Any comments, errors or omissions gratefully received
The Editor
HTML Transcription
© F.Coakley , 2026
[from A.M Harrision's Descriptive List of Insular Societies]
In 1822, just six months after the public launch of the Manx Society for promoting the education of the inhabitants of the Isle of Man through the medium of their own language the Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, published in London, printed in a brief reference to the work of the society that homilies in the Manx language had been scattered among the people of the Isle of Man, and later went on to report an account of the start of another Mission to the Manx involving the use of the native language, this time the work of a nonconformist church established on the Island on Congregational principles by the Reverend Samuel Haining of Edinburgh and Kirkcudbright, in 1808.
Designed to spread the Congregational gospel throughout the Island 'by means of preaching and of schools' it devoted some space to a description of a desirable place in relatively easy reach of the United Kingdom. 'The communications from Liverpool to Greenock being greatly facilitated by means of boats', they hope to receive visits from their Christian friends thereabouts. 'The climate is healthy, the living cheap, and the sea-bathing, they say, excellent'. The report ended with the Isle of Man Congregational Itinerant Society's intention 'to procure ministers to preach to the inhabitants in Manx, their native language.
In 1823 Samuel Haining was able to report to the Lancashire Congregational Union which supported the Manx Congregationalists financially that 'There are now, at least, four preachers in constant motion throughout the Island. And there are encouraging accounts of the places in which the word of God is preached under the patronage of this society.' Their Manx-speaking abilities are not mentioned specifically and no further references to the society have been found. The Congregationalists had to contend with the might of the ancient church and the devotion of the widespread converts to Methodism and, in spite of a succession of devoted preachers, the verdict of its historian, Nightingale, in 1893 adjudged their mission to the Isle of Man as one of 'comparative failure' with only one well-established church, in Douglas, and a Satellite chapel in Union Mills, close by, in operation by that time.
The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle, vol xxx, 1822, London;
Rev. B.Nightingale, Lancashire Nonconformity, Manchester 1893,pp.252-263
...
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
Any comments, errors or omissions gratefully received
The Editor |
||