The Religious Life of London

It is difficult to describe this new burning and shining light. A verbatim report of his sermon would convey no meaning. Who cares to read the sermons of Whitefield or Wesley? I heard him twice. In the afternoon he gave an address on the subject of prayer. There he stood in the pulpit, without gown or surplice, dressed in plain black cloth, mouthing and ranting apparently in the wildest manner, just as on the boards of the theatre they love to represent a Chadband or a Stiggins. His dark short hair was brushed right down to his eyes. The principal feature was his enormous mouth, over which an unripe moustache seemed struggling into life. One moment his face was brought down to a level with the pulpit, the next it was shot forward almost into the faces of the occupants of the nearest seats, and the next he seemed to spring on his toes, with each arm extended over his head, and as far apart as possible. In the same manner the tones of his address were proportionately varied. One moment he spoke in a whisper, the next in a quiet, conversational manner, the next there came a thundering blast as if he sought to arouse the dead. Was this art, or was this passion? The former, says the sceptic. The tragedian can mouth it just as grandly, on the stage. But as the greatest tragedians are the men who, like Kean, felt – ay, even to their inmost core – all the agony they endeavoured to realize and express, so I would say of Mr. Body that the intenseness with which he realized what he said elevated him, and enabled him to embody, as it were, the sublime of human passion. For instance, at All Saints over the altar is a crucifix. In his evening sermon he was pleading that as much now as ever was it our duty to confess Christ before man. It was grand for the Crusaders to save the Holy Land from the Infidels. It was grand the way in which St. Agnes and St. Polycarp died, in which the early Christian martyrs lived and died. Nowadays the Church and the world were far too friendly, and what was the result? That we tried not how much we could do for Christ, but how most easily we could save our souls. We sang the song of martyrs, we acted the part of cravens. “Look,” said the preacher, turning round to the crucifix, “look at the Saviour on the Cross. Who placed him there? who made those wounds there? – the world. And you try to be friendly with the world.” So intense was the power of the speaker that all seemed awestruck, as if before their very eyes stood the Saviour with His wounded and bleeding limbs. Another wonderful thing about the preacher is his common sense. “Look here, now,” said he, “here are a million of people who do not go anywhere on a Sunday in London. Suppose each one of you now resolve to go to the east of London and bring the people to church. Suppose you were to be street preachers. I don’t see why you should not. I don’t see why some of you laymen should not come and preach in this pulpit. Do you want your commission? Here it is, ‘Let him that heareth say Come,’ and if you did this you would accomplish more good between now and Christmas than would be done by the Society for the Employment of Additional Curates if they worked till Doomsday.” Well, there is a freshness, and a vigour, and a common sense about this style of remark one does not often meet in the pulpit. And the service itself, too, was the perfection of common sense. It began in the evening at eight. It was over by nine. It began with a short prayer and a hymn which did not take ten minutes, and it ended the same way. There was a service after to which many stopped, but short as the service was I fear the speaker had overtaxed himself. He speaks from the chest deeply, hoarsely, and his throat gave him a good deal of trouble at the end. Sometimes in his homely Saxon and ironical way he reminds you of George Dawson, but then George Dawson never stirred the depths. The only man I have ever seen equally effective was J. B. Gough, but then Gough was no orator, and could only act one character, while Mr. Body is a master of powerful language, and words never fail. He can read and sing also as well as he can preach, and while I write I seem to see him as he stood giving out the hymn after the sermon, as a general might marshal his troops —

“Onward, Christian soldiers!Marching on to war,With the cross of JesusGoing on before.”

A SUNDAY WITH THE LUNATICS

One of the earliest of the Gospel stories is that which tells how the Saviour healed the man possessed with devils. It is only of late that we have learned to imitate His example. For hundreds of years society has gone on torturing the mad, hardening the hardened, depraving the depraved. We are now retracing our steps; we are atoning nobly for sins of omission and commission on the part of our ancestors. It would do good to some of the noisy poor who waste their time in low pot-houses talking of their rights, when all that a man has a right to is what he can earn, to look over such places as Hanwell and Colney Hatch, where pauper lunatics are lodged in a palace, waited on by skilful male and female attendants, spend their days in light and airy rooms as clean as wax-work, have four meals a day, and every reasonable want supplied. I have no doubt that many a careworn City man, as he has been hurried backwards and forwards past such places by the train, has often wished that in some such stately pile he had a niche where he could come of a night, after the day’s work was over, to breathe the fresh air, to tread the fresh grass, and to smell the fresh flowers. I propose to gratify this wish, – come with me, respected reader, and in the twinkling of an eye you will find yourself in Colney Hatch.

It is on Sunday, a day when the asylum is closed to the public. Far and near this bright sunshiny afternoon there seems resting over all a Sabbath calm. On the neighbouring rails no trains are running; the doors of the Station Hotel are shut; no traffic occupies the road and distracts your attention. You gaze on fields as yet yellow with no ripening corn, meadows as yet uncarpeted by flowers, trees as yet leafless. Farther off on the distant ridge we see lofty mansions.

“All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.”

Arrived at the gate we ring a bell; the porter opens it to us. We enter our name in the visitors’ book, and descend the gravel slope on which the asylum is placed. All round is a wide extent of land in which the lunatics take exercise and occasionally work. There are none outside now, for it is the hour appointed for Divine service. The door is opened for us by an attendant, who understands our mission. He takes us upstairs and we find ourselves seated in a little gallery set apart for the leading officers of the asylum. Just below us is the pulpit; on a line with it, but a little farther off, is the reading-desk; opposite us, at the other end of the room, is the organ. From the floor on which the pulpit is placed there is a gradually ascending series of benches; on our right are ranged the female, on our left the male inmates of the house. It may be that there are some four or five hundred present. Here and there amongst them you see their well-clad keepers. The lunatics attend this service willingly, it is a pleasure for them to come, it is a punishment for them to keep away. On the whole they behave very well, and, as is often the case outside the walls of lunatic asylums, the females greatly preponderate. From our gallery in this clean, cheerful chapel we look down upon the group below. The sight is an unmitigatedly sad one; we fail to see a single pleasant face. The chapel, considering who are the audience, is almost light and cheerful. It is painful to turn from its white walls and rafters to the crowd beneath and realize how much darker and more cheerless is the human face when it is void of intelligence. In this chapel you do not see the worse cases, they are properly concealed from the spectator’s eye; it is enough to know that they are equally wisely and carefully tended with those before you. The women are far more troublesome than the men. All are hideously ugly, such as Fuseli might dream of after a supper of pork-chops, such as, perhaps, that wonderful painter at Brussels, whose pictures form the chief modern attraction of the place, could have painted in that queer little imitation Roman ruin in which he lived and died, but such as no living artist, at any rate in England, could portray. You feel inclined to exclaim with Banquo —

         “What are these,So withered and so wild in their attire,That look not like the inhabitants of earth,And yet are on’t?”

Some sit as living corpses, others with scowling eye, flesh-and-blood pictures of despair. Others there be who have driven themselves mad with their bad tempers and unruly tongues. You can read all that in many a repulsive and reddened face. This one had led a gay life; what a termination for a career of pleasure! That one has become what she is by drinking; this one by the grand passion which underlies all human life, past or present, all philosophy, subjective or objective, all religion, true or false. Amongst the men you do not see so many thoroughly dead and vacant faces; you will also see among them more diversity of action and a greater assertion of individuality. Some look angry, some silly, but few have that God-forsaken appearance sad to behold anywhere, but especially on the face of what might have been possibly under happier circumstances a tender, loving woman. But the tones of the organ indicate that the service is commencing. Men and women are now hushed and still; in spite of an occasional friendly word with a neighbour, whom very probably they pity as “As mad as a March hare,” males and females come and go quietly and comfortably. Most of them have Prayer-books, and make a proper use of them; they join in the responses with great fervour, and repeat the Apostles’ Creed, and bow at the name of Jesus quite as decidedly and uncompromisingly as do any of the sane outside. As to the singing, it may be briefly said that it is loud, and is all the better and more harmonious for the organ, which, especially at the end of the last verse, is prolonged unusually, and with a view to the drowning sounds of an unnecessary character. Indeed, this tendency to individual utterance is the chief danger of such a meeting as this. You can detect notes occasionally very undeniably loud and defiant, and, as it is, one female at the close of the sermon begins talking so loud as to require that two female attendants should take her off as quickly as possible; not that any one is disturbed – oh no! nothing of the kind. In a Belgravian chapel or church such an interruption would have created a far greater disturbance. Here no one is surprised, the preacher goes on just the same, and not a lunatic takes the trouble to turn round and look at the disorderly sister. Out she goes, and no one cares. With this one exception the service was most decorous. One very plain young female appeared to me to be too much taken up with her fruitless endeavour to attract the eye of a very plain young person of the opposite sex, who did not in any way seem to respond. Another also seemed to be smiling joyfully many times, when in the sermon there was nothing to call forth such an external manifestation. Many also seemed to hear with intelligent attention, but as a rule the audience listened to the preacher with that resigned and spiritless expression with which most church-goers are but too familiar. Yet the preacher was short and simple, and spoke of matters in which all could take an interest; and which all could understand, of Him who hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows, who was bruised for our iniquities, and with whose stripes we are healed. It is cheering to think that even here some do not hear of Him in vain.

LAY WORK IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

Dissenters have taught Churchmen a lesson, which they are, at any rate in our time, not slow to learn. The theory of the Church has been up to our own day almost exclusively sacerdotal. Its parochial system is, as Canon Champneys termed it upon one occasion, “a great allotment system,” and to work that system there was the priest with his assistant deacon. That time has gone. There was time also when it was quite sufficient to argue against anything that it was a custom practised among the Dissenters. The reader of Wilberforce’s Life will remember how anxious was that good man that the Dissenters should not take up the question of sending the Gospel to India, as if they did he feared their activity would put a stop to all Church action in the matter. It is not so now. The pressure of public opinion, the dreadful mass of heathenism which had grown up while the Church slumbered, the growing influence of Dissent, the increasing spirituality of the clergy, the zeal and liberality of their people, have in London completely altered the position of the Church of England. Never were her services so well attended, never were her clergy more useful than now. At the West-end the Church is the fashion. In the East, where the poverty is too great to admit of the existence of a church on Dissenting principles, the Church is in some parishes the only place of worship, and the Church clergyman the only religious teacher. I have heard of one parish where the utmost that the clergyman could get for religious and charitable purposes from his wealthiest parishioners was but ten shillings; and of another, where the clergyman spent five hundred a year in charity. It is in these parts of London that the Church is most useful, most successful, most untiring in its operations, most lavish of its spiritual and temporal good. The laity give munificently. For example, the Countess of Aberdeen gives three hundred a year for the support of a clergyman in the East, who preaches in a church built by Lord Haddo; the Marquis of Salisbury has subscribed 300l. for a similar purpose; and the clergy, whether vicars or curates, devote themselves unremittingly to the performance of their sacred duties. Under these circumstances they find themselves unequal to the task, and appeal to the laity for help.

The Association of Lay Helpers for the Diocese of London was formed in the year 1865, and “readers” have been admitted in the chapel of London House with a form of service drawn up for the purpose in the form following: —

John, by Divine permission, Bishop of London, to our beloved and approved in Christ, A. B., Greeting: We do, by these presents, give unto you our Commission to act as Reader in the parish of C, within our Diocese and jurisdiction, on the nomination of the Rev. D. E., Rector [or Vicar] of the same, and do authorize you, subject to his approval, to read Prayers and to read and explain the Holy Scriptures in the School thereof, or in other rooms within the parish, and generally to render aid to the Incumbent in all ministrations which do not strictly require the service of a Minister in Holy Orders. And we further authorize you to render similar aid in other Parishes in our Diocese, at the written request, in each case, of the Incumbent. And we hereby declare that this our Commission shall remain valid until it shall be revoked by us or our successors (whether mero motu, or at the written request of the said D. E.), or until a fresh admission to the said parish of C. shall have been made. And so we commend you to Almighty God, Whose blessing we humbly pray may rest upon you and your work. Given under our hand and seal, &c.

At present the Association consists of 44 lawyers and medical men, 141 clerks, 48 mechanics and labourers, and 156 ranged under the head of miscellaneous. They aim to strengthen the hands of laymen already at work by bringing them into closer relationship with the Bishop and with one another, and to call out more lay help by making known the kind of work in which the clergy want assistance. Recently the Association has been very active on the subject, and has held many meetings in all parts of the metropolis. At these meetings undoubtedly much good has been done; a distinguished layman has taken the chair; a paper carefully prepared has been read upon the subject, and then a discussion of more or less interest and value has ensued.

Great care is taken in the appointment of suitable agents. They must be communicants sanctioned by the Bishop; a register of the names and addresses of the members is kept, showing what description of work each unemployed member may be willing to undertake, and also of the place and nature of the work in which each unemployed member is engaged. Upon the application of incumbents, members of the Association are put into communication with them, with a view to such arrangements for lay assistance in parochial work as may be mutually agreed upon. Once in every year the members attend Divine service and receive the Holy Communion together. Once, at least, in every year a meeting of the members is held under the presidency of the Bishop if possible, in order to consult together upon one or more of the various branches of work in which they are engaged, and to make such regulations as may be found necessary or expedient. I hear also of the formation of Parochial Associations of Lay Helpers which hold monthly or occasional meetings of a desirable character. The executive committee of the Association is appointed yearly by the Bishop.

The work to be done is various. At all the meetings which I have attended I have found the principal stress laid upon house-to-house visitation and mission-house services. It has been found that the poor have a reluctance to attend the church, but they will attend a mission-house service, and to preach and pray at such place lay help is urgently required. Other subjects specified are teaching in Sunday-schools and getting children to attend, conducting Bible-classes, tract distribution, seeking out the unbaptized and unconfirmed, encouraging the newly confirmed to come to Holy Communion, and inducing the poor to attend church. Under the head of week-evening work such subjects are indicated as teaching in night and ragged schools, management of working-men’s clubs and youths’ institutes, assistance at popular lectures, penny readings, and other means of recreation, attendance at penny banks, clothing funds, and school and parochial libraries, visiting the poor, assisting in church services. Day work is much the same. Other subjects not already mentioned are superintending the distribution of relief, reading and speaking to working men on religious subjects in workshops; collecting and canvassing for funds for parochial and mission purposes, and acting as secretaries to parochial institutions and religious and charitable societies. Especial stress is laid upon the clergy being relieved of their secular duties as relieving officers. It is felt that clergy laden with an infinity of secular work, essential to the good of the parish and the carrying out of their plans, are thus more or less incapacitated for the performance of the higher functions of their office. When we think what are the manifold duties of the clergy, it is no wonder that sermons made to represent original compositions, and which may be read as such, meet with a ready sale. Parochially London has grown wonderfully of late. The census of 1861, for instance, enumerates twenty-three parochial districts as formed out of the old parish of Kensington. Bishop Blomfield consecrated in all no less than 198 churches during the twenty-eight years of his episcopate, of which no less than 107 were in London.

Lay organization may be said to have commenced but recently. The first District Visiting Society of which I have heard, writes Mr. Bosanquet, was founded in connexion with St. John’s Chapel, Bedford Row, of which Daniel Wilson, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, was visitor. The Parochial Women Mission Fund was established in 1860. This association does not send its agents into any parish without a written application from the incumbent, who selects both the agent and her lady superintendent. There are now about 100 agents at work in London, acting chiefly in the capacity of Bible-women. For the young men connected with the Church there is a Church of England Young Men’s Society in Fleet Street, with fifteen branches in London and the suburbs; of 200 members on the books, more than half are engaged as teachers in Sunday-schools or other lay work. Then there is the Metropolitan Visiting and Relief Association, 21, Regent Street, formed in 1843, to distribute the contributions of charitable persons in such parts of the town as most need them, by means of the clergy and their district visitors. For that part of London which is in the diocese of Winchester there is the South London Visiting and Relief Association. How well laymen can work is understood in the neighbourhood of Drury Lane, where more than 500 of the lowest and the poorest in that district may be seen any Sunday afternoon at two Bible-classes conducted by laymen. Another lay agency in operation is the Workhouse Visiting Society.

In spite of all these organizations the Church of England as regards London has not yet fulfilled her mission. The harvest is plentiful, the labourers are few. Clergymen in the East say they would be glad of lay help from the West; but it does not come. In some parts of London there are parishes containing from 15,000 to 30,000 people, and in such a clergyman is almost unable to do his duty, in spite of his curates and paid lay agents. In most cases the number of visitors is quite insufficient. Mr. Bosanquet refers to a friend of his who had told him that some months after entering on a very poor cure in the south of London he had twenty-eight districts for visitors, but that twenty-seven were hopelessly vacant, and that the twenty-eighth was taken by his wife. This reminds me that some of the ladies of the clergy, especially in the East and poorer districts, labour as energetically as their husbands. I have heard of one lady who has two sewing-classes, with a hundred women in each. Commander Dawson, conference secretary of the Association of Lay Helpers, looks forward to the time when every communicant will be one of the agents of the society, thus stimulating his fellows, and giving fresh life and courage to his clergyman. It is clear when this consummation is achieved the Church of England, whether established or not, will shine with a saintly lustre which has never yet been hers.

Let me give a sketch of

AN EVANGELICAL PREACHER,

“You must go and hear the Church Spurgeon,” said an intelligent lady, residing not a hundred miles from Highbury New Park, to the writer.

“Who is he?” we asked.

“The Rev. Gordon Calthrop,” was the reply. “He preaches in a temporary iron church, St. Augustine’s, Highbury New Park.”

Soon afterwards, on a certain Sunday, we made our way to the church in question. There was very little difficulty in finding it out. As you enter Highbury New Park, leaving Dr. Edmond’s new church on the right, you come into a region of broad roads and handsome villas, into which poverty, which has an unpleasant knack of pushing itself where it is not wanted, actually seems ashamed to intrude. In these houses, almost countryfied, standing in the midst of well-trimmed lawns, shaded by leafy shrubs, between which flowers of the richest beauty bud and blossom, only rich people and people apparently well-to-do dwell, and they all attend at Mr. Calthrop’s church. Follow any of them, as on a Sunday morning the hour of service draws nigh, and bells far and near are calling men to prayer, and you find yourself at St. Augustine’s. Close by, a handsome ecclesiastical structure is rapidly rising, which is to hold 1400 people. That is the permanent church, the foundation-stone of which was laid by the Bishop of London, and where, it is hoped and believed, Mr. Calthrop may labour for many years to come. As it is, he has been preaching in this iron church, which will seat about nine hundred, for the last five years. He came there a stranger, fearful of the future, doubting what would be the issue. The church was quite a new one. The neighbourhood had been but recently built on, but he came with a heart full of zeal, with an experience ripe and varied, and in a little while it was apparent to himself and his friends that the step he had taken was fully justified by the result. Now he has a crowded church, more than 250 communicants, and a people ever ready to respond to his appeal, and rich in that charity without which a religious profession is but little better than sounding brass. The sacrament money at St. Augustine’s, as they have no poor of their own, is distributed amongst those of neighbouring churches. One of the noticeable features in connexion with the place is the attendance of young men from the neighbouring College of St. John’s. For the benefit of my readers let me add, that what was Highbury College is now a place of training for ministerial work in connexion with the Church of England – of young men who have not had, owing to unavoidable circumstances, the benefit of a University education, but who nevertheless are the right stuff out of which to make useful preachers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. On Sundays they find employment as Sunday-school teachers in various parts of the metropolis; also on that day, with a view to future usefulness, they go to hear such eminent clergymen as may be preaching in the City or the West-end, but mostly they attend at St. Augustine’s, and under Mr. Calthrop’s preaching they prepare for the great work themselves.