Chapel Outing to Beamish

Last weekend, we had our annual chapel outing. By coach, 28 of us visited Beamish Open Air Museum in England’s North East. It contains a late Victorian pit village, complete with school, mine and chapel; an Edwardian town, and two farms, one late Georgian, the other from the Second World War period. Under construction is a 1950s town and an 1820s coaching inn complex. A highlight of the day was hearing two choirs sing in the chapel, one German, the other English. Surprisingly, they both sang good gospel songs and harmonised beautifully. Elsewhere there were brass bands, ladies singing troupes and plenty of stalls selling sarsaparilla and dandelion & burdock.

 

I love the Victorian and Edwardian periods, sometimes wistfully regretting that my working life did not cover the period 1870 to 1910. I look upon it as a golden age, whereas in reality, it had plenty of problems which my rose-tinted spectacles fail to notice, not least the standard of sanitation. Spiritually, it was a great age, with evangelical Christianity permeating much of the culture. Again, it also contained the seeds of the next century’s doubt and apostasy. Darwin’s atheistic evolutionary outlook developed, along with groups like Mormonism and The Watchtower organisation. The Church of England began to re-Catholicise and so called modernist theology planted the seeds of unbelief in a generation of trainee ministers.

 

The golden age of humanity will recommence at Christ’s reign on the earth; until then, let’s make the most of the age in which we are called to live. Outings aside, we must not live in the past, always looking back. Look up!