The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1871-05-13 00:00:00

A "CAMP MEETING."
(From Monday's Daily Sews)

Strolling down the Caledonian-road on Saturday
night among the marketing tolks, the following an-
nouncement on a poster outside a shop caught my
eye :—" Primitive Methodiet Chapel, —,—A
great camp meeting will be htld to-morrow in Tall
Trees-meadow, on the north side of the Cattle-market.
Proceseions will start about 8 30 from the following
places: Top of Great College-street, bottom of
Caledonian-road, top of Pentonville and White
Lion-street. The processions will proceed to the
south end of Remingford-read, Copenhagen-street,
where a short address will be delivered at 9,15;
after which a general processi si will be con-
du ded by the Rev. Thomas Penrose to the camp
ground. Public love-feasts in the evening in the
chapels." A camp meeting in London! This
when found, was surely worth making a note
of. A note of it I made, and was punctual at the
rendezvous yesterday morning. The first to approach
was the King's-cross contingent. It had halted in the
Caledonian-road for a hymn and a prayer, and then
formed ranks again and marched up Copenhagen street
to the place appointed for the rendezvous. No cons
nection seemed to suggest itself between Primitive
Methodism and match making, so the representative
member of the Metropolitan Police force who was on
the ground did not feel called upon to interfere. The
procession breasted the steep hill manfully, five or six
ranks deep, each rank locked ann•and•artn. They
moved to the quick step of a hymn, which they sang
lustily, especially the chorus :

For you must be a lover of the Lord,
For you mutt be a lover of the L
For you must be a laver of the L
0: you can't go to heaven when you die'

This was repeated over and over again, the singing led
by two gentlemen who marched backwards up hill
with great dexterity. As the King's-cross contingent
came one way, the Islington detachment came the
other; the two coalesced, both physically and vocally,
and formed a large ring at the end of Hemingford.road.
Son after the voice of the Camden Town contin-
gent was heard in the distance, and it presently joined
also.

Sunday processions have not been altogether un-
known in London of late years. Their features are
much the same—red flags or green, Phrygian cape,
blasphemous litanies, a general aspect indicating a
ecarcity of map, the stump and fluent balderdash
spiced with snarling sedition. Yesterday's procession
differed from these in every particular. Thrive who
formed it were reepectable, peaceable, GA-feariug
people—all dressed in their Sunday's beet. The great
majority seemed respectable mechanic., but Sunday is
a bad day for discriminating classes in a church-going
sect. There were many females in the processions,
and the good ladies had solved in a very simple
way what is one of the standing difficulties
when a London mother of the working-classes de-
sires to accompany her husband to church—viz.,
what to do with the children. They had brought the
children with them, even unite the baby, and not a few
fathers were to be seen marching on the flank of a rank
with • young one perched on his shoulder. Heming.
ford-road received the Primitive Methodists with great
decorum, which ought to be no great credit to it, but
only a matter of course ; yet it was a credit ins relative
sense, as most Londoners will understand. There was
no chaff or rude banter. The Muting, I think, tamed
the somewhat savage breast of the side streets
of the Caledontan-road. "It does one good to
hear 'em anyhow, don't it, father ?" I heard a
woman out marketing—that hard necessity of the
Sunday morning with so many remark to her
lord and master in moleskin—unshaven as to chin
and unlaced as ta high-lows. "Well, it do, Bet,"
growled her owner, "and I'm— if I'd mind belong-
ing to 'em." Strange glimmer of awakening battling
its way by the impetus of an oath through the fog !
Some friend came by with a certain " dawg " under
his arm, about which there was a whispered talk, and
then Bet's owner, shaking off the momentary weakness
went away with the dog-fancier. But Bet lingered
from her marketing, and took the hymn-leaflet when it
was tendered her; aye, and tried what her poor cracked
voice niight make of "For you must lie a lover of the
Lord," and of the " llalleujah Chorus" which
followed it.
The arrival of the third contingent rather broke up
the chorus into raggedness, fil) the reverend conductor
arrested the strain, to remonstrate that they "did not
bowl it round" earnestly enough, and then re-started
it. The hint told. I had thought that before there
was no lack either of earnestness or of volume, but
the Primitive Methodists must have been husbanding
their strength till the little complaint about defective
"bowling round" knocked off the valve. When the
singing was at length concluded, a clergyman made a
few remarks which partook more of the nature of a
prayer than an address. It was annotated, rather
than broken, by frequent exclamations from the
lietenera Some of these were itarticulate, some-
thing between a groan and an ejaculation ; others
I took the forms of 'Amen.' " Ah yes," "God be
thanked," "By lila grace," and so on. When the
I prayer was over, a delegate, who seemed to act as a
I kind of unwarlike quartermaster-general, explained the
route in a few words, directed the assemblage to form in
ranks, twelve men in each, linked arm-in-arm, and that
a certain detachment on reaching the " camp " should
march on stand No. 1, while another should diverge
to etand No. 2. The Rev. Mr. Penrose, who was the
leader of the procession (nominally, although not
I actually, for his front was covered by a light division
of boys and lade), gave the word to march by striking
I up a hymn, and so the procession, verbatim a thousand
strong, set out up the Hemingford-road in steady slow
time.
There lives in these parts a certain man than whom
there is no more persevering or more gallant warrior
with the sin and misery of this great city. What Mr.
Catlin, the missionary, has done and is doing in the
foul closes and stifling courts of Clerkenwell, no one
can know, unless he has gained his knowledge by per.
aortal experience. That gentleman's wife died last
week. She was a fitting helpmate to her husband,
as many a poor creature knows well. Some eighteen
months ago I had occasion to penetrate into the
haunts where "famine fever' was reaping the
harvest that hardehip and starvation had sown. In
one Clerkenwell attic I entered, where four out of
its six inhabitants were down with the fever, I
found Mrs. Catlin quietly installed as sick nurse,
performing cheerfully the meat menial offices,
and brightening the dingy attic like a Bun-
beam. Her mourning husband, a man of much the
game simple, strong religious faith as themselves, is
known to the Primitive Me'hodiets. Their leader
halted them opposite his house, observing that if
"they were to Mug averse or two in front of it, Mr.
Catlin might find some comfort in the words as well as
in the intention." Let us hope the well-meant seren-
ade was not altogether ineffectual. Then on ateadily
up the road, ever singing, for no amount of vocal
music seems to fatigue the Primitive Methodists. An
the procession passed the back of the Holloway Prison,
its leader called for a strain of exceptional loudness, in
the hope, as he expressed himself, "that it might ring
into the cells of the poor sinners within, and set them
a-thinking for their own good."
"'rail Trees Meadow" has Int one tree in it, and
the "camp meeting" was no only in name. Al.
though there wore no tents, only a little grass and
a couple if wazgone, yet there was something pastoral
in the scene, for sheep were feeding on the meadow,
and when one was tired of etanding he might lie down
on the sward. The two waggons were at some distance
one from the other, and both were full of delegates, of
whom one was present from each of the thirty-eight
static-no in the Districts: Each speaker had a quarter
of an hour allotted to him; he was partitioned off from
his predecessor by a hymn, and there was a regularly
arranged order of proceedings, with the hour
printed for each speaker. The listeners were
pretty evenly divided, but it was plain that most
knew when and where the cream was to be found ; and
now the crowd was dense roiled one waggon, LOW
round the other. Many of the speakers were men of
great power of eloquence; almost all were ready and
telling. There was much plain practicality and straight'
bitting good sense; very little wordiness; and &genuine
community of feeling between speakers and hearers.
The illustrations of one of the delegates were very
apposite as well as quaint. His subject was reli-
gious light, and he was showing that light on us
was of little account—that the desideratum was
light in us. "Lock at the sunlight on yonder ,
tiled roof," said he, "it is bright enough, even
dazzling, but it does not help in the least to light
the house the roof covers. That homy) would be dark
enough if it were lit only by the light on it. But
watch that servant drawing up the blind. See! now
the light is streaming in through the window. The
light is in the house now, not cm it." Again, referring
, to the true light of God as contraedietinguished from
false lights, this was his figure " Von have to pay for
artificial light ; your gas bilk come in regularly, You
have just barely escaped laaviug yet more to pay fur
' artificial P&L But the daylight is better than the
best artificial light, and you never hear of God
sending in His bills for so many days of His glorious
sunlight."
L The "camp meeting" lasted all day with a break
; at mid-day for dinner. The evening love-feasts were
, interesting, but the interest was not of a kind to be
dealt with hen,. Individual' stood up as they felt

moved, and related each his or her own religious ex-
periences, troubles, difficulties, or trinmpha. The feast
proper was a mere conventionality of bread and water.
There was a ".aanap meeting" yesterday in each of
the districts throughout England into which the
Primitive Methodists circuits are grouped. The
gathering is an annual one in commemoration of the
great meeting at Mow Cop, in Shropshire, at which
the sect may be said to have been founded. Delegates,
lay and clerical, are interchanged between the districts,
nor do these go to hotels or require to seek lodgings,
being " entertained " by resident members, whose
addresses, with the name of the appointed guest for
each, are contained in the printed piogramme of which
every deleiate has a cony. It may be long before
London sees another Primitive Methodist Camp
Meeting ;" the last previous one in the metropolis was
held seven years ago.