N ', ') u / ' I J ^m , ^,ttHt*a%iafj,^^ ■/ '^.;, PRINCETON, N. J. % Shelf BV 660 .W56 1897 "■ Winnington Ingram, Arthur F 1858-1945. Work in great cities Work in Great Cities Six Lectures on Pastoral Theology Delivered in the Divinity School, Cambridge Easter Term, 1895 By Arthur F. Winnington Ingram, M.A. Head of the Oxford House, and Rector of Bethnal Green, Chaplain to the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of St. Albans With an Introduction by Herbert E. Ryle, D.D. Hulsean Professor of Divinity, Cambridge London Gardner, Darton & Co. 3, Paternoster Buildings First Edition, December iSqs Second Edition, May iSg6 Third Edition, February l8gj Introduction TTHE Head of the Oxford House, Bethnal Green, has honoured me with. the request that I should write a few words by way of " In- troduction" to the present volume. I am obeying him, not from any feeling that such prefatory words are in the least degree required, but from the wish to make some due acknowledgment of my friend's desire to associate me with himself in the publication of his Lectures. The course was delivered last May in the large Lecture Room of the Divinity School at Cam- bridge, before a large and most appreciative audience, comprising many senior as well as junior men. Many of us, I am confident, were deeply moved by the perfect simplicity and admirable directness Introduction with which Mr. Ingram spoke, out of the fulness of his own experience, and, if I may add, out of the riches of his sympathy with young men. We in Cambridge gained some insight into the secret of the influence which he wields as a leader of the band of Oxford men who are now living in East London, " making their hardest task their best delight." I do not hesitate to commend this volume to the attention of all who would wish to obtain a vivid and connected description of the methods by which the terrific problems presented by the greatest city in the world are being confronted, on Church of England lines, by Mr. Winnington Ingram and his fellow-workers at the Oxford House. The Lectures will necessarily have an especial value for those who are themselves preparing for the office of the ministry, and are looking for- ward, with anxious inexperience, to the prospect of pastoral work in one of our " great cities.'' But let me also commend the Lectures to those who are interested in the training of young men vi Introduction for Holy Orders, and to all who are glad to link themselves, if only in prayerful sym- pathy, with the arduous social tasks which our younger brethren, in ever-increasing numbers, are being " constrained by the love of Christ " to undertake. The Lectures on Pastoral Theology which are here published offer a strange contrast in some respects to the addresses on Pastoralia that used to be given half-a-century ago. But the spirit of the true pastor never varies. In the city and in the country it is the same : — " Qui fratris animam diligit, servat suam : Qui fratris animam negligit, perdit suam." The splendid hopefulness which breathes through these Lectures springs from a living faith in the power of the Gospel of Christ, and from an abounding love towards our fellow-men. May my friend's helpful words receive in all quarters a cordial welcome ! Those who were privileged to be his audience in Cambridge were eager to possess the Lectures in a printed form. Introduction In their name I am sure I may be permitted to wish from Cambridge a " God-speed " to the present volume upon its errand of far-reaching influence. HERBERT E. RYLE. Divinity School, Cambridge, December 5, 1895. Contents I. Special Needs of To-day . II. Unbelief and how to Meet it III. Visiting .... IV. Preaching and Teaching . V. Social Work VI. Parochial Missions . PAGE I 33 69 97 126 Appendix 184 WORK IN GREAT CITIES SPECIAL NEEDS OF TO-DAY MY first feeling as an Oxford man must be one of pride and gratification that, in spite of my belonging to what I suppose at Cambridge would naturally be considered " the inferior University," I should have been asked to deliver to Cambridge men the following course of lectures. But if my first feeling is one of pride, my second, I can most sincerely say, is one of humility. After all the distinguished men who have held this lectureship, I feel in- deed most entirely unworthy, either by length of experience or by quality of work, to follow in any way in their train. I have, however, two small qualifications, and it is these, I presume, which have led to my special Needs of To-day being asked to give these lectures — (i.) one is that 1 live with some twenty-six young laymen at the Oxford House, most of whom are graduates of the University of Oxford, but two of whom — and those, two of the best workers — are, I am happy to say, graduates of Cambridge. The effect of this is that I do not feel so afraid of you as I might otherwise have done. I have only to shut my eyes, remove this unaccustomed gown from my back, and this might be the annual meeting of the Oxford House in one of the college halls at Oxford. (2.) And the other qualification relates to the subject of the lec- tures. I should never have dared to have taken as my subject, " Work in Great Cities," if I had not spent the last six and a half years in the slums of the greatest city in the world ; and I hope therefore that, rough and ready as is much of what I have to say, it is at least founded on practical experience, and will put before you pictures drawn from life. Now I have called this first introductory lec- ture, " Special Needs of To-day." Of course we are all aware of the pardonable vanity with which each age imagines that it is a most exceptional age. I have no wish to say a word to foster this special Needs of To-day little vanity — it is quite strong enough without it ; but still the fact remains that there are special needs in our great cities to-day, special needs which we might perhaps dare to say have never existed in the world before. I am not saying for a moment that these special needs should be a source of pride to us — very much the reverse ; in many cases they spring from our own folly and selfishness, or that of our ancestors ; but still if we are to understand mission work in great cities at all we must (I.) note carefully in detail the special characteristics of these monster growths of modern times, and then (11.) we shall be in a better posi- tion to determine the sort of man needed for mission work in them to-day. My only neces- sary premise is, when I come to pourtray the man, that so far from representing him in my own person, I shall be pourtraying an ideal which is as much beyond my own attainment as it will pro- bably seem beyond the attainment of the youngest undergraduate. I. First then let us sketch the special charac- teristics of great cities themselves ; and the first thing which we must put down as determining the man v/e shall want is (i.) 7 fie Vast Popula- tion of the Parishes. In East London we think 3 special Needs of To-day nothing of parishes of 1 0,000 each ; some have 1 7,000, and I knew one for years in London over the Border with a population of 20,000 and one small iron church. By most vigorous efforts and appeals on behalf of Societies like the Addi- tional Curates Society, the East London Church Fund, the Bishop of St. Alban's Fund, and others, the proportion of clergy to population has been whipped up to something like i in 3000, yet you have only to imagine yourself and two other men in the midst of 9000 people to per- ceive the extraordinary difficulties which the mere numbers throw in the path of mission work in great cities to-day. (2.) Then, secondly, we must put down as the next characteristic the division of the inhabitants into classes ; the fact of the matter is, as a speaker said at the Mansion House a year or two ago, " all those that make jam live in one place; and all those that eat jam live in another." It is obvious at once what a difficulty this creates. Men were never meant to live in shoals like fish, and the very fact that a million and a half live in the East London district alone, and at least as many in South London, almost all en- tirely of the working-class, is the next factor to 4 special Needs of To-day consider as creating a special need at the present time. What is the effect of it ? First, naturally, class bitterness. Imagine a man from some poor and wretched little home in East London going into fashionable London in the height of the season. He sees money as it seems to him poured out like water for amusement, and he himself can ^scarcely get bread enough for his children. Can you very much wonder that he thinks to himself " those people live by themselves and care nothing for me, and will do nothing for me that is not wrung out of them." Then, again, it leads to a low level of life alto- gether. Some of you may have read " Tales of Mean Streets." It is a misleading picture if taken to imply that every one in the " mean streets " is like the characters represented, but it gives truth- fully one result of leaving a million and a half of poor to themselves, and that result is that there are patches here and there of absolutely squalid misery. (3.) Then mixed up with this class feeling — and I am looking at all this as much as pos- sible from the point of view of one beginning his ministry in a great city — there is the feeling against the Church, Many exaggerations have 5 special Needs of To-day been written and spoken on this subject during the past few years. Every hard-working clergy- man is thoroughly respected, but at the same time there is no doubt, judging from the number- less discussions which I hear weekly after lectures and in debates, that the Church is largely looked on still as the Church of the higher class, and as being always conservative, because it has " a good thing to conserve." On the whole the mingled dislike and respect in which the Church is held is well illustrated by a speech made at a club dinner, by a radical working-man, with regard to the hard-working and much respected clergy of the parish in which the Oxford House is situated. It was a brief speech, but much to the point : "I beg to propose the health of the clergy of this parish. If all clergy were like them there would not be so much said against 'em." I could point out dozens of parishes in working- class neighbourhoods where identically the same speech would have been made. It is the imagi- nary, impalpable thing called " the Church " they object to ; their own clergy, if they work, they love. (4.) Then again a fourth difficulty as to mis- sion work in great cities is to be found in the tremendous pressure under which many of the 6 special Needs of "To -day people woi'ky in order to keep their heads above water. I began my ministry in a country town where they used to dust the chair for me when I came in, and it was impossible to glut their desire to be visited ; but in great cities you have often not only to learn but to practice what may be described as the ** foot and door trick." It is ruination to the boot, and sometimes hurts the toe, but it consists in rapidly but quietly pass- ing the foot in, the moment the door is opened by a slit, in order to secure at any rate a few minutes' parley. All this, I need hardly say, is altered when you have become friends with the people ; but I am speaking now of early visits in long-neglected parishes, and what it means is an over-worried population. As a rule they are over worried by sheer anxiety and trouble : the work is falling off, or is worse paid than it was ; the boy is going wrong, or the husband has taken to drink ; or it is the man you find at home, out of work for the last three months ; or the order for these little shoe tops has to be taken in by six ; or they are behind in the rent, and they think you are the rent-collector. 7 special Needs of To-day I remember going round one day to look up a boy who wished to join our large Boys' Club. He had given me the address of his mother and him- self, and I found the exact place : what was my surprise when the woman who opened the door declared she had never heard of Mrs. Jones or her boy. " She believed that there had been a woman of that name somewhere about that street, but she had left a long time ago." "That's a pity," I said ; " I am sorry for that ; the boy will be disappointed not to get admitted into the Club." " Oh," she said slowly, looking at me very narrowly, " then you're not the School Board officer ; " and then in that piercing treble with which " the lady downstairs " always calls her lodger, " Mrs. Jones," she screamed, " Mrs. Jones, here's a gentleman wants to see you." Yes, you will find that I shall end by telling you that mission work in great cities is the most glorious and enthralling work in which a man can be engaged. I am going to tell you that it is going down into the mud of the streets after the lost coin, that it is sharing the Good Shepherd's search for His lost sheep — aye, and His joy in finding it too ; but it is my business to prepare special Needs of To-day you in this first lecture for some of the difficul- ties which may confront you, and so I will tell you what may possibly happen when you knock for the first time at a door. After long hesitation it will be opened by a little girl about half a foot ; you will hear a distant voice from the wash-tub in the rear, " Well, Sally, who is it ? " Then Sally will answer at the top of her voice, " Please, mother, it's religion." You will require all your presence of mind to cope with that. But after all you are the very people to cope with it; what's the good of being a gentleman but for crises like these } You will see in a minute when to go in and when not ; you will plant yourself down by the cobbler as he works, and not stay too long ; and you will realise how much and how little it is wise to say to a man who has to finish an order by seven o'clock. (5.) Then again a population like this becomes the hotbed of all kinds of curious opinions. I propose to devote a whole lecture to the subject of unbelief and how to meet it, but I will only take as an illustration of what I mean, Victoria Park in East London on a Sunday afternoon. When I look round from the Christian Evidence stand, from which I generally speak myself on 9 special Needs of To-day Sunday afternoons, it is certainly a curious scene which meets my view. There is the Secularist back to back with me ; the Labour Church is on my right ; a mission service in the distance under some trees with a band ; the Socialists on my left with a red banner ; a few gathered round a Salva- tion Army lass; an even smaller group round a banner with a " Flying Roll," chiefly remarkable for the men having their hair rolled up under their hats, it being against the tenets of their faith to cut it, [though I may say that what that faith is no one has yet discovered, in spite of their being in the park every Sunday for the last twenty-five years ;] and I can well remember how, when we were all in full swing about four o'clock last summer, including by the way a Mormon who was holding forth close by me, an old gentle- man with a very cracked voice suddenly jumped on to a stone and drew a crowd round him by saying in an engaging way at the top of his voice, " I have just come here to say a few words about that old 'umbug, General Booth." You will see then that you must expect a people who, like the Athenians, are always desiring " to see or hear some new thing ; " and when we come in a few minutes to consider the type of man demanded, lO special Needs of To-day we shall find that this element in their character will have to be considered. (6.) So again, sixthly, you will find that in mission work in great cities you will have to deal with a people whose traditions are totally different from our own. We have been brought up most of us to kneel down and say our prayers from our earliest childhood ; we have been taken by our fathers and mothers, whether we liked it or not, to church on a Sunday morning ; and when it came to confirmation, so far from it requiring any cour- age on our part to be confirmed, it would have required probably very considerable courage on our part to have refused to be confirmed. Now when you plunge into your district in the great city, remember that everything is different. Some few mothers you will find in the worst slums as godly and careful of their children's bringing up as our own mothers were careful of us : from little garrets in the poorest streets on a Sunday evening, if not on a Sunday morning, you will see the widow sallying forth with her little boy or girl to church or chapel ; in the midst of the most scoffing workshop you will find some lad, standing in the hottest of the fire, confirmed and a communicant, upholding the II special Needs of To-day traditions of the martyr band into which he was baptized, and a faithful soldier of the " oldest fighting regiment in Europe ; " but what I want to prepare your minds for is this, that with the great majority it is quite otherwise. Anything like surprise at finding working-men who never say a prayer ; anything like impatience with women who, after all your exhortations, do not turn up to church on Sunday mornings ; anything like roughness with the boys who slink away when confirmation is mentioned is to forget the whole background of their lives. We must never lower the ideal for a moment ; we must never rest satisfied with anything short of the perfect plan of Christ for each individual soul ; we must never relax our efforts until we and every man, woman, and child over whom we have any influence shall have been wholly given up to do completely the whole will of God. But on the other hand never forget what it means for a man to alter the habits of a lifetime, to begin doing something he never was taught to do as a child ; remember what it means for a lad, sensitive above all things to ridicule, to brave and brave alone the public opinion of his fellows. 12 special Needs of To-day You must prepare your minds for this, that a vast majority of the men in your district will have spent their Sundays for the last twenty-five years, and their fathers before them, in the fol- lowing way: they will have lain in bed till about eleven or twelve, having been up early all the week ; they will then go round when the public-houses open, which they do at one ; they will have what they call a ** wet " till three, when the public-houses close ; they will then have dinner, the great dinner of the week, which the missus has been preparing all the morning. Then comes a lie down on the bed in shirt sleeves until five, with a pot of beer and Lloyd's Weekly ; then follows tea, and after tea a bit of walk round to see a friend or a relation ; then fairly early to bed to make up for the very late Saturday night, and to be ready for work in the early hours of the morning. Let us face facts then : it is that Sunday you have got to turn into a day of spiritual rest and worship ; it is that Sunday which for the sake of the man himself, who after all is only here for a few passing years and with eternity before him, you have got to redeem for him, if you can, for the purposes for which it was ordained. All I 13 special Needs of To-day would have you face to-day is that such is the Sunday as it is now. That you may not think I am drawing on my imagination, let me read you a letter from a working-man which appeared in a Church paper a few m.onths ago on the subject of church-going : — " Sir, — If you will kindly insert this letter, 1 feel sure it will throw some new light on this old but important question. The importance I need not stop to enlarge upon, beyond stating that on the decision of the working-man at the next General Election, or the one near following, will our Church stand or fall. We all admit that, as a general rule, the workers of our large towns and cities don't go to church. Well-meaning bishops, priests, and laymen have given many answers, but they are all mistaken. They are, as we workers say, * talking without their book.' Only those who wear the boots know where they pinch, says an old proverb. I am a working member of the largest trade union in the world, and a member of the London Trades Council — let this be my credential. I work in a large factory near London, employing nearly looo hands, from 6 a.m. till 5 p.m., and have worked special Needs of To-day in London in one employing nearly 2000, and one employing 700, and in these representative factories I have made a religious census. In the 2000 factory I found three Roman Catholics, one Church of England, one Dissenter only. In the 700 factory I found one Church of England, one Spiritualist. Where I am now (nearly 1000) I find one Dissenter only. I mix with and am known to several thousands of men in London in our society, in political societies, and factories, and yet I can assure you that it is a novelty to meet a religious man, so much so that a new man starting in a factory for the first time is sure to have somebody say to him (on a certain person passing), 'There goes our religious man.' This is a true picture of the state of religion in London at the present day amongst working-men, the very men we want." Now I am not for a moment admitting that that man is wholly accurate. How, for instance, could he know the spiritual habits of each one of those 2000 men } But that letter led to nearly 200 letters being written from every part of the country, and in spite of the greatest variety of causes which were alleged for the fact, they all IS special Needs of To-day agreed on the fact itself that the immense majority of working-men go neither to church nor chapel. (7.) Can we wonder then that such a life de- mands excitements of another sort ? To turn a wheel for ten, or twelve, or fourteen hours in a day, to make a part of a boot, and the same part, from Monday morning to at any rate mid-day on Saturday, and when Sunday comes to rest through the day, much as a tired animal rests when he has been in the shafts all the week — this cannot satisfy an immortal spirit. We need not wonder then that we find gambling and betting, pigeon- flying, and betting on the pigeons rampant in great cities. I can't flatter myself often that I make a sensation by any address that I give, but I was astonished myself at the efl^ect produced by the announcement of my subject upon an address which I gave in the dinner-hour to a workshop full of men, in the midst of a mission in East London. I had had an inkling that the whole workshop spent the whole of Sunday gambling on certain marshes outside the place, but they none of them had an idea that I knew it ; in fact, they seemed fondly to imagine that no one knew it. You can imagine therefore the astonishment of the whole 16 special Needs of To-day shop when I gave out as the subject of my address, " Gambling on H Marshes on Sunday Afternoon." Many of the men looked as if some one had suddenly put a pistol to his head. Very touching, moreover, were the intercessions put into the box at that mission with regard to drink : " Please pray for a husband given over to drink ; " " Your prayers are asked for a father and three brothers who drink ; " " Please, Mr. missioner, pray for my mother who has taken to drink" — and so on with hundreds of them, showing that the immortal soul which refuses the spiritual activities which alone can satisfy it tries in vain to quench its deathless thirst for higher things by earthly excitements, and, like the prodigal in the story, to satisfy its hunger with the husks that the swine eat. We talk sometimes of men living an animal life, but the whole point about it is that it is not an animal life. " The life you are living," said a fervent orator once to a group in a public-house, " is the life of a pig." — " Steady," said an old, grey-haired man ; " that's rather hard." They all grumbled that it was. " Rather hard on the pig," he drily continued : " what pig ever takes too 17 B special Needs of To-day much wash, or knocks about his sow when he gets home ? " We are not facing scientifically drink and gambling unless we recognise in them signs that we are more than animals, and that the mad energy into which they are pursued is force to be used some day for the advance of the kingdom of God. (8.) Nor, eighthly, would my picture be complete if I said nothing of the sickness and disb^ess of great cities. Sickness is to be found everywhere of course, but we have two special causes of sickness in great cities : {a) over- crowding ; {U) want of fresh air in the courts and alleys. {a) First to take overcrowding. It is a signi- ficant fact that the population of Bethnal Green had scarcely increased at all at the last census since the one before, and it is significant, because it means that it was so crammed before that it couldn't hold any more. I have never seen my- self the historic room where four families were supposed to live in each corner and one in the middle, and to get on very well until the one in the middle took in a lodger ; but it is a common thing to find the whole of a family — father, mother, i8 special Needs of To-day and five or six children — living in one room, as their only sleeping-room and eating-room, and what that means from a point of view of health is better imagined than described. {b) So again with the courts and alleys. Work- ing with the Children's Country Holiday Fund, we send away each year at Oxford House at least 2000 children, as secretaries of the different com- mittees of the district, for a fortnight into the country ; and the extraordinary effect which even that fortnight has on them shows how much they have missed the fresh air in the courts and alleys where they live. On the other hand it is only fair to say that, for any one who can afford a large and airy house. East London is a very healthy place to live in, the low houses allowing far more air to penetrate than in the stuffy, over-mansioned districts of the West. However, what with the overcrowding, the confinement in workshops, the invariably tightly shut windows of the little, rooms, sickness is always with us, and the only part of the life I find really trying is seeing young men whom I have known from boyhood dying of consumption in front of me — men whom I call my friends, with 19 special Needs of To-day caneer in the throat or face, and little children whom I have carried on my knees swept away by some sudden epidemic before my eyes. (9.) And what shall I say of th^ poverty ? You will find in that magnificent book of Charles Booth, " Life and Labour of the People in East London," a careful analysis of the population; you will avoid all danger of exaggeration in following him, and you will find in his book a fact which is often forgotten, that 55 per cent, even of East London people are comfortably ofF, 8 per cent, are well to do, that 22 per cent, are poor, and 12 per cent, very poor. But though it is a great comfort to remember that, and absolutely suicidal, as so often is done in mission work, to leave out of the scope of your work the well-to-do or comfortably ofJ artisans, yet undoubtedly you do seem, as you work in the slums of a great city, to be wallowing in distress. You come across in your visits so often, the half-skilled, who is always out of work, the middle-aged, who has been thrown out of work by the better organisation of the docks, the woman who has known better days, the boy who is handicapped by a crooked spine, besides the unceasing number who lose their 20 special Needs of To-day hands in machinery, break their legs, and get thrown out of the race of life by some accident often quite beyond their control. Then, again, if you work a shelter you come across the very drift-wood of society. I have met artists out of work; authors half-starving; one whom I remember as a boy at a public school, on the streets ; while the report of the House of Shelter gives in one year alone labourers of all kinds, joiners, carpenters, sawyers, coopers, walk- ing-stick makers, coachmakers, cabinetmakers, polishers, picture - frame makers, case - makers, blacksmiths, locksmiths, whitesmiths, copper- smiths, copperplate finishers, boilermakers, drillers, fishermen, seamen, cooks, grooms, stablemen, millermen, sugar refiners, and so on down half a page all out of work, and all homeless when they came in. (lo.) But, if I were to stop here in my picture, it would tend to be a depressing one, and if it was depressing it would be untrue. Let me say at once that I am an optimist through and through, and yet not, I hope, a shallow optimist, for I think you will admit that I have not shirked stating some very ugly facts ; but I am an opti- mist because I believe that I see under the ugly 21 special Needs of To-day appearances deep grounds for the strongest hope. Let me briefly touch on some of them now, though doubtless we shall recur in detail to them in our later lectures. {a) In dealing with these vast populations, which have grown round industrial centres, we are entering upon new country and treading fresh ground. It is not that the Church of God has lost the great towns ; it has never had them ; and the Israelites might just as well be dismayed at not already possessing Canaan, before Jericho and Ai were taken, as the host of God should be dismayed as it moves slowly on from victory to victory, to find in front of it a country it has yet to take. We need not be surprised that this is their way of spending Sunday; it is natural that there should be pagan customs in a pagan country ; and instead of this much-disputed ques- tion, "Why do not working-men come to church .?" the question rather is. Why should they come until their hearts are converted to God } {J)) But, you say, that only throws the question further back. Is there any prospect of their being converted } Every prospect. They are being con- verted every day. Not only will you find large halls and theatres crammed with people for simple 22 special Needs of To-day services conducted by earnest men who, consciously or unconsciously, are doing pioneer work for the incoming of the fuller truth, but in our Church missions, perpetually being held throughout the district, we can fill the churches to the very doors with the poorest of the people. {c) But you say. Are there any who have come out so far as to be regular communicants ? And to answer that question you should visit the churches in the early morning of Easter Day. I was helping a friend this last Easter in the middle of East London, and took the seven o'clock celebration ; there were 170 at that hour, and 500 altogether in that single church before breakfast. In another church in the London Docks, on the same morning, there were also at the early service 141 men and lads, and 244 women and girls ; at another, in the Isle of Dogs, 396 ; and in one church alone in Bethnal Green 350 communi- cants. And these are only four churches out of hundreds. Who can fail to see in this Easter offering a foretaste of what is to come ; who can fail to look on it as the grapes of Eshcol, an earnest of the riches which the land will some day produce ^ {a) Then, fourthly, notice the love and friend- 23 special Needs of To-day ship to be found in these great cities : it is indeed a land flowing with milk and honey — the milk of human kindness and the honey of human love. There are homes there to compare with any homes in the country. When the confidence is once gained there is friendship trustfully given and most faithfully maintained. Already the tyranny of the drink traffic is undermined by counter- attractions which have been gratefully received ; already the sting of Secularism is drawn, and a great reverence for Jesus Christ is slowly spread- ing in the district ; already hands are working, brains are scheming, hearts are praying as they have never worked, and schemed, and prayed before, to remedy the social and physical evils of the district ; and instead of coming here to sound a note of despair, it is rather to sound the confident rallying cry of Caleb, " Let us go up at once and possess the land, for we are well able to overcome it " (Num. xiii. 30). We pass then to consider very shortly the second division of our subject. II. What sort of men then do we want to come into such a district as this, with its huge populations, its sharp class divisions, its half suspicion of '* the parson," its over- work, its fer- 24 special Needs of To-day ment of curious opinions, its unrest, its traditions and habits of paganism, and the mischievous ex- citements by which it tries to vary the monotony of life ; its sickness, its distress, and yet its extra- ordinary interest and hopefuhiess — for what sort of man is there special need to-day ? Not, as you might expect after all this, a great orator, or powerful organiser, or a dialectician, who shall convince by the power of his arguments, against his will, the gainsayer. Surely if this was required for the rank and file of those who do mission work in great cities, there are some of us who would retire to some humbler sphere, and leave the great city to itself. Fortunately the qualifications required are far humbler ones, within the reach of most of us. (i.) First we must believe with all our hearts in our message. We must have thought it care- fully out, and prayed over it, and spoken it to our own hearts, and quite made up our mind that Christianity, in its full meaning, as understood by the Holy Catholic Church, to which we belong, rightly understood and practically applied by all classes, is the cure for all our ills ; that in the. most literal sense, from all evils in the present life as well as in the future, " there is no other name by 25 special Needs of To-day which we can be saved except the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.*' (2.) We must be able to say why we believe this; we must be able, not necessarily to argue, but to give clearly and forcibly the reasons for the hope that is in us. The time has long passed when any statement will be taken on the mere word of the clergyman. The very first visit to a hospital may lead to a question which will go to the roots of the faith. In the midst of that restless host we have to bear firmly and calmly on high the banner of the faith once delivered to the saints. (3.) We must believe in our mission. This is essential in any age or in any place, but it is a special need when the forces loom so huge against us as in the great cities. We want men with a strong sense of mission, who have heard the cry of the great deep calling unto deep ; who have heard the voice of God cry, '' Whom shall I send," and the voice of humanity cry, " Who will come to us ; " and who have answered, " Here am I : send me," and who know that God has sent them, through the hands of His servants. (4.) We need men who are methodical. It is hopeless in any sphere of life to do much work 26 special Needs of To-day unless the day is mapped out and every hour carefully accounted for ; but it is perfectly childish to enter upon such a campaign as mission work in great cities involves, unless the campaign is conducted day by day with punctuality, precision, -and self-discipline. I have only to refer you to the lectures of one of my predecessors in this lectureship — Canon Gibson on "Self-Discipline" — to give you the opportunity of learning in the best possible way how such self-discipline should be carried out : punctual time for rising, prayer, and meditation ; Matins, either by yourself or in church ; the teaching in the School, the morning's read, the hours for visiting. Evensong, the club or class — it all has to be methodised, and yet filled from end to end with loving zeal, which blends the whole day with its varied parts into one sacrifice well-pleasing to God, which is oui reasonable service. (5.) We want bright men — men who, as they go into some of those dark little homes, will take a little sunshine with them ; men who, when they enter a club, will set others at their ease, and who can pacify any small dispute in a good- humoured way. Especially is this required with open-air work, when almost everything depends 37 special Needs of To-day on being able to keep the crowd in good humour and so carry the day. (6.) We want sympathetic men, who will never weary of the tale of sorrow, but who yet are clear- headed enough not to let their hearts overbear their judgments. (7.) We want, in view of the excessive drink- ing, men who, for the sake of others, will be teetotalers. There is no need of violent fanatics who will turn Teetotalism into the only Gospel, but undoubtedly there is a need of men who, in view of the " present distress," think it right to waive their rights ; who, with Christ before them as their pattern, not from any Manichaean no- tions of the world, "please not themselves" in this for the sake of the weak brothers for whom Christ died. As a matter of practical convenience you will find it a great help. I was haranguing 400 men the other day in the Beckton gas-works during dinner-hour, and was just in the middle of my discourse, when a man shouted out, "Are you a tot?"— "Yes," I said. "Oh, all right— go on, then ; if you wasn't, I wouldn't listen to you." Now you might have explained for half-an- 28 special Needs of To-day hour all the various reasons which might have led you to prefer abstract temperance to tee- totalism, but I venture to say, in that rough audience it was better to be able to say "Yes," than "No;" on the other hand, I do not want to lay too much stress on this, as many excellent workers in great cities are not teetotalers, and the health of others would not stand it. (8.) Lastly, we want patient men. There's an old saying, " It's dogged that does it," and un- doubtedly it's dogged that does it in mission work in great cities. I have a man in my mind now — a Cambridge man — who works alongside where we live in East London. " Are you coming to this com- mittee," I ask, " this afternoon, or going to attend that meeting .? " — " If I do, who's to do the visit- ing } " and off he goes with his nose to the ground, like an old faithful hound, and his staff follow his example. What is the result ^ Why, I have seen his church full year after year, and his communicants' roll grow, Easter after Easter, by simple, sheer, faithful church work. Yes, it's dogged that does it ; and it's the old church system that 29 special Needs of To-day answers in the long run. When any one asserts that the church system has failed in East London, I always ask him whether he has ever tried it. Such are the men, then, so far as I can judge, we have all to try to be, if we are to be success- ful missionaries in great cities, and in all proba- bility anywhere else either. We must be convinced men, instructed men, with a sense of mission, with a power of self-discipline ; we must be cheerful, sympathetic, and yet clear headed, ready for self-sacrifice, and above all patient with the patience of God. It is surely time for those who are coming forward, so soon to take their places in the noblest battle which can be fought on earth, to begin to prepare at once for the battle. I know only too well the life of universities — what a step it is from " keeping a roll-call " to a daily celebration, or, at any rate, reading each day Matins and Evensong! what a change from managing a college football club to be at the spiritual centre of the life of a parish ! It is not the services, not the sermons, sacred as they are, which need the most preparation, but the daily visiting of the sick, the daily preparation of the 30 special Needs of T'o-day dying for death, and the daily guiding of indi- vidual souls. Begin, then, at once, if I may venture to speak as straight to you as I am allowed to do at Oxford, to prepare for so weighty a charge ; let the daily prayer be regular, the Communions devoutly pre- pared for ; have a good book of sermons to read for your own soul's sake on Sunday morning ; get some knowledge of the work by practical experience if you can, but above all, live the message out now before you preach it. You are going forth to tell men to devote all their lives to Christ ; devote yours to Him now ; consecrate to Him your schools, your games, your recreation ; put out of the life anything which offends Him here and now, and then you shall come forward with a good conscience and lay your life upon the altar. With all its difficulties and responsi- bility it is the most glorious life in the world to which you have been called — rich in interest, rich in friendship, rich in its varied fulness. Only be absolutely unselfish, seeking not your own but the good of the people and the glory of God, and there is a path of light stretching before you, like the light you see at sunset on the sea — " a shining light that shineth more and more unto 3^ special Needs of To-day the perfect day." All depends in losing your life, so only can you find it. So might I, toiling morn till eve, Some purpose in my life fulfil, And, e'er I pass, some work achieve To live and move when I am still. I ask not with that work combined My name shall down the ages move, But that my toil some end shall find That man may bless and GOD approve. 32 II UNBELIEF AND HOW TO MEET IT TT is time now to come down very much to ■^ details. My one desire in these lectures is to be of practical use to you in the difficulties you will meet, and, if I am to be so, I must give such precise and definite hints, however clumsily ex- pressed, that when you come to the difficulty itself you will at any rate have heard something about it, and will have some idea of what to do on the spur of the moment, until you have had time to think out some better system for yourself. And so I propose now to speak of Unbelief, and I use that term in its widest sense, comprising (a) disbelief, (d) want of belief, and (c) unbelief in any part of the full truth intrusted to our care to teach. Unbelief is of course no peculiarity special to great cities : you will find it in the village, in the university, in the drawing-room. It is the real word to be used, as Mr. Harrison 33 c Unbelief and how to Meet it points out in his " Problems of Christianity and Agnosticism," for what people commonly call " indifference." Indifference springs from unbe- lief. " Do you want a quiet day in your parish ? " a clergyman was asked. " No," he replied, " I want an earthquake" — quite so, but why.? — it was full of unbelief. But though unbelief is not confined to great cities, undoubtedly it takes, as a rule, in large working-class quarters, a more organised and often more hostile form. In some ways perhaps this makes it easier to deal with, on the other hand it makes it more mischievous in its effect on others who do believe. With Secularist lecturers at every street corner, and often Secularist talk in every workshop, one trembles for the faith of igno- rant men and lads who cannot answer the difficul- ties raised ; and I know no more sickening sight than the crowd of boys in Victoria Park applaud- ing vigorously the blasphemies which the Secu- larist orator is directing against their Father in heaven, who is loving them all the time with an everlasting love, and counting the very hairs of their heads. We will divide unbelief then into three heads — (i) unbelief in any supernatural world at 34 Unbelief aftd how to Meet it all — what Mr. Balfour in his recent book calls Naturalism; (2) unbelief in the special revelation given through Christ; and (3) unbelief in any- thing which may be called Church truth, such as the special grace received through the devout use of sacraments. And before I proceed to explain how these three forms of unbelief will meet you, let me tell you a story to emphasise the necessity of dis- criminating between them. I was taking a mission not long ago, and as usual asked to have handed to me the names of all those who gave as their reason for not coming to the mission that they were atheists. A list was given me, and I foraged out the first on the list. I approached him with care, and was gently leading round the conversa- tion to his unbelief, when to my astonishment the tables were changed ; I perceived from his conver- sation that he was endeavouring to convert me : he was a Plymouth Brother. I went on to the second, who was marked down, "Young man, apparently an atheist." I found him in his working clothes, just off his job, sitting by his fire. Thinking a bold policy was the best, I went up to him and put my hand on his shoulder. "Well, old lad," I said, "are you coming round 35 Unbelief and how to Meet it to the mission to-night ? " being perfectly prepared for a curse or a growl. Imagine my astonishment when he looked up with a jolly frank smile. " Well," he said, " I wasn't, but I will," and at once began to put on the boots he had taken off. He never missed a night of the mission after that, and has been to tea with me at Oxford House since, but he was about as much an atheist as you and I are. Wherefore it is well to make a note at once — " Shyness is not necessarily atheism." Taking then each of these three forms of un- belief, let us see how they will in all probability first come across you. (i.) Take Naturalism first — the blank disbelief in anything which cannot be touched or handled. My first experience, after leaving Oxford, was in the case of a German Baroness abroad, who said with half- amusement and half - contempt, " What ! you a man of University education and still believe in the wonders ! " This sentence alone need only have argued disbelief in the Christian revelation, but, if I remember rightly, the whole conversation was my first conflict with an educated sceptic. And if that was my first, my last is very vivid still in my mind. It was an old cabinetmaker in 36 Unbelief and how to Meet it East London, nearly eighty, and very stout. Hear- ing that he was dropping into his grave v^ith no faith of any sort, I found my way to him and led the conversation round to the subject. He was a match for me, however. " Me an unbeliever — oh ! no, sir," he said, " I am a great believer, but I am a self-believer." Between these two, at the very opposite ends of society, I have found, and you will find *' Natu- ralism " in all forms, from the well-dressed man who will blandly ask after your lecture if you will kindly " define God," to the jolly lad in your Boy's CJub, who refuses to come to your Bible-class be- cause he doesn't " go in for that sort of thing." Difficulties will range round free-will and necessity. " Are we men or clocks } " is a subject we often discuss. Does science contradict Genesis } Is there a God } and if so, can He be a good God to allow so much suffering in the world } Either He can obliterate it and will not, in which case He is not good, or He would like to but He cannot, in which case He is not God. I stood for an hour one day listening to a Secularist lecturer who, I could see, saw me with a corner of his eye among the crowd. He was pourtraying the difficulties of the Rev. Mr. Stiggins in an 37 Unbelief and how to Meet it Indian jungle. I was of course meant to be the Rev. Mr. Stiggins. "Look at that beautiful fawn," says the Rev. Mr. Stiggins : " notice the designs of Providence in its shape and lightness and beauty." — "Very beautiful," I replied, says the lecturer. "And look at that magnificent tiger," says Mr. Stiggins, " and notice the designs of Providence in its marks and colour, that it may easily conceal itself." — " Very magnificent," is the reply. At this moment the tiger leaps upon the little fawn and devours it. "Notice the designs of Providence now," says the Secularist lecturer to Mr. Stig- gins : "if you have any reverence for Providence you will stay yourself to be the next meal — but Mr. Stiggins had fled." There word for word is a difficulty which you may come across any day in mission work in great cities. I shall return to Mr. Stiggins presently, but I will leave you to think over what you would have said, if you had been in my place when I got up to reply, while I pass on to the second form of unbelief. (2.) You will find a good many who believe in a God but who entirely reject the claims of Christ. I met one the other day in the London Hospital. " Oh, I believe in God Almighty, but 38 Unbelief and how to Meet it Christ — He was a good man, a good man, I'll admit that, but nothing more.*' I have lent him Godet's " Defence of the Faith." He was a man who had no pretence to education, but took what he called a common-sense view of the whole thing. Then you have the apparently educated man who will tell you before a hundred men that the pass- ages in Tacitus and Suetonius which relate to Chris- tianity are forged. I will pass on to you a useful hint about that. Appeal to the British Museum, and give the verdict to that same audience next Sunday. The audience has not an idea which is right, you or the Secularist, but they believe in the impartiality of the British Museum ; and a letter from some official, stating that up to now no one had ever accused either of these passages of being forgeries, will establish the historical testi- mony in the mind of your audience for ever. Then you come to the forms of unbelief in Christianity which are known as Bible difficulties. Assuming that you have steered successfully through " Who was Cain's wife } " " Jael, " " Balaam's ass, " "Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon," you will find yourself confronted, even in your boys' Bible- class, with such questions as, " Take no thought for the morrow," which seems an impossible and 39 * Unbelief and how to Meet it foolish command ; *' Woman, what have I to do with thee ? " — a rough and ungentle rebuff— while your careful explanations of the actual Greek, and scholarlike rendering of the passages in ques- tion, and of hundreds of others, may be met by the unexpected retort, " Do you suppose, fellow- working-men, that if the New Testament had been meant for the world it would have been written in Greek at all ? " (3.) Then, thirdly, you come to the widespread unbelief in all that we in the Church hold dear, such as Infant Baptism, Confirmation, and the Holy Communion. " We are all children of God by faith, not by sprinkling," said a Plymouth sister vehemently, after a two hours' attempt to get her to allow her three boys to be baptized. " Yes, but have you ever read to the end of the verse .f* " I ventured to suggest. " Let us turn to it — it goes on without a stop, ' We are all children of God by faith, for as many as are baptized into Christ have put on Christ'" (Gal. iii. 26, 27). That controversy is a type of many more. She was a good woman but very ignorant, and even now I have only been allowed to baptize these boys one by one as they have gone out into the world, to service, or to sea. 40 Unbelief and how to Meet it So with Confirmation. " Confirmation, sir, is disgraceful," said another woman. No reason was alleged : it seemed a sweeping statement. This was again over the confirmation of a boy. I ven- tured to challenge the statement, and reduced it to this, that her late husband thought so. In vain I urged that he would probably by this time take a more enlightened view ; it was no good, and that boy has never been confirmed to this day. And then when )'ou come to the question of the Holy Communion, you will be met not so much by open unbelief as by practical neglect. Sometimes when you are urging Baptism and Con- firmation as first steps towards that best and closest Communion of all, you will be met by the retort, as I was the other day, " Oh, but, though I am unbaptized and unconfirmed, I have been a com- municant a long time : we 'as it at So-and-So's," mentioning a hall in the neighbourhood ; but on the whole you will find your chief difficulty a superstition regarding it, keeping the people from ever dreaming of receiving it, rather than any open irreverence or unbelief with regard to its sanctity and efficacy. Now comes the question. That being the atmo- 41 Unbelief and how to Meet it sphere into which you are to go, with what equip- ment are God's young knights to ride into the dark valley of doubt and unbelief? I have seen so many now equip themselves, mount their horses and ride into the thick of it — aye ! I have ridden with so many the first stages, to try if I could be of some little use in showing them the way — that it is not altogether without some experience that I name the essential things. (i.) Moral integrity. It is the old story: David goes out with his sling and his stone ; he does not want Saul's cumbrous armour ; Goliath comes swaggering against him with his bluster and his brag, and David, with the unearthly strength of his moral rectitude, lays him low. I have seen it happen time after time. It is not that the man I am speaking of has never sinned ; it is notj God forbid, that he is a moral prig, and tries to pass himself off as above human infirmity ; no, the man I am thinking of is only too con- scious of his own infirmity and weakness; he is truly penitent for his past sins and shortcomings, but he has his loins girded all the same. He has faced his past life, and believes himself forgiven ; he is past, long past, being shaken by the scoffs of the enemy ; he " knows in Whom he has believed, and 42 Unbelief and how to Meet it is persuaded He is able to keep that which he has intrusted to Him against that day." Such a man I have seen, without great intellec- tual power or many special gifts, threading his way fearlessly through the pitfalls of unbelief. He wears a charmed life ; he does more good by his frank look and winning smile than some of us do by years of argument. The darts of the enemy glance off the polished steel of his obvious sin- cerity ; the honest doubter finds a new argument in his manly life ; and the boys of the parish will give up even the excitement of the Secularist's harangues to come to his Bible-class, not because they understand for a moment the point in dis- pute, but because they feel sure that Mr. So-and- So is certain to be right. (2.) x\nd if moral integrity is the first — and, after all, what is it but the " breastplate of right- eousness" we heard of long ago — we must put secondly the shield of faith. Yes, important as knowledge is, we must put faith before know- ledge. It's believing in these things which carries conviction, not being able to argue about them ; it's believing in a living God, "above our path, about our bed, and seeing all our ways ; " it's living in the sunshine of the faith that God's love 43 U7tbelief and how to Meet it is rising on us as regularly as the morning sun ; it is the steadfast morning prayer by which we rise into a new atmosphere, and come down with a new glory on our souls ; it is believing in a Saviour who is with us " all the days," to con- sole, to strengthen, and to guide, and who yet, though with us all the days, has appointed fixed trysting-places where He will meet us in a special way ; it's looking on the Church, not as some external organisation which has to be kept up for its own sake, but as a " Divine Society," founded by Christ to be the most perfect brother- hood the world had ever seen, to be the arms and hands and feet by which He might gather in the world ; it is looking on the sacraments, not as something which gets between the soul and Christ, but as ropes which bind us to our Guide ; it is believing in the Holy Spirit as an ever- present Worker in our own hearts, in our dis- tricts, through our preaching, in our visiting, and as One who yet comes at times, like Confirmation and Ordination, with special gifts and powers ; in other words, it is faith in historic Christianity, without which no man may tread the dark valley, but with which upon his arm there is no weapon forged in the armoury of hell which can move 44 Unbelief and how to Meet it him by a hair's-breadth from his mission of love. (3.) But, then, though only in the third place, we are bound to put knowledge next. I have put innocence and faith first, and laid emphasis on the fact that they are first, because I should be very sorry to lead any one to suppose that it was only very clever and very well-read men who were any good for mission work in great cities ; on the other hand, let us give knowledge its due, and there is no doubt that knowledge is power. I hear men talking sometimes with anxiety about " getting through their bishop's," as if that usually kindly dignitary was the real person they had to fear, but not a bit of it. It is not he, nor even his far more terrible examining chaplains, who are the real examiners ; the real examiners take you in hand when you have got into your parish ; the real examiners are those enfants ter- ribles in your children's class, who ask you, not perhaps as one of them asked the bishop in the famous recitation, " How many legs has a cater- pillar got } " but some equally puzzling question about Cain and Abel or the kings of Israel and Judah. Your real examiners are the boys in your Bible-class, who soon find out whether you can 45 Unbelief a7td how to Meet it interest them or not, or the laymen who come to your Church, who don't want argument for their Sunday sermon, and still less a dry essay, but who do expect to find, especially from a University man, that he has carefully thought out and studied what he puts before them. What does this amount to ? Why, simply this : read, read, read. You will come to the time before long when, so far from needing to be exhorted to read, you will fight for an hour's reading as one that fighteth for a breath of air ; when, as you pour forth sermons, lectures, addresses, "a few words " here and a few words there, and plough through acres of letters, you look at your books, and wonder whether by a little management of your day, and answering all your letters on postcards, you can squeeze in an hour's reading before dinner. But before that day comes upon you, I say again. Read, read, read : read before you begin to fill up the reservoir, and read when you have begun, to keep the water running clear. " I will give my boys to drink," said Dr. Arnold, as he went off, to his friend's astonishment, to prepare his Thucydides lesson, "I will give my boys to drink out of running water, and not out of a stagnant pool." 46 Unbelief and how to Meet it What then shall you read on this subject ? And please remember you are not listening to a learned man, who will give you an ideally perfect list of all the books which you ought to read if you really wanted to get to the bottom of all the subjects which hover round unbelief, but simply a few books which, as a working missionary, I have found useful in combating these three different forms of it. We will put the books under their different heads. (i.) As against ordinary Secularism or Natu- ralism : — Flint on " Theism " and " Anti-Theistic Theories." Luthardt's " Fundamental Truths of Christianity." Curteis's " Scientific Obstacles to Christian Belief." Balfour's " Foundations of Belief." Illingworth's Bampton Lectures on " Personality." Harrison's " Problems of Christianity and Scepticism." (2.) In defence of the Christian faith : — Godet's "Defence of the Christian Faith." Latham's "Pastor Pastorum." Mason's " Faith of the Gospel." Dale's " The Living Christ and the Four Gospels." Salmon's " Introduc- tion to the New Testament." Gore's " Bampton Lectures on the Incarnation." Edersheim's " Life of jESUS the Messiah." Schaff's "History of the Christian Church" (first two vols.). Holland's "On Behalf of Belief." Prebendary Row's " Manual of Christian Evidences ; " and for Old Testa- ment difficulties, Mozle/s " Ruling Ideas of Early Ages." " Cambridge Companion to the Bible." 47 Unbelief and how to Meet it (3.) To explain why we are Churchmen : — Bishop Kip's " The Double Witness of the Church." Bishop Cleveland Coxe's " Apollos," or "The Way of GOD." Holland's "Creed and Character." Sadler's "Church Doctrine— Bible Truth." Hammond's " Church or Chapel?" There is no need for enlarging more upon the necessity of knowledge, more especially as you will find that it is often a commodity in which those who are attacking you are sadly deficient, and the possession of which will keep you quite quiet and calm in the midst of considerable provocation. After all is said and done, there is nothing so comforting under a severe heckling as knowing the answer ; and if you will take my advice, if you don't know it, the next best thing to do is to sa}i J70U don't know it. Every one respects honesty, and no one has a right to expect you to be omnis- cient, but, on the other hand, if it is on some point which you obviously ought to know as an ordained minister, it does not improve your position if you are obliged too often to say you are ignorant of it. It is obvious, for instance, that we all ought to know why we believe in the existence of God, why we hold that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, what is the right translation of passages in our 48 Unbelief and how to Meet it Greek Testament, why we believe in what at first sight is so astounding a miracle as the resurrec- tion, why we are Churchmen and not Dissenters, and above all, we ought to have grasped the pro- portion of the faith, that we may not go into our life's work with only one poor little fragment of truth which we are going to preach in season and out of season to the end of our days. And it is because of the growing feeling that the time of preparation in our Church is unduly short, and that, after all, a University education needs to be supplemented by some special train- ing, that so many graduates, happily, I think, and most necessarily, go and spend a year, before they are ordained, at some theological college. (4.) There is, however, one branch of knowledge on which I must lay special stress, and a branch to which sufficient attention is not always given, and that branch of knowledge is knowledge of human nature. What do you suppose those twenty-six laymen who are living with me at the Oxford House in Bethnal Green get by their residence ? Why is it that an increasing number think it worth while to spend a year there before going to a theological college at all? They gain, of course, a certain 49 D Unbelief and how to Meet it amount of technical knowledge ; they learn how to diagnose and help cases of distress ; they learn how to manage children's classes, boys' clubs, men's clubs, penny banks, sick funds ; they learn to debate, to teach, and to preach, as you learn to swim by simply being thrown into the water and made to do it ; but far above all other things they gain this knowledge of human nature. It is the perpetual rubbing up against people of every kind of opinion and character ; it is the observation of the motives which sway men, and the necessity of governing by influence, not autho- rity. All this, they find, fits them in a way which nothing else does for the hand-to-hand dealing later on with unbelief in its varied forms. It needs a knowledge of human nature. I re- member a story told me by a retired colonel, that there was a young officer who from time to time in the mess-room used to break out into vehement attacks on the credibility of the Bible. " I found out soon, however," he said, " that these attacks always occurred on certain mornings, and instead of arguing, I used to ask the apparently irrelevant question, ' Where were you, sir, last night .? '" Only those with some knowledge of human nature would be able to tell whether apparent 50 Unbelief and how to Meet it indifFerence was due to shyness or unbelief; whether this unbelief was to be treated sternly, as having its roots in immorality, or whether it was to be treated sympathetically and kindly, as the honest doubt of an earnest man. For how, as a matter of fact, do we grow to know God ? Let me refer you to Professor Flint's book on Theism for the best answer I know. We begin to know God as we begin to know our fellow-man — through His manifestations. We may be tempted to think that we cannot know what we cannot see, but in a perfectly true sense we never see our fellow-man : we see his manifesta- tions ; we see his outward appearance. We hear what he says ; we notice what he does, and we infer from all this what his unseen character is like, what the man is in himself; so similarly and as surely we learn to know God. We see what He has done in nature and in history ; we see what He is doing to-day ; we read what He has conveyed to us for our instruction " in sundry times and in divers manners ; " and so we learn to listen for and to love " the still small voice '' in which He speaks to our hearts. One knowledge is as gradual and yet as sure and certain and logical as the other. 51 Unbelief and how to Meet it But what is essential for such knowledge? Here weave in that beautiful Fifth Lecture of Mr. Illingworth's, in last year's Bampton Lectures, " Moral Affinity needful for Knowledge of a • Person." Why, even a good man cannot reveal himself except to some one with some degree of moral affinity. " Plato, the spiritual philosopher," he says, '' saw more profoundly into Socrates than could Xenophon, his companion in arms. . . . We find upon analysis that an element of will and emotion is obscurely present in even the simplest beginnings of knowledge" (p. ii8). And, again, "the simplest-minded friend or ser- vant knows far more of a man's true character than a stranger or an enemy, however intellectually able" (p. 123). Can we wonder then that humility, moral purity, and charity are essential to a growing knowledge of God, and that "an Infinite Person cannot reveal Himself as such to one who, un- conscious of his own limitations, persists in measuring all things by the standard of a finite capacity, and denying the existence of what He cannot comprehend.^" (p. 124). It is in the light of this that we must under- stand our Lord's words when He says, " He that wills to do the will of God, shall know of the 52 Unbelief and how to Meet it doctrine whether it be of God," and, "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes." (5.) But notice, fifthly, we must place as an essential part of the equipment true sympathy. Don't imagine that I am urging you to say to the doubter, " There is the faith : if you don't believe it, you are a wicked man." Quite the re- verse. You are arguing, let us say, with a sceptic ; what is the object } To win the argument } Not primarily at all, if you are a true missionary, but to win the man. You will find all Mr. A. J. Harrison's books very helpful in this way. They are full of a loving sympathy with the doubter, and it is a sympathy which he has displayed persistently during twenty- five years of controversy with leading sceptics up and down the country. And it is extraordinary how such forbearance answers in the long run. I have tried my best humbly to follow the example which Mr. Harrison has set by precept and ex- ample, and after six years, several of those who most bitterly opposed me at first are now my staunchest friends, and come and read Christian literature in my room. 53 Unbelief and how to Meet it Or perhaps it is some one who finds an almost insuperable difficulty in the Christian story, some one to whom miracles seem impossible and the resurrection past belief. Put yourself in his place. If you have not known doubt yourself, know it by sympathy ; go down and grope in the darkness with him ; look along his telescope, and see what blocks his view ; admit the difficulties, but show the considerations on the other side ; keep him with the Church, so far as possible, just as Thomas was kept with the Church, and never leave him till he falls at Jesus' feet with the cry, " My Lord and my God." And then with what sympathy should we deal with the earnest and religious Nonconformist. Think what it means to have been brought up in a Nonconformist family : to have all those you most love and respect in the world opposed to the Church. I'hink how dear to them are the truths they hold, and how difficult it is for any one to see where he and his are wrong. Think of how Nonconformist bodies have kept alive reli- gion in parts of England where the Church was dead, and how certain it is that the Holy Spirit blesses their earnest efforts. Think of these things, not for a moment as making you give up 54 Unbelief and how to Meet it or undervalue your Church principles, or imagine that a duly ordained ministry, duly administered Sacraments, and the grace of Confirmation are blessings you may put aside for the sake of a false unity, but to show you the spirit in which you should act toward them. Explain to them that the truths they hold, you also hold. You believe in the necessity of conversion ; you believe in "Jesus only" as a watchword; you believe in "giving up the world." When they understand that, they will be prepared to hear and perhaps accept the points of belief on which you at present differ from them. Conversion is not the same as being " born again." You are " born again," or " regenerate " in Baptism ; you are bap- tized into a redeemed society, and therefore born again into a new state of privilege ; but that only pledges you consciously to give your heart to God when you are grown up, or, in the phrase which they love, " to be converted." If we did not believe this why have our missions } They are mis- sions almost entirely to the baptized. It is certain then that we believe in the necessity of a con- verted heart, or we should not have missions. So again with words like "Jesus only." We Church- men make that our motto too, but we refuse to 55 Unbelief and how to Meet it make it mean, " Never mind Jesus' Church or Jesus' Sacraments." Our belief in the Church and Sacraments is, in our opinion, only part of our loyalty to the Founder of the one and the ordainer of the other ; and as for the question of giving up the world, we only plead that there must be some part of the world to be loved and cherished, for " God so loved the world that He gave His Son." II. But it is time for me now to turn from the spirit in which unbelief must be faced, and to say a few words about the method. (i.) Of course the first method, and the one without which all others are useless, is individual visiting. I shall speak more in detail about visit- ing in a subsequent lecture, but I will only say now that the man " who bolts into bed " (as I have known some do) on your first appearance, may live to be your dearest friend, and that none of your best arguments or appeals in lectures or in ser- mons appeal half so forcibly as the half-hour's talk in his own home, man to man. (2.) Then, secondly, comes the ordinary preach- iitg^ to which again we must devote a lecture; but we may say here that, unless specially an- nounced, the controversial sermon is, as a rule, a mistake. Courses in Lent or Advent on 56 Unbelief and how to Meet it week-days are excellent ; instructions after Even- song, also duly announced, are still better ; but, as a rule, the ordinary parochial congre- gation is too mixed and too general to stand a sermon on the reasons for believing in the existence of a God, without either being thor- oughly bored with it or completely misunder- standing it. We have all heard of the clergyman whose old gardener had attended a course of ser- mons on this very question of whether there was a God at all, and who was somewhat perturbed by overhearing this said gardener mutter to himself as he walked away from the last, "Well, the parson may be right, but I believes in a God all the same." But though long arguments are out of place, we owe it to the thoughtful, and perhaps doubt- ful, in our congregations never to say a word we are not prepared, if called on, to substantiate, and to state our truth positively in such a form that it will itself answer the difficulties as they arise. (3.) But there is one special mode of dealing with unbelief with which I am very familiar, and which I would like to bring before your notice in some detail before I close, and that is the method known as lecttwes to vien followed by questions and discussion, 57 Unbelief and how to Meet it Every Sunday afternoon, in a hall during the winter and in the open air during the summer, do we carry on this campaign in Bethnal Green. Confining the meetings to men brings many more men than would come otherwise, and the prospect of " questions and discussion " brings more. In great cities as a rule, they love " heckling," and the missioner to great cities must not mind being heckled. {a) Take such questions as those we mentioned at the start. Go back to Mr. Stiggins and the tiger. You cannot say much in the ten minutes you are given at the moment to answer the lec- turer in the Park, but take it as the subject of your next lecture ; face it, thrash it out. Are the animals unhappy } Is nature one vast slaughter- house } Is the inference from the tiger devouring the fawn either that there is no God or a cruel God } Take the evidence of naturalists, and with one voice they speak of the happiness of the animal creation, the brief moment of their death causing to them no pain of anticipation. Read Drum- mond's " Ascent of Man," and trace the struggle for the life of others as clearly marked through the length and breadth of nature as the struggle 58 Unbelief and how to Meet it for life. Look at the purpose of it all. Read Aubrey Moore on " Evolution and Christianity," in the Oxford House papers. See what Dr. Asa Gray told Darwin with gratitude, that he had brought teleology back into the world. The goal of evolution, assuming evolution to be true, is a good goal of progress, happiness, perfection, and must have been planned therefore by a good Power. (b) Or take the subject of miracles. What is the greatest miracle in the world to-day } The in- fluence of Jesus Christ. We are so accustomed to it that we forget sometimes what a miracle it is ; that one who, humanly speaking, was an obscure Jew, of humble family, with a stain on His birth, deserted even by His own friends, and brought by a self-willed clinging to His pre- posterous claim to what would answer in our time to the " hangman's noose," should to-day be the leading influence in Europe, with an in- fluence ten thousand times as strong as the greatest statesman, and with a devoted following ten thousand times as great as the most popular leader of the day ; that, though unseen to mortal eyes, He should hold, as Napoleon is reported to have said, *' the human soul as an appendage to 59 Unbelief and how to Meet it Himself," and that thousands should be ready to die to-day for one whom, " having not seen, they love " — that is, in truth, the standing miracle of to-day. Nor is the miracle diminished for a moment in its significance by saying that the cause of His influence is His character. Mr. Lecky is a strictly impartial authority, and he says, in his "History of Morality" (ii. 8), "It was re- served for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character, which through all the changes of eighteen centuries has filled the heart of men with an impassioned love, and has shown itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, tempera- ments, and conditions, and has exerted so deep an influence that it may be truly said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate and soften mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers and all the ex- hortations of moralists." That is a great tribute, but when you have uttered it, you have explained nothing. How came it that out of the most narrow, bigoted race, there came a character without a touch of national limitation about it ? How came it that out of a village town in Palestine should issue 60 Unbelief and how to Meet it the one catholic man who can be equally the ideal of the Melanesian islander and the most learned student in the University of Cambridge ? It is a miracle, and a miracle so great that all other miracles pale into insignificance. It is not a question of any one raising the dead ; it is a question of Jesus Christ raising the dead. It is not a question of any one rising again on Easter Day; it is a question of Jesus Christ doing so. It is not a question of an ordinary person saying, " I am the Light of the world," " He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father," " Before Abraham was I am;" it is Jesus Christ saying so; and because it is no one less than Jesus Christ that looks me in the face and asks, " What think ye of Christ.?" "Whose son is He.?'' that I reply with my reason as well as my heart, " Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ ; Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father." It is in this way miracles must be handled. Even Professor Huxley, in a valuable letter, quoted by Mr. Gore in a note at the end of his Bampton Lectures, says, " I have not the slightest objection to offer a priori to all the propositions in the three creeds. The mysteries of the Church are child's play compared with the mysteries of 6i Unbelief and how to Meet it nature ; " and we may go further, and say, " The miracles narrated as having been wrought by Jesus Christ when He was on earth are child's play to the miracles which He has wrought since, and great as are the mighty works that He did, they are nothing to the Mighty Being that He is." {c) Or perhaps it is the Resurrection you are discussing on Easter Day. On what impregnable grounds can you take your stand } Have you to begin by going through the somewhat- intricate, though perfectly sound argument, by which you prove the Gospels to be genuine and trustworthy ? You may do that usefully another day, but it is quite unnecessary on Easter Day. You have a fifth Gospel ready to hand, in St. Paul's four undoubted epistles, admitted by all to be genuine, and to be practically the oldest Christian docu- ments. These would still stand an unrefuted witness to the faith of the early Church if the four Gospels were swept away to-morrow. I. How came it that the man Saul became St. Paul } What convinced a man of such intel- lectual power ? What evidence overpowered his admitted bias on the other side } He had con- sulted evidently the eye-witnesses, for he tells us that the greater part of the five hundred " remain 62 Unbelief and how to Meet it unto this present," and he was not a man to put his reason behind his back. 2. But, even supposing St. Paul was wrong, what started the Christian Church } It could scarcely be the sight of a dead peasant on the cross. A great effect demands a great cause, and there must be a great engine in the past to have started and to be running still so heavy and so long a train. 3. Again, how did Sunday begin } Why did a body of the Jews, without rhyme or reason, suddenly change their holy day from Saturday to Sunday } It would have been to Friday, if they were keeping the death day of their old master. Something must have happened on that day which they must have thought far greater than even His death. 4. Or, again, take the evidential character of the Eucharist. Is it conceivable, as Dr. Maclear asks,^ that such a service, enshrining the memory of the death, should be used as a thanksgiving service for nineteen centuries, unless some great deliverance had succeeded the catastrophe ? 5. Or, again, what happened to the body of Jesus Christ if He did not rise with it } The 1 "The Evidential Value of the Holy Eucharist."— S. P. C.K. 63 Unbelief and how to Meet it swoon theory has notoriously broken down ; the ghost theory is given up in the land of its birth ; the imposture theory is relegated with contempt to the last century. Either the Jews had that holy body or the disciples. If the Jews, then why did they not produce it and confound the story of the disciples } — if the disciples, could they with- out imposture have asserted He was risen } — if neither, what can we think but that the body which lay in the tomb was the same body, glorified and transfigured, which convinced even Thomas of its reality, and was seen by five hundred people in broad daylight on a hill } {cT) Or take pain and suffering in itself; face it, and admit that we cannot explain it. " We suffer ; why we suffer, that is hid With God's foreknowledge in the clouds of heaven." But still face it. Is it wholly bad } How about pain as a danger-signal } — How many men would burn their hands off in a workshop but for pain } How about its refining power .^ Has the Cross nothing to say to it .? Is it no comfort that we follow a crucified Saviour } Does the appeal to wait for further light come with no stronger force from a Leader who is not like some rose- crowned Apollo, careless of the world's anguish, but 64 Unbelief and how to Meet it is Himself, a "man of sorrows and acquainted with grief?" He seems to appeal to us like some general who is leading his soldiers in a hard campaign. " I cannot explain to you," such a general might say, " why this campaign is so difficult — at least not yet ; but I can lie on the hard ground with you, share your rations, and stand with you in the hottest of the fight." So God in Christ appeals to us — " I have many things to say to you, but ye cannot bear them now. This I can do : I can bear the worst with you. See ! Here falls on My limbs the scourge ; here blinds the blood My eyes ; here settles on My soul the darkness too." " Take it on trust a little while : Soon shall ye read the mystery right, In the full sunshine of His smile." All these things you can face in Sunday lec- tures, and so with the genuineness of the Gos- pels, and Bible difficulties, and " Is Christianity a failure ? " and a host of other difficulties about Christianity. And here again come questions about the Church. " Why am I a Churchman ? " I shall 65 E Unbelief and how to Meet it never forget giving a lecture with that title : my friends the Nonconformists, who had come neck and neck with me against the Secularists, turned again and rent me, though quite in a friendly Fpirit. That is the best of these discussions — they make all creeds know one another. But still of course many spoke against my lec- ture. "The Church of England must climb down," said an old Baptist guard. " In my opinion the Baptists have all the water, the Wes- leyans all the fire, and the Church all the starch." " It wouldn't take long to make our chairman a Roman Catholic," said one who objected to my belief in the Sacraments. " But I think he is a Low Churchman," said a Wesleyan, when it came to his turn, " for he believes in conver- sion;" and when they had all done, a Roman Catholic rose, and with a sweep of his extended hand, gently said, "This is what comes of pri- vate judgment." What then was the nett result } — (i.) that with perfect friendliness so many creeds had met with- out in any way compromising their principles ; (2.) that a great silent mass who did not speak had heard three-quarters of an hour's lecture on why they should be Churchmen ; (3.) that the argu- 66 Unbelief and how to Meet it ments on the other side, which appeared so for- cible in the local paper or uttered in a workshop, appeared somewhat, I am bound to say, less for- cible and urgent when they could be heard in the open, and at any rate receive some answer. Then, if you are managing these meetings, after the lecture have questions, and after the questions the discussion. Have three rules — • {a) courtesy ; {b) brevity — not more than ten minutes to be terminated by a little bell ; and last, but not least necessary, {c) relevancy. It is my friends who are my greatest trial as a rule, constantly indulging in a totally irrelevant sermon until sternly pulled up by me as chairman. At the conclusion the lecturer replies along the whole line of the discussion, and thereby secures the last word, (4.) Perhaps it is as well to add that a modified form of this arrangement is often used by clergy with their men's communicants' guilds, where a paper is read or an address given and discussed afterwards, but it is obvious that where the discus- sion is all among friends, there is no necessity for formal rules or by-laws of any sort. This in a rough and ready way is all that I can say in one lecture about unbelief. Don't be 67 Unbelief and how to Meet it afraid of it, though you find yourselves one against a thousand. Remember this — " the solitary Man upon the cross," it has been well said, " is stronger in the end than the surrounding crowds ; " and it is the most literal fact that the faith of one man has more effect upon the world than the unbelief of a thousand. Go forth then as young warriors clad in the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, and the firm grip of study and knowledge on the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and though all the forces of sin and unbelief shall front your path, " the gates of hell shall not prevail against you." But more than that, go forward with a great compassion in your heart. Think what it must be for those to whom *'the great Companion is dead;" think of the darkness and desolation of those who have to bury their dear ones with "no sure and certain hope at all." Go forward as brothers who hold in your hand a torch in the darkness which you would fain pass on to them, and make one prayer at any rate of your ministerial life. " Oh strengthen me, that while I stand Firm on the rock and strong in Thee, I may stretch out a loving hand To wrestlers with the troubled sea." 68 Ill VISITING npHE strength of the English Church has been ^ for years, and is to-day, her visiting. Not only is the Church the only body which has got anything like an adequate staff to cover the ground, not only has she alone got the whole ground mapped out in such a way that visiting is possible without overlapping, but visiting, it seems, is peculiar to the genius of the English Church. She may not be able to boast of many great preachers ; she may be thought by some to be backward in social work, but this, at least, she is acknowledged to be by friend and foe — a great visitor. I was much struck by this after one of those lectures followed by discussion to which I alluded the other day. Two men got up after the lecture and gave it as their " unsolicited testimony " that they had both come over to the Church simply and solely because they had been regularly visited in 69 Visiting their sickness by the parish clergy ; and Mr. Reaney's account of how he first became aware of the work the Church was doing in East London is now public property. He was a Nonconformist at that time, and head of the Stepney meeting- house, and, as such, was placed upon the Man- sion House Committee for administering the Mansion House Relief Fund. What did he find ^. " I found," said he, " as case after case came up before us, that no one knew who the people were, or anything about them, except the clergy of the Church of England, and there was scarcely a case they did not know." You can't do that, except by regular visiting. We have, then, in our generation a very high tradition to live up to, a very high standard to maintain : we are to have pastoral hearts — to be among the people as " those that serve ; " to be able to say of each soul in the parish with St. Paul, "Who is weak and I am not weak.? who is offended and I burn not .? " and to be ready to start off at any moment, staff in hand, in answer to the faintest cry of the farthest lamb which may have lost its way among the mountains. And yet — make up your mind to it at once — visiting, especially in great cities, is difficult work. 70 Visiting (i.) I have already alluded to the difficulty of getting into the house at all, but let me suggest as a good introduction, making the children of the school, or the boys in the club, a base of operations. The children are far the best, so far as they go. All mothers know their children go to school on Sunday, or to the Church school on the week-day, if you are fortunate enough to have a Church school in your parish ; and the children have most probably told their mother that there is a "new curate," in which case the best and quickest way to get into that house is to convey to that mother's mind that you are the new curate and that you know Jeannie, or Mary, or Johnnie, or whatever the name may be. (2.) But having got in, the next thing is to know what to say. I have known men who have gone in and said nothing — absolutely nothing. It is not a good plan. The people expect you instinctively to break the ice and say something first. You have to justify what after all in the abstract is an intrusion ; and it is well to take the bull by the horns, and say boldly that you have come to make their acquaintance, as you are in charge of the district. Find out quietly and gently how many there are and v/hat they do ; and 71 Visiting if there is no book made already of the district, put it down afterwards in a note-book when you get outside the door, but never produce a book and make notes at the time, as if you were the relieving-officer. (3.) Then, thirdly, we have the difficulty of the pampered district, where they say of the last curate, as you go round, " Ah, he was a good man — he guv me many a shilling." They said that of the last curate in my first district, and I made many virtuous resolutions, but to my horror I found afterwards it was also said of me when I was gone. Or perhaps it is, " I was going to ask you, sir, why it is that this Christmas I have not had my gown *' — " my gown " being a gown which was presented a Christmas or two ago out of some charity, with the express declaration that it was " only this once." " I am sure, sir, that if any widow in the parish ought to have it I ought to : I have been three times a widow." So great is the evil of " Church and charity," and so seared is it into the minds of the self-re- specting working men that "people go to Church for what they can get," and that therefore if they are to keep their self-respect they must neither come themselves nor let their wives come, that J 72 Visiting am feeling convinced more every year, except in cases of sickness, there ought to be, an entire severance between the pastoral work of the Church and relief work ; and when we come to speak of social work, I hope to explain the plan adopted now in some of the leading London parishes. (4.) But meanwhile the new curate has at last finished his district, and if it has been really in a great city it has taken him many months to do it. He has made his list, or brought up to date the old list which was given him. Some he has not found in ; some he has been able to make very little of ; some he has liked very much ; some he hasn't liked at all ; but if he has been conducting his operations in the afternoon, he will have made this discovery, and that is, that he has seen scarcely any men : they are all out at work, and do not come in till late. He ponders, then, in his study the next plan of operations. There are, as far as he can make out, (i.) the whole and healthy, chiefly women, to be found in the afternoons washing, mangling, mend- ing clothes, and a few bootmakers and cabinet- makers at work in their shops. (2.) There are the men who come home about seven, and the boys who never seem to come home at all. (3.) There are the sick with their two historic divisions, into 73 Visiting {d) the acutely and temporarily sick, {b) the chronic sick. What are we to advise him to do ? And of course much will depend upon whether he has a district of manageable or unmanageable size. If unmanageable, he must still remember that all the people in the district are his charge, and not only those who happen to come to church ; and he must follow up every clue and seize every opportunity of bringing back every soul to the obedience of God, "buying up the opportunity," and "watching for souls as one that must give account." But we will assume that he has only what we will call a manageable district of 2000 souls. Remember, 2000 souls in a great city are at any rate near together, and as it is almost certain that he will have at least that number to look after, it will be very little use for us to lay out a plan for less than that. Let us take, then, the different classes in the order that he has them in his note-book. I. The first item will be — people to be found in during the afteriiooii. This list will have to be made up with one or two noticeable exceptions — {a) Mothers' Meeting day, and (^) washing-day. {a) Mothers' Meeting day is comparatively simple. It is generally Monday, and it is suffi- 74 Visiting ciently stamped in the unfortunate man's memory by the fact that he has probably got to give an address at the Mothers' Meeting. Still he may as well bear it in mind : he can still go and search for the mothers who don't come to it, for though I have never had much to do with Mothers' Meet- ings myself,^ they are undoubtedly a way to bring the women of the district under the shadow of the Church, and to get some sort of interest into their lives ; they give also the opportunity of straight talks from good ladies and others on the subject of a mother's duties towards their girls ; and I have seldom felt a greater responsibility than when I was asked to address not long ago, by the excellent parish clergy of the parish in which we live, their amalgamated Mothers' Meetings, and found in front of me the rather alarming con- gregation of looo mothers. There is only one caution, however, I might mention while we are on this subject. A woman was asked one day (she lived, let me hasten to add, a long way off from the parish to which I have just alluded) whether she belonged to a Mothers' Meeting. " Oh, no," she replied, with some asperity ; " we have been very hard up this winter, but we haven't come to that yet." 1 This was written before the writer had been appointed also Rector of St. Matthew's, Bethnal Green. 75 Visiting The story speaks for itself, and shows how the best institutions may be misunderstood. We must take a great deal off such remarks as these for the ill nature with which the irreligious often speak of those who are trying to do better, but at the same time the more Mothers' Meetings can be placed on some sort of self-supporting, self-re- specting basis, obviously the better. {b) But the second exception is a much more serious one, and that is " washing-day." Your first impression probably will be on first going round that every day is " washing-day ; " it is like the school matron's birthday in the story that always came the day after the boys had come back to school each term. Long and careful ob- servation, however, such as astronomers use when they are discovering the whereabouts of an un- known planet, will at last reveal to you the where- abouts of " washing-day." It may be a different day in every street, it may even vary in every house in a street ; but when you have found it — I am meaning no play upon words — when, I say, " you had better throw up the sponge," so far as visiting is concerned. Unless you want your mouth filled with a kind of hot vapour which is quite indescribable, and 76 Visiting your coat covered with soap-suds, and a broom shoved in your eye, and your best friend in the district in a state of perspiring irritation, don't attempt to pay a pastoral visit on washing-day, unless it is a matter of life and death ; you had better make it your day off, you will want a day off, and you had better take it then. I had myself last winter, in consequence of washing-day, to revolutionise the whole work of the residents at Oxford House. I had arranged for fifteen of them to beat up a mission in a parish two miles off in East London ; they were to go two days a week for two months, Tuesdays and Fridays, and every other day of the week was filled up too ; but it was no good — Friday turned out to be washing-day, and the whole week had to be recast from start to finish. But having noted these two exceptions, it is obvious that, in spite of the drawback of finding so few men at home, and I am told that in the Potteries and Black Country, where the work is in shifts of eight hours, this drawback does not always exist, the afternoon, at least four times a week, must be spent in visiting. I say four times a week, because I am giving you a day off, and am keeping Saturday for you to look 77 Visiting after the out- door games of your boys and young men. If you have, as I had in my first district, two divisions separate from one another, it is as well to take one division each alternate day. You have of course to visit first those acutely sick, of whom we shall speak in a few minutes ; but when you have done all you can for those, the only way is to go fairly and squarely round the dis- trict. " Remember they are all your people," said my vicar to me as he started me on my round ; and I look back with delight to those all too short years in my first curacy, when there were no committees to attend, and no business to transact, and very few letters to write, and when one gave oneself up to the intense pleasure of really knowing the people. Let me say at once that it was not in a great city, it was in a large Midland town ; and to be perfectly frank, I doubt if it would be possible in a great city to get to know the people in quite the same way as it was possible in that Midland town, where the pressure of life and the stress of competition was so much less severe. But still in trying to picture you starting on your district, and to give you some help as you start, I natu- rally find my thoughts going back to my own 78 Visiting early start, and what it is possible to do in such a district as that, we who are in the thick of great cities must at least aim at doing there. (i.) And first we must aim at knowing all the people in the district. I don't mean to say that when you have found out that a family are devout Roman Catholics, or regularly attend the chapel round the corner, that you either ought or can spend so much time over them as over your own people, or those who go nowhere ; but it is your duty to know them. Let them feel they have a friend in you, and you never know how in the course of time you may be the means of showing them the way to a purer or more com^plete form of Christianity. You will find men of all sorts in every district. I remember one great friend of mine was a Christ- adelphian, whose belief, as held by him, was that '*his body was his soul, and that Jerusalem was heaven, and that no one could be saved except the Christadelphians." I asked him if he really meant that the rest of the 2000, including myself, would be eternally damned. " I am sorry, sir, but I am afraid so," he said. " But if one's body is one's soul," I persisted, " what does St. Paul mean by saying, * As the outward man decays, the inner 79 Visiting man is renewed day by day ' ? " He thought for a moment, and then said — he was a nice young fellow — " he was afraid he didn't know, but he would write to Birmingham, the headquarters of his branch, and ask." (2.) The second rule is to make regular visiting a matter of conscience. After all, compared to voung men in offices, and young doctors who must go their rounds, we are left very much to ourselves, and therefore we must be our own schoolmasters, and, disinclined as you may be at 2.15 to take up your "Pastor in Parochia" and Bible, and start for another round of visits, very rarely will it be that you are not most thankful when you come back to Evensong at five that you kept your rule and went. (3.) For notice, thirdly, you are starting to do nothing less than this — to advance^ if only by a kairsbreadtk, that afternoon the kingdom of God in that district. You never know when you start what opportunities there may be waiting for you. The young man you may have waited on for months may be home from work early that day ; the hard, worldly woman may be softened that day by a sudden loss ; the tailor who professes agnostic opinions, and whom you have never got a good 80 Visiting talk to by himself, may be alone that day and ready for a talk ; and even if none of these things happen, at least you have done your duty. (4.) And so it follows of necessity that you kneel down to pray before you start. The whole of our work from start to finish is dead and use- less unless guided and inspired by the Holy Spirit. He has promised to give us in each hour what we ought to say ; He alone is able to "melt the frozen, warm the chill, guide the steps that go astray." It is for want of that spirit of prayer that visiting, however regular and methodical, may be " complete and dead ; " it makes the whole difference between the people finding in their curate a " man of God," or, as Canon Newbolt says in " Speculum Sacerdotum," " another clergyman going his rounds." (5.) Having prepared yourself, and prayed especially for those whom you are expecting to see, and also to be guided right in any special opportunities which may unexpectedly arise, then dont be afraid to be human. You often heaf discussions as to when, and how, and how often "religion is to be brought in." My impression is that if we have properly prepared ourselves the problem solves itself. Certainly we must not 81 F Visiting be afraid of taking interest in the smallest detail of the daily life. Everything human is sacred, at any rate to a believer in the Incarnation ; and though the first visit or two in a district may have to be a merely friendly kind of introduction, yet, so far from it being easy to stop there, my own experience would lead me to suppose that the people of most districts would secretly, if not openly, be rather insulted if you did not speak to them about their souls. They know what a clergy- man is for, if we don't ; and they know perfectly well that a man is not ordained, and put into a black coat, and sent about the district to talk about the weather. I had a case in point the other day. I am a free-lance in East London, and am allowed by the courtesy of the parish clergy to wander over the whole district, wherever our club members live, so I am often visiting in six or seven parishes in one afternoon, and one day I came across a sick cabinetmaker. I asked him if anybody had been to see him. " Yes," he said, " the curate had ; " but he added in an injured tone, "he never kneels down and says a prayer." Now don't suppose for a moment that kneeling down and saying a prayer is enough or nearly 82 Visiting enough in dealing with the sick. We will speak about that presently ; but in this particular case, where the man is feeling his way back from paganism to the religion of earlier days, it was just the thing to do ; and I mention it to show how mistaken we are if we think that, because a man is a bit rough outside, we therefore shall offend him if we talk very straight. I believe rather that they expect it from us, and respect us for it, even if they don't like it. On the other hand I cannot but consider it a blundering way of working to go up to any man or woman, and without any explanation or intro- duction, say to them, " Are you saved .^^ " I have seen too often the evil results of such a method, and I will tell you one. I visit every Monday in the London Hospital, and have often the oppor- tunity, during the six weeks or so, to lead quietly the broken-legged dockers and young workmen of the district, who are lying till their limbs are mended, to make their accident a new start in the religious life. There was a young workman who was coming on fast, seeing his life in a new light, and of whom I had great hopes of sending out a truly converted man ; but I found him one Monday quite " put off," and not only him but the whole 83 * Visiting ward : some one had been round, flung a flower on his bed, looked him in the face, and said, " Are you saved ? " I would put this question to any one who thinks this a good way of saving souls. What possible meaning can it have to men as uninstructed as those men were? In that short sentence is contained a perfect theology. Surely it is not only cruel but useless to ask a question which is perfectly unintelligible, and which, if answered in the afiirmative, would only cause the man in question to make himself a hypocrite. (6.) What, then, is the workmanlike way — I had almost called it the scientific way — of draw- ing souls to God } Surely, as a rule, the gradual way. "I drew them with the cords of a man, ^ the bands of love," says the Almighty in Hosea ; and it was by the bands of loving influence that Jesus Christ drew round Him, not only the weary and heavy laden, the children and the mourners, but the young men of the world, and Matthew the publican, and women like Martha, to whom the home was everything. Sometimes, of course, one must flash in some question, or raise the voice in loving warning, and even con- ceivably ask that very question of which we have 84 Visiting spoken ; but it will not be before we have thrown round them the meshes of loving influence, and made it possible for them to feel, whatever we say to them, " faithful are the wounds of a friend." There is always '' the next step " for them to take. That man never prays ; that child is un- baptized ; that boy is unconfirmed ; that woman never comes to church : it is that next step, whatever it is, not as a mere form, but definitely as an outward and visible sign of turning over a new leaf, of conversion or a desire for conversion, trying to please God better, that you have to get them to take, and you visit them for that pur- pose. " I will lead them on gently," quotes Bishop Wilkinson from Genesis, in one of his beautiful works, " according as their strength will bear, lest, if I overdrive them one day, all the flock will die." II. Then, secondly, we must speak about the men and lads — that is the second division — those who are only at home in the evening. Now, as we shall see when we get on to discuss clubs, this is where clubs come in : they are shafts let down into the manhood and boyhood of the parish which nothing else will reach ; but, assum- ing that you are in a parish which has no clubs, 85 Visiting you must never be content without knowing the men. It is absolutely essential to really influ- encing the life of the parish to touch the back- bone of it, which after all are the men. It is they who practically hold in their hands the happiness of all the rest. If the husband drinks, nothing you can do with the wife in the after- noon or the children in the school will prevent the whole family being wretched ; and so at all hazards, and at whatever cost, make for the man. It will, therefore, be well worth your while to get an hour or two one or two evenings in the week to drop in upon the men. Of course it sounds at first a difficult thing to do, and no doubt it wants a little courage and tact ; but if you behave like a true gentleman to him, in nine cases out of ten he will behave as a true gentle- man to you. It is quite easy to find out before- hand the happy moment when the wash and supper are over, and after the first shyness is worn off, you will find in all probability he will quite look for- ward to a talk. I needn't hardly say that the first question had better not be why he doesn't come to church — you will get round to that before many months are over. Often a week-day mission service which you take yourself in a school or even 86 Visitmg cottage in your district will be the first thing he will turn up to, and it is not a bad plan to start an hour early on your way to it, and just jog gently the memories of those who have promised as you pass the door ; but with men especially don't be in too much of a hurry, or to put it in another way, take as your motto what the Bishop of Lincoln gave us as our motto from the match- box which lay on his table when Oxford House was started — " rub lightly." III. But now it is time to turn to that most important and engrossing part of a clergyman's life — visiting the sick. I have already divided them into the (i) temporarily sick, and (2) the chronic sick, but let us subdivide them a little more. There is in the first class {a) the infectious. An epidemic has broken out in the district, scarlet fever or small-pox. Go at once ; the soldier of the Cross must take the risks of the campaign. Take all sensible precautions. Go after food ; keep away from the breath in certain cases ; don't stay too long, unless obliged ; change your coat on your return, and wash your hands, and go to your infectious cases last — but go. It must be never said that the priest is afraid to go where the 87 Visiting doctor dare. It lowers the whole ideal : the one is the doctor of the body, the other the doctor of the soul ; and the patient and the district naturally argue that we think the body more important than the soul. Don't take any notice of presentiments. I have never forgotten all through my ministry, and espe- cially remembered it during an epidemic of scar- let fever, a story which the Bishop of Lincoln told us, when Canon King, in his Parochialia Lec- tures at Oxford. As he told it publicly to a large lecture, he will not mind my telling you. He was curate in a village, and an epidemic of small- pox broke out. It was the very year he always had a presentiment he should die. He went on with his work, however, visiting the sick ; when nurses failed, he nursed the sick ; and even, owing to the terror in the neighbourhood, had to sew up a poor fellow in a sack and bury him. He was quite sure now that his hour had come, and certainly we may add to his story, with or without a presentiment, it wanted plenty of nerve to do it ; but, after we had all listened breathlessly to his exciting narrative, he looked round with his quiet smile, and said, "I am here, you see, to-day." (^) Then, secondly, you have the sudden 88 Visiting accident. What awful work it is! — half-an-hour beside a gashed and mangled frame with life fast oozing out, and no sort of preparation for death ; no prayers, no penitence, no power of amendment ; often half conscious, and with wife and children weeping round. Truly, if ever one needs, at one time more than another, to throw oneself wholly upon God, it is then ! One can only do one's best. The Office for the Visitation of the Sick is one's guide. First probe the conscience, as a surgeon probes a wound, to produce some sort of peni- tence. Get off the conscience by open confession anything you can. Speak of the Saviour, get him to believe in Him, and accept His offer of full pardon. Get any act of reparation done that may be, and then commend his soul into the hands of his merciful Creator, sure at any rate that he will be judged with infinite love, as well as infinite mercy, for "he who knew his Lord's will and did things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with many stripes, but he who knew not his Lord's will shall be beaten with few." (r) But let us take the case next of the man who has fallen ill, or has had an accident, but has some days, or even weeks to lie, either to live or to die. Take the case of a young gymnast who fell in 89 Visiting Oxford Hall. It was quite an easy trick he was doing, he had done it dozens of times before ; but he was careless this time and fell, and in falling he cracked the top of his back-bone. He was just twenty-five, but he had never been baptized, had seldom or never said a prayer, and never been to church or chapel. I went at once, when I heard of the accident, to the hospital to see him. I scarcely knew him for he had not long joined the club, but the first thing he said was, "I have never been baptized." He was dead from the shoulders down, but the doctors thought he would live some days. I had to crowd the Gospel of a lifetime into these few days. I paid him constant short visits. He was very good and patient and attentive. I baptized him after a time, taught him some prayers and hymns, and at his own request tied on to the ropes above his bed, for he could move neither hand nor foot, that most beautiful hymn which he died repeating — " O my Saviour, lifted From the earth for me, Draw me in Thy mercy Nearer unto Thee." But perhaps on another occasion you have simply 90 Visiting three or four weeks of ordinary sickness, from which the patient recovers. Remember, of course, the great chance this is to get below the surface — often it is the only chance. Push it home : read the parable of the unfruitful tree ; explain that the object of life is not "to do nobody any harm," or even "to escape being brought before a magistrate," but to " bear fruit," " to do good." " Why was I born ? " no Christian can answer, except in the words of his Lord, "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, to bear witness unto the truth." How much fruit has been produced to gladden the great Husbandman's heart .'* How much witness has been borne in workshop or street.? How much attempt to "love the Lord thy God with all thy heart ? " In some such way as this may the ground be dug about the callous soul. " Break up thy fallow ground " is the first step. While the soul is self- complacent, nothing can be done ; and so bit by bit, and step by step may it be led on to higher things, everything culminating in the definite resolution which it makes as its thankofFering for recovery. Is it necessary to add how such men and women, boys or girls, when the trial time comes of the return into the world again, need all the special Visiting care and help that you can give them, lest the old surroundings bring back the old life ? {d) Then, as a distinct part of sick visiting, do not forget the relations and friends. They are often a difficulty, and you have occasionally by gentle device to get rid of them, especially when you want to be alone with the sick. Sometimes, moreover, for the sick man's own sake, you really have to turn them out of the little room where they crowd up the small space the sick man has for air ; but be very gentle with them — they are softened and sad, and you may never have such a chance of winning them again. Make them kneel round the bed with you and pray for him ; get the young man or boy to walk back part of the way with you ; find out about them: they will never forget the " gentleman who came to see their brother before he died." It is not too much to say that our Sunday evening mission-service in Oxford Hall has been entirely got together over the death-bed of their relations. But, of course, in dealing as we do with the classes who never go to church or chapel, this necessarily plays a larger part with us than in ordinary paro- chial work. Constantly, however, you will find that the relations have never been confirmed or even 92 Visiting baptized, and are glad to have it put before them. Now I come to think of it, both the brother and the fiancde of the young man who was killed in the hall were both baptized and confirmed after his death, and the mother of another lad who died at Christmas has come forward this Easter to be confirmed. {e) Then about wills. Clearly the service for the Visitation of the Sick tells us to remind the sick to make their wills, but we may even be able to go further than this sometimes and see justice done. I can remember in the London Hospital a man who was dying of internal tumour. I had known him for years in Bethnal Green, and he was much afraid that his sons would rob his wife of " the things " when he was gone. I suggested he should make a will leaving everything to his wife. Three of us went in from Oxford House one Sunday, one being a solicitor. We made his will and wit- nessed it and I kept it. The poor fellow soon died and was buried. The sons all turned up to the funeral, but I kept myself in reserve for later on. Sure enough, when the funeral feast was over, the sons, who were married men living at a distance, began to quarrel for the furniture. This was the 93 Visiting moment I had waited for. Arrayed in my best coat and hat, and with as much dignity as I could command, I strode into the room bearing a white paper in my hand. No one had expected me ex- cept the wife, and they thought I was a visitant from another world. Amid dead silence — there must have been thirty- eight or forty people crammed into the house — I read out the will to the last line, and the sons shifted first on to one foot and then on to another, and then slunk away, leaving the old lady mistress of the situation — and of the furniture. (y) But I have now left myself only a few mo- ments to deal with the chronic sick. So many beautiful books have been written, both for them and about them, that I shall be able to put what I have to say into a few lines. (i.) Go on a regular day; let it be a definite day and a definite time, and stick to it. (2.) Have a course of reading or instruction, not grudging in addition some time to brighten their dull day by a little talk about anything that is going on. (3.) Lead them on gradually to be communi- cants, and take the communion at fixed times. Those sick communions are wonderful times, 94 Visiting especially when death is drawing near ; you will find in them wonderful links with heaven, and will know what Mr. Keble meant when he wrote — " O soothe us, haunt us, night and day Ye gentle spirits far away, With whom we shared the cup of grace, Then parted ; ye to Christ's embrace, We to the lonesome world again ; Yet mindful of the unearthly strain, Practised with you at Eden's door, To be sung on, where angels soar With blended voices evermore." (4.) Get them friends — people who will read to them, teach them drawing, lend them books. Every Oxford House man has a " sick friend," and I am never quite sure which appreciates the friendship most. (5.) Teach them to intercede, to pray for the parish, for other sick, for missions; teach them that work is prayer, and that they are not useless members of the great army : " They also serve who only stand and wait." (6.) Tell them of Jesus, the Patient Sufferer, and that they are honoured in being allowed to " lie on their crosses by His side." (7.) And then when it comes, whether with the one class or the other, to dying, pay constant 95 Visiting short visits. If necessary, stay up at nights ; speak quietly but often to them. If there is no reason against it, hold their hand — they need companion- ship ; repeat verses of the Bible or of hymns slowly: " Though thou goest through the valley," &c. ; " I heard the voice of Jesus say," &c. Don't worry them with questions when you have once prepared them as well as you can, and when it comes to the last, make all kneel down, and in the words of the Commendatory Prayer, commend their souls to God, and give them the last blessing. My brothers, awful and responsible as this work is, it is the most blessed work we have to do. We are ordained to be " sons of consolation " to a suffering, dying world. Whether or not we can be great preachers or great organisers, we can all be this. However beautiful the perfecting of worship in the sanctuary, and however necessary the regular times of reading in the study, we must never forget that " pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." 96 IV PREACHING AND TEACHING A GREAT many books have been written and ^^ lectures delivered on the subject of Preach- ing, but I have purposely refrained from refreshing my memory with regard to those which I read many years ago, in the hope that hints given from practical experience may really be more useful than much more perfect advice culled from the lectures of others ; but I hope sincerely that you will supplement the defects of what I shall say to you on the subject by reading at any rate three such books, e.^-., Bishop Phillips Brooks' "Lectures on Preaching," Bishop Dupanloup's " Ministry of Preaching," and the excellent lectures delivered at Cambridge last year by the Bishop of Ripon. (i.) What, then, is preaching? Let us begin by asking that question ; and the answer to it is a very simple and yet a very awful one, 2^ is the delivery of a message from God. The whole origin of preaching lies back in a plan of God's. 97 G Preaching and 'Teaching For purposes of His own, and for reasons we cannot presume to fathom, He saw fit to make a preaching ministry His instrument for the salvation of the world ; and I repeat that it is at once a comforting and yet an awful thought. It is comforting, because it is not we who presume to take on ourselves to do it — " How shall they preach except they be sent ? " If we truly answer our ordination question, "Do you believe that you are truly called to take upon you this office and ministry ? " then it is not we who thrust our- selves into the pulpit — we are called to preach, and if we are called to preach, then we have reason to believe that "God will give us in that hour what we ought to say." On the other hand, it is an awful thought that we are ambassadors for God, that we have to receive the message first and under- stand it, and then deliver it clearly to the people, as though God did beseech them by us to be recon- ciled to Him. To be brought so close into the life of the Godhead, and given so direct a share in work- ing out God's purpose in the world, is enough, is it not, to make us ascend the pulpit steps with awe to the latest day of our ministerial life } (2.) And, secondly, such a thought has an im- mediate effect upon the character of the sermon : 98 Preaching and Teaching sermons cease to be ends in themselves ; they are simply means to ends. We have all heard the story of the French surgeon describing a brilliant operation. He en- larged on the rapidity with which it had been performed, the brilliancy of the execution, and the entirely new light which it threw on the science of the subject. " But what," some one asked, " happened to the man under operation ? " '' Oh," he replied, as if it was no consequence whatever — " the man ? He died." We smile at such a story — probably an entire invention itself; but it has its use if it impresses on us the palpable absurdity of looking on a sermon as a work of art in itself. Its periods may be most polished, its diction perfect, its style irre- proachable ; but if it fails to move a soul nearer to God, it is dead — dead and useless. The roughest and most unpolished utterance from an earnest man which quickens the better feeling in one soul, is as a sermon worth ten of it. A sermon has no meaning or value except in relation to men's souls. (3.) And hence we gather a third point about a sermon : it has to be judged in its relation to the congregation. A sermon that is good for one con- gregation might not be a good one for another. 99 Preaching and Teaching A sermon that would be a good one for the Uni- versity pulpit would be a bad one for a mission service in Bethnal Green; and one which might suit the boys at a public school would be ruinous in Victoria Park. And so this consideration, it is obvious, must decide all these vexed questions about whether sermons shall be written or (so-called) extempore, whether long or short, whether with or without a text. The sole question to decide is, given the congregation, in what form will God's message be likely to find the souls in it — what sort of address will make the man who did not pray this morning start praying to-morrow ; what will hold the attention of that schoolboy and make him live a more unselfish life than he is living now ; what form of address will show the sinner himself as God sees him, and make him give over his sin ? (4.) And one more consequence also follows from this conception of preaching, though I readily admit that it is easier said than done, and that relates to the preacher himself. If preaching is delivering God's message, then his aim can only be to be as transparent a medium for the delivery of that message as it is possible to be. Conceit, ostentation, the desire to attract admiration or to 100 Preaching and Teaching win the people to oneself and not to God, spoil any sermon : they are the " little root of bitterness which, springing up," pollutes the stream as it flows, and " thereby many are defiled." Even self- consciousness, which is really " other people-con- sciousness," and which is for a time the almost necessary bane of young preachers, must gradually, by the grace of God, be got rid of by the incessant dwelling on the God ward side of preaching, rather than the manward ; for it is clear that the less self there is in a sermon at all, the better is the sermon. If we could imagine a man perfectly unconscious of self, perfectly possessed with the truth of his mes- sage, and perfectly adapting the form of his mes- sage to the particular congregation of souls he was addressing — that man would be a perfect preacher. The apparent paradox that we are at once to " be ourselves," and yet " suppress ourselves," is well expressed in the Bishop of Ripon's '* Lectures on Preaching." " Self-suppression is next to im- possible, and never more so than in a sermon. But, further, it is undesirable. However greatly a man may wish to let the naked truth do its work, he cannot forego the aid of emotion and personal conviction. To speak or to preach as though the message we have to deliver were a matter lOI Preaching and Teaching of indifFerence to ourselves is to invite its rejec- tion : how can we persuade others if we are not persuaded ourselves ? " But, then, the Bishop adds, " Suppress yourself: this is the paradox of power. We must before all things be ourselves, and yet we must above all things suppress ourselves. We must learn the meaning of that apostolic thought, * I, yet not I.' The man must be himself, but yet he must crucify self." ^ But, now, it is quite time for us to get down from these ideal heights to what will probably, for a long time to come, be the level of our own attain- ments, though it does no one any harm to start on whatever he is going to do with a high ideal. Let us come to practical details. You are ordained, we will say, and you have gone to your parish, and you are told by your vicar that you are to preach next Sunday. I. Written Sermons. (i.) Shall you write a sermon or attempt to begin speaking extempore } And there is no doubt about the answer for us ordinary men. Write cer- tainly at first. It takes time and practice to get the ideas into logical order. You would be almost ^ The Bishop of Ripon : " Lectures on Preaching," pp. 6, 19. 102 Preachmg and Teachi?tg certain to grow discursive until you have had some practice in writing ; and it is quite a mistake to suppose that a written sermon cannot be delivered with quite as much spirit as an unwritten one. No one could accuse Dr. Liddon of want of spirit as a preacher, and yet apparently most of his sermons were written. (2.) There are, however,, certain conditions necessary to secure the effectiveness of a written sermon. In the first place, {a) it must be written with the congregation before your mind all the time : you must be addressing them as you write ; you must have before you the sea of faces, and even the individual faces of those whom you have met in your visiting, and are desiring to win to God. No one can write a dry essay if he is in touch with the life of his people and has them before him as he writes. Their joys and sorrows, the last sick bed he has visited, the soul that came to him in trouble, the doubter who will be in church when the sermon is delivered, are all present to his mind, and he speaks to them as his pen travels over the paper. (^b) In the second place, you must never write a sentence that will not travel down a church. There are some sentences so involved and complicated, 103 Preachi?2g and Teaching so full of Latinised words and long syllables that they never reach the bottom, but get hung up half-way on one of the pillars. Write short sen- tences in good Saxon, with a clean swing about them, and they will hit the man at the back by the door, as well as the half-deaf man who has been squeezed up under the pulpit. When the poor people say that they can " hear '' you, they really mean " hear and understand." {c) Then, again, if you are preaching a written sermon, know it thoroughly before you deliver it. You will get perhaps a little tired of some of the phrases in it, but it is essential not to have to be looking down every minute. You want to see the people, you want to speak to them, and therefore the less you have to look away from them the better. II. Sei-mons wi^itten and extempore. Passing away then from written sermons, and leaving extempore preaching for the present, what is there to be said about all sermons, whether written or extempore? (i.) First, each sermon must be addressed to one man. Although adapted to the needs of many souls, it must have this effect, that every individual soul must feel that you, or rather God through you, are speaking to him. You will notice that I am afraid in this lecture 104 Preaching and T'eaching of giving many illustrations, for fear of it being supposed that I consider myself capable of carrying out the advice which I give to you ; but one per- sonal incident I might tell to illustrate this point. It was in a mission, almost the first one I ever took. I was preaching on the chain of sin, and pressing home the great danger of not breaking it at once. A well-to-do man sent for me to his house, thrust a brandy-bottle into my hand. " There," he said, " that's my chain, and you knew it : I saw your eye on me all the time." I need hardly say that I had never seen him in my life before, and had not even noticed him in church. It only shows how God can take the weakest words spoken in His name and speak through them to a single heart. (2.) Then not only must a sermon be spoken to one man, but it must contain one and only one central thought. Nothing is more striking in our Lord's sermons than the way in which He always preaches one thing at a time. He utters what we should call paradoxes. " If a man hate not his father and mother, he cannot be My disciple ; " " If a man asks thy coat, let him have thy cloak ; " " Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow from thee turn not thou away." He leaves His statements to be modified and 105 Preaching and Teaching explained by other statements ; and whether it is by parable or by direct teaching, it is always one thing at a time. Now nothing is further from my meaning than that we are to aim at paradoxical preaching, and to try to say merely startling things ; but on the other hand nothing is more fatal to effective preach- ing than trying to crowd the whole Christian faith into one sermon. It has often been remarked that a man's first sermon, especially if he comes from a university, is often a brief review of the history of philosophy, followed by a rapid sketch of Church history, which, after a cursory glance at the Thirty- nine Articles and the Book of Common Prayer, ends with an apologia for his appearance in a Christian pulpit at all. Of course all this is very interesting, and may come out some day in an auto- biography or an apologia pro vita med ; but it is rather trying to a congregation who very humbly are waiting for a crumb of comfort or help for themselves. No ! it must be one thing at a time, one central message, which, when the sermon is over, may be all summed up in a sentence and carried away. " Is the sermon done } " asked some one of a friend who was coming out of church. " No, it's over, but it's got to be done," was the io6 Preaching and "Teaching reply ; and it can only be done if people can carry away in their minds what they have got to do. (3.) But though the thought itself is a single one, it has to be analysed and developed^ illus- trated and applied in all directions. I re- member asking a great preacher, before I was ordained, what was the secret of making preaching interesting, and he said, " Break up simple ideas and restate them." What he meant was this : you don't want new truth — "there is nothing new under the sun," and if there was, it is the old truth people want for the sustenance of their spiritual life. Only they are so familiar with the sound of certain words and certain ideas, that you must break them up and present them in new forms, for only so will you make them realise what the old truth means. Now let us take a simple illustration ; and per- haps a simple illustration, however clumsy, will be more helpful than any amount of descrip- tion. You are preaching in Advent, and you have taken for your text, " So then every one shall give an account of himself to God" (Rom. xiv. 12). Probably no one in the church would deny it as an abstract proposition, but in a large number the thought has no practical effect whatever : it is a phrase ; it sounds in their ears but nothing more. T07 Preaching and Teaching You have got to make it real to them. I. You may begin by saying truly that it is a quiet but a startling statement ; why so ? {a) Because of God's accurate knowledge. Nothing escapes Him. A murder is committed on a dark night ; the murderer may baffle a jury, but he can't baffle God. God was there : He saw it. {F) It is an awful thing to give an account of oneself before God, because of His unerring justice. *' God is a God of judgment, and by Him actions are weighed : " the figure with the scales in the Egyptian Book of the Dead will have its real counterpart in the judgment, {c) He will judge us by His standard, not ours : here draw out the difference between the Ten Commandments as interpreted by Christ and the ordinary standard of the day. Then you might pass on to — II. Do we know at all what questions will be asked us } Three at any rate have been told us. (i.) What hast thou done } " We are to give an account of the things done in the body." (2.) What hast thou said } " Every idle word that men shall speak they shall give account of in the day of judgment." (3.) What hast thou thought ? " He will make manifest the counsels of the heart." III. What sort of defence shall we be able to 108 Preaching and Teaching make ? Popular defences often made on deathbeds. [a) "I have done none any harm ; " (^) I am quite as good as So-and-so ; {c) We are all sinners of course, &c. Show the insufficiency of these, and conclude with — IV. The true defence, {a) Real searching for sins by the light of the Holy Spirit brought to bear on the standard of the Commandments ; {ti) Full confession with amendment and restitution ; [f) Pleading the sacrifice ; " Lo ! between our sins and their reward wc set the passion of Thy Son our Lord." (^) The test of reality — breaking off the sins. This is merely meant as a simple example of how the one idea, " giving an account of oneself to God," might be turned into a sermon for the poorest congregation, so as in some measure to bring it home to their hearts. (4.) But I have made that rough sketch in detail for another reason, it brings out another point in framing a sermon, and which I happened, I think, to see in an address by the late Arch- bishop Magee, and that is you must paint a picture slowly, stroke by stroke, before the eyes of your congregation: "picture, prove, persuade," but first picture. We are all children, and only 109 Preaching and Teaching carry away something which we can see before our eyes. We want to realise it, as we say ; and we realise what it is best by a word-picture. The Archbishop's own sermons are of course master- pieces of this, and so are the sermons of Bishop Phillips Brooks. Why is it that we can never forget some of these wonderful sermons of his } Because he has painted for ever on the retina of our mind " the Fire and the Calf," " The sea of glass mingled with fire," and the scenes on which he preaches in the life of our Lord. (5.) And in doing this there is no need to be afraid of a right use of paradox^ to rouse at the very first the interest of your congregation, and to make them keen to follow you. You can then lead them on from step to step, from thought to thought ; resting them at times here, showing them a view there of this or that glorious truth, but never losing them or letting them go until you have led them up to their final resolution. All this is of course only what masters of preaching can do, but what we might all try to do. Like all noble arts, it needs learning and trouble and practice, but if it is worth doing at all it is worth at any rate trying to do well. Genius has been defined as " the infinite capacity for taking pains ; " and undoubtedly, as ^ Preaching and Teaching Mr. Gibson pointed out in his lectures, " if we all took more pains with our sermons, the whole standard of preaching in the Church might be a different thing." III. Extempore Preaching. But now it is time to turn to the question of extempore preaching. We will say that you have had some years' practice in writing sermons ; it will now be time for you to learn to preach without your manuscript. Quite apart from the urgent reasons which Bishop Dupanloup brings forward in his " Ministry of Preaching," you may easily find yourself in a position where you could not possibly have a manuscript : you might be on a tub in the middle of a factory at dinner-hour, or you might wish to hold forth in the open air. You are bound to be called on at least twice a week, when you are a vicar, to "say a few words " on every possible occasion ; and every- thing therefore points, unless you are content to circumscribe your usefulness, to learn to speak and preach " without a book." Then, again, undoubtedly the poor prefer it. It may seem absurd to us, but to them it seems more like ** speaking from the heart ; " and, although educated people often say they III Preaching and Teaching prefer a written sermon, I am bound to say that, when you go into a big London church as a stranger, the way they "sit up " when they see you have not got a manuscript is very different from the way they sometimes settle themselves comfortably in their pews when you plant down a manuscript on the pulpit, which they know they have got to sit through. Possibly the reason may be this, there is always a chance you may be short if you have got nothing, whereas in the other case they more or less know their fate. (i.) Assuming, then, that you are going to try to preach extempore, the first thing to realise is that, if " extempore " means preaching " on the spur of the moment," there ought to be no such thing. Of course it does not mean that : it is too solemn a work to deliver God's message to immortal souls without preparation, and the first thing to do is to prepare yourself. This applies to all sermons. As has been well said, " the first secret is prayer, the second is prayer, and the third is prayer." You have to pray to be guided to a right subject, pray to the Spirit of Order to guide you to arrange it properly, pray inwardly as you prepare the form the message is to take, and pray most of all before you go up into the pulpit to Preaching and Teaching preach. It all depends on this ; it is not like deli- vering a lecture on some historical subject : it is a sermon, and a sermon is a message from God, and can only go to any one's heart if it has the impact of God Himself behind it. (2.) Then having prepared yourself and settled on your subject, the next thing is to prepare the sermon, and I have no doubt whatever that there are as many different ways of doing this as there are different people, but I will tell you of one way. Analyse up the subject rapidly on a sheet of paper into heads and divisions, so as to have a clearly pro- portioned sketch. Then take a note-book and put the flesh on to this skeleton : clothe it with illustra- tions ; write it as fully as you like. The advantage of writing is that to most people ideas come much more rapidly when they have a pen or pencil in their hand, and also that the fact of writing clears your mind. You will find that this can be done much more rapidly than writing out a sermon, because you can use as many abbreviations as you like, and you need not be particular about the actual words. (3.) Having done this, it is as well to put away the sketch till near the time of preaching. Then take the sketch, and study it until you are per- fectly certain that you know the order in which 113 H Preaching and "Teaching your points are to come. This is the secret of not being discursive. There is no reason why an ex- tempore sermon should be more discursive than a written one. You may add new illustrations as you go on ; you may say the whole thing in a different way from that which you intended ; but, at any rate at first, stick to your sketch ; otherwise, until you have much experience, you will be sure to get the whole sermon out of proportion. (4.) Then, fourthly, you will find it well to know exactly how you are going to begin, how pass from one point to another, and above all how to end. How many speeches has one heard excellent for twenty minutes and then quite spoilt, because the speaker was looking for an ending, and went on repeating all he had once well said for the next twenty minutes. Some one has said that it is like a kitten chasing its own tail. Now this may also happen in a sermon, so have a strong ending, with which at any rate you can bring the sermon to a close, even if you forget some of the points ; and the advantage of knowing how you are going to pass from one point to another is that it sounds a little abrupt to begin every new section with " here's another point." (5.) Then, fifthly, with regard to taking notes 114 Preaching and Teaching into the pulpit, many find it a help, but many also find it a hindrance. The full sketch would be much too long, and if it is only the skeleton you want to take, it does not take very long to com- mit this to memory. On the other hand, at the start, if notes are a help to steady the nerves and do not cause you to " fumble at " them too much, there would be no harm in using them. Let every man do what he finds the easiest for himself. (6.) Lastly, those sermon sketches maybe used again with the same or other illustrations, when wanted, with a sense of freshness denied to the preaching of an old manuscript sermon. IV. Choice of a subject. Now you will observe that I have said nothing yet about the choice of a subject, or of the pre- paration of the matter of the sermon ; and yet how many of us, especially when we are beginning our ministry, tear our hair over the question, " What shall 1 preach about next Sunday } " (i.) Fortunately, in the Church we have to help us the Church's year, with its Epistles and Gospels, and daily lessons, but still even then we want help in treating them with freshness, and we cannot treat them with freshness unless we read. (2.) We must have, then, a course of reading Preaching and Teaching always going on ; it may include sermons of other people's, one or two of which might be read every week. There should always be one book on hand to stimulate our intellectual life, and one to develop our spiritual and moral being. The chief thing to avoid is merely ** reading up" sermons, and reproducing them without allowing the thoughts to become part of ourselves. (3.) Thirdly, it is a blessed help — and here again this is strongly recommended by Bishop Dupanloup — to arrange a course of sermons. I may say that it is quite unnecessary to announce it to all the world beforehand. Once or twice with poor congregations in mission rooms I have preached right through the Apostle's Creed, with- out their ever finding out what I was doing ; but it was a guide to myself, and helped me to keep the proportion of faith. (4.) Then, again, constantly, if we are in thorough touch with the life of our people, the subject will be suggested by events in the parish. There may be a great wave of trouble passing over the district, or a great outbreak of gambling, or some special danger may be threatening them. It is not " sensational " but right for one who is " a messenger, watchman, and steward of the Lord " to 116 Preaching and T'eaching be in constant sympathy with the life of his people, and make them feel that he is himself the heart of the parish, " rejoicing with them that do rejoice, and weeping with them that weep." Take it all together, then, in spite of the feeling when you have preached your first three sermons that you have said all that is to be said at all, yet, as a matter of fact, the choice of a subject becomes easier as you go on. V. Open Air Preaching, Now I must next say a word about open-air preaching. The main subject of these lectures is " Work in Great Cities ; " and in great cities at any rate one is bound to use all possible means to make some impression upon the mass of paganism around one. After all, why should not we preach in the open air ? There is plenty of room ; it is cheap and the seats are free, or rather in most cases there are no seats. Great preachers like Wesley and Whitfield did much of their work in the open air ; and when we go back to the beginning of the Church, I suppose we may fairly say that Christianity was founded in the open air. The fact which probably keeps most clergy back, namely, the vast amount of nonsense which is uttered in the open air, should 117 Preaching and Teaching really be an argument for trying to vary it with a little sense. For instance, I don't suppose that there is more nonsense talked in two hours than in the centre of Victoria Park on a Sunday afternoon ; but still, there in their thousands are the men who are not in any church or chapel. Surely it is the duty of the Church, if possible, to let them at any rate have the chance of hearing the truth. I have no doubt that some who hear our side of the question think that nonsense too, but we are bound ourselves to act on the belief that what we teach is the truth. {a) Now the first essential of open-air preach- ing is that it must be interesting, and that for a very good reason : if it is not interesting, the people will go away. It is not like having them in a church, where decency prevents their going away, except under very special circumstances; but in the open air they can just "mouch" up, and if they are tired, they go away at once; and this constitutes the great strain of open-air preaching, that you never dare let the attention of your audience flag for a moment, or you have lost the very men you are trying to win for God. {b) For this reason, stories, illustrations, and allusions to contemporary events play a far larger part in open-air preaching than in preaching in ii8 Preaching and Teaching a church, and no one who wants to hold a large audience of men must be afraid of humour. There is a difference of opinion about the use of humour in church. Personally I have never willingly raised a smile in church, but I should simply despair of holding 500 or 1000 men on a Sunday afternoon in the open air, if I was debarred from making them smile pretty loudly fairly often. {c) Of course there are other kinds of open- air preaching where this would be quite out of place. If one was in a surplice going round with a choir in surplices, and taking up one's station and holding a service, it would be quite a different thing. One, now a bishop, who had a large church in London, has told me how he used often to take a few choir boys to start a hymn, go down on a Sunday afternoon one of the little quiet streets in his parish, and preach in a kindly fashion to the men as they lounged in their shirt-sleeves on a Sunday afternoon. This easily might turn out to be in your district a more suitable form of open- air preaching than the first one of which I spoke. I have often been down to help the Eton mission, who for >years have filed out in procession with their choir to the door of a well-known public- house every Sunday morning after church, and I 119 Preaching and T*eaching have never known whether to admire most the patience and kindliness with which the men out- side have always listened, or the regularity with which they have always surged into the public- house as soon as the sermon was over. So well known is the custom that it is said that the publican put off opening for five whole minutes, when the sermon one day was a little long. (^) But whichever kind of open-air preaching you go in for, it is a great mistake to speak too loud. Make that man hanging on the outskirts clearly understand that, if he wants to hear what you are saying, he must come nearer ; and though, if you have a very large crowd, nothing can pre- vent it being a great strain to your voice, yet it makes all the difference in the long run how far you economise it at the beginning. VI. Teaching. But now I find I have left myself very little time for saying anything about teaching ; I regret it, however, the less, because it may induce you to follow my advice and read Mr. Gibson's excellent chapter in " Self-discipline " on the " Office of the Teacher." I would only say this, that there is less distinction between preaching and teaching than is commonly supposed. If we are to obey I20 Preaching and Teachiitg Bishop Dupanloup, every sermon ought to be (i) living, (2) instructive, (3) apologetic, and (4) hortative. If this is so, we must not only certainly teach when we preach, but also to a large extent preach when we teach ; in other words, the teaching, whether given in an instruc- tion or a " teaching sermon," or an address to boys or children, or to a confirmation class or a guild, must be no skeleton of dry bones, but have the living flesh on it of human interest and appropriate illustration. As you will find teaching fall to your lot as well as preaching, we must say a few words on each of the different classes you will have to teach. ( I .) Take children^ for instance. Never preach at children ; teach them as far as possible by question and answer, and draw out from them the answer. You will find in listening to a good teacher that he tells them very few things directly, but draws it out of them ; and when he does tell them anything direct, he makes them re- peat it over and over again until they know it. (2.) Then with regard to boys, I remember well my first boys' class as a curate ; there were twenty or thirty of them, and no books in the school. It was "wrestling with the Philistines indeed." I was driven to wrap up my lesson in Preaching and Teaching an allegory or a story, and then draw the lesson out of them by question and answer ; but when a school is better staffed, you will find it best to work through a book. You will find the Acts of the Apostles full of incident, leading in a story form on to full Church teaching, and an easy one by which to hold their attention, and in the Old Testa- ment you will find the Book of Daniel especially interesting to boys. (3.) Then there are metCs Bible-classes. There are few better means of teaching the men in your district than by these classes, but nothing varies so much as the method of conducting them. I have known Bible-classes with nearly 100 men, where they sung hymns for three-quarters of an hour, and had an expository lesson on the Bible for three-quarters of an hour ; and I have known Bible-classes where they have loved " reading round " the whole time, and other classes where, after being asked to read round, they never came again. You have quietly to find out what your particular lot of men want, and when you have found it, let them have it. Humour them on all non-essentials, and never mind how much trouble you have to take over each man. We must roll back the reproach that in great cities not more than one per cent of the working-men go to either Preaching and Teaching church or chapel ; and a Bible-class is an excellent half-way house between " nothingarianism " and church. Give them plenty of opportunity of dis- cussing difficulties and asking questions; they seldom, at any rate in great cities, like the parson having all the talk ; and if you can once draw out their ideas it is surprising how easy afterwards the preparation of your lesson will become. You will be dealing with difficulties which you know are existing, and will not be " beating the air," or what is still more useless, " firing into the air." How often one finds that one has assumed fifty times too much knowledge, and that one's best lessons have been about two miles and a half over their heads. (4.) Lastly, of course, there is that great Com-' munion service to which every true Churchman is gradually leading those committed to his teaching. I omit all detailed explanation of the Confirmation- classes, as on those points you will simply carry out the instructions of your vicar. You will take the boys in all probability at first, and you will have to teach them, in as simple and interesting form as you can, the elements of the faith, going straight through in a course of eight or ten or more lessons, and taking the Catechism as your guide. But I would rather insist upon the absolute neces- sity of some organisation if you are going to hold 123 Preaching and Teaching to the Communion those whom you have prepared for Confirmation, and who have been confirmed. Let me describe you a guild service which takes place in our chapel at Oxford House on Saturday evenings from eight to nine. There is first shortened Evensong, then a hymn, then the Veni Creator^ then a meditation out loud on the Epistle or Gospel of the coming Sunday, so as to draw out one special lesson on which to fix our minds. Such meditation should be {a) simple, (<$) real to yourself, {c) prepared on your knees beforehand ; {d^ it should seek out the centra] lesson of the passage, and {e) should end with a single and definite resolution. We then kneel down and examine ourselves by questions on the commandments, we pray for forgiveness and a spirit of preparedness, and we then separate to meet next morning at the early Communion. What keeps so many away is the sense that they ought not to come unless they are prepared, and yet the extreme difficulty of finding a time or place to prepare themselves, coupled with a dis- trust of their own powers of self-preparation ; also they need the social sense of the companionship of others serving the same Lord in the same way. Both these needs a guild serves ; and when it grows large, its meetings can be held for men, women, 124 Preaching and Teaching boys, and girls on the first, second, third, and fourth Saturdays respectively of each month. Such, then, are the rough hints I have set down on the subject of preaching and teaching. Their only merit is that they are founded on actual experience, though they have been discovered as much by failure as by success. I would have each go forth to take up this part of his work with an exalted sense of the " godlike '* work to which he is called, to be nothing short of this — am- bassadors for God, under-shepherds to the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ, and voices of the Holy Spirit ; but, on the other hand, I would have you not to be too exalted to attend to details. We honour, not dishonour God by earnest preparation, diligent reading, and never-ceasing effort to perfect our method of delivering His message. May you go forward with a true sense of the glorious Gospel, of the blessed God committed to your charge. " How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of them who carry the Gospel of peace ! " and may you go forth to save souls, both by your teaching as well as your preaching, remembering that " he who turneth a sinner from the error of his ways has saved a soul from death, and covered a multitude of sins." 125 SOCIAL WORK I THINK that those who have so far read ^ these lectures will at any rate grant me this, that the ideal I have set before them of what a priest should be is not that he should be merely a good member of the Board of Guardians, an energetic Sanitary Inspector, or a shrewd political economist, nor that he should spend the greater part of his time in making speeches on platforms with regard to social questions. I hope I have made it clear that the first object of a priest, and the primary object for which he is ordained, is to convert souls to God, and bring them up in His fear and love. And therefore it is with a good conscience that I now plunge into a discussion of what is generally called " Social Work," and shall endeavour to give some sort of outline of one direction in which you will, certainly in great cities, and probably more or less everywhere, have to do a work for God. There are three reasons why some form of social 126 Social Work work must form part of the work of every clergyman. (i.) First, Christ Himself cared for the bodies of men ; and though it is not quite true to say that He cared first in every instance for their bodies rather than their souls, for He forgave the paralytic man before He healed him, and taught the crowd before He fed them, yet who can watch Him going in and out among the people without seeing that He had the most tender sympathy for their bodily needs, and who can believe but that His dauntless com- mand echoes down to us to-day as we stand in the midst of the poor and hungry in our crowded cities, " They need not depart, give ye them to eat " ? And we may surely add that it would have very much surprised us if He had not. After all, who made the bodies of men except God ? Who arranged that mutual interaction of the body on the spirit except God } Who looked down upon creation, including the bodily as well as the mental life in it, and called it " very good " except God } And for what possible object did the Son of God take a human body Himself if it was not to redeem and sanctify the life of the body as well as the life of the soul } With regard, therefore, to the bodies of men, often so overwrought, so overtired, and so 127 Social Work underfed, we may surely pray the favourite prayer of Bishop Andrewes out of the Psalms, " Despise not Thou the work of Thine own hands." (2.) Then, secondly, we come to the impossibility of raising Lazarus until we have taken away the stone. If a man is the slave of strong drink, is he likely to be in a fit state to come to the Holy Com- munion ? If he lives in a single room with his wife and five children, and has nowhere else to go to of an evening, is he less likely or more likely to be driven to a public-house ? If a man is utterly overworked and underpaid, and worried as to how he can possibly make both ends meet and feed his children, is he as free and ready to give his mind to your spiritual teaching as he would be if things were better with him } However strongly you may hold the opinion that he ought to be, you will find as a matter of fact that he is not, and you will be driven there- fore, by your very desire to speak peace to his soul and win him to the discipleship of Christ, to do what you can for his physical troubles. You must, at any rate, show that you are making some effort to take away the stone, if you hope to say in the name of Christ, " Lazarus, arise." (3.) Thirdly, you will find in this social work 128 Social Work a great means of getting to know those in poor districts who never go to church at all. I have quoted in a previous lecture a letter from a working man, giving a religious census of the different factories in which he worked. In the first, containing looo men, he found three Roman Catholics, one adherent of the Church of England, and one Dissenter only ; in another factory, em- ploying 700, he found one adherent of the Church of England and one Spiritualist ; and where he is now, in which 1000 are engaged, he found one Dissenter only. I believe that he is unwittingly exaggerating — how, for instance, could he know the spiritual habits of so many in this factory } — but with the greatest possible desire to be accurate, I cannot honestly say that I believe more than one per cent, of the working men in East London go regularly to either church or chapel. Now how are you, the curate of the parish, to get to know these men at all } I have already suggested evening visiting, but I proceed now to show that, quite apart from the direct good which social work does, it gives you a chance in a per- fectly natural way of getting to know the men, both working men and other laymen of the parish, in a way which nothing else does. In working I2Q I Social Work shoulder to shoulder with you over insanitary houses in the district, by sitting side by side at a parochial committee for the relief of distress, by being joint-officials in a working-man's club, they have a chance of finding that their parson is a man like themselves, and that, in spite of the long black coat and the clerical hat, "A man's a man for a' that." But now we must descend to details, and as we have been talking a good deal about sanitary work, (i.) Let us begin with the drains. Don't tell me that it is not the parson's work to at- tend to the drains of his district : if not, why did Providence gift him with a nose? There can hardly be a greater piece of cant than to say it is " unspiritual" to investigate the causes which have laid that little child low with diphtheria, or given the whole of that other family in your district scarlet fever. Mr. Horsley, late of Wool- wich, now of Walworth, has shown us a splendid example of fearlessness in this matter. He is the terror of rack-renters, and of landlords who take money for their dwellings without fulfilling their duties to keep them in repair. " Hast thou found me, O mine enemy \ " he told us at a 130 Social Work Church Congress he had seen in the eye of many a guilty and furious criminal whom he had ex- posed. " Yes," he replies — and those of us who know him can imagine that it would be with some- thing of the force of Elijah — " and I mean to find you while one insanitary dwelling for which you are responsible continues to exist on your property." Now, without saying that you would be able to become the sanitary expert which he has been able to become in the midst of all his thronging spiritual duties, yet undoubtedly, if there is any- thing of the spirit of the prophet left among us, it is the duty of all of us to use the unrivalled opportunity we have of knowing the facts of the case — and be very sure you do know the facts before you make a statement — to put right what is wrong in your district. If you are working single-handed, you can at any rate complain to the district vestry, see the sanitary inspector, and courteously but firmly insist that the thing shall be put right. If you have a good local authority, they will value your co-operation ; if a bad one, they will soon find out if you mean business. It is quite true that the pigs make the stye very often, and that it is the uncleanness or carelessness of the tenants that is to blame ; but it is also true, 131 Social Work only too often, that the stye makes the pig, and then it is useless talking to the tenant till the landlord has done his duty. But though it is possible to do something even by yourself this is just a question in which to seek the co-operation of your laity, and of people of all creeds. We have had for many years at Oxford House a Sanitary Aid Committee in connection with the Mansion House Council for the dwellings of the poor. It consists of a barrister, who is the life and soul of it, a district surveyor from a distance, a doctor or two, a lord, and two or three working- men. I am chairman, and I listen with interest, if not always with entire comprehension, to the mysteries of " bell traps," " gullies," " sufficient or insufficient water supply," and the rival acts under which the particular case comes. I may not have had a thorough sanitary training, but I have got at any rate two eyes and a nose, and I can turn the experts on to damp ceilings, smelling houses, and swamped courts. From time to time a working man turns up to make a complaint. He dare not complain direct himself, for fear of getting notice to quit ; but we act as a buffer between him and the owner of the tenements in which he lives, and take the responsibility of the complaint on our- 132 Social Work selves. The complaint is then sent in to the vestry; the place is revisited from time to time, to see if the nuisance is abated, by one or other member of Committee ; the local paper even may have to be called in, or an appeal sent direct to the County Council, or, in extreme cases, to the Local Government Board. When real wrongs exist, the office of tribune of the people is still vacant, and it should be held by the parish clergyman. (2.) Then again we come to open spaces. When I was putting together this lecture in Bethnal Green, I had just run up to my room at about ten o'clock one night from taking the chair at the Poorsland Trust of Bethnal Green ; and I may say in parenthesis, if there is something rather unconnected or illogical about these lectures, you must put down something to the fact that some of them have had to be composed in odd half- hours of an almost ceaselessly occupied day. About that Poorsland Trust there hangs a tale, and I will tell it you as briefly as I can, in order to point to you what sort of way the clergy may help on that most important question in great cities of preserving open spaces. There is an open space of 6 J acres in the middle of Bethnal Green, which district contains within itself 130,000 ^33 Social Work people. Six years ago an attempt was made to build on it, and the attempt unfortunately was made by the most influential people in the parish. Finding, however, that the original trust deed of 200 years ago laid down that it never should be built on, and thinking it a crying shame that this open space should be lost to the people, we formed a small Preservation Committee, and began agitating. It had already been taken from the people in this sense, that it was sublet to a private lunatic asylum and enclosed. This also we decided to alter if we could. The agitation lasted over two or three years, and involved altogether fifty or sixty public meetings. The matter was referred to law, and was carried up to Mr. Justice Chitty; but we were nobly backed up by the open space societies, and judgment was finally given in our favour with costs to the other side. What is the result? That instead of being chairman of an obscure preserva- tion committee, I am now chairman of the Trust itself, and my colleagues mainly constitute the Board. The 6| acres have been handed over to the County Council, and will be opened this spring^ to the poor of Bethnal Green for the first time for 200 years ; and, as a rest from those times of war ^ This has now been done — December 1895. Social Work and agitation, we sit peacefully now, distributing to twenty pensioners, at five shillings a week, the two or three hundred a year which accrues, in addi- tion to the open space, as the spoil of our victory. Will any one say that such social work is not worth doing ? (3.) Or shall we take the subject of thrift? What a field of useful work lies before us under that short and easy title ! You may fondly imagine that the whole question of thrift is settled by the establishment of Post Office Savings Banks ; but if so, you have yet to learn that the poor have got to be taught to save, and, more than that, when a desire to save has been stirred up in them, it still requires some one to call round on Monday morning and collect their money, and take it to the bank himself. If I may quote a passage from a book lately published, entitled, "The Universities and the Social Problem," ^ the process is thus described by a lady who started this provident-collecting, as it is called, in the particular parish where she works : " Monday after Monday," she says, " the punctual collector calls, meeting on the doorstep the rent ^ Edited by John M. Knapp, Oxford House, Bethnal Green. Published by Percival, Rivington, & Co. 135 Social Work lady and the burial club gentleman. By degrees the tiny sum swells, and a sense of the possibility of having something to fall back upon in time of need creeps into the harassed life. For those who put by a penny regularly soon find that they can spare twopence or threepence, and freely own that they have not missed it ; and the surprising feats that the despised pennies can accomplish in the way of mounting up are a never-ending source of satisfaction. " Why, it's like a gift," said one woman when her first savings were paid out to her, " only it's better than a gift, there's such a relish with it." ^ I may add, as a useful hint, that it does not do to have the Monday provident-collector often changing, even in consequence of illness or of holidays. It so happened that in the district where Oxford House " provident-collects," three different gentlemen appeared on three successive Mondays. It nearly produced a " run on the bank," as it began to spread through the district that an elaborate fraud was being perpetrated on their pennies by plausible scoundrels dressing up as gentlemen. When you come to the more intelligent and ^ "Thrift and Social Intercourse," p. 189. 136 Social Work better educated artisans, especially when you get them, as we shall see in a few moments, massed into clubs, provident collecting gives way to penny banks, held at a certain place and a certain time, to mutual loan societies, which will certainly be held at the local public-house if they are not held in your school or club, and even to co-opera- tive stores, such as we have in connection with one of our clubs, which can be made to pay one shilling in the pound to members, and sixpence in the pound to purchasers. The whole subject of Co-operation, whether Distributive or Productive, is too vast for these lectures. There is little to be said about penny banks, except the extraordinary way in which they roll up small amounts in no time into hundreds of pounds ; the penny bank belonging to one club alone is over ;^iooo; but it is as well to notice that men will constantly trust their money to something that you or some other friend start, whereas the same men would not put a penny into the Government Savings Bank. Nor again need we dwell long on mutual loan societies. You are struck at once by the extra- ordinary way in which they reverse all copy-book morality. When you and I went to the university, 137 Social Work our fathers said to us, " Now, be sure, my boy, never borrow ; come to me if you want anything ; " but in mutual loan societies you are fined if you don t bo7^row. I cannot regard them as an ideal form of thrift, more especially as they divide up all they have every Christmas ; but as in many other ways, so in this, if you can't drive people you must humour them by giving them loans at a cheap in- terest, and a loan society keeps them at any rate out of the hands of the Jews. It is far better, more- over, to have the whole thing going on in your own premises, than have all the paying in, and lending, and fining, and paying out going on in a public- house, with a drink to wash down every transaction. (4.) And now I may as well plunge at once into that special form of social work of which I know most, and for which I think I may say without presumption that Oxford House has achieved a certain reputation, and that is the social wo7^k which takes the form of clubs. At first sight, I am bound to say, the name does not sound very promising ; we think naturally, if we belong to a London club, of the New Oxford and Cambridge or the Bachelors ; and useful as these institutions doubt- less are, it would never have occurred to us that they were or could be in any sense a missionary agency. 138 Social Work The only club I ever belonged to myself was my old school club at Oxford, which, after carrying on for some time a precarious and delusively pros- perous career by always presenting its balance-sheet before it had paid its bills, finally came to a just and inevitable doom, with the painful result of a five-pound levy on all old members to pay its debts. Clubs then to be appreciated must be viewed in the light of their background; and if you were work- ing in the slums of a great city with a public-house at every corner, with the men away in the city all day, and the boys only coming back from their work to loaf about the streets or cadge for a drink at the corners of the public-houses, you would be forced to ask these questions : Is there no way in which I can provide the men with somewhere else to go beside the public-house ? Is there no place where I can meet the husbands of the women whom I see when I visit in the afternoon ? Is there no way of getting to know the 99 per cent, of the men who never come to church ? Is there no way of getting the boys out of the streets of an evening, and at least giving them decent games, if I can give them nothing else ? And the only answer that I know to these questions is summed up in the one word — clubs. 139 Social VTork (a) And if we want to be logical, we must take boys^ clubs first. They are probably as a matter of fact the first thing you will start. It is the most pressing need which will strike you in your new district. You are manager of the local Board school, we will presume, even if you have got no Church school in the parish ; and as you go round your schools, it will strike you as a terrible pity that the boys whom you see so orderly in the schools, and taught so much self-discipline and self- respect, should practically be allowed to run wild directly they leave the school and go to work ; or, as you walk through your district of an evening, if you are a true pastor of souls, your heart will long to do something for those larky, cheeky lads, who will probably cheek you as you pass, but whom you feel sure you could do something with if only you had a chance. Now we have at this moment in full working order two boys' clubs, one with 400 boys, and the other, lately started, for very rough boys, some of them not infrequently in prison, with 120 mem- bers. I think, however, that it will be most useful to you not to describe either of them in all their manifold activities as they are to-day, but rather to suggest from our experience, both of successes and 140 Social Work failures in building them up, how you should begin, if starting by yourself in a fresh district. And first let me warn you, that you will find two classes of boys, which as a rule will no more mix than oil and water. The majority of boys in any district of East London that I know, full of fun and chaff at they are, are the well-disposed children of respectable parents, or not infrequently the respectable children of disreputable parents, whom it only requires a little patience and tact to build up into self-respecting citizens. Let us take them first. Get a nucleus ; ask half-a-dozen or a dozen to tea ; broach your project ; get leave from the vicar to use the school-room or the mission- room ; buy a few games, and get the most good- natured female relation you have to buy a bagatelle board. Begin small and let it grow slowly ; make all members pay an entrance fee of threepence and a subscription of a penny a week to pay for the gas, &c. As soon as you can form a committee of the boys themselves, give them the authority to keep order. Nominate your first committee, but let the club elect at least half afterwards. Do not give the power of admission or expulsion, or they may do to you what they did to a clergyman I knew on receiving this power, namely, passed a 141 Social Work rule that no more should be admitted, and cap- tured the fine new premises that had been built, for the original twenty-five. Let me go on with my aphorisms, but remem- ber that every sentence in this club creed has been wrought out, like the sentences in some of the real creeds, by at least one revolution. Have plenty going on : it's idle hands that break up furniture. Have, if possible, plenty of room : it's crowding that spoils discipline. Cater for body, mind, and spirit ; have plenty of games for the body ; as you progress, get up a class or two for the mind. They will at any rate be ready to learn carving, possibly shorthand. A few will really like to go on with reading and writing, though they will be shy to say so; and if there is a Paris Exhibition going on, they will sometimes learn French. They never do go to the Exhibition, but they always think they might. Then on Sunday, have a Bible-class connected with the club ; but, if you take my advice, you will not make attendance at it a test for coming to the club. I know that in saying this I am going against the practice of many good workers, but it touches a question about which you will have to make up your mind for all clubs : Is it for Jacob or Esau } 142 Social TFork If it is for the peaceful Jacob, who is already in the choir, or just promoted from your Sunday- school, to whom you merely want to give a little amusement in addition to his performance of his religious duties, then make any rules you like, so long as they don't make him a hypocrite ; but if it is for the jolly but lawless Esau, who has never been inside a church in his life, who escaped early from Sunday-school, if he ever went, I doubt the expediency of a test club, unless your rooms are so small that you can only take a small number, and definitely prefer to pick the boys who wish at once to be religious. Working on the other plan, each boy is intro- duced by a member, who stands sponsor for his good conduct. He comes in, pays his entrance fee, is introduced to the committee at its weekly meeting, who receive him with the dignity of a Cabinet Council ; he then has the rules of the club, with regard to swearing, gambling, and cleanliness, read to him, and is duly installed as a member. From a religious point of view it now becomes a question not of rule but of influence ; so malle- able, however, are boys when they find a friend, that the influence of the laymen who work every night among them, results in fifty or sixty coming every 143 Social Work Sunday of their own accord, to be instructed by those whom they have known during the week, in the elements of the Christian faith. Others doubt- less go to classes in parishes where they live, but in any case, personally, I would rather see sixty come of their own free will than four hundred driven. {U) Very Rough Lads Clubs, When I pass to the other class to which I referred, I am bound to say that I wish you could all read the paper in the " Universities and the Social Problem," entitled " The Repton Club," and written by my colleague, Mr. Hugh Legge, of Trinity College, Oxford, whose name will be not unknown to many who read this. It was he to whom I intrusted the charge of founding and conducting for its first year the club for those lads of the district who were found to be too " criminal " for the larger club. His paper has been picked out by all those who have reviewed the book in London, as a character sketch equal to anything in " Tales of Mean Streets." "There is a class of boy," he says, "in East London whose members stand at the street corners, usually in batches, and when they move, progress in the shape of a gang which monopolises much of the thoroughfare in which it happens to be. They have been known to assault unoffending persons, 144 Social Work and even to fall foul of the police. Sometimes these boys have work, and sometimes they have none. Occasionally the close-cropped appearance of the head of some member of the gang suggests that the owner has been living at Her Gracious Majesty's expense, probably for fighting, or gam- bling in the street, or some other equally heinous offence." The following account of a father and mother by a boy who liked his people, may throw a light upon the previous education of this class of lad, and may help you to deal with him when you meet him. " My father 'e was a man ; 'e weighed sixteen stone and thought nothing of sending you out at twelve at night for a dozen of oysters. 'E's dead now, and my mother — why IVe never seed 'er drunk once. She's a queer woman. But my father, I've often seed him drunk." " The difficulty is," he continues, '' to get hold of them. They have a rooted objection to most forms of discipline, and a kind of pious horror for any man or thing that they call religious." You may not be so fortunate as I was in secur- ing such a helper in my new experiment as the writer of that article, but you will find the pos- session of a long black coat no bar at all to being Social Work on equally good terms with the boys. I saw, when I was walking back one day some months ago, from taking a ten days' mission, what looked at first to me a gang of roughs on the way to wreck something. I never made a greater mistake. As I got nearer, I heard a whoop of welcome ; *' 'Ullo, Mr. Ingram ; " and before I knew where I was, fifty grimy pair of hands were grasping mine. It was the "Repton" off to play football in Victoria Park ; and in Holy Week the most breathlessly attentive audience I had to hear the story of the Cross was the Repton Club. I can only summarise what you have to do with them. Let them box in your presence for three months : it is the only thing they can do or care to do. After three months, advance gradually to dumb-bells. Have a few papers in another room for the quietest, and after six months get a bagatelle-table, but don't be surprised, as Mr. Legge says, if they mark this advance in civilisation by prodding holes in the ceiling with the bagatelle cues, which gives the ceiling the appearance of a cloth target after a Gatling-gun has been shooting at it. In other words it comes to this. I assume that you are going down into your districts to attack the real problem, and not some fancy problem, 146 Social Work which you think ought to exist. If you are, then "take the human animal as you find him, and touch him at any point where he can be touched." Let your heart go out to those lads, so generous, so loyal, and so true when you know them ; love them — that is the main thing, and then how to win them, " love will find out the way." {c) And no\^ I see I must compress very much what I have to say about mens clubs^ but that is all the better for some reasons. If I were to give myself full rein, I should weary you to death ; and if you really care for any detailed statement of anything I know about the matter, I have put all I know and rather more into the article on " Working-men's Clubs," in the same volume from which I have quoted. That article is founded on experience in work- ing one club of eight hundred working-men and another of three hundred, and also in watching the working of the sixty different clubs which form our federation, and which comprise nearly eight thousand men. Here again you must at once make up your mind whether you are going to cater for Jacob or Esau ; if for Jacob, then make any rules you like ; there ought not to be the slightest difficulty in 147 Social JVork working a quiet club for your Church working- men. They have already got the very thing to which you hope some day to lead Esau. They have got " religion," the safeguard of righteous- ness and the bond of peace. The clubs I speak of are for Esau, and as a first step to making him religious, have no religious test : let him be as free from being " button-holed " in your club to join anything against his will as a Bishop is free from being " button-holed " in the Athenaeum to join the Land League. Have no political test either, of course ; it is a social club you want ; it is a union of men as men, to raise the life of man. Begin small and educate a nucleus, then have your committee, just as with the boys. Safe- guard your principles of no drink and no political test by a council with a power of veto ; put in a third rule that it must be carried on in a way consistent with its connection with the Church ; keep the original property in your own hands, and have whatever the club itself buys entered on a separate inventory, and having taken these pre- liminary precautions, launch it on its way, a free, self-governing thing. You will thus steer between the Scylla of des- potism and the Charybdis of anarchy. I have 148 Social Work seen many ships wrecked on both. The first is the most common. The clergy often will not refrain from "bossing the whole show" themselves, and the consequence is the working man feels it is not his show at all, and goes off. To make a club successful you must awake the democratic, self- governing spirit of the people, and you cannot do that without entrusting them with a substan- tial share of government. On the other hand, those original precautions already stated are necessary. A club launched in East London once without such precautions de- manded " dancing girls " for their Saturday night entertainment. There was no rule against it, but the founders objected; hence strained relations and general smash up. Then about the money — a club of only one hundred members will at once pay its own ex- penses, except the rent ; and as it rises in civili- sation and numbers, it will manage the rent. It requires, however, a large number if the weekly subscription is only one penny, and nearly every district in London could really manage twopence, which after all is only the price of a glass of beer. Of course the absence of beer does not mean that the members need be teetotalers outside the 149 Social Work club : and it must inside the club be compensated for by refreshments of all kinds at the bar — plenty of amusements, bagatelle, billiards, a reading- room, debates, lectures, concerts and dramatic performances. In other words, your club must be an effec- tive " cut out " of the public-houses which flame at every corner; there is no good wasting your breath in abusing publicans : it is useless, besides being usually quite unfair. Devote your energies to cutting them out. Let me quote an incident which I narrated in my article. I was visiting in the London Hospital, and found myself sitting by the side of a broken-legged publican. When he heard who I was, he began asking about the wel- fare of several of our club members. I asked him how he knew them. " Oh," he said, " they were regular customers of mine before they joined your club : I had a public-house close down your way." — " Are you still there .? " I asked him. " No, sir, IVe moved a little further off." Then with regard to religion, by all means have a voluntary Club Bible-class, and once a quarter a club service in the church, also voluntary, but to which you will find some will come who never come at any other time. But apart from anything 150 Social Work directly religious which you will be able to intro- duce, you will have this inestimable blessing in your parish work, you will know the men of your parish ; the barrier between you will be broken down ; you will be able to visit them in their own homes on quite a different footing. The very working of the club, in which you are working shoulder to shoulder, will weave you into a brotherhood you can get in no other way ; and as you patiently watch your chance year after year, it will go hard if some of them, at any rate, will not take from a friend the faith which they refused to take from a stranger. (5.) And now I can only touch on other social work which may lie in your path : there will, of course, be the vexed and most difficult question of Relief of Distress. Undoubtedly to avoid overlapping, undue favouritism by Church workers, the accusation of " Church and Charity," the mere increase of pauperism by attempts to relieve it, and fifty other evils which beset this thorny subject, the best way is to form a Parochial Committee, consisting largely of laymen. Get, if you can, some representative of the local Nonconformists to join it, and then let each case in the district 151 Social Work be judged on its merits. Keep in communication with the relieving officer of the district on the one hand, and with the Charity Organisation office of the district on the other. Earn the confidence of the generous by your thoroughness, and the confidence of the poor by your considerateness, even where it may be impossible to relieve them ; and it will go hard if you cannot make your Parochial Relief Committee at once a check to pauperism and yet the hope and stay of every helpable case in your district. On no account let the question of help be decided by profession of creed, but solely by character, lest, in your en- deavour to support the "household of faith," you turn it into a " household of hypocrites." (6.) Children's Country Holiday Fund, — Serve on the committee. Work with the Board school teachers in sorting out the right children to go ; if you can't get a layman, act as secretary yourself. Don't " grab " places for your own children, but be fair to other people's ; don't send boys when your country correspondent asks for girls, or girls when they ask for boys ; and be eure you send them to the right station. (7.) Lastly with regard to more general social refoi^'ms. For the first few years your vicar will Social Work be the persona of the parish ; you will have too much visiting to do, I hope, and will not in any case be the person to take the lead; but, after- wards, when the responsibility comes to you, back up movements on their merits, apart from politics on either side. As a man you can do what you like, but as a clergyman you are the clergyman of all parties. Take each question then on its merits. Be found on the committee of the Early Closing Movement, and if you have really time, be a Guardian, or on the Vestry. Most social reforms are now accomplished through local administration, and it is the local adminis- tration itself which wants uplifting and purifying. Remember, however, always that your spiritual duties come first, and that you are absolutely failing in duty if you leave the sick man unvisited, or the sick boy to die unbaptized, because you are attending a committee on the better paving of the streets. For, to sum up everything, in the words of the first stated principles of the Christian Social Union, our business is to uplift our Lord Jesus Christ to our generation as the ''Living Master and King " of all men, and to claim for the Christian law the ultimate authority to rule Social Work social practice ; in other words, we are to pro- claim again to rich and poor alike the old Gospel of righteousness, justice, and love, and to work towards the time when the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ. Note. — I had no space in this lecture to allude to the useful work of the Church Lads' Brigade. All information can be ob- tained from W. M. Gee, Church House, Westminster. The secretary of the Church Lads' Brigade for the diocese of London is F. Abel Bloxam, Northumberland Chambers, W.C. 154 VI PAROCHIAL MISSIONS T HAVE chosen for the subject of my last * lecture " Parochial Missions/' partly because they are becoming more and more a recognised part of mission-work everywhere, and especially in great cities ; and partly because I find that the men who come up to work with me from Oxford, and even those who come from Cambridge, what- ever else they may know, are profoundly ignorant on this particular subject. I shall always re- member the mistake I made a year or two ago, in sending off ten or a dozen men to begin a two months' preparatory work in a large parish of East London, for a mission which I was going to take later on. I told them the exact details of where the place was, gave a letter of intro- duction to the rector, explained in what order they should take the streets and houses, and when the mission would begin ; but what was the result of the first afternoon's visiting ? Simply this, 155 Parochial Missions that they all returned with one story. We have done all you told us, but you forgot to tell us one thing, and that is the thing they all ask us in the district — " What is a mission f " Now that is the question I propose to answer now. Every November, and sometimes oftener, I take a mission in East London, not only that we may take our share of the mission-work of the Church, but also that those who come to the Oxford House for a year's training may have a practical answer to that question. As, however, I am afraid it is impossible for every one to come to East London and have such a practical answer, I must endeavour, as well as I can, to give you a written answer here. (i.) And first outwardly^ if you were passing through a district in which a mission was being held, you would notice the frequency with which the bell was ringing ; you would see placards about the walls, announcing a long list of services to be held each day during the mission, and probably, if it were in the evening, a white-robed procession winding slowly through the streets. The time-table of an ordinary mission every day would be something like this, though of 156 Parochial Missions course it could be indefinitely changed to suit the habits and the working-hours of the popula- tion in which the mission is held. 7 and 8 a.m.— Celebrations of the Holy Com- munion. 9 A.M. — Children's service. 1 1 A.M. — Service of Intercession with an address. 12-2 P.M. — Dinner hour services in factories or in the open air. 3 P.M. — Service for women only. 5 P.M. — Evensong. 7 P.M. — Start of procession through the streets. 8 P.M. — Mission service for all. 9 P.M. — Instruction and after-meeting. On Sundays this would be varied by the addi- tion of a service for children at 2.30, for men only at 3.30, by the omission of the women's service, and by the evening mission service and instruction taking the place of the ordinary Sunday Evensong and sermon. These would be the outward signs of a mission going on, and would be all the outsider would see. (2.) But what is the inwardness of a mission } What constitutes its special solemnity and re- sponsibility .? Nothing short of this, that it is a special coming of the Lord Jesus Christ 157 Parochial Missions through the parish, in answer to prolonged and earnest intercession. If you come to think of it, the whole idea of a mission and our belief in its efficacy is founded upon two or three elementary Christian truths : we are told in the New Testament {a) that the Holy Spirit would be sent to " take of Christ's and show Him to us." It was to be His special office to carry on in this way the work of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity; and in doing so He was " to convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment." That is the first truth we are bound as Christians to believe. (^) We are told that the Holy Spirit is poured out in answer to prayer. "If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him.?" The Holy Spirit then, with His power of bringing home Christ to the hearts of men, and with His power to convict them of sin, will come in answer to prayer. {c) But we want a third fact fully to under- stand the preparation of a mission, and that is that undoubtedly a special blessing is promised and a special power is vouchsafed to united inter- 158 I Parochial Missions cession. " If two of you shall agree touching any- thing they shall ask, it shall be done for thera of My Father which is in heaven." A mission then is a putting to the proof these three promises in the New Testament ; it is co-ordinating and then acting up to three elementary truths of Christia- nity ; and that is why every mission is preceded by a year's special prayer, on which everything depends. Just as rain is only the vapour condens- ing and falling which has been drawn up by the mists in the early morning, so the blessings which come down and freshen dry souls in a mission have been drawn up previously in the mists of inter- cession. We believe, then, that in answer to our prayer, Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, comes as really through the parish as He ever came through any village or town in Palestine, but with this difference, that now since He is exalted far above all principalities and powers. He has even more influence, not less, upon the souls of men. (3.) Preparation for a Mission. — It follows, then, if a mission is such a solemn thing as this, if the cry is again to go up through the parish, " Jesus of Nazareth passeth by," that preparation, and very careful preparation too, is needed ; and, in order to make this lecture if possible more useful 159 Parochial Missions to you, let me imagine you to be in your first curacy, and that a mission is going to be held in your parish before the year is over. What have you to prepare ? {a) First, obviously, you have to prepare your- self, A mission when it comes is a mission to all, and not the least to the clergy of the parish. We have only to ask what we should have done in the old days, if we had been told that Jesus Christ was coming through our town to see what sort of a preparation it must be. We should have eagerly asked leave — should we not ? — to pre- pare a lodging for Him, and begged Him to come under our roof. So it needs no further words to show how careful must be the preparation of our own hearts : everything ruthlessly expelled which cannot possibly consort with so holy a Guest, and the prayer sincerely breathed, expressed so beauti- fully in a favourite mission hymn : — '• Thou didst leave Thy throne and Thy kingly crown When Thou earnest to earth for me, But in Bethlehem's home was there found no room For Thy Holy Nativity. Oh, come to my heart, LORD Jesus — There is room in my heart for Thee." Be prepared, then, to accept the mission as a i6o Parochial Missions mission to yourself, and without thinking of the probably only too obvious infirmities and short- comings of the missioners, " to hearken what the Lord God will say concerning you ; " and then you will be best prepared to help to make the mission a blessing to others. (J?) For, secondly, there must next come the prepa7'atio7i of the parish^ and much of it doubt- less will depend on you. The ordinary parish districts must be subdivided, and a special band of mission-workers collected, so as to make a detailed house-to-house visiting of the parish pos- sible before the mission begins. Prayer centres should be formed in the different districts, to which those might be invited to come who could not join in the intercessions which, of course, will be offered up week by week in intercession ser- vices in church. Through the parish magazine and by sermons in church, the interest of the parishioners should be thoroughly aroused in what is going to take place in their midst. I have only one caution to give about this. It is possible sometimes ^' to take too long a run for your leap;" and although I never remember it happening in the preparation by the parish clergy of any mission which I have been called to con- l6l L Parochial Missions duct myself, it does sometimes happen that the people in the parish are utterly tired of the mission before it begins at all. (^.) Then about two months before comes the immediate p7^eparation. All this you will find ex- cellently explained in a handbook by Archdeacon Donne, of Wakefield, " How to Prepare for a Mission," just as you will find an equally sug- gestive book from a missioner's point of view in Messrs. Horsley and Dawes' book on "Parochial Missions." The head missioner will probably come down about six weeks or two months before, and address the workers ; and from that time up to the mission there will be, first, the vicar's letter to be taken round, enclosing probably a letter from the Bishop of the diocese, then the Mis- sioner's letter, and then cards and papers with the list of services, which you should get as many people as possible to put up in their windows. Special mission hymns will also have been chosen, and will be practised by the congregation after Evensong on Sunday evening. {d!) One word about the hymns. Choosing the hymns will of course fall upon the missioners, but I may say that I find it best myself to have new 162 Parochial Missions hymns for a mission, or at any rate new tunes. A mission has to cut into the heart of a district, and the hymns undoubtedly are a great help in mak- ing it do so ; but the best hymns in the world, by constant repetition, lose their edge; and though the choir, who will not sit in their choir stalls but about the church during the mission, and also the congregation should know the hymns beforehand, yet they should not be chosen out of a book which they have perhaps used for years before the mission begins. Personally I have found the Durham mission hymn-book the best, but I do not wish to say a word against any of the many others. (4.) The course of the mission. — The mission then begins at last, and although, as the curate who has been helping in the preparation work, you will probably be rather tired, there will at any rate be this comfort for you when the mission begins, that you have for ten days got no sermons to prepare and no addresses to give yourself. {a) Assuming the mission to occupy the usual ten days, th^ first service will be on Saturday night for the reception of the missioners. There need be no great whip up for this service, as it is the faithful in the parish who receive the missioners, the mission itself not beginning until the next 163 Parochial Missions day. At this service the vicar of the parish commits the parish to the loving care and teach- ing of those whom he believes God has sent, and instals them in the stalls which they will occupy during the next ten days. A service for this reception will be found at the beginning of the " Durham Mission Hymn-book." {p) The first Sunday. — On the next day the mission will begin, the second missioner probably preaching in the morning and the head-missioner taking the sermon and instruction in the evening. On the whole it is far better to begin at once the mission service which will go on during the week on the first Sunday night. Your aim is of course to get into church all those in the parish who at present go nowhere. Many of them are not ready yet for Evensong, cannot find their way about the Prayer-Bo ok, and do not understand the Psalms. You make a better start then with them, and are much more likely to get them to come evening by evening during the following week, if you start off at once with the mission-service which is to be used. I remember once all but losing one or two men who came for the first time to the mission on the Sunday night by keeping on the ordinary Evensong before the mission-service. 164 Parochial Missions (c) Tht /orm of mission service is very simple : a hymn, a few prayers, such as you may find in Bishop How's Pastor in Parochia^ especially that beautiful prayer for the conversion of all the souls in the parish given under the head of " Short Service for a Cottage Lecture ; " then another hymn, a short lesson, the sermon, another hymn, during which any may leave the church who wish, then an informal instruction, forming part of an after-meeting, which every missioner has his own way of conducting, and of which more presently. As I am not speaking primarily to those who are taking the mission, I would only say that you must yourself enter into the spirit of what is being attempted, refrain from sneering at a " Ranter's service," and, however musical you are, be content to go without Gregorians, at any rate for ten days. {d) The mens service will also form on the first Sunday a special feature, and you will have done well if you have had special cards of invita- tion circulated during the previous fortnight. A good men's service on the first Sunday gives a real lift to the mission at the start, and often leads many men who have never been to church before, to come regularly evening by evening 165 Parochial Missions through the week. There is never much diffi- culty about the second Sunday : by that time the parish has usually got quite stirred up by the nightly processions and what they have heard from others of the mission, and press in on the second Sunday, that they may at any rate have been to one service before it is closed ; so that it is the first Sunday which is the " tug of war." {e) For, remember fifthly, that the main object to which your efforts must be directed is to get as many as possible every night into church during th^ first five nights of the mission. A mission goes in a continuous course : it has to begin by " breaking up the fallow ground," it has to speak stern things of death and judgment, why we were ever born, and why we need a Saviour. Now it is quite obvious that the great mass of the parish want this teaching ; it is the very thing they do want, they are not ready for the building up in the faith in which the last days of a mission are spent. They want converting, they want bring- ing to the Cross, they want to be brought to a conviction of sin ; and though your missioner will doubtless as he preaches be remembering every evening those who may be brought there for the i66 Parochial Missions first time that night, yet he cannot repeat the course by which step by step he is trying, God helping him, to lead men from their self-com- placency and sin, first to the foot of the Cross, and then to a new life in the strength of the Risen Christ. Each day therefore in the early part of a mission is of priceless value in bringing in individual souls. (y ) In this visiting never give a man tip : re- member it may be the last chance he will ever have of being reached by the Gospel before he dies. I have never had to work up a mission in a parish for any one else, but I invariably ask as missioner for a list of the obdurate, and drop on to them if I possibly can myself. Some- times they will come, if the missioner goes himself, when they would not come under any other pressure. I can remember a man at the last mission I was taking, who was only in for twenty minutes in the whole day, and that for dinner. I was told it was of the utmost importance for his soul's sake to get him to the mission, and though I should have hesitated in ordinary parish work, I " harpooned " him, if I may use such an illus- tration, in those twenty minutes while " the meat 167 Parochial Missions was yet between his teeth," and landed him for mission service at night, to which he came every evening afterwards, and subsequently took a defi- nite resolution before the mission was over to change his life. There is such a thing then as standing too much on ceremony, though I do not recommend as an ordinary rule choosing dinner hour for a call, unless there is absolutely no other time at all. Nor at a mission time need you be afraid of over-importunity : if one re- members the tremendous issues at stake, one is bound to leave no stone unturned to save a man almost against his will. The angels had to lay hands on Lot and almost force him out of Sodom ; and I remember an answer in another mission, which, when reported by the rector of the parish, made us laugh very much at the time, but which showed the effectiveness of the visiting. '' Oh, yes, Fm coming," said an old man who had been a drunkard for years. *' There's Mr. So-and-So been round, and Miss So-and-So was here yester- day, and Mrs. So-and-So the day before, and now here's you. Fm coming, or I shan't have no peace ; " and come he did. {g) Then there is another branch of the work which will largely fall upon you as a curate of the i68 Parochial Missions parish, and that is the arranging of the intej'ces^ sion service. I say the arranging, because you will not conduct it : it will be conducted by the missioner. He will give out early in the mission that all those who are anxious about others shall write down the needs of those for whom they are anxious on slips of paper, and put them in a box placed for that purpose at the door. They are not, of course, to write down the names, but to state the exact trouble : ''A mother desires the prayers of the mission for her son who has taken to drink ; " '* A father asks you to pray for his two daughters who are living in sin ; " or some- times it is simply, "For my husband," "For my sons ; " and sometimes a touching petition is put in from a child, such as one I remember, " Please, Mr. Missioner, will you pray for father, that he may not be cruel to us any more." Such are some of the hundred cries which rise from a sin-stricken parish during a mission ; but often it requires a little explanation and help and tact to liberate the cries at all. It is for you to give that help ; it is for you to give the lead, to put in yourself a list of those for whom you are anxious in your district, and to be so in touch with the needs of the congregation, that you may suggest 169 Parochial Missions here and there a prayer where you know a soul is harassed at home, or in great anxiety about another. Where writing is a difficulty, you may even write it down, and so lead, by precept and example, all over whom you have any influence to rest upon this in- tercession service, as what it is, the very pivot on which the mission turns. If you do this, you will be wonderfully rewarded. Not only are there often the most marvellous answers to prayer vouch- safed during the mission, in drunkards reclaimed, and godless brought in ; but the whole parish is left believing in intercession in a way it never has believed before. {Ji) Then, again, the Slightly procession will fall largely to your share. I was very sad the day torches were forbidden by the police in London. We have never had such good processions since. There is something about torches which have a peculiarly " fetching " power. It seems almost impossible for any man, woman, or child to stay in a house, when the bright light of torches is playing on their windows. Time after time in other large towns where they were not forbidden, we have had the whole population of the street outside their houses listening in awed silence to the singing of the choir, robed in white, which 170 Parochial Missions slowly winds down the street, singing, " Souls of men, why will ye scatter ? " or — " Come to the merciful Saviour who calls you, Oh, come to the Lord who forgives and forgets. Though dark be the fortune on earth that befalls you, There is a bright Home above w^here the sun never sets." And it is here that you, as curate of the parish, are so useful. You go down one side of the street, while the missioner goes down the other, and personally invite the men standing at the door, who have by this time, that is between seven and eight, come home from their work. You will probably know many of them ; and though you will get from many " Not to-night, sir — not to- night," yet you will see some of them in church another night, and in any case you will be almost certain to find that the second Sunday sees them in church, either at the men's service in the after- noon or at the evening service. However, the days of torches are over, at any rate in London, not in consequence of our Church missions, but in consequence of other more rowdy processions which carried torches, and so we have in these degenerate days to do our best with hur- ricane lamps. These will be carried by working- men, who will find in this a useful piece of Church 171 Parochial Missions work to do ; and I have even known men who, when the mission began, were half-inclined to scofF at it, who yet have become " lamp-bearers " before the end. The main thing is so to hold the lamps that the choir may have nothing to do but sing. Never let the boys who sing carry the lamps, or you get the most quavering and un- certain notes, which bring discredit on the whole mission, and are very unlike the confident and certain sound with which the Church should bear her witness when she does go out into the open air. I dwell on these processions, as I attach great importance to them. You must always remem- ber that half your tracts, and mission papers, and notices of the mission are put safely on shelves or under books by the women, or used by the men to light their pipes with ; and that when the mission really has begun, you want some- thing to convince the people that it has begun, and the unusual appearance of a white-robed pro- cession in their streets is about the one thing un- usual enough to convince them that there really is something going on. They are quite different from the rather irreve- rent, quick, boisterous processions which we some- times see, and which we perhaps think not very 172 Parochial Missions conducive to the progress of religion ; these are slow and solemn, and awe rather than excite the crowd. One foggy night down by the docks, when I was not out with the procession, I came upon it suddenly in a specially dark spot, and it sounded as it came towards me, like " angels singing over a lost world." When you first propose it, you will often find that the choirmen are rather afraid of it, though the boys like the idea ; but it ends by the men all coming every night, and the boys weeping any night when, because of the wet, the procession cannot take place. It even moves the admiration and kindly envy of other Christian workers in the neighbourhood. " That was a fine procession of yours last night, sir," said a friendly Nonconformist who came to see me in the vestry. "There must have been sixty in procession and the rector at the head, but it wants more courage to go out with two others into Road, and break down in the first hymn." The procession of course starts from the church after a few words of prayer, and returns to the church just before the mission service begins. (i.) Then another part of the mission in which the curate of the parish will take a part will be 173 Parochial Missions services in workshops and factories during dinner^ hour. This is a most important part of the mis- sion, and it falls upon the vicar of the parish and the curates to secure as many openings as possible before the missioners arrive. It sometimes requires the joint-visit of missioners and clergy to get inside some, as in the case of some large gasworks the other day, where many thousand men were working. The great importance of getting inside these works in the middle of the day lies, not only in securing half-an-hour's straight talk to the very men who are probably not coming near the mission in the evening, but also that the visit is looked on by the men, if they at all take to the missioner, in the light of a call, which they return in church. Cer- tainly not only have the evening processions brought in hundreds who would never have come near the church without them, but the mid-day visits to factories have brought many to the mission, who tell you frankly that they never had any intention of coming until the service was held in the factory. Naturally it has to be very short, the whole thing over in half-an-hour. You take up either hymn sheets or hymn books, and if you cannot manage many prayers, you can at least make them uncover their heads at the end, and all say 174 Parochial Missions together, " Our Father," The ideal thing is, of course, to get the employer to give half-an-hour out of work time ; but, as this is equivalent to pay- ing them to listen to the missioner, you must not be surprised if all employers do not at once jump at the idea. If they do not, you must make the best of dinner-hour, and I shall never forget the ser- vices in the Beckton gasworks during dinner- hour. Standing on a tub in the middle of three hundred or four hundred men, who were devour- ing the last remnant of beefsteak by the lurid light of two or three furnaces, dressed in the rough clothes, which even the well-to-do among them put on during their working hours, and yet listening with all their ears to what we had to say, it was hard to recognise those wild-looking figures as the same men who, washed and changed, might be seen in the church in the evening at the mission- service, or, in cases where the " shifts " did not permit, on Sunday afternoon at the men's service. On another occasion there were fifteen hundred girls working in a jam factory. The employer nobly gave us half-an-hour for three days, and we had five hundred a-day for three days, some of whom at the end of the mission came out for Confirmation. 175 Parochial Missions The possibility of doing any of this work dur- ing a mission largely depends upon the amount the parish clergy have won the confidence of the employers of the district, as well as of the working people. (/^) But now the mission draws towards its close, and the efforts of missi oners and clergy alike have rather to be intensive than extensive ; in other words, you have to help the missioner to get into touch with individual souls who have already been brought into the mission, rather than to continue to bring fresh ones in. This you can do by care- fully watching those out of your district who have been coming regularly and who seem touched, and suggesting that they should accept the missioner's invitation and stay behind and see him. It may often happen, however, that they prefer, at first at any rate, to unburden their hearts to you, and you must therefore be prepared with prayer, and love, and care, to deal with souls yourself. It is impossible in one paragraph of a lecture to speak of what after all is the " art of arts " to the physician of souls, and which all of us are only slowly learning, as we know our own souls and the souls of others better and better, as life goes on ; but, at any rate, we may note a few essentials. Be 176 Parochial Missions faithful : probe home ; it is the most merciful thing to do, whatever pain it gives, and it is abso- lutely essential in a mission, which is nothing if not "charged with reality." Get the whole burden of the conscience told out to God : there can be no healing till there is frank and full confession to God ; then lead up to the Cross, valued at last when we know ourselves sinners, that so the soul, receiving pardon and peace, may go forth to serve God with aquiet mind. Then build up in the faith. Find out what is lacking : perhaps the man never prays, has never been baptized, never confirmed, never a communicant. Help him to form a reso- lution, thus running the molten ore of his emotion into a mould before it cools, and get him to go to the missioner and take a mission resolution- card, on which the resolution he makes before God is solemnly inscribed and attested. (7.) After work. — But after all it is when the missioners have gone away that your chief work begins ; then almost everything depends upon you and your colleagues. The men who have taken resolutions to join a Bible-class, of which a list with names and addresses will be given you by the missioners, must be looked up and got together at once before the influence of the mission grows 177 M Parochial Missions weaker : the confirmation candidates have to be pre- pared ; and those who have been brought to church for the first time must be prevented falling back when Matins and Evensong resume their place. You will find it helpful for a time to continue the mission service once a week, say on the day on which the concluding thanksgiving service was held ; the mission hymns, which by that time they will have learnt to love, should be used, and in fact everything done to lessen the strain of the reaction which almost inevitably comes when the mission is over. You must not be disappointed if some fall back, but it is for you to make that number as few as possible. A mission is like a wave which breaks upon the beach, and though it falls back, it will leave some safe upon the shore, as a monument of the mission for the years to come ; and this at any rate it is almost certain to do, it will send the workers of the parish forward as a missionary band which bears the high commission, not merely " to do parish work," but "to convert the world to God." (8.) And now, before I bring this lecture to an end, I should like to face two questions about missions which you may have to face before many years are over, and the first one is, " Shall I 178 Parochial Missions have a Tnission in my parish f " In answering this question you must remember that a mission is not a galvanic battery which can be brought in to galvanise life where there is no life before. What a mission rather does is to bring to a head and focus into a new force the life and work that has been going on for years. I can remember a parish where patient work had been going on for years without any very striking results ; but when the mission came, it was like a match put to a carefully laid fire — there flamed out into astonishing results the patient work of years. {a') The first question then you will have to ask is this, Have I been long enough in my parish to know my people and to let them know me .? Do I know them well enough to put my finger on their needs, and can I shepherd them when the mission is over ? (^) Again, how long ago is it since there was a mission in the parish .? To repeat missions con- stantly is a fatal mistake ; it is like living on stimu- lants ; and even if there has been no mission in your time, you must inquire carefully whether a mission was held in the time of your predecessor. It is true that in great cities the population changes 179 Parochial Missions so rapidly that one need not wait so long as in small towns ; but even there, from five to ten years at least should elapse before another mission. {c) Lastly, have you enough workers? Have you got, that is, in a central body of com- municants, a nucleus on which you can depend ? Christ's own plan seems to have been to call out, one by one, individual workers, to train them carefully Himself, and then, through them, to set about the task of converting the world. All this is beautifully traced in a book for which the Church at large is grateful to Cambridge — Pastor Pas- torum. This surely must be our method ; and if there is no central body with which to work, it will be far better to get it together one by one, by your individual exertions, in ordinary parish work, and postpone your mission till you have it. If any of these essentials are absent, avoid being dragged into a mission because there is a general one in the Deanery, but keep your parish out of it, and let them simply join in praying for the others. (9.) And the other question is. Shall I go as under-missioner ? There is a terrible lack of mis- sioners in England, and each generation, as it comes up from the Universities, must be ready, after due preparation, in some way to supply the lack. You 180 Parochial Missions will probably shrink at first from the very idea of it, but after ail, when you are asked solemnly by some one who has the right to ask, it is of the nature of a call from God, and must be solemnly considered. You must askyourself then — {a) Have I been long enough in parish work to be able to some extent to help distressed souls ? {J?) Can I speak fluently enough without a manuscript ? {c) Have I grasped the " proportion of faith," so as to lay, so far as possible, the whole truth, point by point, before the people in a mission ? Even if you could not honestly answer all these questions in the affirmative, you might yet go to take the children's work, always supposing you can speak to children, which is not a specially easy thing to do ; but if you cannot in some degree answer these questions, it would be as well at any rate not to take a mission church where you will see little of your chief, and be left very much to your own resources. If you do, after prayer and consultation with some one whom you trust, decide to go, then [a) be loyal to your chief : take cheerfully the part he assigns to you, and refer cases you cannot deal with to him. Remember it is he who takes the mission under Christ, and the souls in the parish are in- i8i Parochial Missions trusted during those ten days to his care. {U) Aim throughout your preaching at the conscience and will rather than the feelings ; it is when a man says, " Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do ? " that he is a converted man, not before, {c) Have a course thought out beforehand, which may be varied according to circumstances, but which will ensure your preaching the whole faith once de- livered to the saints. Such a course I suggest in the Appendix as a single instance. {d) Lastly, discourage any rivalry between the daughter-church and the mother-church, a rivalry which is not uncommon. And, now, my course is done. My readers must forgive the simplicity of what I have said, and what may have seemed the small points of detail into which I have entered. I have spoken, I confess, not as a professor speaking to learned students, but as a man speaks to his young brothers, when they are setting out upon a task of which he has him- self learnt the difficulty. I have simply tried to put myself in the place of those entering on untried work, and to say what I should have liked to have had said to me under the same circumstances. I ask you to forgive me for this, and to make this 182 Parochial Missions course of lectures merely a preliminary to further study. When there is a Cambridge House in South London to back up the noble work already done by your college missions, I hope you will go to it, and get that practical experience which is worth any number of lectures before you are ordained. Those who have college missions would get doubtless valuable experience by going to work at them ; to those who have none, so far as accommodation allows, I shall give a hearty wel- come at the Oxford House. In any case I hope that all of you who intend to take up this work will go for a time to one or other of the Theological Colleges, or Clergy Training-Schools, and have that devotional train- ing you can receive nowhere else ; and then when duly prepared may you go forth to your work full of the mission spirit, ready to spend and be spent in the service of your Lord for the salvation of the souls He died to save, and having followed Him to the end, bearing His Cross, may you follow Him at last to His eternal glory ! APPENDIX Suggested course of Sermons and Instructions for a Mission Sermons I ? — "A dying man' (Ps. 1. What am xxxix.). 2. What have I got to do?— "To give an account of myself to God " (Rom. xiv. 12). 3. Why was I born? — "For this end was I born ... to bear witness unto the truth " (St. John xviii. 37). 4. The Cross. What has been done for me? — ** Pie loved me and gave Him- self for me " (Gal. ii. 20). What is being done for me? — Daily preservation of body and provision in the Church for my soul. ' ' Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do ?" (Acts ix. 6). 7. (Saturday.) The Sacraments. Instruc- tion only. 8. (2nd Sunday.) "Certain victory" (Rom. viii. 37). 9. Decision for Christ (i Kings xviii. 21). 10. Thanksgiving Service. The instruction should never be made a new sermon, but a homely expansion and reiteration of the main point driven in by the sermon. It is often delivered by the missioner dressed only in a cassock as he walks up and down the church. 5- 6. Instructions God's claim on me. Self-examination. Self-examination on life as a life of witness. Forgiveness. Bible reading. On making a resolution. Prayer. Confirmation. DATE DUE >^#-*r-a 1 — CAYLORD PRINTtO (N U t « Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 1 1012 01024 9193 &mm^ i 'M :]■■'■ .i: •.'■^-.