Christian village

“ Cannot the Congregational churches, which have the lead in Christian work here, arise in faith and take possession of the land in the name of the Lord?
There is one place which gives promise of being the future center of this whole region and the largest place in the mountains. It is now absolutely destitute of all elevating, religious and educational institutions. It is nearly one hundred miles from the nearest A. M. A. work. It is a village of three or four hundred inhabitants, with a thickly populated country all around it. ”

“ Devoted men are now being sent forth, whose duty it will be to go beyond the labours of these brethren, and to itinerate among the villages and towns. It should be remarked, however, that the heathen villages and Christian villages are so intermingled, and single villages so divided, that both the stationary missionaries and the native preachers have many opportunities which they improve for making known to them the way of salvation. ”

“ In the course of an hour, though my turjeman and myself came off early and secretly, it was known all over the city the Christian had gone to the sanctuary, and the more bigoted were not a little excited. In the village, although everything has the appearance of the most abject poverty, all is bright and clean. ”

“ The next morning, the principal person in the village, who owned a great part of it, came to their hovel, and acquainted the old folks that they might the next Sunday send their children to church, where they would be instructed in the principles of the Christian religion, and be likewise taught to read, without any expence to themselves. ”

“ The fruits are pomegranates, oranges, figs, and olives. The village has now about 4,000 population, chiefly Christians, with a few Mohammedans, a mosque, a Franciscan convent, and two or three chapels of other confessions. In the rainy season the streams pour down rapid floods through the hills. The wise man there takes care to build and dig deep down to the rock, and not to trust to the loose soil as a foundation. From the heights extensive views are obtained of the Lebanon, Hebron, Carmel, Gilead, and Gilboa. ”

“ As the lords or thanes of the various vills, following the example of their kings, accepted [Pg 45] Christianity, their people followed their example. In the open places of the tuns and vills, where the folk-moots were held, Christianity was preached and the cross set up. That, probably, was the origin of most of the village and market crosses. Then, in the course of time, in some cases, a church was built on a part of the old sacred open spaces. You cannot help noticing to-day how in many towns the chief church is by the market-place, and in the villages by the village green. ”

“ Now, the summoning church-bell tolls its solemn note; school children, with merry laugh and light step, cross the common; the village is astir, and a human tide is setting towards its sacred portals: all, all speaks to the heart and to the imagination of happy days and happy scenes in a far-off land. ”

“ I recognised the little church with its gilt dome and blue and pink walls, the pride of all the inhabitants—the whitewashed houses of the richer villagers, and the rough log-huts, thatched with straw, of the poorer serfs. A sparkling stream ran by it, and green fields and orchards surrounded the place. It was altogether a flourishing little village. ”

“ The theory that brought them into existence has lost its hold, while the spirit that could animate them and give them a living message has not yet entered them; the refined grace, the sweet solemnity of these simple buildings, has no voice for the plain, sensible villager; it cannot be interpreted to him. If all the inhabitants of a village were humble, simple, spiritually minded people, ascetic in life, with a strong sense of beauty and quality, then a village church might have a tranquil and inspiring influence. ”

“ Penance alone can save us.
However gay the life of the village we enter, the streets are soon silent and the fields and meadows deserted. God's house has become the refuge. The inhabitants show their readiness to exchange the earthly for the heavenly, for the fruits of the earth spoil through neglect, while the people pray in the churches.
And even the government perceives the necessity of a general conversion in the land. Should a man be found idling in the village square on a Sunday, he would be driven into the church at the point of the bayonet. ”

“ What a mystery of love and unity is there; what a grandeur and pathos of sure and simple faith. The village Church and its mellow chimes, the village tree and the village festival, are thoughts which refresh us even now in the dry and glaring age in which we live and toil. What elements of a happy life, withdrawn from the tumultuous world, still linger among us. Our ten thousand village Churches, and the parochial system of which they are the life, have in them a virtue of power to change this laboured and distracted land to be merry England once more. ”

“ On the contrary, we feel that it is the simple impression of a need, the ingenuous cry of an appetite, and, like the shepherd's bed of dried leaves, it is the retreat the soul has built for itself where it comes to rest when it is tired. These village churches represent better than their city sisters the distinctive features of the places where they are built, and they seem to participate more directly in the life of the people who, from father to son, come to kneel at the same place and on the same stone slab. ”

“ This, with a small farmhouse, in old times a manor house, and its outbuildings and a cottage or two, make the village. So quiet a spot is it that to see a human form or hear a human voice comes almost as a surprise. The little antique church, the few stones, the dark ancient tree—these are everything, and the effect on the mind is strangely grateful—a sense of enduring peace, with something of that solitariness and desolation which we find in unspoilt wildernesses. ”

“ At the foot of the hill, connected with the chateau by a narrow path, lies a pretty village, whose white houses seem to have sprung from the golden sand; a chapel stands halfway up the hill; the lords descended and the villagers ascended to its altar-the region of equality, situated like a neutral spot between poverty and riches, which have been too often opposed to each other in bitter conflict. ”

“ The country village of 1,000 population has five churches; it should have only one. The country is full of half starved preachers and weak, struggling congregations.
The get-together movement will help religion, and it's going to happen surely. ”

“ The church occupies slightly rising ground, from which in almost every direction one may behold stretches of some of the most charming rural country in England; and the church itself, [Pg 47] with the old village cross beneath the monster elm tree, is not the least picturesque feature of the landscape. The village which fronts it, clean, cozy and comfortable-looking, its gray walls dashed with ivy and relieved by the rich color of rose vines and old-time flowers, is as lovely and peaceful a hamlet as one will find, even in England. ”

“ What strikes one so much in these parish accounts of bygone days is the richness of even small, out-of-the-way village churches. Where we would naturally be inclined to look for poverty and meanness, there is evidence to the contrary. ”

“ Over the next rise in the very winding lane I heard the sound of brisk church bells, and not three hundred yards beyond came to a village green, where knots of men dressed in the dark clothes, light ties, and bowler hats of village festivity, and of women smartened up beyond belief, were gathered, chattering, round the yard of an old, grey, square-towered church. ”

“ And so the gloomy days crept on, and the sufferers and the mourners of the village which lay half-built beneath the hill passed on to take up their dwelling in the village upon the bluff, where, silent pilgrims, they lay, row upon row, hands meekly folded, lips close set, and eyes forever shut, but yet attaining all that they sought in this their pilgrimage, freedom from tyranny even of time and circumstance, freedom to worship God in spirit and in truth. ”

“ Hundreds of villages and towns bear the names of holy missionary monks who built first a cell, and then a monastery around a chapel, which became the centre of a village, that grew in time to be a city. ”

“ We see arising above the trees the church, the centre of the old village life, both religious, secular, and social. It stands upon a site which has been consecrated to the service of God for many centuries. There is possibly in or near the churchyard a tumulus, or burial mound, which shows that the spot was set apart for some religious observances even before Christianity reached our shores. Here the early Saxon missionary planted his cross and preached in the open air to the gathered villagers. ”

“ Very often these are the oldest and most picturesque buildings left in a village, except the church. It is these old-fashioned houses which make village scenery so pleasing to the eye after the dreary rows of bunches of brick, with holes in them for windows, covered in with slate, which fill the streets of our towns, all alike, and all ugly. ”

“ It dipped down into a valley too, and passed through a quiet, peaceful little village, with a group of tall silver poplars before the church, and a congregation of fine old beech trees around the rectory. The whole aspect of the place was home tranquillity; that of a purely English village under the most favourable circumstances. Cleanliness, neatness, rustic ornament, an air of comfort, a cheerful openness, a look of healthfulness. How different from the villages one sometimes sees, alas! in every country ”

“ Once a village was withdrawn from what is going forward in the world. But now the village is the very source of our salvation, social and artistic. It is not that we are finding humanity at its best in the villages, but that there humanity is at the point where it is most in type. ”

“ If in each small village there was a single church in which all the Christians of the community could unite, they could easily [Pg 118] organize the work in all the surrounding country and carry it on successfully. But where there are a number of churches they are in the way of each other and effectually prevent any widespread and efficient work. Still, even in that unfortunate condition, something may be done in a systematic way to help the rural regions. ”

“ I am one of them, a villager with the village mind, and no wish for any other.
This mind or heart includes the dead as well as the living, and the church and churchyard is the central spot and half-way house or camping-ground between this and the other world, where dead and living meet and hold communion—a fact that is unknown to or ignored by persons of the "better class," the parish priest or vicar sometimes included. ”

“ When all the ministers and all the churches catch the vision of the Larger Parish and address themselves to the work of making it a reality, the rural regions will be rehabilitated, religiously, morally, and [Pg 123] socially, and a splendid impulse will be given to the work throughout the whole country. If some practical plan can be adopted by the village churches for extension work, the whole aspect of the country situation may be quickly changed. The people, both in the villages and in the open country, are more ready for some such movement than has been supposed. ”

“ Miall's question—what is the condition of the rural parishes? and for an answer refer, not to Blue Books alone, but to the knowledge of living men. How are 'the men whose whole and sole business it is to take care of the souls' of our villagers discharging their high function? Are they feeding them with the bread of life, or with 'the husks which the swine do eat,' in the shape of superstitious teaching, or of vapid formalism? Is it not in our village parishes that there are to be found the most stolid ignorance and the grossest superstition? ”

“ Would not the Larger Parish idea as set forth in this story furnish a good working plan for such a movement?
No man can have very much enthusiasm in a task that does not challenge all his powers and bring them into action—neither can a church. With the village churches it is a case of self-preservation as well as outreaching service. They must do this work or die. They will not long survive the spiritual declension of the country. The country and the village stand or fall together. ”

“ It is no wonder that you had such poor preachers in your day; why few men of liberal education, aware of all the exactions and disabilities under which the sacred cloth laboured, would ever encounter them. But, now, every village has its own pastor; and some of them are highly gifted men, commanding the attention of the most intelligent people. The little churches are filled, throughout the summer, with such of the gentry of the cities who can afford to spend a few months in the country during the warm weather. ”

“ About them in smaller and conspicuously meaner houses are the other inhabitants of the village—small families with parents struggling to make both ends meet, with children frequently underfed and underclothed, but all of them belonging to the main stream of Life, and constituting the only justification there is for the existence of the very town and village itself, the Church, and all the machinery of social life. ”

“ Here, too, come the people from the village—bent old women, their wrinkled faces hidden under snowy linen mutches, carrying in their hands, with the long-treasured Bible, a sprig of southernwood and sweetwilliam to smell at during sermon ”