Salem Chapel (1863)

Salem Chapel. That is the name of our little place of worship which sits atop Newby Hill. It is also the name of a high Victorian novel by Mrs Oliphant from 1863 which I read this year. It is fairly long and some of its characters were mildly irritating, but it was a good read overall and some of the affairs and machinations of her Salem Chapel, set in the fictional town of Carlingford, I was able to recognise. A dashing young minister must run the parallel gauntlets of the deacons (‘the chapel managers’) as well as their gossipy women and amorous daughters. The plot is rather more complicated than that, and Mrs Oliphant certainly attempted to make a story about a dull, provincial nonconformist chapel to be as exciting as possible. At the novel’s start, one had a deal of sympathy for the young minister, Mr Vincent. By the novel’s close, one finds him rather hard to admire. Themes of hypocrisy, faith, class and family all mingle into a combination of social commentary and melodrama.

Trials and tribulations expose the real qualities of our characters, rather than the masks we like to wear. A minister may fill a chapel, and the deacons may enjoy counting the increased revenues of a thriving church, but is the Lord glorified? Oliphant's Salem is essentially a social club for the lower-middle classes; pray that ours is a community of the redeemed with a passion for Christ and a burden for the lost. 

In Salem also is his tabernacle, and his dwelling place in Zion. Psalm 76:2