History of the Fife Pitcairns

CANON PITCAIRN'S LIFE AT ECCLES. 321
services in the old church, and many were the moist eyes in the
congregation who listened to the solemn tones of the organ in the
" Dead March." Outside in different parts of the borough flags were
floating half-mast from the various public buildings. Two of these
were hoisted on the Town Hall, one was on the mast on the Parish
Church tower, another on St Andrew's tower ; at the Eccles Central
Conservative and Liberal Clubs ; at the Eccles Working Men's
and the Junior Liberal Clubs ; on the top of the Co-operative Society,
and at the Union Offices, Patricroft.
Extract from a sermon by one of the neighbouring clergy : —
To him the tolling bell reiterated the warning, " The one shall
be taken and the other left." As the minister who was left, he
would like to say of the minister who had been taken, that the
death of Canon Pitcairn, the vicar of this ancient parish of Eccles,
had occurred, most strikingly, in the very year of the village's in-
corporation as a borough. It seemed as if ordained that he should
live to see that day, and do his part to complete the important
change by securing the attendance of the newly elected mayor,
aldermen, and councillors at the ancient church, to ask God's
blessing on its newly given municipal life and its serious duties \ so
creating a precedent which may, God grant, be uninterruptedly
followed through the coming history of the borough — and that,
when that was done he should be taken home. A striking change
had been witnessed in the parish during Canon Pitcairn's tenure of
the living. But to the vicar's own eye (and certainly the changes
upon which he would look back with the greatest satisfaction), would
be the ecclesiastical extensions of spiritual provision within the
boundaries of that large expanse of territory over which he, when
he was appointed to the living, was the responsible pastor. During
the last 30 years the churches of Hope, Weaste, Irlam, Patricroft,
St Augustine's, Pendlebury, Clifton, and Little Hulton, St Andrew's,
St Barnabas', Pendleton, and that at Davyhulme, had been conse-
crated, and his own church magnificently restored. He doubted if
any previous vicar of Eccles, except the missionary from the dis-
tant Abbey of Whalley to whom the ancient church and its first
endowment were due, could show such a record of men and churches
added to the ministry of Christ's work.
None knew so well as those sorrowing ones, who had our
tenderest sympathy that day — the inmates of the late vicar's
home — the cherished tenants of his own heart — how great
was their loss ; none could doubt his strong devotion to and
affection for them. That would be to their heart's joy to
remember, though now for a season it was their heart's bitter-
ness to feel. But they might all ask God to make the darkened
vicarage His holy habitation, and hope that in Him the fatherless
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