts; in calmness and close bargain driving;
in getting as much as they can, in sticking to it a long while, and
yet in behaving well to the poor. The influence of the creed they
profess has made their uprightness and humanity proverbial. Their
home influence has been powerful; their views in the outer world are
becoming more fully realised every day. Nations have smiled
contemptuously at them as they have gone forth on lonely missions of
freedom and peace; but the inner beatings of the world's great heart
today are in favour of liberty of thought and quietness. The Quakers
have been amongst life's pioneers in the long, hard battle for human
freedom and human peace. Quakerism may be a quaint, hat-loving,
silence-revering concern in its meeting-houses; its Uriahs, and
Abimelechs, and Deborahs, and Abigails, may look curious creatures
in their collarless coats and long drawn bonnets; but they belong to
a race of men and women who have kept the lamp of freedom burning;
who have set a higher price upon conscience than gold; who have
struggled to make everything free--the body, the religion, the bread
and butter, and the trade of the nations; who are now by their
doctrines slowly lifting humanity out of the red track of war, and
teaching it how grand a triumph can be made all the world over by
absolute Peace and Honesty.
ST. PETER'S CHURCH.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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