CHAPTER VII

THE CHAPEL


The revivalist preacher had come, and was indeed sweeping the land like
a flail. Everyone was caught up in that threshing, and staid old
church-goers of years rushed into the chapels and added their groans and
outcries to the rest. Parson Boase stood aside, powerless while the
excitement lasted. Those were days when Methodism was at its most harsh;
the pure, if fierce, white flame of Whitefield and Thomson and Wesley
had become obscured by the redder glare and smoke of that place whose
existence seemed the chief part of these latter-day Methodists' creed.
Hell was the theme of sermon and hymn--a hell of concrete terrors enough
to scare children in their beds at night. Thanks to the Parson, Ishmael
had hitherto been kept out of this maelstrom of gloomy fears, but now
that Annie, with the vicarious piety of so many women, had set her mind
on his "conversion," he too was to run the gamut of religious emotion,
in which it has been said there are contained all the others.

Ishmael, in so far as at that age he could be said to wish to attend any
place of prayer at all, was quite pleased to be going to chapel, partly
because he had never been allowed to, and partly because the singing,
from without, always sounded so much noisier and more frequent than
church music. Annie impressed on him that he was to say nothing to the
Parson about her intentions, and, though it made Ishmael uncomfortable
and even miserable to think of deceiving his friend, he was too afraid
of his mother to go against her, especially since this new sustained
violence was upon her.