The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford, Edited by his friend Reuben ShapcottWhite, William Hale
General
The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford, Edited by his friend Reuben Shapcott
White, William Hale
Religious fiction
THE old Presbyterian chapels throughout the country have many of them
become Unitarian, and occasionally, even in an agricultural village, a
respectable red-brick building may be seen, dating from the time of Queen
Anne, in which a few descendants of the eighteenth century heretics still
testify against three Gods in one and the deity of Jesus Christ.
Generally speaking, the attendance in these chapels is very meagre, but
they are often endowed, and so they are kept open.
There was one in the large, straggling half-village, half-town of D-,
within about ten miles of me, and the pulpit was then vacant. The income
was about £100 a year. The principal man there was a small general
dealer, who kept a shop in the middle of the village street, and I had
come to know him slightly, because I had undertaken to give his boy a few
lessons to prepare him for admission to a boarding-school. The money in
my pocket was coming to an end, and as I did not suppose that any
dishonesty would be imposed on me, and although the prospect were not
cheering, I expressed my willingness to be considered as a candidate.
In the course of a week or two I was therefore invited to preach. I was
so reduced that I was obliged to walk the whole distance on the Sunday
morning, and as I was asked to no house, I went straight to the chapel,
and loitered about in the graveyard till a woman came and opened a door
at the back. I explained who I was, and sat down in a Windsor chair
against a small kitchen table in the vestry. It was cold, but there was
no fire, nor were any preparations made for one. On the mantel-shelf
were a bottle of water and a glass, but as the water had evidently been
there for some time, it was not very tempting.
I waited in silence for about twenty minutes, and my friend the dealer
then came in, and having shaken hands, and remarked that it was chilly,
asked me for the hymns. These I gave him, and went into the pulpit. I
found myself in a plain-looking building designed to hold about two
hundred people. There was a gallery opposite me, and the floor was
occupied with high, dark, brown pews, one or two immediately on my right
and left being surrounded with faded green curtains. I counted my
hearers, and discovered that there were exactly seventeen, including two
very old labourers, who sat on a form near the door. The gallery was
quite empty, except a little organ, or seraphine, I think it was called,
which was played by a young woman. The dealer gave out the hymns, and
accompanied the seraphine in a bass voice, singing the air. A weak
whisper might be perceived from the rest of the congregation, but nothing
more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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