Cautley Chapel

Cautley Methodist Chapel near Sedbergh is a little smaller than our Salem Chapel but the landscape in which it sits is more dramatic. Perhaps knowing they could not compete with those brooding fells, the Wesleyans of Westmorland built as plain a chapel as they could, with stepped seating like our own, and an imposing pulpit from which the gospel could be proclaimed. Although the grass in its grounds is long, the place seems to still function as a Christian meeting house. The rot at the heart of Methodism may not yet have fully reached this remote part of the northlands. An online source links its foundation to one Roger Moister, who evangelised these parts in the two decades before the chapel’s construction in 1845. He was later known as the Patriarch of Wyoming, publishing a memoir in 1883. I dare say that England’s Cumbria and America’s Wyoming are not very dissimilar, and that Mr Moister was called by God to leave the one and go to the other. Having cut his teeth in the old world, God drew him into service in the New, his skills and services better honed. Perhaps as a witness to this faithful servant of God has the Lord not seen fit to yet shut the doors of Cautley Chapel.

Many of the chapels and churches the world over are not just witness to God’s grace and Christ’s gospel, but to the ordinary men and women who laboured for their Master. The New Testament is adamant that we cannot fully love God if we love not His people. May we also honour them- past and present- if we are to fully glorify Him.

Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen. Ephesians 3:21