The fifties had barely run their course when there was another great awakening; and Thomas Stephenson (who afterwards went into business at Crook, and died there) was one of the promoters in the establishment of a Sunday School, which subsequently, with Jonathan Walton as its superintendent, attained a high position in the Northern District. Barnabas Wild gives a fine description of a revival in which John Gill and Miss Bennett, of Chester, were engaged. (The latter’s fame spread over the North of England, and she became one of the foremost women preachers of her time.) Thomas Featherstone, who declared that he had been a mere moralist, cried out at one of the meetings: " I have got to-night what I never had before." Thirty-six souls prostrated themselves before the Lord, and the outside comment was: "If Thomas Featherstone needed converting, the Lord help us! "Years afterwards, when M. Wild returned to the station, he found a great number of useful men and good local preachers, the fruit of that revival. Luke Stafford tells of four months meetings without a break in the hard winter of 1870-71 and reckons amongst the heroes of Primitive Methodism the men and women who worked, sang, and prayed with such tenacity all the time.
‘Northern Primitive Methodism’ by W M Patterson, published in 1909, page 175.
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