‘Fatal Seizure in a Country Chapel’: The 3 Minute Sermon

I recently corresponded with a gentleman of Yeadon, a great-great-nephew of one Joshua Garnett, a successful Bradford ‘woollen and worsted manufacturer’. He kindly sent me a copy of a newspaper article from Friday 20th June 1913, which mentions both Mr Garnett and Martin Top Chapel, of all places. It was the Sunday School Anniversary the Monday of that week, and Mr Garnett had been asked to attend and participate. Coming by car from Long Preston station, he arrived just after the service began. He was ‘anxious to be present’, having a fondness for our chapel, he wishing to support the little outposts of gospel light in his county’s farthest corner. Pastor Duerden, Mr Garnett’s friend, invited him to the front to speak and respond to the previous contributors. He spoke for three minutes, quickly returning to his seat. Almost immediately, the Lord called him home, despite the best efforts of those around him. The article reports that:

‘the meeting was brought to an abrupt conclusion…a sensation was caused in the chapel, which was filled by about 250 people. The day was very hot and the room quite crowded’.

The rest of the obituary lists his achievements, his career teaching Sunday School, his faithful support for Idle’s Upper Chapel, his success in manufacturing. He was known to support the little churches out in the sticks- ‘such as the one in which he passed away’.

He didn’t quite die in the pulpit, but the unnamed illness which claimed him must surely have begun its deadly work there as he offered his thoughts. He did not know he was going to die that day. Had he done so, he might have said his farewells, updated his will, explained the latest stock-take to his heirs. Sadly, his three-minute speech is not recorded. The shock of his death, the newspaper reports, meant his words ‘were never submitted to the meeting’- in other words, they weren’t properly minuted.

If I had a final three minutes to speak, especially before a crowd, what would I say? Tell them how smart they look, how great it is to see them? Share a joke, raise a chuckle? Or would I share the blessed hope of the gospel, knowing it might be my hearers’ final minutes also? Charles Wesley wrote: 

Happy, if with my latest breath

I may but gasp His Name,

preach Him to all, and cry in death,

"Behold, behold the Lamb!"

We should prepare as though we will remain on earth for decades; we must live like each day is our last. Mr Garnett was a godly, wholesome man, described by the Bradford paper as ‘the Apostle of the Dales’. I suspect the Holy Spirit gave him the very right words for his final three minutes, a word in due season. His sudden death would have been a graphic illustration to all those present that earthly life is fragile and brief. If It is Mr Garnett today, whose turn tomorrow?

A final reference to the article:

‘It is a pathetic [archaic meaning of the word: meaning pitiable, arousing compassion] coincidence that the end should come amidst such surroundings, for the career of Mr Garnett had been one of great religious utility’.

 

I'll praise my Maker while I've breath;

and when my voice is lost in death,

praise shall employ my nobler powers.

My days of praise shall ne'er be past,

while life, and thought, and being last,

or immortality endures.

 -Isaac Watts

 

Picture taken by Hubert Henry, Bradford. Borrowed from https://www.aireboroughhistoricalsociety.co.uk