Our Churches and Chapels eBook

Titus Pomponius Atticus
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 386 pages of information about Our Churches and Chapels.

Our Churches and Chapels eBook

Titus Pomponius Atticus
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 386 pages of information about Our Churches and Chapels.

Lune-street chapel contains standing, sitting, and sleeping room, for about 1,400 people.  The bulk who attend it take fair advantage of the accomodation afforded for the first and second positions; a moderate number avail themselves of the privileges held out for the whole three postures.  The chapel is not often crowded; it is moderately filled as a rule; and there is no particular numeric difference in the attendance at either morning or evening service on a Sunday.  The singing is neither loftily classic nor contemptibly common-place.  It is good, medium, well modulated melody, heartily got up; and thoroughly congregational.  In some places of worship it is considered somewhat vulgar for members of the congregation to give specimens of their vocalisation; and you can only find in out-of-the-way side and back pews odd persons warbling a mild falsetto, or piping an eccentric tenor, or doing a heavy bass on their own responsibility; but at Lune-street Chapel the general members of the congregation go into the work with a distinct determination to either sing or make a righteous noise worthy of the occasion.  They are neither afraid nor ashamed of the job; and we hope they draw consolation from it.  The more genteel worshippers take up their quarters mainly on the ground floor—­at the back of the central seats and at the sides.  The poor have resting places found for them immediately in front of the pulpit and at the rear of the galleries.  Very little of that unctuous spasmodic shouting, which used to characterise Wesleyanism, is heard in Lune-street Chapel.  It has become unfashionable to bellow; it is not considered “the thing” to ride the high horse of vehement approval and burst into luminous showers of “Amens” and “Halleleujahs.”  Now and then a few worshippers of the ancient type drop in from some country place, and explode at intervals during the course of some impulsive prayer, or gleeful hymn, or highly enamelled sermon.  You may occasionally at such a time, hear two or three in distant pews having a delightful time of it.  At first they only stir gently, as if some on were mildly pinching or tickling them.  Gradually they become more audible, and as the fire of their zeal warms up, and the eloquence of the minister enflames, they get keener, fiercer, more rapturous; the intervals of repose are shorter, the moments of ecstacy are more rapid and fervent; and this goes on with gathering desperation, until the speaker reaches his—­climax, and stops to either breathe or use his handkerchief.  But hardy a scintilla of this is perceived on ordinary occasions; indeed it has become so unpopular that an exhibition of it seems to quietly amuse—­to evoke mild smiles and dubious glances—­rather than meet with reciprocity of approval.  It must be some great man in the region of Wesleyanism; some grand, tearing, pathetic, eloquent preacher who can stir to a point of moderate audibility the voices of the multitude of worshippers.  In Lune-street Chapel, the Ten Commandments occupy a prominent position, and that is a good thing.  It would be well if they were fastened up in every place of worship, and better still if the parsons referred to them more frequently.

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Our Churches and Chapels from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.