The Romance of Zion Chapel | Page 3

a single second of time, whatever
the apparent contradictions on the surface, was Theophilus
Londonderry that poorest of all God's creatures,--a hypocrite. However
you may judge him, you must never make that mistake about him.
CHAPTER III

OF ELI MOGGRIDGE AND THE NEW SPIRIT
New Zion, despite its name, was, as I have hinted, no longer new. The
fiery zeal which had once made it a living schism had long since died
out of it. Carried years before, a little blazing ember of faith, from a
flourishing hearth of Nonconformity some streets away, it had puffed
and gleamed a little space in the eloquence of the offended zealots who
carried it hotfoot that Sunday morning, but its central fire had been
poor, and for a long time no evangelistic bellows had awakened in it
even a spark.
Its original elders had long since lost heart and passed away. A
dwindling remnant of their children, from old association, just kept its
doors from actually closing, and made a mournful interruption in its
musty silence on Sundays. Life was too low to support a Wednesday
prayer-meeting, and Sunday by Sunday that life ebbed lower. New life
from the outside must come, and speedily, or it must die.
But new life was already on the way. On the town side the sad streets
round New Zion led one into a more prosperous High Street, and
indeed Zion Street itself, as it turned the corner, flamed into quite a
jovial and ruddy shop--a provision merchant's, and kept by Eli
Moggridge. The name did its owner considerable wrong, for its
suggestion of puritanical sanctimoniousness was a flat contradiction of
the jovial and ruddy personality, the huge red-whiskered laugher, for
whom it stood, and of whom the shop, with its healthy smell of cheese
and its air of exuberant prosperity, was a much more truthful
expression. Well, the business was growing with such gusto that Mr.
Moggridge felt he might afford a home away from his shop, and thus
he came to take the biggish empty house which presently put on new
paint and once more seemed quite proud of being "Zion View."
Till this time, Mr. Moggridge. had "attended" elsewhere, but he was not
so young as he had been and somewhat stouter, and the stealthy
approach of comfortable habits had suggested to him that his old chapel
was rather at an unnecessary distance. Then, too, the fact of his house
being called after New Zion seemed to impose a sort of obligation
towards the sad old chapel. Besides, Mr. Moggridge was not inhumanly

above the pleasures of self-importance, and though he did not express it
in just those words, or indeed in any words at all, the idea of his being
the Maecenas of New Zion was suddenly born within him.
Now, quick was even the word with Mr. Moggridge, as became a
successful man of business, and for him to conceive an idea was to
carry it out, as goods were always delivered from Mr. Moggridge's
shop, with despatch. Also in some dim far-off way Mr. Moggridge's
mind had, all unconsciously, been stirred by vibrations of what we call
the New Spirit. The new spirit of any age works its way even into its
businesses, and though Mr. Moggridge wouldn't have so described it, it
was the "New Spirit" that had made the success of his provision shop.
Speaking of the need of New Zion, Mr. Moggridge called it "new
blood." He meant the "New Spirit;" and it was in reply to his
advertisement for a new pastor, that the "New Spirit" in the person of
Theophilus Londonderry came one Sunday to preach at New Zion.
CHAPTER IV
ENDS QUITE ROMANTICALLY
Eli Moggridge was a judge of men, and he liked Theophilus
Londonderry at a glance. Theophilus Londonderry was also a judge of
men, and he liked Eli Moggridge. In fact, two men that needed each
other had met.
You couldn't help laughing a little at Mr. Moggridge at first, soon you
couldn't help respecting him,--Theophilus Londonderry was almost to
know what it was to love him. Indeed, that Mr. Moggridge was just the
man he was was a matter of no small importance to the young minister.
A chief deacon is nothing less than a fate, and it is in his power to be no
little of a tyrant. Had Mr. Moggridge's interest in New Zion been of a
different character, he would inevitably have been as great a hindrance
as he was to prove a help. Fortunately that interest was recreative rather
than severely religious. It was to be for him a sort of Sunday-business
to which he was to devote his vast spare energies. He wanted to see it a
"going concern," and, hating stagnation in his neighbourhood, he

looked about for a