Schools
In the month of May, Mr. White’s tender of £1,000 was accepted for building the Girls’ National school in All Saints street.
The Halton schools were benefited by £13 2s. on Sunday, Nov. 7th, collected after a sermon, by the Rev. T. Parkin.
For the Cheltenham Training Schools, a sermon on the same Sunday, by the Rev. F. Close, at St. Mary’s Chapel, realised £39 8s.
[School-aid sermons on the 10th of October (as stated in previous chapter) realised £30 10s at St. Leonards, & £24 10s. at St. Mary Magdalen.]
Missions
The London Missionary Society held a meeting at the Croft (Independents’) Chapel on the 20th of October, when the financial statement read by the Rev. William Davis, showed that during the year, Hastings had contributed £51 18s. 6d.
The Wesleyan Missions were benefited by a collection of £15 at a meeting on Oct. 18 and sermons on the preceding Sunday. — On the 28th of Nov. the Jewish Missions had sermons preached on their behalf which realised £65. Also at the next day’s meeting £16. The amounts sent from Hastings during three previous years had been £86, £127 and £137, respectively.
Lectures
This (and a few other years, before and after), was a period in which great encouragement was given to lecturers; and a desire — to the credit of the inhabitants — was manifested to benefit by the instruction thus conveyed. To give even a skeleton sketch of those lectures ought not to be valueless, but in a work of this kind the allotted compass will only suffice for the names of the lecturers and the titles of their subjects.
A lecture on “Natural Magic or unusual appearances in the Heavens” was delivered by Mr. Cox, of London, under the auspices of the Athenaeum.
On the 12th of January, a lecture on “The Crystal Palace”, was delivered for the Mechanics’ Institution, by H. S. Gore, Esq., C.E.
On Monday, Jan. 19th Mr. H. Vincent gave the first of a series of lectures in the Market Hall on “The Commonwealth”. His 2nd and 3rd lectures on the same subject were delivered on Tuesday and Wednesday of the same week, and his 4th, 5th and 6th on the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of the following week.
English History was the title of a second lecture delivered at the Mechanics’ Institution by the Rev. John Stent, a Baptist minister. A third lecture was given on the following Monday, and a fourth, on March 1st. The reverend gentleman had intended to deliver six lectures, but after the third one he declined to continue the course in consequence of a newspaper criticism which charged him with violating the rules of the Institution, which excluded the introduction of politics or religion. The members generally could not see that the rules had been infringed, and a long letter was published by Messrs. Hy Winter and John Banks, in which the points of criticism were repudiated, and the criticism itself strongly condemned. After that an urgent appeal was made to Mr. Stent to continue the course, and the 4th lecture was delivered as above stated. The sixth and last lecture was delivered on the 15th of March. These discourses were very instructive and highly interesting.
