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
At the back of the chapel there is a Sunday-school. It was built in
1849. The number of scholars "on the books" is 120, and the average
attendance will be about 90. In connection with the school there is
a nice little library, and if the children read the books in it, and
legitimately digest their contents, they will be brighter than some
of their parents. There are two Sunday services at the chapel--one
in the morning, and the other in the evening. No religious meetings
are held in it during weekdays; the minister couldn't stand them; he
is getting old and rotund; and, constitutionally, finds it quite
hard enough to preach on Sundays. "He would be killed," said one of
the deacons to us the other day, in a very earnest and sympathetic
manner, "if he had to preach on week days--he's so stout, you know,
and weighs so heavy." We hardly think he would be killed by it.
Standing in a narrow pulpit for a length of time must necessarily be
fatiguing to him; but why can't things be made easy? If a high seat-
-a tall, broad, easy, elastic-bottomed chair--were procured and
fixed in the pulpit, he could sit and preach comfortably; or a swing
might be procured for him. Such a contrivance would save his feet,
check his perspiration, and console his dorsal vertebra. We suggest
the propriety of securing a chair or a swing. It would be grand
preaching and swinging.
The congregation at Vauxhall-road Chapel is pre-eminently of a
working-class character. Nearly the whole of the pew holders are
factory people; not above six or seven of them find employment
outside of mills. They are a plain, honest, enthusiastic, home-spun
class of folk. A few there may be amongst the lot who are
authoritative, or saucy, or ill-naturedly solemn; but the generality
are simple-dealing, quaintly-exhuberant, oddly-straightforward, and
primitively-pious people--distinctly sincere, periodically
eccentric, and fond of a good religious outburst, a shining
spiritual fandango now, and then.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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