CHAPTER 32

Bible Readings, 1858-59.

The church (so-called) in which I now ministered had been built by persons who intended to accommodate the largest number of people for the smallest amount of money.  It was scantily built, and almost square, with galleries on three sides.  On the remaining one there used to be a pulpit, conspicuously placed in the middle of the wall.  This important portion of the edifice was now removed to one side, to make room for a Communion table, the seats in front being arranged chancel-wise, facing one another, for the choir.  This was quite a damper to my ecclesiastical tastes; besides being ugly in the extreme.

I tried by putting ornamental scrolls over the windows, and by staining the glass in them, to make some improvement.  I also painted a diaper pattern round the side walls; and upon the high blank wall behind the Communion table exercised all the skill I possessed, but fear it was somewhat in vain, though I laboured hard.  The designs looked very well on paper, but when displayed on the wall gave no satisfaction; so one after another they disappeared, till my dissolving views, as they were called, ended in a large floriated cross of gold, with a monogram inter-twined in it, on a dark background.

When once, however, the Lord began to bless the Word, and souls were awakened, despite all anti-ecclesiastical appearances, my heart was drawn towards the ugly place, and I loved it greatly.  I could never have believed that my former tastes and tendencies could have been so completely changed as they were.

In those days it was a strange thing to hold an after-meeting in a church; it was never done, even by the few who had such meetings.  Therefore, I took the anxious ones and others to my own house for the inquiry meeting, after the evening service.  Having taken up the carpet in the drawing-room, we fitted it up with chairs and forms to accommodate ninety people, while half as many more occupied the hall, and often numbers stood outside the windows.  In this house it pleased God to give us very many souls, who were brought in week by week for several months.  I believe every room in that house, like the rooms at Baldhu Parsonage, was consecrated as the birth-place of one or more of God’s children.

The number of those who attended the after-meeting became so great, that we found it necessary to go to the large schoolroom.  This place will also be remembered in eternity, and many a soul will say of it, “I was born there!”

One night, when I returned home from a distant meeting, I was called to see a person in Feat distress of soul.  As I went down the street at eleven o’clock, I was surprised to see lights in almost all the houses, and what was more, to hear voices in urgent and importunate prayer, as also the voice of thanks-giving.  The whole street was alive, and indeed there was a most “joyful noise” on every side.  I was praying or rejoicing in one house or another all through the night, which was one never to be forgotten.