Vol 2, pages 1-100 - My Primitive Methodist Ancestors

22 PRIMITIVE METHODIST CHURCH.
Gregory Alcock, and the Waller family were for a long period among the stated
worshippers." *
The structural, brick-and-mortar history of Jersey Street, of Canaan Street, of
West Street, or any other of the historic chapels of Primitive Methodism is the least
important part of its history to be recalled. The main thing to be recognised is the
body of rich and constantly multiplying associations that for so many people gathered
round the building ;
the large place it filled in the better part of the lives of so many ;
the fireside of the men who ministered or were
the memories arid the talks by
ministered unto within its walls ;
the historic meetings, the notable texts and sermons,
the remarkable conversions, the rousing prayer-meetings, the inspiring hymns, the
love-feast experiences the institutional ; Saturday-night band-meeting, for which even
the country people would steal an hour from their marketing even the traits and
;
oddities and outstanding features in the characters of the habitual frequenters of the
sanctuary, remembered all the more vividly when they are gone
all this constitutes
the true history of the plain old building now no more, and explains the hold it got
on the hearts and imaginations of men, and yet all this has to be conceived rather
than described in relation to Jersey Street, which was the ganglion the nerve-centre
of our denominational life in Manchester for so long a term of years.
Two Conferences were held in Jersey Street that of 1827, of which we know
a little, and that of 1840, of which we know next to nothing. At the former there
were five o'clock morning preachings, a procession through a large part of the town to
the camp-ground near the workhouse, and in the evening there was held what may be
called an In Memoriam service for James Steele, who had died but a few days before
the opening of Conference. W. Clowes would have taken a leading part
in this
service but for the fact that he was then, and had been for some time, in an indifferent
state of health. As it was, it fell to the lot of Hugh Bourne and Thomas King to
speak of the life and death of this honoured servant of God. In
his Journal, however,
Clowes tells how he had visited James Steele whom he designates
" one. of the
founders of the Primitive Methodist Connexion" only
a few minutes before he
expired.
He records how, though the sands of the hour-glass were fast running out,
the good man " entered freely into conversation respecting the work of the Lord,"
and how, when asked if his faith stood firm, he replied in the words of the Psalmist,
" I will not forsake thee when thy faith faileth."
An administrative change of some importance was effected at this Conference.
A new district was formed out of some of the frontier stations of Tunstall, Nottingham,
and Hull Districts, and of this new district Manchester was made the head. Towards
the formation Nottingham gave New Mills, and a year after Bradwell ;
Hull gave
Preston, Blackburn, Clitheroe, and Keighley ;
while the mother-district contributed
Preston Brook, Liverpool, and Chester, together with Manchester and its daughtercircuits
Oldham and Bolton, and Bolton's own child the Isle of Man. Thus it will
be seen at a glance, that Manchester District was made rather than grew. A new
district was created, as it were by a stroke of the pen, for administrative purposes,
* Communicated by Mr. W. E. Parker.