Page:Ashburton•Scotter•1972.pdf/153

Anglicans had established the first clergy in the county and probably attracted the largest congregation at first, but before the end of the century the Presbyterians quite clearly outnumbered them in church attendances though not in census returns. However, the special characteristic of religious observance in Ashburton was the prominence not of the two major denominations but of the Primitive Methodists. They built the first church in the town, ‘Little Bethel’, and one of their parsons, James Cocker, became so popular as a preacher that the building had to be enlarged to accommodate congregations of 350, three-quarters of them men. An attendance of 473 was recorded at one meeting in 1891. The Primitive Methodists held the first conference to assemble in the town, a hundred visitors gathering there for a week in 1893. Their ‘show feed’ was a regular feature of the annual A. & P. Association show. Hundreds of farmers and their families dined that day in the Wills Street schoolroom. Two of their foundation members, George W. Leadley and William Thomas Lill later figured prominently as leaders in farming affairs and local government. The latter was one of only two lay New Zealand presidents in the history of the denomination.

The Salvation Army ‘invaded’ Ashburton in 1884 and the ‘soldiers’ soon made their presence felt. A captain went to gaol rather than give a promise to discontinue the street gatherings which allegedly obstructed the traffic. Certainly the band and flaring torches frightened passing horses. These meetings suffered, as in other towns, from the harassing attentions of ‘larrikins’. Nevertheless, although the Army counted only eighty-five members in 1890 they were reported to gather congregations of over 300 at their ‘headquarters’.

By the end of the period, some 200 Presbyterians and Anglicans attended services of Holy Communion at the two town churches. The latter were not greatly affected by the ritual controversy which troubled that denomination. Admittedly the cross was twice removed from the altar by zealous Protestants, but chanted services were introduced without marked objection in 1896. The Rev. Arthur Edwin Scott, later archdeacon, who served in Ashburton from 1882 to 1892 was probably the most widely popular local parson of the time. In the words of the Ashburton Guardian: ‘Few men throw themselves into any undertaking with the zeal and energy which the incumbent of St Stephen’s displayed in the work of his parish; few ministers have made so many friends or made the