Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

I hastened back from Mary Shent’s funeral at Leeds to the love-feast at Birstal. It was the first of the kind which had been there. Many were surprised when I told them, “the very design of a love-feast is a free and familiar conversation, in which every man, yea, and woman, has liberty to speak whatever may be to the glory of God.” Several then did speak, and not in vain: the flame ran from heart to heart, especially while one was declaring with all simplicity the manner wherein God, during the morning sermon (on those words, “I will, be thou clean”) had set her soul at full liberty. Two men also spoke to the same effect; and two others who had found peace with God. We then joyfully poured out our souls before God, and praised Him for his marvellous works.

Order the book

Subscribe to the free daily email

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations:

• ER: East Riding
• GM: Greater Manchester
• NR: North Riding
• NY: North Yorkshire
• SY: South Yorkshire
• WR: West Riding
• WY: West Yorkshire

Comment

Comment

Something to say? Get in touch

Original

I preached in Birstal room at eight. At one we had thousands, the greatest part of whom were persons “fearing God and working righteousness.” I rode thence to Leeds, in order to preach a funeral sermon for Mary Shent, who, after many severe conflicts, died in great peace. It was one of the largest congregations which has been seen at Leeds, to whom I spoke very plain from part of the Gospel for the day, “Give an account of thy stewardship, for thou mayest be no longer steward.”

I hastened back to the Love-feast at Birstal. It was the first of the kind which had been there. Many were surprised when I told them, “the very design of a Love-feast is a free and familiar conversation, in which every man, yea, and woman, has liberty to speak whatever may be to the glory of God.” Several then did speak, and not in vain: the flame ran from heart to heart, especially while one was declaring with all simplicity the manner wherein God, during the morning sermon, (on those words, “I will, be thou clean,”) had set her soul at full liberty. Two men also spoke to the same effect; and two others who had found peace with God. We then joyfully poured out our souls before God, and praised Him for his marvellous works.

228 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Agape feast (2) ·
• Birstall, West Yorkshire (5) ·
• Mary Shent (1) ·
• Methodism (38) ·
• Wesley, John (1703-91) (21), cleric and leader of a evangelical revival movement within the Church of England known as Methodism ·

All tags.

Similar

• 2 February 1806: John Yeadon helps a desperate sinner at a Methodist love-feast during the Great Revival at Yeadon
• 9 May 1757: John Wesley rides into Huddersfield in the Wild West Riding
• 22 June 1761: John Wesley is troubled by fish at Guisborough
• 28 April 1747: John Wesley visits “the new house of the Germans” (the Moravians) at Pudsey, which is financed by overseas donations
• 19 May 1812: An Anglican Whit walk encounters a Nonconformist one at “Briarfield” (Birstall), amid Luddites and wars with France and the US, in the imagination of Charlotte Brontë
• 24 June 1761: A cat joins John Wesley’s street congregation at Robin Hood’s Bay
• 24 July 1761: Jonas Rushford (14) of Bradford tells a perhaps envious John Wesley how the Skipton magician Timothy Crowther helped him find a missing man
• 23 April 1832: “Pilgrims” arrive at Leeds on Easter Monday on their way to York to hear Richard Oastler call for a 10-hour working day for mill children
• 12 November 1819: The first, nocturnal vision of Prophet Wroe in one of his fields at Tong Street, Bradford following his near-fatal fever
• 22 May 1711: Leeds’s first white-cloth hall is opened on Kirkgate, replacing the outdoor market on Briggate, and competing with Wakefield’s 1710 building