Blomfield.
THE opening services were continued for three successive Sundays, and one noteworthy feature in the course was the holding of a love-feast; that peculiarly Methodistic institution which was so rich a blessing to the Church in the earlier days, and is yet, in the places which have maintained their primitive simplicity, and into which the cold criticisms of lethargic respectability and the frosty influences of a stately formality, have not found their mischievous and unwelcome way. In those old times the love-feast was not relegated to a brief half-hour after the evening service, when the jaded congregation is glad to get out of a spent and oppressive atmosphere, and when a careful examination of the tickets of membership, once a precious certificate of union with the Church, and a passport to peculiar privileges of spiritual intercourse, is rendered all but impracticable. Then, the love-feast was held in the afternoon, each member showed his ticket at the door, and those who came without that token had to go to the minister for a written “permit.” A few kindly and serious words spoken to the applicants often resulted in their decision for Christ, and their connection with His people.
At the Nestleton love-feast there was a full gathering of members, not only from the village, but the region round about. After singing and prayer, “Grace before Meat” was sung, and then the time-honoured custom of eating bread and drinking water together was observed. There are those, even among Methodists, who speak jocosely and slightingly of this usage, as one which “might be very well spared.” They are degenerate children, who sadly underrate and misunderstand its meaning, and are recreant and disloyal to the spiritual mother that bore them. They forget that Methodism has for one of its main elements of strength, one of its most effective equipments for moral service, a principle and bond of brotherhood, a family relationship such as belongs to no other Christian Church on earth. The breaking of bread together is the sign and token of that moral freemasonry, and has done much to make the Methodists at home with each other, wherever their lot is cast. In an Australian hut or Indian bungalow, an American shanty or a Canadian log-house, on a South Sea Island or a Western prairie, as well as in an English rural homestead or an urban villa, two Methodist hearts, hitherto strangers, will beat in unison, and the hand-grasp that follows betokens a welding power in the Methodist polity which it will be stark, staring madness either to weaken or destroy. Besides this, the cultivation of the family bond by such means as the love-feast is an effective means of checking feuds, jealousies, coolnesses, and of re-twisting the brotherly bonds that friction with the outside world tends to loosen, to the serious loss of spiritual power. He is the most loyal Methodist who will heartily conserve all those rules and usages which tend to bind its world-wide constituency into one homogeneous, harmonious, and resistless whole.
ADAM OLLIVER ADDRESSING A MEETING.—[Page 287].
“Grace after Meat” was sung, and then Mr. Clayton, who conducted the service, related his own experience of the saving and sustaining grace of God. Then the meeting was thrown open, and one after another stood up to tell “what God had done for their souls.” There was no unwillingness to bear this godly witness. Young men and maidens, old men and children—youthful Samuels and aged Simeons—all spoke briefly and feelingly of their new-found or time-tested faith in Jesus. The old wept tears of joy to hear the lispings of the young, the young listened with interest to the “wisdom spoken by years.” Once only was the current of grateful love and joy broken in upon by another kind of testimony. A good brother, who was sadly given to doubts and fears, and generally to an unsatisfactory and discontented view of things, spoke in such a sighing, doubting fashion as to cause quite a depressing influence to fall upon the meeting. He was instantly followed by Adam Olliver, who seemed to regard that sort of thing as a libel on the goodness and grace of God.
“Ah think,” said he, “’at Brother Webster, ’at’s just sitten doon, lives i’ Grumblin’-street. Ah lived there mysen yance; but ah nivver had good ’ealth. T’ air was bad, an’ t’ watter was bad, an’ t’ sun nivver shined frae Sunday mornin’ te Setterday neet. Sae ah teeak a hoose i’ Thenksgivin’-street, an’ ivver since then things ez been quite different; t’ air’s feyn an’ bracin’, an’ t’ watter’s pure and refreshin’, an’ t’ sun shines like summer, an’ t’ bods sing, an’ ah can’t help bud sing mysen. Ah recommend Brother Webster te flit. It’ll deea him a wolld o’ good, an’ ah sall be varry glad te get a new neighbour. Te-day ah thenk the Lord ’at me’ peeace floas like a river; an’ though ah’s nobbut a poor aud sheep ’at can’t forage for mysen, an’ isn’t worth tentin’, ‘the Lord is mi’ Shippard, an’ ah sall nut want. He mak’s me te lig doon i’ green pasthers beside still watters, an’ leads ma’ i’ t’ paths ov righteousness for His neeame’s seeak.’”
He was followed by Judith, who spoke in clear and joyous language of her calm repose on the bosom of infinite love, and of her hope of heaven, which she said was brighter than ever.
“I sall soon be there,” said the ripe old saint. “I can’t say as Jacob did to Pharaoh, ‘few and evil have the days of the years of my life been,’ for I seems to hev had nothing but mercies all t’ way through. As Adam says, we’ve lived i’ Thanksgiving-street, an’ though there’s been trials and cares, they’ve all been swallowed up in a multitude of blessings. Now I feel that I’s getten to be a poor totterin’, old woman, but I’m going home to Jesus.