Streams of Living Water

In the late 1840’s, Hugh Miller, instead of going for his annual break to Orkney, decided to go to England instead. When he was staying in Manchester, he decided one Lord’s Day to worship at the collegiate chapel. That particular Sunday was St. Bartholomew’s Day - notorious among Protestants for the memorial of the massacre of the French Hugenots. The Liberal Preacher in the collegiate chapel preached that day on the importance of observing Saints Days. There follows a hilarious account of Miller’s experience there:

First, Miller’s impression of the gargoyles on the wall - “Not a few of the carvings which decorate every patch of wall are of the most ludicrous character. Rows of grotesque heads look down into the nave from the spandrels; some twist their features to the one side of the face, some to the other; some wink hard, as if exceedingly in joke; some troll out their tongue; some give expression to a lugubrious mirth, others to a ludicrous sorrow.”

Second, Miller’s impression of the impact of the sermon on Saint’s Days, - “I looked round me to see how the congregation was taking all this, but the congregation bore the tranquil air of people quite used to such sermons. There were a good many elderly gentlemen who had dropped asleep, and a good many more who seemed speculating in cotton (Manchester was the cotton capital of Britain at the time); but the general aspect was one of heavy inattentive decency: there was, in short, no class of countenances within the building that bore the appropriate expression, save the stone countenances on the wall.”

Let’s give God thanks for those bastions of truth which are emerging in today’s Anglican community! And let’s pray that those who are truly listening to our preaching (and not just asleep) may not have recourse to the expressions of the gargoyles!

P.S. There are no stone gargoyles on the inside of St. V’s - only on the outside. Perhaps their pained expressions should mirror our expressions of grief at the moral and spiritual decline in the city…