At Intervals Came The Distant Chimes Of
Three Distinct Village Churches - Ding Dong, Dong Ding, Pango, Frango,
Jango - Very Much Jango - Bang, Clatter, Clash - A Humming Vibration And
Dreadful Stir.
The country world was up in arms, I was about to say - I
mean in chimney-pot hat and
Pomade, - en route - to its various creeds,
some to one bell, some to another, some to ding dong, and some to dong
ding; but the most of them directed their steps towards a silent chapel.
This great building, plain beyond plainness, stood beside a fir copse,
from which in the summer morning there floated an exquisite fragrance of
pine. If all the angles of the architects could have been put together,
nothing could have been designed more utterly opposite to the graceful
curve of the fir tree than this red-bricked crass building. Bethel Chapel
combined everything that could be imagined contrary to the spirit of
nature, which undulates. The largest erection of the kind, it was
evidently meant for a large congregation.
Of all the people in this country there are none so devout as the
cottagers in the lanes and hamlets. They are as uncompromising as the
sectaries who smashed the images and trampled on the pride of kings in
the days of Charles I. The translation of the Bible cut off Charles I.'s
head by letting loose such a flood of iron-fisted controversy, and to any
one who has read the pamphlets of those days the resemblance is
constantly suggested. John Bunyan wrote about the Pilgrim. To this chapel
there came every Sunday morning a man and his wife, ten miles on foot
from their cottage home in a distant village. The hottest summer day or
the coldest winter Sunday made no difference; they tramped through dust,
and they tramped through slush and mire; they were pilgrims every week. A
grimly real religion, as concrete and as much a fact as a stone wall; a
sort of horse's faith going along the furrow unquestioning. In their own
village there were many chapels, and at least one church, but these did
not suffice. The doctrine at Bethel was the one saving doctrine, and
there they went. There were dozens who came from lesser distances quite
as regularly, the men in their black coats and high hats, big fellows
that did not look ungainly till they dressed themselves up; women as red
as turkey-cocks, panting and puffing; crowds of children making the road
odorous with the smell of pomade; the boys with their hair too long
behind; the girls with vile white stockings, all out of drawing, and
without a touch that could be construed into a national costume - the
cheap shoddy shop in the country lane. All with an expression of Sunday
goodness: 'To-day we are good, we are going to chapel, and we mean to
stay till the very last word. We have got our wives and families with us,
and woe be to any of them if they dare to look for a bird's nest!
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