[CHAPTER XII.]
Adam Olliver in the “Methodist Confessional.”
“When one who holds communion with the skies,
Has filled his urn where the pure waters rise,
And once more mingles with us meaner things,
’Tis even as if an angel shook his wings;
Immortal fragrance fills the circuit wide,
And tells us where his treasure is supplied.”
Cowper.
IN addition to the Sunday services conducted by local preachers, and a fortnightly Thursday meeting, when the Nestletonian Methodists were favoured with a sermon from one of the “itinerants,” two weekly class-meetings were held, the one in Adam Olliver’s cottage, the other in the kitchen of Nathan Blyth. In each case the owner of the place of rendezvous was the “leader” of the little band which gathered from week to week to give and obtain mutual cheer and encouragement in the Christian life. Old Adam’s class consisted chiefly of the older members of society, and numbered a dozen or fourteen men and women who were “asking their way to Zion with their faces thitherward.”