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.
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