Unitarianism

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Unitarianism In Sheffield (1839)

On Tuesday evening, May 21, the Members of the Upper Chapel Congregation held their Whitsuntide Festival

in the Assembly-Rooms, under the presidency of their talented and much respected pastor, Mr. Stannus.

Nearly 300 ladies and gentlemen sat down to tea; after which several appropriate and interesting addresses

were delivered by the Rev. Chairman, the Rev. P. Wright, Messrs. Palfreyman, Hinde, Morton, Hobson, Ryalls, and Lincoln.

I am sorry that I cannot give even an outline of these speeches; but I should be wanting in my duty to the public,

if I were to leave unnoticed an exhibition of religious bigotry, that recently occurred at Stannington, and which

was related to the meeting by Mr. Wright.

An infant child, named Shaw, whose parents reside at the above-named village, was taken ill, and when in the

agonies of death, its mother sent for the Church clergyman (Mr. Carver) to exercise the duties of his sacred

office in prayer. Mr. Carver went to the house, and asked the distressed parent if the child was baptised,

and by whom ? She told him that her child was baptised by the minister of the Stannington Unitarian Chapel (Mr. Wright).

Mr. Carver replied that he could not offer up prayers to heaven for such a child, and strongly urged the mother

to allow him (Mr. C.) to rebaptise it according to the rites of the Church of England; stating, at the same time,

that the ceremony which had already been performed by Mr. Wright, was not Christian baptism.

The mother objected to this; and the clergyman, as if to render her grief still more agonizing, declared on his departure,

that her obstinacy would prevent her infant from receiving Christian burial here, and consign it to eternal torments hereafter.

The child died next day, when the Reverend Mr. Carver actually refused to inter it in the church-yard; and it was ultimately

buried by Mr. Wright, in the ground adjoining the Unitarian Chapel.

About the same time, the relatives of a poor Catholic woman, named Sykes, applied to Mr. Carver to allow her remains to be

deposited in the church-yard. He reluctantly consented; adding, that if she had been a Unitarian, he would not,

on any account, have read the burial service over the corpse.

A deputation from the trustees and congregation assembling in the Unitarian Chapel, Norfolk-Street, waited on their minister,

the Rev. B. T. Stannus, on the 15th May, and presented him with a purse containing 70 sovereigns, as a mark of their esteem,

and as a testimony to his zeal and faithfulness in the discharge of his ministerial duties during the last twelve months.