The Religious Life of London

“Come let us anew our journey pursue;”

and after a short prayer by the preacher for blessings during the coming year, the service closed, and out I went into the streets, suddenly as it were wakened up into life – while church bells rang out the old 1869, and rang in a. d. 1870.

CHAPTER XI.

the quakers

Modern Christianity, it is often said, has little in common with that of apostolic times: I fear it is equally true that the Quakerism of to-day has little in common with the heroic Quakerism of an earlier day. It was in 1646, during the prevalence of civil and religious commotions, that George Fox commenced his labours as minister of the Gospel, being then in the twenty-third year of his age. It was a hard time of it he and his disciples had; no men ever fared worse and for less provocation given, at the hands of arbitrary powers, than did the Quakers. Baxter thus describes them: – “They made the light which every man hath within him to be his sufficient rule, and consequently the Scripture and ministry were set light by. They spake much for the dwelling and working of the Spirit in us, but little of justification and the pardon of sin and our reconciliation with God through Jesus Christ. They pretend their dependence on the Spirit’s conduct against set times of prayer and against sacraments, and against undue esteem of Scripture and ministry. They will not have the Scriptures called the Word of God. Their principal zeal lieth in railing at the ministers as hirelings, deceivers, false prophets, &c., and in refusing to swear before a magistrate, or to put off their hat to any, or to say you instead of thou or thee, which are their words to all. At first they did use to fall into wailings and tremblings at their meetings, and pretend to be intently acted on by the Spirit, but now that is ceased. They only meet, and he that pretendeth to be moved by the Spirit speaketh, and sometimes they say nothing but sit an hour or more in silence and then depart.” The most fiery, the most untameable of men were the old Quakers, now a Friend is the sleekest and fattest of men; lives in a style of the utmost comfort, and wears the best of everything; there are no such homes of luxury, no such lives of ease as amongst the Quakers. It is no wonder they are a long-lived race. They mingle little with the world, and find a peace which often the worldlings miss. As a religious organization they are becoming weaker every day; they have a few chapels in various parts of London, but as the old worshippers die off no new ones appear. At their last annual meeting Mr. R. Barclay, who referred with satisfaction to the fact that all over the land, Sunday by Sunday, 1100 Friends were engaged in teaching 1400 children and 3000 adults, regretted to find that no other Church had declined so much either in this country or in America since 1720. In the United States 13,000 seats were closed in the meeting-houses between 1850 and 1860. “If,” said he, “other Churches had declined as we have done, Christianity must have died out.” As regards the metropolis they seem to be in a little better condition; the last statistics of membership show an increase of 95 in the year, the whole number being 6608 males, 7286 females; total, 13,894; the births exactly balanced the deaths. There were 121 new members from convincement and 61 resignations, against 31 disownments there were 19 reinstated. The habitual attenders at the places of worship are 3803, being an increase of 145. It was remarked by a senior Friend that the resignations were fewer and the convincements more than in any year since accounts had been kept; Mr. Tallack gave it as his opinion that the Society was never more healthy, not even in the first years of its existence; J. Grubb believed that there was a considerable change for the better, both as regards public and private prayer. It is to be hoped such may turn out to be the case. The great characteristic testimony of the Friends, particularly against ecclesiastical pretensions on the one side and against religious forms on the other, is as much requisite now as ever; there is, as one of their official documents remarks, “a strong tendency in the human mind to substitute the form of religion for the power, and to satisfy the conscience by a cold compliance with exterior performances while the heart remains unchanged. And inasmuch as the baptism of the Holy Ghost and the communion of the body and blood of Christ, of which water baptism, and bread and wine, are admitted to be only signs, are not dependent on those outward ceremonies or necessarily connected with them, and are declared in Holy Scripture to be effectual to the salvation of the soul, which the signs are not, Friends have always believed it to be their place and duty to hold forth to the world a clear and decided testimony to the living substance – the spiritual work of Christ in the soul and a blessed communion with him there.” Practically, in the promotion of temperance and education, in the improvement of prisons and prison discipline, in the advocacy of universal peace and freedom, in philanthropy and charity, the Friends have ever led the way. For such ends they have freely sacrificed money and time, and energy and life itself; nor do they forget those of their own household, as it were; every poor Friend who may be unable to earn a livelihood usually receives aid from his brother members to the extent of 20l. to 40l. per annum (administered privately in general), according to age or infirmity. When the poorer Friends are out of a situation they are often helped to obtain employment by various arrangements under free registries, and by the aid of private inquiries for vacancies. In addition it may be remarked that a large number of charitable bequests and special funds have been bequeathed for the local or general benefit of the members of this religious community. The City of London owes much to Quakers, who in time past by their industry and self-denial laid the foundations of many of its noblest charities and its most princely mercantile establishments.

JONATHAN GRUBB AT THE AGRICULTURAL HALL

Long, long ago the wise men came from the East, and from the east of England has come to us a man wise, in the opinion of his friends, in the best wisdom. It is of Mr. Jonathan Grubb I write, who has been living in Sudbury for many years, and who for the last twelve or fourteen has almost entirely devoted himself to missionary work in various parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland. I think as a temperance lecturer he first came before the public. It was the sin of drunkenness which first led him to lecturing. He had seen the evils of intemperance; he had seen what poverty, what wretchedness and crime were its results; and much and deeply moved thereby he mounted the platform, which more or less ever since has been familiar with his name. While in Cornwall on one occasion he found an opportunity of talking on something else – on that common salvation without which, in the opinion of pious people, temperance itself is of little worth. The opportunity was one of great spiritual benefit, and ever since he has been engaged in what is called by the denomination to which he belongs – the denomination whose energetic and untiring philanthropy has been honoured all the world over – the denomination which, from the days of George Fox, has ever borne a silent protest against the frivolities of fashion and the vanities of life – public preaching. In the opinion of those excellent people an ordinary minister is not a public preacher at all. They reserve that title exclusively for one who, like Mr. Grubb, goes out into the world, as it were, collects the crowds by the wayside, on the seashore, in the crowded street, and there, to those for whose souls few care, who otherwise would perish for lack of knowledge, proclaims that Gospel which tells how, for such as they, pardon can be secured and life and immortality brought to light. In our day no Friend is more extensively engaged in this work than Mr. Grubb. In all parts of Suffolk his labours have been many. In various districts of the metropolis he has been similarly engaged. He has also spent much time in Ireland – where he has been listened to and aided by Roman Catholic and Protestant alike. It was only on one occasion that he has ever been prevented from preaching by the intrusion of a mob, and that was (tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askalon) in no less ancient and respectable a borough than that of Bury St. Edmunds. In the filthiest and most depraved districts of London, in the very heart of Roman Catholic Ireland, he has never been interfered with at all. Of course some of this success is due to Mr. Grubb himself. With his one aim to tell how sinners may be saved, he has been remarkably successful in avoiding collision with class feelings and sectarian animosities. His manner is also eminently kind and gentle; but after all does not his experience also show, what we have long believed, that honest, simple, faithful preaching is never exercised in vain? It may be also said that some of Mr. Grubb’s qualifications are hereditary. By birth he is an Irishman (he comes from Tipperary), and his mother was an eminent Quakeress, and extensively useful in her day. It was a sermon from her that was the instrument, humanly speaking, in the conversion of one of the most respected of our open-air preachers in London at the present day. We take much from those to whom we owe our being. Why should we not also inherit some of their excellences? The question may be asked though not answered here.

But to return to Mr. Grubb. The last time I heard him he had a truly magnificent congregation at the Agricultural Hall, Islington. Mr. Thain Davidson’s well meant effort to attract outsiders, and to keep up a large Sunday-afternoon service, now that the novelty of the thing has passed away, seems as successful as ever. He and his people have lately moved into the new hall, a most commodious building, and right well do they fill it. It will be much to be regretted if this scheme fall through for want of funds. It appears much good has resulted from it. Not a week passes but cases occur in which it has been shown how awakening have been the addresses delivered. A service that only lasts an hour is a desideratum. No one could have listened to Mr. Grubb without feeling how his kind of address is pre-eminently adapted to encourage and stimulate the religious life, to arrest the attention of the impenitent, and to touch especially the hearts of the young. Mr. Grubb takes no text, preaches no formal sermon, aims at no rhetorical flight, does not strike you as being very intellectual, or very original, or very learned. It may be that he is all three – it certainly is not for me to say that he is not – but whether he be so or not, it is clear that he judges and judges rightly that, at the Agricultural Hall on a Sunday afternoon what is wanted is not the glare of the rhetorician, not the learning of the divine, not the elaborate argument of the trained logician, not the fancy of the poet, not the dramatic action of the elocutionist, but the tender beseeching of one who, saved by Divine mercy himself, and assured of all its fulness and omnipotence, would force a similar boon on all around. It was thus he preached on Sunday afternoon. He seemed to speak out of the depth of a holy love, in language very simple, abounding with the commonest, and, as some might think, most worn of Scripture quotations, yet with a pathos that, as it came from the heart, at once reached the hearts of all his hearers. A more homely or plainer-looking man than Mr. Grubb you don’t often see. As he stood there, with his sunburnt, honest face, with his suit of sober black and grey, with his rustic air, you felt that his power (for there was not a single unattentive hearer) was such as a Whitefield or a Wesley wielded, and which has never been exerted in our world in vain. Man’s fallen state, his need of pardon, his need of pardon now, the danger of delay, the duty of all instantly to receive the proffered grace – such were his themes. He told them he had stood by the death-bed of a woman who had believed that there was no mercy for such a wicked old sinner as she was, and had heard her song of joy as she passed from the poverty and sorrow of earth to the wealth and joy of heaven. Yes, for all there was mercy, and that all there present might attain it was his prayer; and as thus he spoke, light came to his eye and animation to his voice, and, with uplifted arm and flowing utterance, he gave you his idea of the true evangelist – the man always needed in our land – and it is to be feared, in spite of all our boasted Christianity, never more than now. But it is not for me to say what are Mr. Grubb’s peculiar qualifications for his work. What they are may be best gathered from his abundant labours. In his own denomination it is well known how numerous are his efforts and how great his successes. He is a fitting representative of active and spiritual Quakerism. Men say that body is not what it was; that it is losing its power; that it has little hold upon the people; that it makes no converts. It may be so, but if it has many such ministers as Mr. Grubb in its midst, as much as any it is fitted with a living ministry which will go out into the highways and hedges and bring back to the fold those who have wandered far away. His appeal is not to the high and mighty, to the rich, the learned, or the great, but to the poorest of the poor. Mr. Grubb’s mission is evidently a special one. Amongst fallen women, in districts where ragged-schools and churches are required, in corners of our land where no regular means of grace exist, he finds special charm and need. It is pleasant to see him supported by the good men and true of his own denomination and others. It is evident that at the Agricultural Hall – perhaps all the better for its not being professedly such – we have the true idea of an Evangelical Alliance, an alliance for Christian work rather than of Christian creed, an alliance practical, not speculative, not in form and dogma, but in life and love.

CHAPTER XII.

the moravians in fetter lane

What virtue there is in an if. Without going as far back as the Book of Genesis, and thinking what a different thing life would have been if the mother of us all had not plucked and eaten

“The fruit

Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world and all our woe,”

it is very obvious much depends upon the ifs. If Sir Robert Peel had encouraged the advances of Disraeli, how different would have been the state of politics in this country. If Louis Philippe had shot Louis Napoleon when he had the power to do so, the Orleanists might have been the rulers of France. If old George III. had had brains as well as self-esteem and a stubborn will, what untold horrors might have been averted from England and Ireland. If Balthazar Gerard had not fired his pistol at William the Silent, Belgium at this time would have been as intensely Protestant as it is now intensely Catholic. If John Wesley had perished in the fire at Epworth Parsonage, where would have been the Methodist Revival of the last century? And if Wesley himself had not broken from the little band who met in Fetter Lane, what sect in England would have equalled in numbers or usefulness that of the Moravians? Now, in this teeming London they have but one place of worship, and that but very indifferently filled. It does not even present the usual appearance of a place of worship, and thus attract notice; the stranger passes it by. Yet it is a place of surpassing interest, one of the hallowed spots of London, where sinners have wept, where souls have rejoiced, where the power and presence of God have been marvellously displayed. Let us go there; we pass along a passage till we come into a very old-fashioned meeting-house. There we shall find plenty of room. There are two hundred communicants, and at certain times they are all present, but they are scattered far and wide, and in general the place has a very deserted look. The benches – there are no pews – are most uncommonly hard to sit on. There are galleries, and in one of them there is an organ. The place is neat and clean. The service itself calls for no especial notice. It is much like that of other denominations. The liturgy is exclusively that of the Moravians. The preaching is such as you may hear elsewhere. Attached to the place is a skeleton Sunday-school. There is light about the place, but it is not very powerful. It suggests more that of the setting than of the rising sun. I confess I see no reason why this should be the case, why the Moravianism, so powerful in many places, so blessed in missionary efforts, should be so powerless here. Moravianism is older than Lutheranism. It has an apostolical descent more genuine than that of the English or the Romish Church. Pre-eminently it may claim to have followed the leadings of Providence. Nowhere is there a trace of the gradual elaboration of any plan dictated by human wisdom. The leading men in the Ancient Unity, the emigrant founders of Herrnhut, Count Zinzendorf himself, and those of his fellow-labourers who were instrumental in introducing the Church into England, were all led gradually and by a way which they knew not to results they had not contemplated. As an anonymous writer, one of their body, remarks, “What a striking proof is here afforded of the wisdom and faithfulness of God! Surely it well becomes the members of a community which has been so undeservedly favoured to inquire whether they, as individuals and collectively, have faithfully improved the privileges bestowed upon them.”

But about the chapel. Turn to Baxter’s Diary, and we find the place mentioned there. He writes: “On January the 24th, 1672–3, I began a Tuesday Lecture at Mr. Turner’s church in New Street, near Fetter Lane, with great convenience and God’s encouraging blessing.” It is, writes Mr. Orme, that between Nevill’s Court and New Street, now occupied by the Moravians. It appears to have existed, though perhaps in a different form, before the Fire of London. Turner, who was the first minister, was a very active man during the Plague. He was ejected from Sunbury, in Middlesex, and continued to preach in Fetter Lane till towards the end of the reign of Charles II., when he removed to Leather Lane. Baxter carried on the morning week-day lecture till the 24th of August, 1682. The church which then met in it was under the care of Mr. Lobb, whose predecessors had been Dr. Thomas Goodwin and Thankful Owen. This church still exists, but on the opposite side of the way, under the care of the Rev. J. Spurgeon. The Moravians came into possession of the building in 1740. They had previously met in Fetter Lane, but in a smaller room. The present chapel was then known as the Great Meeting-house, or Bradbury’s Meeting-house. Tradition says that the place was once used as a saw-pit, and as a place of asylum when the State Church was busy at the work in which it has ever been untiring, no matter how remiss in other matters – that of enforcing its rights real or fancied, and disregarding those of other men. Tradition also says that the place was built, for the same reason, with two modes of egress, that the good men in the pulpit might have an additional chance of safety. It was in the meeting that Emmanuel Swedenborg was for a time accustomed to worship. It was in the old place that Whitefield and Wesley attended, and where, as Southey writes, “they encouraged each other in excesses of devotion which, if they found the mind sane, were not likely long to leave it so,” but of which Wesley writes in very different language. Let us hear what he says. “About three in the morning, as we were continuing instant in prayer, the power of God came mightily upon us, insomuch that many cried out for exceeding joy, and many fell to the ground. As soon as we were recovered a little from that awe and amazement we broke out with one voice, ‘We praise Thee, O God! we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord.’” “It was a Pentecostal season indeed,” wrote Whitefield. Let me add that it was there, and not in the present meeting, that Wesley stood up and read from a written paper such of their doctrines as he contemned, especially that of there being no degrees of faith short of perfect assurance. He had learnt much from the Moravians. They had found him a mere Ritualist, they had left him a converted man, but he had outgrown his teachers, the mild and loving and placid Germans of Fetter Lane. “I have borne with you long,” said he at the end of his discourse, “hoping you would turn; but, as I find you more and more confirmed in the errors of your ways, nothing now remains but that I should give you up to God. You that are of the same judgment, follow me.” When he had thus spoken he withdrew. This breach was never healed, and from that day to this Moravianism has never in this country, and especially in London, recovered from the blow.

It may also be said that the impulse given to the religious life of England by the Moravians has tended naturally to their decrease. Their speciality was to preach the atonement made for sin by the blood of Jesus, and happiness in communion with Him. In the dark days, when they came over, this doctrine was far less commonly believed than now, and in proportion as it has been preached by Churchmen and Dissenters has there been a decline of Moravian influence. In reality, what they came here to do has been done by others who had learned how to do it from them. All Evangelical sects teach now what they teach, and even where they now break fresh ground it is found those whom they have influenced prefer to take part with churches of a more native origin or British character. As regards London the position of their chapel is very much against them. An out-of-the-way situation is as undesirable in a spiritual, as in a commercial point of view. In their church government they are Episcopalian, and meet at certain great occasions in synod. At one time they much favoured the lot, but now that is rarely used, and their marriages are not arranged by it as was formerly the case. A bishop is an elder appointed by the synod to ordain ministers of the church. The latter are sent to a congregation, but it exercises a veto. The congregation is ruled by a committee chosen by the communicants. They claim not to be Dissenters; it was the opinion of Archbishop Potter they were not. They trace their pedigree from Zinzendorf to Huss, from Huss to the Greek monks, Theodorus and Cyril, who in the ninth century introduced Christianity into Moravia and Bohemia. But after all they chiefly glory in the fact of preaching, to use one of their own hymns —

“That whoe’er believeth in Christ’s redemptionMay find free grace and a complete exemptionFrom serving sin.”

CHAPTER XIII.

the swedenborgians

If the reader be told that there exists in this enlightened age a sect who believe that the day of judgment is passed, that it took place nearly a hundred years ago, that the Christian dispensation is at an end, that Emmanuel Swedenborg daily visited the spiritual world, and made acquaintance with its inhabitants, that he was directly appointed by God to describe to men the scenery of heaven and hell, and the world of spirits, and the lives of their inhabitants, and that through him the Lord Jesus Christ makes his second advent for the institution of a new Church described in the Apocalypse under the figure of the New Jerusalem, at once you exclaim, this is “one of the things no fellah can understand.” Nevertheless, such actually is the fact – nay more, it may be observed, that the number of Swedenborgians is on the increase; that they have a hundred chapels in England, and a larger number in America, and that this sect, while it has excited the rude laugh of ignorant folly, has attracted to itself some of the greatest intellects of the day. Emerson claims for Swedenborg that he was a “colossal soul;” and Mr. Kingsley speaks of him, though not very correctly, as a “sound and severe and scientific labourer, to whom our modern physical science is most deeply indebted.” The Swedenborgians, says Theodore Parker, have a calm and religious beauty in their lives, which is much to be admired. I should fancy the artist Blake was a Swedenborgian. Amongst the active Swedenborgians of the past I find such names as John Flaxman, sculptor; William Sharpe, engraver; the Rev. Joseph Gilpin, curate to Fletcher of Madely; and James Hindmarsh, one of Wesley’s preachers; Charles Augustus Tulk, a friend of Joseph Hume, and M.P. for Sudbury in 1821; Samuel Crompton, the inventor of the spinning-mule, of whom it was truly remarked by his biographer, “Few men, perhaps, have ever conferred so great a benefit on their country and reaped so little profit for themselves.” In our time Swedenborgianism was represented in Parliament by Mr. Richard Malins, now Sir Richard, and a Vice-Chancellor. Mr. Hiram Power, the American sculptor, is a zealous missionary of the Swedenborgian faith. The chief of the living Swedenborgian literati in this country are Dr. Garth Wilkinson, and the Rev. Augustus Clissold, formerly of Exeter College, Oxford. Other well-known names in connexion with the sect are Mr. Isaac Pitman and Mr. George Hartly Grindon.