The Religious Life of London

“Come, oh, come! and do not leave us;
Christ is waiting to receive us,
Christ is waiting to receive us,
In that bright, that better land.”

Mr. M‘Auslane resumed. The text taught (3), Jesus prays for children. It is true we have not the prayer, but, nevertheless, he believed that Jesus prayed. The account in Matthew implies that He did. His prayer would, in all probability, be that God would be the protector of these children, and guide them all through life to the heavenly, happy land. There was a young man once condemned to die. His brother, who had lost an arm in the service of his country, went and pleaded for him. The judges were overcome, not by his eloquence, but by the sight of the stump of the amputated arm, and spared his brother’s life. Christ, in the same way, might plead with the Father the five wounds received on Calvary. “I have often heard an old man pray for children,” said the preacher, “and have heard him ask for things which I am sure were not proper to ask for for children. It was so long since he had been a child that he had quite forgotten what children’s feelings were. It was not so with Jesus. But you must remember also to pray for yourselves. Jesus prayed for Peter that his faith might not fail, but it did, because Peter did not pray for himself. 4. Christ wishes children to be happy, and they could not be that without the pardon of sin and hope of heaven. 5. The text taught that there are a great many children indeed in heaven. It is true there were there Jesus, and the patriarchs, and prophets, and angels, and apostles, but there were more children there, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. That last text meant that the glory of heaven was open to children, but it also meant that the population of heaven was made up of children. They would be there of every colour, – from every quarter of the globe. Last Christmas morning one little child was in that chapel who is in heaven now. “Shall we go there when we die?” was the question which concluded and enforced the preacher’s appeal, which was plain and simple and thoroughly adapted to its end. Of course there were some little ones who could not follow the preacher, but it seemed to me that evidently the majority did. It is to be hoped they did, for none but those who live in London can tell what are its trials and sorrows for such as they, or what are their needs. From the Sunday-school even many a lad and girl has gone astray. It was only a few weeks before that, at a midnight meeting in the Euston Road of some eighty or thereabouts – I cannot speak within one or two – some seventy fallen, weeping women confessed that they had been Sunday scholars, and amongst them even there were Sunday-school teachers! Of the hundreds who trooped joyously into Finsbury Chapel on our last bright, joyous Christmas morning, who can say what may be the end? Of this one thing, however, we may rest assured, it will be long before some forget the wise, kindly words listened to then, the songs in which they then took a part, or the prayers that then went up to heaven for them.

DR. PARKER AT THE POULTRY

“What are you doing?” said lately one of London’s biggest D.D.’s to a visitor from the country. “Oh, sir, I am in the ministry now,” was the somewhat exulting reply. “Ah, but, my brother,” said the querist again, “is the ministry in you?” Rather an important question that, and a question to which, alas! many ministers would be unable to give a very satisfactory reply. When I see a nervous, timid, feeble, hesitating, wavering brother in the pulpit, I think of the Doctor’s question as one from which such a man would instinctively shrink.

Dr. Parker belongs to another and a rarer class. The ministry is in him as a divine call, and not as an accidental profession. He speaks as one having authority. In an age of negation, and mistrust, and little faith, he is as positive as if spiritual truths had been audible to his bodily ear and seen with the bodily eye. Amidst the perplexities of a theology ever shifting in external phraseology, where man’s wisdom has darkened God’s light as revealed in His Word, where the miasma of doubt has repressed and stinted Christian life, he walks with a masculine tread, and he does so not from ignorance but from knowledge, because he knows how difficult is the way, how dark the path, how easily error comes to us in the form of truth, how the devil himself can assume the shape and borrow the language of an angel of light. He has got good standing ground, but he knows how treacherous is the soil, and what pitfalls lie open to catch the rash, and reckless, and overconfident. His is the strength of the athlete who has become what he is by years of careful training, protracted conflicts, and painful discipline, and in all his words, and they are many, you can hear as it were the ring of victory and assured success. Physically he looks and speaks like a man. What he says he means, and what he means he believes. He is not the kind of man to write an apology for Christianity; he would laugh to scorn the idea. He can laugh at much, because, as Hobbes says, to do so implies superiority, and Dr. Parker, strong in his faith in the everlasting Gospel, has an immense feeling of superiority; and as you listen he takes you up with him into his coign of vantage, and you laugh too. It is good to see wit as well as logic and learning in the pulpit; to feel up in that serene height, where the preacher has it all himself, and none may gainsay him, there is humanity there, a flesh and blood reality, and not a respectable academic ghost in whose brain there is hollowness and in whose eye there is no fire of speculation. What a head the man has – ample, well formed, well and fairly developed. What a voice the man has – strong as a mountain torrent, impetuous, irresistible, mastering all, carrying like a Niagara all before it. Dr. Parker is better off than Paul. Apparently the earthen vessel in which he has his treasure is of admirable adaptation and utility.

London has gained and Manchester has lost Dr. Parker. Already he has made himself no stranger in London. To many his “Ecce Deus” has commended itself as the work of a vigorous thinker, and all have confessed that his “Springdale Abbey” was full of very clever talk. No ordinary preacher could have written such books, that was clear. In Manchester he had become a success. How came he to be such? Partly I have explained the reason. In the first place, in an age of doubt, of negative theology, of blinding and bewildering speculation – when between the so-called Christian and the Cross in all its eternal lustre has risen up a fog of gloom – when the Gospel of unbelief and despair has come into fashion, so that when we listen for the shout of psalm or the holy exultation of prayer, we hear instead

“An agony
Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills
All night in a waste land, where no one comes,
Or hath come since the making of the world.”

Dr. Parker has a living faith. And then again he has a deep sense of what the pulpit requires, and an unmitigated scorn of that kind of preaching which is too common there. “Almighty God has to tolerate more puerility in His service than any monarch on earth. If Christianity had not been Divine it would have been ruined by many of its own preachers long ere this. The wonder is, not that it has escaped the cruel hand of the infidel (it can double up a whole array of crazy atheists), but that it has survived the cruel kindness of its shallow expositors.” Whose language, you ask, is this? Why, Dr. Parker’s own. The preacher who can thus censure his fellows is bound to guard sacredly and constantly against that which he condemns, and to come to his pulpit with every feeling attuned and with every energy aroused for its gigantic work. Give to such a man the requisite brain and tongue, let him have the requisite delivery, let his lips be touched by that spirit which and you have a Dr. Parker. He has come to London – a difficult thing for any man to do, but in this case the step has been undertaken under peculiarly difficult circumstances. Time was when the City was the home of citizens, and many of the wealthiest and most influential of them went to the Poultry. That time has long gone by. It was when deacons shook their heads at Mr. Binney as not quite sound. Of all places on the earth the most deadly on a Sunday is the City of London, and especially that part of it in which the Poultry stands. At St. Mildred’s, close by, it is impossible, or seems to be so, to collect a decent congregation. Will Dr. Parker succeed better? Some sort of answer was given to the question, when to a crowded and attentive congregation he preached what I may term his inaugural discourse. If I say it was an eloquent display I shall excite the Doctor’s indignation, as he contemned the use of such phraseology in his sternest and most indignant manner. Nor indeed with regard to the discourse in question would the phrase be literally correct. No one can doubt the Doctor’s eloquence, but in speaking of himself and his hopes and purposes in connexion with the Poultry – in showing the grand principles upon which he took his stand, and by means of which he was placed beyond the fear of failure, he aimed at something more than eloquent display. “I am preaching to myself as well as to you,” said the Doctor in the course of his sermon; and such was in reality the case. For the work which he has to do, for the programme which he trusts to work out, truly indeed does the Doctor need the guidance of that Providence which shall go before, and which shall make the crooked places straight. This, indeed, was the Doctor’s text. You will find it in Isaiah xlv. 2. From the beginning to the end of the service this was the leading and appropriate idea. He commenced with Cowper’s magnificent hymn, “God moves in a mysterious way.” The portion of Scripture read was Christ’s commission to the seventy to go and preach the Gospel all over the world; the prayer was an acknowledgment that the human will should be subordinated to the Divine; and it was “Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah,” which formed the closing song.

“Touched Isaiah’s lips with hallowed fire,”

As Dr. Parker told us he was going to publish his sermon (his sermons now appear weekly, under the title of “The City Temple”), I need say little of the discourse, of which I have already given the text. It began with a reference to the triumph and danger of liberty – that man might go whether with God or without Him. Man was free, nor was his religion one of slavery. To those who considered such a statement to be a grand contradiction of what we know of eternal decrees, it was sufficient to reply that it could only be harmonized in the ecstasy of light and love. God will not make everything straight, but only in proportion as we trust Him and live with Him will our difficulties diminish. As to his text in particular, remarked Dr. Parker, it was first a warning – there are crooked places. It was a promise – the crooked places God would make straight: all that we required was patience. Also it was a plan – God would go before us. Say some, that is God’s sovereignty – that is the omnipotent Jehovah. No, it indicated His love, His tenderness, His care. In such an idea we do not dwarf God, but exalt Him. Then came the limitation of the promise. This going before was a question of character. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. That, however, was no motive for carelessness, but the reverse. The Doctor, in conclusion, spoke of himself. He had been told that in leaving Manchester and coming to the Poultry he was moving into a crooked place. In explanation he stated he did not look for the ordinary course of a minister. He looked at London, that immeasurable centre; he thought of the young men who come strangers to the metropolis, and with no friends to guide and guard them; and if he did not get people to come and hear him on the Sunday, he trusted they would do so on the Thursday, when there would be a service from twelve to one, when he would aim simply to touch the heart with a sense of sin and forgiveness. He also intended to use the printing-press. He had great faith in the printed page. It remained to be read at spare moments when a man had nothing to do. Finally, said Dr. Parker, he spoke with fear and trembling, but he came there with a strong determination to succeed, and he appealed to all around to do their duty – not to carp, or criticise, or say unkind words, but to resolve to labour and to be guided by heavenly power and wisdom. At the close of the service there was a collection. After this the immense congregation streamed out into the open air, much to the astonishment of casual passengers, who did not understand what was the matter. The Poultry has a prosperous look, and they have got a new pulpit there almost as rotund, and bright, and buoyant as Dr. Parker himself.

I know not how the Sunday service succeeds, but the Thursday morning service is wonderfully well filled. In this busy age it is scarcely credible that in the busiest part of London, and at the busiest hour of the day, a chapel as large as the Poultry can be crowded, and is regularly crowded, with merchants and men of business and others. Yet such is the case, and Dr. Parker has succeeded in an attempt which, until he tried it, certainly seemed hazardous in the extreme. If the Doctor seems a little bombastic, it may well be forgiven him under these circumstances, especially when we remember that no preacher can succeed in convincing others that he is worth hearing till he has become firmly convinced of that fact himself. A modest man I fear is out of place anywhere, but most of all so in the pulpit. It was in wisdom that Dr. Parker was selected for his post. I should think he is a preacher pre-eminently adapted to the young. Judged not by what he has done, but by years, the Doctor is almost a young man himself. There is youthful vigour in his full round face, in his small dark eyes; and certainly there is no small store of youthful enthusiasm in his heart. In his black hair and beard there is no suggestive tinge of grey. If he has passed through and left the golden portals of youth behind, it can only be but recently that he has done so, and there is still in him somewhat of its grace and glory. In another respect also the choice of Dr. Parker was appropriate. The Poultry Chapel is in the very heart of London; the chances were that most of the young men present – and, I might add, of the old ones too – were more or less engaged in some secular avocations. In like manner, so the writer has always understood, the Doctor’s youthful years were passed. Hence it came to pass the old Poultry Chapel is in a flourishing state. The Doctor seemed in his right place, and, if we may judge from appearances, the people seemed to think so.

MR. LYNCH’S THURSDAY EVENINGS

In a great city like London there are many sources of pleasure completely overlooked. If people complain that life is dull – that it is monotonous – that it presents to them few objects of interest or attraction – I fancy they have chiefly themselves to blame. No man or woman either with heart or head need lead a barren life either in the country or in town. There is always something to do, to see, or to hear, and in London especially is there much to hear of which Londoners know but little. Such, at any rate, was the reflection of the writer one Thursday night as he made his way along the Hampstead Road to a neat little iron church on the left-hand side as you go from the City, and just before you reach Mornington Crescent. Every Sunday morning there preaches there the Rev. Thomas Lynch, the author of some choice prose and poetry – a man at whom there was a dead set made by certain religionists a few years ago, but who has long outlived that, and to whom that time of trial and of trouble was undoubtedly a most blessed event, inasmuch as it taught the gentle author of the “Rivulet” his strength, both as regards himself and as regards the best of our religious teachers; and inasmuch as it demonstrated to all anew, and more clearly than ever, how hard, how cruel, how unmerciful dogmatic theologians could become. At that time Mr. Lynch was preaching in a chapel in one of the streets running from Tottenham Court Road into Fitzroy Square. He is now nearer Camden Town, and preaches in a building between which and the pastor there seems to be a kind of resemblance and sympathy; at any rate, as much as can exist between what is abstract and concrete – between matter and mind. The church is no Gothic edifice, hoary with time, but slender and modern, and, as much as possible, graceful. You wonder it has not been swept away by the storms of winter. A similar feeling exists when you look at Mr. Lynch. There are great mountains of men, whose tread is terrible, whose laugh is volcanic, whose heads are rugged rocks, whose bodies are bulls of Bashan, whose speech is as the roar of an angry sea, whose faces in summer parch you up like burning suns, or in winter darken you with angry clouds. To this genus Mr. Lynch does in no way belong. The fairies who assisted at Mr. Lynch’s birth did very little for him physically – at any rate, they robbed his bones of all flesh, and made his outward frame as spare as possible. It is to be wished also that they had endowed him with better health. Yet his figure cannot be termed ungraceful or his appearance unattractive. In his dress he is scrupulously neat. Even on weekday services he wears the white handkerchief, which when round the neck denotes that you are a swell on your way to dinner, or a waiter, or a gentleman of the clerical profession. His grey eye is full of enthusiasm, and kindles up a pale, dark face that otherwise might be dull. His voice is stronger and clearer than you would expect. You are agreeably surprised to find how animated and vigorous he can become. After all, and in spite of ill-health, time has dealt not ungently with Mr. Lynch. He is a trifle bald, and you can detect a greyish tint in his hair – that is all; but Mr. Lynch, I imagine, is not one of those who age fast. He has a happy cheerfulness apparently, which compensates for the poetic sensitiveness which frets away many a man’s, life, and which made a hard-headed Wordsworth write —

“We poets in our youth begin in gladness,
Whereof come in the end despondency and madness.”

Indeed, Mr. Lynch’s cheerfulness is evidently, ever welling up out of his heart and colouring all his thoughts and words. In his services this is everywhere apparent. He has much of the lithe action of the comedian, and he stands ever, like Garrick, between tragedy and comedy, one moment ready to make you smile, and the next touching all that is most earnest, most serious, most devout in our common nature. He leans on his little desk, his hands before him, and talks away, sweetly and devoutly, about things that interest all – things that have a spiritual bearing, things that are secular and profane, only to the secular and profane. There are not very many people to hear him; but then, they are hearers, and there is sympathy between the preacher and the pews. The Iron Duke said, “When you begin to turn in bed, it is time for you to get up.” In a similar way it may be said, when the people begin to turn to look at the clock it is time the preacher or lecturer was done. The other night I found Mr. Lynch’s service occupied nearly two hours, yet it did not seem wearisome or long. The service was commenced with chanting, and prayer, and reading scripture, and singing. Then there was a text, and a lecture or sermon from that text. On the occasion to which I refer the subject was John Howe, as an illustration of that passage in Proverbs which predicates of the man diligent in his business that he shall stand before kings – a prediction literally verified in the case of John Howe, who was chaplain to Oliver Cromwell – a man greater than any king – and who had friendly converse with that Protestant hero, William the Third, the best king England ever had. Very vividly did Mr. Lynch bring out all that was noblest and brightest in John Howe’s character and career, dwelling with evident unction on the many pregnant titles of Howe’s works, which he seemed much to prefer to the works themselves, and in which he was right; for Howe’s thoughts, it must be conceded, are not couched in the form and language most easy of apprehension to the men of to-day; and from the past, with some rare exceptions – those, of course, written in a dead language being the chief – it is vain to extract literature for the study and edification of the present. Religion is no exception to a universal law; indeed, more than anything else, it is required of him who preaches it that he should speak to living men in the living language of to-day – not according to formulas that have long died out, or in terms that have long become extinct; and this specially may be said of Mr. Lynch, that as much as any one he realizes this great law, and does use language and illustration and argument familiar to the men and women of London in this latter day – that he does not cease to be a man when in the pulpit, and deal with abstraction rather than with real life. When Mr. Lynch began his ministerial career this virtue was rarer than it is now, and of this desirable result Mr. Lynch deserves, at any rate, some of the credit. Be that as it may, the writer has one other thing to say. It seems to him that these Thursday evening lectures of Mr. Lynch’s deserve a wide support. There are many in London who would be glad enough to attend. There are many living out of town who would find it worth while stopping an hour or two later on a Thursday evening. The service commences at a quarter past seven; and I believe generally Mr. Lynch takes some specific subject, such as “John Howe,” or “Bells,” or anything which seems to him notable. The writer heard also on the night in which he was there something about questions asked and answered; but on that he can say, as he knows, nothing.

CHAPTER IX.

the unitarians

“In the apostolical Fathers we find,” writes the Rev. Islay Burns, “for the most part only the simple Biblical statements of the deity and humanity of Christ in the practical form needed for general edification. Of those fathers Ignatius is the most deeply imbued with the conviction that the crucified Jesus is God incarnate, and indeed frequently calls Him, without qualification, God. The development of Christology in the scientific doctrine of the Logos begins with Justin and culminates in Origen. From him there proceed two opposite modes of conception, the Athanasian and the Arian, of which the former at last triumphs in the Council of Nice, and confirms its victory in the Council of Constantinople.” By the Ebionites Christ was regarded as a mere man. By the Gnostics he was considered as superhuman; but in that capacity as one of a very numerous class. The doctrine of the absolute unity of God, alike in essence and personal subsistence, was held by the Monachians, who are divided respectively into Dynamistic and Modalistic. As the latter held that the whole fulness of the Deity dwelt in Christ and only found in him a peculiar mode of manifestation, it was assumed that the natural inference was that the Father himself had died on the Cross. Hence to these heretics the name of Patripassians was applied by the orthodox. Sabellius, who maintained a Trinity, not of divine Persons but of successive manifestations under the names Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, was one of the chief Patripassians. The Arian controversy, as Dean Stanley shows, turned on the relations of the divine persons before the first beginning of time.

If Dean Stanley be correct, at this time the Abyssinian Church is agitated by seventy distinct doctrines as to the union of the two natures in Christ. It is clear, then, no one man can epitomize all that has been uttered and written on this pregnant theme, over which the Church contended fiercely three hundred years. “Latin Christianity,” writes Dean Milman, “contemplated with almost equal indifference Nestorianism and all its prolific race, Eutychianism, Monophysitism, Monothelitism.” When the Reformation quickened free inquiry and religious life, Socinus appeared; the epitaph on his tomb shows what his friends thought of his doctrine. “Luther took off the roof of Babylon, Calvin threw down the walls, Socinus dug up the foundations.” Furious persecution was the fate of the holders of his opinions; Servetus was burnt by Calvin; and Joan Bocher was sentenced to a similar fate by the boy-king Edward VI. for denying the doctrine of the Trinity. With tears in his eyes as he signed the warrant, he appealed to the Archbishop. “My Lord Archbishop, in this case I resign myself to your judgment; you must be answerable to God for it.”

Unitarianism has made way in England. When Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act became law the Unitarians in England were a small sect, and had not a single place of worship. It was not till 1779 that it ceased to be required of Dissenting ministers that they should subscribe to the Articles of the Church of England previous to taking the benefit of the Toleration Act, and even this small boon was twice thrown out in the Upper House by the King’s friends and the Bishops. In 1813, however, one of the most cruelly persecuting statutes which had ever disgraced the British code received its death-blow, and the Royal assent was given to an Act repealing all laws passed against those Christians who impugn the commonly received doctrine of the Trinity. It was no easy matter to get this act of justice done; the Bishops and the Peers were obstinate. In 1772, we read, the Bishop of Llandaff made a most powerful speech, and produced from the writings of Dr. Priestley passages which equally excited the wonder and abhorrence of his hearers, and drew from Lord Chatham exclamations of “Monstrous! horrible! shocking!” A few years after we find Lord North contending it to be the duty of the State to guard against authorizing persons denying the doctrine of the Trinity to teach. Even as late as 1824, Lord Chancellor Eldon doubted (as he doubted everything that was tolerant in religion or liberal in politics) as to the validity of this Act, and hinted that the Unitarians were liable to punishment at common law for denying the doctrine of the Trinity. Yet the Unitarians have a remote antiquity. They can trace their descent to Apostolic times, and undoubtedly were an important element in the National Church, in the days of William and the Hanoverian succession.

Dr. Parr, says Mr. Barker, “spoke to me of the latitudinarian divines with approbation. He agreed with me in thinking that the most brilliant era of the British Church since the Reformation was when it abounded with divines of that school;” and certainly Unitarians may claim to be represented at the present day in Broad Churchmen within the Establishment, and in divines of a similar way of thinking without. They have been much helped by their antagonists. No man was less of a Unitarian than the late Archbishop Whately, yet, in a letter to Blanco White, he candidly confessed, “Nothing in my opinion tends so much to dispose an intelligent mind towards anti-Trinitarian views as the Trinitarian works.”

As a sect, the Unitarians are a small body, and at one time were much given to a display of intelligent superiority as offensive in public bodies as in private individuals. They were narrow and exclusive, and had little effect on the masses, who were left to go to the bad, if not with supercilious scorn, at any rate with genteel indifference. There was in the old-fashioned Unitarian meeting-houses something eminently high and dry. In these days, when we have ceased to regard heaven – to quote Tom Hood – as anybody’s rotten borough, we smile as a handful of people sing —

“We’re a garden walled around,
Planted and made peculiar ground;”

yet no outsider a few years ago could have entered a Unitarian chapel without feeling that such, more or less, was the abiding conviction of all present. “Our predominant intellectual attitude,” Mr. Orr confesses to be one reason of the little progress made by the denomination. A Unitarian could no more conceal his sect than a Quaker. Generally he wore spectacles; his hair was always arranged so as to do justice to his phrenological development; on his mouth there always played a smile, half sarcastic and half self-complacent. Nor was such an expression much to be wondered at when you remembered that, according to his own idea, and certainly to his own satisfaction, he had solved all religious doubts, cleared up all religious mysteries, and annihilated, as far as regards himself, human infirmities, ignorance, and superstition. It is easy to comprehend how a congregation of such would be eminently respectable and calm and self-possessed; indeed, so much so, that you felt inclined to ask why it should have condescended to come into existence at all. Mrs. Jarley’s waxworks, as described by that lady herself, may be taken as a very fair description of an average Unitarian congregation at a no very remote date. Little Nell says, “I never saw any waxworks, ma’am; is it funnier than Punch?” “Funnier?” said Mrs. Jarley, in a shrill voice, “it is not funny at all.” “Oh,” said Nell, with all possible humility. “It is not funny at all,” repeated Mrs. Jarley; “it’s calm, and what’s that word again – critical? No, classical – that’s it; it’s calm and classical. No low beatings and knockings about; no jokings and squeakings like your precious Punch’s, but always the same, with a constantly unchanging air of coldness and gentility.” Now it was upon this coldness and gentility that the Unitarians took their stand; they eliminated enthusiasm, they ignored the passions, and they failed to get the people, who preferred, instead, the preaching of the most illiterate ranter whose heart was in the work.

In our day a wonderful change has come over Unitarianism. It is not, and it never was, the Arianism born of the subtle school of Alexandrian philosophy, and condemned by the orthodox Bishops at Nicea; nor is it Socinianism as taught in the sixteenth century, still less is it the Materialism of Priestley. Men of the warmest hearts and greatest intellects belonging to it actually disown the name, turn away from it as too cold and barren, and in their need of more light, and life, and love, seek in other denominations what they lack in their own. The Rev. James Martineau, a man universally honoured in all sections of the universal church, confesses: – “I am constrained to say that neither my intellectual preference nor my moral admiration goes heartily with the Unitarian heroes, sects, or productions of any age. Ebionites, Arians, Socinians, all seem to me to contrast unfavourably with their opponents, and to exhibit a type of thought and character far less worthy, on the whole, of the true genius of Christianity. I am conscious that my deepest obligations, as a learner from others, are in almost every department to writers not of my own creed. In philosophy I have had to unlearn most that I had imbibed from my early text-books and the authors in chief favour with them. In Biblical interpretation I derive from Calvin and Whitby the help that fails me in Crell and Belsham. In devotional literature and religious thought I find nothing of ours that does not pale before Augustine Tauler and Pascal; and in the poetry of the Church it is the Latin or the German hymns, or the lines of Charles Wesley or Keble, that fasten on my memory and heart, and make all else seem poor and cold.” This is the language of many beside Mr. Martineau – of all, indeed, to whom a dogmatic theology is of little import compared with a Christian life.

Let us attempt to describe Unitarianism negatively. In one of his eloquent sermons in its defence, the late W. J. Fox said, “The humanity of Christ is not essential to Unitarianism; Dr. Price was a Unitarian as well as Dr. Priestley, so is every worshipper of the Father only, whether he believes that Christ was created before all worlds, or first existed when born of Mary. Philosophical necessity is no part of Unitarianism. Materialism is no part of Unitarianism. The denial of angels or devils is no part of Unitarianism.” Unitarianism has no creed, yet briefly it may be taken to be the denial of a Trinity of persons in the Godhead, or of the natural depravity of man, or that sin is the work of the devil, or that the Bible is a book every word of which was dictated by God, or that Christ is God united to a human nature, or that atonement is reconciliation of God to man. Furthermore, the Unitarians deny that regeneration is the work of the Holy Spirit, or that salvation is deliverance from the punishment of sin, or that heaven is a state of condition without change, or that the torments of hell are everlasting. It may be that the Broad Churchman entertains very much the same opinions, but then the Unitarian minister has this advantage over the Church clergyman, that he is free. He has not signed articles of belief of a contrary character. He has not to waste his time and energy in sophistications which can deceive no one, still less to preach that doctrine so perilous to the soul, and destructive of true spiritual growth, and demoralizing to the nation, that a religious, conscientious man may sign articles that can have but one sense and put upon them quite another. Surely one of the most sickening characteristics of the age is that divorce between the written and the living faith, which, assuming to be progress, is in reality cowardice.

In our day we have seen something of an Evangelical Alliance, that is, a manifestation of the great fact that people are yearning after a Catholic union, and are caring less and less for denominational differences. The Unitarians all speak and write of the orthodox as of a body of Christians perfectly distinct from themselves. Yet there is an approximation between them, nevertheless. Unitarianism, as it becomes a living faith – as it leans to the theology of the sweetest singers and most impassioned orators of the universal Church – becomes in sentiment and practice orthodox; while orthodoxy, as it grows enlightened, and burst the bonds of habit, and, laden with the spoils of time, gathers up the wisdom and the teaching of all the ages underneath the sun, sanctions the Rationalism and the spirit of free inquiry for which Unitarianism has ever pleaded and its martyrs have died in our own and other lands. Actually, at the meeting of the British and Foreign Unitarian Society, an effort was made to get rid of the title altogether, and to call themselves instead a British and Foreign Free Christian Association, on the plea that the Christian Church consists of all who desire to be the children of God in the spirit of Jesus Christ His Son, and that, therefore, no association for the promotion of a doctrine which belongs to controversial theology can represent the Church of Christ. To this Unitarianism has attained in our time. This is the teaching of Foster, and Ham, and Ierson, and Martineau – a teaching seemingly in accordance with the spirit of the age. Unitarian theology is always coloured with the philosophy of the hour, and consequently it is now spiritual and transcendental instead of material and necessitarian.

As regards London, the statistics of Unitarianism are easy of collection. In their register we have the names of fifteen places of worship, where Holy Scripture is the only rule of faith, and difference of opinion is no bar to Christian communion. In reality Unitarians are stronger than they seem, as in their congregations you will find many persons of influence, of social weight, of literary celebrity. For instance, Sir Charles Lyell and Lord Amberley are, I believe, among the regular attendants at Mr. Martineau’s chapel in Portland Street. At that chapel for many years Charles Dickens was a regular hearer. The late Lady Byron, one of the most eminent women of her day, worshipped in Essex Street Chapel, when Mr. Madge preached there. In London the Unitarians support a domestic mission, a Sunday-school association, an auxiliary school association, and a London district Unitarian society.

AGGRESSIVE UNITARIANS

It is not often that Unitarianism is aggressive, or that it seeks the heathen in our streets perishing for lack of knowledge. Apparently it dwells rather on the past than the present, and prefers the select and scholarly few to the unlettered many. Most Unitarian preachers lack popular power; hence it is that their places of worship are rarely filled, and that they seem tacitly to assume that such is the natural and necessary condition of their denomination. It is with them as it used to be with the old orthodox Dissenters in well endowed places of worship some thirty or forty years ago. Of them, I well remember one in a leading seaport in the eastern counties. I don’t believe there was such another heavy and dreary place in all East Anglia, certainly there never was such a preacher; more learned, more solemn, more dull, more calculated in a respectable way to send good people to sleep, or to freeze up the hot blood and marrow of his youthful hearers. Once and but once there was a sensation in that chapel. It was a cold evening in the very depth of winter. There was ice in the pulpit, and ice in the pew. The very lamps seemed as if it was impossible for them to burn, as the preacher in his heaviest manner discoursed of themes on which seraphs might love to dwell. All at once rushed in a boy, exclaiming “Fire, fire!” The effect was electric – in a moment that sleepy audience was startled into life, every head was raised and every ear intent. Happily the alarm was a false one, but for once people were awake, and kept so till the sermon was done. It is the aim of Mr. Applebee in the same way to rouse up the Unitarians, and in a certain sense he has succeeded. He has now been preaching some eighteen months in London, in the old chapel on Stoke Newington Green, where, for many years, Mrs. Barbauld was a regular attendant, and where long the pulpit was filled by no less a distinguished personage than Burke and George the Third’s Dr. Price; the result is that the chapel is now well filled. It is true it is not a very large one; nevertheless, till Mr. Applebee’s advent, it was considerably larger than the congregation. Before Mr. Applebee came to town he had produced a similar effect at Devonport; when he settled there he had to preach to a very small congregation, but he drew people around him, and ere he left a larger chapel had to be built. I take it a great deal of his popularity is due to his orthodox training. It is a fact not merely that Unitarianism ever recruits itself from the ranks of orthodoxy, but that it is indebted to the same source for its ablest, or rather most effective ministers.

In the morning Mr. Applebee preaches at Stoke Newington; in the evening he preaches at 245, Mile End. It seems as if in that teeming district no amount of religious agency may be ignored or despised. In the morning of the Sabbath as you walk there, you could scarce fancy you were in a Christian land. It is true, church bells are ringing and the public-houses are shut up, and well-clad hundreds may be seen on their way to their respective places of worship, and possibly you may meet a crowd of two or three hundred earnest men in humble life singing revival hymns as they wend their way to the East London Theatre, where Mr. Booth teaches of heaven and happiness to those who know little of one or the other; nevertheless, the district has a desolate, God-forsaken appearance. There are butchers’ shops full of people, pie-shops doing a roaring trade, photographers all alive, as they always are, on a Sunday. If you want apples or oranges, boots or shoes, ready-made clothes, articles for the toilette or the drawing-room, newspapers of all sorts – you can get them anywhere in abundance in the district; and as you look up the narrow courts and streets on your left, you will see in the dirty, eager crowds around ample evidence of Sabbath desecration. I heard a well-known preacher the other day say it was easy to worship God in Devonshire. Equally true is it that it is not easy to worship Him in Mile End or Whitechapel. The Unitarians assume that a large number of intelligent persons abstain from attending a religious service on Sundays in the most part “because the doctrines usually taught” are “adverse to reason and the plain teaching of Jesus Christ.” Under this impression they have opened the place in Mile End. In a prospectus widely circulated in the district, they publish a statement of their creed as follows: 1. That “there is but one God, one undivided Deity, and one Mediator between God and man – the man Christ Jesus.” 2. That “the life and teachings of Jesus Christ are the purest, the divinest, and truest;” His death consecrating His testimony and completing the devotion of His life; his resurrection and ascension forming the pledge and symbol of their own. 3. “That sin inevitably brings its own punishment, and that all who break God’s laws must suffer the penalty in consequence;” at the same time they “reject the idea with abhorrence that God will punish men eternally for any sins they may have committed or may commit.” Such is the formula of doctrine, on which as a basis the Unitarian Mission at Mile End has been established, and to a certain extent with some measure of success. It is charged generally against Unitarians that they have no positive dogma. The Unitarianism of Mr. Applebee has no such drawback. He has a definite creed, which, whether you believe it or not, at any rate you can understand. In the eyes of many working men, that is of the class to whom he preaches at Mile End, he has also the additional advantage of being well known in the political arena. As a lecturer on behalf of advanced principles in many of our large towns he has produced a very great effect. I confess I have not yet overcome the horror I felt when I saw at the last election how night after night he spoke at Northampton on behalf of Mr. Bradlaugh’s candidature. Surely a secularist can have no claim as such on the sympathies of a Christian minister. Yet at Northampton Mr. Applebee laboured as if the success of Mr. Bradlaugh were the triumph of Gospel truth, and as if in the pages of the National Reformer the working men, to whom it especially appeals, might learn the way to life eternal. But Mr. Applebee is by no means alone. In Stamford Street Chapel and in Islington you have what I believe the Unitarians would consider still more favourable specimens of aggressive Unitarianism.

CHAPTER X.

the wesleyan methodists

Tertullian wrote in his apology, or rather in his appeal, to the heathen persecutors on behalf of the Christians of his age, “We are but a people of yesterday, and yet we have filled every place belonging to you – cities, islands, castles, towns, assemblies, your very camps, your tribes, companies, palaces, senates, forum. We leave you your temples only. We can count your armies; our numbers in a single province will be greater.” The language was boastful, but it was founded on fact. Wesleyan orators might indulge in a similar rhetorical flourish. In 1729 John Wesley returned to Oxford, intending to reside there permanently as a tutor. He found that his brother Charles, then a student at Christ Church, had, during his absence, and chiefly through his influence, acquired views and feelings corresponding with his own, and had prevailed on two or three young men to unite with him in receiving the Lord’s Supper weekly, and in cultivating strict morality in their conduct, and regularity in their demeanour. “Here is a new set of Methodists sprung up,” said one. The name took at once, and was thenceforth applied derisively to the little band. To this company John Wesley united himself; and of it his ardour and his wonderful talent of organization and for ruling his fellows soon made him the head. In the world’s history a hundred and thirty years is but a little while; the fathers and founders of Wesleyan Methodism have as it were but recently passed away. There may be some living now whose little eyes saw Wesley’s body carried to the grave in 1791, or whose young ears heard the last public utterances of the dying saint. And now it appears from the recently-published returns of the Conference that the total number of members, not mere attendants, at Wesleyan places of worship, is in Great Britain at the present time 342,380, being an increase of 5310; and there are upon trial besides for Church membership 24,926 candidates. A people which have thus grown, which have thus become a power in the State, to whom Dr. Pusey has appealed for aid, surely are well worth a study.

In an exhaustive work by Mr. Pierce we have, as it were, the inner life of Wesleyan Methodism, methodically arranged and placed in chronological order. “The attempt,” says the Rev. G. Osborn, D.D., in his Introductory Preface, “is made in honesty and candour; and has required a large amount of labour on the part of the compiler, which, however, his love and admiration of the system have made, if not absolutely pleasant, yet far less irksome than under other circumstances it would have been.” We must, in fairness, add that Mr. Pierce has certainly exhausted his theme, and his non-Wesleyan readers. A catechism of 800 large pages of small type is more trying than even that of the Assembly of Divines. Surely it was possible to do what Mr. Pierce has done in a more readable form. Still, however, his work is invaluable as a cyclopædia of Wesleyan faith, and organization, and practice.

Mr. Wesley had originally no intention of seceding from the Church of England. Dr. Stevens, in his very interesting work, has shown how, step by step, he was forced into secession, and was compelled, by the force of circumstances – the irresistible logic of events – to abandon his very strong Church principles. In this respect Conference has rigidly adhered to Wesley’s teaching. “What we are,” it stated in 1824, “as a religious body we have become both in doctrine and discipline by the leadings of the providence of God. But for the special invitation of the Holy Spirit that great work of which we are all the subjects, and which bears upon it marks so unequivocal of an eminent work of God, could not have existed. In that form of discipline and government which it has assumed it was adapted to no preconceived plan of man. Our venerable founder kept only one end in view – the diffusion of Scriptural authority through the land, and the preservation of all who had believed through grace in the simplicity of the Gospel. This guiding principle he steadily followed, and to that he surrendered cautiously but faithfully whatever in his preconceived opinions he discovered to be contrary to the indications of Him whose the work was, and to whom he had yielded up himself implicitly as His servant and instrument. In the further growth of the societies the same guidance of Providential circumstances, the same signs of the times, led to that full provision for the direction of the societies, and for their being supplied with all the ordinances of the Christian Church, and to that more perfect pastoral care which the number of the members and the vastness of the congregations (collected not out of the spoils of other churches, but out of the world which lieth in wickedness) imperatively required.” Thus, practically abhorring the name of Dissent, Methodists became Dissenters themselves, and certainly as a sect put forth, as the above extract teaches, the strongest claims to a Divine origin and sanction.

In 1784 Conference had a legal habitation and a name. All power was then placed in its hands as regards the Wesleyans. “The duration of the yearly assembly of Conference shall not be less than five days nor more than three weeks.” It has to fill up vacancies by death, elect a President and Secretary, expel or receive preachers – who must, however, have been in connexion with it as preachers for twelve months, – and regulate all the affairs of the body. Appointments of preachers are limited for three years. According to the original rule, no person could be a member of the Methodist Society unless he met in class. If he neglected to do so for three weeks in succession (if not prevented by sickness, distance, or unavoidable business), he was considered by such neglect to exclude himself. Consequently, the meeting in class is still made a fundamental condition of membership, and is indeed the only gate of admission into society. Once a quarter each of these classes is visited by one of the travelling preachers, for the purpose of ascertaining the spiritual state of every member, and giving to each a ticket or printed badge of membership, by the production of which he is admitted to any of the more private means of grace. The preachers are instructed to give notes to none till they are recommended by a leader with whom they have met at least two months on trial. If in the opinion of a leader any reasonable objection exists to the character and conduct of any person who is on trial, such may be stated, and, if established to the satisfaction of the meeting, the ticket may be withheld. No backslider after gross sin may be readmitted till after three months. All members are expected to meet in the classes belonging to their respective circuits, and all persons acting as local preachers, class-leaders, stewards, conductors of prayer-meetings, or sustaining any other office in the body, are expected to belong to the circuits in which they reside. In order to avoid conformity to the world, it is forbidden to teach children dancing, to dress according to the fashion of the day, to drink spirits, to smoke tobacco, or take snuff, to indulge in evil conversation or strife. Music, and such-like diversions, are also interdicted. In the Conference of 1836 similar injunctions were repeated, as it observed with sincere regret in some quarters “a disposition to indulge in and encourage amusements which it cannot regard as harmless or allowable.” The strict observance of the Sabbath is enforced. On that day members are not to employ a barber, or to trade, or go to a feast, or engage in any military exercise. In 1848, convinced of the great and growing importance of a careful observance of the Lord’s day to the Church of Christ and the nation at large, the Conference appointed a committee to watch over the general interests of the Sabbath, to observe the course of events in reference to it, to collect such information as may serve the cause of Sabbath observance, to correspond with persons engaged in similar designs, and to report from year to year the result of their inquiries, with such suggestions as they may think proper to offer. The duty of family worship is strongly recommended. The power of expulsion is conferred only on preachers, who have ever appointed leaders, chosen stewards, and admitted members. No one is to belong to the society who is guilty of smuggling or bribery at elections.

For the support of their ministers most careful provision has been made. The direct means by which funds are raised is that of weekly and quarterly collections in the classes, and quarterly collections in all the chapels. It is expected that every member, in accordance with the original rule of Mr. Wesley, should contribute at least one penny per week and one shilling per quarter.

I have spoken of the class meetings. Band Societies are the same, except that they are divided into smaller companies and are on a stricter plan as to the faithful interchange of mutual reproof and advice. The questions proposed to every one before he is admitted are such as these: Have you forgiveness of your sins? Have you peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ? Have you the witness of God’s Spirit with your own that you are a child of God? Is the love of God shed abroad in your heart? Has no sin, outward or inward, dominion over you? Do you desire to be told of all your faults? Do you desire that every one of us should tell you from time to time whatever we fear – whatever we hear concerning you – that in doing this we should cut to the quick and search your heart to the bottom? And so on. Again, at every meeting it is to be asked, “What known sins have you committed since our last meeting? What temptations have you met with? How were you delivered? What have you thought, said, or done of which you doubt whether it be sin or not?” To the members of these bands the minutest injunctions are given. Amongst other things, they are to “pawn nothing – no, not to save life.”

Society Meetings were instituted by Mr. Wesley immediately after the formation of the first Methodist Society, and were regarded by him of great importance in a spiritual point of view. All preachers were to hold them on the Lord’s day; only those members who had tickets were to be admitted. On these occasions the society is to be closely and affectionately addressed by the preacher on those important subjects which relate to personal and domestic religion. A Methodist love-feast is a meeting at which none are present but the members of the society, and such as have obtained special permission from the minister. The meeting begins with singing and prayer, after which the stewards, or other officials of the society, distribute to each person a portion of bread or cake, and then a little water. A collection is then made for the poor. Liberty is then given to all to relate their religious experience in accordance with the words of the Psalmist – “Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will tell what He hath done for my soul.” This service is usually held once a quarter, continues about two hours, and is concluded with prayer. The times for holding public prayer-meetings are not fixed by any established rule of the connexion, but are left to the discretion of the superintendent of the circuit, who usually appoints such times as may be most convenient to the people of the district. Prayer-meetings are generally held on Sunday mornings and week-days. Missionary prayer-meetings are held once a month, and meetings in private houses for prayer are strongly recommended. Quarterly days of fasting and humiliation are also held. The religious services known as Watch Nights are usually celebrated on the New Year’s-eve, but they are not always confined to the close of the year, for it is the custom of some places to hold them quarterly. On the first Sunday afternoon in the New Year, a solemn service is held entitled the Renewing of the Covenant. It generally commences at two and closes at five. None but members or those who have obtained special permission from the preacher may be present.

Baptism is regarded by the Methodists as a dedicatory act on the part of Christian parents. The Sacrament is their most solemn and sacred festival. In the bread and wine they see no mystical efficacy, but a significant emblem of the body and blood of Christ; but they do not make it the test of Church membership. Originally the Wesleyans went to their parish church for the purpose of celebrating it, and it was not till after Wesley’s death that the body received the Sacrament in their own chapels, and from their own ministers.

On the Sabbath morning public worship is usually commenced by the reading of the Church of England service in a more or less abridged form. The Conference has appointed that, where this is not done, the lessons for the day, as appointed by the Calendar, should be read. A hymn is then sung from a hymn-book compiled by Charles Wesley, and subsequently much enlarged. Extemporaneous prayer follows; then another hymn; then, unless the Church service has been previously used, the reading of portions of the Scriptures; then an extemporaneous sermon, and the worship is concluded with singing and prayer. With the exception of the Church service, the same order is observed in the evening.

Among Wesleyan institutions must be placed first and foremost pastoral instruction. Catechumen classes for the instruction and edification of the young are held by catechists. Sunday-schools were next established; then day and infant schools. In 1843 steps were taken for the establishment of the Wesleyan normal schools in Westminster. This led in 1856 to the establishment of the Westminster Training College. Other schools, such as those at Sheffield, Taunton, and Dublin exist for the children of such as can pay for a good education for their children. The Kingswood and Woodhouse Grove Schools are supported by the denomination for the free training of the children of preachers. Then steps were taken for the establishment of the Wesleyan Theological Institution at Richmond and Didsbury. In 1866 it was resolved to have one at Headingley for training missionaries. The responsibility of recommending candidates for the ministry originally rested upon the superintendent. He proposes him to the quarterly meeting. The candidate is then recommended to the ensuing annual district meeting, and they recommend him to Conference, who decide. The candidate must previously have been a local preacher. After a certain time of trial the candidate is ordained or admitted into full connexion, after a private examination by the President and a few senior ministers whom he may select. The ordination is by imposition of hands. No travelling preacher can marry during the term of his probation without violating the rules and rendering himself liable to be dismissed from his itinerancy. There are besides, assistants and superintendent preachers. Every preacher shall be considered as a supernumerary for four years after he has desisted from travelling, and shall afterwards be deemed superannuated. No person is eligible to be a local preacher unless he be a regularly accredited member of society, and meet in class. He has to undergo an examination of a private nature.

It would take far more space than I have at command to continue the subject. The Wesleyans have a Stationary Committee to draw up a plan for stationing ministers; a Committee to guard their privileges; a Committee to look after and support worn-out preachers; another to consider the case of the widows; another for the maintenance of the children of ministers; another for the Home Mission and what is called the Contingent Fund. In 1862 Juvenile Home and Foreign Missionary Societies were established. The General Wesleyan Missionary Society, as it is now known, dates from 1817.

The chapels are, of course, the property of the denomination, and the same may be said of the preachers’ dwelling-houses. There is a Chapel Loan Fund, a Connexional Relief and Extension Fund, a Wesleyan Chapel Committee, and a Metropolitan Committee for the same purpose, which, since 1862, has granted 11,625l. to nineteen chapels in the metropolitan districts, which cost altogether 89,499l., and gave accommodation to more than 17,000 hearers.

The Methodist Book Establishment consists of the President and ex-President, the members of the London Book Committee, thirty-nine travelling preachers, and the representatives of the Irish Conference. There is also a Wesleyan Tract Society.