IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY JAMES ADDERLEY, 1916. Frontispiece. IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY REMINISCENCES OF OLD FRIENDS BY JAMES ADDERLEY Hon. Canon of Birmingham LONDON T. FISHER UNWIN, LTD. ADELPHI TERRACE First published in 1916 (All rights reserved] AUTHOR'S NOTE THE author wishes to acknowledge the kind- ness of the Editors of Everyman, Ecclesia^ and the Christian Commonwealth for allowing him to make use of portions of articles by him which have appeared in their publications. 344533 CONTENTS PAGE ECCLESIASTICAL ...... 9 First experience of Church work On cribbing sermons Robert Eyton St. Alphege, Southwark Evangelical Catholicism " The Bitter Cry of Outcast London" Bethnal Green Cosmo Gordon Lang Dr. King Francis Paget Canon Scott Holland Philip Waggett Dr. Liddon Toynbee Hall Canon Barnett Oxford House Archbishop Benson Herbert Hensley Henson Bishop Walsham How Frederick Temple My first and only curacy Henry Bodley Bromby The Christ Church Mission Luke Paget Dr. Mason Brother- hoods Father Benson Basil Maturin Father Ignatius Caldey Berkeley Chapel Dr. Percy Dearmer " Spikes " Plainsong Hyde Park preaching Bishop Creighton Bishop Ingram Bob Dolling Dr. Westcott Canon Knox Little St. Mark's, Marylebone Road "Critical Questions" Dr. Inge "Ballad of London Town " Saltley Bishop Gore Nonconformist friends Dr. Dale R. J. Campbell Honorary Canonry Anonymous Letters. II DRAMATIC . .136 Dramatic tastes Hams Hall theatricals Oxford The Philothespians Jowett and the O.U.D.S. Arthur Bour- chier Frank Benson Sir Henry Irving and others "Windsor Strollers " and "Old Stagers" Religion and the Drama. Ill LITERARY . . .168 Tract-writing "Stephen Remarx " My other books Goodwill Hall Caine Oscar Wilde G. K. Chesterton Punch Amateur authors Clerical literature Sermons George Russell. 7 8 CONTENTS IV PAGE SOCIALIST . . . . . -193 My father Gladstone and Disraeli Ben Tillett -The great Dock strike Charles Marson Shuttleworth and Headlam Mr. Bradlaugh The Christian Social Union The Church Socialist League Tom Mann John Burns Keir Hardie Robert Blatchford G. B. Shaw George Lansbury The Suffragettes Socialism and the War OPINIONS . . . . . . 225 The opinions of clergy " The gloomy Dean " and the Socialist clergy Christian objections to Socialism con- sidered The Church and everyday life Religious edu- cation Sabbatarianism The Continental Sunday. VI CHESTNUTS . . . . . .270 War anecdotes Bishop Billing Bishop Blomfield's wit Father Noel Father Stanton Extempore effusions Unconscious humour Funny mistakes Pulpit stories Irish chestnuts Whatelyand Trench Irish and Scottish stories American wit Prayer Book chestnuts. INDEX 299 ILLUSTRATIONS JAMES ADDERLEY, 1916 . . . Frontispiece FACING PAGE SIX HEADS OF OXFORD HOUSE . . . . 6l OUR LAST APPEARANCE TOGETHER ON THE STAGE . 145 JAMES ADDERLEY, 1889 .... 197 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY ECCLESIASTICAL First experience of Church work On cribbing sermons Robert Eyton St. Alphege, Southwark Evangelical Catholicism "The Bitter Cry of Outcast London" Bethnal Green Cosmo Gordon Lang Dr. King Francis Paget Canon Scott Holland Philip Waggett Dr. Liddon Toynbee Hall Canon Barnett Oxford House Archbishop Benson Herbert Hensley Henson Bishop Walsham How Frederick Temple My first and only curacy Henry Bodley Bromby The Christ Church Mission Luke Paget Dr. Mason Brother- hoods Father Benson Basil Maturin Father Ignatius Caldey Berkeley Chapel Dr. Percy Dearmer " Spikes " Plainsong Hyde Park preaching Bishop Creighton Bishop Ingram Bob Dolling Dr. Westcott Canon Knox Little St. Mark's, Marylebone Road "Critical Questions" Dr. Inge " Ballad of London Town " Saltley Bishop Gore Nonconformist friends Dr. Dale R. J. Campbell Honorary Canonry Anonymous Letters. I MUST crave the reader's indulgence and ask him not to think that, by putting my story in the first person, I want to claim any self-im- 10 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY portar.ce in the Church. I am and always shall have been what Dean Farrar (speaking of a newly made bishop) once called " a third-rate ecclesiastic." Like the late Lord Lyttelton, 41 I go third-class because there is no fourth." I want to call attention, not to myself, but to the various people I have met (and I have met a good many) in the Church. At the same time, I must perforce intrude some of my opinions on 1 the reader, or he will find himself drowned in an unintelligible hotchpotch of words. My first experience of Church work was under Father Goulden, of St. Alphege, South wark. Living alone in London, I used to wonder to myself what I could do for the Church, which I always loved, long before I thought of taking Orders. When quite a little boy I had made up my mind that I could not be a parson because I should never be able to learn to give the Blessing at the end of the service without a book ! I admired my two brothers who were going to be ordained, but did not think I could ever emulate them. It was Robert Eyton, with his wonderful sermons at St. Mary's, Graham Street, who converted me to a practical Christianity. His sermons, by the way, were (what is called) " cribbed " from Frederick Denison Maurice, Mason, and Holland, but they were very ECCLESIASTICAL 11 wonderful all the same. I am quite sure that it is possible to crib sermons and be very " original " at the same time. Other instances of this were Father Maturin's sermons, which were mostly from Phillips Brooks, and Bob Boiling's, which were mostly Mr. Osborne's. These men took the leading thought from some other preacher, even sometimes the skeleton of the sermon, but made it their own in a very different sense to that in which a thief makes your watch his own. While I am on the subject of cribbing sermons I must refer to the pathetic story of the Lord Mayor who was caught doing it. He addressed a large audience on Sunday morning at the Polytechnic. What must have been his feelings on the following morning when the Daily Chronicle set his sermon out in parallel columns with one of Mr. Spurgeon's ? Parts of it were, if I remember aright, word for word the same. He got out of the mess somehow. There is a still more famous case of a celebrated preacher who pub- lished a sermon with the queer text " And Gashmu saith it." Of course anybody who had read Dr. Talmage's sermon on the same text would naturally compare the two. Many people did this. Comment, as they say, is needless. I may take this opportunity to correct an impression derived from another 12 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY sermon by this same preacher. It was a sermon on the death of the late Duke of Clarence. On the frontispiece (I think) the writer quotes the hymn- Fling open wide the golden gates And let the victors in. Unkind gossips, wanting to make a good story, declare that he printed these words thus And let the Victor in. It was not so. Dr. Liddon's sermons are very easily cribbed. They are so perfectly arranged and so lucid that any parson may be forgiven, I think, for having a try. In connexion with this I remember a Cowley Father (now a Bishop) telling me a good story. He was to preach at Sunday evensong at St. Paul's and it was St. John the Baptist's Day. I suppose he had been reading one of Liddon's sermons on the subject, and he preached it in his own way (a very good 1 way, I may mention, for he was himself a first-rate man). Now, Liddon had been preaching in the afternoon and, as luck would have it, had preached his old pub- lished sermon. Somebody kindly informed my friend of this as they sat down to supper. The Cowley Father thought he had better confess at once to Liddon, which he did. It ECCLESIASTICAL 13 drew forth from the great preacher one of those delightful sentences which he always delivered with a twinkle of the eye : " Dear friend, it is a pleasure in these days to hear two clergy- men saying the same thing." I remember, too, Dr. Gore making us feel a little uncomfortable once in a retreat, when he dryly remarked that on many of our sermons we could only make this reflection, " Alas ! master, for it was borrowed." Personally, I have found it a good plan (to save the gnawings of conscience) to confess openly when one hears a good sermon : " Look here I tell you plainly, I am going to crib that." I have even been honoured by having had my own sermons cribbed. This was brought home to me somewhat cruelly once. A very dear friend of mine, one of the best preachers I have ever heard, but a very humble person, was in the habit of jotting down notes of what I said when we took missions together. These he used to fire off in his own parish when he got home to Yorkshire. He once asked me to spend a Sunday with him and preach to his people. I did my best for him, but when his rough north countrymen were asked what they thought of my sermons, they replied : ' Why, he's nowt but ! " (men- tioning the parson's name). They had heard all my best epigrams before ! 14 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY This has been a long digression. I was writing of Robert Eyton. It was for him that I did my first bit of district visiting. He had appealed for help in this way, and I answered him by putting myself at his disposal. I shall never forget the terror I experienced when I first knocked at the doors in Pimlico to ask people to come to church. It is a little con- fusing when a woman looks out of the top window and shouts : " Well, young man, and what do you want?" Canon Barnett used to hold that we had no right to force ourselves into people's houses in this way. I suppose the parish clergy must do it, but ought the laity to do so? Certainly in well-to-do quarters it must be very difficult. In the West London Mission a curate was ushered into the midst of a select circle of ladies and gentlemen, and began at once, " Do you have family prayers? " Bishop Wilkinson (when Vicar of St. Peter's, Eaton Square) is said to have insisted on his curates visiting the rich, and I remember hear- ing how the good Father Mackonochie once felt it incumbent on him (this is not a pun) to storm the shops and warehouses in St. Alban's parish. It may be brave work, but it is certainly very difficult. Nobody would like doing it. Yet we clergy should ask ourselves, Why, if we feel no com- punction in behaving like this in a poor ECCLESIASTICAL 15 man's house, should we shrink from it in Belgravia ? My first district visiting was a failure. I then boldly wrote to Father Goulden and offered to work for him. I had read his famous " Red Book," describing the wonders of St. Alphege's. It was certainly a terrible parish in those days. The Father had no mercy on the neophytes among his Church workers. He simply planted me down in charge of a rough boys' club and told me to "manage" it. Honestly, I was terrified by those boys, and I know that I did them no good whatever. I could not keep any order amongst them. How could I, straight from Christ Church? It would have been like pro- posing to read a tract at a Bullingdon dinner. I simply hated those evenings as they came round week by week. But I learnt much that has served me in good stead in after-years. For one thing it was from dear Father Goulden that I learnt to combine the best in Evangelical religion with the best in Catholicism, or rather to know that they are not two religions, but one, if rightly understood. This Evangelical Catholicism of Father Goulden's is the greatest power still for bringing Christians together. You find evidence of this in the life and work of all the most successful " Ritualists " such as Stanton, Dolling, and George Russell. 16 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY While militant Protestants are wasting their time in inveighing against the Mass and the Confessional, the Evangelical Catholic is showing the earnest Evangelicals among the Nonconformists that he is after the conversion of souls, and that the confessional is only the penitent form in another guise, while the " Mass " is the great Gospel service and far more Evangelical than Matins. The Noncon- formists learn this more quickly than the " Low Churchmen," and that is why they are adopt- ing and adapting Catholic liturgies for use in chapels while the others are still fighting to preserve Matins. Goulden was called a Methodist. I have been called the same by the editor of " Who's Who " or the " Daily Mail Year Book" (I forget which). It was Goulden who made me this. I thank his memory for it. It has always kept me in charity with Nonconformists. " Love conquers all " is most true in Christian work. The hap- piest moments of my life have been when I have been able to preach in chapels and otherwise fraternize with the Free Churches. Then came the great turning-point in my career. " The Bitter Cry of Outcast London," written by a Nonconformist minister (who ought to be canonized), had successfully directed the attention of the West End to the ECCLESIASTICAL 17 East. The Universities were aroused, and, whereas up to the year 1883 vou could count on your fingers the names of men, like Edward Denison, who had studied the social question on the spot and lived among the people, after that time it became the commonest thing in the world for both " ladies and gentlemen " to explore East London. Toynbee Hall was started, and very soon in its wake came the Oxford House. I wrote boldly to my dear friend Henry Scott Holland, and said that I should like to go there (though my father was old-fashioned enough not to like the idea). I remember going to ask Holland for his advice, and the beautiful prayer he offered up for me to Him " who was always loyal to the Father." For another reason that interview is impressed upon my mind. It was then that I met Charles Gore for the first time. Oxford House has been so often described that it is hardly necessary to do this again. But it may be worth mentioning that in those early days it was not the grand place it is now. Those were primitive times, when an Oxford don (now Bishop of Truro) could be seen carrying his bath across the road to his diggings in the "Buildings." On my first night in Bethnal Green there was no room for me in the house, and I re- member laughing with my brother over the 2 18 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY quarters in Cheshire Street where I was billeted. The House itself was only an old schoolroom of St. Andrew's parish. On the upstairs floor we partitioned off some cubicles and made a sitting-room where we used to shiver over a stove on winter nights. The leading spirits of the place at that time were Douglas Eyre (who has kept up his connection with the House longer than any of us) ; Rev. W. E. Jackson, our first Secretary, one of the most patient and good-humoured men I ever met ; and Knight Bruce, the Vicar, who afterwards became Bishop of Bloemfontein and Mashonaland in succession, and died early in his career. He was a splendid fellow of the type of Charles Kingsley (whose memory he worshipped), and under whom I was taught to worship three other great names Westcott, Creighton, and Benson. Knight Bruce had a quaint way of referring to Benson as " the Archbishop who, with the exception of the present company (consisting of oneself, and perhaps two or three other numskulls), is the man with the greatest brains in England." " Garn with you ! " is what I always felt in- clined to respond. When Jackson left us I was chosen Head of the House, really (this without any mock modesty) because there was nobody else in the place who could devote the time to it. And I could only give my even- ECCLESIASTICAL 19 ings, for I was working all day at a solicitor's office . i i I have always found that the various places for which I have worked have taught me much more than I ever taught others therein. This was certainly true of Oxford House. We had a very happy time and I formed some lasting friendships. Frederick Seawell and Philip Moor and William Campion (the pioneers of Oxford House) were cut off by death, but Herbert Hensley Henson and Cosmo Gordon Lang and many others I got to know then, and those two, as we all know, are still very much alive. I always flatter myself that I had something to do with the shaping of the careers of those two men. I think I started Henson on his combative career by sending him one Sunday evening to answer G. W. Foote at the Hall of Science on " Christianity and Slavery." I could not go myself, but I fancy that Foote met his equal in the young Fellow of All Souls on that occasion. 'Henson, having tasted blood, took to fighting the Secu- larists, who at that time were a real power in East London, and he led another famous debate in Oxford Hall, where everybody agreed that he came off the conqueror. He has continued to fight everybody in turn since Dissenters, Church Army, Salvation Army, High Church Bishops, Christian Socialists, Army chaplains. 20 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY Whether he is as successful in his attacks as he was when he fought Mr. Foote I will not say here. In the case of Lang it was on this wise. I started the Sunday Afternoon Lectures for Men, which have gone on ever since, and have done a vast amount of good. Dr. Bright gave the first ; Lang, who was then a student for the Bar and residing at Toynbee Hall, gave the second. I was so much impressed by his power that I wrote afterwards to him and asked him (though he was a Presbyterian) to give some addresses to men in one of our mission- halls. He used to say that it was that which set him thinking, and eventually caused him (I do not say it was the only cause !) to join the Church of England and prepare for Holy Orders. Little did I think that not many years later I should be with him at Portsea a few days after he had received the King's call to be a Bishop. He was soon afterwards confirmed and ordained. I suppose it is unique for a man to be admitted into the Church's fellowship and then become an Archbishop within about twenty years. Oxford was de- termined to have him back, and he was made Dean of Magdalen. It was then, and when he became Vicar of St. Mary's, that he did so good a work among undergraduates. His life of the undergraduate Balfour is ECCLESIASTICAL 21 a delightful story of a modern saint who owed much to the influence of the Vicar of St. Mary's, and who was not without his effect on Lang himself. The Arch- bishop has been fortunate in getting into touch with every phase of life, from the society of Oxford Blues, amateur actors, semp- stresses, and curates up to the Throne itself. Dr. Lang's friendship with the late Queen is well known, as also the conversation in which, when Her Majesty suggested his taking to himself a wife, he replied that he could get rid of any of his sixteen curates whenever he wished, whereas he could never get rid of one wife. His acquaintance with Royalty never made him obsequious. On a certain occasion when he had to preach before the present King (then the Duke of York), and he had been told that the Duke did not like missionary sermons, he took good care to preach him one about foreign mission work. His vicariate at Portsea was as noteworthy as all his efforts have been. Mr. Lang would have a blackboard in the pulpit and teach the congregation like children without making them think that they were being treated as such. His Sunday Lectures to men were different from the vapid rubbish that is ordi- narily associated with P.S.A.'s. Those who were present at the last meeting at Portsea 22 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY will remember how he gathered up into one address all he had tried to teach during his three years how he had led them on, by means of biographical lectures about " Great Men of the Victorian Era/' to understand what a wonderful century the nineteenth century was, and how much we had all learnt from men of science, poets, painters, and theologians. There was only one of the sixteen curates allowed to take the Vicar's place, and that was Cyril Garbett, who is now in his master's place, and still gathers a thousand men to hear him every Sunday. But Portsea could not contain this young spirit for long, and when Bishop Ingram was appointed to London it was felt certain that Lang would go to Stepney. Lord Salisbury sent the letter by mistake to " Southport " (a mixture of South- sea and Landport), and considerable delay en- sued in making known the King's offer. It would be attributing affectation to him to say that he was not pleased. There are some men who cannot help knowing that they are meant to be leaders, and Lang knew that God was using these human authorities to call him to the Episcopate. And splendidly (yes, that is exactly the word) he rilled the office of East End Bishop. Back again in the place where he had first found the joy of the Catholic religion, it is not surprising that he did well ECCLESIASTICAL 23 for the Church. He was just the man to work with the Bishop of London. More highly gifted intellectually, more dignified, he just contributed to the diocese that element which was needed. There were East London work- ing-men who preferred the dignity of Dr. Lang to the bonhomie of the Bishop of London. There were West Enders who liked to hear Dr. Ingram's stories of Bethnal Green better than the Bishop of Stepney's apologetics in the aristocratic churches. Dr. Lang is one of the few who can preach a really good sermon. His sermons are in- tensely practical and intelligible, really eloquent and well composed. His exposition of Scrip- ture is unrivalled, except perhaps by Dr. Mason and Dr. Scott Holland. He owes this power to his Presbyterian training, for none knows so well as the Scotsman how to expound. He is a real orator, as those who listened to his maiden speech in the House of Lords, in defence of the Budget, remember. Noble lords shook their heads and murmured something about " youth " and " obvious fallacies " (the present writer heard them in the Lobby), but could not deny that a new orator had arisen in their midst. Yet it was in his Budget speech that one also felt a certain deficiency. Here was a prophet, but somehow it was not prophecy. 24 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY What a splendid opportunity for him to have given the Lords a hint that God might actually be using Mr. Lloyd George to consider whether the ordinary methods of a ground landlord were quite compatible with the Sermon on the Mount ! Instead of which it was an appeal to political economy ; it showed how the Budget was not so dangerous as they thought ; it hinted that its rejection might land them in difficulties. It was oratory, majestic and wonderful, but it was not prophecy. His sermon at the Coronation was much more prophetic, and his address on Democracy is more what we should wish to expect from him. He recognizes the intensely religious nature of our British Labour Movement and is one of the few Church leaders who has noticed the great Christian meeting of Labour men at the Browning Settlement. This brings me to his C.E.M.S. work. Of course, he has made the C.E.M.S. what it is. He has put heart into the laymen, and there is nobody they will listen to (not even Bishop Ingram) with such enthusiasm as they will to him. Just as it was a bold act on the part of Lord Salisbury to send Dr. Ingram to London, so it was on the part of Mr. Asquith to choose this young man for the northern primacy. But each of these bold actions has already been amply justified. The late Bishop of ECCLESIASTICAL 25 Salisbury lamented Archbishop Lang's partial inexperience, but I cannot agree with him. What is the lack of a little experience in the red tape methods of Convocation compared with the delightfully new experience of having a young Archbishop, full of vigour and en- thusiasm, backed by abnormal intellectuality, administering the affairs of the northern Church ? I have said little of the spirituality of Dr. Lang, but any one who knows him is aware how intense it is. When dealing with a refrac- tory parson, I remember his saying : " I felt I could not ask the man to kneel down and say a prayer about the matter." He could not give out his own spirit where there was not likely to be any response. That speaks volumes. He has, indeed, all the strong reli- gion of a Scotsman combined with the love of souls and the faith in the sacraments which will always produce a faithful priest and pastor. God bless him ! This seems the place to tell how the Assembly of the Scottish Church wired to Lang on hearing of his preferment : " Come back ; all will be forgiven." But I must continue my autobiography, which seems to occupy the place of the Prayer Book in a certain ritualistic church " it appears at intervals only to be imme- 26 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY diately suppressed." I have never been so important a person in the Church as in those early days of Oxford House. I was the " ecclesiastical young man/' always beloved of Bishops and Church ladies. I was asked to address all kinds of meetings, and looked upon as a sort of freak the fellow who might live in luxury in Belgravia but preferred Bethnal Green. This is only what my friends thought. Personally I hated the West End, and have only been to two grand " parties " in my life. Immediately that I was ordained, two years later, I sank into insignificance. Of those meetings the one that stands out most in my memory is the " Rub Lightly " meeting at Christ Church Hall. It was the first time that the saintly Dr. King had made his bow to an Oxford audience as a Bishop. I had to speak for Oxford House, and I remember Philip Waggett chaffing me about a very vulgarly flashing stud I wore in the centre of my shirt-front, a fashion we had in those days. Dr. King rose to speak and the whole house trembled with applause. Aubrey Moore, in moving a vote of thanks, said : ' When an Oxford speaker wants two minutes in which to collect his thoughts, he has only to say * Dr. King,' and he gets it." Well, the Bishop's speech became famous because of the following sentence. He had been telling us how wr ECCLESIASTICAL 27 were to treat the poor in Bethnal Green. ' I was wondering," he said, " where to find a text for my sermon to-night. All my books are packed up except a Tertullian. But there was a match-box, and on it was written * Rub lightly.' That's it. Beware of the ecclesi- astical ' must 'you must ' rub,' but it must be a light rub." Nobody but one who knew Dr. King can exactly understand why this " rub lightly M speech evoked such enthusiasm. If you or I were to say it, it would sound flat just as do his young imitators in the pulpit who begin, " Dear people," and always make one angry. It does not do to imitate the saints in that kind of way. A young fool once tried to palm off an address to mothers he had heard Dolling give before an audience of ladies. The result, I am told, was disastrous. While I am on the subject of Dr. King I had better indulge in a few more chestnuts about him. You have heard of the American who on hearing of Edward King's trial said : ' You English are a funny race. You don't often get a saint, but when you do you try to put him in prison." Certainly it was a mad act on the part of that odd Society the Church Association when they singled out Dr. King for prosecu- tion. The Archbishop's judgment was said by Dean Church to be " the bravest thing that ever 28 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY came forth from Lambeth." Perhaps it was, but the moral effect of the trial of a ritualistic saint was also the biggest score ever handed over by an adversary to his opponent in a game. King always said that his Protestant critics did him more good than harm. "You see/' he said, " I am so harmless when they find out the truth about me. They say I teach transub- stantiation, compulsory celibacy, and the con- fessional : when they find out that it is the Real Presence, voluntary confession, and the desirability of sisterhoods they will be quite surprised." He was one of those people whom his religious opponents found it very hard to ex- plain. A Jesuit postulant once told me that in a lecture which he attended on " Grace " the presence of holiness in " non-Catholics " was explained thus : " There is always a flaw some- where in the lives of non-Catholics. For instance, the Protestant Bishop of Lincoln is said to be a proud man ! " I think the lecturer might have done better than to make such a silly mistake. On the other hand, the " Evan- gelical " undergraduates in my day at Oxford frankly confessed that they could not explain away Dr. King. He had somehow managed to get on all right without having been " con- verted " after the approved fashion of those ECCLESIASTICAL 29 times. " Love conquers all " was never better exemplified than in Dr. King. He bore down opposition by the sympathy which, as Dr. Liddon said, " amounted in him to a genius." His face alone was an inspiration. I remember a very Broad Church don confessing to me the power of King's countenance over him ; and we know how some of the Lincolnshire opposi- tion melted away at the very sight of the old man in his " dressing-gown " (as they called his cassock). Nobody had a greater influence in Oxford between the days of Newman and Gore. Yet he was, as I heard him once say, " academically nothing." I wish the authori- ties would repeat the experiment of making an academical nonentity into a Bishop occa- sionally. " Bethel," the little outhouse in his garden at Christ Church, was the place where Sunday by Sunday this perfect love worked its wonders. He had a great sense of humour, and was quite alive to the awkwardness and gauche rie of some of the undergraduates, especially of those who were seeking Holy Orders. " We must get them in," he used to say with a twinkle in his eye, " and teach them which sides to put their knives and forks at meals." Personally I got to know him by singing comic songs to him after dinner. He forgave me many things in after-years because of those songs. He always saw the grotesque 30 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY side of things. The frequent crossing of them- selves by ritualistic boys he called " lamb's- tails." The initiated will, I suppose, know why. After the death of his old mother he came back from the cathedral one evening and said : ;< How sorry I am that she is not here for me just to be able to say, ' What a horrid sermon ! ' Then I should feel quite happy." Was it friendly sarcasm or was it sublime inno- cence that made him warn us on the first Sunday in Lent not to fast too much? When I remember the " Loders " and " Rousers " in the pews (they were the two crack clubs at the House) I think it must have been the former. Mr. Gladstone had the prophetic insight to make him a Bishop, although (as he said) " I have voted against him all my life." In his diocese the same old fascination continued among the ploughboys and farmers. " He must have been a ploughboy hisself," said one Confirmation candidate, listening to the advice of the Bishop on the treatment of horses. " I war cuttin' turnups t'other morning," said another, " and they were that awkward, an' I broke out swearing ; but then I remembered what t'old Bishop said when I war confarmed, an' so down I plunged on my knees among t' turnups an' prayed to be forgiven." What, again, could be sweeter than this ? ECCLESIASTICAL 31 Once in the lambing season the Bishop pictured the awful result of taking the lambs away from their mothers. So people's souls would dwindle and die if they were taken from prayer and Holy Communion and their mother the Church. " The two sets of persons who will go straight to heaven," said the Bishop once, " are the Tommies, and the old ladies who give a whole hyacinth to the altar." People who have no sense of humour will call this frivolous, but not those who knew Dr. King. This may seem a good point at which to write a word about my Oxford acquaintances among the clergy. My Headship of Oxford House prolonged my Oxford life far beyond my undergraduate days, and it was after those days that I became " ecclesiastical." I was looked upon as a buffoon before I took my degree, and if I fell in with the parsons it was chiefly to sing them comic songs at a temper- ance meeting. With Canon Scott Holland, for example, I came in contact at first, not as the budding priest but as the actor. This I describe in another part of the book. But my affection for him and for the late Francis Paget (my dear tutor) began long before I thought I should be ordained. I never felt so much at home with Paget as with Holland : I should never, for instance, have dared to write to " Dear Paget," while I think Holland was 32 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY " dear " before I had known him a week. I look upon Francis Paget as the highest example I have ever come across of a pure, simple Christian gentleman. He was one of those men in whose company I always felt a restraint because of his heart -searching holiness and transparent purity. This book, for instance, would have grated on his nerves, though it must not be thought that he did not love a joke or could not make one. Canon Scott Holland has shown us that in his " Bundle of Memories." The reader is referred to that marvellous book, and therein to Paget's ex- quisite reply to the suggestion that the learned Mr. Swallow should be asked to write a new Summa Theologica, " It is not every Swallow that can make a Summa." He was conscientious to a degree unparalleled. His rooms were under mine at the House, and if in conversation he thought he had perhaps not made his own position quite clear or had been in any way unjust he would come upstairs and knock at the door to correct the impression he might have left in my mind before he could go to bed in peace. He worshipped his own father, the late Sir James Paget. " I have never known him wrong," he said to me once. It was a great grief to Paget when any of his pupils got into trouble. Once upon a time my brother (now a very respectable Vicar) so ECCLESIASTICAL 33 far forgot himself as to place a cheese -cover full of flour on the head of a fellow -diner in I hill, called " B." The authorities were very angry about this. Years afterwards, on the Queen's birthday, I led off the National Anthem at dinner in Hall, and the whole assembly (ex- cepting, I suppose, the dons) caught it up. I was fined. Paget could not help laughing about it, and remarked, " It was so awfully like Reggie bonneting ' B.' " " B," I may mention, was also the hero (or victim) of the great Christ Church hoax in the seventies, when his friends printed three hundred bogus cards in- viting the tradesmen of Oxford to call on him at 10 a.m. to receive orders. The result was very alarming, especially when the undertaker arrived to measure " B " for his coffin ! " B " was really a delightful person, I believe, and took it all in good part. But I am wandering from the ecclesiastical to the miscellaneous, and I must return to Francis Paget. Any one who has read his sermons knows that he was one of the few clergy left who could, or rather did, really compose a homily. They are gems of literature as well as of deep spiritual power. I never felt this power more than on the last occasion on which I heard him, shortly before his death. It was at a " Convention " at which we had just listened to a torrent of words from a distinguished 3 34 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY parson, who told us exactly how many times a certain word was mentioned in the Bible. We were simply " fed up " with Dan. i., Phil, ii., John iii., and Col. iv., etc. Then, after this discordant storm of " Concordance," we had ten minutes' exposition of a passage in St. Peter by Paget, calm and thoughtful and devout, given without a note or a fault. His letters, too, were marvels of composi- tion. I cannot imagine him ever writing a hasty note. His caligraphy was alarming in its precision. I have no space here to repro- duce any of his letters to myself, but I can only say that of all the advice I ever received ,at critical moments in my career none was more carefully given or sounder than his. As to Canon Scott Holland, it would require a volume to write what I should like to about him. It is very difficult to write temperately and impersonally of another to whom one owes almost everything that he feels to be of any value in his own life. Were I asked for whom I would especially thank God, as Kingsley thanked God for Maurice, so would I for Holland. But for him I should never have gone to Oxford House or the Christ Church Mission, and without them I might have been an atheist or a " moderate " Anglican parson. Even in my Oxford days I should probably ECCLESIASTICAL 35 have been sent down in disgrace for illicit acting if Holland had not interceded for me with the Vice-Chancellor. Then there was the Christian Social Union. That would never have come into being without him ; and what do I not owe to that Society? But, chiefly, it has been the presence of a dear friend, seldom seen now, it is true, but felt to be in the midst. The Commonwealth is to me a kind of sacrament to assure me that the good man is alive (and shall I say kicking?), that the dear heart still beats with love and the dear soul still quivers with joy and fun as of old. No one, not even Bob Dolling or Henry Bromby among the faithful departed, or Charles Gore and George Russell among the living, means so much to me in the daily struggle of Church life. He is very much alive, one who may be called the Peter Pan of the Church the boy who never grows old. Right through all the dreary periods of Huxley and Wace, of Temple and the older Kensit, of Liddon and " Lux Mundi," of Henson and the Christian Social Union, up to the days of Chesterton and Dr. Saleeby, Redmond and Carson, Lansbury and Lloyd George, Asquith and the Pankhursts, Dr. Holland lives and laughs and loves, and never quarrels with any one. I kept a diary at Eton, covered with ink blots, and therein I wrote on a certain Sunday evening these words, 36 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY " Excitable priest preached." It was the im- pression made on me by hearing and seeing Holland for the first time. Sunday by Sunday we had been bored by the old Fellows who seemed never to have been boys themselves, by irritating strangers who told us the story of Bishop Patteson as if we had never heard it before, who reminded us in the summer half that there was a " spiritual bat/' and in the football season babbled about heavenly goals. Here at last was a preacher who was alive. He described the functions of the heart, as then known to science. It was indeed very exciting. It was a boy speaking to boys, but the amazing thing is that he is still a boy as he talks to us in middle age. Yet, of course, he is not merely boyish. That is the stupid mistake that a few people still continue to make about him. They think he is only joking. That is because they have no sense of humour themselves, and have not learned the simple lesson that it is the things of which we think most seriously that we generally laugh about. Canon Scott Holland is strangely misunderstood by many. We can forgive the little girl who saw nothing in him but a walking " Gradus ad Parnassum" and said, " What a lot of adjectives he knows ! ' r We can, perhaps, forgive the witty Bishop, on the look-out for a new bon mot wherewith to ECCLESIASTICAL 37 keep up his reputation, who remarked that he never used one word when five would do ; but we cannot forgive the tame asses of the desert who cannot detect the tremendous earnestness beneath his fun. His fun is really the exuberance of his Christian joy and hope. He is being " saved by hope." He must have his joke, and it is a good thing for us all that he must. He cannot help laughing at a politician floundering in theology ; a comfort- able statesman looking for votes while the poor are looking for bread ; a Nonconformist pastor worshipped by his flock while he declaims against priestcraft ; a Radical minister perse- cuting people for their opinions ; or a Bishop seriously alarmed because we do not have "Matins at ii.o" in Tibet, or expound the Act of Uniformity to the Fiji Islanders. British anti-Socialists who do not go to church, but are terrified by reports of con- tinental atheism ; political Liberals who have forgotten all their principles of reli- gious equality ; the old gentlemen at the Carlton Club who see the Pope and his Cardinals lurking beneath the folds of an Anglican chasuble ; Secularists who, with ponderous mid-Victorian arguments, declare that Christianity is played out at all these and many others Dr. Holland just smiles and goes on his way, " walking and leaping and 38 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY praising God." He will never give in. He will never despair. England (the very name is honey on his lips), the Church of England, the State, the people these are all great facts, full of power, possibility, destiny ; they are not to be apologized for or doubted. All will come right, not, of course, by " muddling through," but by active, energetic life which is bubbling and pushing and means to come out. This is what makes him the greatest of all our speakers on foreign missions. I re- member a great meeting at Exeter Hall which I always look upon as the beginning of the new missionary spirit which has resulted in " Missions of Help," and the general liveliness in the mission-field as compared with the state of things twenty years ago. He got in his joke on that occasion about St. James's Hall and the Christy Minstrels. In St. James's Hall the black is grease paint, and you laugh at it : in Exeter Hall (it was not an hotel then) you learn that the black is in the blood, and in Christ we are brethren, whatever our colours. Now, the occupation of Canon Holland on that one day was symbolic of the many-sidedness of his work. Already he had, I think, been battling with the Home Secretary all the morning about women's work, and pleading at Holborn Town Hall all the afternoon for a ECCLESIASTICAL 39 living wage, long before Convocation had dared suggest that it might be right. Another mistake that people make about the Doctor is to think that, because he is a " Christian Socialist," he has no other interests but those that have to do with economics and industry. Once we were preparing for a General Mission in Birming- ham, and the clergy were considering the names of those who should come and prepare us for it. Canon Holland was suggested. " Oh ! I think we must have a spiritual address," said some- body. What a futile remark ! In the first place, why should it be considered " un- spiritual " to prepare the way of the Lord in a great commercial city by mentioning social problems ? Would an Isaiah or an Amos or a John the Baptist be likely to avoid such sub- jects in Birmingham ? But, in the second place, how ignorant such a man must have been of Holland himself. I could not myself imagine Holland being unspiritual in dealing with social questions. The fuel that makes the fire of all his social prophecy is religion, is the gospel. He is very jealous for the Lord of Hosts. He simply cannot separate the gospel of Christ from the gospel of the King- dom of God on the earth. The very founda- tion of all, he says, is Christ Jesus of Nazareth, the Holy Ghost, the Catholic Church, the Sacraments. People who think thus of him 40 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY can never have read his books, let alone heard him speak. A word, now, about his books. It is much to be deplored that he has never published a big book, a magnum opus. Almost all his writing is to be found in sermons, or in the Commonwealth. Still, there is plenty to be found in them, so much, indeed, that when I once tried to arrange a volume of excerpts the publisher rejected it, because it ran into a quarter of a million words. The result of my attempt was, however, the issuing of " Personal Studies," one of his very best books, in which we have about ten sketches which tell us more about the men he deals with than can be found in the twenty heavy volumes of their biographies. His sermons are intensely scrip- tural ; in fact, one could not do better than take certain parts of the Bible, such as St. John, the Romans, the Ephesians, the Sermon on the Mount, the Parables, and cull from his sermons all he has said about them, verse by verse. It would be one of the best commen- taries that one could imagine. Again, he is a thorough Churchman. Anglicanism has never had a better apologist. " Creed and Character," which to my mind remains his best book, is the finest exposition of the Church position I know. " Christ or Ecclesiastes " and " The City of God " should also be read ECCLESIASTICAL 41 again and again. One of the most beautiful descriptions of the Blessed Sacrament ever written is in his article published in the Religious Review of Reviews, a magazine which is now defunct. But though Canon Holland is so devout a Churchman, he is in no way the narrow eccle- siastic. He can stand his own on almost any subject. Is it music? Read his "Life of Jenny Lind." Is it art? Read him on Ruskin in the Commonwealth. Is it philosophy? Read his anticipation of many of our modern novelties in " Logic and Life," written thirty years ago. Is it biblical criticism? Read his " Lecture on the Fourth Gospel," delivered at Aberdeen. Is it poetry? He is a poet himself. He has the mind of a poet. What could be more poetic than this description of spring? " No ! There is nothing in the world more beautiful than the coming of spring on an English countryside. Each year we doubt whether it can be so absolutely enthralling as the records in our memory assert. And then right in our face the whole miracle is done again. It is flung at us in its infinite variety, in its rollicking exuberance, in its unstinted and immeasurable splendour. Our former language, excited and ecstatic as it was, turns out to be miserably inadequate to the actual facts which laugh it down into humiliating 42 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY insignificance. That glow of the gleaming green on the larches is far beyond our finest remembrance of its fascination. The yellow flush on the willows, the purple tufts of the poplars, the sudden outbreak of the hazels, the shimmering glory on the birches, the sheen of the sunlight on the deep lawns of grass. These are what they were when ' the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.' And the cherry-blossoms are un- imaginable, humming with the live music of the bees. And the sweet breaths of air posi- tively pulse with the song of nightingales ; and the dome of heaven rings with the crowded gladness of the lark : and the wise thrush ' re- captures ' with overwhelming success ' his first fine careless rapture ' and sings and sings it over and over again, as if his and your delight in it could never end." There I must leave him or the reader will also kick, but as I re-read what I have written I feel it is but a meagre tribute to one who to my mind is the greatest prophet and priest of the Anglican Church. I can only thank God that he has been preserved from the subtle influence of the episcopal Upas-tree and can dance happily in the dear Tom Quad, as of old, in the freedom of his professorship. Of course, he ought to be a Cardinal, but appar- ently we cannot rise to that yet in our old ECCLESIASTICAL 43 State Church. The heralds tell us that Canons may wear green hats with one tassel. Could he not be persuaded to start the fashion ? The next autograph in my book which calls up Oxford memories is that of Philip Napier Waggett. I little thought when I used to nod " good morning " to the young science student as he passed through Peckwater that there went one of the strongest personalities whom I was to reckon as my friend in the near future. * The cleverest man I know/' was said of him by one who knows most of the great men of the day. When Aubrey Moore passed away it was instinctively felt that Philip was the only man who could succeed to his position in the Church as its best apologist on the side of science and theology. I cannot attempt to describe him. At the time of writing he is working as a military chaplain and has been mentioned in the dispatches of the Com- rnander-in-Chief . I was talking one day near the front to a fellow-officer of his and what he said expresses at least one truth about Waggett. " There is no subject upon which he is not an expert : if we talk of music or art or science or theology or the war, he seems to know everything. He has even got a new game for the little French child, who lives here, every evening." That is Waggett all over. Although science is of course his 44 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY strongest point when he lectured to some doctors in London once they found he had been reading far more up-to-date books than they had yet he is somehow able to master all subjects. In fact, it is sometimes more difficult to get him to talk science than other things. " Doctor he began a speech once ; ' who is always much less bored by biology than I am." I remember once when we had got him to lecture on " Heredity " at a University and he had given us something much better than he had ever written in a book books are said not to be his forte we were dismayed to find the next morning that the reporters had made p, hopeless muddle of it. We thought we had got something intelligible and concise out of him at last. But it was not to be. One of his best books, " The Scientific Temper in Religion/' consists of the sermons he gave at my church, St. Mark's, Marylebone Road, in 1903. His great friend was George Romanes, with whom he had a spiritual inti- macy into which we cannot pry, but it is an open secret that Philip ought to have written his Life, which would have been, among other things, a most valuable piece of Christian apologetic. Not that Philip would ever write or preach apologetic in the vulgar way. It is exactly his reserve and his artistic way of ECCLESIASTICAL 45 putting things which makes him so powerful an apologist. To him the truly scientific way of apologetic is not by logical reasoning but by experiment. I remember his once telling me that a scientific man is always much more impressed by the holy life of a saint than by any arguments from the professional apologist. He was always a little impatient when people asked him for scientific reassurements in order to bolster up their religion. " The truly religious man does not want to know why he stands on his hind legs, but whether when he prays by the graveside of his wife he is going to see her again." All the same, I think Philip is a little provoking sometimes. There are people who are beset by the over - confident unbelievers who tell us that nearly all scien- tific men are atheists, and we rather like to have a Cowley Father who can show cause why you can be scientific and Christian at the same time. Of course it is the fashion to say that the quarrel between science and religion is all over now that Queen Victoria is dead, but if you live near factories and do not only read the Chestertons you cannot feel quite so sure about that. I wish I could reproduce some of Philip Waggett's letters, of whic]| I possess scores, but there is no room here. There is a sort of Ruskifiesque flavour about them and something else which 46 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY is all his own. Rut there is one which may be worth printing. It was announced in the newspapers that Waggett was to be Bishop of Stepney. I believe there was no founda- tion for the report, but this was his reply to a very efTusive congratulation that I sent to " my very dear Philip. "- A thousand thanks for your kindest letter. I am afraid you will have a pang of disappointment when you hear that I am not going to be Bishop. Who starts these reports ? What shocks there must have been to-day in many worthy bosoms, and what articles are being written ! It is quite difficult to believe, after to-day's letters, that nothing has happened at all. I still live in hopes that I may have again to write my congratulations some day and shall receive a different answer. There are many more Oxford friends of whom I should like to write : of that splendid father-in-God the present Bishop of Winchester, always so kind to me at the University and at Bethnal Green ; of Dr. Sanday, who was always ready to help me in answering difficult questions in those days when, as I have said, East London was a hotbed of secularism ; of Dr. Bright, who would write me pages of Church history and affectionately warn me against socialism and loose theology ; of Dr. Liddon, who would honour me by asking me to preach in St. Paul's and treat me with a dignified sym- pathy under which I felt crushed. Liddon, ECCLESIASTICAL 47 however, did not ordinarily crush one. He was so gentle and sweet and urbane. I remember being told off by Mr. Frank Harris to try to persuade Liddon to answer some articles in the Fortnightly by Dean Fremantle on "The New Reformation." These articles were among the first indications of growing modernism amongst the Anglican clergy and, incidentally, the cause of Father Ignatius's wild attacks on the unfortunate Dean. Liddon was very kind, but very firm in his refusal. " Dear friend," he said, " if the editor really thinks these articles dangerous why does he publish them?" Afterwards he wrote me a characteristic letter on the whole question, and hinted that if he had complied with my request he would have called his article "The New Absurdity." As an instance of how rapidly thought develops, it is interesting here to note that Dr. Pusey was alarmed by Liddon's Bamptons, Liddon by Dr. Gore's, and now Dr. Gore is alarmed by " Foundations." So the way of theology is marked by shaking milestones. In those Oxford House days we did not trouble ourselves much about theological quarrels, though our position was very clearly differentiated from that of Toynbee Hall. We called ourselves " Church of England " and worked in connection with the parish churches 48 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY of the neighbourhood. Toynbee Hall, on the other hand, did all kinds of social work without asking for any test from its residents. On the whole, the Settlement movement has developed more on the religious side than any other, and it looks as if the Oxford House had set before itself the highest ideal. On the other hand, Toynbee Hall had a deeply spiritual man at its head to begin with, and, though he belonged to no particular party and confined his strictly religious work to his own Church of St. Jude's, it was impossible for Canon Barnett's influence at Toynbee Hall to be non-Christian. He made a deep study of East End life, and really knew the people. He caught the ear of the Universities, especially of Oxford. " Do you realize," he would say, " that all our social system is arranged on the tacit assump- tion that there is a leisured class in every locality who will see that the laws are carried out and generally keep the social life going? Do you also realize that there is no such class in East London, where it is most wanted? Come and be that class, not in a patronizing spirit but in a spirit of neighbourliness. You will find that there is more for you to learn than to teach." Canon Scott Holland put it into more pictur- esque language when he said, " Come and be the squires of East London." ECCLESIASTICAL 49 Many foolish and cruel things were said about Barnett's work, and the very remem- brance of them makes us see how much we have learned since then. For instance, when a fountain was erected outside St. Jude's Church it was supposed to be " unspiritual," and people sneered at what they called " Christianity assisting at its own funeral." They shrugged their shoulders, too, at the " worship hour " at St. Jude's which Barnett substituted for Evensong. " Poor folk cannot understand," he said, " why giggling choir boys should keep on singing, ' Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners.' ' I remember a dear Salvation Army officer once in St. John's, Bethnal Green, being unable to contain him- self when he heard that well-known versicle and crying out, " Turn us all into good shouting saints, Lord ! ' ; There are still some people who have not the wit to see what Barnett was driving at when he opened his Picture Exhibition in White- chapel, or read Tennyson to his flock as well as David. He was always deeply concerned about Labour problems, but there was never a man less given to fruitless agitation. When he did agitate it was with a knowledge and deter- mination to be fair to all parties. He knew the faults of the rich, but also the faults of 4 50 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY the poor. He never shrank from telling either of them the truth to their faces. I think his article in a book called " Chris- tianity and the Working Classes" (edited by George Haw) is one of the very sanest and at the same time most truly spiritual accounts of the religious situation that I know. He deplored what he called " impertinence " in the masses. Of course he did not mean by that the ordinary " cheekiness " of street boys, but rather a spirit of ignorant and insolent con- tempt for tradition, or for old age, or for well- tried maxims and principles. The famous letter from past and present heads of settle- ments on " Poverty and Luxury " is well worth reading in view of present problems. It is the best piece of " Christian Socialism " I know. It may interest our readers to hear how it came to be written. I have always myself believed that there should be missions to the rich, and that the message delivered to them should be by those who really understand the social problem. I suggested to a Bishop who was about to hold a mission to the West End of London that Canon Barnett should accompany him and do the " penitent-form " work. This was thought to be a very odd idea. I suppose it is because we think that there is only one way of working a penitent form, the Evangelical way (so- ECCLESIASTICAL 51 called). To my mind there is a more truly Evangelical way than the fashionable one namely, the way of St. John the Baptist, who was a casuist and dealt with each class differently (the Pharisees, the publicans, the soldiers, etc.). It seemed to me that Barnett was exactly the man to tell the rich how to repent, and I still think he was the man. In the article mentioned above Barnett has some excellent ideas about the different kinds of preachers. Some are like Theudas, " giving himself out to be somebody," and trying to arouse emotions and passions through his own personality. Others are like the Scribes, trying to get acceptance for religion by apologetics and intellectual arguments. But the best are those, like John the Baptist, who appeal to the conscience, bidding men face what they know to be wrong and to give it up, and equally to face what is right and to do it. Well, not meeting with much sympathy in episcopal quarters, 1 appealed to Barnett himself, and this is how he replied in his characteristic way : ' What I fear is that a mission as usually understood is a form of excitement which weary people might like as a change. If you can induce the Bishop to use the power he has won in calm, well-thought-out denunciation of smart life, I believe good will follow. The 52 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY denunciation must not be sensational, but go home as straight as our Lord's words. By all means tell him that in my opinion the luxury of West End living is the chief obstacle to East End improvement. ' You will never help the East till you destroy the West/ was one of Ruskin's warnings to one of the first of the Oxford groups who came East. The truth underlying this exaggeration is borne home to me. An example of simple life in high places, a protest against the vulgarity of ' having ' when ' being ' is possible would turn the current of people's thoughts. A simple life would be the distinguishing mark of a Christian. What is to be done ? Shall we you and I and others memorialize the Bishop? Would a published protest, something on the lines of the enclosed, be any good ? It might be signed by past and present heads of settlements." Then followed the letter, from which there is only room to give a few extracts here : " We are led to believe that luxury which leads people to much expenditure on private enjoyment, amusement, or display, without making them more useful to the community, is an actual cause of poverty." " It seems to set * having ' rather than ' being ' as the chief object of life, and under its influence the individual's powers of admira- tion, hope, and love are neglected." ECCLESIASTICAL 53 " Luxury prepares the way to poverty." "It materializes the nature of the people so that they gradually become indifferent to the intelligent action and the spiritual aspiration which are necessary to progress." " It induces the selfishness which makes us as a nation indifferent to the ugliness of our towns and cities." " It leads to cruelty in our industrial relation." " The dominant ideals make or unmake a nation, and luxury exalts an ideal which seems to us to be anti-social." Roughly speaking, we may say that Canon Barnett has helped the Church to enlarge its views as to the field in which it is to work in order to carry out the redemptive work of Christ. He has brought the ideas of Maurice about the kingdom of God into actual work- ing. He has given a practical meaning to much of the religious talk about brotherhood. It always seemed to me that his preference for the word " friendship/' rather than brother- hood, made his teaching and practice more human. It is better to try to realize true friendship than to talk of brotherhood which we don't really feel. We are friends and neighbours. Let us behave as such. The time may come when, having realized friend- ship, we may be able more genuinely to talk 54 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY of brotherhood. Barnett's work on the Children's Country Holiday Fund was due to this belief in friendship. He hated the ordinary Sunday School treat. He wanted a more permanent relationship to be formed between town and country. Barnett was never a party man in politics or religion. That is why he was able to do so much with all parties. He saw the good in the " ritual " movement, and adopted what he thought made for reality in worship. He had no partisan axe to grind. It was no small gratification to me that on going to Bristol he wrote thus : " It is always to me a pleasant memory that while my clerical neighbours misunderstood, you did understand and openly gave support." He referred to the time when I was starting the Oxford House and he was starting Toynbee Hall. Much has happened since then. It is a joy to me to recollect that, although the aims and methods of the two settlements were, and still are, somewhat different, there was no antagonism. I am convinced that in the death of Canon Barnett the Church and nation have lost one of the very few prophets that we have had in our midst for a hundred years. He was a great man, and I blush to think that while Toynbee Hall had this man as its Warden, Oxford House had to be content ECCLESIASTICAL 55 with such an inferior article in me as its Head. Oxford House has always maintained its essentially Anglican character, and has turned out a succession of excellent priests and bishops. But it must not be thought from this that it has been merely a theological college. From the very first we worked the club idea, and though now there is not so much enthusiasm for these institutions as there was, I think they have done a great amount of good. We wanted to get a footing in the place, and we found that the very best way was then to start a club. There were a large number of men who did not want to come to church and yet who were dissatisfied with the drink- ing clubs and the political ones. We pro- vided them with a place to spend the evening in, and very soon there gathered round the place all kinds of institutions, athletic clubs and dramatic clubs, etc. The Sunday lectures gave us the opportunity to make it quite clear that we were Christians out for the conversion of souls. If Oxford House did not progress very rapidly in those early days, it was because we had not the plant in men or buildings. Moreover, I was not the man to collar the University. Barnett was ahead of me on one side and Bob Dolling with his Magdalen 56 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY College Mission on the other. It was reserved in the providence of God for Arthur Foley Winnington Ingram to lead the victorious army which eventually conquered the University. When I had once made up my mind to be ordained I felt that I must leave Oxford House. There is too much of the free-lance in me to allow me to be the head of an institution that is forced by the nature of things to be con- ventional. The Head of Oxford House has to represent the University in a particular depart- ment. You might as well expect a vegetarian or an anti-vivisection agitator to be M.P. for Oxford as a pronounced Socialist to represent the University in East London Church life. It would never do. But before I could be ordained I had to make quite sure that I was right in giving up my legal career, which was just beginning. I think I may say that it was Archbishop Benson who finally decided that for me. He was a very close friend of my father's, who used to call him "St. John." I went to him and asked his advice. He was at first somewhat against the idea, because he thought that a layman in the world was more wanted than more parsons in the Church. But we prayed together at the little prle-Dien in his bedroom, and I departed with his blessing and the resolution to take Orders. There is a story of me and Archbishop ECCLESIASTICAL 57 Benson which my friends have elaborated and made rather funny. He was opening Oxford Hall some years later when I had left Bethnal Green, and my name was almost forgotten by the men. I had been breakfasting with him at Lambeth that morning and had given him a few hints for his speech, This is what he said and this is how it was received : " A young man called on me this morning. I told him I was coming to Oxford Hall and I asked him what subject I should speak upon. He replied at once, ' Religion ! ' (Dead silence.) Dear friends, who was that young man? (Breathless silence.) It was Mr. Adderley! (Silence.) I say, it was Mr. Adderley! ! (Dead silence.) I repeat, it was Mr. Adderley ! ! ! " (A silence that was so much felt that the Primate was obliged to pass on to the next point.) This reminds me of Father Goulden's funeral, which was described as the " funeral of the costers' parson." But not a coster, it was said, could be seen. Dr. Benson was fond of coming down to East London. I accompanied him back from the opening of the People's Palace, and remember a woman looking right into the carriage and saying, " He does look a dear ! " She was admiring his long hair and his " nightgown." Benson did not quite like 58 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY these little attentions. Father Stanton would have laughed and answered back, as he is said to have done when a man said, " He's got my old woman's nightgown on " (alluding to his cassock), " My dear fellow, if your wife's night- gown is as black as this do get her to have it washed ! " The only time I can remember the " Cocoa Press " lapsing into genuine humour was when it described Benson once as " the Archbishop of Canterbury, better known as the father of the author of ' Dodo.' " He always took a fatherly interest in me, and made a special point of preaching at my church in Poplar, when he was astonished at the enormous congregation which gathered to hear him. It is well known, of course, that he was keenly alive to the urgency of the social problem, though his activity in the direction of reform did not go much beyond writing and speaking. Once upon a time, Tom Mann, at a drawing-room meeting in the West End, accused the clergy of apathy. The Archbishop, hearing of this, invited him to Lambeth, and taxed him with it. Going up to the book- shelf, he took down a book and began reading. " This," said the Archbishop, " is written by a clergyman : what do you think of it ? " "Oh, that's all right," said Tom Mann ; " who wrote ECCLESIASTICAL 59 it?" "I did," said the Archbishop, some- what triumphantly, presenting him with the book. The book was " Christ and His Times," and the passage which the Archbishop read was, I think, from the famous chapter on " Suffering Populations." Tom Mann told me once that he had often made use of the book at socialist meetings. The Archbishop believed in the social aspect of the Holy Communion, and could not bear to think of selfishness and narrowness among communicants. " The very phrase ' My Com- munion ' is a contradiction in terms," he said to me once. " It should be ' Our Com- munion.' ' On another occasion he was most emphatic about the need of more definite teaching by the clergy to their flocks. "Why will the clergy preach so many hortatory sermons in- stead of teaching their people the Faith?' he said. The Archbishop believed in the revival of Brotherhoods in the Church. " I believe in Brotherhoods," he wrote in 1892, "for the Brothers' sakes and the Church's. I do think they are rapidly becoming a necessity for the discharge of our work in dense populations." Later on he proved the sincerity of these words by carefully revising and finally signing with loving words of sympathy the Rules of a 60 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY Brotherhood lately begun in the Church of England. But the sweetest story about our dear Father is that in which we have been told that it used to be a tradition at the school where he was educated that it was " easy to be good when Benson came to the school." Few boys, we think, have had such a thing said of them by their companions. I was succeeded at the Oxford House by my old friend Herbert Hensley Henson, whom I was always quarrelling with and always forgiving. In those days we cor- responded about every week, and I believe I knew more about the inner workings of the Dean's strange conscience than many who have looked at him only from the outside. I am never tired of defending him against culpable inconsistency, of which he is often accused. People say : " Look at Henson, who used to abuse Dissenters, and now talks of Reunion. Look at Henson, who was the great defender of the Catholic episcopate, and now writes against the doctrine of apostolical succession." But I do not see the inconsist- ency as others think they do. Henson's attacks on Nonconformity in old days were merely due to his Establishmentarianism. He still holds to that. The Establishment was (and I believe still is), with him a "craze/ 1 ECCLESIASTICAL 61 as Mr. Gladstone once said it was with Arch- bishop Benson. I do not say that Henson has not changed of course he has, because he is alive but he has not changed so much as people think. He never held the Tractarian view of apostolical succession. Where he has changed most has been in giving up old Liberal catchwords such as Home Rule, in which at one time he ardently believed, and also, per- haps, in his love for some Catholic institutions. He is fond of fighting, and deserves his nick- name of the " stormy petrel " of the Church. The Convocation of Canterbury is, I should think, very much less lively now that he has gone north. The parson who said to him, " If only you could remember that you are not the most intellectual clergyman in the Church, but you are the most affectionate," was giving him an excellent hint. His affectionate dis- position has won him more victories, and might win him many more, than his fertile brain. Now that Francis Paget and Dean Church have gone, he is one of the very few who take pains to write a literary sermon. But he loves to be in opposition, and prides himself on being a sort of ecclesiastical Ishmael (though a well- paid one). He has more heart than he gives himself credit for possessing, and he wilfully (I think) hides it. It is a thousand pities that he has not been kept at parish work much 62 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY longer. His monthly service for communi- cants at Barking was one of the most inspiring services I ever attended, and I am not at all sure that he will not make an excellent Bishop some day, just because he will then once more come in contact with the souls of sinners and weak Christians, who want comfort rather than dialectics and diatribes. Well, it was he who in the providence of God took my place at Oxford House, and it is characteristic of him as an unconscious humorist, that in his open- ing address (in my presence) he quoted the words, Ring out the false, Ring in the true. My preparation for Orders brought me into direct contact with two more remarkable men, Bishop Walsham How and Frederick Temple, Bishop of London. Walsham How was a humble saint, who, by his life of love, did more for the Church in East London than any one else has done, except, perhaps, Ingram. He was an odd companion for Bishop Temple. \Valsham How used to talk of his " two years in the school of one Tyrannus " as descriptive of his life in the Diocese of London. But he said what was perfectly true when he used to assure us of the heart of love that lurkH b.?nemh thr ECCLESIASTICAL 63 rough exterior of Frederick Temple. The least thing would bring tears to Temple's eyes. When addressing the Missioners at the begin - ing of the great London Mission, he simply broke down. I remember in the middle of the Kensit crisis in 1898, when he wrote remon- strating with a certain prominent Anglo - Catholic, and asking him to come and see him, I prophesied, " When you meet each other he will cry." And he did. It would be absurd to attempt to write down all the stories I have heard about Temple. Most of them are well known. It may be in- teresting, however, to note that the story about the Fulham cabman who grumbled about his fare, and said in revenge, " St. Paul would not have lived in a palace here," and how the Bishop said, "No, he would have been at Lambeth, and the fare there is only a shilling ! " is not true. It never happened so. The famous " Never knew yer aunt so I can't say," was told of Archbishop Whately many years before Temple. This is a curious instance of how myths arise and stories are handed on from age to age. There are many more such. I have heard a story of Bishop Wordsworth of Salisbury, which was certainly told of " Soapy Sam " forty years before, and Lady Wlmborne's donkey story was, to my know- ledge, being told when I was an Eton boy, 64 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY about forty years ago. There is one good story of Temple which is not so often told as the others. He had been holding a confirma- tion and had missed his train home. The Vicar, foreseeing that this meant the Bishop's presence at Evensong, asked him to preach. He refused. Then to be prepared against all criticism, the Vicar said, " I would like to in- form your lordship that I used to preach written sermons, but I have lately registered a vow never to preach except extempore, il find it so much better." Grunt from the Bishop. The sermon came and went. Steps were heard tramping up the aisle to the sacristy. Then the Bishop, before all the choir and sidesmen, raised his hand over the Vicar and said, " I hereby absolve you from your vow ! ); Another story, which mid-Victorians may think a little coarse, runs thus. A certain Mrs. Quiverful said to the Bishop, " Oh, my lord, I do believe you haven't 1 they were called. I never remember a better lecturer than Shuttleworth. The work these two men did in meeting secularism in the right way cannot be too highly praised and grate- fully remembered by the Church. They were personal friends of Mr. Bradlaugh and Mrs. Besant, and they always behaved as gentle- men in dealing with the movement of which these two powerful fighters were the leaders. Bradlaugh himself was always very courteous in debate, and it was all the more provoking when one heard a " Christian Evidence " lecturer almost insulting him, as I heard once at the Hall of Science. This was at a meeting held to discuss the Oxford House papers which were being issued at that time, as a very mild artillery wherewith to storm the secularist trenches. Those papers were excellent reading for clergy and ordinands : they were quite inade- quate to meet the National Reformer and the Freethinker. As head of the Oxford House I thought I ought to write to Brad- laugh to correct the impression he might have received, that we had had anything to do with the way in which he had been treated, and he wrote me a very kind reply saying he was quite sure I should not have approved of what was said. Mrs. Besant always interested me 204 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY more than Bradlaugh, because she was getting nearer to Socialism while he was getting farther away from it, and because she was always more religious in the true sense. Mr. Hynd- man (whom I am sorry to say I did not get to know till much later in my life) used to oppose Bradlaugh's individualism with might and main, and it was probably that (quite as much as anything the Church ever did) which eventually turned the attention of the workers from atheism to Socialism, and made the Clarion so popular in its early days. Militant Socialism superseded militant athe- ism. Shuttleworth always prophesied that this would be the case, and it is sad that his comparatively early death prevented him from witnessing the fulfilment of his prophecy. I owe much to that man and to a little book called " Christ and Democracy," by C. W. Stubbs (afterwards Bishop of Truro), which he gave me. But the G.S.M. was not destined to convert the Church of England to Socialism or anything like it. Anglicans move very slowly, and especially in matters that touch Tory poli- tics and interference with monopoly. Clergy are still allowed to crowd Tory platforms with- out being accused of mixing up religion and politics. Church newspapers still take it for granted that the vast majority of their readers have little interest in politics beyond wishing SOCIALIST 205 and praying for the downfall of Liberal Governments. There are still candidates for livings who will write to patrons, as one of them did to Lord Chancellor Halsbury, that " without neglecting my duty to my Master I always find time for two nights a week at the Conservative Club." The G.S.M. was also too much associated in the mind of the Church with Headlam's views on the ballet, which were very ant i -Puritan. Even I " squirmed " sometimes, though I shall never cease to reverence Headlam for his stalwart defence of Catholic truth and his extraordinary patience in prophecy. Archbishop Temple never could understand Headlam and his persistent belief that a dancer had a soul to be saved and that tracts were not the only means necessary to salvation. It worried the good man to be asked to go to the Alhambra and see a new premiere danseuse, who happened also to be " a communicant in your lordship's diocese " ; nor could he under- stand how her flimsy costume could be as " proper " for her work as his own " Magpie " was for his. There was once a remarkable interview between the Bishop of London and a deputa- tion of G.S.M. clergy and dancers. Dr. Temple prefaced his remarks with an assurance that he had no complaint to make 206 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY against these ladies. The ladies were not quite so sure about that. It is satisfactory to know that the present Primate takes a kindlier view of Headlam, and called him a prophet at one of the C.S.U. meetings. Headlam's annual address to the G.S.M. used to be by far the most illuminating Church oration of the year. Here is a typical sentence from his address at the time when a Royal Commission had been appointed to report on the alleged " disorders in the Church " :- "Brethren," said St. Paul, "we exhort you admonish the disorderly." Let the Commissioners, for instance, investigate the charges which Mrs. Lyttelton in "Warp and Woof" has brought against the whole of West End Society : I do not say they are true, indeed I think they are misleading, though the Secretary of the Women's Trades Union League tells me that there has been this year a convicted case of a girl being allowed to work for twenty-four hours on end with only one and a half hours for meals and rest, but I do say that the Commissioners should send for Mrs. Lyttelton and get at the facts : they are more important and bear more closely on the question as to whether all is in order in the City of God than does the fact that in some churches two candles are alight in the daytime, or whether or not the chancels in our churches are maintained as they had been maintained in times past. Let us cultivate some sense of proportion. If clothes are to be the subject of stern and drastic action, let it not be the cut or the colour of the priest's at the altar, but the conditions under which those worn by the whole con- gregation are made. Let the highly placed ladies, too, who are responsible for this inquiry, be sent for and asked to give SOCIALIST 207 an account of the history of their clothes, and to prove that they were all produced in an orderly manner that there is no blood, or soul blood, in the skirts of their clothing. Let it be made clear that, without maintaining that twenty-four hours on end to make pretty frocks for a duchess's ball is customary, it is an undoubted fact that a large percentage of the young London population are unable to come to evening classes owing to the long hours of work. These are the real burning questions of order and disorder ; these are the articles of a standing or falling Church. It would be well, too, if some one, somewhere, would take evidence as to how their fellow- Churchmen, their brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ, are housed ; let them postpone the question as to the exact spot by the Altar at which the Gospel should be said until each one of their dearly beloved brethren has a com- fortable home and their children a clean bed, and good fresh air to sleep in, and a moderate amount of healthy food. These are the real questions of Church order and discipline. The Church is a Communistic Society, a Society of brothers ; the real disorderly thing which the Commissioners have to tackle is that so many of their brethren have not an abund- ance of the things necessary for bodily health. True Church discipline will insist on their having these things. The prose- cution of those Bishops who violate the Ornaments Rubric can be postponed till these matters are settled. For forty years and more Headlam has gone on explaining to the British nation the truth about Sunday, about the Sacraments, about the Bible, about Mammon, about the drama and the dance, about the Kingdom of God and many other things, and what he has written never seems to me stale or unprofitable. But a society that is to convert a whole Church must not be a one-man show, and it 208 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY must also go more quietly to work than the G.S.M. could ever do. It was necessary to from the Christian Social Union. Henry Scott Holland and Charles Gore were the original leaders of this Society, and it has worked wonders in the Church. I was a member for about ten years, and I believe I got as many recruits for it as any one else. Yet I was not content with it, chiefly because I had com- mitted myself to the political Socialists, and that was just what a real leader of the C.S.U. must never do. The Union rightly welcomes all kinds of Churchmen who are agreed upon two things the urgency of social reform, and the belief that Christ alone can solve the problem. It is a sort of Vigilance Society for the Church in matters of social interest. Another Society, the " Collegium," is now doing a splendid work in the same direction, under William Temple, son of the great Arch- bishop. The Church Socialist League, which has been comparatively lately formed, starts definitely as a body of Socialists, and has done much to correct the idea that the Socialism of a Church- man is a particular brand of Socialism which is only in a half-hearted opposition to 41 capitalism " and all its attendant evils. The truth is that Socialists proper are those who believe that, slowly or quickly, SOCIALIST 209 by Fabian methods or I.L.P. methods or Syndicalist methods or Guild - Socialism methods, the present capitalist system has got to go if ever poverty is to be abolished and a just distribution of wealth is to be accomplished. Of course this means that we Socialists differ among ourselves. Was there ever a living movement that did not involve differences ? The war has accentuated our differences, and some most amazing results have already shown themselves. State con- trol has become the cry of the anti-Socialists, and compulsory methods, which the Socialists were once supposed to favour, are being held in check by them. Still, the main idea of the Socialists remains the same, and it will be more difficult for their opponents to revert to their old ideas after the war than it will be for us to heal our own differences and co-operate once more with our pacificist comrades. Certain lessons will have been learned by the nation which will make it impossible ever to go back to the anti-Socialist position. So also it is to be hoped that certain lessons will have been learned by the Socialists which will help them to achieve their ideal. In a period of great transition it is difficult to talk of great leaders. The old ones will be discarded : the new ones are at present unknown by name. But I venture to mention 14 210 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY those whose friendship I have made during the last thirty years and from whom I have learned much, even though in some cases nothing would induce me to follow them again, unless they changed their minds ! I will not say to which particular ones this last sentence refers. The first friend I made in the Socialist Movement was Ben Tillett, always a much more patriotic person than the Jingoes believed. I have already referred to our acquaintance in Bethnal Green and Poplar. Another remark- able person was Tom Mann. The Dock strike in 1889 brought him into prominence, and he certainly managed it, with Tillett and Burns, very well. He soon became a popular guest at clerical meetings, and it is perfectly true that he had thoughts of being ordained. Sup- posing he had been, which would have come to grief sooner, the Church or Mann? I wonder. I did not meet him after 1889 for many years, not indeed till I found myself in the Bull Ring not long ago screaming on the side of the Black Country strikers. John Burns, I must confess, I liked best before he became a Cabinet Minister, though no one who meets him can help being im- pressed by his honesty and determination. But I was certainly more moved when I heard him preaching on the " rising orb of the dockers' SOCIALIST 211 tanner," in 1889, than I was when I sat with him in his office a few days after the Liberal Government romped in with its leviathan majority in 1906. There was something more romantic about " Bloody Sunday " when I ran up a side street to escape being knocked down by the Guards at full gallop than there was in that snug little room at the L.G.B. As a Christian I have always had a great respect for another revolutionary, Herbert Burrows, who, though very unorthodox from my point of view, has never been anything but a spiritual reformer. When I remember my extreme ignorance I reflect also on the audacity with which I used to talk and write to men like Herbert Burrows and J. M. Robertson in the days of my youth. Now for a word about Keir Hardie. This part of my book will probably lose me the few remaining subscriptions that I can look for from my friends to help me in my slum parish. I had better begin by saying that I utterly disagree with both Keir Hardie and Ramsay Macdonald as regards the War. But this is not going to make me deny that both these men have taught me much in times past. I knew Keir Hardie for more than a quarter of a century, so perhaps I have some right to speak about him and once more defend him against his fellow-Christians. His enemies 212 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY never made a more foolish mistake than when they attacked him on religious grounds and tried to make us believe that he was an "atheist." His was the grandest figure in the Labour Movement. His very appearance lent a dignity to British Socialism. When one sees how easily the enemies of Socialism forgive their opponents, provided they modify their opinions, one understands why they have never forgiven Keir Hardie, and how little their for- giveness really means. Keir Hardie has com- mitted the unforgivable sin of never having budged an inch from his convictions. In these days for that alone we should thank God for him. But it is of his religion that I want to write. His was a rugged, straightforward religion, expressed in his noble, lion-like countenance. He admired all goodness when he saw it. This made him, while thinking the worship of royalty a little overdone, have a genuine admiration for Queen Mary as a mother, bringing up her children to fear God. He knew and no one better than he that Christianity was the only force that could really work a revolution. It was that conviction that made him chafe at the clergy who, as he said, talked " Socialism " but seldom " materialized " in an election. He really meant it when he said in Canning Town Hall some twenty-five years ago, " Send me to SOCIALIST 213 Parliament to work for the souls of those for whom Christ died." He really meant it when he wandered about the parish of St. Agatha's, Landport, just after Bob Boiling's death, to find out the working-men whom this wonderful priest had brought to Christ ; his heart went out to one who had really touched the heart of labour, which he himself had found so hard to do. He really meant it when he meekly met the foul attacks made by his ; ' Liberal " opponent at Merthyr in the last election but one, when everything that any German atheist had said against religion for the last forty years was placarded about the towns and villages as representing Mr. Keir Hardie's view of God. I never felt more ashamed of my fellow -religionists than I did during that election. There were so-called Christians refusing Hardie a platform in their conventicles ; there were others distributing an indecent picture of him reprinted from some dirty racing paper, calculated to make people think him an advocate of " free love," while he himself was on the platform pleading for the kingdom of God, surrounded by his wife and family. He said some severe things about Christians, but nothing more than we deserved. When he met the appeal from the Welsh Church of England Men's Society to oppose Disestablish- 214 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY ment he rightly reminded them that they had never supported him in all his long struggle for freedom for the wives and children of the miners. Why should they suddenly conceive this affection for him when the stipends of the clergy were in danger? Again, he really meant it when he took advantage of a few hours' rest in the midst of the I.L.P. Conference to attend our Eucharist at Saltley, and to say, " This looks like the reunion of Christendom." I did not like his war views, but that is not going to make me withhold my tribute to his genuine goodness and his deep religious enthusiasm. I doubt if since the days of the " Clap-ham Sect " there has been a closer mixture of religion and politics in any one individual. He represented the exact antithesis to the German atheist Socialist. It was only the gross blind- ness of many of his political opponents which prevented them from seeing this, and caused them to attribute to him the infidel motives which they did. They were the real infidels who would not believe that God could work His will through the unorthodox. May God give us a few more " atheists " like Keir Hardie ! We shall certainly need them when the War is over. I have suffered much from my friends by my attachment to Keir Hardie from the days SOCIALIST 215 when I used to speak for him from a cart in West Ham to the days when I said that I had learned much Christianity from him. I am not penitent about this. I have lost subscrip- tions, but I have gained a friend in Paradise. The " atheism " bogy has always amused me, because it was so transparently in- sincere. The anti-Socialists could only keep it up by quoting, or misquoting, little snip- pets from Socialist writers, a process by Which it would be quite easy to prove that Toryism and Liberalism and even Christianity itself is atheism. But this insincerity was never more blatantly exposed than when the whole of the capitalist class left off abusing Robert Blatchford, the secularist, and called him the saviour of the nation. He did not change his religious views when he began to warn us about the War. " Will you permit me," wrote Blatchford to me once, " to put the matter in my own way? Socialism and agnosticism are two distinct things. A Christian can be a Socialist, and so can an agnostic. I should not say that I have made agnosticism part of my Socialism, for that would be absurd. I should say that Socialism and agnosticism are both parts of my religion, just as Christianity and Socialism are both parts of your religion." 216 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY Personally I must confess to great disap- pointment when Blatchford began attacking Christianity. It was he who in the early days of the Clarion had scotched militant atheism by his highly moral and righteous propaganda of Socialism. For him to go back to the old mid- Victorian Bible -smashing was indeed sad. But we have forgotten all that now, and I prefer to think of him as the good old " John Bull " that he has become, and hope he will be knighted in due course. Those who imagine that " Nunquam " is no longer a Socialist because he is a " John Bull " do not understand either him or Socialism. Socialism is to him, and I hope to all Socialists, the acme of patriotism, love of country, belief in the solidarity of the nation and the responsi- bility of all. Converted Tories always make the best Socialists. I remember reading an article by Miss Marie Corelli on the " Coronation of George V," in which she told us that as she looked on in Westminster Abbey she felt " This is the end of Socialism." I wrote a reply to the Daily Mail (which was not pub- lished), in which I said that when I looked on at the Coronation of Edward VII in the same place I felt much more inclined to say, "This is Socialism at last." Why? Because at a coronation we experience, if only for a SOCIALIST 217 short time, the power and glow of a united nation, all agreed and happy about a great national act. This is the root principle of Socialism. That is why the War, with all its horrors, has its great compensation for us Socialists. It not only proves the common sense of many of our economic proposals, but it shows us the great object-lesson of the futility of individualism and the splendid enthusiasm possible in a united (that is, a socialist) nation. So Robert Blatchford does not make me quake for his Socialism when I read his War articles. On the contrary, I feel it still tingling in his veins and in mine, but with renewed hope. And what of H. G. Wells? Here is another from whom I have learned many lessons. I still think his " New Worlds for Old " the best book on Socialism to put into the hands of a Tory or anybody else. Of course I could easily find something to say against each of my Socialist friends ; I could show cause why I think each of them is wrong on some point, but I have tried just to put down a little of what each has done for me. And now I have said nothing about the greatest of them all G. B. Shaw certainly the one to whom it is the most interesting to listen. Let any one go to a political meeting 218 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY addressed by a big Liberal or a big Tory : then let him go and hear G. B. Shaw. How different ! How vastly more alive and human ! I hope he will not mind my publishing a characteristic letter of his which I received when I boldly asked him to send me some of his books to sell at a bazaar. You know not what you ask. At a moderate estimate the bazaars and sales organized by the unfortunate clergy of this country would, if I complied with their requests, dispose of five or six editions of my works every year. By dint of registering an oath of the extremes! profanity in heaven never to comply with any such request, and stick to it for years, I have at last reduced even the clergy to despair. If I weaken, even for your sake, I am lost. And you are the last man in whose favour I should care to make an exception, because the less time you spend in begging for the poor, the more you will have left to insult the rich, which is much more important. It is everybody's business to feed Lazarus, who should therefore be left to the State. It is your special business to damn Dives, whom I accordingly leave to you. By the way, I altogether demur to the position that you have a right to ask me for books because you have been weak enough to give books yourself. Where did you find the rule " Do unto others as others have done unto you " ? Suppose a man garrotted you, will that justify you in garrotting me? It might provoke you to do it, but that is another matter. (Signed) G. B. SHAW. Again, I have forgotten George Lansbnry, Philip Snowden and his good wife, Sidnev SOCIALIST 219 Webb and his, Bruce Glasier and his all splendid people. When Snowden made one of his speeches in the House a Bishop said it was the finest thing he had heard since Gladstone. There is something intense and pathetic about Snowden which makes men listen. Mrs. Webb, again, makes you feel small because of her stupendous knowledge. No doubt you kick against regimentation, and nowadays still more against " Prussianization," but for all that it is very difficult to answer the Webbs. It is easier to listen to Will Crooks, whose power is his humanity and humour. Why is he called " Weeping Willy " ? I have known him for a quarter of a century, and have never seen him cry. He has often made me laugh. He is to the House of Commons what the Bishop of London is to the House of Lords. They each bring the East End to the notice of our legislators in much the same kind of way. I shall never forget the first Woolwich Election and the fun that C. F. G. Masterman and I had canvassing for Crooks. It was at a later one that when some one telephoned to Will, "Do you know that your opponent has two brothers in the Army and that it will make it hard for you with the Arsenal men?" he replied, " Tell them I've got six aunts in the workhouse ! ' 220 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY George Lansbury is another instance of the neglect by the Church of England of some of her most Christian sons. People look upon him as a fanatic, and perhaps he is, though it is well to remember that most movements, includ- ing Christianity, owe a great deal to their fanatics. It cuts me to the heart to find myself opposed to George Lansbury, as I sometimes do, on the War, for instance, but I hope I shall never cease to admire and love him. He has earned the right to criticize the Church, for he is a devoted adherent of hers. It is good for us comfortable Church people to hear this sort of thing : The Church has no future, and will be of no help to me or to anybody else, unless very soon it- definitely takes sides in the struggle against poverty. The idea that the Church should keep the ring and as it were be a kind of Jack-on-both-sides is exploded, and now she must realize that the saying is as true to-day as when it was first uttered, " Those who are not for me are against me." If we have any work it is just this, to waken up the Bishops and the Deans, the Archdeacons and the Vicars, and tell them that the day of smooth sayings is over. Unfortunately, this is the sort of man we seldom hear at a Church Congress, for the respectable Church laity dislike being told the truth. I wonder whether the type of church- warden will ever change, whether we shall ever have revolutionary laymen in our high places SOCIALIST 221 who will wake us up and not only lament the smallness of the collection. At present the Vicars and curates are generally far ahead of the laymen, just as the lower ranks of the clergy are far ahead of the Bishops I mean in what are called " progressive " ideas. I have written nothing about the Suffra- gettes, not because I think lightly of their movement, but because I feel that after the War the whole matter must be approached in a different spirit to that which was possible before. I could not, for instance, go over the dreary arguments again for or against " militancy." But I can say, what I shall always say, that the leaders of the Women's Movement put all political parties, and the Churches too, to shame by their genuine en- thusiasm and earnestness. A Suffragette meeting, apart altogether from militancy and its accompaniments, is the most inspiring of all kinds of meetings. I would also say that their active opponents are the most dismally uninspiring people I have ever met. They seem to me to work on a lower plane altogether, and do not understand the inward- ness of the movement they set out to combat. While it is quite easy to imagine Suffragettes praying about their principles, it is difficult for me, at least, to imagine the " anti's " doing it. It is almost inconceivable that when peace 222 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY comes the cry of the women will remain unheeded. Nevertheless, English people are capable of forgetting even the splendid behaviour of the Suffragettes in the War, and I should not be wholly surprised if the miser- able fight began again, though hardly in the same fashion. Nobody who has come in contact with any of the Pankhurst family can possibly feel anything but a sort of awe at their intense and pathetic seriousness about their cause. I can only say that I always wish that I could feel the same about Church people and their Christianity (including my own). A number of the Socialist clergy assembled at the Central Criminal Court prepared to witness for the bond fides of the Suffragettes at the first window -smashing trial, but we were not allowed to give evidence. Perhaps the reader will ask after reading all this balderdash, " To what kind of Socialism do you incline?" My reply would be "To the Socialism of none of these in toto : rather to the Socialism so ably presented week by week by Mr. Orage in the New Age." I have been considerably shaken in some of my old beliefs both by Mr. Orage on the one hand and by Mr. Belloc on the other. But I am not giving my opinions, I am only commemorating my friends. Other clerical SOCIALIST 223 Socialists who have been crowded out of this chapter must at least be mentioned by name. Conrad Noel and Percy Widdrington and Arnold Pinchard have in their various ways done very much to familiarize Churchmen with Socialism and Socialists with Christianity. Lewis Donaldson and his good wife have been constant in season and out of season in preach- ing the Kingdom of God. It is an instance of the blind timidity of Governments that Donaldson (chiefly, I believe, because he had the courage to lead a procession of unem- ployed from Leicester to London) has never received State preferment. It is quite a mistake to suppose that militancy of the Suffragette type is the only thing that makes Cabinets shy of promoting " extreme " people. In the Church especially any action of this kind (outside the pulpit) marks a parson as dangerous. There still remain two very " extreme " Socialists of whom I have said nothing : the Countess of Warwick and Mr. Hyndman. It is a real loss to the nation that the latter has not got into Parliament. It is more than a loss : it is a disgrace. Why did they not put him in the House of Lords and give him a seat in the Coalition Government ? He is the very man for a War Government. Of Lady Warwick, who has always been most kind 224 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY to me, I am certainly not going to write apologetic words. I am not going to explain to my aristocratic friends that it is really pos- sible for her to be a Socialist in earnest. If they have any doubts they had better have a talk with her and, above all, they had better read a few Socialist books (not the tracts of the Anti -Socialist Union) and find out what Socialism is. I am well aware that before this book is printed the whole world will have changed and Socialism, like everything else, will have altered its complexion, but in a book of memories we must deal with the past and not with the future. It may be worth while even in 1916 to remember that there was a nine- teenth century, and even that the twentieth had a first decade. OPINIONS The opinions or clergy " The gloomy Dean " and the Socialist clergy Christian objections to Socialism con- sidered The Church and everyday life Religious edu- cation Sabbatarianism The Continental Sunday. MUCH of what I say in this chapter has dropped out in various forms between the wheels of the anecdotal chariot as it has rushed along, and I must ask the reader's pardon if he finds me repeating myself. I must also apologize for thrusting my opinions upon others, though perhaps it will help us to understand why I called myself in the beginning a " third-rate ecclesiastic." I suppose I must begin with my ecclesiastical opinions, though it is not par- ticularly as a parson that I want to intrude myself. People cannot get out of their heads that we have our ecclesiastical axe to grind. They draw a distinction between " a priest " and " a man." Such and such a clergyman is "a man," they say, not "a priest." This is rather a silly distinction. It is never drawn 15 225 226 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY in any other walk of life. You do not say when you want a mutton-chop : "I am going to buy my meat from Mr. Jones. He is the sort of chap I like. He is not a butcher ; he's a man." On the contrary, you will be very foolish if you don't buy your dinner from a person who is quite certainly a butcher, though quite probably an insignificant little human creature rather like the lambs he kills. So if you want spiritual advice about your soul you will, if you are wise, seek out a priest, regard- less of whether he can play football or tell a good story or has got " means of his own " and might lend you a " fiver " if you were stone broke. In a word, you want " priest- craft," as Kingsley said, a man who can exer- cise his craft as it ought to be exercised. I have been told that George Eliot was in a railway-carriage once with a friend, and there was a " muscular Christian " sort of parson conversing with them about all the topics of the day. The reverend gentleman got out at a certain station, and the friend remarked enthusiastically : " Ah ! that's the sort of parson I like. No nonsense about him ! " t;l Is he the sort of parson you would like to have at your deathbed? " said George Eliot. " Oh no ! " said the lady. But why " deathbed"? Is it not the life- OPINIONS 227 bed at which we really want the parsons to come and wake us up? But the chief reason why I do not want my little opinions taken as a parson's opinions is because of the exaggerated importance which is too often attached to anything said or written by a clergyman, just because he is a clergy- man. Why cannot we be allowed to talk to our fellow-creatures, at any rate in a book, without what we say being taken as in any sense authoritative ? We are disciples as much as any one else, and a disciple is a learner. The clergy should be allowed to converse with people of all sorts, and not always be looked upon as giving opinions which have some sort of ecclesiastical or Divine authority. Of course there are occasions and subjects whereon the parson has no right to speak unless he is pre- pared to back it up with authority, but a book of this kind is not one of them. I am only chatting with my readers as a man to men and women. If I am " churchy," it is because I am a parson, just as I should be " horsey " if I were a jockey. "Cannot the clergy be Irishmen too?" as says Father O'Flynn in the well-known song. Yes, and no doubt we are some of us, as they say, not sufficiently an fait with human nature. Bob Dolling, the most human priest I ever 228 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY knew, told some ordination candidates once that the best thing they could do would be to go and work in a City office for a year before taking Holy Orders. -Well, I was in a solicitor's office for some time ; so I did try his recipe not that I think it did me much good. I think I got more good by working as an ecclesiastical layman in Bethnal Green. The real mistake that is made about our ordinands is not that they see too little of life, but rather that the life they see is not varied enough. The Public School and the Universi- ties are too much of one type. A very great deal has to be unlearned before an Eton and Oxford man makes a good parson. The School and College Missions and the University Settle- ments have done much good in affording a new experience for the men who are to become clergy. The War is probably doing a great deal of good in throwing men of all classes together into a common life, and it is incon- ceivable that our schoolboys and 'Varsity men will be so ignorant in future about the souls of the working-man and the clerk. Vice versa the " lower classes " will emerge with very different views of the " rich." It amuses me to read the speeches of Labour leaders about the aristocracy when they go on recruiting ex- peditions. I only hope they will not go too far in their admiration of the upper classes OPINIONS 229 and meekly submit to " capitalism " when peace comes. We Socialist clergy, on the other hand, are supposed to be in a state of servile adoration of the Labour party. The " gloomy Dean " calls us " chaplains to King Demos/' and tells us that, unlike Christians, we affirm that " the sty makes the pig," while the religious thing to say is that " the pig makes the sty." By the way, this Court chaplain metaphor is no new one, as the anti -Socialist admirers of the Dean seem to think, judging by their headlines. Canon Knox Little used it twenty - five years ago at an Oxford House meeting, and Dean Hensley Henson has frequently re- peated it. What is it intended to imply? That we are obsequious toadies and are tumblrng over one another in our frantic efforts to pay homage to Demos ? It is rather hard on the Court chaplains to give people to understand that this is their ordinary character. Is it not possible to be a good Court chaplain ? I should like to feel that I was a chaplain to King Demos. I should like to assist his Majesty to a better understanding of the religion he professes. I should like to show him that he has Divine sanction for his socialistic aspirations. I should like to provide him with intelligible services when he worships his God instead of being forced 230 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY by Acts of Uniformity to mystify him and drive him into atheism whenever, as an Anglican priest, I am called upon to take part in a royal christening, wedding, or funeral. There are plenty of things I should like to do if King Demos would appoint me his chaplain . The truth is the Dean has a mistaken idea of what we Socialist parsons are trying to do. Take, for example, the slum parish in which I live. The Dean imagines, I sup- pose, that as a Court chaplain I am holding open-air meetings in the streets (there are certainly " courts " in the place, not like Buckingham Palace), and that at these meet- ings I am engaged in praising the moral beauty of the slum-dwellers, patting them on the back and telling them what splendid fellows they are. As a matter of fact, I am not even preaching Socialism to them. What good would this do ? No, I am doing my work as a Socialist in quite a different way. By my pen or by my voice I am trying to ^et at the classes who live in the grand places of the earth, who by their education and position have the opportunity of altering the system under which the slums exist and disgrace this Christian country. It is not because we think Demos so good and Plutus so wickevl that we spend our efforts on the latter rather OPINIONS 231 than on the former. It is because Plutus goes to Church and Parliament and Council. It is because Plutus is generally a prominent Churchman or Nonconformist, and talks a great deal about his religion and his love for the poor and how shocked he is at our atheism. We think that if we could get Plutus away from his conventional Christianity and converted to a gospel religion he might allow King Demos to live in his palace and not rot in a prison. I am sure the Dean is wrong in supposing that we pander to our poor old King, fast bound in misery and iron. We are out for something quite different. Another way of making this accusation against us is to say that we " play to the gallery." A Bishop once complained that I did this. I remarked that it was about time we left off playing to the stalls and dress- circle . And now for a word about the pig and the sty. Socialists say that the sty makes the pig ; Christians vice versa. This is just one of those comfortable sayings which encourage the rich to do nothing. It is all the fault of the poor, of course. Lead-poisoning is the fault of the poor. Strikes are the fault of the poor. Con- vert the poor to Christianity and they will be all right. They will be loyal in a strike ; they will be content. 232 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY Now, is it the best Christianity which teaches that the pig produces the sty? I think not. It results in Christians compassing heaven and earth to " convert " the pig to a form of religion and then leaving him to go " home " (save the mark 1) to wallow in his sty. And did he make the sty, or does he alone keep it as it is ? What about the jerry -builders who erected it and the landlord who draws rent from it and refuses to rebuild or clean it, even when the pig in despair asks for it to be done? If conventional Christianity sets out to convert these people, it too often only succeeds in making them subscribers to dole funds, or hymn-singing hypocrites, who assure the pig that he will be quite happy some millions of years hence in a city paved with gold, while they continue to murder him by a slow process and pocket the profits in order that they may furnish their own sty from Maples or Waring and Gillow. Again, is it altogether untrue to say that the sty makes the pig ? All honour to the Socialists who emphasize the unwelcome fact. Others say it too. The Committee on Physical Deterioration said it ten years ago. Charles Booth said it twenty years ago. Indeed, Christ said it 1,900 years ago by His miracles, when He brought hope and more abundant life u> the OPINIONS 233 maimed and sick by healing them of their infirmities . Can we dismiss the social problem by either of these two little aphorisms, when, accord- ing to the best authorities, one-third of all paupers are sick, one-third are destitute children, and one-quarter are widows, encum- bered by young families, or certified lunatics, leaving only 9 per cent, of the total whose pauperism could be attributed to some obvious vice or defect, such as drunkenness, theft, laziness, etc. ? The " gloomy Dean " is wrongly named. There was a preacher once who cast a gloom over his congregation by suggesting that they should apply their religion to their daily lives. The Dean is much more likely to disperse the gloom which we Court chaplains are beginning to cast over the garish light of the West End drawing-rooms. The War will alter all this, I hope. We hardly realize yet what it means to have dis- covered as a nation that we can spend millions a day on a national object about which we are all agreed. What an awakening there will be some day when we realize that poverty and sickness and slums and ignorance are national enemies at least as worthy of our steel as the Germans, and go out to meet them as one united body ! This will be Socialism indeed. 234 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY Thomas Carlyle saw that day when he wrote these words : If we saw an army of 90,000 strong, maintained and fully equipped in continual real action and battle against human starvation, against chaos, necessity, stupidity, our real national enemies, what a business were it ! Socialism, I suppose, will have to change its name when it becomes fashionable, as un- doubtedly it will ; but it matters not what we call it if we get the thing. The " thing " is national co-operation, real " national service," when all will contribute to the best national work and life. But the old arguments with which we have met the attacks of the capitalist class will remain true. Nobody suffers more in the Socialist cause than a parson. He gets attacked on every side. The ordinary Christian holds up his hands in horror at the idea of a priest calling himself a Socialist, while the Socialists suspect the parson of not being the real thing. Many of us found it best to drop the name " Christian Socialist " because it gave people the idea that this was a special brand of Socialism, not quite orthodox from the I.L.P. or Fabian point of view. In fact, we once signed a manifesto to assure our " comrades " that we were real Socialists, and as my name, beginning with an " A," came OPINIONS 235 first in the list I got all the kicks. It was this manifesto which called forth from Lord Rose- bery the famous declaration that " Socialism is the end of all faith." I replied that it was the beginning of mine. Lord Rosebery once came to Berkeley Chapel, and, as luck would have it, I had prepared a rather dull sermon on some very ecclesiastical subject. Who knows but I might have had some dis- tinguished preferment if I had not chosen to preach that sermon, for, at least, it was not socialistic that time ? It is quite right for Christians to take note of and to criticize Socialism. When the Socialists come forward with a new set of schemes for material and economic reform we are bound to consider how they affect our schemes for the moral regeneration of society, how far we can work with them, whether they offend against recognized principles of Chris- tianity, whether or not our Lord would approve them. But in doing this Christians should be careful not to mix up two distinct matters. They must not deal with Socialism as if it were a new religion : nor must they put forward their own religion as if it were a political or economic scheme which is to rival Socialism in its own department. Let us be quite clear that Socialism is not a religion, a rival religion to Christianity. Its connection 236 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY with religious aspirations lies in the fact that it shows a way by which many of the ideals of Christianity may be stimulated and furthered in practical accomplishment. It is a help to Christians, not a substitute for Christianity. The first ignorant criticism made by Christians against Socialism is that it would employ force and compulsion where Christianity would trust to persuasion. It will not be made so often now that the War has shown us how necessary compulsion of some sort is. It is quite true that Socialism does trust to force and compul- sion, but that is not peculiar to Socialism. It is the inevitable accompaniment of all efforts at State reform. The advocate of Tariff Reform or the Referendum, the advocate of Sunday closing, equally with the advocate of Sunday opening, they all trust to force and compulsion in other words, to the arm of the law. The Christian critics of Socialism do the same. The editors of the Guardian and the Clarion, who both agree about the desirability of conscrip- tion, unite also in their demand for compulsion. They none of them believe in the voluntary principle. But does this make them anti-Christian? No, nothing of the kind. Christianity as a religion does not appeal to force. It has donr so sometimes with disastrous results. But OPINIONS 237 normally it trusts to persuasion and education. It leaves the compulsory part of the business to the legislators and the officers of the State. So when Socialism comes along and advocates compulsion it is only doing what every statesman has been obliged to do. Nobody accuses Lord Salisbury of being anti-Christian because he passed the Free Education Act, or Mr. Gladstone of being an infidel because he instituted Board Schools. Of course, if Christians by this anti-compulsion argument mean that Socialism must not be forced upon an unwilling nation, they are only repeating a truism which applies to the pro- posals of Tories and Liberals quite as much as to those of Socialists. In this respect, prob- ably, Socialists are the least wedded to force of any political party. We do, as a matter of fact, take much more pains to educate people and persuade them to adopt our views willingly than any other State reformers do. If you compare the methods of the Primrose League with those of the Fabian Society, you will see this at once. There is plenty of compulsion about the former and very little about the latter. The Fabian Society has done its work by careful logical reasoning and persuasive education. The Church might even take a leaf out of its book, and instead of trying to force its own dogmas on an unwilling people 238 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY might take more pains to explain its prin- ciples to the ignorant. Another objection made by earnest Christians to Socialism is that it is " contrary to human nature." What do they exactly mean by this? Do they mean that the competitive system has got such a hold upon men and women that it has become a part of their very nature, and that any attempt to get them to alter it is quixotic and absurd? It always seems to me that this objection sounds very faithless in the mouths of men and women who are pledged by their loyalty to Christ to believe in the redemption and regeneration of human nature. I can understand an atheist or a pessimistic sceptic throwing up the sponge and ridiculing the Socialists for talking about supplanting competition by co-operation or the present game of " beggar my neighbour " by an attempt at brotherhood. But for Christians to discount Socialism on this score is surely nothing less than treason to their own religion . One is tempted to suspect that Christians have joined in the anti-socialistic cry about " human nature " because they are ashamed at the enthusiasm of Socialists when put side by side with their own apathy and failure. They are like the old prophet in Bethel, who was conscious of his own neglect of his oppor- OPINIONS 289 tunity of witness and covered his fault by bringing about the condemnation of the so- called " disobedient prophet," who was really more faithful to duty than himself. The " atheism " objection I have dealt with in another part of the book. Roughly speaking, it resolves itself into this : the anti-Socialists, knowing the tender feelings of John Bull on the subject of religion, and his passionate love for the Bible, which, of course, he diligently reads, and never puts under a glass case in a damp parlour, have very cleverly raised a scare that Socialism is atheism, in order to set John Bull against it. This they have been easily able to do by quoting snippets from German writers, many of them \forty or fifty years old. But is there any movement that could not be shown to be very different from what it really is if such methods were employed? Where would twentieth-century science be if it were held to the opinions expressed by leaders of science in 1850? How would the Church Times like to be saddled with the opinions expressed by Bishops of the forties? Per- sonally, I should not like Anglicanism to be judged by the stray opinions of Bishops of forty hours ago, let alone forty years. Would it be fair to condemn Tariff Reformers because Disraeli said that Protection was not only dead but damned? Would it be gentle- 240 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY manlike to attribute to modern Liberals all the ideas of the Manchester School? The "atheism" (so-called) of Socialists is nothing more than their protest against the narrow-minded and blind Pharisaism of the religious bodies, Protestant as well as Catholic, which has opposed them in every kind of way, chiefly for political reasons. Christians should pause and ask themselves whether the fault is not with the Church rather than with the Socialists. It was the Church which crucified Christ, and they called Him an atheist to begin with. The latest form of the atheist scare is the organization by the aristocracy of a new kind of Sunday School to counteract the Socialist schools. I do not wish to defend all the things that have been taught in Socialist Sunday Schools, any more than I wish to de- fend all that has been taught in Church and Nonconformist ones, but I think the aristocracy would be better employed in organizing the religious education of their own children than in defeating the efforts of a few Socialists to supplement the very defective teaching on citizenship which is given in our schools. Let the rich Christians teach the Church Catechism, with its magnificent " duty towards my neigh- bour," to their own boys and girls. Perhaps they are afraid of the revolution which would OPINIONS 241 certainly result if their families believed it and carried it out. So with the "hostility to the Christian idea of marriage " which is supposed by some Christians to be wrapped up in Socialism. Here again Socialism is not to be held responsible for all that has been written and said on the subject by individual Socialists. Nor are the views held by some Socialists on marriage by any means confined to Socialists. The Church has got to face the problem, whether Socialism succeeds or disappears. Very likely it will be found that the Church has got to stand out against the world in this thing, but " the world " will not mean the Socialists only. It will include, as it always has included, Tories and Liberals as well. Meantime it is well to note the hypocrisy of many rich Christians in this matter. They pro- fess to be alarmed about the " family life," the " sacredness of the marriage tie," etc., while it is notorious that the breaking up of the family life and the debasing of fatherhood and motherhood in modern times, are much more due to lusts of the rich than to the opinions of a few Socialists. The same people who profess to be shocked at " eugenic " proposals are the people who wink at sin in their own families and still base their arrangements for " holy matrimony " on money qualifications, 16 242 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY and very often put considerations of " love " in the background and ignore all the teaching of modern science in regard to heredity. This kind of thing is the real atheism and it is not Socialist. Socialists, as much as any, and more than most, are deeply concerned about the break-up of family life due to industrial causes. They have long ago declared war against slums and sweating, the two great enemies of the home. Our rich friends must get something better to say against us than that we want to wreck the family. We want to save it. Socialism, again, is said to be likely to de- stroy the individual, to put a stop to initiative and independent thought and energy. This is quite a fair criticism for Christians to make as Christians. For Christianity is the religion of liberty for the individual . Christianity wants to save each man's soul alive. Christianity holds that each man counts for one and not more than one. Christianity tells each of us that he is made in the image of God, and that he can become a son of God. If Socialism is going to destroy this, then indeed Christians may well look askance at it. But Socialism not only has no such intention, but rather believes that it holds the secret by which this destruction, which it sees going on OPINIONS 243 all around, can be averted. No doubt, in the days when Socialism was in its infancy and Communism was put forward as an ideal, it did look as if the triumph of Socialism might mean the destruction of the individual . Though even in those days John Stuart Mill said that under a communist regime a workman would be more free than under the slavery of the system of his day. The truth is that we no longer, if we are reasonable people, contrast Socialism and individualism as antithetical. All agree that the individual must be free, but all agree that a considerable amount of social control is necessary to preserve that freedom. It is simply a question of how much or how little control must the community have to keep its citizens free. Out experience of >the reign of individualism leads us as Socialists to believe that the community must have more control, not because we want to destroy the in- dividual, but, for precisely the opposite reason, because we want to save him. We too have learnt wisdom. We know that man is not a machine, and no modern Socialist wants to make him one. Our whole desire is to enlarge State interference and State control, solely for the purpose of developing the liberty and initiative of each man, to deliver him from the thraldom of the competitive system for private profit which is now choking the life out of 244 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY himin a word, to enable him to become a man (which for us Christians means a son of God). Under the present system the poor are not only poor, their lives are only half lives ; they are stunted physically and morally ; they are uneducated, deprived of true life. Half the world of art, poetry, literature, pleasure, games is shut out from them. This is the real problem of poverty. A poor man cannot live as God meant him to live. Why do people think that Socialism is going to make this worse, and that the individual is going to be destroyed? " I believe in the life to come," we say in the Creed. Too many Christians, in despair at this very system, which Socialists want to break up and destroy for ever, have made that splendid, hopeful, faith- ful article of the Creed mean merely a future life after death. We believe, we poor " atheists," that that life might begin to arrive immediately. Initiative invention ! Are they really stimu- lated by our present money-grabbing system? Are the poor in my parish really encouraged to initiate and invent by the fact that for a miserable weekly wage, which at any moment may be cut off at the whim of a foreman, they are to toil from morning to night in order to increase the dividends of unknown share- OPINIONS 245 holders, and enable the plutocracy to live in luxury ? And are the greatest of our modern inven- tors and artists men who work with a view to private profit ? Does Sir Oliver Lodge think only of his prospects of a peerage when he spends his time in studying electrified agri- culture or the diminution of fogs ? Two of the greatest of modern inventors, Edison and Westinghouse, are, I have been told by those who know, men to whom money profit is a thing of little importance and always has been so. Almost everything you have been told to believe about us by anti-Socialist dukes and country clergymen is the exact reverse of what we want or what we do. We don't want to share up equally. We don't want to make slaves of your children, but to set them free from conventionality and a miserable life. We don't want to break the ten commandments, but to help you to keep them. We don't want to abolish property, but to control the use of it for the good of the community. We do not see why twenty men (as at present) in America should control all the necessities of life. We think the millions, who are equally with them children of God, should be allowed to get their daily bread from the Father to whom they pray for it. We don't want to 246 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY eliminate God, but to reintroduce Him to you as the God of the Bible, and not of the upper classes, the God of Justice, the God of Love, the Lord of Hosts. We don't want to take away your Church, but to persuade you to use it for the purposes for which your Divine Master instituted it, to proclaim liberty to the captives, to set up the Kingdom of God on the earth. We don't want to deprive you of your Saviour, but to convince you that He is ready to save you now, and to suggest to you that if you want to appear before Him with confidence, it is time that you gave up serving Mammon and served God ; time that you fed the hungry the hungry rich as well as the hungry poor the starving orphans of human society, deprived by our present competitive system of the eternal life God meant them all to have. This is the sort of thing I have said to the Christians who seriously object to Socialism. I am afraid I am not so polite when I meet the merely political anti-Socialist. I offended the Standard once by suggesting that their attack on Socialism was not so much due to their anxiety for the Lord of Hosts as for " the hosts of lords." But I should not like my readers to think that I am only a Socialist agitator. As a matter of fact I seldom attend Socialist OPINIONS 247 ings now, and my chief work of that kind has always been in defending the Socialists against Christian attacks. I have always been attracted by the moral zeal of Socialists as compared with the apathy of the members of my own Church in furthering their own much more important propaganda. The Church is still very behindhand in applying Christianity to ordinary life. The mildest kinds of social reform (let alone Socialism) are still remote from the minds of our most devout Church people . It is not so very long ago that a certain royal personage prevented my having a share in some needlework done for the poor be- cause in her presence I had made the harmless remark that the people who worked least got most holidays. Though I believe that many people are extra- ordinarily interested in religion, I cannot say that I think that the Church, as at present conducted, meets the needs of the most re- ligiously minded of our countrymen. Many Church people still seem to imagine that to take an interest in social questions is to do something outside the religious sphere ; that for the clergy to deal with them is to do un- spiritual work ; that if we are to mix ourselves up with them \ve must only do it as a sort of extra, like dancing or drawing at a girls' 248 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY school. This is, to my mind, a most ghastly mistake, and it is because those who are keen about these questions suspect the Church of holding this heresy that they pay so little atten- tion to what we say or do in these matters. Once let the people feel that we look upon the solution of social problems as part and parcel of our religion, and they will listen to us, even if they do not agree with our solution. When a certain great preacher came to address the clergy before a Mission in Birming- ham, we were told by him that one result of the Mission would be the solution of some of our great social problems. This was received with applause, but one felt pretty sure at the time that no change whatever would take place in the principles upon which our municipal life is carried on ; not a single slum would be demolished, not a single wage would be raised, not a single sweater would cease to sweat. And so, I fear, it turned out. We had our Mission. We preached at the poor, and worried them into church in the good, old-fashioned way. We asked the rich as a great favour to subscribe to the printing ex- penses, but carefully avoided asking them about the condition of their souls or the con- ditions under which their employees were work- ing, the wages they paid, the methods of their business. At least, if we did it was all kept OPINIONS 249 very quiet, while a good deal of noise was made about everything else. This half-heartedness of the Church is what makes us despised and rejected of the working- man. This is an age of splendid social ideal- ism ; but the most splendid ideals are not the ideals of the average Churchman. Working- men, social reformers, women Suffragists, and such like are full of enthusiasm, and even fanaticism, while the bulk of the Church re- mains cold and time-serving. We may shrink from fanaticism, but it is very powerful. " The fanatically religious have been uniformly suc- cessful against those in whom religious fervour has been lukewarm." These enthusiasts cannot understand us Church people. They know our Bible, they know what our principles are supposed to be, they hear us sing and talk ad nauseam of Justice, Brotherhood, Victory, a Kingdom, and all the rest of it ; but they look in vain for a body of Christians bent on doing more than talk and sing. They hear our middle-class choirs shouting At the sign of triumph Satan's host doth flee, but they know that the devil does not turn a hair. They see us able to get up crowded meetings to scream against disendowment, at 250 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY which we naively confess that if our money is taken away we shall be crippled for life : they know that we are quite unable to gather our forces to demand justice or a living wage for the poor of Christ. They see us hand in glove with the classes of society about which our Lord said that it would be extremely diffi- cult for such to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. They read our so-called " religious " news- papers, and find them, so far as politics are concerned, on the side which is usually opposed to most of their aspirations : they read the correspondence, and find us occupied with petty questions of ritual and ceremonial. If we do pass resolutions in Convocation or at a Diocesan Conference about a living wage or some such subject, they suspect that we shall not attempt to carry them out, and certainly, judging from the attitude of Church people during the labour unrest, they are not far wrong in their sus- picions. We are eminently the Church of the classes, yet we do not -help even them very much spiritually. We have very little to say, and very little that we can do, which is of any real assistance to the commercial man with a conscience who finds himself called upon day by day to do things in his business which cannot be squared with a loyal following of Christ. We are almost impotent to deal with the serious questions now arising in connection OPINIONS 251 with the law of marriage, the relation of the sexes, eugenics, and doubtful practices in con- nection with fatherhood and motherhood, and a host of matters in which people are looking to us for guidance. The Church seems to be kept as a sort of tame pet of the upper and middle classes, to be played with but not allowed to bark or bite. I own I am a very bad hand at suggesting a remedy. At any rate, no remedy can be applied until we have learnt humility and entered upon a course of self-examination. We cannot be too optimistic about the Church, viewed as God's own society, but we can be much too optimistic about the Church of Eng- land as it is ; we can be culpably blind, as the Pharisees were, declaring that we see while we are all the while seeing not. Instead of pluming ourselves on our big " men's meet- ings " which we sometimes manage to scrape together to listen to some popular apostle, we should reflect on the puny result in practical life of such meetings. Instead of parading our statistics of finance, we should meditate on our statistics of Confirmation and Com- munion, remembering that though we boast of being the National Church, only two and a half millions ; are communicants (about the same number as in James I's reign, when the popu- lation was seven times smaller). 252 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY Instead of talking of the successful ministry of Mr. This or the marvellous pulpit power of Mr. That, we should post ourselves outside some of the great factories at the dinner hour, and ask the parish priest how many of these hordes of men are in the slightest degree influ- enced by the presence of the Church in their midst. If I felt that these crowds were really heathen, materialists, sodden with drink, blatant with atheism, I should not so much mind. But when one knows that they are many of them the best men in our parishes, sometimes a good deal more moral than our Church atten- dants and officers ; when one knows that many of them are full of grand ideals of justice and brotherhood and social betterment, and are doing twenty times as much to realize those ideals as some of our choir-men and sidesmen when one knows this, and thinks of it, and prays about it, one feels that the proper place for the Church of England is the penitent form. One of the indications of the unpractical character of Anglicanism is to be found in the great difficulty that we have in getting our Church people to be missionaries or evangelists. Salvationists and Socialists find no such difficulty. That is because they have a practical programme. Our people are not OPINIONS 253 shy. It is that we give them no material to propagate. They have acquired so little them- selves that is of value to them in their ordinary life that they do not see that there is anything to hand on to any one else. A Socialist young man or a Suffragist young lady has something very definite to do immediately that the move- ment is joined. I look forward to the day when the National Church may really be once more the Church of the nation ; but this it will never be until it expresses the religious and idealistic aspirations of the nation. If, as Sir Leo Chiozza Money tells us, there are thirty -eight million uncom- fortable people, and only five million comfort- able ones, it stands to reason that the Church must not be content to be the Church of the small minority. Even of these five million, only a very few perhaps one third are, I sup- pose, interested in the Church at all. I should like to ask what effect it must have on the masses when they see that while we deprecate interference in politics one day, we organize ferocious political meetings ourselves the next to defend our endowments ; when they see that the only thing that ever appears to unite us in definite political action is a sense of injustice to the clergy. If the Church is to get into touch with national life, it must be felt to be much more 254 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY concerned about national questions than about purely ecclesiastical ones. I do not agree with the Bishop who said he was in the House of Lords only to look after the Church. I am inclined to say that that is the least important part of his duty. He is there to influence the nation in a religious direction, not to guard his own particular ecclesiastical in- terests. I should like to see the Bishops initiating all kinds of social reform, apart altogether from their ecclesiastical bearings. The nation is sick of party strife and after the war would be glad not to return to it. The Bishops might propose all kinds of social legislation on its own merits. They might be the Labour Party of the House of Lords a minority, but a very influential one. This would endear them to the nation. Gradually the nation would feel that there was a positive social propaganda distinctively asso- ciated with Churchmanship, independent of all parties. I am not arguing that the Church should become Socialist, though I do think that, in proportion as we separate ourselves from the two great parties and take a line of our own, we shall probably tend to become so. The great cleavage will come in time between those who support the present system of capitalism, with it- selfish profit -hunt ing, and those who OPINIONS 255 believe that some new system must be devised of collective ownershipat least in the neces- sities of life. I think that when Church people have learnt to view these things apart from party politics, and especially in connection with their religion, they will most of them agree with Bishop Gore that " we must identify ourselves with the positive ideals of socialistic thought." The greatest social reforms of the last century were brought about by non-party Christians like Wilberforce and Lord Shaftesbury. Wilberforce registered an oath that he would never take office in the Cabinet, and Lord Shaftesbury declined to be labelled Radical or Tory. But this is a very different thing from having nothing to do with politics. I want the Church, just because it is non- party, to go into the thick of politics, for what are politics but national life itself? The great stream of ordinary life is around us and about us, pushing forward with amazing energy with its ideals and its enthusiasms, its mistakes and its sins, its victories and its failures apart from the everyday religion of the Church. We are afraid to take the lead. We have little or no spirit of martyrdom in us as Christians. For leaders and martyrs the nation has to look elsewhere. I am well aware of the good side of Church 256 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY life, but to dwell on that takes our attention off the failures which stimulate us to repentance. If we are ready to revise a good many of our opinions and methods, if we are ready to change, we shall live and live again. Other- wise we are dying or dead, for " to live is to change, and to have changed often." There are two fundamental problems which have always seemed to me to need solution if the Church is to recover or retain its hold on the masses. The one is the problem of religious education, and the other that of Sunday. Religious education is, unfortunately, the cause of a seemingly hopeless strife betwen Nonconformists and Churchmen. It is made worse by the fact that the two kinds of schools have become rivals, and each party claims one set of schools as representing its ideals. Though at the moment we are, of course, too much occupied elsewhere even to quarrel, yet we shall some day be in for another controversy between religious educa- tionists, and neither side seems to have learnt anything or to have any wish to end the quarrel by any sort of compromise. Is it not possible for us to look at the whole question apart from the desires of individual Nonconformists to score off the Anglicans and OPINIONS 257 of Bishops off Dr. Clifford? Cannot Christians who presumably want their children to be nurtured in the admonition of the Lord ask themselves quite frankly if the present system in Council schools or in Church schools does really effect its object ? Is there, in the first place, any great difference between Church school children and Council school children when it comes to religion ? Would any Anglican clergy say that their Confirmation candidates come from Church schools rather than from Council schools ? Would many Nonconformist ministers say that their children educated in Church schools have much leaning towards Anglicanism? I do not think so. Must we not all confess that the result in all cases, whether denominational or undenomina- tional, is very meagre indeed? I doubt if the thing is worth fighting about. On the other hand, I believe there is some- thing much more worth fighting about, and it is the kind of Bible teaching we have in all schools, especially the undenominational ones. The Nonconformists cling to the Cowper- Temple clause and worship it as a sort of fetish, but does it really secure " simple Bible teach- ing " ? It is a curious fact that Liberals in politics are in this matter of religious teach- ing the most conservative of Conservatives. While the Tory Church schools are issuing 17 258 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY diocesan syllabuses full of advanced views of the Bible, the Council schools still go on reading the Bible without comment, and perpetuating all the heresies of verbal inspira- tion. In the Church schools we are free to explain the Bible ; we can appeal to the imagination of a child, tell him that he actually belongs to the society about which he reads in the Acts of the Apostles,, and that the Sacraments are still in operation in the parish church ; we can tell him that Moses and Joseph may be reappearing on the stage of history in the forms of Mr. Asquith or Mr. Balfour ; that even Isaiah and John the Baptist might emerge in a Tolstoy or a Ruskin ; that the events which led to the Exodus were some- thing like the strikes in which their parents are engaged, and that there was a " smart set " even in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. It is a denominational school which best can bring religion and modern life together, and it is only thus that religion can live for children or grown-up people either. Mean- while, in the real National schools, the Council schools, Tom, Dick and Harry, Mary and Kerenhappuck, are only allowed to read the Bible verse by verse (and very badly they read it too!). No explanation is allowed. It is "the Bible as literature." But why, if it is only literature, keep to it alone? Why not OPINIONS 259 have Shakespeare or Bernard Shaw ? Why not ? Not only is this not Christian instruction or education ; it is the inculcation of a bad religion. It is not true that " undenomina- tionalism is a new religion." It is the con- solidation of an old and discredited one. It is the foundation of atheism. Were I a rationalist, I would work hard for the estab- lishment of Cowper-Templeism, as it is, to be permanently taught in all schools. It is the breeding process of the hopelessly conservative view of the Bible which permeates the work- ing classes. I have sometimes asked a school- boy at the end of a week what he has learned during the past five days at the " Scripture lesson." " One day we had a hymn, another day we learned a psalm, another day we learned about Moses' wife." That is a typical answer. Whatever it is, it is not the Christian religion. Do I, then, plead for the establishment of Church schools everywhere? Certainly not. Do I plead for " secular schools " ? No, I do not think we need come to that yet, though I very much object to calling it " atheism " to believe in them. A " secular " school would be one where there is no " religious instruc- tion " ; it would not be positively secularist ; it might be even more religious than a Cowper- Temple school. What I plead for is one more 260 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY attempt to make " Cowper-Templeism " effec- tive. It is quite certain that the State Will never agree to the establishment of more State- paid denominational schools. Right of entry may possibly be granted, but it is doubtful. On the other hand, it is certain that for a long time to come the bulk of the nation will be educated under the Cowper-Temple restriction. Let us make the best of it. Let us entirely overhaul the religious instruction as given in the Council schools. Let the State take into its counsels, or, better still, depute the settle- ment of a common religious syllabus to, a body of leaders of spiritual thought. If the Bishops refuse to take part in this, so much the worse for them. Let this body not be confined to ordained ministers, but only to Christians, laymen and clergy, parish priests and Bible students. Such a set of persons ought to be able to agree upon certain funda- mental truths with which it is desirable for children to be acquainted. Cowper-Templeism is only dry and stupid because we are afraid of each other. We are not trying to agree. On nearly all the vital points we do agree, and there is no reason why we should not tell our children so. Is the whole thing to be wrecked because on certain points we disagree ? I see no reason why, with a foundation such as a revised and OPINIONS 261 improved Cowper-Templeism might secure, we could not go on in our various churches and chapels to give that distinctive teaching which would cause the children to adhere to the denominations which we think desirable. But the great advantage that would ulti- mately accrue would be the gradual awakening of the whole nation to a new and fruitful view of the Bible. At present the very elements of religion (and even of morality) are becoming less and less known to exist by the majority of those " educated " in our schools. Denomi- nationalists should ask themselves very seriously if their bolstering up of Church schools and their clamour for right of entry does really make for an increase of this elemental knowledge in the bulk of the children. Undenominationalists should ask themselves equally seriously if the present Cowper-Temple system does produce anything worth produc- tion. All should ask themselves whether this continual quarrelling can result in any good whatever to the children themselves. Were not people like Archbishop Temple wise in their generation when they spoke of a " slippery slope," and are we not sliding miserably down it, while our opponents imagine they are winning, but really are only fastening 262 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY upon the schools something even more futile than we have ever had before ? I do not say that a revised Cowper-Templeism is the only way, but it seems to me better than anything we are likely to get from our present controversy, whichever side is successful. I have not dealt with Sunday Schools and Catechisms because I think that the question of what is taught in the day schools is the more important. In the first place, only a small minority of children come to school on Sunday, and, in the second place, it is in the day school that the general impression is given which for better or for worse will give the mass of children the idea of religion which will haunt them all their lives. And this brings me to my second problem, the problem of Sunday. Again, for better or worse, it is the Sunday which represents to most people their idea of religion. Personally, I think our British Sunday gives a very bad idea to the world of what Christians are aim- ing at, and though I do not, of course, want all the features of the continental Sunday repro- duced in this country, I do think it is worth while giving it a dispassionate consideration. I think we must confess that, with all our enthusiasm for the British Sunday and our contempt for that of our neighbours, we have not succeeded in doing anything very much OPINIONS 263 better than they in securing one day's rest in seven. And first, of our own Sunday. Is it not time that we more frankly allowed that the old- fashioned Sabbatarian argument will not hold water? Can these statements be denied? (1) That, historically speaking, the Christian Sunday is not the s,ame as the Jewish Sabbath ; ( 2) that our Lord's attitude towards the Sabbath was revolutionary, in the sense that He went against the religious view of His day, which is the view that modern Sabbatarians want to rehabilitate and fasten on to the Chris- tian Sunday; (3) that St. Paul knew nothing of a Christian Sabbath on the first day of the week; (4) that the "first day of the week" was a day of joy and worship, and had no con- nection with the Sabbath ; (5) that even when Constantine, in the fourth century, combined the Mithra Festival and the Christian Lord's Day and decreed a holiday, he did not forbid some work, and therefore was not recon- stituting the Sabbath ; ( 6) that the first Reformers were opposed to making Sunday a Sabbath, as savouring of Judaism. If all this is allowed, we are enabled to start afresh in modern times to make our Sunday useful and health-giving. We can take what we like in the Sabbatarian idea and leave what we do not like, without any sense of 264 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY disobedience to Divine law. We can get at the spirit without being at pains to attain uniformity in the letter. Catholics can insist on their Mass, Protestants on something else, while secularists and all can agree in securing a seventh -day rest. Peace will never come so long as Christians try to force a law which they think is Divine upon people who either suspect that the law is not Divine or reject the God whose law it is supposed to be. We all agree that we want a weekly rest. Why should we quarrel over the particular day, and why should we try to coerce our fellows in the name of religion ? We do not dream of doing this about any other religious duty, not even about religious duties the sanction for which is undoubted. Why should we choose the one religious practice the sanction for which is extremely doubtful, and impose it on others ? I know that it is argued that the Sabbatarian idea of Sunday is the only bit of religion left in many cases, and that it would be perilous to disturb it. But does any good ever come from obscurantism ? Have we any right to deceive ignorant people and make sad those whom the Lord has not made sad ? This we do if we transfer the restrictions of the Hebrew Sabbath to the Christian Sunday. Of course it is right to be very tender with old-established prejudices, and, as Robertson of Brighton OPINIONS 265 pointed out long ago, it would be as wrong to ride roughshod over a Scotsman's feelings about Sunday as it would be to do the same over an Italian peasant's " Mariolatry." But there is no need to ride roughshod over any- body. We want liberty and common sense. We need to learn from all quarters in this as in everything else. And this brings me to the continental Sunday. I am not going to argue for the imposition of the French Sunday or the German Sunday upon English people, but I do believe that we can learn from them in some directions how to improve our own. In the first place, we should leave off making wholesale condemnations. We should divide the subject of our criticism, and know exactly w r hat it is we are judging at one particular time. For example, to compare the Sunday morning of the Grand Prix with the same morning at St. Paul's Cathedral is no more fair than to compare the Oberammergau Passion Play with the Brick Lane Bird Market. If we compare the church -going public of Paris with the church -going public of London, I think the balance weighs in favour of the former. If we compare the occupation of the French, German, and Belgian townspeople between church hours with the occupation of the Scottish people at the same time, I should say 266 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY again that the foreigners have my vote. I once spent a Sunday in France with ordinary middle-class and working people, and it com- pared very favourably with the many Sundays I have spent under similar circumstances in Birmingham. We all went to Mass in the morning. In a truly Christian way I was offered the Pain benit, though a Protestant. After church some of the men sat at a com- mittee to deal with sick and poor relief, while the boys went to their club and played games. In the afternoon there was a fete at the neigh- bouring town, and everybody seemed to be thoroughly happy. No doubt many of them went to Vespers or Benediction in the evening, though I could not say. Now, what happens in England under the same conditions ? In the morning probably nothing happens, for these kinds of people are in bed, if Britons. But, granting they get up for an " early morning school " or Matins, is their worship as much like what we read of in the Acts as that of my French friends ? It is more likely that they go to an evening service only. All the rest of the day is spent in hanging about dull and empty streets. There are no amusements, scarcely any music, no Cafes. The only objection to these things is the Sabbatarian objection that some Divine law would be infringed if they were open, and OPINIONS 267 this, as we have seen, is very doubtful. Would it not be much better for all parties if we agreed to drop the religious argument and to adopt the purely philanthropic one, that the " Sabbath was made for man " ? Let us all combine on the securing of one day's rest in seven for every worker. By this means we are much more likely to secure liberty for the Christian to keep a good Sunday, and at the same time we shall not be irritating the secularists by trying to impose upon them a law which they see no reason for obeying. The secularists have surely as much right to have their opinions respected as the Moham- medans or the Jews under British rule. We do not interfere with these in India or in London. This does not mean that all Sunday restrictions are to be done away with. It means that we should approach the subject as citizens first, sympathizing with the preju- dices of all parties, and fastening on the points where we all agree, rather than endeavouring to force our own point of view as Christians on the masses who are not so. We must do this quite openly and honestly, not trying to squeeze in a little Christianity mixed up with philanthropy and statecraft, or trying to capture the secularist by pretending to believe in a seventh-day rest for his body, while secretly we want to run him into our Bethels by 268 IN SLUMS AND SOCIETY shutting up all other doors but these. Above all, let us avoid that cant about " charity," which concedes the Sunday cinematograph, provided the proceeds are given to us. If it is wrong to have picture shows on Sunday, it is wrong, whatever the financial object. It is not really wrong ; but we have not the courage to say so. Now, if we will treat the subject as citizens, we shall soon find the way clear to benefiting all alike, whether Christians or not. This is the policy of our continental brethren, and the result is most satisfactory to all parties. They begin by recognizing facts. It would be perfectly useless to try to shut up the restaurants or all the places of amusement on Sundays. They therefore devote their energies to reforms in regard to opening other shops or factories. But even here they are not in too much of a hurry, and they insist on the one day a week before attempting to make it necessarily Sunday. At the same time, having regard to the religious people, they do secure time for church -going to a very large number of people. This is the important point : it is 178 Belloc, H., 222 Benham, Canon, 75 Benson, Archbp., 56 Benson, E. F., 172 Benson, Fr., 73 Benson, F. R., 147 Benson, Monsigr., 78, 84 Berry, S., 127 Besant, Mrs., 203 Billing, Bishop, 271 Blatchford, R., 215 Blomfield, Bishop, 273 Bottomley, H., 181 Bourchier, Arthur, 138, 145 Boyd Carpenter, Bp., 106 Bradlaugh, C., 203 Briggs, H.,84 Bright, Dr., 20, 46 Bromby, H. B., 67 Brookfield, C., 152 Brookfield, Dr., 79 Brooks, Phillips, 188 Bruce Glasier, J., 219 Buckland, F., 143 Bull, Paul, 78 Burnand, Sir F., 137, 184 Burns, J., Rt. Hon., 197, 210 Burrows, H., 211 Caine, Hall, 176 Campbell, R. J., 124, 183 Campion, W., 19 Capper, Alfred, 151 Carlyle, Abbot, 78 Carnegie, Canon, 103 Chappel, H., 72 Chesterton, G. K., 173, i.> Church, Dean, 27, 61 Clarence, H.R.H., Duke of, 79 Clark, Holman, 147 Clark, Sir A., 184 Clay, Mrs. Cecil, 152 Clerk, F., 138 Clerk, Miss M., 152 Clifford, Dr., 257 Coleridge, Hon. G., 141 Colnaghi, C., 151 Corelli, Miss, 177, 216 Courtney, W. L., 144 299 300 INDEX Cradock, Hon. Mrs., 141 Crawford, M., 148 Creighton, Bp., 65, 87 Crooks, W., M.P., 74, 219 Curzon, Earl, 142 Cust, Purey, 140 Dale, Dr., 123 Dalton, T., 145 Davidson, Archbp., 99, 182 Dearmer, Dr., 79 Dell, R, 90 Denison, E., 17 Dilke, Sir C., 171 Disraeli, B., 194 Dolling, R., 102, 148, 185, 213, 227 Donaldson, F. L., 223 Driver, Dr., 76, 86, 1 13 Eliot, George, 109, 226 Evans, Canon, 287 Evans, Dr., 142 Eyre, D., 18 Eyton, R., 10, 14 Farrar, Dean, 10 Farren, W., 149 Figgis, Dr., 78 Foote, G. W., 19 Francis, St., 79, 93 Fremantle, Dean, 47, 76 Frere, Dr., 71, 78 Galsworthy, J., 161, 190 Garbett, C., 3 Gatty, Sir A. S., 138 Gatty, Sir S., 137 George, Rt. Hon. Lloyd, 24 Gibraltar, Bp. of, 72 Gilbert, Sir W., 138, 184 Gladstone, Rt. Hon. W. E., 30, 107, 171, 176, 186, 192, 194, 291 Gooch, Captain, 138 Gore, Bp., 13, 17, 76,78, 118, 176, 208 Goulden, Fr., 10, 15, 57 Grain, Corney, 139 Green, S. F., 108 Guilbert, Madame Yvette, 150 Halsbury, Lord, 205 Hancock, T., 199 Harcourt, Sir W., 90, 193 Hardie, Keir, 211 Hardy, E., 72 Harris, Frank, 47 Harris, Rendel, 128 Hart, G.W., 78 Harvey, Martin, 147 Haw, G., 50 Hayter, H., 141 Headlam, Stewart, 90, 196, 109, 202 Healy, Fr., 289 Henson, Dean, 19, 60, 127 Hewlett, A. S., 70 Hicks, Seymour, 147 Hitchcock, A. H., 70 Hole, Dean, 140 Holland, Dr., 17, 31, 34,48, 113, 142, 173, 208 Hyndman, H. M., 204, 223 Ignatius, Fr., 47, 75, 273 Inge, Dean, 113, 229 Ingram, Bp., 56, 96 Irving, H. B., 138, 147 Irving, Sir H., 148 INDEX 301 Jackson, W. E., 18 Jay, Fr., 176 Jowett, B., 143 Kelly, Fr., 78 Kemble, Mrs. F., 149 Kennedy, Rann, 163 Kensit, J., 83, 90, 133 Kilmorey, Earl of, 198 King, Bp., 26, 31, 119 Kingsley, Charles, 199 Kirkpatrick, Dr., 113 Knight Bruce, Bp., 18 Knox Little, Canon, 106 Lang, Archbp., 19 Lansbury, George, 218, 220 Lees, Sir E., 141 Leigh, Dean, 137, 149 Leigh, Sir Chandos, 137 Liddell, Mrs., 141 Liddon, Dr., 12, 46, 109 Little, A. G., 174 Lodge, Sir Oliver, 245 Lyttelton, Lord, 10 Macdonald, R., 211 Mackinnon, Alan, 138, 141 Mackonochie, Fr., 14 Mann, Tom, 58, 210 Manning, Cardinal, 123, 198 Marson, Charles, 66, 155, 174, 199 Martineau, Dr., 124 Mason, Dr. A. J., 71, 123, 197 Masterman, Rt. Hon. C., 119, 219 Matthews, C., 149 Maturin, Basil, 74 Maurice, F. D., 106, 120, 199 Melbourne, Lord, 190 Merivale, H., 140 Middleton, Archbp., 292 Midleton, Viscount, 142 Monckton, L., 129, 138 Monckton, Sir J., 148 Money, Sir L. C., 253 Moor, P., 19 Moore, Aubrey, 26, 43 Morley, Viscount, 199 Morris, W. J., 141, 149 Noel, " Baptist," 79 Noel, C., 223 Noel, M. B., 275, 280 Northcliffe, Lord, 102 Norton, Lord (C. B. Adderley), 125, 136, 194 Norton, Lord(C. L. Adderley), 195 Orage, A. R., 222 Paget, Bp. F., 31 Paget, Bp. L., 69 Paget, Sir J., 32, 184 Pankhurst, Mrs., 222 Parker, Dr., 124 Phillimore, Miss, 70 Pinchard, A., 223 Platt, S., 141 Ponsonby, C., 138 Ponsonby, E., 138, 152 Reece, R., 140 Rivington, L., 74 Robertson, Bp., 113 Robertson, Rt. Hon. J. M., 211 Robertson, Sir. J. F., 147, 163 Robinson, Dr., 72 302 INDEX Romanes, G., 44 Roose, Dr. Robson, 95 Rosebery, Earl of, 235 Ruskin, John, 52, 105 Russell, Rt. Hon. G., 191 Sabatier, Paul, 173 Salisbury, Marquis of, 142 Sanday, Dr., 46, 86, 113 Seawell, F., 19 Shaw, G. B., 90, 161, 217 Sheldon, C. B., 170 Shore, Canon Teignmouth, 79 Shorthouse, J. H., 184 Shuttleworth, H.C., 202 Smith, Sydney, 79 Snowden, P., 218 Spalding, A., 138 Stanton, Arthur H., 276 Stirling Mrs. Fanny, 149 Stubbs, Bp., 187 Stubbs, Bp. (of Truro), 204 Sullivan, Sir A., 138 Taibot, Bp., 46 Talmage, Dr., n Tanner, Dr., 192 Taylor, Tom, 140 Temple, Archbp., 62, 86, 91, 197, 205 Temple, William, 208 Thomas, Lloyd, 128 Tillett, Ben, 196, 210 Toole, J. L., 148 Trench, Archbp., 286 Truro, Bp. of, 17, 68 Twain, Mark, 296 Twiss, Quintin, 138 Tyrrell, Fr. George, 103, no Vanbrugh, Irene, 146 Vanbrugh, Violet, 146 Vaughan, Cardinal, 146 Waggett, Fr., 43, 75, 113 Wakefield, Bp. Russell, 112, 128 Walsh, Walter, 132 Walsham How, Bp., 62 Ward, "Sam," 148 Warwick, Countess of, 177, 223 Watts, G. F., 153 W T ebb, Mrs.S., 218 Webb, S., 218 Wells, H. G., 217, 295 Westcott, Dr., 105 Westminster, Duke of, 80 Whately, Archbp., 63 W T hitmore, E. H., 145 Widdrington, P., 223 Wilde, Oscar, 178 Wilkinson, Bp., 14 Wilson, Archdeacon, in Wimborne, Lady, 83, 90 Woodward, G. R., 113 Wyndham, Rt. Hon. G., 87 Yates, Edmund 148 Ube (Sreebam prew UNWIN BROTHERS LIMITED WOKING AND LONDON