The peculiarity of the Church of England, that by which it is
distinguished from orthodox Dissent, is the priestly character of
its claims, and its intolerance of other sects.
The “Tracts for the Times” tell us “that the
Bishop is Christ’s representative, and the priests the
Bishop’s, so that despising the clergy is despising
Christ.” “A person not commissioned may pretend
to give the Lord’s Supper, but it can afford no comfort to
any one to receive it at his hands; and as for the person who
takes it on himself without a warrant to minister in holy things,
he is all the while treading in the steps of Korah, Dathan, and
Abiram. It is only having received this commission that can
give any security that the ministration of the Word and the
Sacraments shall be effectual to the saving of your souls.
The Dissenters have it not.”
The Dean of Chichester writes—“Our ordinations
descend in a direct unbroken line from Peter and
Paul. Unless Christ be spiritually present with the
ministers of religion in their services, those services must be
vain. But the only ministration to which He has promised
his presence are those of the Bishops, who are successors of the
first commissioned Apostles, and the other clergy acting under
their sanction and authority.”
The Bishop of Winchester says—“We believe that we
do possess, as we cannot see that others do, Christ’s
direct commission for our ministry, and a certainty and fulness,
therefore, of His presence and of His Sacramental working, which,
to say the least, may be lacking elsewhere. If we do not
hold as much as this we must dissent from the plain language of
our own Ordination Service.” The Bishop also denies
that it is a superstitious theory that “the clergy can
convey to the soul by a material intervention some spiritual
influence in an occult manner.”
The Rev. E. Blenkinson, in the “Church and the
World,” a book presented to Convocation by the Bishop of
Oxford, says the Protestant bodies have “cut themselves off
from the participation of the one Spirit as living in the Church
and flowing through the Sacraments, which are the veins
and arteries of the body.” The last utterance on the
subject is that of the Bishop of Ely, who places the first and
undisputed General Councils as of equal authority with
Scripture. The Catechism teaches Baptismal
Regeneration. The clergy also tell us that they are called
by the Holy Ghost, that the Bishop has conferred on them
spiritual graces by the laying on of hands. This is the
theory of the Church of England. In accordance with this in
time past, it drove out the Evangelicals on Bartholomew Day, and
has at any rate till our time prosecuted Broad Churchmen for
heresy.
The bitterest opponents of this theory are the
Evangelicals. It is a singular and noteworthy fact, that
the theology dearest to the hearts of the people is that which
teaches in the plainest manner the literal inspiration of the
Bible, the doctrine of Original Sin, of Predestination, of
everlasting damnation, of a Devil ever thwarting the designs of a
benevolent Deity, and seeking whom he may devour. Yet the
character given by Dr. Arnold of the Evangelical clergy is still
true, and accounts for the little influence they have in educated
circles. Another fact also becomes increasingly prominent:
their readiness to swallow their words, to quietly accept
whatever may be offered them by their opponents
apparently merely for the sake of position in society.
Every now and then a crisis occurs in the history of the
Church. If Baptismal Regeneration, for instance, be ruled
to be permissible they must leave, and then when the time comes
for them to arise and become martyrs, they quietly pocket their
principles and remain. Of course they plead their greater
opportunities of usefulness, as if religion were better served by
dishonesty than by honesty,—as if the cause of God were
better advanced by falsehood than by truth,—as if position
as regards society were of more importance than the man’s
consciousness of independence and honourable life. For the
ritualist or the Broad Churchman it is no difficult matter to
remain in the church in company with the Evangelical; but they,
in accordance with his theory, are teaching soul-destroying
errors; yet he remains with them, and is, according to his idea,
a partaker in their sins.
The characteristic of our day is the Broad Churchmanship,
which rejects the common theology as a prejudice well fitted for
certain times, but unworthy of credence now. Of this party
are the ablest men in the Church; all who are disgusted with the
childishness of ritualism—with the narrowness of orthodox
formulas, turn to them, and hail them as the
regenerators of Church and State. Such men as Dean Stanley
and Mr. Maurice are a power in the land. They walk hand in
hand with the poets and men of science of our time. In
their teaching is gathered together much that is best and truest
in the wisdom of the past. The difficulty of their position
is that they are tied down as strongly as they can be to
orthodoxy, and half their strength is wasted in the effort to
show they have a right to be where they are. Nevertheless
it is quite true that there can be no honest faith without honest
doubt; that we fight our fears and gather strength; that as we
know more, we feel how outworn is the old creed of
Christendom. Sir J. D. Coleridge tells us the Articles are
Articles of peace—that is, for the sake of uniformity a
minister may make statements which he cannot believe. But a
man who cannot trifle with words is denied all this liberty; he
is tied hand and foot. The State gives him moral prestige,
supremacy, wealth, on certain conditions. The Dissenter is
free; the wildest ranter has a liberty which an Archbishop may
sigh for in vain. Such is the law. A State Church
such as is desired by Broad Churchmen is an impossibility.
And yet in spite of the rival and differing parties in
the Church, and in spite of the fact that Churchmen themselves
are longing to be free of the fetters of the State, I know not
that the Church of England, as regards London, was ever stronger
than now. The layman has little sympathy with Church
squabbles: he goes to church feeling that in doing so he is not
committed to any form of belief or worship. Dissent
requires some sort of faith as preliminary to fellowship.
In the Church you avoid all this: the Puseyism of the pulpit
seldom extends to the pew. Then, again, there is a natural
yearning in all minds after national union in religious as well
as political matters. The higher class of Dissenters
display this feeling in an extraordinary degree. Their
chapels are built like churches—they cling to the steeple
which the stern old Puritans considered an abomination—the
meeting-house has ceased to exist. Day by day Dissent gets
rid of all its characteristics—its ministers assume a
clerical appearance—they adopt the Prayer-book as their
model—they now listen to read sermons and read
prayers. Of late years their leaders have grown rich and
respectable, and anxiously disclaim all connexion with the loud
and exciting form of worship that has attractions for the
ignorant. You may safely assume that the teaching of modern
Dissent is indirectly in favour of the
Establishment. Dissenters tell us they have modified their
customs in order to retain their hold upon the young of the
wealthy classes. But they cannot be retained by means like
these. It has almost become a proverb, that in the third
generation they will pass through the chapel to the church.
Half the great mercantile houses of London and the empire were
founded by Dissenters whose sons, as they have grown rich and
cultivated, feel more and more the awkward isolation of
Dissent. Increasingly this feeling is spreading among
Dissenters, and the Church, if it were wise—its history is
a career of blunder upon blunder—would have laid its plans
to recover such. All the levers of society have been at its
disposal. The Establishment rolls in wealth; there is no
other Church in the world so wealthy; the aristocracy are bound
to support it. Literally, there is in our land no career
for a Dissenter. Dissent is a stigma in society. Even
men who have no religious predilections would scorn the name of
Dissenter. The schools, the universities—all have
wealth and honour for those who will conform; and for those who
conscientiously refuse to do so—exclusion and disgrace.
In London, within twelve miles of the Post-office, there
are some seven hundred churches and chapels connected with the
Church, and about treble that number of officiating clergy.
At St. Paul’s it is estimated that on special occasions as
many as 7000 or 8000 persons take part in the services. For
the special evangelization of the metropolis there is what is
called the Bishop of London’s Fund. In the summer of
last year the Bishop of London stated that towards the sum
proposed to be raised for that purpose, 360,000l. had been
subscribed. By means of that subscription 200 clergymen
have been added to the diocese, and contributions made to the
erection of 69 new churches and of 20 parsonages. Sites
also had been secured for 33 more churches, 27 schools, 15
parsonages, and 4 mission stations. 15,000l. had been
expended for educational purposes; upwards of 9000l. for
53 Scripture readers; about 2000l. for 27 parochial
mission women, and 2670l. towards the rent and expenses of
mission rooms. It says something for the Church that it has
thus raised funds for such purposes. When Bishop Blomfield
appealed for 10 new churches for Bethnal Green, and raised
sufficient money both to build and to a great extent endow them,
it was feared that he had called forth such an expression of
Christian liberality as would exhaust the resources
of wealthy Church people in the great metropolis for many years
to come. Since that time it is estimated that
1,700,000l. have been expended in London on churches and
endowments. I am not aware that any other religious sect
can say as much. The Times estimated that there are
as many as 85 clerical charities in London.
In the City of London the Church does not seem to
thrive. The Church Times published a kind of census
of fourteen of the City churches drawn up after personal
inspection during service time not long ago. It gives the
value of the benefice, and the number of persons actually present
when the correspondent entered the church.
|
Annual Value.
|
No. Present.
|
St. Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield
|
£680
|
40
|
St. Anne and Agnes, St. Anne’s Lane
|
626
|
25
|
St. Michael le Querne, Foster Lane
|
300
|
closed
|
St. Mary Magdalene, Old Fish Street
|
230
|
18
|
St. Nicholas Cole Abbey
|
270
|
closed
|
St. Bennet’s, Paul’s Wharf
|
254
|
6
|
St. Nicholas Queenhithe, Thames Street
|
260
|
11
|
Allhallows, Bread Street
|
382
|
3
|
St. Martin Pomray, Old Jewry
|
410
|
1
|
St. Margaret, Bread Street
|
287
|
3
|
St. Peter le Poor, Old Broad Street
|
1725
|
20
|
St. Martin Outwich, Bishopsgate Street
|
1100
|
6
|
St. James, Mitre Square
|
300
|
20
|
Allhallows with St. Bennet, Lombard Street
|
650
|
9
|
|
£7074
|
162
|
In the City there are 105 churches, parochial and
district, and in the City the superiority of the Church over
Dissent is manifest. The Jews, the Greeks, the Roman
Catholics, the Wesleyans, the Baptists, the Congregationalists,
the Presbyterians altogether have but twenty-six chapels in the
City.
From the beginning of the long reign of George III. to its
close—that is from 1760 to 1820—there were not six
new churches erected in the metropolis.
When the Great Fire had devoured the eighty-nine parish
churches of London, Sir Christopher Wren superintended the
building of fifty-three at the same time that he was building St.
Paul’s. Various Acts were passed in the reign of
Queen Anne and George I. to increase church accommodation in
London, and Commissioners were appointed to apply the coal duties
from the year 1716 to the year 1724, to the building of fifty-two
new churches. Much of the money was misappropriated and
only eleven were built, and a subsequent fund of 360,000l.
was granted, to be paid in instalments of 21,000l. a
year. In 1818, Parliament was prevailed on to vote a
million and a half for building churches throughout the country
as a thank-offering for the termination of the war; and in the
same year the Incorporated Church Building Society was
founded, to build, enlarge, and repair churches; of which many,
such as those in Bethnal Green, Hackney, St. Pancras, Battersea,
were in London. Daniel Wilson, Bishop of Calcutta,
persuaded the vestry of Islington to vote 12,000l. for
church building. In 1836 Bishop Blomfield inaugurated the
Metropolis Churches Fund, to which he himself gave up sinecure
patronage at St. Paul’s to the extent of 10,000l. a
year. Sixty-eight churches were built by this fund at the
cost of 136,787l., before it was merged, in 1854, in the
Diocesan Church Building Society. During the twenty-eight
years of his episcopate, Bishop Blomfield consecrated 108
churches in London. The whole number of churches ten years
ago, writes Mr. Bosanquet in 1868, was only 498. Now
Churchmen aim at absorbing the entire metropolis.
“But in order to secure for every 2000 of our population
one clergyman,” said the present Archbishop of Canterbury
in 1867, “we shall need twice as many additional clergymen
as we have yet, with a proportionate number of
schools.” And here as elsewhere it seems to be true
that supply creates demand. As soon as a church is opened
it is well filled.
The Bishop of Winchester’s Fund, also known as the South London Church Extension Fund, is a similar effort
to supply the spiritual need of that part of London which belongs
to the diocese of Winchester.
In London there are two thousand persons born deaf and
dumb. To the sweet music of speech, whether in the way of
conversation or lecture, grave or gay, or song however sacred and
Divine, they are insensible. It follows almost as a natural
consequence that they are mute, that from their lips can never
come the thoughts that breathe and words that burn. It is
almost impossible for us to measure adequately the greatness of
their loss or the depth of their desolation. How in some
degree to make it up to them, to raise them in the scale of
being, to teach them to think, and feel, and learn, and to enable
them to communicate to others the results, is certainly not one
of the least praiseworthy of the many praiseworthy Christian
efforts of our day. With this view two courses of action
have been followed. A Jewish school has been established at
44, Burton Crescent, where the system of teaching by articulation
and lip-reading is pursued. For some time a similar system
has been in successful operation in Rotterdam. As to the merits of the system a warm dispute has been for a
considerable time in progress in America. Its advocates
tell us that when these results shall have been made known, and
the attention of the philanthropist and man of science shall have
been directed to them, the days of the old system of dactylology,
or communication by the aid of fingers, will be numbered.
They ask, triumphantly, What parents will be content that their
children shall continue to communicate their thoughts and wishes
by the aid of signs, when it can be proved to a demonstration
that 999 deaf mutes out of every 1000 possess the faculty of
speech, and that such faculty can be successfully utilised?
Mr. Isaac tells us, that at Burton Crescent, after only eighteen
months’ instruction, a deaf child who had never previously
uttered a clear sound, recited a verse of the National Anthem in
a way that brought tears into the eyes of many hearers. The
questions are put by the teacher in audible language; and the
deaf mute, by aid of lip-reading—another marvel of the
system in which the eye does duty for the ear—comprehends
every question, and gives answers audibly and distinctly.
The Association in aid of the Deaf and Dumb, of which the Rev.
Samuel Smith is the able and indefatigable secretary, are, however, doubtful of the new system—and certainly
lip-reading seems liable to give facilities for great
misapprehension as to the speaker’s meaning—and
prefer to continue the system which the society was organized in
1840 to teach, and under which it has worked more or less
successfully ever since. Under this system has sprung up a
deaf and dumb church-going public. On Sundays there are
five or six places opened for such in London; on Tuesday evenings
there are two, the principal one being held in the fine old
church of St. Lawrence Jewry, near the Guildhall—one of Sir
Christopher Wren’s churches—in which are monuments to
Wilkins, the learned Bishop of Chester, and Archbishop Tillotson,
whose lot was no peaceful one, and of whom it is worthy of remark
that in the language of Jortin he broke through an ancient and
fundamental rule of controversial theology, “Allow not an
adversary either to have common sense or common
honesty.” Poor Tillotson, you see, never got over the
disadvantages of Dissenting training.
But to return to the deaf and dumb. Inside this handsome
church you will find any Tuesday evening about eight
o’clock, some fifty or sixty of them sitting near the
reading desk. Most of them are men and women in a humble
position in life, engaged in various
callings in the neighbourhood, more, however, in the east than
the west. The desire to profit by such services seems on
the increase. They have, for instance, at St. Lawrence,
double the number they had, and the same may be said with regard
to the services conducted morning and evening at the Polytechnic
Institution. Nor are these services held in vain.
Every year some are prepared for confirmation, and special
celebrations of the Holy Communion are held for their
benefit. To the ordinary attendants, including even such as
have little need of an interpreter to explain the subject or to
help them to follow the services in church, the committee report,
“these services and lectures are profitable.”
“I have felt it a great privilege to attend the
services,” said one, “which have been a great comfort
and benefit to me, and I hope I shall remember what I have
heard” (it is to be presumed, by “heard,” the
writer means what he saw: his language is conventional).
“After I left school I felt so lost I could not hear what
was said in churches, and now I am very happy in attending
them.” In another way, also, the religious condition
of these afflicted ones is kept in view. The Society
employs missionaries engaged in house-to-house visitation.
By these missionary agents, acting in concert with the
parochial clergy, a personal acquaintance is maintained with the
deaf and dumb scattered over London, and a most marked
improvement in their character, conduct, and intelligence is the
result of the supervision exercised. The society is also
engaged in promoting the erection of a church for the deaf and
dumb. For this purpose 550l. have already been
subscribed. In the Old Kent Road there is a Deaf and Dumb
Asylum, and in other parts of the metropolis there are societies
for their special benefit. Of course no mere outsider can
give an account of a service with the deaf and dumb. It is
easy to realize songs without words, but not so easy to realize
public prayer and preaching in which no audible sound is heard,
in which the service is conducted as it were by pantomime.
As much as possible the rubric is observed, the deaf and dumb
obey the instructions of the Prayer-book, and stand where
standing is prescribed, and “sign” the response to
the Lord’s Prayer, Creed, Confession, &c. As to
the sermon, all that can be said is that it comes up to the
Demosthenic standard for eloquence—action, action,
action. Among the deaf and dumb the best preacher must be
the best actor. Not merely are the fingers in constant
requisition, but every part of the preacher’s face, as
much as possible, is speaking all the time, either in the way of
exhortation or entreaty. Great use, as we may imagine, is
also made of the arms, and the body sways backward and forward as
if to lend expression to such ideas as it may be the design of
the teacher to convey. The great aim of these services is
educational. They are intended to afford such an insight
into the meaning and use of the Book of Prayer, that the deaf and
dumb may be enabled to join intelligently in the public worship
of the Church of England, and undoubtedly it is desirable that
the terrible sense of isolation so natural under the
circumstances should be got rid of, that the deaf and dumb should
feel that they are part and parcel of the universal Church.
Nevertheless there must be a deaf and dumb pulpit from which may
flow the ever fructifying stream of Christian truth—a
pulpit which the deaf and dumb may feel exists especially for
them. Of this pulpit at present the Rev. Samuel Smith is
the most distinguished orator, and as you watch him, though you
cannot understand him, you cannot but wonder at his marvellous
skill. Evidently his heart is in his work; equally evident
is it that he has to complain of no wandering eyes. Every
hearer is intent, many seem really devout and
find the privilege one not lightly to be esteemed. The deep
strain of the organ is not there, you miss the song of praise,
you hear no penitential chant. From no living tongue falls
the sweet promise of salvation and eternal life, from those
sealed and silent lips escapes no audible prayer. Yet we
know that
“God reveals Himself in many
ways,”
and that He may be met with even among the deaf and dumb.
Most travellers by the Great Northern Railway must have been
struck with a feudal castle apparently, just what you might
expect to see on the Rhine, but certainly not such a building as
you would look for in the immediate vicinity of the Cattle Market
and of Mr. Mark Wilks’s overflowing congregation. As
you approach it, all around you are genteel villas and desirable
residences; the neighbourhood has an air of comfort and
respectability; the inhabitants seem substantial and well to
do—in short, to belong to the upper strata of that middle
class which in our land, at any rate since the last of the Barons
fell on Barnet Common, has been a powerful influence for good in
England and all over the world. You would scarce fancy that
feudal castle, with its “jutty, frieze, and coigne of vantage,” was a jail, or that inside it
there were shut up between three and four hundred rogues and
vagabonds, old and young, male and female, who have outraged the
laws of their country, and have been sent there, if possible, to
receive punishment for their offences, and to learn to do better
for the future. Yet such in reality is the case. You
are standing outside the City House of Correction, which was
built some few years ago at a cost of 100,000l. Into
this place it is rare for good characters to obtain an
admission. They may knock at the door, but it will not be
opened unless they are furnished with an order from the Secretary
of State, or one of the visiting magistrates, who are aldermen of
London city.
In this necessarily short paper it is not our intention to
describe the general arrangements of a place which we fear to too
many of its inmates can have but few terrors. There are
homes outside of filth, and want, and degradation; where,
morning, noon, and night all that is decent, that is tender, or
true, or pure is crushed out of man, woman, and child; where you
can scarce believe man was made in the image of his Maker, that
he is a little lower than the angels; where you feel that rather
than have company with such you would associate with the beasts
of the field, or dwell in some lonely isle
“far off amid the melancholy main.” To such,
such a place as Holloway, with its cleanliness, and fresh air,
and wholesome food, educational advantages, and considerate
attendance, must be simply—in spite of its drawbacks of the
treadmill, &c.—a millennium; and the question arises
whether we have hit on the most effectual mode of making the
dread of jail an incentive to the criminal class to keep
out. Another question also suggests itself: Is it right
thus to tenderly treat dishonesty, when honest poverty in our
midst undoubtedly fares so bad? Here, however, that subject
cannot be discussed, neither can we touch on that other question,
at this time strongly agitating the aldermanic mind, as to the
propriety of allowing prisoners to have a religion of their own,
and to be attended by their own religious ministers—a
question the majority of the court evidently think absurd, for,
as Alderman Cotton observed—and our readers must remember
Alderman Cotton aspired to the honour of a seat in
Parliament,—“if every dissenting sect were to apply
for facilities for the celebration of their religious services,
what would become of them? They should have to give the
Baptists a pool to bathe in, the Mormons a harem, and the Shakers
a circle in which they might make their
dance.” Of course, then, when I write of a Sunday in
Holloway jail, I write of a Sunday where the services—there
are two, morning and afternoon—are Protestant, and
Protestant according to the Church of England. As the
worthy chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Owen, is now about to preach, let
us accompany him. We follow him up a flight of stairs, and
are at church and in jail. To most of us it is to be hoped
the sensation is a novel one.
In a small gallery, under which is the clerk and in the middle
of which is the pulpit, we take our seat. The chaplain, of
course, is seen by all. A red curtain, which we are
requested not to remove, hides us from the congregation.
However, we can see them nevertheless. On the right of the
preacher, partitioned off so as to be seen by none but himself,
are the women prisoners; on his left, in another recess, are the
boys, little lads for whose offences against society others and
older ones are certainly more responsible than themselves.
Before us, in rows gradually ascending, are ranged the male
adults—pale, melancholy-looking men, who form the principal
portion of this sad community. While they are seating
themselves let us note the cheerful, neat appearance of the
place. Not a speck of dirt is anywhere visible. You might, to use a common but expressive form of
speech, eat your dinner off the floor. The wooden ceiling
is very light and airy; the windows are plain and plentiful; the
walls are bare, but of snowy whiteness. Underneath is the
communion-table, and once a quarter such as the chaplain
considers truly penitent are permitted to partake of it.
Some dozen officials, in uniform, on raised seats, are ranged in
different parts of the chapel, and when all have taken their
places the service is commenced by singing, in which generally
the wife of the chaplain—a lady not unknown in the literary
world—assists by instrumental performance. This part
of the service is especially remarkable. The prisoners are
fond of singing. There is weekly a class for this purpose,
and they enter into it with all their heart and soul. Of
course the tunes are very simple and old-fashioned, such as we
used to hear, but they are sung with a fervour of which few
outsiders can have an idea. One could not help thinking of
Longfellow’s lines:
“Loud he sang the Psalms of David,
He a negro and enslaved.”
The book used is the collection of Psalms and Hymns issued by
the Religious Tract Society, and those
selected are chiefly of a penitential and consolatory
character. The soothing influence of this part of the
service is, according to the experience of the chaplain, very
great indeed. It was also very evident that the men took
great pleasure in the responses, and one could not but hope that
it was not all assumed; that when they confessed themselves
“miserable sinners,” that when they exclaimed,
“We have followed too much the desires and devices of our
own hearts,” or that when after the chaplain read each one
of the Commandments they prayed, “Lord, have mercy upon us,
and incline our hearts to keep this law”—that to
some, at any rate, these words were full of meaning, and did
represent actual workings of the mind. In chanting also
they join, and the way in which they find out the proper places
in the Prayer-book, or in which they turn up the portions of
Scripture read, or find out the text, or repeat the Creed, is a
model to others, and gives an illustration of the existence of a
very desirable influence which the men appear to be under.
It must be remembered that they are there by themselves, that no
external eyes are on them, that to many of them the service is an
unaccustomed novelty, and that to those to whom it is not it
affords a welcome relief after the
monotony of the week. Be this as it may, nowhere in London
or the country, at home or abroad, have I seen a quieter or
better-behaved congregation. If you did not see the prison
garb, and the number on the arm, and the little brass plate on
the breast, you might fancy you were in the midst of an earnest
Christian people, who for purposes of their own excluded women,
and babies, and old men. The chaplain’s sermon
generally occupies from fifteen to twenty minutes, and is of a
character adapted to his audience; yet I must confess the
attention paid to it was not equal to that which was shown in the
more active parts of the service. The pulpit has yet to
learn to be plain and practical; and chaplains, it is to be
feared, with very remarkable exceptions, are inclined to be
conventional. Still, the preacher did his best, was kind
and simple, and when he speaks of such topics as godly sorrow for
sin, and of turning away from it to God, or of the many ways in
which men fall from rectitude, many evidently, especially of the
younger ones, seem desirous to understand and realize it, and to
lay hold of something spiritually soothing and appropriate.
In many faces was to be seen an expression of great earnestness,
forming a contrast to the unconcerned look of the
indifferent. As the chaplain
visits them all the week, and reads prayers to them every day,
his influence must of course, whether in the pulpit or out, be
great. Be this as it may, to many it is manifest that to
them has arisen unmixed advantage from spending a Sunday in
jail.
What is a mission? In a book of the mission edited by
the Society of St. John the Evangelist, at Cowley, Oxford, I
read—1. It is a special call from God. “Jonah
preached a mission to Nineveh, and the whole city repented and
was saved. Lot preached one night to Sodom, but they would
not hearken, and were destroyed by fire.” 2. It is a
time of special grace. The men who have devoted twelve days
to a mission in London have taken a bold and brave step in
connexion with the Church of England. As much as Sodom or
Nineveh, London, with its pauperism, and vice, and crime; with
its nobles stooping to the foul companionship of the jockey and
the courtesan; with its high-born daughters rushing to see
Formosa at Drury Lane; with its merchant princes deeming
it no disgrace to be honest as the world goes, or as the times
will allow—needs if it would be saved from the fearful fate of Sodom, or the decline of Nineveh, that it
should be specially preached to and called on everywhere to
repent. For twelve days, then, some hundred churches have
been open nearly all day long, in addition to the Sunday
services, which have been conducted as usual. At All
Saints, Margaret Street, for instance, the first service began at
a quarter to seven in the morning, and the last did not close
till past nine p.m. Church
people are not partial to innovations. It was only this
week a lady was complaining to the writer that in the parish in
which she resided a week-evening service had been
introduced. As if two services on a Sunday were not quite
enough. And truly, as times go, she had reason to
complain. Two such sermons as one generally hears read in
that lackadaisical, sing-song manner, which seems to be the only
thing clerical the raw curate picks up at Oxford or Cambridge,
are quite enough. If such were the preachers employed in
the recent mission (I see their number is set down at
forty-eight), it must have proved a failure. At All Saints,
so far from the mission being a failure, it has been, I should
think, a success. I have always respected the Ritualistic
clergy; I have always given them credit for honestly attempting
to develope the Catholic element, of which
there is a considerable leaven, in the historical English Church;
I have always felt that amongst them rather than amongst popular
evangelical preachers, whose favourite haunts are the
drawing-rooms of dowagers, or Broad Churchmen, the delight of
sceptical peers, are to be found the men most ready to take up
the cross and bear the yoke; but I had no idea they could preach,
or if they did that men of sense could listen. I have found
out my mistake. I have been one of the thousands who have
listened to Mr. Body, of Wolverhampton, and I never heard or saw
within the walls of a church a man so absorbed in his message, so
carried away with its import, so imbued with a sense of its
Divine reality. I may also add that a more awkward-looking,
ill-favoured clergyman I never saw ascend the pulpit stairs.
But these people were all Ritualists—believers in
form? Well, they are; there was an exaggeration of form, I
frankly admit; there was a great deal more crossing the forehead
and the breast than we English approve of; there was far too much
of appearance of devotion. A man may worship God in a
hearty, cheerful way as well as on his knees and with elongated
jaw. The preacher himself at times assumed an
air of needless imbecility as he stood with drooping head and
with hands folded, as if engaged in secret prayer; lank and pale,
and with a sickly smile upon his face, as was the manner of
mediæval and pre-Raphaelite saints. And then of
course, like most of the services of all churches, of whatever
denomination, the harlot, and the publican, and the sinner to be
called to repentance, kept away. It is a sign of
respectability to attend a place of worship, and people who come
to church in neat broughams, who are partial to diamond studs,
who wear brilliants on their fingers, are eminently respectable;
still there were poor sinners there, and the place was full, and
many were evidently deeply smitten, for the apostolic fervour of
the pulpit crept from row to row till the sinner and the sceptic
ceased to sneer, and all seemed mastered and subdued.
Before the service began half the audience seemed engaged in
silent prayer, and at the close that silent prayer was
resumed.
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 Jesus
Going on before.”
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.
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
“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.
Nor do I know that they could have a better model. Mr.
Calthrop is not the Church of England Spurgeon. I am not
aware that the Church of England has a Spurgeon. I know
none of the other Christian churches of our day that have.
It is only once in an age that a Mr. Spurgeon appears, but Mr.
Calthrop has no need to fear comparison with Mr. Spurgeon or any
one else. Personally, he is much smaller than the far-famed
Baptist orator Mr. Spurgeon, and in figure and face very much
resembles the late Douglas Jerrold. His voice is one of
wonderful sweetness and power, and as he reads the Liturgy of his
Church you feel that with him it is no empty form, to be repeated
parrot-like and with railway speed, but the voice of a
people humbled on account of sin, and standing trusting, yet
trembling, in the presence of their God. Exquisitely can he
render all its pathos, all its tenderness, all its sorrow, all
its fulness of exultation, all its ecstasy of Christian
hope. From the reading-desk to the pulpit the transition is
easy and natural. At a distance there is something youthful
in his look; but in his grey hair, in his face lined with
thought, in his eye, which seems ever looking far off, as if here
was not the boundary of his horizon, as if it had realized
something of the glory which is to come; you see that already
golden youth has past, and that you have before you one who has
attained to the strength and steadiness, and ripeness and
experience, of Christian manhood. He will not detain you
long, nor will he weary you with learning, nor will he aim to
dazzle the intellect and neglect the heart. In language of
poetical simplicity will he unfold and illustrate his text, and
force home on the hearts and consciences of all, its
lessons. There is nothing of the pretension of the priest
about him, nor does he delight in the terrors of the law.
Evidently he is the servant of one whose yoke is easy, and whose
burden is light; and such is his freshness and
originality, and such is his careful preparation for the pulpit,
and such the naturalness of his delivery, that the more you hear
him the more you like him. Much of his ministerial work is
done at his own house, amongst the young people whom he collects
there in his Bible-classes, which are largely attended. For
this work he seems eminently fitted by a refinement of manner,
not so much, I should fancy, the result of training, as of the
natural instinct of a kindly heart. The North of London is
favoured as regards clergymen, and Mr. Calthrop is a favourable
specimen of his class. There are none around him more
eloquent, more laborious, more successful. A recent
American writer points to the chaplainships founded and supported
in all the places of fashionable resort on the Continent as a
proof of the amazing energy, and wealth, and power of the English
Church. I would rather point to such churches as St.
Augustine’s, where a pastor is maintained in affluence, and
a church crowded, and real good accomplished, without one
farthing but what is raised by the free-will offerings of the
people.
Outside his own immediate circle Mr. Calthrop has laboured
with much effect. As a platform speaker he is very
effective. As an out-of-door preacher he at one time
greatly distinguished himself. He was also one of the first
to take his share in the work of preaching in theatres; and one
of the best accounts of one—a service at the Britannia,
which was reprinted in almost all the religious journals at the
time—was from his pen. A little while ago he had the
honour of preaching in Westminster Abbey. He was before
that one of the preachers in the special services at St.
Paul’s. Perhaps the greatest compliment in this
respect paid him was the appointing him University preacher at
his own university—that of Cambridge—a few years
since. To have occupied that pulpit is a memorable event in
any clergyman’s life.
Little more need be said. Mr. Calthrop was born in
London, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. He at
one time had thoughts of studying for the law, but ultimately the
pulpit became the object of his choice. As a curate he
originally laboured at Reading; he moved thence to Brighton,
where he was curate to the late Rev. Mr. Elliott, author of a
work still known in theological circles—the
“Horæ Apocalypticæ.” Six years of
his ministerial life were spent at Cheltenham, and thence he
removed with his wife and family to what was then a new and
untried sphere of labour. The wealth and material
prosperity around him seem not to have impaired
his devotedness. Very possibly they have opened to him
fresh fields of usefulness; for if ever plain preaching was
required for rich men, it is in the day in which we live.
It is to the credit of Mr. Calthrop that he realizes this fact,
and sees in the Gospel he proclaims a message for the richest of
the rich as well as for the poorest of the poor.
A book might be written about Church Life. I can only
say Dr. Temple tells us, that such commands as those in Leviticus
as to tattooing, disfiguring the person, or wearing a blue
fringe, should be sanctioned by divine authority, is utterly
irreconcileable with our present feelings. The Bible is
before all things the written voice of the congregation, writes
Dr. Rowland Williams. The Pentateuch was not written by
Moses. The Psalms do not bear witness to the Messiah.
The prophecies are histories. Justification means peace of
mind, or sense of the Divine approval. Regeneration is an
awakening of the forces of the soul. Reason is the
fulfilment of the love of God. The kingdom of God is the
revelation of Divine Will in our thoughts and lives. The
incarnation is purely spiritual. In London pulpits
the preacher best known and most identified with Broad Church
theology is Professor Jowett, whose great theme is that eternal
punishment is inconsistent with all that we can conceive of the
requirements of justice or the character of God. Dean
Stanley says no clergyman believes the Athanasian Creed, and
treats many parts of the Bible as mythical. Of Father
Ignatius and his eccentricities it is needless to speak.
The following statistics will interest
many:—“There is a weekly celebration of the Holy
Communion at 169 churches, more than one-fourth; daily
celebration at 20, nearly one-thirtieth; early morning
celebration at 159, one-fourth; evening celebration at 97, nearly
one-sixth; afternoon celebration at 5; choral celebration at 63,
one-tenth; saints’-day services at 198, nearly one-third;
daily service at 132, more than one-fifth; no weekday service at
104, one-sixth; full choral service at 128, more than one-fifth;
and partly choral service at 115, nearly one-fifth; giving a
proportion of nearly half where the psalms are chanted; surpliced
choirs at 137, more than one-fifth; paid choirs at 88, nearly
one-seventh; voluntary choirs at 231, more than one-third.
Gregorian tones are used exclusively for chanting at 46,
one-fourteenth. The weekly offertory is the rule at
128, nearly one-fifth. There are free but appropriated
seats at 141, nearly one-fourth; free and open seats at 65, more
than one-tenth. The Eucharistic vestments are worn at 20,
being one church in every 31; incense is used at 7,
one-nineteenth; the surplice is worn in the pulpit at 83, more
than one-eighth; and 26 churches are open daily for private
prayer.”
Dr. Sherlock, afterwards Bishop of Bangor, in his “Test
Act Vindicated,” published in the year 1718, tells us that
in the year 1676, upon a calculation that was made, the
Nonconformists of all sorts, including Papists as well as others,
were found to be in proportion to the members of the Church of
England as one to twenty. That this is not the case now
shows how the Church of England has misused her opportunities, or
else that her claims have been rejected by the nation at
large.