CHINESE CHURCH IN MELBOURNE.

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 237, 15 August 1872, Page 7

CHINESE CHURCH IN MELBOURNE.

Tn Little Bourke street, between Swanston and Russell streets, stands a neat brick edifice ornamented with devices in firebrick, and which on certain evenings in the week emits from its windows a flood of light, while the hum of a voice heard through the open door proclaimes that it is not untenanted. Here in the midst of dirt and Mongolian profligacy stands the Chinese church. It is plastered inside, has four windows shaded with Venetian blinds on one side, and two windows looking into Little Bourke street. The furniture consists of a polished cedar reading desk and a double row of forms, with a passage between them. The building is lit by a couple of gas sunlights. The preacher, an intellectual Chinese, last night was urrayed in a black cassock, and wears the orthodox white tie. He is evidently no mean rhetorician : now the gutturals flow trippingly from his tongue, and now there is a burly, impressive energy in his deliverance. Now he takes the audience into his confidence, and with uplifted finger speaks in whispered accents and now his voice .assumes the tone of coaxing entreaty. The congregation is a mixed one. Here a white bearded Chinese gazes fixedly at the lips of the preacher, and there a spectacled compatriot peruses a prayer-book printed in Chinese characters. Another with his head resting on his hand, seems wrapt in devotion, while near him ia a Mongolian friend who has evidently gone to sleep. A few European females, with flowing hair, Tyrolese hats, and a great show of ribbons, are scattered about tlm building. The rest of the congregation ia made up of three or four respectable looking tradesmen, a bibulous-looking individual rubing his shoulders against the wall, and a couple of sodden-looking youths evidently of the larrikin class. Composite as is the congregation, the utmost quiet reigns, and a decorum is preserved that misfht set an example to the frequenters of many a far more pretentious place of worship. — "Age."