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.
transforming into cleanness and brightness.  The pews are high, and on the average they will hold six persons each.  Seven might get into them on a pinch; but if the number were much extended beyond that point, either abraison or blue places through violent pressure would be the consequence.  Two or three pews at the top end will hold twelve each; but that apostolic number is not very often observed in them.  The price of a single sitting in the middle aisle is 10s. per annum; the cost of a side seat is equal to three civil half-crowns.  The long side seats are free; so are the galleries, excepting that portion of them in front of the organ.  Often the church is not much more than half filled on a Sunday; but it is said that many sittings, calculated to accommodate nearly a full congregation, are let.  Viewed from the copperhead standpoint this is right; but taking a higher ground it would be more satisfactory if even fewer pews were let and more folk attended.  The church is not well arranged for people occupying side seats.  In looking ahead the pillars of the nave constantly intercept their vision if they care about seeing who is reading or preaching.  Wherever the pulpit were put it would blush unseen, so far as many are concerned.  At present it is fixed on the south-eastern side, and only about one-fourth of those seated under the galleries can see either it or the preacher.  Some of them at times complain considerably of sequestration; others feel it a little occasionally; a few think it a rather snug thing to be out of sight.  A large five-light stained glass window occupies the chancel end; but there is nothing very entrancing in its appearance.  The greater portion of it has a bright, amber-coloured, monotonous flashiness about it, which flares the eyes if gazed at long, and makes other things, if looked at directly afterwards, yellow-hued; and it is surmounted with a number of minor designs, reminding one of the big oddities in a mammoth keleidoscope.  But the congregation have got used to the window, and will neither break it nor permit others to do so.  Six spaces for tablet inscriptions occupy the base of the window.  Two of them are blank; two have a great mass of letters packed into them; and two are but moderately filled in with words.  At a distance nobody can see what is said upon them.  It is reported that they contain the Decalogue and the Apostles’ Creed; and if this be so, the incumbent, the curate, and the clerk must have been the parties for whose delight they were put up, for they are the nearest to, and can consequently best read, them.  There are the full compliment of sacred enclosures and resting places at the higher end of the church—­a chair for the ease of the incumbent or curate; a desk for the prayer reader; a box for the clerk; a lectern for the lesson reader; and a stout pulpit for the preacher.

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Our Churches and Chapels from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.