HISTORICAL FESTIVAL OF PRIMITIVE METHODISM.

Feilding Star, Volume V, Issue 1254, 6 August 1910, Page 8 (Supplement)

HISTORICAL FESTIVAL OF PRIMITIVE METHODISM.

ARMY OF 100,000 WORSHIPPERS. Hanley, June 19. Never before in the history of tho Christian Church has sucK a scene been witnessed aa thai which -was presented to-day when more than 100,000 people gathered together on Mow Cop, the historic bill which saw tho birth of Primitive Methodism, to take part in a great religious festival. j Hugh Borne, the founder of the Primitive Methodist Church* first prayed at daybreak on this hill top with :'M his company in 1807. and in 1810 cxime the first class meeting, j which perpetuated the movement ; started three 3 r ears before. It is the centenary of that class meeting which was celebrated to-day. ; j Mow Cop stands up 1200 >eet above . the sea. From the rocky outcrop on I its wooded orest the vast copse-stud- ■ ded panorama of the Cheshire plains stretcher, as far as the eye, can follow, | while behind peasant meadows shelve, away to the Black Country. Before the sun Was up. this morn-

ing, and while the pottery furnaces stilL burned scarlet against the paling sky, the summit of Mow Cop was peopled by shadowy groups of men and women moving indistinctly over the dewy grass and among the misty thickets. White canvas tents gleam* ing palely on the Staffordshire side of the slopo had sheltered many of them overnight, and as I stood lihere before daybreak I saw the tent-flaps open and people emerge yawning and half awake to worship at sunrise.

Others came who had not slept that night, or \yho had risen at midnight to toil up from the valleys below to the hill-top. They stood expectantly, speaking with hushed voices, waiting for the sun to rise.

Presently, when the dawn came and the chill silver of the sky gave place to a living flush, the liillerest was flooded with faint golden light, and the people knelt bare-headed on the wet grass, praying fervently aloud. Such wp-s the prelude to the Mow Cop centenary camp meeting.