THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES.
 
 THE FAITHS 
 OF THE PEOPLES 
 
 BY J. FITZGERALD MOLLOY, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 1 COURT LIFE BBLOW STAIBS ; OB, LONDON UNDER THE G-EOBSES," "ROYALTY RESTORED; 
 OR, LONDON UNDER CHARLES II.," "THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF EDMUND KEAN," 
 " THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF PEG WOFFINGTON," ETC., ETC. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. II. 
 
 ILontJon: 
 
 WARD AND DOWNEY, 
 12, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 
 
 1892. 
 
 [All rights reserved.']
 
 CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, 
 CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEJL- . . . 1 
 
 MORNING SERVICE AT ARGYLE SQUARE. 
 
 THE UNITARIANS . 35 
 
 SUNDAY MORNING WITH THE KEY. STOPFORD BROOKE. 
 
 MONASTICISM IN ENGLAND 65 
 
 VESPERS AT THE CARMELITE CHURCH, KENSINGTON. 
 
 THE FIRST DAY MEETING OF THE SOCIETY OF 
 
 FRIENDS 84 
 
 THE SALVATION ARMY 113 
 
 SUNDAY EVENING AT REGENT CIRCUS BARRACK. 
 
 MONASTICISM IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND . 138 
 
 FATHER IGNATIUS AT THE WESTMINSTER TOWN HALL.
 
 vi CONTENTS. 
 
 PAQB 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN REUNION SCHEME . . .167 
 
 MORNING SERVICE AT ALL SAINTS, LAMBETH. 
 
 EVENSONG SERVICE AT ST. PAUL'S . . , 182 
 THE MORAVIANS^. . . . . . . .195 
 
 SUNDAY MORNING IN FETTER LANE CHAPEL. 
 
 SATURDAY AFTERNOON WITH THE SEVENTH 
 
 BAPTISTS 209
 
 THE 
 
 FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 
 
 MORNING SERVICE AT ARGYLE SQUARE. 
 
 EMANUEL SWEDENBORG may be said to have inherited 
 his love of mysticism from his father, who was Bishop 
 of Skara, and Professor of Theology to the University of 
 Upsala ; a man with no mean opinion of his learning 
 and power, who believed himself in constant communica- 
 tion with angels. 
 
 Emanuel came into the world in 1688 ; and he 
 tells us that from his fourth to his tenth year his 
 thoughts were continually engrossed by reflecting on 
 God, on salvation, and on the supernatural affections 
 of man. " I often," he adds, " revealed things in my 
 discourse which filled my parents with astonishment, 
 and made them declare at times that certainly the 
 angels spake through my mouth." From the first he 
 gave proof of his high intellectual abilities. He rapidly 
 
 VOL. IT. B
 
 2 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 mastered the classics and mathematics, and on leaving 
 the University of Upsala at the age of twenty-two, 
 set out on his travels through Europe, that he might 
 see the world and study philosophy. 
 
 Thirsting for knowledge he made the most of his 
 opportunities, and everywhere sought the society of 
 the famous and the learned. He spent a year in London 
 a ad at Oxford, and four years in various Continental 
 cities. He then returned to Sweden brimful of projects, 
 dreaming of inventions, and resolved on establishing a 
 scientific journal. Being introduced to King Charles XII. 
 he was appointed by His Majesty Assessor Extraordi- 
 nary in the Royal College of Mines, and Associate 
 Engineer with Polhem, called the Archimedes of Sweden. 
 He greatly assisted the King in his military operations, 
 and when Charles was killed at the siege of Frederick- 
 shall, bis successor, Queen Ulrica Eleanora, ennobled the 
 Swedenborg family, whereby Emanuel, as the eldest 
 living member, subsequently became entitled to sit in 
 the House of Nobles. 
 
 Whilst taking part in legislative schemes, he con- 
 tinued to devote himself to scientific studies, and 
 published many works dealing with the level of the 
 seas and tides in the ancient world ; the position and 
 motion of the earth and planets with respect to the 
 sun ; the division of money and measures which would 
 facilitate calculation and avoid fractions ; plans for
 
 CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 3 
 
 the construction of dykes, docks, and sluices ; ex- 
 planations concerning the phenomena of chemistry and 
 physics by geometry ; means of discovering the powers 
 of vessels by the application of mechanical principles, 
 for which he was elected a member of the Academy 
 of Science at Upsala, corresponding member of the 
 Academy of Science at St. Petersburg, and member of 
 the Academy of Science at Stockholm. Still, in the 
 interests of his profession and in the fulfilment of his 
 duties as assessor, he visited mining and smelting 
 works in various countries, and made scientific experi- 
 ments. But his philosophical studies speedily led him 
 beyond the reach of things mechanical, and soon after 
 passing his thirtieth year he strove to arrive at a 
 scientific explanation of the universe. Later he became 
 desirous of discovering the relation between soul and 
 body, and of finding the subtle link uniting the 
 finite and the infinite. 
 
 In 1719 he resolved to travel once more and seek 
 his fortune in mining. He was of opinion that " he 
 must indeed be a fool who is loose and irresolute, who 
 sees his place abroad, yet remains in obscurity and 
 wretchedness at home, where the Furies, Envy and 
 Pluto, have taken up their abode and dispose of all 
 rewards, and where all the trouble I have taken is 
 met with such shabbiness." He therefore left Sweden, 
 
 and whilst in Amsterdam published five pamphlets in 
 
 B 2
 
 4 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 Latin, relating to scientific subjects. Subsequently, 
 he travelled through Holland, France, and Italy, his 
 mind occupied in striving to solve the mysteries of 
 life and death. 
 
 Metaphysical principles and mathematical deductions 
 brought him, he says, neither the wisdom he sought 
 nor the comfort he desired ; and by degrees he began 
 to look for answers to the problems that troubled his 
 soul, not from science, but from inspiration. This 
 happened about his fifty-fifth year. Writing of himself, 
 he says : " For many years before my mind was opened 
 and I was enabled to speak with spirits, there were 
 not only dreams informing me of the matters that 
 were written, but also changes of state when I was 
 writing, and a peculiar extraordinary light in the 
 writings. Afterwards there were many visions when 
 my eyes were shut ; light miraculously given ; spirits 
 influencing me as sensibly as if they touched my 
 bodily senses ; temptations also from the evil spirits, 
 almost overwhelming me with horror ; fiery lights ; 
 words spoken in early morning ; and many similar 
 events. 
 
 " Flames of various sizes and different colours and 
 splendour were seen by me, and this so often that 
 for several months when writing a certain work, scarcely 
 a day passed in which there did not appear before 
 me flames as vivid as those of a common fire, which
 
 CHUECH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 5 
 
 were so many attestations of the truth of what I 
 was writing; and this was before the time when 
 spirits began to speak with me as man to man." 
 
 He declares he was first introduced by the Lord 
 to natural sciences, that he might better understand 
 the revelation subsequently made to him. According 
 to his belief One appeared before him, who said : " I 
 am the Lord, the Creator and Eedeemer of the world. 
 I have chosen thee to unfold the spiritual sense of the 
 Holy Scripture. I will myself dictate to thee what 
 thou shalt write." " The same night the world of spirits, 
 Hell and Heaven, were convincingly opened to me, 
 where I found many persons of my acquaintance of 
 all conditions. From that day forth I gave up all 
 worldly learning, and laboured only in spiritual things, 
 according to what the Lord commanded me to write. 
 Thereafter the Lord daily opened the eyes of my spirit 
 to see in perfect wakefulness what was going on in 
 the other world, and to converse, abroad awake, with 
 angels and spirits." 
 
 It is notable that from his youth he was able to 
 retain his breath for a considerable time without 
 suffocating ; and when praying or lost in thought, the 
 actions of his lungs became suspended, as in the case of 
 trance. This act of withholding the breath which was 
 perfectly natural to him, has been practised by many 
 occultists as a means of inducing supersensual vision.
 
 6 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 When the vision appeared, and the mission was 
 given to him, he was staying in London ; and regarding 
 this second visit, a well- authenticated story is narrated 
 by one Brockrner, who lived in Fetter Lane, and is 
 printed in William White's "Life of Swedenborg." 
 This delightfully quaint statement runs as follows : 
 
 " In the year 1743, one of the Moravian Brethren 
 named Seniff made acquaintance with Mr. Emanuel 
 Swedenborg while they were passengers in a post-yacht 
 from Holland to England. Mr. Swedenborg, who 
 was a God-fearing man, wished to be directed to some 
 house in London where he might live quietly and 
 economically. Mr. Seniff brought him to me, and I 
 cheerfully took him in. Mr. Swedenborg behaved 
 very properly in my house. Every Sunday he went 
 to the church of the Moravian Brothers in Fetter Lane. 
 He kept solitary yet came often to me, and in talking 
 expressed much pleasure in hearing the Gospel in 
 London. So he continued for several months, ap- 
 proving of what he heard at the chapel. 
 
 " One day he said to me he was glad the Gospel 
 was preached to the poor, but complained of the 
 learned and rich, who he thought must go to hell. 
 Under this idea he continued several months. He told 
 me he was writing a small Latin book, which would 
 be gratuitously distributed among the learned men 
 in the Universities of England. After this he did
 
 CHUECH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 7 
 
 not open the door of his chamber for two days, nor 
 allow the maid-servant to make the bed and dust 
 as usual. One evening when I was in a coffee-house, 
 the maid ran in to call me home, saying that some- 
 thing strange must have happened to Mr. Swedenborg. 
 She had several times knocked at his door without his 
 answering or opening it. Upon this I went home 
 and knocked at his door, and called him by name. 
 He then jumped out of bed, and I asked him if he 
 would not allow the servant to enter and make his bed. 
 He answered no, and desired to be left alone, for he 
 had a great work on hand. 
 
 " This was about nine in the evening. Leaving 
 his door and going upstairs, he rushed up after me, 
 making a fearful appearance. His hair stood upright, 
 and he foamed round the mouth. He tried to speak 
 but could not utter his thoughts, stammering long 
 before he could get out a word. At last he said that 
 he had something to confide in me privately, namely 
 that he was Messiah, that he was come to be crucified 
 for the Jews, and that I (since he spoke with difficulty) 
 should be his spokesman, and go with him to-morrow 
 to the synagogue, there to preach his words. He 
 continued : ' I know you are an honest man, but I 
 suspect you will not believe me. Therefore the angel 
 will appear at your bedside early in the morning, 
 then you will believe me.' I now began to be afraid,
 
 8 TEE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 and considered a long time ere I replied. At last 
 I said: 'You are, Mr. Swedenborg, a somewhat ancient 
 man, and as you tell me have never taken medi- 
 cine ; wherefore I think some of a right sort would 
 do you good. Dr. Smith is near, he is your friend 
 and mine, let us go to him, and he will give you 
 something fitted for your state. Yet I shall make this 
 bargain with you, if the angel appears to me and 
 delivers the message you mention, I shall obey the 
 same. If not, you shall go with me to Dr. Smith 
 in the morning.' 
 
 "He told me several times the angel would appear 
 to me, whereupon we took leave of each other and went 
 to bed. In expectation of the argel I could not sleep, 
 but lay awake the whole night. My wife and children 
 were at the same time very ill, which increased my 
 anxiety. I rose about five o'clock in the mornirjg. 
 As soon as Mr. Swedenborg heard me move overhead, 
 he jumped out of bed, threw on a gown, and ran 
 in the greatest haste up to me, with his night-cap 
 half on his head, to receive the news about my call. 
 
 " I tried by several remarks to prepare his excited 
 mind for my answer. He foamed and cried again 
 and again : ' But how how how ? ' Then I re- 
 minded him of our agreement to go to Dr. Smith. 
 At this he asked me straight down : ' Came not the 
 vision ? ' I answered : ' No ; and now I suppose
 
 CHURCH OF THE NEW JEHU SALEM. 9 
 
 you will go with me to Dr. Smith.' He replied : ' I 
 will not go to any doctor.' He then spoke a long 
 while to himself. At last he said : ' I am now associat- 
 ing with two spirits, one on the right hand and the 
 other on the left. One asks me to follow you, for you 
 are a good fellow ; the other says I ought to have 
 nothing to do with you, because you are good for 
 nothing.' I aiiswered : ' Believe neither of them, but 
 let us thank God, who has given us power to believe 
 in His word." He then went downstairs to his room, 
 but returned immediately and spoke, but so confusedly 
 that he could not be understood. I began to be 
 frightened, suspecting that he might have a penknife 
 or other instrument to hurt me. In my fear I addressed 
 him seriously, requesting him to walk downstairs, as 
 he had no business in my room. 
 
 11 Then Mr. Swedenborg sat down in a chair and 
 wept like a child, and said : ' Do you believe that I 
 will do you any harm ? ' I also began to weep. It 
 commenced to rain very hard. After this I dressed. 
 When I came down I found Mr. Swedenborg also 
 dressed, sitting in an arm-chair with a great stick in 
 his hand and the door open. He called : ' Come in, 
 conae in/ and waved the stick. I wanted to get a 
 coach, but Mr. Swedenborg would not accompany me. 
 I then went to Dr. Smith, Mr. Swedenborg's intimate 
 friend, and told him what had happened, and asked also
 
 10 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 that he would receive Mr. Swedenborg into his house. 
 He had, however, no room for him ; but engaged apart- 
 ments for him with Mr. Michael_Carr, the wig-maker in 
 Warner Street, Cold Bath Fields, three or four houses 
 from his own. 
 
 "Whilst I was with Dr. Smith, Mr. Swedenborg; 
 
 7 o 
 
 went to the Swedish Envoy, but was not admitted, 
 it being post-day. Departing thence he pulled off his 
 clothes and rolled himself in very deep mud in a 
 gutter. Then he distributed money from his pockets 
 among the crowd which had gathered. In this state 
 some of the footmen of the Swedish Envoy chanced to 
 see him, and brought him to me very foul with dirt. I 
 told him that a good quarter had been taken for him 
 near Dr. Smith, and asked him if he was willing to 
 live there. He answered 'Yes.' I sent for a coach, 
 but Mr. Swedenborg would walk, and with the help 
 of two men he reached his new lodging. 
 
 "Arrived there, he asked for a tub of water and 
 six towels, and entering one of the inner rooms, 
 locked the door, and spite of all entreaties would 
 not open it. In fear lest he should hurt himself the 
 door was forced, when he was discovered washing his 
 feet and the towels all wet. He asked for six more. 
 I then went home and left six men as guards over him. 
 Dr. Smith visited htm and administered some medicine, 
 which did him much good.
 
 CHUECH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 11 
 
 " After this, I continued to visit Mr. Swedenborg, 
 who at last had only one keeper. He many times 
 avowed his gratitude for the trouble I had with him. 
 He would never leave the tenet, however, that he was 
 Messiah. One day when Dr. Smith had given him 
 a laxative, he went out into the fields, and ran 
 about so fast that his keeper could not follow him. 
 Mr. Swedenborg sat down on a stile and laughed. 
 When his man came near him, he rose and went to 
 another stile, and so on. When the dog days began he 
 became worse and worse. After wards I associated 
 very little with him. Now and then we met in the 
 streets, and I always found he retained his former 
 opinion." 
 
 To this narrative, Aron Mathesius, minister of 
 the Swedish Church and Chaplain to the Embassy, 
 adds : " The above account was word by word 
 delivered to me by Mr. Brockmer, an honest and 
 trustworthy man, in the house and presence of 
 Mr. Burgman, minister of the German Church, the 
 Savoy, London, while Swedenborg lived." 
 
 In the diary which Swedenborg kept, many strange 
 dreams or visions are recorded with much minuteness and 
 gravity. In one, he narrates that he spoke as if awake, 
 and felt that certain prayers were put into his mouth. 
 He repeated these, and then states : "At that moment 
 I sat in His (Christ's) bosom, and saw Him face to
 
 12 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 face. It was a face of holy mien and altogether 
 indescribable, and He smiled so, that I believe His 
 face had indeed been like this when He lived on earth. 
 He spoke to me and asked whether I had a certificate 
 of health. I answered, ' Lord, Thou knowest that better 
 than I/ 'Do then,' He said, which signified as far 
 as I perceived in my mind, to love Him in reality, or 
 that I should do what I had vowed." This is set 
 down under date, April, 1774. Scarcely a day or 
 night passed that did not briDg him visions of women 
 and angels, of dogs and boars, of kings and queens, 
 of things incomprehensible, and matters bewildering. 
 " I seemed to be with Christ," he writes in October, 
 " with Whom I conveised without ceremony. He 
 borrowed a little money from another, about five 
 pounds. I was sorry that He did not borrow of me. 
 I took two pounds, of which methought I let one drop, 
 and then the other. He asked what it was. I said, 
 ' I have found two,' one being probably dropped by 
 Him. I offered, and He took them. In such an easy 
 manner did we seem to live together. ]t was a state 
 of innocence." 
 
 In the following year a remarkable revelation was 
 made to him. " I was in London," he stated to his 
 friend Mr. Bobsaham, " and dined late at my usual 
 quarters, where I had engaged a room in which to 
 prosecute my studies in Natural Philosophy. I was
 
 CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 13 
 
 hungry, and ate with a great appetite. Towards the 
 end of the meal I remarked that a kind of mist spread 
 before my eyes, and I saw the floor of my room 
 covered with hideous reptiles, such as serpents, toads, 
 and the like. I was astonished, having all my wits 
 about me, being perfectly conscious. The darkness 
 attained its height, and then passed away. I now saw 
 a Man sitting in the corner of the chamber. As I had 
 thought myself alone, I was greatly frightened when he 
 said to me, 'Eat not so much.' My sight again became 
 dim, but when I recovered it I found myself alone 
 in my room. The unexpected alarm hastened my 
 return home. I did not suffer my landlord to perceive 
 that anything had happened, but thought over the 
 matter attentively, and was not able to attribute it 
 to chance or any physical cause." His commission, as 
 already stated, was then given him. 
 
 The year in which this vision appeared he re- 
 turned to Sweden after an absence of over two 
 years, resumed the duties of Assessorship, and began 
 to study Hebrew that he might read the Scriptures 
 in the original tongue. As he read the wisdom of 
 the Word was revealed to him and written down 
 by him for the benefit of his kind. 
 
 In 1746, however, he resigned his duties that he 
 might devote himself wholly " to the new function 
 to which the Lord had called him." A higher degree
 
 14 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 of rank was offered him and declined, lest it should be 
 the occasion of inspiring him with pride. He now 
 decided, as he narrates, " to print and publish various 
 unknown Arcana, which have either been seen by 
 me or revealed to me, concerning Hell and Heaven, 
 the state of man after death, the true worship of 
 God, the spiritual sense of Scripture, and many im- 
 portant truths tending to salvation and true wisdom." 
 About this time he also began his spiritual diary. 
 
 Quiet in manner and modest in conversation, he 
 never sought to bring others to his way of thinking ; 
 satisfying himself with printing and circulating his 
 books. He passed days in a state of trance, during 
 which all his bodily faculties seemed suspended, and 
 nights in warring with the spirits of evil, who power- 
 fully assailed him. In his diary are complaints of 
 the pains they had inflicted on different parts of his 
 body, " as upon my feet, so that I could scarcely 
 walk ; upon the dorsal nerves, so that I could scarcely 
 stand ; and upon parts of my head with such perti- 
 nacity that the pains lasted for some hours. I was 
 clearly instructed that such sufferings are inflicted 
 upon man by evil spirits." Whether his seership 
 was as his followers hold, a natural result of intel- 
 lectual and moral development open to all men, or an 
 abnormal condition of mind, must remain an unanswered 
 question ; but he proved himself to possess powers
 
 CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 15 
 
 common to many spiritualistic mediums of the present 
 day, by which he predicted events hidden in the 
 future, gave information concerning the dead that 
 was verified by their friends, and described occur- 
 rences happening at great distances which news sub- 
 sequently confirmed. Concerning his seership there 
 can be little doubt, as various well - authenticated 
 proofs of it are given. Once, when he arrived at 
 Gottenburg from England on the 19th of July, 
 1759, he became, two hours after landing, much 
 agitated, and declared a dangerous fire had broken 
 out at the Sudermalm in Stockholm, three hundred 
 miles distant, and was spreading fast. He feared 
 it would reach his own house, and was in great per- 
 plexity. Not until two hours had passed, during which 
 he gave minute descriptions of the scene, did he ex- 
 claim : " Ttiank God, the fire is extinguished the third 
 door from my house." Two days later came news 
 from Stockholm verifying his statements in every 
 particular. 
 
 Kumours of his power spread abroad, and he was 
 immediately beset by curious people. Amongst his 
 visitors came the widow of one Marteville, a Dutch 
 ambassador to Sweden. Of late she had been sued 
 for twenty-five thousand guilders~which she was certain 
 her husband had paid, though, she was unable to find 
 the receipt. She stated her trouble to Swedenborg,
 
 16 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 who promised that if he should meet Marteville 
 in the spiritual world he would make inquiries of 
 him concerning the matter. 
 
 Eight days later, as the lady's second husband 
 narrates, Marteville appeared to his wife in a dream, 
 and "mentioned to her a secret place in his English 
 cabinet where she would find, not only the receipt, 
 but also a hairpin set with twenty brilliants, which 
 had been given up as lost. This happened about 
 two o'clock in the morning. 
 
 "Full of joy my wife rose and found them in the 
 place designated. She returned to bed and slept till 
 nine o'clock. About eleven in the forenoon Sweden- 
 borg was announced. His first remark before my wife 
 had time to speak was, that he had seen several 
 spirits during the night, and amongst them Marteville. 
 He wished to talk with him, but Marteville excused 
 himself on the plea that he must go and discover 
 something of importance to his wife. 
 
 " This is the true statement of the affair in which 
 my wife was concerned. I do not attempt to pene- 
 trate the mystery. I am merely required to make a 
 plain statement of facts, and this duty I perform." 
 
 Charles Leonard de Stahlhammer, who declares 
 himself no follower of Swedenborg, and regrets that 
 " the only weakness of this truly honest man was his 
 belief in the apparition of spirits," tells the following
 
 CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 17 
 
 story. A short time after the death of the Prince 
 of Prussia, Swedeuborg went to Court which he was 
 in the habit of attending regularly. When the Queen 
 saw him she exclaimed in jest : " Well Mr. Assessor 
 have you seen my brother ? " Swedenborg answered 
 he had not, whereon she replied : "If you should see 
 him remember me to him." 
 
 "Eight days after Swedenborg came to Court, but 
 so early that the Queen had not left her apartment, 
 where she was conversing with her maids and other 
 ladies. He did not wait for the Queen's coming out, 
 bub passed directly to her room, and whispered in 
 her ear. The Queen, struck with astonishment, was 
 taken ill and did not recover herself for some time. 
 After she had come to herself she said to those about 
 her, ' There is only God and my brother who can 
 know what he has just told me.' She owned he 
 had spoken of her last correspondence with the Prince, 
 the particulars of which were known to themselves 
 alone." 
 
 On another occasion when a company had listened 
 to the seer's description of the spiritual world, one 
 of them asked who of those present would die first. 
 Swedenborg sat in profound silence for a time, and 
 then said : " Olof Olofson will die to-morrow morning 
 at forty-five minutes past four o'clock." 
 
 The man whose name was mentioned was not 
 
 VOL. II.
 
 18 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 amongst the party, but known to them. One of 
 Swedenborg's hearers went next morning to Olofson's 
 house, but on his way met a servant who said his 
 master had died of apoplexy. The clock in Olofson's 
 room had stopped at fortyfive minutes past four. 
 
 On the other hand he amused and interested his 
 friends by accounts of various conversations he 
 enjoyed with spirits of the departed, and by 
 details he was enabled to furnish regarding the posi- 
 tion and occupation of many distinguished persons. 
 Louis XIV. was in great dignity in the spiritual 
 world, and governed the best society of the French 
 nation. Clement XII. for some time presided over 
 the Papists in the world of spirits, " but abdicated 
 of his own accord, and passed over to the Re- 
 formed Christians, among whom he still is, and 
 enjoys a blessed life." Benedict XIV. associated with 
 cunning and malicious spirits ; he loved the Jesuits, 
 and when they were shown to be devils he still 
 clung to them. He was therefore consigned to the 
 cavern of a harsh corrector, who punished him 
 severely. Afterwards he was led by various wind- 
 ings to the deepest of the Papal hells, into which 
 he rushed as to his appointed and congenial place. 
 Sixtus V. confided to Swedenborg that "the saints 
 were nobodies." He said "he led the same active 
 life that he had done on earth, and that every
 
 CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 19 
 
 morning he prescribed for himself nine or ten things 
 to be accomplished before evening." St. Ignatius 
 Loyola had no pleasure in being thought a saint. 
 St. Francis Xavier is described as a cunning magi- 
 cian, and when Swedenborg met him he was quite 
 idiotic, yet he had sense enough to state that in 
 the place where he is confined he is not insane, for 
 idiocy only comes on whenever he fancies himself 
 a saint. When a worshipper calls for St. Agnes, 
 "she goes out and asks what is wanted with a 
 humble shepherdess ; and her companions join her 
 and chide the worshipper even to shame. Agnes 
 is watched lest she should grow proud. She is 
 now removed elsewhere, and is not tolerated amongst 
 upright women unless she confesses her own badness." 
 
 Swedenborg's life and liberty were attempted to 
 be taken. His nephew Bishop Filenius whom he 
 compared to Judas Iscariot, conceived the idea of 
 shutting him in a madhouse, a device which a 
 friend made known to Swedenborg and besought 
 him to fly. The seer went into his garden, fell 
 upon his knees and prayed that God might direct 
 his actions. He then rose and said no evil should 
 touch him, which proved true, for his rank and 
 inoffensive character saved him from the threatened 
 fate. 
 
 It is stated that one day a young man came to 
 
 c 2
 
 20 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 his house and demanded speech of him. The servant 
 being suspicious of the visitor, said her master was 
 out ; but the fellow not believing her word rushed 
 into the garden, when his cloak caught in a lock 
 and his naked sword fell to the ground. His 
 wicked design being thus exposed he escaped in 
 haste. 
 
 The latter part of Swedenborg's life was spent 
 chiefly in Holland and in England. His habits were 
 simple, his days uneventful, and his diet principally 
 consisted of vegetables, with brown bread and milk. 
 He died in London on the 29th of March, 1772, 
 in the eighty-fourth year of his life. He left 
 behind him many theological works dealing with 
 all things in heaven and on earth. 
 
 According to him, the last judgment is not followed 
 by the destruction of the world ; for he declares neither 
 the visible heaven nor the habitable earth can be 
 destroyed, but will exist for ever. Earth is but a 
 preparatory school for heaven. All judgment takes 
 place in the spiritual world, where all men congregate 
 after death. A judgment takes place in the world of 
 spirits whenever a Church comes to its end, that is 
 when its charity, and consequently its faith are dead, 
 and all that remains is a mere empty form of life.' 
 A judgment took place at the end of the Jewish Church. 
 " Now is the judgment of this world," were the Lord's
 
 CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 21 
 
 own words. Yet there was at that time no visible 
 judgment in the natural world. Svvedenborg affirms 
 that a similar judgment was passed upon the Christian 
 Church towards the middle of the last century, and the 
 best test of the truth of his affirmation is the religious 
 state as seen in the history and literature of Christendom 
 at that period. 
 
 Hell consists of those who have rejected the Lord 
 and His word, and given themselves up to the vanities 
 of the world and indulgence of self. 
 
 In heaven the Lord's commandments are obeyed 
 from willing obedience and love ; in hell there is 
 neither love nor willing obedience. The Lord rules 
 the hells as well as the heavens ; but they are ruled 
 through the fear of punishment, evil and punishment 
 being inseparably conjoined, and the order which is 
 thus maintained is similar to that maintained in our 
 prisons, an order which can only be preserved by 
 outward force. 
 
 The "Angelic heaven," he states, "is so immense 
 that it corresponds to every particular in man, exterior 
 and interior, myriads of angels going to the formation 
 of every member, organ, and viscus, and to the 
 affections of each ; and it was given me to know that 
 this heaven cannot by any means exist except by 
 drafts from innumerable earths ! " That is to say, the 
 inhabitants of the universe together form that mystical
 
 22 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 body to which the Apostle Paul alludes, and the uses 
 performed by the inhabitants of each world correspond 
 to the function or use of some organ or member of the 
 natural body ; thus the dwellers on our earth perform 
 for the mystical body the functions of the skin. 
 
 Marringe it appears, notwithstanding the words 
 of Christ upon the subject, exists in heaven ; for sex, 
 he holds, being essentially of the soul, is therefore 
 indestructible, and consequently a man lives a man, 
 and a woman lives a woman, after death ; and 
 since it was ordained from creation that the woman 
 should be for the man, and the man for the woman, 
 and thus that each should be the other's, and since that 
 love is innate in both, it follows that there are marriages 
 in heaven as well as on earth. Marriage in heaven is 
 the union of two into one mind. In man the under- 
 standing is predominant, in woman the will ; but in the 
 marriage of minds there is no predominance, for the 
 will of the wife becomes also the will of the husband, 
 and the understanding of the husband becomes that 
 of the wife, because each loves to will and think as 
 the other wills and thinks, and thus they will and 
 think mutually and reciprocally. Hence their con- 
 junction; so that in heaven two married partners are 
 not called two but one angel. When this conjunction 
 of minds descends into the lower principles which 
 belong to the body, it is perceived and felt as love, and
 
 CHUECH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 23 
 
 that love is conjugal love. It is almost needless to 
 say that, according to Swedenborg's teaching, marriages 
 on earth are at this day entered upon so generally from 
 merely worldly and sensual motives, and with so little 
 regard to similarity of mind, that not in all cases are 
 they maintained and perpetuated in the other life. 
 Married partners commonly meet after death, but if 
 internal differences of mind are manifested they separate. 
 If, however, they have led good lives, fitting partners 
 are found for them, and a true marriage takes place 
 to last to eternity. True conjugal love can exist only 
 between two, and in polygamists and adulterers it is 
 utterly destroyed. It is the foundation love of all good 
 loves, and is essential chastity. The children of a true 
 marriage derive from their parents, the sons a faculty 
 of becoming wise, the daughters a faculty of loving 
 what wisdom teaches. 
 
 In the strict sense of the word, in heaven they 
 neither marry nor are given in marriage. Pairs are 
 born in the world. Space and circumstances may 
 divide them ; but being parts of one whole, there is 
 a continual longing for union. Their meeting and 
 recognising each other in heaven are only the comple- 
 tion of what in essentials had been effected before 
 upon earth. 
 
 An exposition of the Books of Genesis and Exodus 
 is given in one of Swedenborg's works, called "The
 
 24 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 Arcana Ccelestia." From this we learn that the Book 
 of Genesis, from its beginning to the call of Abram 
 (chapters i. to xi.), was not written by Moses, but is 
 a fragment of an older Scripture ; neither are those 
 early chapters matter-of-fact history, but compositions 
 in the form of history, symbolical of things celestial 
 and spiritual. With Abram, or rather with Eber, 
 actual history begins. In both cases however, the 
 Scriptures are in very truth the Word of God, every 
 syllable and expression therein being His ; Moses, 
 David, the Prophets, and the Evangelists were simply 
 the divine penmen, who wrote from the dictate of a 
 living voice. That there was a more ancient Word 
 is proved by the allusions in Numbers xxi. 14, and 
 Joshua x. 13, to the Book of the Wars of Jehovah 
 and to the Book of Jasher. Tn the Word are three 
 senses or meanings the celestial, the spiritual, and 
 the natural or literal. These three senses make one 
 by correspondence. 
 
 The Psalms, which have been a spiritual treasury 
 to Christians in all ages, acquire a new power when it 
 is found that they contain within them a description 
 of all those states through which our Lord passed 
 while on earth during the process of the glorification 
 of His humanity. In his " Exposition of the Doctrine 
 of the New Church," the beliefs of Protestants are 
 compared with those of Catholics, the conclusion at
 
 CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 25 
 
 which he arrives being that " Catholics before the 
 Reformation held and taught exactly the same as the 
 Reformed did after it with regard to a Trinity of 
 persons in the Godhead, Original Sin, the Imputation 
 of the Merit of Christ, and the Justification by Faith 
 therein, with this difference, that they conjoined that 
 Faith with Charity or Good Works." 
 
 The Protestant innovation on the Catholic creed 
 was the separation of Good Works from Faith, and 
 the denial of their efficacy. Whilst salvation was 
 attained through Faith alone, Good Works followed 
 its reception as its signs and fruits. Protestant 
 theology is said to be "interwoven with so many 
 paradoxes that its tenets gain no entrance to the 
 Understanding, but only to the Memory, and are 
 professed in blind credulity. They cannot be learned 
 and retained without great difficulty, nor can they 
 be preached or taught without great care and caution 
 to conceal their nakedness, because sound reason neither 
 discerns nor receives them." 
 
 Amongst other doctrines, Swedenborg teaches that 
 God is man, from which fact all the angels and all 
 the spirits are men in perfect form. Regarding men, 
 the interiors which belong to their minds are spirits 
 clothed in this world with a material body, which is 
 in every case subject to the thought of the spirit and 
 to the decision of its affection. For the mind, which
 
 26 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 is spirit, acts, and the body, which is matter, is acted 
 upon. Every spirit, too, after the rejection of the 
 material body, is a man in a form similar to that 
 which he had while he was a man in the world. 
 (Athanasian Creed and Subjects connected with it.) 
 
 Man is an organ of life, and God alone is life. 
 God infuses His life into the organ and all its parts, 
 as the sun infuses its heat into a tree and all its parts. 
 And God grants man a sense that the life in himself 
 is as if it were his own ; and is desirous that he should 
 have such a sense of it, to the intent that he may 
 live, as of himself, according to the laws of order, which 
 are as many in number as the precepts of the Word, 
 and may thus dispose himself to receive the love of 
 God. Yet God continually, as it were, with His finger 
 holds the perpendicular tongue that is over the balance 
 to moderate it ; but still He never violates free-deter- 
 mination by compulsion. . . . Man's free-determination 
 results from the fact that he has a sense that the life 
 he enjoys is his own. (True Christian Religion.) 
 
 Hereditary evil as it exists at present, was not, 
 as is commonly and erroneously supposed, derived from 
 Adam. Every one who commits actual sin acquires a 
 nature conformable to it, whence evil is implanted in 
 his children, and becomes hereditary. Consequently it 
 is derived from each particular parent . . . and is thus 
 multiplied and augmented in each descending generation.
 
 27 
 
 And it remains with each, and is increased in each, by 
 actual sin ; nor does it ever become dissipated or lose 
 its baneful influence except in those who are re- 
 generated by the Lord. Every attentive observer 
 may see evidence of this truth in the fact that the 
 evil inclinations of parents visibly remain in their 
 children ; so that a family, yea an entire race, may 
 be thereby distinguished from every other. 
 
 Hereditary evil from the father is interior, and 
 hereditary evil from the mother is exterior. The former 
 cannot easily b3 eradicated, but the latter can be. 
 When man is regenerated, the hereditary evil inrooted 
 from the next parents is extirpated ; but it remains with 
 those who are not regenerated, or not capable of being 
 regenerated. It (hereditary evil) is believed to consist 
 in doing evil; but it consists in willing and thence 
 thinking evil. Hereditary evil is in the will itself, and 
 thence in the thought, and is the very tendency which 
 is within it, and even adjoins itself when a man does 
 good. It is known by the delight which arises when 
 evil befalls another. . . . Heuc3 it is that there is no 
 perception of good and of truth at this day, but instead 
 of it the regenerate conscience, which acknowledges as 
 good that which is learned from parents and masters. 
 
 The faculty of understanding what is good and true, 
 although it does not will it, is given to man in order 
 that he mny be reformed and regenerated, and therefore
 
 28 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 this faculty exists with the evil as well as with the 
 good, yea, sometimes more acutely with the evil ; but 
 with this difference, that with the evil there is no 
 affection of truth for the sake of life, that is, for the 
 good of life from truth, and therefore they cannot be 
 reformed ; but with the good there is an affection of 
 truth for the sake of life, that is, for the good of life, 
 and they therefore can be reformed. 
 
 Every one can be reg3nerated, but each according 
 to his state. For the simple and the learned are re- 
 generated differently ; yet differently those who are in 
 different studies, and also in different occupations ; those 
 who are inquisitive about the externals of the Word 
 differently from those who inquire about its internals ; 
 those who from parents are in natural good differently 
 from those who are in evil ; those who from early child- 
 hood have entered into the vanities of the world 
 differently from those who earlier or later have with- 
 drawn from them ; in a word, those who constitute the 
 external Church of the Lord differently from those who 
 constitute the internal. This variety, like that of faces 
 and dispositions, is infinite ; but yet every one, according 
 to his state, can be regenerated and saved. That it is 
 so may be seen from the heavens into which all the 
 regenerated come, in that they are three a highest, a 
 middle, and lowest ; and they come into the highest 
 who by regeneration receive love to the Lord ; they
 
 CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 29 
 
 come into the middle who receive love towards the 
 neighbour ; they into the last who only practise external 
 charity ; and all at the same time acknowledge the 
 Lord as God the Redeemer and Saviour. All these 
 are saved, but in different ways. That all may be re- 
 generated, and thus saved, is because the Lord with His 
 divine good and truth is present with every man ; from 
 this is the life of every one, and from this is the faculty 
 of understanding and willing, and from this they have 
 free agency in spiritual things. These are wanting to no 
 man. And means are also given ; to Christians in the 
 Word ; and to Gentiles in the religion of every one, 
 which teaches there is a God, and teaches precepts 
 concerning good and evil. From all this it follows that 
 every one may be saved ; consequently that if he is not 
 saved the Lord is not in fault but man ; and man is 
 in fault in that he does not co-operate. (True Christian 
 Religion.) 
 
 Some believe that it is difficult to live a life that 
 leads to heaven, which is called a spiritual life, because 
 they have heard that a man must renounce the world, 
 and deprive himself of what are called the lusts of the 
 body and the flesh, and that he must live spiritually, 
 which they understand no otherwise than that they 
 must reject worldly things, which are chiefly riches and 
 honours ; that they must walk continually in pious 
 meditation about God, salvation, and eternal life ; and
 
 30 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 must spend their life in prayers and in reading the 
 Word and pious books. This they conceived to be 
 renouncing the world, and living after the spirit and not 
 after the flesh. But it has been given me to know by 
 much experience, and from conversation with the angels, 
 that the fact is quite otherwise ; nay, that they who 
 renounce the world and live after the spirit in this 
 manner acquire a sorrowful life which is not receptive 
 of heavenly joy ; for with every one his own life remains. 
 But in order that a man may receive the life of heaven, 
 it is altogether necessary that he live in the world and 
 engage in its duties and occupations ; and then by moral 
 and civil life he may receive spiritual life. And in no 
 other way can spiritual life be formed in a man or his 
 spirit be prepared for heaven ; for to live an internal life 
 and not at the same time an external is like dwelling in 
 a house that has no foundation, which gradually sinks, 
 or cracks and yawns with crevices, or totters till it falls. 
 (Heaven and Hell.) 
 
 That Swedenborg foresaw a Church would be 
 established after his demise may be taken for granted 
 from the following statement : 
 
 " Since the Lord cannot manifest himself in person 
 to the world, which has just been shown to be im- 
 possible, and yet He has foretold that He would 
 come and establish a new Church, which is the New 
 Jerusalem, it follows that He will effect this by the
 
 CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 31 
 
 instrumentality of a man who is able, not only to 
 receive the doctrines of that Church in his under- 
 standing, but also to make them known by the press. 
 That the Lord manifest himself before me His servant, 
 that He sent me on this office, and afterwards opened 
 the sight of my spirit, and so let me into the spiritual 
 world, permitting me to see the heavens and the hells, 
 and also to converse with angels and spirits ; and 
 this now continually for many years I attest in truth ; 
 and further, that from the first day of my call to this 
 office, I have never received anything appertaining to 
 the doctrines of that Church from any angel, but from 
 the Lord alone whilst I was reading the Word." 
 
 Undoubtedly, Swedenborg's efforts were the boldest 
 and most successful attempt ever made to defend 
 revealed religion, on rational grounds, against the 
 scepticism and materialism of his own and all succeed- 
 ing ages. Acting on the conviction that the use of 
 knowledo-e is to communicate it to others for their 
 
 o 
 
 help ; that to act otherwise was to prove guilty of 
 spiritual avarice, those who read his works endeavoured 
 to spread their circulation. Chief amongst them was 
 the Rev. John Clowes, Rector of St. John's Church, 
 Manchester, who translated most of Swedenborg's 
 theological volumes from the original Latin. In 
 1783, eleven years after the mystic's death, Robert 
 Hindmarsh began to hold regular Sunday meetings
 
 32 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 at his house in Clerkenwell Close, not far removed 
 from the spot where the Swedish seer had died. These 
 were attended by a few persons whose purpose it was 
 to read and hold discussions on Swedenborg's theological 
 works. Their numbers presently increasing, they hired 
 chambers in the Inner Temple, and subsequently in 
 New Court, Middle Temple, where they assembled. 
 Banding themselves together they took the title of 
 "The Theosophical Society, instituted for the purpose 
 of promoting the Heavenly Doctrines of the New 
 Jerusalem." As yet they had not separated themselves 
 from the Established Church; but in 1787 a chapel 
 was taken in Great Eastcheap for the worship of the 
 sect now calling itself the Church of the New Jerusalem. 
 Kobert Hindmarsh was then baptized into the new 
 faith and appointed its first minister, after which a 
 liturgy was prepared and adopted. In the first month 
 of the following year public service was begun. Other 
 places of worship of the same denomination were in 
 time established, and the new religion spread, so that 
 in 1885, a hundred years subsequent, it numbered 
 sixty-five societies and nearly six thousand members. 
 There are, at least, two New Jerusalem Churches in 
 London ; one at Camden Road, and one at Argyle 
 Square, King's Cross. The latter is a handsome, 
 spacious edifice built in the form of a Greek cross. 
 The nave is divided from the aisles by massive pillars
 
 CHURCH OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. 33- 
 
 supporting lofty arches. On the communion table, 
 which is covered with fine linen and adorned with 
 rich velvets bearing the letters I.H.S. raised in gold, 
 is an open copy of the Scripture, with the sacred 
 vessels used in administering the Sacrament. 
 
 Behind the communion table, set in an arched 
 alcove, and written in black letters upon a gold 
 background, are the Commandments. Above is a 
 small rose window with the letters I.H.S. shining in 
 the centre. On the right hand side is a pulpit. The 
 nave and aisles are filled with comfortably cushioned 
 oak pews. 
 
 The Sunday morning service begins with the 
 playing of a voluntary on the organ, during which 
 the minister and his assistant, wearing white surplices 
 extending to the feet and having voluminous sleeves, 
 leave the vestry and take their places at the prie-dieus 
 at either side of the table. A hymn is then sung, 
 after which the assistant minister reads aloud a con- 
 fession of faith and a prayer, whilst all kneel. The 
 Lord's Prayer is likewise recited, and followed by a 
 psalm. Then comes the Creed, distinctly declaimed 
 by the minister and fervently repeated by the people. 
 Between the reading of the First and Second Lessons 
 an anthem is sung. The minister next repeats the 
 Doxology, the choir singing between each command- 
 ment the petition, " Lord have mercy upon us, and 
 
 VOL. II. D
 
 34 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 incline our hearts to keep His law." Then follows 
 a long prayer recited by the assistant minister, the 
 congregation kneeling, the choir responding. Hymns 
 are sung, after which the minister, ascending the 
 pulpit, repeats an extempore prayer, and reads one 
 of the Gospels, on which he preaches. Another hymn 
 is sung, and then the minister ascends the steps 
 leading to the communion table, turns his face to 
 the people, and extending wide his arms, says : 
 
 "The Lord bless ycu and keep you; the Lord 
 make His face shine upon you and be gracious unto 
 you ; the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and 
 give you peace. Amen." 
 
 The service then ends.
 
 THE UNITARIANS. 
 
 SUNDAY MORNING WITH THE REV. STOPFORD BROOKE. 
 
 THOUGH the Unitarians have no separate or settled 
 creed to which they adhere as a boiy, there are cer- 
 tain principles on which they agree. Chief amongst 
 them is that from which they derive their name, 
 a faith in the Personal Unity of God in oppo- 
 sition to the Trinitarians, who believe in three 
 persons in one God. Regarding the p2rsonality of 
 Christ they disagree, but the great bulk hold with 
 one of their most famous ministers, Belsham, 
 "that Jesus of Nazareth was a man constituted in 
 all respects like other men, subject to the same 
 infirmities, the same ignorance, prejudices, and 
 frailties." Concerning His mission on earth, the 
 same writer says Christ "was authorised to reveal 
 to all mankind without distinction the great doc- 
 trine of a future life, in which men shall be 
 rewarded according to their works." He did not 
 die in propitiation for the sins of mankind, God 
 
 being willing to forgive sin on the sinner's repent- 
 
 D 2
 
 36 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 ance, or to atone for the evil of the world, but 
 " as a martyr to the truth and a necessary pre- 
 liminary to His resurrection." 
 
 The Holy Ghost is the spiritual influence by 
 which God communicates with man and wins him 
 to Himself. Regeneration is the awakening into 
 activity of the slumbering energies inherent in man, 
 and it is necessary this awakening should take place 
 before a* man becomes a true Christian. The theory 
 of eternal punishment is denied, as is likewise the 
 personality of the devil, the existence of fallen 
 angels, and the innate depravity of man, who they 
 believe is now as perfectly moral as before the Fall. 
 The Scriptures are held a sufficient guide to faith, 
 and practices, the Gospel they regard as "a divinely 
 given remedy for human sins and woes, and recognise 
 in it, especially as embodied in the all-powerful 
 life of Christ, a restorative agency, a developing 
 and uplifting agency, sufficient to save the world,, 
 notwithstanding its numerous and terrible evils." 
 
 The Unitarians were originally known as Soci- 
 nians, from Laelius Socinus, a native of Sienna, and 
 member of an assembly which met at Vincenza in 
 1546, to discuss the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. 
 (Jn the suppression of this meeting he went to 
 Cracow, Zurich, and finally to Polau, where he 
 brought many to the belief he held in the Unity
 
 THE UNITARIANS, 37 
 
 of God. After his death other writers helped to 
 spread his principles, much to the anger of Calvin, 
 who feared the influence of this new body of so- 
 called reformers, and wrote to the Synod of Cracow 
 warning them against such dangerous sentiments as 
 the Socinians professed. 
 
 Meanwhile Michael Servetus, a native of Arragon, 
 described as a "rash, hot-headed Spaniard," was 
 teaching the same doctrines regarding the Trinity 
 in the south of France. He had been educated in 
 a Dominican convent, and at the age of twenty- 
 three gave lessons in Paris on medicine, mathematics, 
 astronomy, and astrology. Having travelled in 
 Switzerland and Germany, and met in these countries 
 many who had started new theories regarding re- 
 ligion, he published a book on The Errors of the 
 Trinity, which was received with indignation by 
 Catholics and Protestants, and seized by the State. 
 Being forbidden to teach astrology in Paris, he left 
 that city and settled at Lyons. From there he 
 went to Vienne in Dauphind, and having apparently 
 reconciled himself to Catholicism, spent some years 
 under the protection of Archbishop Palmer. His 
 doubts regarding faith seemed to continue, and he 
 set himself to write a work called " The Kestoration 
 of Christianity," which boldly attacked the tenets 
 of all Christians. Whilst in Paris he encountered
 
 38 TEE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 Calvin, with whom he now entered into correspond- 
 ence, sending him pages of his manuscripts, and asking 
 his advice. The letters which passed between them 
 were numerous, until at length Calvin, becoming 
 weary, wrote to Servetus, saying : " Neither now nor 
 at any future time will I mix myself up in any way 
 with your wild dreams." 
 
 Friendship between them was thus suspended^ 
 and when Calvin's book, " Christian Institutes," was 
 published, it was fiercely attacked by Servetus. 
 Presently his own book, the " Kestoration of 
 Christianity," was published anonymously, and awoke 
 a storm of indignation. As Servetus was suspected 
 of being the author, he was arrested, it is said 
 at Calvin's instance, and brought before the Lieu- 
 tenant - General du Eoi, in Dauphine. He was 
 acquitted on the ground of there not being sufficient 
 evidence of his heretical opinions ; but the Inquisition 
 took up the trial, having received from Calvin 
 letters, papers, and books sent to him by Servetus 
 during the days of their friendship. Amongst these 
 was a copy of " Christian Institutes," in the margin 
 " of which, made in the handwriting of the accused, 
 were notes concerning the Christian dogmas sufficient 
 in themselves to cause his condemnation. His trial 
 was brief. The sentence pronounced was that "he 
 should be burnt alive over a slow fire at the place
 
 THE UNITARIANS. 39 
 
 of public execution, so that his body should be 
 reduced to cinders as well as his book." 
 
 Whilst awaiting the execution of this horrible 
 order, he made his escape from prison, and having 
 wandered for some time about France and Switzerland 
 he travelled to Geneva, and took up his residence at 
 the Auberge de la Eose. Nay, he even went to hear 
 him preach who had caused his condemnation. On 
 learning his whereabouts, Calvin requested one of the 
 syndics to arrest Servetus, who on the 13th of August, 
 1553, was brought before the civil authorities, not only 
 on the ground of holding and teaching blasphemous and 
 heretical opinions, but of having been guilty of sedition 
 and treason. Calvin openly admitted that it was he 
 who had caused the rearrest, and also that, in accord- 
 ance with the laws of Geneva, he had procured the 
 assistance of his friend and secretary, Nicholas de la 
 Fontaine, to act as prosecutor, and to submit to the 
 necessary imprisonment during the trial, which lasted 
 two months and thirteen days. 
 
 This trial became a theological discussion in which 
 Calvin took part. Bitter animosity was shown on both 
 sides. Servetus denounced the reformer, and demanded 
 he should be committed for trial, which should only end 
 by the condemnation to death of one of them, but his 
 attack and his desire were unheeded. After repeated 
 adjournments of the case, sentence was pronounced in
 
 40 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 October that Servetus should be taken to Champel, 
 and there burnt alive, and his books burnt with him. 
 The wretched man implored mercy iu vain, and he died 
 at the stake on the 27th of October, 1553. 
 
 Already in London men were suffering a like death 
 as Servetus in Geneva, and for the same cause. Three, 
 at least, were burnt at the stake under Elizabeth, and 
 several under James I., for heresy regarding the Trinity. 
 An Act of the Long Parliament in 1648 (Protectorate), 
 made the profession of Socinianism a felony. The only 
 society of this body in England was founded at this 
 period by John Biddle, who was imprisoned for his 
 heretical dogmas, and during his confinement in 1647 
 published twelve questions or arguments against the 
 deity of the Holy Ghost, which were answered by the 
 Nonconformist writer, Matthew Poole. The following 
 year Biddle, yet in prison, printed seven arguments 
 against the deity of Christ. The Westminster Assembly 
 was of opinion he merited death, but Cromwell inter- 
 posed, and in 1651 Biddle was liberated. 
 
 Immediately he published a work on the Trinity 
 and on various other Christian beliefs, when he was 
 again cast into prison. Cromwell once more released 
 him, when Biddle challenged Griffin, a Baptist minister, 
 to dispute with him in St. Paul's on the deity of Christ. 
 This desire caused the Privy Council to commit him to 
 Newgate; but again Cromwell interfered, sent him
 
 THE UNITARIANS. 41 
 
 to the Scilly Islands, and allowed him a pension of a 
 hundred crowns a year. After his patron's death he 
 returned to London and opened a chapel, where he 
 preached until the Restoration, once again lost his 
 liberty, and died in prison in 1662. With him his 
 congregation disappeared. 
 
 Soon after the Revolution, many of the clergy of the 
 Church of England, together with the three great bodies 
 of Nonconformists, the Baptists, Independents, and 
 Presbyterians, became agitated by discussions on the 
 Godhead of Christ. Professor Whiston was expelled 
 from Cambridge in 1710 because of his heresy. About 
 the same time Dr. Samuel Clark, Rector of St. James's, 
 Westminster, published a work on the Scripture 
 Doctrine of the Trinity, which brought him into 
 controversy, from which he desisted on the condition 
 of retaining his preferment ; whilst towards the close 
 of the century a number of well-known clergymen, 
 amongst whom were Disney, Jebb, Wakefield, and 
 Lindsey, resigned their benefices because they had 
 adopted Unitarian principles. Many Baptists embraced 
 this dogma, and numbers of Presbyterians did like- 
 wise ; so that several of the churches now used by 
 the Unitarians were formerly built for the worship 
 of Presbyterians. 
 
 Joseph Priestly may be considered the founder 
 of modern Unitarianism in England. He was the
 
 42 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 son of a cloth-dresser at Fieldhead, near Leeds, and 
 was sent to a grammar school at an early age. 
 During the vacations he taught himself Hebrew 
 and Chaldee, and eventually entered the Dissenting 
 Academy at Daventry. His father was a Calvinist, 
 but the young student had little leanings towards 
 that sect, and on leaving the Academy became a 
 Nonconformist minister at Needham Market in Suffolk. 
 A man of great abilities, he was presently appointed 
 Professor of Languages and Belles Lettres at the 
 Dissenting Academy of Warrington, was made a 
 member of the Royal Society, and a Doctor of Laws 
 by the Edinburgh University. Subsequently he took 
 charge of a Nonconformist congregation at Birming- 
 ham, where the most important events in his life 
 took place. 
 
 His religious views had for some time tended 
 towards Unitarianism. He denied the divinity of 
 Christ, and stated in his "Familiar Letters addressed 
 to the inhabitants of Birmingham " that all orthodox 
 Christians were guilty of idolatry, for he declared 
 " We have no other definition of idolatry than 
 to worship as God that which is not God." He 
 also held that future punishment is merely pro- 
 bationary a purgatorial state. Amongst his other 
 works, theological, historical, and scientific, he pub-
 
 THE UNITARIANS. 45 
 
 lished " Eeflections on the French Revolution," up- 
 holding its principles, for which he was made 
 a member of the French Republic. This, even 
 more than his religious opinions, offended the 
 Birmingham people ; a riot ensued, during which 
 his chapel and his house were wrecked. He 
 withdrew to London in 1791, but being still 
 unpopular, he sailed for America, and died in Penn- 
 sylvania in 1804. 
 
 The place he occupied as leader in England of the 
 Unitarians was taken by Thomas Belsham, whose "Calm 
 Inquiry into the Scripture Doctrine concerning the 
 Person of Christ," published in 1811, is regarded 
 as the ablest work Unitarianism has produced. The 
 mode of Church government of Unitarians is con- 
 gregational, and they enjoy since 1813, the same 
 political privileges as other Dissenting bodies. In 
 Germany, Holland, France, Switzerland, and America 
 there are numerous followers of this sect. In the 
 United Kingdom there are about one hundred and 
 thirty thousand members, having three hundred and 
 forty ministers, and three hundred and forty-five 
 chapels. 
 
 At present the most remarkable man, and perhaps 
 the most eloquent preacher amongst the clergy who 
 refuse to accept the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity
 
 44 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 is the Rev. Augustus Stopford Brooke. The de- 
 scendant of a long line of Churchmen, he was born 
 at Glendoan in the County Donegal, received his 
 education at Kingstown and at Kidderminster, 
 graduated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he 
 took honours and gained several Vice - Chancellor's 
 prizes, and was ordained in 1857 by the Bishop 
 of London, who nominated him to a curacy in 
 Marylebone. Two years later he became curate to 
 the Venerable Archdeacon Sinclair at Kensington 
 Church, where the force of his personality and the 
 power of his expression were quickly recognised and 
 fully appreciated. 
 
 It was no less as a humanitarian than as a 
 preacher that he established and built his reputation 
 amongst his flock ; for the afflicted found in him 
 a sympathiser, the weak a helper, and the poor 
 a friend. It was with hesitation he accepted, 
 in 1863, the chaplaincy of the British Embassy at 
 Berlin, offered him by Earl Russell. The narrow 
 routine of his duties in a foreign town became 
 distasteful to a man of active mind and high aspira- 
 tions, so that after a stay of two years in the 
 German capital he returned to London, where bis 
 words would have a wider space to fill, his strength 
 a fitter field for exercise. His resignation of the
 
 THE UNITARIANS. 45- 
 
 chaplaincy was followed by his appointment as one 
 of Her Majesty's honorary chaplains, and subsequently 
 as a chaplain-in-ordinary. 
 
 Meanwhile, he became a tenant of York Street 
 Chapel, St. James's, where his independent thought 
 and poetic expression drew crowds of cultured people. 
 During the tea years he preached here his fame as 
 an intellectual man and a brilliant speaker spread, 
 and was sustained by the essays, biographies, and 
 poems he published. 
 
 The lease of York Street Chapel expiring in 1875 r 
 he was for a brief while without a place of worship 
 in which to minister ; but in the following year, his 
 friends believing his expression of independence de- 
 barred him from promotion in the Church, collected 
 a handsome sum, with which they purchased and 
 presented to him the lease of Bedford Chapel, 
 Bloomsbury. This act placed him in a position 
 entirely unconstrained, and free from all relations 
 regarding patronage or appointment to the Church. 
 If he so pleased, he might have taught Buddhism or 
 Mohammedanism within the walls of Bedford Chapel, 
 without interference from the Bishop of London or 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury. This liberty no doubt 
 gave impulse to a scheme for liberalising the Church, 
 " by infusing it gradually with the larger ideas proper
 
 46 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 to its own original elements," which with much 
 thought and careful consideration he eventually carried 
 out. 
 
 For some time previous to the year 1880 he had 
 been regarded as an advanced member of the Broad 
 Church party; but at that date he left the Church, as he 
 no longer believed in the Godhead of Christ. This step 
 made but little change in his position ; a large number 
 of his congregation remained, others were attracted 
 by the alteration and Bedford Chapel continued to hold 
 full congregations. Exteriorly, this building which 
 stands at a corner of Oxford Street, is plain and 
 unpretending ; interiorly it is long and narrow, en- 
 circled by galleries, its body filled by high, old- 
 fashioned pews. Efforts have been made to relieve 
 the monotonous dreariness of its original aspect, and 
 rot in vain. The upper parts of the walls have 
 been toned to a pale pink, the lower portions painted 
 a faint green, whilst the mouldings and ornamental 
 work behind and around the communion table are 
 touched with gold. An enclosure divided by a low 
 rail from that portion of the building occupied by 
 the congregation is covered with a carpet of dull 
 red hue ; and here are the oak pews reserved for 
 the surpliced choir. The high wooden pulpit with 
 its branches for candles stands at the right, a con- 
 spicuous rather than a handsome object.
 
 THE UNITARIANS. 47 
 
 By eleven o'clock the pews are well filled, and 
 there is little space left in the galleries for late 
 comers. The congregation, whilst having no strik- 
 ing peculiarity is unlike that which fills any 
 other place of worship in London. Those who 
 have lovingly clung to obsolete sestheticism, seem- 
 ingly for no other reason than its unfittedness to 
 their style, give a note of colour to dull places. 
 A certain air of advanced thought is lent by the 
 number of short-haired, spectacled young ladies, who 
 might have come from Girton and lectured on 
 their rights by the way. An actor who has made 
 an effort to rise betimes on this day of rest, an 
 editor who has been brought by his wife, an art 
 critic with a deep-lined face and shaggy head, a 
 female author who stares into space and clutches an 
 umbrella, contribute a literary flavour ; whilst several 
 Americans, whose complexions and whose clothes, 
 together with their upright bearing and speculative 
 air, betray their nationality at a glance, represent 
 cosmopolitanism. 
 
 Soon the organ begins a prelude, and to its 
 music a surpliced choir of boys and men file into 
 the chapel, followed by Mr. Stopford Brooke, also 
 wearing a surplice and cassock. 
 
 His large head with its crisp iron-grey hair, his 
 massive face with its deeply scored lines, are full
 
 48 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 of character. The wide forehead with its rounded 
 temples indicates imigination, poetry, daring, and 
 unconventionally. The large eyes, deep set, with 
 heavy, sweeping brows, betray a world of solitary 
 thought, whose depths no man may fathom, whose 
 currents none may influence, whose workings none 
 may suspect. The long upper lip with its central 
 furrow shows natural eloquence, whilst his heavy 
 jaw and square chin are signs of a courageous 
 mind and an inflexible will. Tall, broad-shouldered 
 and upright, his appearance is at once picturesque, 
 striking, and impressive. 
 
 The service adopted in Bedford Chapel differs 
 somewhat from that of the Church of England ; 
 and that it is shorter few will be found to com- 
 plain. Portions of prayers and hymns contained in 
 the Prayer Book that belonged to or consisted 
 in doctrines in which Mr. Stopford Brooke no 
 longer held faith, are omitted. The petitions for 
 the Queen and Royal Family, instead of being 
 divided into two, are made into one prayer ; and 
 in the invocation following instead of "bishops and 
 curates," words that left out all unepiscopal persons, 
 '* ministers of truth " are substituted, which not only 
 include bishops and curates, but all who teach 
 truth to man. The reading of the Ten Command- 
 ments is eliminated, being replaced by a recital of
 
 THE UNITARIANS. 49 
 
 the summary of God's law as spoken on the 
 Mount. The Te Deum and likewise the Absolution 
 are somewhat changed ; the Doxology and Creeds 
 are left out. The Lessons are, of course, retained, 
 whilst psalms and hymns are sung by the choir 
 and by the congregation. The sermon, delivered 
 in a clear, emphatic, and musical voice, was notable 
 for its concise and polished sentences, its full and 
 rounded periods. Its chief argument was that 
 "" Christianity is not a laboured scheme, but an in- 
 fluence whose direct aim is not to make men 
 moral, but to awaken in them those deep emotions, 
 and to present to them those high ideals, which, 
 felt and followed after, will not only indirectly 
 produce morality, but aspiration and effort to do far 
 more than men are absolutely bound to do by the 
 moral law." 
 
 On the morning of the 17th of October, 1880, 
 Mr. Stopford Brooke announced to his congrega- 
 tion that he had left the Church of England. He 
 asked them to believe that he had not acted rashly ; 
 for, indeed, he had counted the cost, and with the 
 help of Him whose is the power of the soul and 
 inspiration of labour, meant to pursue his course. 
 He had taken his departure with mingled serious- 
 ness and joy, for there could be few hours more 
 grave in a man's life than that in which, late in 
 
 VOL. II. E
 
 50 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 his career, and no longer young, he leaves the 
 home which has sheltered him for many years, 
 with all its associations and traditions, and sets 
 sail an emigrant for another laud. 
 
 The main reason for his parting from the 
 Established Church was, he had ceased to believe 
 miracles were credible, and that since it founded 
 its whole scheme of doctrine on the miracle of the 
 Incarnation, a disbelief in that placed him outside 
 the pale of the Church. He not only disagreed 
 with its doctrine, but disapproved of its existence 
 as an ecclesiastical body ; and of the theory of its 
 existence in relation to politics, to theology, and to 
 religion. 
 
 " Politically," to use his own words, " it was mixed 
 up with that old aristocratic system which has perished, 
 or is perishing so rapidly, the very essence of which is 
 in opposition to all the moving and living forces of 
 society. The theory of the Church is an aristocratic 
 theory, and it ministers to that imperialist conception 
 of God which in theology has done as much harm 
 as despotism or caste systems have done to society. 
 The way the Church works in society proves what 
 I say. It has sytematised exclusion, and supported 
 caste in religion. It has forced the whole body of 
 Dissenters from its forms to suffer under a religious 
 and a social stigma. Its claims separate from itself,,
 
 THE UNITARIANS. . 51 
 
 and strive to keep down, large masses of men whose 
 spiritual life is as deep as its own ; nor does the 
 Church recognise their religious movements as on a 
 level with its own. Its standard of the worthiest 
 is not spiritual goodness, but union with itself; this 
 is not the fault of its members, but the fault of 
 its theory ; but the fault utterly condemns the theory. 
 Many within the Church have tried hard to do what 
 was right in the matter, to hold out the hand of 
 union to the Nonconformists, but they have failed 
 and must fail. The theory of the Church is too 
 strong for them. I could no longer be mingled up 
 with a body which every political principle I hold 
 condemns, the very existence of which, in spite of 
 all the liberal men in it, supports all the political 
 principles and systems I oppose, and shall oppose 
 as long as I have breath to speak. 
 
 " Ecclesiastically, the Church suppoits and claims 
 authority. Its system is based on the authority of 
 a creed which embodies and crystallises past religious 
 thought and binds it on men by oath, or on the 
 infallible authority of the Bible, or on the infallible 
 authority of the Divine Spirit secluded and con- 
 fined in the Church itself. On whichever of these 
 forms of authority Churchmen base themselves, the 
 Church by their voice calls on all men to unite them- 
 selves to it, and to bend before these authorities,
 
 52 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 or to lose or imperil their salvation. It asks them 
 to surrender individuality and to become an un- 
 questioning part of the whole. ' The Bible has 
 spoken, the Church has pronounced its decree ; it is 
 yours only to believe and obey.' 
 
 " The inevitable tendency of this system and its 
 claim is to make both the preacher and hearer the 
 conventional servants, not of a living Word, but 
 of the system ; bones in a skeleton, not members 
 of a living body, enslaved to a hierarchy or a book, 
 functionaries and listeners who do not belong to 
 themselves, who cannot move except in chains, none 
 the less chains for their velvet covering, or for the 
 self-persuasions which prove them ornaments, not 
 fetters. Authority of these kinds, faithfully followed 
 and believed in, dearticulates the backbone of the 
 intellect and the spirit, hangs lead on the wings 
 of the religious imagination, binds the soul away 
 from freedom in the prison of the past, reduces, in 
 certain cases, the conscience to silence and sacrifices 
 the reason on the altar of ecclesiastical theology. 
 That is its inevitable tendency, and though there 
 are numbers in the Church who claim their liberty 
 from these authorities and maintain their individual 
 freedom, the tendency is in the end too much for 
 them ; they are obliged to grow more conservative, 
 or their position becomes untenable. They cannot
 
 TEE UNITARIANS. 53 
 
 liberalise a Church based upon authority, and to 
 take away these authorities from the Church, as 
 many of them wish to do, will not liberalise the 
 Church, but do away with it altogether. It is 
 nothing without its system, and its system is 
 authoritative." How then, he asked, could he 
 remain bound up with a body whose system rested 
 on authority ? It was no longer possible to breathe 
 in its atmosphere. Nor was he left without an 
 authority. There was, he says, " the authority on which 
 Christ rested the truth of his teaching, to which 
 he appealed, the inward authority for our personal 
 lives of God's voice within us, of our own reason, 
 conscience, and spirit, enlightened by His spirit ; 
 the outward authority of the general reason, conscience, 
 and spirit of mankind, led slowly to choose and 
 establish through the ages certain great and firm 
 fixed truths which cannot be broken, and in which 
 is the eternal spirit of God. Every one with open 
 eyes can see what those truths are in religion as 
 well as in politics and science and art, and their 
 authority is undeniable. This is my authority. 
 But it is an authority which the Church denies, 
 which it must deny or stultify itself. It is an 
 authority which disperses to the winds the authorities 
 on which the Church relies, save so far as they 
 assert its truths. It claims as its grounds those
 
 54 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 very powers of reason and conscience which the 
 authorities of the Church frequently desire us to 
 suppress, when they are uninstructed by the Church. 
 When once I had said that this was the only 
 authority on which I rested my faith in truth, 
 it was impossible to live any longer in the Church." 
 
 He was convinced religion was suffering from 
 a state of compromise. 
 
 The High Church and Low Church oppose those 
 who attack miracles or the doctrines of the orthodox 
 Church ; whilst the liberal party compromise by setting 
 aside such questions and speaking of Christianity as a 
 beautiful moral system which is not founded on 
 miracles or on dogma, but lives in the heart. Mr. 
 Stopford Brooke thinks "the questions which press 
 now for solution, owing to the vast change which 
 Science has wrought in our view of history and of the 
 physical world, are too vital, too close to the homos 
 and hearts and brains of men for any compromise. 
 They involve the very heart of religion ; and men who 
 love religion, and who believe in Christianity as the 
 saving power of the race, and yet who do not see 
 how they can, without self-inflicted blindness, deny 
 that the results of Science have changed the aspect 
 of all religious questions, have no business to ignore 
 by silence, or to pass by only with allusions these 
 questions, in order that they may by their inaction
 
 THE UNITARIANS. 55 
 
 widen the Church. The very life of religion is en- 
 dangered among the masses of the people, and it is 
 no time to think only of a side-issue. It is because 
 I was convinced of the harm done to religion by this 
 mode of action in myself, that I resolved to give up 
 that action and to try another. And I could only try 
 it outside of the Church, for the moment I openly 
 proclaimed my unbelief in (e.g.) the miracle of the 
 Incarnation, I could not remain in the Church (even 
 were I allowed to remain), and hope to do any good. 
 Now, I know that I shall be able to declare that, while 
 I frankly accept the proved conclusions of Science 
 and Criticism, there remain, untouched and clear, 
 the great spiritual truths of the soul, the eternal 
 revelation of God, the deep life of Christianity. I am 
 free, and I am heartily glad of it. I have made no 
 sacrifice. I have followed with joy and freedom my 
 own conviction ; and I look forward with ardour and 
 emotion to preaching the great truths that declare the 
 divine relations of God to Man. I shall speak of God 
 abiding in Nature and abiding in Man; of God im- 
 manent in History, and filling and impelling, day by 
 day, to a glorious and righteous end ; of the Revelation 
 He is daily giving of Himself to man, and of the 
 Inspiration which He pours into us all ; of God as 
 revealed in the highest way through Jesus Christ, of the 
 Life which Christ has disclosed as the true life of men,.
 
 66 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 of the Power and Love by which He kindles and 
 supports that life ; of Man reconciled to God through 
 Christ ; of God incarnate in all men in the same manner 
 iu which He was incarnate in Christ ; of the vast 
 spiritual communion in which all men are contained,, 
 and the depths of the immortality in which they now 
 live, and the fulfilment of which is their destiny ; of the 
 personal life of God in the soul, and of His universal 
 life in the race and of the thousand results which in 
 history and life flow in practice from these mighty truths.'* 
 It was not without serious thought and much 
 reluctance Mr. Stopford Brooke departed not only from 
 the old traditions of doctrine, but of ceremony. " Their 
 power," as he stated, when after his change he met his 
 congregation, " is great over men, and no one can feel 
 how great and extensive that power is, without some 
 grave self-questioning when he abandons them. To 
 feel their power is also to feel their usefulness. They 
 have done for centuries good and practical work. 
 They have bound together, through the intellect and 
 the emotions, vast masses of men into a religious 
 union. To put them by seems for the moment to 
 sever oneself from their use, to divide oneself from the 
 whole body of religious life to which one has been 
 accustomed. And then they are so mixed up with the 
 past, so steeped in old associations, so linked to life 
 from childhood to manhood, step by step, hour by hour,.
 
 TEE UNITARIANS. 51 
 
 that beyond their religious power and use, they are 
 naturally dear to the heart, and to leave them behind 
 is to put away, as one lays by the records of a dead 
 love, large diaries of religious life. But when their 
 power is only a power in the past, when if it were 
 still to be reverenced the reverence would be only 
 conventional ; when there is no longer a spirit in their 
 power ; when their use is no longer a use to a man, 
 but a chain which encumbers religious life in him- 
 self, and prevents him from feeling a wider religious 
 union than they can support or gh 7 e ; when their 
 dearness, like the dearness we feel towards a decaying 
 or a bygone affection, is one which troubles life through 
 the demands it makes on that we cannot give ; when 
 one feels that life has left that love of them which 
 once engaged the whole of being round them then 
 it is better to abandon them frankly, openly, and 
 irrevocably. To cling to them then is to come to 
 hate them, and at last to lose all religious life, all 
 moral truth, all self-respect. And in the loss of these 
 things, religion and the power of it die in the soul. 
 
 "The Ten Commandments are omitted partly to- 
 shorten the service, but chiefly because their form 
 is more Jewish than Christian. The second com- 
 mandment is burdened with an assertion of God's 
 action towards men, which might be explained as 
 a mere statement of the law that evil is hereditary,.
 
 -58 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 but after a time is wrought out of those who obey 
 the natural laws of health, but which as a religious 
 statement gives an untrue view of God's relation to 
 us. The fourth commandment, in the form we have 
 it, is obsolete, and declared to be so by Christ him- 
 self, and there is attached to it a reason for the ob- 
 servance of the Sabbath which is in direct contradiction 
 of scientific truth. The world was not made in six 
 days, nor did God rest upon the seventh. The other 
 commandments have nothing temporary in them. They 
 lay down moral laws true always and in all places, 
 but they lay them down as coercive orders which 
 demand obedience through fear of punishment or hope 
 of reward, and this is not the ground on which Christ 
 placed obedience to God's law. He bid us love God 
 and love man, and then, if love were secured, we 
 should do naturally all that the law demanded, with- 
 out claiming reward, without serving through fear. 
 To obey because we must obey or suffer, to obey 
 because of an outward force, is the ground of the 
 law, and is at the root of the anger of men against 
 God, and of the false view of God which has built 
 up the evil power of superstition. To obey because 
 we love to obey, to obsy through the inward im- 
 pulse of the personal soul, to obey through passionate 
 love of a righteous Father and through passionate 
 love of man, is the temper of Christ, the very foun-
 
 THE UNITARIANS. 59 
 
 dation of all personal religion towards God and 
 man, the very ground of the Gospel in contrast 
 with the law. Therefore I have replaced the Deca- 
 logue by the summary which our Master himself 
 has given us ; on which, he said, hung not only 
 -all the law, but also all the teaching of the prophets." 
 
 The Absolution as it stands in the Prayer Book, 
 Mr. Stopford Brooke could use if allowed to attach 
 his own interpretation to its words. If it meant 
 that God absolves the repentant sinner by the voice 
 of men, and that all men have a right to say to 
 their fellows, " God has forgiven you, be true and 
 lead a new life," then it enshrines a deep truth which 
 he could hold with his whole heart. But as used 
 in the Church service, it indicated more than that. 
 Deacons are not allowed to use it until at the hands 
 of the bishop they are made priests, and receive 
 the apostolic gift, as it is said to be, of remitting 
 sins. 
 
 "It is bound up then with the notion of a super- 
 natural and special gift handed down through the 
 laying on of hands to a special class of men set 
 apart as priests, as mediators between God and man, 
 . as ecclesiastical dispensers of grace. It is bound -up 
 with the whole of that sacerdotal theory, a theory 
 derived from the Church of Rome and transferred to 
 the Church of England, a theory in which the whole
 
 60 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 of the services of the ordering of Bishops and Priests 
 and Deacons is steeped, a theory which influences^the 
 Communion Service, and which, here in this prayer, 
 underlies its place after the confession, and its use 
 by the priest alone. It is a theory which of all others 
 is the most fatal to the continuance of religious life 
 in a nation, which has been the cause and support 
 of superstition and all the ills that follow it, which 
 chimes in with political despotism and systems of 
 caste, which hinders free development, which divides 
 God from the individual man, and which Christ spent 
 his life in contradicting, and which, therefore, slew 
 him in the end. But it was and is permissible to 
 belong to the English Church and to deny it, and a 
 great number of her ministers do not hold it in any 
 sense whatever. I never held it, but as long as it 
 is the theory of the English Church, so long those 
 who remain in the Church are in some sense mixed 
 up with it, and have to make a compromise with 
 themselves." Its form as used in Bedford Chapel is 
 therefore changed so that the parts to which objection 
 were taken are removed. 
 
 " The Doxology is set aside, not that it could not 
 be used to express the belief that one God stands 
 in a threefold relation to man, but because it is 
 associated with the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, 
 which confesses not only three modes of being in God,
 
 THE UNITARIANS. 61 
 
 or three ways of our conceiving God, but something 
 more three essences, all of which may be clothed 
 with personality, and one of which is distinctly 
 separable from God the Father in the actual parson 
 of Jesus Christ, and so separable that we can offer, 
 and are indeed bound to offer, to him a worship the 
 same as that we offer to God. When we thus con- 
 ceive him, and must conceive him as one Being 
 and the Father as another, we practically confess two 
 Gods. 
 
 "And when we go further, as many do, and 
 conceive God the Spirit as also personal, and image 
 Him as such, and pray to Him, it is to confess 
 three Gods. To say that we can thus separate 
 these three, and at the same time believe them to 
 be one, is to use terms which represent an impossible 
 thought. Those who abide in the Church and are 
 forced to define their thought on this subject do 
 not believe in this tritheism, and hold a metaphysical 
 Trinity, that is, God becoming out of His eternal 
 Being threefold to us. It was so I believed when 
 I was in the Church, and so I still believe. And 
 without doubt the opinion of the Church, as settled 
 by the law, allows such an explanation of the Trinity 
 to be given by its ministers. But that is not the 
 doctrine intended to be laid down by the Nicene 
 Creed. Christ is there conceived of as a distinct
 
 62 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 personality, as God out of God, as GoJ at God's 
 right hand, as God coming to judge while the Father 
 sits apart, and such a conception is contradictory of 
 a metaphysical Trinity. The Church in its services 
 does imply that in his very person Christ is God, 
 distinct from the Father, but it allows the matter 
 to be compromised. It was so I compromised, 
 making use of the liberty offered me. But now 
 that I am freed from compromise, I wish to clear 
 my path, and I will use no phrases which seem to 
 be bound up with the orthodox doctrine." 
 
 Mr. Stopford Brooke does not desire to call himself 
 a Unitarian, fearing the term might limit his freedom 
 of asserting a threefold mode of being in God which 
 he may represent by the terms Father, Sou, and Holy 
 Ghost ; but so far as Unitarians deny the orthodox 
 doctrine of the Trinity he fully agrees with them on 
 the point. 
 
 The Te Deum is changed, so that it is now "a 
 hyma to God, and not to Jesus Christ." Mr. Stopford 
 Brooke holds that " God filled Christ, that God's whole 
 moral and spiritual Being was united to the Man 
 Christ Jesus, not in a way different in kind from the 
 way God unites Himself to us, but in a way different 
 in degree ; but I do not believe that Christ was God, or 
 that he was miraculously made to differ from us, or that 
 he is to be worshipped in the same way as we worship
 
 THE UNITARIANS. 6* 
 
 God. He is God's Highest Ravealer, the moral image 
 of God in Man, the ideal representative of the Race 
 to God, the Spiritual Head of the Race, the absolute 
 moral Humanity, our Humanity made perfect through 
 obedience and suffering for truth, the Saviour, through 
 God's revelation in him, of Mankind, the embodiment 
 of the true life of God for us our Master, Lord, and 
 King but not our God ; the Word of the Father, but 
 not our Father ; at one with God, as we shall be at one 
 with God hereafter, at one in character, but not at one 
 with God in eternal essence. Therefore thinking thus 
 of Christ, I can end all the prayers with ' through Jesus 
 Christ our Lord/ and rejoice to do so. But I have 
 been forced to omit such phrases at the end of the 
 prayers which imply, with regard to Christ, that he 
 reconciled God to us, that God hears us only for his 
 sake, that we are saved through his merits and 
 mediation phrases to which I could give a meaning 
 of my own, but which too much imply, and have 
 certainly implied, either the vicarious atonement of 
 Christ and all the scheme attached to that doctrine, 
 or the sacerdotal theory of Christ as the Sacrificer whose 
 sacrifice is continually offered up for the sins of men by 
 the priesthood." 
 
 The Creeds are omitted from the service at Bedford 
 Chapel because they make assertions which its clergy- 
 man no longer believes, and hold doctrines to which he
 
 -64 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 cannot subscribe. But beyond these reasons there are 
 others which, according to his opinion, make all creeds 
 and confessions of faith, when used as tests, both 
 needless and harmful. They reduce infinite truths 
 to finite propositions ; they express spiritual truths 
 in intellectual forms which are claimed as final and 
 infallible. "Though the truths of God in Christ are 
 one and eternal, they are capable of infinitely changing 
 forms, flexible and various for every character and 
 every nation, and it is to destroy their noblest, most 
 useful, and most divine characteristic to fix them into 
 immovable propositions. They are like the wind, 
 they blow where they list. You cannot tell whence 
 they come or whither they are going so are all the 
 truths that are born of the Spirit," 
 
 From these points it will be seen that the service 
 in Bedford Chapel is unique, and adds one more to 
 the vast number which differ from the Church -of 
 England.
 
 MONASTICISM IN ENGLAND. 
 
 VESPEES AT THE CAEMEL1TE CHUBCH, KENSINGTON. 
 
 THE Carmelite Order is the most ancient in the 
 Church, as it traces its origin to the Prophet Elias 
 who dwelt in a cave on Mount Carmel and united 
 his followers in a religious community nine centuries 
 before the coming of Christ. These men were then 
 known to the people of Jerusalem as Rechabites, 
 or Sons of the Prophet. In the fourth century 
 John Nepos, forty-fourth bishop of Jerusalem, gave 
 them their first rule. Towards the beginning of 
 the twelfth century a crusader named Berth old vowed, 
 if victory was granted him, he would embrace a 
 religious life. Success crowning his arms, he abandoned 
 war, sought peace, and retired to Mount Carmel. 
 Soon the hermits living there ranged themselves 
 under his generalship, and he reorganising them, 
 placed them under the protection of Our Lady of 
 Mount Carmel. 
 
 VOL. IL F
 
 66 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 In the early part of the next century the 
 Carmelites in order to escape from the persecutions 
 of the Saracens took refuge in Europe, and in 
 1224 came to England, settling near Alnwick, in 
 Northumberland. Eighteen years later they were 
 brought to London by Sir Richard Grey, ancestor of 
 the Lords Grey of Condor, and soon after Edward I. 
 gave them for ever, as he believed, a plot of ground 
 in Fleet Street, between the Temple and Salisbury 
 Court, which is called after them to this day, 
 Whitefriars. Here they built a house surrounded 
 by broad gardens and grassy grounds, shaded by 
 great trees, and intersected by pleasant walks 
 leading down to the Thames, where the White 
 Friars might be seen by all who passed that way. 
 About the year 1350 the house was enlarged by 
 Hugh Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire, and later the 
 church was built with great magnificence by Sir Robert 
 Knolles. To this was added a sanctuary where all 
 seeking refuge were free from the penalties of the 
 law. Tne Carmelites flourished here until 1539, 
 when the priory was suppressed, and its revenues 
 taken possession of by Henry VIII., who gave the 
 chapter-house to Dr. Butts, the same mentioned by 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 Edward VI. pulled down the stately church and 
 erected houses on its site. The refectory was used
 
 MONASTICISM IN ENGLAND. 67 
 
 as a theatre, but it was not until 1697 that the 
 sanctuary was abolished. 
 
 For over three centuries the Carmelites were 
 unknown in England; but in the year 1862 Cardinal 
 Wiseman, who had done much towards effecting a 
 change in public opinion towards the Catholic Church, 
 resolved to reintroduce them. Being then in Rome, 
 he was much attracted by the ardour and sanctity 
 of a remarkable man, known to his order as Father 
 Augustin, but previously famous in the world as 
 Hermann Cohen, the celebrated pianist. His Eminence 
 asked the Vicar-G-eneral to send this friar to London, 
 there to re-establish a branch of his order ; but 
 the Vicar-General refused to part with so valuable 
 a preacher, when the Cardinal applied to the Pope, 
 who granted his request. It therefore happ2ned that 
 Hermann Cohen who had previously visited London 
 as a famous pianist now returned to the capital as a 
 Carmelite monk. 
 
 The strange career of the Carmelite selected for 
 the purpose of reintroducing monasticism in England 
 outrivals romance in its contrasts, outruns fiction 
 in its interests. Hermann Cohen was born at Ham- 
 burg, of wealthy parents, one of whom claimed 
 descent from the High Priest Aaron, of the tribe 
 -of Levi, consecrated to the service of the Temple 
 at Jerusalem. As a boy he showed remarkable 
 
 F 2
 
 68 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 talents, outstripping in knowledge his schoolfellows 
 many years older than himself. When a little 
 over four years of age he began to study music, 
 and at six could improvise to the wonder and admira- 
 tion of all who heard him. A few years later he 
 appeared at a concert in his native town, and took his 
 audience by storm, and soon after he played at the 
 courts of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg- Strelitz and 
 of the Hereditary Grand Duke of Schwersh, who loaded 
 him with presents and lauded him to the skies. It 
 was now resolved he should become a professional 
 musician, and his mother took him to Paris, where 
 after having lessons from Chopin and Zimmermann, 
 he finally became a pupil of Liszt, then a young man 
 of two-and-twenty, who was rapidly attaining fame. 
 Liszt soon recognised the lad's abilities, and speedily 
 introduced him to the drawing-rooms of fashion and 
 the ateliers of Bohemia. 
 
 Pale in complexion, with clearly cut features, eyes 
 dark, liquid, and brilliant, and long hair falling in curls 
 on his shoulders, he was remarkably handsome and 
 gained immediate attention, not only on account of 
 his brilliant talent, but because of his picturesque 
 appearance. The sensation he made was as surprising 
 to his family as it was delightful to himself. Journalists 
 lauded him ; women of highest rank flattered and 
 caressed him ; painters vied with each other for the
 
 MONASTICISM IN ENGLAND. 69 
 
 privilege of painting him ; sculptors made him their 
 model, and the world flocked to hear him. Though at 
 this time scarcely fourteen years old, his manners 
 were graceful, his conversation witty, and his ambition 
 boundless. He quickly made friends with some of 
 the most distinguished men and women of the day, 
 amongst whom was Georges Sand, then in the zenith 
 of her fame. Precocious for his age, he was aware 
 that to gain her friendship was to increase his renown ; 
 and he therefore by the fascinations he knew how 
 to exert, had striven to attract her attention, and 
 succeeded in winning her regard. Soon he became 
 " her little darling," spent whole days in her company, 
 making cigarettes for her, playing the piano whilst 
 she wrote, and driving out with her, the envied of 
 many. In her works she spread his name through 
 Europe. 
 
 In one of her letters she spoke of seeing him " across 
 the orchestra with its hundred lights, motionless as 
 marble, yet tremulous as a flower, breathing harmony 
 -at every pore. Has heaven," she asks, " ever formed 
 a fairer soul, a more exquisite intelligence, a more 
 interesting figure than our Hermann ? " 
 
 When Liszt quitted Paris for Geneva, his pupil 
 followed him and became teacher in the Conservatoire, 
 gaining money and reputation ; but after a short stay 
 lie was back again in Paris, wh ere he made the friend-
 
 70 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 ship of a young Italian singer, Count Mario, who, 
 banished from his own country, became the idol of 
 the Faubourg St. Germain. Hermann, who was now 
 known as a composer as well as a musician, accompanied 
 him when he sang and shared his triumphs. After 
 his absence abroad, Parisian society received him with 
 open arms and dazzled him with its fascinations. 
 Now in the freshness of youth and fulness of promise, 
 singularly handsome, famous, endowed with an im- 
 pressionable temperament, a vivid imagination, and 
 inheriting the fervour of his race, he plunged into a 
 vortex of gaiety and dissipation. His nights were 
 spent in pursuit of pleasures, his days in feverish 
 slumbers. He neglected his profession, and on more 
 than one occasion, when he had lost heavily at the 
 gambling-table, he meditated suicide. But in the midst 
 of this, he says he began " to suffer from that complaint 
 which devours the world of idlers, even in their places 
 of .diversion, and takes forcible possession of almost 
 every heart." 
 
 It happened one day in the month of May, 1847 - 
 he being then in his twenty-sixth year his friend 
 the Prince de la Moscowa asked him to take his place 
 as conductor of an amateur choir in the Church of 
 St. Valere. He readily complied, and relates that 
 at the moment of Benediction he felt "a strange 
 emotion, and as it were remorse at sharing in this-
 
 MONASTICISM IN ENGLAND. 71 
 
 blessing to which I had no light of any kind." The 
 church and the service had a stray ge fascination 
 for him, he attended again and again, and went to 
 mass on Sunday, when at the moment of the elevation 
 he records : " I suddenly felt forcing themselves through 
 my eyelids a deluge of tears, which continued to flow 
 with a voluptuous abundance down my burning 
 cheeks." 
 
 He had previously avoided priests and monks, 
 regarding the latter " with horror as though they 
 were cannibals," believing the former intuL-runt men 
 in whose mouths are " incessant threats of excom- 
 munication and the flames of hell " ; but he now 
 sought an introduction to the Abbe Legrand, whom 
 he found cultured, clever, and many-sided. Under 
 his direction, Hermann Cohen studied Christianity 
 and embraced Catholicity. A remarkable change 
 became apparent in him. He had formerly been 
 noted for the luxury and foppery of his dress ; he 
 now wore rough clothes and common shoes, whilst 
 his daintily furnished and perfumed rooms were ex 
 changed for a garret in the Rue Universite, contain- 
 ing an iron bedstead, a trunk, a piano, a crucifix, 
 and a picture of the Madonna. His friends were 
 bewildered by the alteration, Adalbert de Beaumont, 
 the painter, declaring he was guilty of headstrong 
 folly, whilst the Baronne de Saint Vigor took a
 
 72 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 lock of his hair that she might consult a clair- 
 voyant regarding the strangeness of his conduct. 
 
 He was confirmed by Monseigneur Affre, Arch- 
 bishop of Paris, who soon afterwards lost his life 
 on the barricades during the Revolution of '48, 
 and after paying his debts, resolved to become a 
 Carmelite. But here an obstacle awaited him, for 
 a rule existed that no Jew could become a member 
 of the order. Exceptions had been, made to this 
 decree, but it was feared that on account of the 
 notoriously dissolute life he had led, and the short 
 time which had expired since his conversion, this 
 privilege could not be accorded to him. Determined 
 to gain his desire, he set out for Rome to plead 
 his cause before the Superior-General, who gave him 
 permission to enter the novitiate. 
 
 Returning to France, he became a novice in 
 the Priory of Broussy, eight leagues from Bordeaux, 
 the members of which were at the time all men who 
 had been distinguished in the world. These bare- 
 footed friars had embraced the rigid discipline in- 
 troduced by St. Teresa in the sixteenth century. 
 That a man of Hermann's refined nature, sensitive 
 temperament, and artistic training could endure the 
 life that followed is beyond comprehension. Thrice a 
 week he scourged his body till the flesh was clotted 
 with blood ; he performed the most menial and dis-
 
 MONASTIG1SM IX ENGLAND. 73 
 
 gusting offices, and barefooted and shaven, bore a 
 cross upon his back and knelt in the refectory, 
 accusing himself of faults he supposed himself to 
 have committed. The routine of his life, monotonous 
 and dreary to read of, torturing and humiliating 
 to practise, was to him a source of joy and satis- 
 faction. 
 
 At midnight, when formerly, the admired of all, 
 he had moved through throngs of famous people 
 gathered in brilliant salons, he now rose from a 
 plank bed and its wooden pillow to join a brown- 
 robed procession of shivering novices, who, singing 
 the doleful staves of the Miserere, passed through 
 the bleak and faintly lit corridors on their way 
 to the chapel to chant lauds and matins. An hour 
 later they assembled in the oratory for meditation, 
 and at two o'clock were dismissed to their cheerless 
 cells to sleep until five. 
 
 At that hour they rose to sing prime aud tierce, 
 read religious books, hear mass, and examine their 
 consciences. Then chanting the De Profuadis, they 
 repaired to the refectory for their first meal. No 
 longer did the famous musician sit down with com- 
 
 O 
 
 panious famed for their wit or lauded for their 
 beauty, to banquet-tables bright with flowers and 
 dazzling with lights, where laughter sounded as music 
 and wine sparkled as sapphires. The Carmelite
 
 7i THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 refectory was a bare room with a brick floor, and 
 whitewashed walls on which a black crucifix hung, 
 having ranged along the sides benches and tables, 
 the latter laid with a coarse cloth, a wooden spoon, 
 knife, and fork for each novice, a white skull marking 
 the Superior's place. 
 
 Fruit, vegetables, and on rare occasions fish was 
 the diet, water the drink. Speaking was forbidden, 
 but the solemn silence was broken by the voice of one 
 reading a chapter from a religious book. After a 
 sparse meal came exercise, the novices walking one 
 by one, or with a companion allotted to him, talking 
 not being allowed. Then came visits to the church, 
 vespers, sermons, study, and instructions, medita- 
 tions, compline, a second collation, prayers until 
 seven o'clock, when all retired to their cells. 
 
 After twelve months spent in this manner he 
 was allowed to take the vows, and for years preached 
 in Paris and throughout France with brilliancy and 
 fervour. Whilst in Rome he met, after the absence 
 of many years, his old friend and master Liszt, 
 who had now joined the Church, and here it was 
 he attracted the attention of Cardinal Wiseman. With 
 only seven pounds in his pocket Hermann arrived in 
 London, where he had formerly been known as a pianist. 
 He was accompanied by a Frenchman and a Maltese, 
 neither of whom spoke English, and settled down
 
 MONA8TIGISM IN ENGLAND. 75- 
 
 in Kensington Square. Adjoining the house, sepa- 
 rated only by iron railings from the public, was 
 a garden where White Friars were once more seen, 
 and where religious processions took place which were 
 greeted by howls and pelted with stones. A year later 
 the Carmelites moved to their present house in 
 Church Street, Kensington, but a few perches from 
 St. Mary Abbotts ; and in 1865 the first stone 
 of the handsome church was laid by Cardinal Manning, 
 and erected at a cost of six thousand pounds, irre- 
 spective of ornamentation or furniture. 
 
 After labouring for some years in London, and 
 accomplishing the purpose for which he came, Father 
 Augustin returned to France. But on the outbreak 
 of the Franco - Prussian War he left the country 
 of his adoption, fearing lest, on account of his nationa- 
 lity, he might get his brethren into trouble. He there- 
 fore went to Spandau, about nine miles from Berlin, 
 where were six thousand French prisoners. Of these 
 he took charge, visiting, teaching, comforting them, 
 giving them linen and tobacco, and attending those 
 suffering from smallpox. Whilst engaged in this 
 manner he was stricken by this foul disease, and 
 his health being already undermined by labour and 
 mortification, he quickly succumbed and died on 
 January 19, 1871. 
 
 Halfway up Church Street stands the Convent
 
 76 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 of White Friars Hermann Cohsn founded. The church, 
 dedicated to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, is a 
 handsome Gothic building designed by Welby Pugin. 
 The visitor enters between buttresses of great height 
 and strength, the doors of the double porch yield 
 noiselessly to the touch and give admittance to the 
 spacious, sombre, monastic edifice. 
 
 The sanctuary is imposing in its breadth, and 
 its view is unimpeded by a rood screen. The nave 
 is divided from the arcaded and recessed aisles by 
 Caen stone columns, resting on red bases. The 
 chancel is panelled, decorated, and lighted by lancet 
 windows filled with crimson glass. The high altar 
 is composed of white marble, delicately carved and 
 enriched with sculpture, whilst above are three 
 windows on which are painted, in hues of scarlet 
 and flame, emerald and amethyst, the figure of 
 Christ, His Mother, and His saints. To the right, 
 divided from the sanctuary by an open-work screen 
 of dark oak hung with transparent draperies, is 
 the choir where the monks assemble ; and above 
 this is an organ built by Cavaille, Coll, & Co., an 
 instrument almost unequalled for the sweetness of 
 its tones and the variety of its qualities. Down 
 the aisles are altars before which dim lamps glow 
 like stars at eventide ; the white figure of Christ 
 crucified stands out against a grey background ;
 
 MONASTICISM IN ENGLAND. 77 
 
 the light falling through lancet windows casts a 
 dull red glow on some pictured martyr, or bathes 
 in glorified hues a kneeling worshipper. 
 
 Leaving the bright sunshine and fashionable world 
 of Kensington behind, and entering the church, with 
 its semi-lighted atmosphere and air of repose, the 
 contrast is great. In a moment one has stepped 
 from the nineteenth century into mediaeval times. 
 Evening song, a certain form of prayers and sing- 
 ing of the Psalms called vespers, from Vesper the 
 sunset star, which every ecclesiastic in the church 
 must say daily, are on Sunday afternoons sung and 
 repeated in public. The Carmelites are famous for 
 their music, the choir which consists of professional 
 singers, costing over four hundred pounds a year. 
 
 Vespers have begun. On the high altar draped 
 in white linen, stand six lighted candles ; the sanc- 
 tuary is empty ; neither the organ nor the singers 
 are visible. A rich chorus slowly chants one 
 of the Psalms prescribed by the rubric for the 
 season ; and now and then between each verse, the 
 organist, with skilled hand and throbbing imagina- 
 tion, rebellious at having so long endured the heavy 
 chords of the Gregorian music, wanders into various 
 keys and strange harmonies, until suddenly and re- 
 pentantly he returns to the original note, when 
 the choir once more sings portions of a Psalm with
 
 78 TEE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 a simple force and broad grandeur that sets at 
 naught the vagrant, erratic symphonies that went 
 before. 
 
 In deep tones of wailing penitence vespers are 
 sung. Occasionally at the Gloria Patria a rich baritone 
 solo is heard, as a single bell might succeed a peal, 
 and is later joined by a chorus that echoes down 
 the shrine - lighted aisles. The altar is still bare 
 save for six lighted candles ; no figure of cowled 
 friar or white-robed acolyte is seen ; groups throng- 
 ing into the nave take their places in the long 
 oak pews, or entering the aisles seat themselves 
 on rush-bottomed chairs. At the singing of the 
 Magnificat the congregation rises, when preceded 
 by acolytes and censer-bearer, a Carmelite wearing 
 -a rich cope of cloth of gold, issues from the sacristy 
 door, and incenses the altar till the air is heavy 
 with fragrance, through the purple clouds of which 
 the divine figures in the pictures above tremulously 
 loom like glorified visions. He then returns to the 
 choir, and the sanctuary is once more empty. 
 
 The singing of the Psalms being ended, a voice 
 rises from out the momentary silence, and is answered 
 by a chorus, in which many join. Other supplica- 
 tions are chanted ; then comes a breathless pause, 
 interrupted at last by the sound of a single note 
 giving the friars the key on which to begin the
 
 MONASTICISM IN ENGLAND. 79 
 
 Litany of the Saints, each saint being invoked by 
 name to a general response of Ora pro nobis. The 
 while these prayers are being said, sounding as 
 weird and mystic incantations to invisible presences 
 whom those within the sombre-curtained choir would 
 summon to their aid, an accompanying symphony 
 is played on the organ, flute- like, fitful, tremulous, 
 wailful, now rising to daring flights of melody, 
 anon subsiding to soft minor keys, bursting into 
 joyousness or sinking into silence like the voices 
 of musical spirits that hover round, and would fain 
 interrupt these holy men at prayer ; having nothing 
 in common with their intent, yet nothing at variance 
 with their tones. At last the Litany ends, the 
 music with one prolonged regretful breath ceases, 
 and silence falls peacefully on all, interrupted only 
 by a muttered ejaculation or a last responsive Amen. 
 
 Then a friar with shaven crown and sandalled 
 feet, wearing the long brown habit and flowing 
 white cloak of his order, passes, a silent, solitary 
 figure before the altar, where he kneels a moment 
 in prayer before ascending the pulpit. First reading 
 the Epistle and Gospel of the day, he next dis- 
 courses on a text from the latter in a slow voice, 
 his pronunciation not being yet victorious over the 
 difficulties of the English language. If however his 
 words fail to interest, his appearance is not wanting
 
 80 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 in impressiveness. Tall, lithe, sad-eyed, and dark- 
 complexioned, his face, pale and worn with inward 
 conflicts, expresses rapt enthusiasm and spiritual 
 triumph. With his long, brown, nervous hands 
 crossed upon his breast, his rosary by his side, he 
 stands like a mediseval saint on the canvas of an 
 Italian master. He ends his sermon, which lasts 
 about half an hour, by making the sign of the 
 cross above the heads of his hearers, and disappears 
 as noiselessly as he came. 
 
 Meanwhile, a number of candles have been lighted 
 on the high altar which has been made ready for 
 Benediction, a rite of comparatively modern date, 
 being introduced about the sixteenth century. Before 
 that time the Sacred Host was merely exposed on 
 the altar or carried round the church, without being 
 as now, raised in benediction above the heads of 
 the people. Soft low music steals through the church, 
 the sacristy door opens, and a procession headed 
 by cross-bearer, acolytes, censer-bearers, and ending by 
 a priest in glittering cope, passes into the sanctuary. 
 All kneel before the altar, the Salutaris is sung, 
 and the priest, taking the Sacred Host from the 
 tabernacle, places it in a monstrance, a vessel whose 
 stem supports a crystal surrounded by rays of gold 
 sparkling with gems. This he places on a canopied 
 throne, and having prostrated himself on the altar-
 
 MONASTICISM IN ENGLAND. 81 
 
 steps, offers incense until the atmosphere becomes 
 laden with rich odours. 
 
 Whilst the Litany of Loretto (in which the 
 choir and the congregation take alternate parts) is 
 being sung a collection is made ; for the White 
 Friars, eighteen in community including novices 
 &nd lay brothers, are supported, and the church 
 is sustained by contributions obtained in this manner, 
 and by such gifts in kind as the charitably disposed 
 may give. Having recently found it necessary to build 
 a new friary rated at three hundred a year 
 the old house being no longer habitable, the Carmelites 
 have incurred debts amounting to over fifteen thousand 
 pounds. To defray this they depend on their congrega- 
 tions, which consist of peoples of all nations French, 
 Spanish, Italians, Germans, Americans, and English. 
 A large proportion is composed of those outside the 
 Catholic Church who have been attracted by the 
 music or fascinated by that strange sense of peace 
 that indescribable feeling of repose which the place 
 insensibly exercises over many. To the credit, 
 be it said, of those who are strangers to the 
 creed professed by the Carmelites, they give liberally. 
 Two Carmelites make the collection. One is old 
 and fat, with wrinkled skin and round yellow face ; 
 the other a novice, is tall, young, and slender, 
 .his complexion fresh, his features handsome, his 
 
 VOL. II. G
 
 82 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 eyes so dark a grey as to look black under their 
 sweeping lashes. His head has been recently shaven, 
 and a line of dark down is just perceptible on the 
 delicately curved upper lip. Without knowing the 
 world, he has fled from its ways ; still on the 
 threshold of life, with all its wondrous possibilities 
 stretching before him, he has pledged himself to 
 an existence of perpetual warfare against temptations 
 from without and within, devoted himself to penance 
 and to prayer, that in the future he may possess 
 in heaven the enjoyments he has put from him 
 on earth. 
 
 The Litany ended, a musical interlude follows, 
 in which the organ, a violoncello, and a harp are 
 combined, all kneeling in silence whilst waves of 
 melody surge through the church ; the rippling 
 strings of the harp, the plaintive notes of the 'cello, 
 the mellow tones of the organ, harmonising in 
 one perfect concord of sweet sounds, half sad and 
 wholly soothing. Then comes the singing of the 
 Tantum Ergo, during which incense is once more 
 offered, after which prayers are chanted, a satin 
 scarf, oblong in shape, is placed round the priest's 
 shoulders, muffling his hands in the extremities 
 of which, he removes the monstrance from its throne, 
 places it on the altar, and prostrates himself. 
 Rising, he takes the monstrance amidst breathless
 
 MONASTICISM IN ENGLAND. 83 
 
 silence, broken save by the ringing of a silver 
 bell, and makes with it the sign of the cross in 
 the air, giving the Benediction of the Blessed 
 Sacrament to the people. 
 
 The monstrance is replaced on the altar, and 
 the Host removed from it to the ciborium or chalice 
 kept within the tabernacle. The choir during the 
 time singa a concluding psalm, Laudate Dominum, 
 the priest and his acolytes return to the sacristy, 
 and the Benediction service ends. 
 
 o 2
 
 THE FIRST DAY MEETING OF THE SOCIETY 
 OF FRIENDS. 
 
 IN the passive, firm, and unobtrusive manner charac- 
 teristic of its movements, the Society of Friends still 
 continues a living, active force amongst religious 
 bodies. Socially, psychologically, and historically, the 
 Society has points of extreme interest. Acknowledg- 
 ing no earthly head, believing in the equality of 
 all men, it remains the most democratic of sects; 
 without priesthood, sacraments, or liturgy, it differs 
 from all other religions professing Christianity. 
 Simplicity of life, the avoidance of vanities, universal 
 charity, justness, purity, and peace are taught its 
 members. According to the "Book of Christian 
 Discipline," which embodies the doctrines and practices 
 of the Society, the Friends are admonished to avoid 
 " the foolish and wicked pastimes with which this 
 age aboundeth, particularly balls, gaming - places, 
 horse-races, and playhouses, those nurseries of de- 
 bauchery and wickedness, the burden and grief of 
 the sober part of other societies, as well as of
 
 THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. 85 
 
 their own." Various diversions allowable to others 
 are forbidden to them, musical entertainments being 
 amongst the number. 
 
 " There are amusements," says the Book, " the 
 object of which is principally, if not entirely, the 
 gratification of sense, which possess a fascination 
 sufficient, more or less, to withdraw the mind from 
 worthier objects, and the pursuit of which almost 
 necessarily distracts the attention from the sober 
 realities of life and the duties of religion. As 
 regards those musical exhibitions in which an attempt 
 is made to combine religion with a certain amount 
 of amusement, it is hard to understand how a truly 
 Christian mind can allow itself to sanction the 
 profanation of the sacred name by attending such 
 performances, in which the most awful events re- 
 corded in Holy Scripture are made the subject of 
 professed entertainment to an indiscriminate assembly, 
 many of whom make no pretensions to religion." 
 
 The Book condemns indulgence in reading, com- 
 panionship, recreation, or pursuits which shall grieve 
 the Holy Spirit. Hunting and shooting for diversion 
 are prohibited, for besides the necessity of distressing 
 God's creatures, such amusements lead into undesirable 
 associations. Rifle clubs and volunteer corps are pro- 
 tested against; Friends are entreated to be watchful 
 whilst preparations for war are being made, lest
 
 86 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 they be drawn into lending money, arming, or letting 
 ships, or otherwise promoting the destruction of the 
 human species ; nay, they are advised against assisting 
 the conveyance of soldiers, their baggage, arms, ammu- 
 nition, or military stores. Military centres are looked 
 on with serious apprehension as the causes of de- 
 moralisation and sin, for soldiers cannot become 
 skilled in the art of destruction, armaments cannot 
 be raised or kept together, battles cannot be fought, 
 multitudes of men cannot be slaughtered and their 
 souls hurried into eternity, upon Christian principles. 
 The Society not only censures warfare, but likewise 
 capital punishment, holding that it is not for fallible 
 man to determine at what period his fellow-man 
 shall cease to exist. Members are warned against the 
 spirit of speculation and the snare of accumulating 
 wealth, and both men and women are exhorted 
 against the grievous sin of adorning themselves in a 
 manner at variance with the plainness and simplicity 
 of which they make profession ; as also against such 
 habits of expense in furniture or attendance, which 
 are not only inconsistent with the teachings of the 
 Gospel, but absorb property better employed in 
 feeding the hungry, and spend time better utilised 
 in comforting the afflicted. 
 
 However, of late the rules regarding amusements 
 are not so strictly enforced. Not only is music no
 
 THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. 87 
 
 longer objected to, but is taught in the Friends' 
 schools ; whilst such diversions as shooting, fishing, 
 etc., are frequently indulged in by members of the 
 Society, the general feeling being that where such 
 things are wrong, the Spirit of God will restrain 
 from them. This was the feeling existing in the 
 mind of George Fox when William Penn, on becoming 
 convinced of the principles of the Friends, asked 
 the former if he should continue to wear his sword 
 as he had constantly done. " Wear it as long as 
 thou canst," answered the founder of the Society. 
 
 The Friends keep neither feasts nor fasts, feeling 
 bound with meekness to refuse compliance with them 
 as being anti-Christian, and set their faces against 
 the vain custom of wearing or giving mourning and 
 all extravagant expenses about the interment of the 
 dead ; whilst above all the drinking of intoxicating 
 liquors the source of misery and crime is generally 
 strongly discouraged though not forbidden by the 
 Society, although by far the greater number of members 
 are total abstainers. In many parts of America how- 
 ever, the Friends have strict rules against drinking 
 intoxicants and even against tobacco. They have 
 steadily refused to pay tithes or aid the forced 
 maintenance of the Established Church, for which 
 in early days they suffered cruel persecutions. 
 
 The Society has no priests, believing that " no
 
 88 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 man or order of men can worship for the rest " ; 
 and they have no ritual, but meet for silent worship 
 and extempore prayer, " recognising the value of 
 silence not as an end, but as a means towards the 
 attainment of the end; a silence not of listlessness 
 or of vacant musing, but of holy expectation before 
 the Lord." 
 
 Their insistance of the sufficiency and power of 
 God's Spirit in all things may be considered the 
 principle of their religion. Unlike other sects which, 
 in their pitiful lack of charity and their contemptible 
 fulness of egotism, believe in the election of them- 
 selves and the damnation of all differing from them, 
 the Society of Friends teaches the revelation of spiritual 
 light in every individual soul, and the manifestation 
 of the love and grace of God towards all men, be 
 they Christian or heathen, Jew or Gentile. By 
 this light man is enabled "to distinguish good from 
 evil, and to correct the disorderly passions and 
 corrupt propensities of his nature ; and without the 
 Spirit inwardly revealed man can do nothing to the 
 glory of God or to effect his own salvation." The 
 existence and efficacy of this spiritual light flooding 
 the soul obviates the necessity of sacraments. 
 
 Marriage the Friends believe an ordinance of 
 God, in which He alone can rightly join man and 
 woman. Therefore they seek the aid neither of
 
 THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. 89 
 
 priest nor of magistrate ; but the man and woman 
 concerned take each other as husband and wife, 
 promising unto each other, with .God's assistance to be 
 loving and faithful in that relation to each other 
 till death shall separate them. Children are named 
 in presence of those who witnessed their birth. 
 Christ is Himself the bread of life. "The eating 
 of His body and the drinking of His blood is not 
 an outward act. They truly partake of them who 
 habitually rest upon the sufferings and death of 
 their Lord as their only hope, and to whom the 
 indwelling Spirit gives of the fulness which is in 
 Christ. It is this inward and spiritual partaking 
 which is the true supper of the Lord." 
 
 They consider the breaking of bread and' drinking 
 of wine was a portion of the Jewish passover which, 
 " as oft as they did it," was rightly observed by the 
 Apostles, who were Jews till the destruction of 
 Jerusalem, when the Jewish law ceased and its 
 observances became impossible, as the Temple was 
 destroyed. Priesthood then ceased, being all absorbed 
 in " the one high priest after the order of Melchizedec," 
 who makes all kings and priests unto God. 
 
 From a Declaration of Christian Doctrine given 
 forth on behalf of the Society in 1693, it may be 
 gathered their belief in the divinity of Christ some- 
 what differs from other sects professing Christianity.
 
 90 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 They hold that "the Word or Son of God, in the 
 fulness of time became perfect man according to 
 the flesh, descended and came of the seed oi Abraham 
 and David ; but was miraculously conceived by the 
 Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary; and 
 declared powerfully to be the Son of God according 
 to the spirit of sanctification by the resurrection 
 from the dead. . . . That as man, Christ died for 
 our sins, rose again, and was received up into glory 
 in the heavens, He having been in His dying for 
 all that one great universal offering and sacrifice 
 for peace, atonement, and reconciliation between 
 God and man ; and He is the propitiation not for 
 our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole 
 world. . . . That Christ's body that was crucified 
 was not the Godhead, yet by the power of God 
 was raised from the dead ; and that the same Christ 
 that was therein crucified ascended into heaven and 
 glory, is not questioned by us. His flesh saw no 
 corruption, it did not corrupt ; but yet, doubtless, 
 His body was changed into a more glorious 
 and heavenly condition than it was in when subject 
 to divers sufferings on earth ; but how and what 
 manner of change it met withal after it was raised 
 from the dead, so as to become such a glorious 
 body as it is declared to be, is too wonderful for
 
 THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. 91 
 
 mortals to conceive. The Scripture is silent as 
 to the manner thereof, and we are not curious 
 to inquire about or to dispute it ; nor do we esteem 
 it necessary to make ourselves wise above what 
 is written as to the manner or condition of 
 Christ's glorious body in heaven ; no more than 
 to inquire how Christ appeared in divers manners 
 or forms ; or how He came in among His disciples, 
 the doors being shut ; or how He vanished out 
 of their sight after He had risen." 
 
 Concerning future happiness and eternal punish- 
 ment, the Declaration briefly states : " God hath com- 
 mitted all judgment unto His son Jesus Christ; and 
 He is judge both of quick and dead, and of the 
 states and ends of all mankind." 
 
 As each individual member possesses the inward 
 spiritual light, all are allowed to preach and pray 
 at the meetings, and those in whom the Spirit is 
 most prominently manifested are acknowledged as 
 ministers, be they men or women ; but this position 
 gives them no more power or authority than they 
 had before. Besides ministers, the Society has elders 
 and overseers. The former " encourage and help 
 young ministers, and advise others as they, in the 
 wisdom of God, see occasion." The latter take heed 
 of any improper conduct of the members, admonish
 
 92 TEE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 them in love, if necessary report them, and show 
 concern in the affairs of the poorer brethren, a 
 duty held more or less obligatory on all. 
 
 Occasionally a meeting may last for hours, and 
 end without a single word being spoken. By this 
 silent method of worship, which has been practised 
 for centuries in the Catholic Church, they testify 
 to "the spiritual reign and government of Christ." 
 To the Friends, " no outward ceremony, no observations, 
 no words, yea, not the best and purest words, even 
 the words of Scripture, are able to satisfy weary 
 and afflicted souls." The true spiritual refreshment 
 comes from what they believe to be the actual 
 communion of the Spirit of God with their spirits. 
 
 But Friends are admonished against attending 
 public worship conducted "in a manner at variance 
 with our Christian profession, and where modes 
 and forms are made use of, from which we are 
 religiously restrained." 
 
 For their charity towards the poor, and their 
 concern for the oppressed, the members of this 
 Society have always been remarkable. George Fox 
 and William Penn strove to secure religious teachings 
 to the negroes; and the Friends were the first 
 Christian body that refused to deal in slaves, for 
 as early as 1780 not a slave was, to the knowledge 
 of the Society, owned by any Friend in England
 
 THE SOCIETY OF FEIENDS. 93 
 
 or the United States. They were indeed the 
 first to petition the House of Commons for the 
 abolition of slavery, and took a prominent part 
 in the agitation which resulted in the freedom 
 of the negroes. It was a member of this Society 
 who first opened a school for the education of 
 the poor. The Friends have also laboured for 
 the amelioration of the penal code, the reformation 
 of prisons, the improvement of lunatic asylums, and 
 the abolition of capital punishment. 
 
 The principal meeting-house of the Society in 
 London is at Devonshire House, Bishopsgate Street 
 Without, where the yearly meetings of Friends for 
 Great Britain have been regularly held in May for two 
 hundred and eighteen years. There are also meeting- 
 houses in Bunhill Fields, at Peel, near Smithfield, in 
 Ratcliff Highway, at Deptford, at Stoke Newington, 
 Tottenham, Peckham, Hammersmith, Upper Holloway, 
 and at Westminster in St. Martin's Lane. So unpre- 
 tentious is the entrance to the latter, that it fails to 
 attract the attention of those who pass the way. On 
 its iron gates a notice is fixed stating that meetings 
 begin at 11.15 a.m. on the first day of the week. 
 A wide hall leads to a broad lobby from which 
 by doors to right and left access is gained to the 
 meeting-house. This building is almost square, and 
 is entirely devoid of decoration. The lower part
 
 94: THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 of the walls is wainscoted, the upper part painted 
 fawn colour ; the semi - arched oak ceiling is 
 lighted by a large central window of muffled glass. 
 Rows of forms covered with green cushions fill the 
 body of the hall, the male portion of the congregation 
 occupying those at one side, the female the other; 
 whilst at the end, raised by a couple of steps, 
 is a balustraded platform. On this one First Day, 
 otherwise one Sunday morning, sat three men and 
 three women, ministers and elders of the Society. 
 The former were gray-bearded and white- whiskered, 
 but wore no distinctive dress; two of the ladies, 
 also advanced in years, wore round black bonnets 
 and garments of sober hue. The congregation, 
 which numbered something over a hundred, counted 
 many young men and young women, a few boys 
 in knickerbockers and sailor suits, a few girls with 
 long hair and short skirts; but, with the exception 
 of the two ladies already mentioned, none wore the 
 dress we are apt to associate with the Society of 
 Friends. Indeed, such foolish vanities as feathers 
 and flowers, furs and velvets might be seen on the 
 women, whilst their husbands, brothers, and fathers 
 wore rings and chains to adorn themselves withal. 
 
 In the bright morning of this First Day, five 
 score and upwards of people sat silently, motionlessly, 
 contemplatively. The ticking of a clock, the occasional
 
 THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. 9& 
 
 rustle of a gown, a subdued cough, alone disturbed 
 the profound stillness which lasted about a quarter 
 of an hour. At the end of that time one of the 
 elderly ladies sitting on the platform arose and 
 addressed the congregation in simple phrases. For 
 amongst the Friends the preaching of women is 
 acknowledged to be a special gift of Christ, " who 
 only has a right to appoint, and who alone can 
 qualify His ministers effectually to publish the glad 
 tidings of salvation through Him." It was, as 
 they remind us, a woman who received " that most 
 sacred commission, which expressed the fellowship 
 and oneness of His poor afflicted followers with 
 their risen Lord, and in language unutterably 
 consoling indicated their ultimate participation in His 
 glory : 'Go to my brethren, and say unto them, 
 I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to 
 my God and your God.'" 
 
 When her address was finished silence once more 
 fell upon the congregation, but at the end of ten 
 minutes all suddenly rose, and standing with bowed 
 heads listened to an extemporary prayer offered by 
 one of the old gentlemen, who dwelt on each syllable 
 and prolonged the pronunciation of each word until 
 the whole sounded as a recitative, having many 
 pauses for an unheard accompaniment, and many a 
 tremulous note. After intervening silence, he ad-
 
 96 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 dressed his hearers in the same oratorical manner, 
 omitting neither the quavering notes nor the sing- 
 ing of syllables. Stillness again, followed by some 
 brief observations by one of the ladies ; and then 
 this service without psalms or hymns, the preach- 
 ing of sermons or the reading of Scriptures, ended. 
 Whilst it proceeded a couple of the male members kept 
 their heads covered, save when prayers were offered, 
 the wearing of hats at the meetings being optional. 
 
 The founder of the Society of Friends, George Fox, 
 was born in 1624, in Dray ton, Leicestershire. His 
 father, Christopher Fox, was known to his neighbours 
 as Righteous Christer, and his mother was " an up- 
 right woman and accomplished above most of her 
 degree." From these good people he inherited a 
 character which the strifes and changes of the nation 
 politically and socially wielded into shape. In his 
 childhood he " appeared of another frame than the 
 rest of his brethren, being more religious, inward, 
 still, solid, and observing beyond his years." He was 
 apprenticed to a shoemaker, who was likewise some- 
 thing of a farmer, dealing in cattle and wool, and 
 much trust was placed in this grave youth. The 
 people loved him for his innocency and honesty, and 
 he might have remained long with his master; but 
 in his nineteenth year came a crisis in his life. 
 Whilst attending a fair he was brought into a tavern
 
 THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. 97 
 
 and there asked to drink healths. The sights and 
 scenes he witnessed disgusted his sensitive spirit, and 
 he says : " When I had done what business I had 
 to do, I returned home but did not go to bed that 
 night, nor could I sleep, but sometimes walked up 
 and down, and sometimes prayed and cried to the 
 Lord, who said to me : ' Thou seest how many young 
 people go together into vanity, and old people into 
 the earth ; thou must forsake all, both young and 
 old, and keep out of all, and be a stranger unto all/ 
 Then at the command of God, on the ninth day of 
 the seventh month, 1643, I left my relations, and 
 broke off all familiarity or fellowship with old or 
 young." For four years he wandered about the 
 country, "taking a chamber to myself in the town 
 where I came, and tarrying sometimes a month more 
 or less in a place." His spirit was restless, peace fled 
 from him. Though afraid lest, " being a tender young 
 man, he should be hurt by conversing much " with 
 clergymen, yet he occasionally consulted them, and 
 their advice was various and amusing. One bade him 
 get himself a wife; a second told him to enlist and 
 fight in the civil war then devastating the country ; 
 a third suggested he should sing psalms and smoke 
 a pipe ; whilst a fourth declared there was no remedy 
 for a mind diseased like physic-drinking and blood- 
 letting. He paid no heed to their words but went 
 
 VOL. II. H
 
 98 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 his way, and soon he had " openings " or revelations 
 made by God to his soul. One of these assured him 
 that being bred at Oxford or Cambridge University was 
 not enough to fit and qualify men to be ministers of 
 Christ ; whilst another informed him that God who 
 made the world, did not dwell in temples built by 
 hands. These revelations resulted in his becoming an 
 itinerant preacher, his subjects being the light God 
 had kindled in every human heart, the necessity for 
 repentance and the beginning of a new life. He 
 boldly denounced the forms and ceremonies of re- 
 ligious worship, declared the ministry had become 
 a trade, and maintained the only warrant for as- 
 suming it was the consciousness of a divine call. 
 
 The earthly spirit of the priests, as he persistently 
 terms the clergy, wounded him sore. " When I heard 
 the bell toll to call the people together to the steeple- 
 house, it struck at my life ; for it was just like a 
 market bell to gather people together, that the priest 
 might set forth his ware to sell. Oh, the vast sums 
 of money that are gotten by the trade they make of 
 selling the Scriptures, and by their preaching, from 
 the highest bishop to the lowest priest. What one 
 trade else in the world is comparable to it ? " 
 
 From the first he met with success and gained 
 followers. The country was harassed, the people dis- 
 turbed. The old order had passed away with the
 
 THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. 99 
 
 dethronement of royalty ; new forms of government 
 and fresh creeds were springing into existence ; men 
 were prepared for strange teachings and novel practices. 
 Crowds gathered round this homeless preacher, who 
 believed himself inspired as he preached at the market 
 cross, the fair green, or in the churchyard, and his fame 
 rapidly spread amongst the people. By degrees his 
 teaching became more defined. It was now made clear 
 to him he should never raise his hat to any one, no 
 matter of what rank, or remain uncovered in the 
 presence of even the greatest, nor was he to bow 
 or scrape with his leg, nor to bid good morrow or 
 good evening, "for they knew night was good and 
 day was good without wishing of either." In address- 
 ing individuals he was to use no other pronoun than 
 thee and thou ; he was to observe the same manner 
 towards all men, high or low ; never to fight even 
 in self-defence ; to use numerical nomenclature for 
 days of the week and months of the year ; to forbear 
 drinking healths as a provocative to take more than 
 <lid people good ; to discard the usual symbols and 
 signs of woe at funerals ; to refuse all military duties ; 
 to refrain from taking oaths even in Courts of Justice ; 
 to adopt simplicity of dress ; and to look after the 
 interests of his followers. 
 
 Presently becoming more assured of his position, 
 he grew bolder in his actions ; and one Sunday 
 
 H 2
 
 100 TEE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 morning at Nottingham, on hearing the bell of the 
 "steeple-house," he, admonished by an inward voice, 
 entered the church whilst the clergyman was preaching, 
 and wave expression to his theories. This caused a 
 disturbance, a constable was summoned and George 
 Fox was carried to jail, from which he was soon 
 released by the sheriff, whose sympathies he enlisted. 
 But whilst at Derby a like act of his caused the same 
 result, when he was brought before the magistrates 
 and sent to the house of correction as a public 
 blasphemer. Fox is said on this occasion to have 
 bidden Justice Bennett " quake at the word of the 
 Lord," when Bennett called him a quaker, by which 
 name he and his followers became speedily known. 
 This imprisonment was but the first of many the 
 preacher was destined to endure. 
 
 The intervals he subsequently spent in prison 
 were devoted to writing tracts, amongst which were 
 "The Unmasking and Discovering of Antichrist, with 
 all the false Prophets, by the true Light which comes 
 from Christ Jesus, written forth to convince the 
 seducers, and for the undeceiving the seduced ; " "A 
 Warning from the Lord to the Pope and to all his 
 train of Idolatries ; with a discovery of his false 
 imitations and likenesses and traditional inventions 
 . . . and also some quseries, given forth to be answered 
 by the Pope, his Priests or Jesuits, or them who are
 
 THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. 101 
 
 popishly affected ; " "A Warning to all this proud 
 City called London, to call them to repentance ; " 
 '" A Warning to the World that are groping in 
 the dark after sects, opinions, and notions ; " "A 
 Declaration to the Jews for them to read over, in 
 which they may see that the Messiah is come accord- 
 ing to their own Prophets and Gabriel the Angel." 
 
 His preaching in " steeple-houses," a liberty com- 
 monly allowed those desiring to teach or to argue 
 in this age of religious excitement, frequently brought 
 George Fox into trouble. When he strove to enter 
 ^, church at Warmsworth, the door was shut against 
 him ; but eventually he was allowed in. When the 
 preacher caught sight of him, he stopped in his 
 discourse and asked him what he had to say. " When 
 I began to speak," Fox records, "the people violently 
 rushed upon me, and thrust me out of the steeple- 
 house again, and locked the door on me. As soon as 
 they were done their service, and were come forth, 
 the people ran upon me and knocked me sorely with 
 their staves, threw clods and stones at me, and abused 
 me much ; the priest also being in a great rage, laid 
 violent hands upon me himself." 
 
 Being filled with the Lord's refreshing power, he 
 recovered so rapidly that he was enabled to visit 
 another steeple-house that afternoon, but " the priest 
 h ad done before I got thither," he records regretfully.
 
 102 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 The following First Day he was at Doncaster and went 
 to church. When the sermon ended he spoke to the 
 people, "and they were in a great rage, hurried me 
 out, threw me down, and haled me before the 
 magistrates. A long examination they made of me, 
 and much work I had with them. They threatened 
 my life if ever I came there again, and that they 
 would leave me to the mercy of the people. After 
 a while they put us out (for some Friends were with 
 me) among the rude multitude, and they stoned us 
 down the street. An innkeeper that was a bailiff 
 came and took us into his house ; and they broke 
 his head, that the blood ran down his face, with the 
 stones that they threw at us. We stayed a while at 
 his house and showed the more sober people the 
 priests' fruits. Then we went to Balby, about a mile 
 off, and the rude people laid wait for us, and stoned 
 us down the lane ; but blessed be the Lord, we did 
 not receive much hurt." 
 
 The following Sunday, whilst at Tickhill, he was- 
 moved to visit another steeple - house, and found 
 the priest, as he persistently calls the minister, 
 and most of his parishioners in the chancel. When 
 George Fox began to speak they fell upon him, 
 and the clerk, taking up a Bible, hurled it at him 
 so that his face gushed out with blood. Then the 
 people cried, " Let us have him out of the church,"
 
 TEE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. 103 
 
 when they beat him exceedingly, threw him down, 
 dragged him over a hedge and down a street, 
 stoning and belabouring him so that he was covered 
 with blood and dirt. 
 
 His journal contains many bitter complaints of 
 the clergy who, as he preached against ecclesiastical 
 authority, were his bitterest enemies. Priest Marshall 
 raised many bitter slanders against him, he says, 
 such as, "that I carried bottles with me and made 
 people drink of them, which made them follow me ; 
 and that I rode upon a great black horse, and 
 was seen in one country upon it in one hour, and 
 at the same hour in another country threescore 
 miles off; and that I would give a fellow money 
 to follow me when I was on my black horse. 
 With these lies he fed his people, to make them 
 think evil of the truth which I had declared 
 amongst them. But by these lies he preached 
 many of his hearers away from him ; for I was 
 then travelling on foot and had no horse at that 
 time, which the people generally knew. The Lord 
 soon after cut off this envious priest in his 
 wickedness." 
 
 Again " envious priests and professors " raised 
 a slanderous report concerning him, that neither 
 water could drown him, nor could they draw blood 
 from him, and that therefore, he was surely a
 
 104 TEE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 wizard. Whilst on one occasion he was preaching 
 at Whitehall to Oliver Cromwell's guards, "an 
 envious priest, a newsmonger, and a light, scornful, 
 chaffy man " interrupted him. Fox bade him repent ; 
 which struck the chaffy man as being strange enough 
 to put in the news - sheet. The next time Fox 
 appeared at Whitehall he " manifested the priest 
 to be a liar in several things he had affirmed." 
 The worthy parson, the forerunner of paragraph 
 writers for society journals, made copy from this 
 second visit, and describing this lion in the religious 
 world, said he wore silver buttons, "which was 
 false," Fox gravely wrote, " for they were but 
 alchymy." Moreover, drawing on his imagination, 
 the writer declared Fox hung ribbons on people's 
 arms, which caused them to follow him. When in 
 1654 the preacher was at Whetstone, came seventeen 
 troopers and a marshal, and took him before Colonel 
 Hacker, who was with his major and a great 
 company of his captains, and much discourse they 
 held concerning priests, and meetings, and the rumour 
 of a plot against Cromwell, when Fox declared him- 
 self an innocent man free from such designs. 
 Colonel Hacker asked him if he would return 
 home and stay there ; but Fox answered if he 
 went home it would show he was guilty of some 
 offence, and if he stayed there it would make his
 
 THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. 105 
 
 home a prison ; and furthermore declared he would 
 go to meetings as the Lord should order him, and 
 therefore could not submit to their requirings. The 
 Colonel then said he must send him by Captain 
 Drury to the Lord Protector. 
 
 That night he was kept a prisoner at the 
 Marsh alsea, and next morning at six o'clock was 
 delivered to Captain Drury, Before starting he 
 demanded another interview with the Colonel, to 
 whose bedside he was led. Hacker again advised 
 him to hold no more meetings, but Fox declared 
 he must have liberty to serve God, whereon he 
 was told he must go before Cromwell. " Whereupon," 
 says the preacher, " I kneeled and besought the Lord 
 to forgive him, for he was as Pilate, though he 
 would wash his hands ; and when the day of his 
 misery and trial should come upon him, I bid him 
 then remember what I had said to him. But he 
 was stirred and set on by priest Stephens and the 
 other priests and professors, wherein their envy and 
 baseness was manifest." 
 
 George Fox therefore set out for London accom- 
 panied by Captain Drury. Now the latter carried 
 himself fairly towards the prisoner, but was an 
 enemy to truth, and "would scoff at trembling 
 and call us Quakers, as the Independents and 
 Presbyterians had nicknamed us before," writes
 
 106 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 Fox. "But afterwards he once came to me, and 
 told me that as he was lying on his bed to rest 
 himself in the daytime, a sudden trembling seized 
 on him, that his joints knocked together, and his 
 body shook so that he could not rise from his bed ; 
 he was so shaken that he had not strength enough 
 left to rise. But he felt the power of the Lord 
 was upon him, and he fell off his bed and cried 
 to the Lord, and said he never would speak against 
 the Quakers more, or such as trembled at the word 
 of God." 
 
 Reaching London, they lodged at the Mermaid, 
 over against the mews at Charing Cross, where the 
 Captain left his prisoner whilst he went to give an 
 account of him to Cromwell. Returning, Drury said 
 the Protector required a promise that "a carnal sword 
 or weapon against him or the Government " should not 
 be taken by Fox or his followers, the same being set 
 down in fair writing and properly signed. This was 
 accordingly done, and then the preacher was brought 
 before Oliver at Whitehall. On entering his presence 
 Fox was moved to pray that peace might dwell in the 
 house and to exhort him to keep in the fear of God. 
 They had much discourse about religion, when the Pro- 
 tector carried himself very moderately, and Fox spoke of 
 ministers who "preached for filthy lucre and divined 
 for money, and were covetous and greedy, and can
 
 TEE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. 107 
 
 never have enough," which charges Cromwell said were 
 true. 
 
 " Many more words I had with him," writes George 
 Fox, "but people coming in, I drew a little back; 
 and as I was turning he caught me by the hand and 
 with tears in his eyes said, ' Come again to my house, 
 for if thou and I were but an hour a day together we 
 should be nearer one to the other,' adding that he 
 wished me no more ill than he did to his own soul ; I 
 told him if he did he wronged his own soul; and 
 I bid him hearken to God's voice, that he might stand 
 in His counsel and obey it ; and if he did so, that would 
 keep him from hardness of heart ; but if he did not 
 hear God's voice, his heart would be hardened. He said 
 it was true." When Fox left the great man's presence, 
 Captain Drury followed him saying the Lord Protector 
 had set him at liberty, and he might go whither he 
 would. 
 
 Four years later, in 1658, the preacher sought 
 Cromwell at Hampton Court that he might speak 
 concerning the persecutions suffered by the Friends^ 
 
 " I met him riding into Hampton Court Park/'' 
 he says, "and before I came to him, as he rode at 
 the head of his life-guard I saw and felt a waft 
 (or apparition) of death go forth against him, and 
 when I came to him he looked like a dead man.. 
 After I had laid the sufferings of Friends before him,.
 
 108 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 and had warned him according as I was moved to 
 speak to him, he bid me come to his house." 
 
 When George Fox called next day, the Protector 
 was ill and could not see him then, nor did he ever 
 see him more, for a few months later Oliver Cromwell 
 died. 
 
 In person Fox was tall, well-built, and muscular ; 
 " graceful in countenance, manly in personage, grave in 
 gesture, civil beyond all forms of breeding, tender, 
 compassionate and pitiful." His character is quaintly 
 described by William Penn as a man "that God 
 endowed with a clear and wonderful depth, a discerner 
 of others' spirits, and very much a master of his own. 
 And though the side of his understanding which lay 
 next to the world, and especially the expression of 
 it might sound uncouth and unfavourable to nice ears, 
 his matter was nevertheless very profound, and would 
 not only bear to be often considered, but the more it 
 was so the more weighty and instructing it appeared. 
 He exercised no authority but over evil, and that 
 everywhere and in all, but with love, compassion, 
 and longsuffering. A most merciful man, as ready 
 to forgive as unapt to take or give offence." 
 
 For four years he was the only preacher of his 
 doctrines, but at the end of that time he was aided by a 
 woman, Elizabeth Horton. Soon five-and-twenty dis- 
 ciples were spreading his doctrines, and before seven
 
 THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. 
 
 years elapsed more than double that number helped 
 to popularise his teachings. At first they called them- 
 selves Children of Light, a name they discarded in 
 favour of the Religious Society of Friends, by which 
 they are known to this day. 
 
 The protests of the Friends against worldly 
 pleasures offended the Cavaliers, and their con- 
 demnation of intolerance enraged the Puritans. 
 They therefore suffered great hardships which their 
 meekness of spirit but increased. They were put 
 in the stocks, stoned, whipped, and imprisoned, 
 "though honest men of good repute where they 
 lived." Some of them in their enthusiasm were 
 guilty of wild extravagances, one at least (who then 
 foretold the fire of 1666) going through the streets 
 naked, or clad in sackcloth with ashes on his head ; 
 entering churches during services to bid congrega- 
 tions repent of their sins ; warning magistrates of 
 their impending doom ; falling prone on the earth, 
 where he lay trembling during the manifestations 
 of the Spirit; and giving utterances to what he 
 termed prophecies. The names are still kept of 
 those who predicted the death of Cromwell, the 
 plague and fire of London, events likewise foretold 
 many years in advance by William Lilly, the 
 astrologer. 
 
 The wildness of their fervour, together with their
 
 110 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 urging all men to refrain from war whilst civil rebellion 
 rent the country, and their opposition to the teachings 
 of the Baptists, Independents, and Episcopalians, en- 
 tailed persecution upon them. Though Cromwell, 
 in a speech delivered in 1654, declared liberty of 
 conscience the right of all, the Friends suffered 
 grievously under his reign. If they travelled to 
 meetings on Sundays, they were accused of Sabbath 
 breaking ; if they preached, they were declared blasphe- 
 mers. Heavy fines were inflicted on them, they were 
 insulted by the populace, the women and children 
 dragged by the hair through the streets, the men 
 transported. Between 1661 and 1697, as many as 
 thirteen thousand five hundred and sixty-two were 
 imprisoned. Under Charles II. the old cruel statutes 
 passed in the reign of Elizabeth against Catholics were 
 revived for the Friends. In 1670, an order of the King, 
 signed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and thirteen 
 others, directed Christopher Wren to pull down their 
 meeting-houses in Ratcliffe and Horselydown. When 
 the Friends met close by the ruins, they were dis- 
 persed by soldiers, who beat them with the butt-ends 
 of their muskets, killing many. The fines levied 
 against them amounted to over a million. In 1671 
 Charles suspended the penal laws in favour of those 
 imprisoned for religious opinions, and released four 
 hundred Friends, remitting their fines and restoring 
 
 * o O
 
 THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. Ill 
 
 their estates ; but this act of justice was so unpopular 
 with his subjects, that he recalled his proclamation, 
 and persecution was revived. To escape suffering, 
 many had emigrated to the West Indies and America, 
 but fared no better from the Puritans, who had 
 settled in the latter country. When in September, 
 1656, Mary Fisher and Anne Austin arrived in 
 Boston, their trunks were searched, and their books 
 burned by the common hangman. They, barely 
 escaping the same fate, were cast into prison, stripped 
 and searched for signs of witchcraft ; but none being 
 found, they were convicted of heresy, and expelled 
 from the state. Nine others who arrived soon after 
 were similarly treated, whilst from 1659 to 1691, four 
 Friends, Mary Dyer, William Robinson, Marmaduke 
 Stevenson, and William Leddra were hanged at Boston 
 because they had dared to return to that city. 
 
 In 1686, William Penn using his influence with 
 his friend James 1L, the latter released fifteen hundred 
 Friends, most of whom had been imprisoned for non- 
 payment of tithes or their refusal to take an oath 
 of allegiance and supremacy. Three years later 
 came the Toleration Act, which relieved them from 
 taking the oath, and their persecution may be said 
 to have ceased since then, except as regards tithes 
 and church rates. Meanwhile, the purity of their 
 lives, their patience under affliction, the justness of
 
 112 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 their dealings, and devotedness to each other, won 
 the respect of many, so that their numbers increased. 
 George Fox was unwearied in his labours, visiting 
 not only Scotland, Germany, and Holland, but 
 Barbadoes, Jamaica, and America. In the fulness 
 of his zeal, lie believed the Society of Friends would 
 eventually absorb all other Christian religions. He 
 introduced effective discipline, instituting monthly 
 and yearly meetings, and wrote a code of Christian 
 doctrines for his followers. Frequent imprisonment 
 in filthy and polluted jails had undermined his 
 health, and he died in November, 1690, in the sixty- 
 sixth year of his life.
 
 THE SALVATION ARMY. 
 
 SUNDAY EVENING AT REGENT CIRCUS BARRACK. 
 
 THE stirring sounds of a brass band playing the " Men 
 of Harlech " as the accompaniment to hundreds of 
 voices singing a hymn ; the steady tramp through the 
 centre of a thoroughfare of a compact body of blue- 
 coated men and black-bonneted women; the floating 
 of red banners bearing the words " Blood and Fire," 
 and a general air of enthusiasm that makes light of 
 the mocking laughter, and glories in the derisive cheers 
 of unsympathetic crowds, are the audible and visible 
 sounds and sights of the Salvation Army, perhaps 
 the most vigorous and extraordinary religious revival 
 the English Church has known. 
 
 Briefly stated iu the words of its founder, the 
 design and end of the Salvation Army is " to spread 
 throughout the entire world, and to last as long as 
 God has enemies to be fought with and overcome." 
 Beginning with the exertions of one man, the movement 
 has grown to gigantic proportions, and is a social factor 
 
 VOL. II. I
 
 114 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 and saving power in the lives of thousands to whom 
 honesty, sobriety, purity, temperance, truth, and honour 
 were once but empty sounds and unknown qualities. 
 
 The man who so radically changed the condition 
 of things spiritual and temporal for thousands must 
 necessarily contain in himself magnetic force, deter- 
 mined will, unbounded sympathy, persuasive power, 
 swift perception, enduring patience, ability to organise 
 elements in a character which assuredly combine 
 to lift it high before the world. Such a man is 
 William Booth, who in 1829 was born at Nottingham 
 of parents belonging to the Church of England. As 
 a lad he attended the services of the Wesleyan Metho- 
 dists, and was impressed by the manner in which they 
 directly appealed to the people. 
 
 He was scarcely more than fourteen when he 
 experienced what is described as a change of heart, 
 and henceforth he threw himself boldly in with the 
 Methodist movement, attending open-air missions 
 and cottage meetings held for the benefit of the poor 
 and the enlightenment of the ignorant. In due time 
 he addressed crowds, and preached brief stirring sermons 
 on Sundays. Throughout the week he was engaged 
 in a pawnbroker's office, and the misery, privations, 
 and poverty, frequently induced by drink, with which 
 he grew acquainted stirred him with compassion and 
 quickened him with desire to rescue the wretched
 
 THE SALVATION ARMY. 115 
 
 from the darkness of their ways. At seventeen he 
 became a local preacher, whose earnestness was 
 acknowledged and whose powers gave promise. 
 
 He is described at this p3riol as " a mere stripling, 
 tall, with long, flowing, black hair, a piercing eye, and 
 a tongue of fire." His exertions were such that during 
 the next three years his health, never robust, threatened 
 to give way ; but without abandoning his labours he 
 relaxed his efforts, and spent some time in London 
 as an evangelist. 
 
 At four-and-twenty he placed himself under the 
 charge of the Kev. William Cooke, D.D., for theo- 
 logical training, with a view to joining the ministry 
 of the Methodist New Connexion, and a year later 
 he went to Guernsey to preach. At his first service 
 thirty were "converted," and before a month ended 
 his congregation was enlarged by three hundred 
 members. Tidings of his influence went forth, and 
 many demands were made upon his labours, to which 
 he freely responded. But the Methodist New Connexion 
 was becoming too narrow for his ever-widening sym- 
 pathies, and after a while he severed his connection 
 with the sect, acting on the prompting of conscience 
 and having no consideration for worldly prospects, 
 for this step left him without home, employment, or 
 income to support himself and the young wife he had 
 
 recently married. 
 
 i 2
 
 116 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 However, a man of his activity did not waste much 
 time in idleness. Journeying to Cornwall he found 
 fresh fields for his labours, in which he was now helped 
 by Mrs. Booth. For two years they held a series of 
 revival services, listened to by crowds of fishermen, 
 navvies, and miners. The success of the missionaries was 
 so great that invitations poured in upon them from 
 all quarters ; but unheeding these, they came to London 
 in 1865 and began their labours in the East End. 
 
 Writing of her husband at this period, Mrs. Booth 
 says : " He left a happy and prosperous ministerial 
 career, gave up all that is commonly regarded as 
 valuable in life, came out without any human en- 
 couragement or guarantees, and devoted himself to 
 labour among the neglected masses, with no thought 
 beyond that of a local work in the east of London. 
 "We surrendered home, income, every friend we had 
 in the world, save my parents, with four little 
 children under five years old, to trust only in God. 
 During the ten years following, we were groping 
 our way out of the conventionalism in which we 
 had been trained, and often reluctantly following the 
 pillar of cloud by which God was leading us. We 
 tried committees, conferences, and all sorts of govern- 
 ments, showing how far we were wrong, till the grand 
 military idea was revealed to us." 
 
 None but those who have lived in their midst can
 
 THE SALVATION ARMY. 117 
 
 realise the profound degradation, besotted ignorance 
 of all good, and fourfold knowledge of all evil, the 
 mental darkness and physical squalor, neither re- 
 lieved by religion nor lightened by compassion, in 
 which the inhabitants of the east of London lived. 
 As far removed from those in the west as if continents 
 lay between, knowing no tie in common, scarcely 
 speaking the same tongue, they at this period, before 
 public attention was called to their needful conditions, 
 were more neglected than the savage tribes for which 
 missionaries have shed their blood. To rescue people 
 who were neither conscious of their present state, 
 nor anxious for their future welfare, seemed a hope- 
 less task. Eeligion was to them either a thing un- 
 known or a subject for free mockery ; churches were 
 buildings where only the well fed and comfortably clad 
 resorted ; parsons were men who associated with the 
 rich, and held aloof from the wretched ; faith, charity, 
 temperance, and morality were things beyond their 
 lives. On one Sunday, eighteen thousand persons were 
 seen to enter public-houses within a circuit of half 
 a mile ; the streets were unsafe by night. 
 
 But William Booth and his wife did not despair. 
 Standing one day on a heap of refuse, he began his 
 crusade, and spoke of repentance and mercy ; strange 
 words which fell upon surprised ears. Daily he 
 preached in the open air to crowds that gradually
 
 118 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 increased. These were composed of sailors, coster- 
 mongers, fallen women, thieves, navvies, factory girls, 
 loafers, dog fanciers, Jews and pedlars, the waifs and 
 strays of humanity. When autumn came, a tent 
 was given him by a Methodist who sympathised with 
 his work, Mr. John Eason. A hymn-book was pre- 
 pared and sold for a penny, and by the time winter 
 came a drinking saloon which had once been a den 
 of infamy was hired for the services. 
 
 A gradual improvement became noticeable in the 
 lives of many of his hearers ; others were rescued at 
 once from careers of crime ; some of the converted were 
 pressed to join the crusade and narrate their experiences 
 for the benefit of others. A dancing-room and a large 
 theatre were next taken, whilst missions were opened 
 in various districts, where meetings were held under 
 railway arches, on commons, in cellars, and under 
 sheds. William Booth had 1 discovered the means by 
 which the masses could be reached ; his plain speech, 
 and adaptability to surroundings, attracted many, 
 whilst his anxiety for the temporal as well as the 
 spiritual welfare of his followers rapidly increased 
 their numbers. 
 
 In 1870, after five years' work in the East End, 
 he secured a building in Whitechapel that once had 
 been a people's market. This was constituted the 
 head-quarters of the Salvation Army, where space
 
 THE SALVATION AEMY. 119 
 
 was found for a meeting-hall, class-rooms, book-rooms, 
 and offices. Here daily services were held, and mission 
 work organised. The movement rapidly gained in 
 strength, and spread not only through London but 
 the provinces. William Booth's talent as an or- 
 ganiser was now furthermore called into service, and 
 he laid down certain rules for working the great 
 revival in town and country. 
 
 These were, to hold meetings out of doors, and 
 to march singing through the streets in harmony with 
 law and order. To visit public-houses, gin palaces, 
 prisons, private houses, and to pray with such as can 
 be got at. To hold meetings in theatres, music-halls, 
 saloons, and other common resorts of those who prefer 
 pleasure to God ; and services in any place where 
 hearers can be gathered, especially such as would 
 not enter ordinary places of worship. To use the 
 most popular song- tunes, and the language of every- 
 day life, in conveying a knowledge of God to every 
 one in novel and striking forms, but in such terms 
 as can be easily understood. To make every convert 
 a witness for Christ, both in public and private. 
 
 It was not until 1878 that after much considera- 
 tion, the movement was remodelled on the lines of 
 a military organisation, and called the Salvation 
 Army ; that name, as its commander explained, being 
 preferable "because the only reason for which the
 
 120 TEE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 organisation exists being war against sin, common- 
 sense requires that it shall be framed after the pattern 
 which mankind in all ages has found to be the most 
 effective, and the only one possible for an army." 
 At the same time he assumed the fitting title of 
 General, just as Napoleon the Great crowned himself. 
 The halls where services were held were henceforth 
 spoken of as barracks, stores, and head-quarters ; the 
 flags were inscribed with the motto " Blood and Fire," 
 
 o 
 
 signifying the blood with which Christ atoned for 
 sin, and the fire of the Holy Spirit which sanctifies, 
 verifies, and comforts the soldiers of God. A uniform 
 was selected for the male officers consisting of dark 
 blue trousers and tunic with red facings, the collar 
 marked with the letter S, or a scarlet guernsey, with 
 a peaked cap bearing the badge, Salvation Army. 
 The women were to wear plain gowns of blue, with 
 cloaks of the same colour, the ribbons on their black 
 bonnets having the badge in gilt letters. This quiet 
 though striking uniform was designed for the purpose of 
 attracting notice ; helping to gather crowds round the 
 wearers when they preach; leading the idle and 
 curious to question the officers, who have then an 
 opportunity of giving instruction ; and above all of 
 guarding against conformity to fashions of the day. 
 Mourning for the dead is not permitted, and is regarded 
 as a contradiction to all " the departed brother or sister
 
 THE SALVATION ARMY. 121 
 
 has been saying for years or months gone by, all that 
 was said on their death-bed, all that is being said at 
 the grave and on the platform, and all that will be 
 said of him for years to come, viz., that God took 
 him in love away from the evil, to come to a glorious 
 land of rest and pleasure and communion ; nay, to 
 the very society of angels and of God." 
 
 General Booth says this military system of organi- 
 sation contradicts no form of government laid down 
 or practised in the New Testament, and is in perfect 
 harmony with the only system described in the Old 
 Testament, and cannot therefore be called unscriptural. 
 " Our organisation makes every soldier in some degree 
 an officer, charged with the responsibility of so many 
 of his townsfolk, and expected to carry on the war 
 against the locality where he resides. Every corps 
 is mapped to a portion of the country, and every 
 village is placed under the care of a sergeant until a 
 corps be established in it under commissioned officers. 
 England is divided into thirteen districts, each under 
 the command of a major, whose duty it is to direct 
 and inspect the operations of every corps therein ; 
 he has to see to the extension of the war, and the 
 calling out of new officers, and to the removal of others 
 unfit for their position. Each corps is under the 
 command of a captain, assisted by one or two 
 lieutenants, who are entirely employed in and supported
 
 122 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 by the Army, their duty being to conduct services 
 outdoors and indoors, to visit those enlisted, and 
 to plan and work for the salvation of the whole 
 population around. Captains and lieutenants are 
 removed about every six months, to avoid settling 
 into old ruts, and to prevent their forming too strong 
 attachments either to persons or places. We have 
 tens of thousands of soldiers who are ready at a 
 word to leave all and go out to rescue the souls of 
 others, and who glory in submitting to the leadership 
 of either men or women placed over them, for 
 Christ's sake. Experience has taught us that real 
 soldiers care little who leads or how they march, 
 so that there is victory. We have never enjoyed 
 such unbroken peace or harmony as we have had 
 since it was thoroughly understood that the corps 
 is under its captain, the division under its major, and 
 the whole army under its general, with no hope of 
 successful agitation against superior authority. It 
 is a great object with us to avoid using our system 
 of government so as to limit spiritual liberty, 
 or hamper any officer with awkward restrictions 
 who is seeking the accomplishment of his great 
 
 mission." 
 
 The success of the Salvation Army was now 
 assured. Within twelve months eighty new stations
 
 THE SALVATION ARMY. 123 
 
 were founded, and a hundred officers added to the 
 staff. Its progress may be estimated from the 
 fact that in 1878 the Army numbered twenty-nine 
 corps and thirty-one officers, whilst, according to an 
 estimate made in 1888, the corps or societies numbered 
 two thousand five hundred and thirty-nine, and the 
 officers over seven thousand. 
 
 So great a work could not be accomplished 
 even by the most heroic patience, labour, and 
 perseverance without money. For many years a 
 philanthropic Member of Parliament who took a 
 deep interest in William Booth's work, supported 
 him and his family ; continuing his benevolence 
 for some time after the foundation of the Army, 
 and indeed until the profits arising from the 
 literature published by it rendered his help no 
 longer necessary. These profits are now sufficient 
 to maintain the official staff. The movement had 
 from the first been helped by contributions freely 
 given by those attending the services ; the workers 
 within the Army likewise subscribed, whilst the 
 outside public composed of every denomination gave 
 of their goods. 
 
 A sum amounting to several thousand pounds 
 now belonged to the Army. In 1875, William 
 Booth, in order to secure this money to the object
 
 124 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 for which it Lad been subscribed and acquired, 
 Lad a deed drawn up and enrolled in Chancery, 
 declaring tLe property belonged first to himself, 
 then to Lis son William Bramwell Booth, and at 
 their deatLs devising that the whole is to be 
 vested in trustees for the use of the Array so 
 long as it exists. The Army solicitors hold the 
 deeds, together with a complete schedule of all the 
 property standing in William Booth's name. 
 
 A balance - sheet of the moneys received and 
 expended at head-quarters is issued yearly, and 
 signed by Messrs Beddow & Son, public accountants. 
 Moreover, any person who has a direct interest in 
 the Army is at liberty to inspect the books which 
 contain all the particulars of income and expendi- 
 ture. From the beginning General Booth has never 
 received support from the funds of the Army. 
 
 The officers of this vast organisation who work 
 so efficiently are not chosen at haphazard from the 
 ranks ; on the contrary great care is taken in 
 selecting those suitable to carry on the work. 
 True, they are drawn from all ranks ; but they 
 must first have made themselves conspicuous by 
 their zeal and energy, when they are recommended 
 to head-quarters by the major of their division, 
 the officers of their corps, and others who have 
 known them. They are then placed under the
 
 THE SALVATION ARMY. 125 
 
 supervision of a major, by whom they are reported 
 to Mr. Herbert Booth. If they are able to answer 
 satisfactorily the eighty -seven questions set down 
 on the candidates' paper, and to pass successfully 
 a medical examination, they are sent to the various 
 garrisons, twenty-nine in number, in the suburbs of 
 London for training. Formerly it was sometimes found 
 necessary to teach some of them reading, writing, 
 and arithmetic ; but now a wholly uneducated 
 candidate is not accepted. In the garrison they 
 are shown how every branch of the service should 
 be conducted, how the ignorant may be instructed, 
 and the manner in which to preach with effect. 
 
 Smoking is forbidden, as is also the use of 
 jewellery. Music-halls and theatres must be aban- 
 doned ; no officer will be allowed to marry unless 
 he is three years in the field, except in cases of 
 long- standing engagements before being raised ; no 
 male officer will under any circumstances be allowed 
 to marry before he is twenty-two years of age ; 
 nor will consent be given to the engagement of 
 any male officer unless the young woman is likely 
 to make a suitable wife for an officer, and if not 
 already an officer is willing to train for such. 
 Self - sacrifice and rectitude is expected, and their 
 powers to endure and abilities to lead are tested by 
 mission work.
 
 126 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 Those who after a training of six weeks are 
 found unsuitable for the post of captain are sent 
 back into the ranks ; those who succeed must give 
 up home and such position in the world as they 
 may have held. A captain must be prepared to 
 be sent north, south, east, or west at a short 
 notice, and with very little in his pocket wherewith 
 to begin his labours. He is expected to conduct 
 about twenty meetings weekly, extending from 
 thirty to thirty-five hours, and to spend eighteen 
 hours visiting in the hope of and endeavour to save 
 or strengthen struggling souls. 
 
 The salary for single men is : Lieutenants, 
 sixteen shillings weekly ; captains, eighteen shillings ; 
 for single women, lieutenants, twelve shillings ; 
 captains, fifteen shillings ; married men, twenty- 
 seven shillings a week, with a shilling a week 
 extra for each of his children under fourteen years 
 of age. They are pledged never to receive any 
 sum in the form of pay beyond these allowances. 
 
 The Salvation Army does not seek to increase 
 its numbers by drawing members of other Churches 
 to its ranks ; but rather strives to awaken a sense 
 of religion in those who profess no form of faith, 
 know no God, disdain all restriction, and follow 
 every vice. Its harvest is gathered from the 
 vicious, the ignorant, the sodden, and the poor.
 
 THE SALVATION ARMY. 127 
 
 Two of the hierarchy of the English Church, the 
 Archbishop of York and the Bishop of Bedford, 
 have administered communion to large numbers of 
 the Salvation Army, whom they have thus acknow- 
 ledged as members of their fold. The teachings of 
 the Army closely resemble those of the Methodists, 
 the body in which William Booth began his missionary 
 career. " We have not," he says, " a particle of 
 sympathy with those who desire to let down or adapt 
 the gospel of Christ to the fancy of the nineteenth 
 century. The gospel which tells a man that he is 
 thoroughly bad, and under the power of the devil; 
 which drags out the hidden things of iniquity to 
 the light of the Judgment Throne ; which denounces 
 sin without mercy, and warns men of eternal wrath 
 to come unless they repent and believe in the only 
 Saviour ; the gospel of a crucified Saviour who shed 
 real blood to save men from real guilt, real danger, 
 a real hell, and who lives again to give a real pardon 
 to the really penitent a real deliverance from the 
 guilt, power, pollution, and fact of sin, to all who 
 really give up to Him a whole heart and trust in 
 Him with a perfect faith such is the gospel of the 
 Salvation Army. We heartily believe the three 
 creeds of the Church, we believe every word of the 
 Communion Service, and we denounce the wrath of 
 God against sinners as those who believe that all
 
 128 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 these things are true. We teach men to expect 
 salvation from the guilt of sin the moment they turn 
 from sin to God, and trust Him to receive and 
 pardon them. We teach that God is able and willing 
 perfectly to purge the heart from all its evil tendencies 
 and desires, the moment the soul trusts Him for 
 it all. We urge the people not to rest until God 
 has thus cleansed the thoughts of their hearts by 
 His holy Spirit ; and we assure them that God will 
 preserve them blameless, and cause them everywhere 
 to triumph, so long as they fully trust and obey 
 Him. We teach that sin is sin whoever commits 
 it, and that there cannot be sin without the divine 
 displeasure ; that there is a real, constant, and per- 
 fect deliverance from sin provided by Jesus Christ, 
 which all men are responsible either for accepting or 
 rejecting. We teach that all saved men or women 
 ought to lay down their lives for the salvation of 
 others, if required ; that being followers of Christ 
 means sacrificing all our interests, enjoyments, and 
 possessions to save a rebel world, and that whosoever 
 does not so bear the cross has no right to expect 
 the crown." 
 
 Music is regarded by the Army as a powerful 
 means of attracting attention, of rousing enthusiasm, 
 and of reaching the heart. Popularity of style, 
 melody rather than harmony, and simplicity are
 
 THE SALVATION ARMY. 129 
 
 the chief characteristics of the airs adapted to its 
 hymns. From the position occupied by the Sal- 
 vationist, we are told " there can be no season in 
 his life when he is so free from the claims of God 
 and of a perishing world that he can take up music 
 as a luxury, as a means of cultivating and satisfying 
 a mere artistic taste, or as an accomplishment 
 which may form part of his equipment for display 
 in society." Music is therefore used simply as a 
 means towards an end. 
 
 The singing of hymns to popular airs forms a 
 great part of the services ; and those in the con- 
 gregation who remain cold, callous, and unmoved 
 whilst listening to the stirring strains are regarded as 
 dead to spiritual influences. And as the music is 
 meant to appeal to the minds and hearts, so likewise 
 is the preaching and general manner of conducting 
 the services. It is not to the educated and refined, 
 but to the ignorant and uncultured that the 
 Army appeals. It addresses the masses who have 
 little time and less opportunity to learn of a world 
 beyond their own, of a kingdom lying within them, 
 of a future for which they are responsible ; and the 
 manner of teaching is less considered than the 
 results. 
 
 Therefore, methods calculated to shock or revolt 
 one section of the public by their seeming levity 
 
 VOL. II. K
 
 130 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 or familiarity, attract and win by their directness 
 and simplicity another section, less fastidious in 
 taste, and freer from prejudice. 
 
 Close by Regent Circus is "a barrack," where 
 the Salvation Army holds services thrice on Sundays 
 and twice on many days during the week. The 
 entrance is protected from the street by iron gates, 
 above which, on a huge square of canvas, announce- 
 ments may be read of forthcoming " holiness meetings," 
 "knee drills," and "soul-saving campaigns." The 
 lamps outside bear inquiries as to whether you are 
 saved, and statements that there is salvation for all. 
 
 The gates open on a wide, well-lighted hall, 
 on the walls of which are such inscriptions as "The 
 wicked shall be turned into hell, and all nations 
 who forget God ; " "In the name of the Lord God 
 we set up our banners ; " " Fear Him which is able 
 to destroy both body and soul in hell ; " " Better is 
 little with righteousness than great revenues without 
 right." This hall, in which stand lads in scarlet 
 guernseys and lasses in poke bonnets offering the 
 War Cry for sale, leads to the building where services 
 are conducted. At one end is a wide stage, from 
 which seats rise tier upon tier to the ceiling; round 
 three sides runs a gallery, supported on light metal 
 pillars ; the body is fitted with rough wooden benches, 
 passages for egress and ingress being left at the
 
 THE SALVATION ARMY. 131 
 
 sides. What with the stage, the glare of gas, the 
 crowded and excited audience in pit and gallery, 
 which talks and laughs, calls out, and reads papers, 
 the place strongly resembles a theatre. 
 
 Suddenly is heard from outside the blare of a 
 brass band, which ends with a flourish, and then 
 harrying into the building in a rough and tumble 
 manner, come the colonels and captains, adjutants 
 and cadets, male and female, of the Army, some 
 of the former wearing their caps, one carrying a 
 big drum triumphantly above his head, another with 
 a concertina under his arm. Noisily they clamber 
 on to the stage and take their places on the ascending 
 tiers of seats, the men on one side, the women on 
 the other ; the scarlet, yellow-lettered guernseys and 
 blue jackets braided with red of the lads presenting 
 a sharp contrast to the sombre bonnets and dark 
 dresses of the lasses. 
 
 One is immediately struck by the youthfulness 
 and enthusiasm of these modern agents of salvation, 
 for, with the exception of half-a-dozen middle-aged 
 men, they are all young, some of them having scarcely 
 emerged from childhood. And with them are the 
 emotion and gladness of youth, as they settle down 
 to what will evidently be to them an enjoyable 
 evening. Fiddles are tuned, a stray note sounds 
 from a concertina, a bassoon utters a groan ; the 
 
 x 2
 
 132 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 voices of War Cry vendors and money collectors 
 penetrate from the hall, and a noise of many tongues 
 gradually rises. 
 
 Then, stepping forward in front of the stage 
 with an air of assurance and a smile of satisfaction, 
 a dark - complexioned, good - looking young man, in 
 clear ringing notes, recites a verse from a hymn. 
 No sooner has he finished the last word than an 
 awful din, such as might wake the dead, arises ; 
 for hundreds of voices, in all keys, accompanied 
 by trombones, clarionets, drums, fifes, fiddles, con- 
 certinas, tambourines, and cymbals, shout out the 
 verses. They storm heaven by sound. 
 
 The hymn being finished a brief and blessed peace 
 falls upon all, in the midst of which the conductor 
 of the service steps forward again, his hands thrust 
 into his trousers pockets, his body swaying to and 
 fro, his head thrown back, and in a strong, resonant 
 voice, that gives indescribable force to his words, 
 he begins an harangue. Throughout his discourse a 
 running comment in parenthesis is maintained by 
 those on the stage. Here is a sample : 
 
 "Look here," he begins, "does any one want to 
 be saved ? If so, they have come to the right shop. 
 (Glory be to God.) Salvation is what we all want 
 to-night. (We have got it.) Let's go in for it, 
 I say. There's many here to-night whose souls
 
 THE SALVATION AEMY. 133 
 
 are black with sin (Hallelujah. Yes. Amen.) 
 who are going down the straight road to hell, 
 but we can save them ; we hold out salvation to 
 them. (That we do.) Why is it I'm so happy? 
 How is it I can look with pity on those now 
 leaving the hall, souls swept overboard into the 
 ocean of damnation, and lost in the darkness of 
 raging hell ? It's because I know I'm saved (You 
 are, you are. Hallelujah. Amen.) it's because I've 
 given myself body and soul to God, who has 
 made me strong in His ways. (Ay, has He, lad.)" 
 
 Here the speaker is interrupted by the drumming 
 of feet in the gallery, when he pauses to remark : 
 " Thank you, but we cannot afford to pay for 
 all your boots being repaired," a saying received 
 with shouts of laughter, after which he continues 
 to speak of the blessings of salvation. "Whoever 
 you are," he says, turning towards a well-dressed 
 young man, resting in his indifference with his back 
 against the palisade of the gallery, " or no matter 
 how red your soul, come to us, and we'll wash it 
 white. (So we will, God bless you.)" 
 
 After holding forth in this style some twenty 
 minutes he sits down, while fiddles squeak, tam- 
 bourines rattle, drums sound, and then all being 
 ready, a hymn is sung to a popular air, men swaying 
 backwards and forwards, women waving their hands
 
 134 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 and boys shouting in a fine spirit of enjoyment. This 
 ending, a young woman rises to give testimony to the 
 miracle of grace wrought in her behalf. On leaving 
 the hall some weeks ago, covered with sin and black 
 with crime, a voice asked her in Oxford Street where 
 she was going, and at the same time a sight was 
 given her of the place prepared for her reception in 
 hell. Then she turned back and sought salvation. 
 Before she had quite finished, a sister becoming im- 
 patient tugs at her skirt, when the speaker sub- 
 siding, the sister jumps to her feet and with a 
 rapidity of utterance that takes away one's breath, 
 makes her declaration of the manner in which she 
 had been saved, which is even more sensational in 
 its details. 
 
 A third sister, wonderfully plump and rotund, 
 declares God told her she fed her body too well and 
 starved her soul ; while another avows she had been 
 cleansed through and through and her soul was white 
 as snow. When the last-mentioned sister sits down, 
 a neighbour of hers explains that the last speaker 
 was always praying that was the reason she was 
 cleansed ; the old devil hadn't time to get near her ; 
 a statement received with a chorus of hallelujahs. 
 
 The fair ones have not all the glory of confession 
 to themselves. A light-haired man tells a tale o 
 which he is his own hero, yells of thanksgiving and
 
 THE SALVATION ARMY. 135 
 
 murmurs of applause interrupting him. Such a sinner 
 has he been, so outrageous was his career, that one 
 wondered at the blindness or clemency of the police 
 in not having brought him to justice and penal 
 servitude. His manner is excited, his delivery rapid, 
 while his words deal largely in metaphor. Mountains 
 of sin, wells of salvation, cleansing waters of the 
 Spirit, nights of despair, devouring lions, blinding 
 darkness, and wandering devils, all formidably figure 
 in his somewhat incoherent confession. 
 
 Then comes another hymn sung in a rollicking 
 manner, after which an appeal is made for contributions. 
 The weekly expenses of the hall amounted to thirty 
 pounds, and there were few weeks when the whole of that 
 sum was subscribed. "There's no use beating about 
 the bush," says he of the dark complexion. " There 
 are some people who are wondering how much they 
 will give ; " he hopes it won't be a mere sixpence, 
 and trusts there will be a right down good collection, 
 and that all will give freely for the glory of God. 
 
 While the boxes rattle, the band plays, babies 
 whine, the War Cry is offered for sale, people talk, 
 confusion reigns. Another hymn, and then a man, 
 who looks like a sailor, one who has had many con- 
 versations with the devil, stands up. Satan had just 
 been telling him not to speak, for there were many 
 present who could talk ; but he didn't heed him, not
 
 136 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 lie. The same lying spirit said a few days ago that 
 his old woman would never recover, but God came 
 and healed her, and now she was well. 
 
 The ancient mariner is succeeded by a converted 
 sinner in the person of a good-looking young lieutenant, 
 whose years cannot have exceeded sixteen. His beard- 
 less, boyish face is flushed with excitement ; his round 
 blue eyes sparkle with enthusiasm. His theme is the 
 brevity of life and the duration of eternity. He had 
 in time turned from the evil of his ways, and been 
 spared to give testimony of the value of salvation ; 
 while travelling in the darkness he had suddenly seen 
 the light, and now stood forward as one saved to 
 promise that a like grace should be given to all who 
 repented. He is listened to with seriousness, and 
 gratitude is expressed for his timely rescue from the 
 paths of depravity. 
 
 The band having departed, variety is given to the 
 service by the singing of hymns in low tones by the 
 women, to the eccentric accompaniment of a fiddle 
 that wanders all round and about the air without ever 
 joining it ; and when several hymns had been gone 
 through in this manner the great feature of the even- 
 ing arrives. The conductor of the service freely 
 using his lungs, and violently exercising his arms, 
 delivers an address, at the end of which he sum- 
 mons the converted to the foot of the platform
 
 THE SALVATION ARMY. 137 
 
 where there is not much room, he remarks, but just 
 room enough. 
 
 " Now, who'll be the first ? " he cries out. " Come 
 along, now is the time for salvation. Seventeen were 
 converted last Friday, I just want three more to make 
 up twenty ; who'll come, will you will you ? Don't 
 be ashamed ; don't let the devil hold you back ; salva- 
 tion will be freely given you. Come along, you may 
 never have such a chance again." But as no one 
 answers his appeal, he bids the sisters sing softly once 
 more ; and when they cease he again invites sinners 
 to walk up and save their souls, shouting, looking 
 down at the body of the hall and up at the galleries, 
 using every form of address, until at last a young 
 girl comes and kneels before the stage. 
 
 " Now, where are the other two ? " he exclaims. 
 " Oh, they're there, but the devil holds them back ; 
 one more tussle and you'll have him down ; don't fear 
 him ; triumph over him, and you'll have salvation." 
 In the course of half an hour another girl comes and 
 kneels at his feet ; then more hymns are sung, and 
 the crowd is dismissed, with a reminder that all are 
 expected to subscribe to the cadets' boxes in the 
 hall.
 
 MONASTICISM IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 FATHER IGNATIUS AT THE WESTMINSTER TOWN HALL. 
 
 JOSEPH LEYCESTER LYNE, self-styled Father Igna- 
 tius, is one of the most notable Churchmen 
 of modern times. A century hence he will be 
 regarded as an historical figure from being the 
 first who by word and example strove to establish 
 monasticism in the Church of England. He was 
 born at Trinity Square, close by the Tower of 
 London, on November 23, 1837, and even whilst 
 in the nursery his quaint ways and curious comments 
 perplexed his parents. Quite early he showed a 
 burning desire for knowledge, and for a while was 
 sent as pupil to St. Paul's School. As a lad he 
 was delicate, sensitive, enthusiastic. The head- 
 master, Dr. Kynaston, declared him "unlike all 
 boys he ever knew, with none of their pardonable 
 shortcomings, and more true holiness and spirituality 
 of mind and character than usually falls to the lot 
 of Christians still growing in the grace of God in 
 after years."
 
 MONASTICISM IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 139 
 
 Being removed from St. Paul's School, lie was 
 placed under the care of a private tutor, the Rev. 
 G. N. Wright, and showing strong inclinations for 
 the Church, he entered Trinity College, Glenalmond, 
 Perthshire, as an ecclesiastical student. At the age 
 of twenty-three, he was ordained deacon by the 
 Bishop of Auckland at Wells Cathedral, and became 
 curate to the incumbent of St. Peter's, Plymouth. 
 From the first his powers as a preacher were remark- 
 able ; fluent, picturesque, ardent in his delivery, he 
 drew crowds around him, and not less by the fervour 
 of his words than by the force of his personality im- 
 pressed them strongly. Gradually by his teachings and 
 by his practices he began to set forth ideas favouring 
 monasticism, and before reaching his twenty-fifth year 
 resolved to follow the rules of the Benedictine Order. 
 This determination did not, as might be supposed, 
 lead him to enter one of the Benedictine priories already 
 established in England, where his personality would 
 be submerged in the ordinary ranks, his name unheard 
 of by the world, his egotism checked by practices of 
 humility, his liberty restricted, his behaviour subjected 
 to the discipline of obedience. He preferred to establish 
 an order of his own within the Church of England, of 
 which he should be the founder, guide, and director. 
 He therefore received the habit such as is worn by 
 Benedictine monks from Dr. Pusey at Oxford ; though
 
 140 TEE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 by what authority Dr. Pusey gave it or Mr. Lyne 
 adopted it must remain mysteries to the uninitiated. 
 
 His innovations being unwelcome to Plymouth 
 congregations, he was obliged to resign his curacy, 
 and for some time he laboured in the East End of 
 London under the Rev. C. F. Lowder. The novelty 
 of his design soon spread his fame, and presently 
 the Rev. George Drury, Rector of Claydon by Ipswich, 
 gave him a wing of his rectory in which to establish 
 a Benedictine monastery. He had already gained 
 many sympathisers amongst the clergymen of the 
 Church of England, and amongst others Dr. Forbes, 
 Bishop of Brechin, imparted his episcopal benediction 
 to this new undertaking, thanking God (as he wrote 
 to Mr. Lyne, who now called himself Brother Ignatius) 
 " for putting it into your heart to revive the rule 
 of St. Benedict of Nursia in the Church of England." 
 Ignatius neither sought nor required authority for 
 the step he had taken, which was already raising 
 bitter animosity around him, and causing surprise 
 and consternation, tribulation and warfare in the 
 Church of which he still professed himself a member. 
 He had been called from the Church and from the 
 world, he declared, and he had adopted the habit of 
 St. Benedict, each part of which was put on with 
 special prayer, as the uniform of his profession. 
 
 The new monastery quickly attracted attention,
 
 MONASTICISM IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 141 
 
 and Ignatius eventually gained a disciple. The 
 Norfolk News of May 30th, 1863, dwells on "the 
 monstrous, almost insane, performances which have 
 taken place under the direction of Brother Ignatius 
 in the parish of Clay don." The walls of the parish 
 church, we are told, were profusely decorated with 
 floral devices, and gold and silver tinsel. During the 
 services the altar blazed with lighted candles, some 
 of which were ten feet high, whilst clouds of incense 
 darkened the air. The Rector " was draped in rare 
 robes, wearing a large alb extending to his feet, 
 and bordered with a yellow stripe. Over this he 
 had a chasuble reaching down his back and almost 
 touching the ground. This was of bright red, 
 embroidered with a golden cross more than a yard 
 in length. Besides these he wore the girdle, maniple, 
 amice, and stole. The Benedictine brothers were 
 habited in black serge ; their hair was cut close 
 round the crown and left long outside. The choristers 
 had scarlet skirts under their white surplices. Brother 
 Ignatius incensed the Rector, and the Rector incensed 
 the Brother in return. The altar was incensed, so 
 also were the choristers, the church, and the whole 
 congregation. The tall candles were again and again 
 carried to and from the vestry. During the service 
 twenty-four lights burned on the altar, twelve on 
 each side of the large crucifix suspended in the
 
 142 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 centre. Observances, prostrations, and mysterious 
 gestures were continually taking place." 
 
 Crowds came from far and near to witness the 
 strange sights in Claydon Church ; but no disturbance 
 seems to have taken place, save on one occasion, 
 when a carrier, sitting solitary in the building to 
 await a service, watched Ignatius marching up and 
 down before the altar, apparently rehearsing. The 
 Brother on seeing the spectator, requested him to 
 depart in peace ; but the yokel refused, whereon the 
 Brother called on the Father to eject him, which the 
 Kev. George Drury did with the aid of a red-hot 
 poker snatched from the stove, which he laid about 
 the man's forehead and face ; an assault for which he was 
 fined five pounds and costs. The Bishop of Norwich, 
 coming to hear of the innovations, inhibited Ignatius 
 from preaching, and forbade the Rector his practices. 
 But the Rev. George Drury being disinclined to 
 obey, his lordship took proceedings against him in 
 the Arches Court, which were eventually abandoned 
 on the Rector agreeing to discontinue the processions, 
 ceremonies, and observances complained of, and to 
 submit to the Bishop's desires in the arrangements, 
 ornamentation, and furniture of the church. 
 
 Brother Ignatius and his disciples, who had now 
 increased to the number of five, were soon obliged 
 to leave Claydon, but they did not move far afield.
 
 MONASTICISM IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 143 
 
 In January, 1864, they took possession of a private 
 residence on Elm Hill, Norwich, which they named 
 St. Mary and Dunstan Priory. The chapel was a 
 long, low-roofed room at one end of which, raised 
 on some steps, was an altar having a crucifix, candles, 
 and flowers. Lower down were shrines with statues 
 of Our Lady and St. Benedict, adorned with lamps 
 and plants. A chancel screen separated the monks 
 from the part assigned to the congregation, and a 
 small pulpit was erected in which Ignatius was to 
 preach. A special solemn opening took place in 
 February, followed by the ceremony of the taking 
 of vows by the new disciples, admission to witness 
 the sight being by tickets costing five shillings each. 
 The Rev. George Drury, wearing gorgeous vestments, 
 officiated. The altar blazed with candles, incense rose 
 in clouds, acolytes marched to and fro, music pealed, 
 and monks with shaven crowns and bare feet knelt 
 within the sanctuary. The new monastery and its 
 inmates created the wildest sensation, not only in 
 the town of Norwich but throughout the country. 
 The chapel which held about three hundred people, 
 became too small for congregations, that were 
 obliged to witness the ceremonies from outside. 
 Ignatius, in a lecture delivered at Ipswich, declared 
 "his poor, sinful hand had received persons from 
 different denominations of Dissenters Methodists,
 
 144 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 Independents, Baptists. He also numbered Jews 
 amongst his congregations, many of whom were 
 willing to lay down their lives for the monks they 
 had learned to love." Presents of flowers and candles 
 were given the church, whilst a donation of five 
 hundred pounds was made by Miss Sellon that 
 Ignatius might purchase the house he had converted 
 to a priory. In return, he gallantly bestowed upon 
 her the high - sounding title of The Lady Abbess 
 Priscilla. But there was also another side to the 
 question. The Press spoke of him as " a mad-brained 
 enthusiast," or " a diabolical agent of Popery " ; 
 when he appeared abroad he was yelled at and 
 mocked ; letters were addressed to him, assuring 
 him he was on the straight road to hell, and was 
 taking numbers with him ; stories were set abroad 
 of a child which the wicked monks had bricked up 
 alive ; and if the poor missed any of their offspring, 
 it was said the monks had kidnapped them. One 
 woman who had lost her child battered at the 
 priory door and refused to believe it was not there. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Rev. George Drury being prohibited 
 by his bishop from officiating in the priory chapel, 
 Ignatius was left without a celebrant, he being only 
 a deacon and his companions but novices. Therefore 
 the monks, wearing their black serge habits, with 
 cowls over their heads, sandals on their feet, and
 
 MONASTICISM IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 145 
 
 girdles around their waists, went through the town in 
 slow and solemn procession from the priory to the 
 Church of St. Lawrence, where communion was 
 administered to them by the Rev. E. A. Hillard. The 
 procession consisted of six monks, headed by Brother 
 Oswald, a rosy-cheeked, merry-eyed lad of fifteen, who 
 evidently enjoyed the sensation he helped to create, 
 and ended with Brother Ignatius ; but on its frequent 
 excursions backwards and forwards it was invariably 
 accompanied by hundreds who laughed and jested, 
 hissed and groaned, and hustled each other into the 
 church, where they stood on the seats to see the 
 black-garbed figures prostrate themselves at full length 
 in front of the altar, their foreheads on the ground, 
 before receiving the sacrament. 
 
 On Good Friday Ignatius, having, as he remarked, 
 " the impoliteness to imagine people had eyes as well as 
 ears," had a Passion Play performed in his chapel by 
 way of change. Later on the feast of Corpus Chris ti in 
 June he and his monks, as early as half-past three in the 
 morning, went in procession through the town, carrying 
 lighted candles and banners, and singing so loudly as 
 to wake the inmates of the houses they passed; but 
 as few were abroad at that hour they were unmolested. 
 The priory was poor, but in order to gather funds for 
 its maintenance Ignatius went into the world to preach 
 in churches where permission was given him ; or to 
 
 VOL. TI. L
 
 146 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 lecture on monasticism in the Church of England, by 
 which means he was able to support himself and his 
 novices. In October, 1863, he was allowed to speak 
 at the Church Congress, held in Bristol, under the 
 presidency of Bishop Ellicott. The sensation caused 
 when he appeared in his black habit, with shaven 
 crown, sandalled feet, a crucifix by his side, a cowl 
 upon his shoulders, his face pale and worn, was 
 remarkable, and he was literally howled down. 
 
 Meantime a branch of " the third order of St. 
 Benedict " was established at Bristol under the 
 superintendence of Ignatius, having a superior of 
 its own known as Prior Cyprian. But matters 
 did not flow smoothly with the prior's monks, two 
 of whom, rejoicing in the euphonic names of Brother 
 Etheldred and Brother Benedict, got drunk and caused 
 great scandal to the neighbourhood. Complaint was 
 made to Ignatius, who reminding them they had 
 promised to obey his voice as the voice of God, 
 sent them heavy penances ; but these they flatly 
 refused to perform. Accordingly he issued a Bull 
 of Excommunication against them. This extraordinary 
 document is dated from " Our most Holy House of 
 Religion, on the 16th day of the month of Mary 
 ever Virgin mother of our Lord and God Jesus 
 Christ, in the fifth week of the great forty days
 
 MONASTICISM IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 147 
 
 in the year of the world's redemption, 1865," and 
 began as follows : " We, Ignatius, Superior of the 
 English congregation of Blessed St. Benedict, Father 
 of the monks, to his most dear children in the 
 Lord Jesus Christ and St. Benedict, tarrying in 
 Bristol or near thereto greeting." 
 
 After a long preamble speaking of his authority 
 and their offences came the terrible curse hurled 
 from the Norwich Vatican. " We, Ignatius, Superior 
 of the English congregation, give them over to 
 Satan that their souls may not be saved in the 
 day of the Lord ; may God in His just anger 
 light upon them ; may the dread of hell encompass 
 them ; let them be restless and without peace in 
 their going out and coming in ; may their sleep 
 be bitter to them ; may their eyes in the night 
 watches know terror ; may their ears be filled with 
 the sounds of their own cursing which their un- 
 repented sins will bring upon them ; may they 
 know no peace ; may their food be terror and 
 their drink be grief; may they lie down in sorrow 
 and wake in sore amazement. May all these things 
 be so with them, until casting aside their pride, 
 their lying, and self-will, they abase themselves 
 and return to Jesus the God of pardon. So be 
 it, if it be a just sentence in conformity to God's
 
 148 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 will. Amen." To heighten the effect of this 
 rigmarole, which was read in the chapel after 
 vespers, the altar was, according to instructions 
 from Ignatius, draped in black, and the crucifix 
 and statues veiled. The lamps at the shrines and 
 lights on the altars were extinguished with the ex- 
 ception of one which was placed before a cross, 
 and the 51st Psalm sung. The Bull was received 
 with hisses; but whether the objects of the curse 
 were reduced to the pitiable condition of the jack- 
 daw of Rheims or not, history does not say. 
 
 In the March of this year he announced that 
 "a forty hours adoration of the Blessed Sacrament" 
 would take place in his chapel, adding that any 
 one who subscribed twenty shillings towards the 
 new church would be prayed for during that time. 
 But on the following May, at the feast of the 
 Ascension, he gave fuller scope to his love of display. 
 For some weeks previous to the festival the town 
 of Norwich was placarded with showy bills headed 
 "The Coronation of the King," under which was 
 a large black cross. Then followed the admonition, 
 "All faithful subjects begin to prepare for grand 
 doings on Thursday, the 25th of the month. It 
 is the coronation day of the King. He will expect 
 you to keep it with great solemnity and rejoicing.
 
 MONASTICISM IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 149 
 
 Get up a public and general subscription for 
 decorating your streets, and for a grand illumination 
 in the evening. It is the most triumphant day in 
 all the year. All shops must be closed, the bells 
 rung all day, and the guns from the Castle fired. 
 Our own dear Queen Victoria, whom we all so 
 much love, will do homage to the King on that 
 day." 
 
 At two o'clock on Ascension morning lauds and 
 matins began in the priory, ending with a " procession 
 of the Host " at four o'clock through the empty streets, 
 the route selected being strewn with flowers, whilst 
 hymns were loudly sung. At eleven the great ceremony 
 of the day took place in the priory chapel. The 
 altar was gorgeous with cloth of gold and numerous 
 lights, backed by a reredos of crimson, whilst the 
 rood screen was decorated with lilies. Soon after 
 the appointed hour a procession entered, headed by 
 monks with shaven crowns and sandalled feet 
 carrying huge lighted candles, followed by lads of 
 "the holy order of St. William of Norwich" in 
 white robes, scarlet girdles, light blue capes, and 
 red skull - caps, bearing banners with pictures of 
 the saints. Then came more monks chanting a 
 psalm, girls dressed in white with flowing veils, 
 four clergymen of the Established Church wearing
 
 150 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 vestments of cloth of gold and baretti, and finally 
 Ignatius, his train supported by gorgeously dressed 
 boys. On his shoulders he wore a cope of white 
 brocade, having on the back a shield - shaped 
 ornament of glittering gold bearing the letters 
 I.H.S. On his head was a paper mitre, in his 
 right hand an abbot's crozier, whilst with his left 
 he led a child recently presented to the priory 
 and known as the Infant Samuel, who was dressed 
 in a monk's habit of white flannel. The Eev. Mr. 
 Ousley, acting as celebrant, sprinkled the people with 
 water, incense rose in clouds, and Ignatius, divesting 
 himself of his rich robes, took his place at the organ, 
 when an imitation of the mass followed. 
 
 In the evening Ignatius, carrying in his arms the 
 Infant Samuel and accompanied by his monks, attended 
 St. Peter's Hungate Church ; for by this time he 
 had quarrelled with the Rector of St. Lawrence's. 
 They took their places in the chancel and behaved 
 quietly until the Creed, which they intoned, much 
 to the surprise of the clergyman Mr. Titlow who in 
 vain begged them to desist, and then waited until they 
 had finished, when he began the Creed again. An im- 
 mense crowd had during the service gathered outside 
 the church to divert themselves with a sight which 
 had not yet lost its novelty, and to accompany Ignatius
 
 MONASTICISM INT THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 151 
 
 back to his residence. " The monks," says The Norwich 
 Mercury, "did not or could not form a procession, 
 but got to their dwelling as best they could. A 
 regular scene of jostling, bustling, and crowding ensued, 
 notwithstanding the vigorous efforts of the police to 
 prevent a disturbance. The scene at the gate of 
 the monastery was for a time a disgrace ; and to 
 make matters worse one of the monks who appears 
 to have lost his temper, remained outside doing his 
 utmost to give as good as he got. It was some 
 time before the crowd dispersed ; a woman standing 
 at the gate to prevent her boy entering the place, 
 and as might be supposed, she got a large number 
 of sympathisers." 
 
 Seemingly all went well in the priory until the 
 following month, when Ignatius having left to collect 
 funds as usual, the monks rebelled. Before his de- 
 parture they had protested against the oppressive 
 rule he exercised, but he did not deign to heed 
 them ; but no sooner were they freed from his 
 presence than they convened a chapter and cited 
 him to appear and give an account of himself. By 
 way of reply he sent them penances to perform, 
 when they all with the exception of one lay 
 brother, deposed Ignatius and proceeded to elect 
 Thomas Bannock, otherwise Father Stanislaus, as
 
 152 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 prior in his stead. They then sent a special 
 messenger to London informing Ignatius of his 
 suspension till he should answer the charges made 
 against him by the whole body, and stating he 
 should be excommunicated if he failed to appear. 
 At this threat Ignatius laughed merrily, declared he 
 never allowed his actions to be criticised ; that 
 those who were not ready to obey him must leave ; 
 that he would soon return, and if the doors were 
 not opened he should enter by force with a body 
 of police. 
 
 The most Holy House of Keligion was thrown 
 into a state of commotion at his reply; the chapel 
 was hung with black, and a coffin in which was 
 fixed an effigy of the deposed prior placed in 
 the chancel, whilst a chair of state was set up 
 for Thomas Bannock. The monks rushed into 
 print and aired their grievances in the local news- 
 papers. They stated that being an elective body 
 the prior should have been regularly chosen, instead 
 of which Ignatius had by his own act placed him- 
 self at their head. That he had not acted according 
 to the constitutional rule in his own life, though 
 he had rigidly enforced it upon others ; for whilst 
 they fasted on two scanty meals a day, he had 
 been living luxuriously and eating meat two or
 
 MONASTICISM IN THE CHUEGH OF ENGLAND. 153 
 
 three times daily, knowing meat was forbidden by 
 the Benedictine rules. That whilst he conversed 
 freely with young people and visitors, he enforced 
 silence upon them, one of the monks being sentenced 
 to kneel for three hours on the damp grass in the 
 early morning merely for saluting a neighbour. That 
 he was tyrannical, proud, and haughty ; that he 
 required them to go on their knees when speaking 
 to him, and desired them never to pass him without 
 " making a prostration." That the penances he 
 imposed for trifling faults were excessive, amongst 
 them being the recitation of the whole psalter, the 
 saying of six hundred Our Fathers, the licking up 
 of the dust in the form of a cross seven times on 
 the dirty stone floors. But above all that he was 
 " a sham monk," oppressive to the last degree, 
 spending money without their approbation, using 
 the order as a means of personal aggrandizement, 
 and whilst professing to carry out the rule of St. 
 Benedict he was really only following a rule of 
 his own which he would not allow to be questioned. 
 Meanwhile Ignatius communicated with his followers 
 amongst the laity, or to quote the words of a monk, 
 "he sent down letters which have instigated a mob 
 of the vilest description to attack us here, break open 
 the doors three times, and desecrate the church."
 
 154 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 Whilst the new prior was preaching a brick was flung 
 at his head by one of the supporters of Ignatius, 
 riots ensued, the chapel doors were shut, and the 
 police sent for. " Mr. Lyne," writes one of the monks, 
 in The Norwich Chronicle, referring to the abbot, 
 "has intercepted all our letters, and written to several 
 of his creatures letters calculated to excite animosity 
 towards us. Spies have watched our premises all 
 night, peeping in at our windows and otherwise 
 annoying us. And to crowa all, our serving-boy 
 had the letters he was carrying to the post snatched 
 from him by a man named Woodward, acting under 
 the orders of Mr. Lyne. Will the public allow 
 this man Lyne to play the tyrant in this way and 
 treat men in every way his superiors as common 
 felons ? " 
 
 The next step in this amusing drama was the 
 entry of bailiffs to distrain upon the furniture and 
 effects at the suit of the landlord to whom sixty 
 pounds was owing. The pious brethren then dis- 
 mantled the chapel and removed the gorgeous decora- 
 tions of the altar. Subsequently prior Thomas Bannock 
 wearing his habit and exhibiting a large oaken crucifix 
 on his breast, accompanied by Brother Marus and 
 attended by a boy monk carrying a breviary, appeared 
 in the police court to prosecute Woodward for having 
 stolen their letters. The case was heard on two
 
 MONASTICISM IN THE CHUECH OF ENGLAND. 155 
 
 consecutive days, and ended by a withdrawal of 
 the charge. But whilst the new prior was attending 
 the police court, the deposed prior appeared at the 
 monastery, and readily gaining an entrance, shut out 
 "with his poor sinful hand" the ringleaders of the 
 rebellion. When however he discovered that the 
 boy Hubbard was missing, he sent near and far in 
 search of him. Presently he was found with the 
 rebellious monks hidden in a house in the market- 
 place, but the latter refused to part with the boy, 
 when Ignatius summoned and appealed to the lad's 
 mother. Finally Mother Hubbard declared that though 
 she gave her son to the monastery she would not 
 allow him to leave the city. Ultimately the boy and 
 with him Thomas Bannock returned to the priory, 
 leaving Brother Marus to seek adventure elsewhere. 
 
 Ignatius having returned with funds, dismissed 
 the bailiffs in peace. In addressing his congregation 
 on the subject of the rebellion, he said it was very 
 strange that almost on every occasion he had left, 
 God permitted some trouble to arise. He believed 
 the brothers had been bewitched in the literal sense 
 of the word, for the Bible said rebellion is the son 
 of witchcraft. He was willing to pardon them all, 
 with the exception of the man who had introduced 
 Satan into the monastery, and had spoken of him, 
 Ignatius, as unfit to be a companion. They all knew
 
 156 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 how feeble he, Ignatius, was, how easily he became 
 depressed, but the Almighty had given him strength 
 to quell insubordination within three hours of his 
 return. He then announced that a penitential service 
 would take place, whence arose another opportunity 
 for strange ceremonial. 
 
 A couple of months later he was served with an 
 inhibition from the Archbishop of Canterbury forbidding 
 him to officiate within his Grace's diocese. This, 
 together with the revolt of his monks, prostrated him, 
 and he was obliged to seek change and rest in Thanet 
 and Hampshire. During his absence the monastery 
 was left in charge of Brother Placidus, under whose 
 rule the monks enjoyed certain relaxations and allowed 
 their hair to grow on the crowns of their heads. On 
 his return Ignatius complained that their waste and 
 reckless expenditure was wicked. Between the building 
 of a new church and other expenses the debts on the 
 priory amounted to a thousand pounds, of which 
 not one farthing was forthcoming. Ignatius was in 
 despair. "Must we leave all our poor people in 
 Norwich, our beautiful new church, our promising 
 mission work?" he writes. "Numbers of clergymen 
 in our English Church profess sympathy with our work, 
 many belong to our Third Order. Some of these 
 must come forward and ease me of my burden of
 
 MONA8TICISM IN THE GHURCR OF ENGLAND 157 
 
 responsibility. I can bear it singly no longer. I& 
 there not one of the thirty thousand clergy of our 
 Church who will come forward to save our work from 
 being given up ? " His appeal met with no reply, and 
 he declared, " I have been deceived by many of the 
 clergy ; all support has left me ; I am in debt and a 
 beggar without hope ; my health and strength have 
 failed me, and I fly and am safe in my father's home." 
 
 Before however he found refuge with his father, 
 who had strongly and consistently opposed his son's 
 vagaries, Mr. Lyne required Ignatius to assume his. 
 proper name, to deliver the Infant Samuel to be reared 
 by some responsible person, and to lay aside his 
 monk's habit, with all of which he complied. 
 
 The monastery was taken charge of by the Eev. 
 George Drury, who held a mortgage on the property 
 in consideration of five hundred pounds advanced by 
 " an anonymous friend." The Kector invited Mr. Lyne 
 to return, but the latter having played at being a 
 monk for some time without profit, was then unwilling 
 to resume the role. A lawsuit ensued concerninc; 
 
 o 
 
 the monastery which left Ignatius penniless. 
 
 Dr. Langley, then Archbishop of Canterbury , 
 invited him on a visit to Lambeth Palace, where 
 having reasoned with him on the error of his ways, 
 he obtained for him a curacy under -the Vicar of
 
 158 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 Margate. The Bishop of London subsequently con- 
 sented to ordain Mr. Lyne under certain conditions, 
 to which however he would not submit, the result 
 being that he still remains a deacon of the Church 
 of England and not a Benedictine abbot. Becoming 
 
 O o 
 
 impatient under restraint, and feeling hampered by 
 authority, he once more resumed his habit and sandals, 
 shaved his crown, girded his waist with a leather 
 belt, and once more declared himself a monk of St. 
 Benedict. Therefore he was soon before the world again, 
 preaching and lecturing that he might collect funds to 
 build himself a home. Everywhere the singularity of 
 his dress, the novelty of his design, the force of his 
 courage, drew crowds who were interested and im- 
 pressed by his striking eccentricity rather than 
 by the power of his oratory. But the old prejudice 
 in the public mind had not died out, and occasionally 
 crowds ho \vled at, spat at, and stoned him, whilst 
 clergymen regarded him as a joke and bishops inhibited 
 him from preaching in their dioceses. Amongst the 
 latter was the late Dr. Jackson, Bishop of London, 
 to whom Father Ignatius, as he now styled himself, 
 replied in a pamphlet called " May a monk serve God ? " 
 " I firmly acknowledge and accept the Nicene Creed 
 as the Universal Church has received it as the only 
 authorised test of orthodoxy," he writes. " Your
 
 MONASTICISM IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 159 
 
 lordship has plenty of clergymen in your diocese who 
 do not do this, and yet they continue unmolested in 
 their ministry. I could name the churches in your 
 diocese where fundamental articles of the Christian 
 religion are not held but denied ; the clergymen in 
 these churches your lordship is bound by your conse- 
 cration oath to banish from our midst, as you do 
 myself, who holds the whole truth of the Church's 
 faith. Why do you not do so ? Because they are 
 supported by the great ones of the land. I am only 
 supported by the poor by the people. . . . By tacit 
 approval, an order of preaching heretics who deny 
 the infallibility of the Bible, an order of drunken 
 and adulterous clergy, are permitted, and are at 
 this moment holding benefices and preaching in the 
 Church of England. By implication, my lord, you 
 assert that monks are worse than infidels, drunkards, 
 and adulterers. If your lordship asks me to name 
 the infidels, drunkards, and adulterers among the 
 clergy, I am ready to mention names and take the 
 consequences." 
 
 Having gathered sufficient money to build a 
 priory for himself, he selected Llanthony, a secluded 
 spot in the Welsh mountains, as its site, probably 
 because an abbey had been established there in the 
 early part of the twelfth century. This monastic home,
 
 160 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 which was a handsome and stately building, is 
 mentioned by such historians as Prior Betun, Giraldus 
 Cambrensis, and Prior William of Wycombe. Like 
 all other establishments of its kind, it was suppressed 
 in the sixteenth century and in part destroyed. 
 Ignatius would have purchased it from its owner, 
 Walter Savage Landor, had the latter been willing to 
 sell it ; but failing to secure this, he built a new abbey 
 higher up, above the dark pine woods covering the 
 lower slopes, and surrounded by the peaks of a lofty 
 range of lonely mountains. The abbey which is 
 six miles from the nearest railway station of Llanvi- 
 hangel, was erected at a considerable cost, and has 
 a church famous for its beauty. Here Ignatius has 
 founded a home of which he is the abbot, but his 
 monks are few in number, being generally limited 
 to two, for they never remain long under his guidance, 
 and either embrace Catholicity or return to the world. 
 He has stated that " of the men whom the Church 
 of England has sent to our monastery scarcely any 
 have been found honourable enough to keep their 
 vows or their promises as yet." 
 
 A convent is attached which has remained practi- 
 cally empty, save for one elderly woman. But though 
 Llanthony Abbey is far removed from the world it 
 was not destined to remain unknown, for here there
 
 MONASTICISM IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 161 
 
 presently occurred some startling occult phenomena 
 that defied speculation whilst inviting comment. That 
 these spiritualistic manifestations should happen imme- 
 diately after the apparitions at Knock in Ireland may 
 have been a mere coincidence. However, strange 
 things took place at Llanthony, which Ignatius has 
 described in detail in The Hereford Times. It is 
 the custom to observe "perpetual adoration" in the 
 Abbey church. One person prays before the lamp-lit 
 altar for an hour, and is relieved by another individual, 
 who in turn gives place to a third worshipper, and 
 so the system is continued throughout days and 
 nights. It happened that on the morning of August 
 30th, 1880, whilst Brother Dunstan was keeping his 
 watch, he suddenly saw the silver monstrance containing 
 the Host standing on the altar. As he knew that 
 but a short time before he had carefully locked the 
 monstrance in the tabernacle which was strongly 
 made of iron with polished brass doors emblazoned 
 with jewels, he regarded this as an optical delusion, 
 and bending low his head, he continued his prayers. 
 Half an hour afterwards on raising his eyes it 
 was still there. An hour later an elderly woman, 
 known as Sister Janet, coming to take her turn 
 and watch outside the grating of the monks' choir, 
 was surprised to see the monstrance exposed, and 
 
 VOL. II. M
 
 162 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 on being relieved went round to the monastery and 
 told Brother Dunstan what she had seen. The latter 
 then decided that what he had believed a delusion was 
 a reality. On revisiting the church the monstrance 
 had disappeared and the key of the tabernacle was 
 in his cell. But the wonders did not end here. 
 
 The same evening, as four boys who lived in 
 
 the monastery and served as acolytes, their ages 
 
 ranging from eight to fifteen, were playing in the 
 
 abbot's meadow after vespers, they saw in the 
 
 gathering twilight " a beautiful spirit," about four 
 
 feet high, dressed in a white alb with wide sleeves 
 
 and a long veil hanging behind. The hands were 
 
 raised, and a dazzling light, oval-shaped, shone round 
 
 the body. The figure advanced from a pathway 
 
 leading to the gates, and entering a hedge disappeared, 
 
 leaving behind for some minutes after it had vanished 
 
 "a dazzling glow." The boys, being considerably 
 
 frightened, rushed to the monastery and told Ignatius, 
 
 their " dear father," what they had seen, declaring 
 
 themselves ready to swear on the crucifix to the 
 
 truth of their statements. Ignatius came with them 
 
 into the meadow but saw no vision, and on examining 
 
 the hedge which was nine feet high and thick in 
 
 proportion, found no traces of trespass. A few nights 
 
 later a brother who was ill \ 7 isited the bush where the
 
 MONASTICISM IN THE OHUROE OF ENGLAND. 163 
 
 apparition had been seen, and kneeling there said the 
 rosary, and took a leaf which he applied to his 
 forehead and was instantly healed. That night having 
 put the leaf under his pillow, he dreamt he saw the 
 vision. The dream was soon to be realised. 
 
 On the night of the 4th of September, Ignatius 
 being absent, the two monks, four boys, and Sister 
 Janet went in procession to the meadow singing the 
 Ave Maria and saying prayers. The night was dark, 
 close, and breathless, only the sound of the choristers' 
 voices disturbed the stillness of the hills. Suddenly 
 they all saw a bright light glimmer in the hedge, and 
 then beheld the figure of a child with his arms 
 stretched out as on a cross approach the veiled figure 
 seen a month before. The seven persons present attest 
 having witnessed this sight twice. The apparitions 
 were " surrounded by a wonderful light, the meadow 
 being sometimes quite bright." 
 
 The event has been more briefly described by 
 Ignatius's father, who says : " My son has spread 
 far and wide the news that he has had a visit 
 from the Virgin Mary ; that her head appeared above 
 a bush in his garden, and that the leaves of that 
 bush (which are to be bought) cure all manner of 
 diseases." 
 
 It was in the Town Hall of Westminster that the 
 
 M 2
 
 164 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 writer heard Ignatius preach. The large square room 
 with its bare walls, white-faced clock, varnished gallery, 
 fanlights, and highly coloured ceiling seemed out of 
 harmony with the man and his mission. Those present 
 appeared to come with a desire to be entertained 
 rather than with a disposition to be edified. The 
 only indication that a religious service was about to 
 be held was that on a scarlet curtain at the 
 back of the platform hung a white banner bearing 
 a red cross, above which were the words, "Jesus 
 only," and below, " Pax." Before seven o'clock, the 
 hour appointed for the service, the hall was crowded 
 to excess. The opening of a side door, followed by 
 an expectant hush, announced that Ignatius was about 
 to appear, and immediately after a red -faced, light- 
 haired young parson, wearing a surplice and stole, 
 stepped on the stage, followed by the tall thin 
 figure of Ignatius, clad in the black habit of a 
 Benedictine monk, his head shaven at the crown, 
 sandals on his feet, a leather strap round his waist r 
 a rosary hanging by his side. His pale clearly cut 
 face was lined by thought, worn by ill-health, and 
 luminous with enthusiasm. 
 
 The clergyman, having knelt at a table in the 
 centre of the stage, began the service according to 
 the Church of England, reading the prayers with
 
 MONASTICISM IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 165 
 
 tame monotony and lack of impressiveness. Then 
 Ignatius, taking his place at an harmonium, announced 
 a hymn, recited its verses with much gesticulating 
 and lifting of eyebrows, and finally played the accom- 
 paniment in a manner that proved him a musician 
 gifted with feeling and expression. A lesson was 
 read and succeeded by other hymns, when the centre 
 table being removed, he came forward to speak. The 
 difference between him and the curate was such as 
 lies between an awkward amateur and a practised 
 actor. His strong personality, that nameless and 
 mesmeric influence which famous orators and actors 
 possess, was instantly felt. His voice, full, clear, 
 and musical, began a fascination which his words 
 vivid, fluent, and picturesque, finished. Every 
 thought that flashed through his mind, every phrase 
 that crossed his lips found expression in his mobile 
 face, and illustration in his graceful gestures. 
 
 The subject of his discourse was the supper given 
 to Christ at Bethany six days before the Passover, 
 at which Lazarus who had been raised from the dead 
 sat at meat with Him, whilst Martha served, when 
 Mary, taking a pound of ointment, very precious 
 and sweet-smelling, anointed the feet of Jesus and 
 wiped them with her hair. This was a theine afford- 
 ing Ignatius a subject, which he painted in brilliant
 
 166 TEE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 colours. With swift - flowing words lie described a 
 supper-table iu the East, laden with fruits and wines, 
 with dishes and vessels, pointing out where those 
 who gathered to that memorable feast Judas with 
 face distorted by greed, Lazarus pale from the shadow 
 of the grave, Mary with downcast eyes stood or re- 
 clined, those who served passing to and fro, until his 
 characters took life and appeared before his hearers. 
 Then, having interested, impressed, and softened, he 
 proceeded to exhort, entreat, and advise, praying that 
 sinners might like Lazarus rise from the tomb of 
 sin and sit at the feast of the Master. 
 
 His powers as a preacher have been widely recog- 
 nised and forcibly felt, for he has addressed congre- 
 gations of Wesleyans and Baptists, Atheists and 
 Freethinkers, and he has been invited to preach before 
 a troop of the Salvation Army. But notwithstanding 
 his struggles, his determination, and his abilities, it 
 must be acknowledged that though he has spent over 
 thirty years in striving to establish monasticism in 
 the Church of England, his efforts have resulted in 
 dismal failure.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN REUNION SCHEME. 
 
 MORNING SERVICE AT ALL SAINTS, LAMBETH. 
 
 LAMBETH ROAD lies at the Surrey side of Westminster 
 Bridge, an unsavoury district lined with shabby 
 dwellings tenanted by the poor. Public-houses, old 
 clothes, greengrocers, fried fish, and second-hand 
 furniture shops abound, whilst bookstalls, fruit carts, 
 and benches covered with rusty hardware such as 
 no one seems likely to want line the side -paths. A 
 short way down the road stands the dark, unattractive 
 church of All Saints, of which the Rev. Frederick 
 George Lee, D.D., one of the most remarkable 
 Churchmen of the day, is vicar. 
 
 Ascending a narrow flight of stone steps, the 
 church is gained, a large and lofty building with 
 painted walls and an encircling gallery. Something, 
 not in its architecture, but in its appearance, attracts 
 the sight and holds the attention ; for it differs largely 
 from the interiors of buildings where the services of 
 the Established Church are held. The choir is
 
 168 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 separated from the aisle by a rood screen, surmounted 
 at either end by a worshipping angel, and adorned 
 with many candles. Above the entrance hangs a 
 picture of the thorn-crowned head of Christ, whilst 
 higher still the white figure of the Crucified gleams 
 from the dark background of a cross darkened by 
 age. On the front of the screen runs the inscription, 
 " Worship and fall down and kneel before the Lord 
 our Father." The altar which is approached by steps, 
 is beautifully carved. Tall white candles and vases 
 of flowers rest upon it, whilst it is draped by a fine 
 linen cloth. The altarpiece is likewise handsomely 
 carved with scenes from the Passion of Christ, whilst 
 above all in bas-relief appears the youthful and 
 heroic figure of St. Michael, clad in flowing garments, 
 girted by a goodly sword, and surrounded by angels, 
 seen against a groundwork of old gold. This together 
 with the altar and altarpiece, cost five hundred 
 pounds, a sum contributed by Dr. Lee and two of 
 his friends. 
 
 A curtain of blue and yellow bars lines the blue- 
 domed alcove in which the altar stands, and is flanked 
 by two large pictures representing St. Thomas of 
 Canterbury and St. Augustine of Canterbury in full 
 canonicals. At this high altar the Communion Service 
 is celebrated on Sundays, and at the side altars
 
 THE CHRISTIAN REUNION SCHEME. 169 
 
 dedicated to Our Lady and to St. Gregory the Great, 
 on week days, according to whether the patron saint 
 of the day belongs to the Eastern or to the Western 
 Church. 
 
 For twenty - four years Dr. Lee has laboured 
 zealously and patiently in this parish where his 
 eloquent preaching and his brilliant talents are well- 
 nigh lost. Undoubtedly he is a man of great ability, 
 striking personality, and high enthusiasm. He is 
 descended from a family of Churchmen, his father 
 and grandfather being vicars like himself; and he 
 inherits his literary gifts from his kinsman, Edward 
 Young, the author of " Night Thoughts," and the 
 Rev. James Hervey, the writer of " Meditations." 
 Born in 1832, he graduated at St. Edmund Hall, 
 Oxford, gained the Newdigate Prize, and in his twenty- 
 fourth year was ordained priest by the famous Dr. 
 Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. He subsequently 
 became a curate of Sunning Well, Berks, assistant 
 minister of Berkeley Chapel, incumbent of St. Mary's, 
 Aberdeen, and chaplain to the Duke of Leeds and 
 to the Earl of Morton. In 1867 he was appointed 
 to the living of All Saints, Lambeth, one of the 
 poorest parishes in London, which does not number 
 amongst its congregation a single person of gentle 
 birth ; and twelve years later the honorary degree of
 
 170 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 D.D. was conferred upon him by the Senate of the 
 "Washington and Lee University of Virginia. 
 
 Dr. Lee is a theologian, a poet, a scholar, an 
 author, and a preacher. His finely moulded and firm 
 brow gives indication of his talents ; his clear blue 
 eyes are brilliant with the light of high purposes, 
 whilst his cleanly shaven chin and mouth show 
 strong determination. His publications which are 
 about eighty in number, include political tracts, poems, 
 sermons, lectures, prayers, correspondence, essays, 
 guides to the celebration of divine offices, manuals 
 of devotion, tales, and historical works. These latter, 
 "The Church under Queen Elizabeth," "King Edward 
 the Sixth," " Historical Sketches of the Reformation," 
 and "Reginald Pole, Cardinal Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury," have been pronounced by the Press brilliant 
 in portraiture, rich in research, powerful in style, and 
 unanswerable in argument. 
 
 These books must remain a lasting monument to 
 his industry. Trouble has not been spired in bringing 
 forward facts heretofore unsuspected or unknown ; 
 time has not been grudged in searching for deeds and 
 documents amongst State papers and private collections 
 of manuscripts to verify statements that throw new 
 light on many chapters in history previously obscure. 
 Those wishing to see England as she existed in the
 
 THE CHRISTIAN REUNION SCHEME. 171 
 
 sixteenth century have in the pages of Dr. Lee's works a 
 truthful, vivid, and interesting picture of the country. 
 
 A year after his ordination Dr. Lee joined the 
 Association for the Promotion of the Unity of Christen- 
 dom, "established September 8th, 1857, feast of the 
 Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary." Its object 
 was to unite in a bond of intercessory prayer 
 members both of the clergy and laity of the Latin, 
 Greek, and Anglican Communions. From this sprang 
 the Order of the Corporate Eeunion, which twenty 
 years later Dr. Lee helped to establish. What the 
 first association endeavoured to accomplish theoretically, 
 the latter strove to effect practically by action within 
 the Church. 
 
 The work of the society, which is said to progress 
 with the rapidity and the silence of a strong, swift 
 current, may form one of the most interesting chapters 
 in the history of the Established Church. What its 
 mode of working really is, and how many members it 
 numbers, remain a mystery to outsiders, for it is stated 
 that "it is necessary that those only should be made 
 acquainted with the details who may be practically 
 concerned in them. As it is desired to interfere with 
 no one who is not willing to co-operate, so it is the 
 strong and solemn determination of the rulers of the 
 
 o 
 
 Order not to allow any one not concerned to interfere
 
 172 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 with them in any way." For, it is argued, "if this 
 great work be of God, as it is believed to be, then by 
 His help it will prosper ; if not, it will soon enough 
 come to nought without the intervention, opposition, 
 or contrivance of man." 
 
 No one is admitted into this Order who is not a 
 bond fide member of the English Church, and its bishops, 
 clergy, and people are solemnly bound not to interfere, 
 or infringe the laws of the Established Church. The 
 Order, we are told, " supplements the spiritual authority 
 of the Anglican Church to meet the requirements of 
 the Eastern and Western Churches when seeking re- 
 union." It also "supplies the spiritual power which is 
 lacking which has been thrown aside by the Anglican 
 Episcopate." Its objects may be gathered from the 
 literature published by the Order. Chief amongst them 
 are to reunite Christendom in accordance with the 
 prayer of our Lord " That they may be all one, 
 that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me ; " 
 to secure spiritual equality with the ancient com- 
 munions of the Catholic body, and to restore the 
 Visible Church unity amongst each and all. 
 
 The Order found, " to the sorrow and shame of 
 many, that the spiritual freedom of the Church, together 
 with the actual jurisdiction of its Episcopate, is practi- 
 cally extinct. And having been forced by the invasion
 
 THE CHRISTIAN BE UNION SCHEME. 173 
 
 and active power of these evils to investigate more 
 closely the whole history and condition of the Estab- 
 lished Church since the Tudor changes, certain other 
 defects and abuses have become evident to the founders 
 of this Order which urgently call for remedy." The 
 evils deplored are briefly set forth as "Want of an 
 unquestioned Episcopal succession ; extreme confusion 
 iu organisation and discipline ; grave diversity of doc- 
 trinal teaching ; lapse of spiritual jurisdiction, loss of 
 the spiritual freedom of the Church, and uncertainty 
 of sacramental status, arising from the long-continued 
 prevalence of shameful neglect and carelessness in the 
 administration of baptism, contrary to the doctrines 
 contained in the Book of Common Prayer." 
 
 The Union seeks the establishment of Catholic 
 ritual ; the furtherance of Catholic dogma ; believes in 
 the universality of the Church, and not in its localisa- 
 tion to any continent or people ; desires a union where 
 the Churches of the East and of the West may be one, 
 as in the early days of Christianity ; and declines to be 
 satisfied with a union of the Protestant and the Catholic 
 faiths unless they are likewise joined to the Greek 
 Church. In other words, the Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 the Patriarch of Constantinople, and the Pope of Rome 
 must be united in faith before the Order of the 
 Corporate Reunion is content.
 
 174 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 Nor does Dr. Lee despair of success. " It took," he 
 writes, "half a century of legal savagery, conceived with 
 Satanic art and applied with demoniacal fury torture, 
 fines, imprisonments, and martyrdoms to visibly sever 
 the ancient Church of England from the rest of 
 Christendom : savagery under the form of ' law,' by 
 the way, in its most detestable form. Those, therefore, 
 longing for Corporate Keunion may well afford to 
 exercise a little patience in labouring to remedy and 
 reverse the evil. That evil is practically before us in 
 this our beloved country in the hundred and seventy 
 discordant sects, all contradicting each other and 
 rendering Christian teaching more and more difficult of 
 success. At all events, no good work can be completed 
 and crowned until it has been commenced." The 
 present position of the Church of England, he thinks, 
 " both as regards laxity of doctrine and the enmity of 
 its foes, is dangerous in the extreme : and this all true 
 patriots must deplore. It is letting slip its chief 
 doctrines, and sinking deeper and deeper into the 
 slough of doctrinal indifference. Practically, indeed, 
 its faith is indefinite, for there is no living authority 
 to determine what is of faith or what is error. For 
 instance, no person can authoritatively tell me what 
 the Church of England teaches as regards Baptism. 
 Moreover, the now exploded policy that every beneficed
 
 THE CHRISTIAN REUNION SCHEME. 175 
 
 cleric should follow the bishop over him is simply 
 unworkable and essentially ridiculous. If this policy 
 were now in vogue, in one diocese the Athanasian Creed 
 would be scornfully rejected ; in another the principles 
 of the condemned 'Essays and Reviews' would be 
 accepted and applied ; in another the very notion of a 
 Christian priesthood would be ridiculed and cast out ; 
 while any clergyman roving from place to place and 
 ready to attempt such summersaults would have to 
 change his religious creed with his geographical longi- 
 tude and latitude a position of no slight moral and 
 intellectual difficulty." 
 
 It is argued that many of the social and religious 
 disorders in England have been begotten by the 
 ecclesiastical changes made by the Tudors. That as 
 every pastor in the Church of England acknowledges 
 his bishop as superior, so the bishop in turn submits 
 to the jurisdiction of his archbishop. But no arch- 
 bishop can determine and define points of faith or 
 settle controversies, such authority belonging only 
 to a General Council presided over by a divine mouth- 
 piece. Since the Tudor changes the archbishops of 
 the English Church, whether in camera or in Convo- 
 cation, have acknowledged no spiritual superior except 
 the British monarch, from whom they receive such 
 jurisdiction as they claim or possess. The cure, there-
 
 176 TEE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 fore, for ecclesiastical and social disorders is the cor- 
 porate restoration of England to Catholic Unity, and 
 the efficient renewal of spiritual authority upon the 
 important principles and beneficent action of Cardinal 
 Archbishop Pole in 1553. It has been stated that 
 over fifty thousand persons have given their adhesion 
 either to the Society for Promoting the Unity of 
 Christendom, or to the Order of the Corporate Eeunion. 
 
 Since the establishment of the Order Dr. Lee has 
 devoted his life to the furtherance of its ends. He 
 believes the so-called Eeformation has dealt a blow 
 to Christian faith in England from which it has never 
 recovered, and prays to see the English Church restored 
 to the position she occupied in the early part of the 
 reign of Henry VIII. 
 
 Previous attempts at reunion had failed because 
 "both in plan and project the See of St. Peter has 
 been passed over by those who from time to time 
 have made them." With regard to the acknowledg- 
 ment of the Papal Supremacy, Dr. Lee has written : 
 "If in political affairs our degraded ancestors, at the 
 instigation of Whig peers were so anxious ' to stoop 
 their necks ' to a Lutheran Dutchman, their descendants, 
 who have already had a Scotch archbishop, need not 
 demur as regards ecclesiastical affairs, to recognise in 
 Peter's successor a holy and righteous Italian Pontiff.
 
 THE CHRISTIAN REUNION SCHEME. 177 
 
 If the Church of England be inherently and exclusively 
 national, the Church of God is Catholic, embracing 
 as of old, Jew and Gentile, barbarian, Scythian, bond 
 and free." 
 
 In an interesting paper entitled " The Order of 
 the Corporate Reunion," published in The Nineteenth 
 Century for November, 1881, Dr. Lee gives some 
 information regarding the foundation of the society. 
 From this we learn that in the summer of 1877 was 
 held in London a solemn preliminary Synod, com- 
 prising certain representative clergy of the Established 
 Church, a Promoter Fidei, and a public notary. At 
 daybreak on the feast of the Visitation an Anglicised 
 form of the Mass was celebrated, when all present 
 received the sacrament. This deliberate liturgical 
 was "an avowed protest against the tyranny and 
 injustice of those who had robbed the National Church 
 of its most sacred treasure, and had substituted for it 
 the mongrel, mutilated, and bald service for the Lord's 
 Supper now in public use." 
 
 At the conclusion of the service the Synod was 
 formally constituted, the ecclesiastical rule and custom 
 necessary for such occasions being strictly observed. 
 Moreover, all present who were unable to produce 
 direct, definite, and conclusive proofs of having received 
 -certain valid baptism, had that sacrament administered 
 
 VOL. II. IT
 
 178 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 to them sub conditione ; a mere baptismal certificate 
 from an ordinary book of registers was, considering 
 past and current neglect, held insufficient. After the 
 " Veni Creator " had been said the Pastoral of the 
 Order, which contains its principles carefully and 
 moderately stated, was read and accepted unanimously 
 by those who formed the Synod. Amongst those things 
 which it protested against were the " mode of nomina- 
 tion, the so-called ' election ' and ' confirmation ' of 
 bishops, the scandalous oath of homage taken by them 
 on appointment," whereby they " declare the ruling 
 sovereign is the only supreme governor of this your 
 realm in spiritual and ecclesiastical things," and 
 acknowledge that they hold the said bishoprics "as 
 well the spiritualities as the temporalities thereof only 
 of your Majesty." The Pastoral likewise deplored the 
 erection of new sees and the division of existing dioceses, 
 as those of Oxford and Peterborough in the sixteenth 
 century, and Kipon, St. Albans, and Truro in recent 
 times, the manner of appointment to those sees by 
 Royal Letters Patent alone ; and the Public Worship 
 Regulation Act, under which any English citizen, 
 whether baptized or not baptized, can become an 
 accuser of his parochial clergyman. It was "Drawn 
 up, approved, ratified, confirmed, and solemnly 
 promulgated in the divinely protected City of London
 
 THE CHRISTIAN EE UNION SCHEME. 179 
 
 (which God pardon for its sins and still mercifully 
 protect), on the Eighth Day of September, being the 
 feast of the Nativity of our Lady Saint Mary, the 
 Blessed Mother of God, in the year of Our Lord, 
 and of the World's Redemption, One thousand, eight 
 hundred and seventy-seven." 
 
 The pastoral was subsequently promulgated one 
 morning from the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral, " by 
 competent authority, and in the face of credible wit- 
 nesses," and copies of it were then despatched to the 
 Pope, to many distinguished Catholic prelates and theo- 
 logians in various countries, and to the English bishops, 
 deans, and proctors in convocation. 
 
 The morning service at All Saints, which the writer 
 attended, began at eleven o'clock, when a procession 
 issued from the vestry, consisting of a cross-bearer, 
 choir boys in purple cassocks and fine linen surplices, 
 chanters in short black capes, the curate, and the vicar, 
 about twenty in all. Having taken their places in the 
 choir stalls, and made the sign of the cross, the service 
 began, all turning their faces towards the altar at the 
 end of the Psalms. The curate read the First and 
 the vicar the Second Lesson, and hymns were sung 
 with excellent effect to an organ accompaniment. To- 
 wards the end of the service Dr. Lee placed a chalice 
 on the altar, and retired to vest whilst the candles 
 
 H 2
 
 180 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 were being lighted and a missal arranged on the left 
 side of the altar. Presently preceded by the servitors, 
 he returned, wearing green vestments having a red 
 cross on the back, and standing at the altar steps 
 began an Anglicised version of the Mass, whilst the 
 choir sang the Miserere. 
 
 The Gospel of the day was chanted, after which 
 a sermon was preached by the curate, and the Nicene 
 Creed, being intoned by the celebrant, was sung by 
 the choir, the congregation going down on their knees 
 at the words, " And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost 
 of the Virgin Mary' and was made man." The offertory 
 followed, with the washing of hands and blessing of 
 wine ; and then came the elevation of the Host and 
 chalice, when the ringing of a bell alone disturbed 
 the breathless silence, all present kneeling with bowed 
 heads. The dead were duly prayed for, and the 
 blessing given, Dr. Lee making the sign of the cross 
 three times in the manner of a Catholic bishop, the 
 thumb and two first fingers held open, the third and 
 fourth fingers closed, as may be seen in the statues 
 of Isis, the divinity most sacred to the Egyptians. 
 At the end a procession was formed, and returned 
 to the vestry singing a hymn of thanksgiving. 
 
 Dr. Lee repudiates the idea of belonging to the 
 Kitualists, considering his position is that of a priest
 
 THE CHRISTIAN REUNION SCHEME. 181 
 
 who has always been united to the Catholic Church. 
 He believes in the Real Presence, the power of abso- 
 lution, prayers for the dead, the intercession of saints, 
 and the dogmas of the Catholic Church. He is more- 
 over a Tory and a Jacobite, and boasts that he can 
 influence the votes of five hundred working men. 
 Whatever may be thought of his theories, no doubt 
 can be entertained of his sincerity.
 
 EVENSONG SERVICE AT ST. PAUL'S. 
 
 THE brief afternoon of this autumn day is dull 
 and chill. Heavy clouds sail slowly across the grey, 
 gloomy sky above the black massive dome of St. 
 Paul's Cathedral. To the west a touch of fire marking 
 where the sun has begun to set casts a lurid glare 
 on the upper portion of the sombre building, setting 
 the windows ablaze. Sharp and sudden gusts of 
 wind sweep through the surrounding churchyard, whirl- 
 ing in the faces of wayfarers the dead leaves fallen 
 from trees that stand like shivering sentinels round 
 the edifice. Big raindrops fall upon the slippery 
 pavements, and from out the northern tower the 
 tolling of a bell, whose melancholy sounds soar above 
 the din of traffic, and are alternately wafted down- 
 ward and swept onward by the gathering gale, invites 
 the heedless faithful, over-busy with the affairs of 
 this world, to the service of Evensong. 
 
 Those who pass the way and give casual and 
 careless glances at St. Paul's scarcely remember, even
 
 EVENSONG SERVICE AT ST. PAUL'S. 183 
 
 if they know, that this is the third church of its 
 name standing on the same spot. The first, which 
 is said to have been built on the site of a temple 
 of Diana, being burned down during the last year 
 of William the Conqueror's life in 1087. Reconstructed, 
 it became the scene of some of the most stirring 
 events in English history ; and moreover was reserved 
 as a burial-place for those whom men honoured in 
 their day and regretted in their death John of Gaunt, 
 Sir Philip Sydney, John Donne the poet, and 
 Vandyck the painter, being laid to rest within its 
 walls. 
 
 Likewise it was used as a place of resort for the 
 wealthy citizens, a theatre for the performance of plays 
 and mysteries, a place of assignation for lovers, a 
 mart for the sale of merchandise, and a thoroughfare 
 for all men. Its abuse seemed to have reached a 
 -climax in the reigns of Mary and of Elizabeth, each 
 of these sovereigns passing laws forbidding the leading 
 of mules and horses, the carrying of casks, flesh, fish, 
 or fruit through the church, the drawing of swords, 
 sustaining of frays, or shooting of hand-guns in the 
 cathedral under pain of fine and penalty of imprison- 
 ment. 
 
 Almost destroyed by lightning in Elizabeth's reign, 
 it remained in a state of neglect until the time of
 
 184 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 Charles I., when it was in part restored under the 
 direction of Inigo Jones. But before its completion 
 days of fear and trouble fell upon the land ; and 
 presently, the Puritans gaining power, they seized upon 
 the edifice, tore down the scaffolding, and with it part of 
 the south transept, seized some seven thousand pounds 
 subscribed for its restoration, sold the sacred vessels 
 to provide Cromwell with artillery, turned part of 
 the building into a cavalry barrack, and hired the 
 remaining portion not only as shops, but as residences- 
 to sempsters, cobblers, and hucksters. It was said 
 that the Protector intended selling the cathedral to 
 the Jews, who greatly desired it for a synagogue. 
 
 At the restoration of Charles II. it was again 
 used as a place of prayer, and some efforts were made 
 towards repairing the damages recently wrought. 
 But when in 1666, the Great Fire devastated London, 
 St. Paul's perished in the flames. Ignited by showers 
 of sparks from surrounding buildings, the vaulted 
 roof burst into fire that crept along the parapets, 
 consumed the timber, and eventually melting a great 
 sheet of lead measuring six acres which covered the 
 roof, a rain of liquid fire descended that seamed and 
 burned the earth, and carried destruction in its 
 swift course towards the Thames. Pillars fell to the 
 ground, windows melted in their frames, ironwork
 
 EVENSONG SERVICE AT ST. PAUL'S. 185 
 
 bent as wax, transom beams snapped asunder, the 
 great bell was reduced to a shapeless mass of metal, 
 fire raged as in a furnace, the very pavements around 
 glowed with heat so that neither man nor animal 
 could stand upon them, and of the vast and stately 
 pile nothing was left save black and broken columns, 
 heaps of charred stones, and piles of smouldering 
 cinders. 
 
 Its destruction afforded an opportunity for the 
 erection of the present handsome edifice to the 
 genius of Christopher Wren. The young architect 
 had already invented the wheel barometer, and 
 mezzotint engraving, and had distinguished himself 
 by the building of the chapel of Pembroke College, 
 Cambridge. After some deliberation the designs of 
 the new cathedral were entrusted to him, but in 
 his labours he was destined to meet with many 
 worries, vexations, and contradictions. His first 
 plan drawn in the form of a Greek cross, was 
 objected to by those whose authority he was un- 
 able to resist, whose taste he was powerless to- 
 improve. Had his scheme been accepted in full, 
 St. Paul's would now be surrounded by spacious 
 streets, lines of piazzas, and green and leafy squares. 
 
 After nine years of delay the first stone was 
 laid on June 21, 1675. Wren made it his boast
 
 186 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 that he should build for eternity, and he began 
 by seeking a firm foundation. He therefore dug 
 deep, even to the river level, discovering as he 
 proceeded mediaeval graves, Saxon stone coffins, 
 Roman funeral urns, sacrificial vessels, tear vases, 
 and skewers of ivory and boxwood that had held 
 together the burial garments of those who centuries 
 before had turned to dust. When presently he 
 had drawn the vast and noble dome, he despatched 
 one of his workmen to note the exact centre. The 
 man returned bearing a piece of an old tombstone 
 on which was engraved the single word Resurgam, 
 reading which the architect rejoiced, for it seemed 
 a sign and a token had been delivered to him. 
 
 Thirty-five years after the laying of the first 
 stone the last was placed, in Wren's presence and by 
 his son. And yet thirteen years later, at the age 
 of ninety-one, Sir Christopher found a resting-place 
 in the cathedral which remains a lasting glory to 
 his name, his being the first grave made in the 
 new church. 
 
 Since its erection four sovereigns have repaired 
 in great pomp and public procession to this shrine. 
 Queen Anne visited it no less than seven times to 
 commemorate victories and return thanks. George I. 
 was brought here to give praise for an event which
 
 EVENSONG SERVICE AT ST. PAUL'S. 187 
 
 was a source of discomfort and a burden to his 
 German spirit his accession to the English throne. 
 George III. came to give thanks for his partial 
 recovery from the dread malady of madness, and 
 Queen Victoria to express gratitude for the recovery 
 of the Prince of Wales. 
 
 Within the great cathedral on this autumn after- 
 noon a congregation of about two hundred persons 
 have already seated themselves on rush-bottomed chairs 
 under the great dome and close to the choir, a black 
 mass in the centre of grey space. 
 
 Lower down the aisle people have scattered 
 themselves here and there on the forms, rather with 
 the intention of resting than of taking part in 
 the service about to begin. The atmosphere of 
 solemn gloom and sepulchral silence that reigns 
 throughout is occasionally broken by sounds of stray 
 footsteps, a whispered word, the banging of a door, 
 an unrestrained yawn. 
 
 Sufficient light still streams through the high 
 windows to make visible the monuments erected to 
 soldiers and sailors, statesmen and scholars, philosophers 
 and painters, humanitarians and historians ; and sight- 
 seers pass quietly up and down the naves gazing 
 in surprise, if not in sorrow, at the Pagan emblems 
 that celebrate the glories of Christian heroes. Here
 
 188 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 a brace of long-legged, red- bodied guardsmen, witb 
 smooth, well-cropped heads, stand before the recumbent 
 figure of the hero of Waterloo, at which they gaze 
 for some seconds and then move onwards with measured 
 step and jingling spur to inspect the statues of Sir 
 John Moore, Lord Heathfield, Sir Kalph Abercromby, 
 Cornwallis, the Govern or- General of India, Napier, 
 Elphinstone, Sir John Lawrence, Sir Isaac Brock, 
 Lord Mayo, Eodney, Lord Duncan, Lord St. Vincent, 
 and General Gordon a noble and gallant company 
 in all, whose names are associated with wise rule, 
 whose feet have trod the red road leading to death 
 or victory. 
 
 A couple of American ladies, accompanied by a 
 girl in short skirts and a pigtail, and two stout-limbed 
 lads in knickerbockers, stand in speechless wonder before 
 the athletic figure which commemorates the memory 
 of Samuel Johnson. The marble by no means repre- 
 sents the heavy-browed, round-shouldered philosopher, 
 dressed in small-clothes and a roll-collared coat, but 
 a serene-faced, upright, muscular giant, sparsely clad 
 in a Roman toga. Could the goodly man have seen 
 this monument bearing his name how he would have 
 wondered, and with what forcible epigram would he 
 have protested against its inappropriateness ! From 
 this statue the group passes to that of Sir Joshua
 
 EVENSONG SERVICE AT ST. PAUL'S. 189 
 
 Reynolds, whose marble effigy bears but slight re- 
 semblance to the spectacled face we are accustomed 
 to see on canvas ; for he is likewise marked with 
 the sign of eternal youth, idealized in feature, 
 heightened by a liberal allowance of inches. Our 
 American cousins are evidently interested in the men 
 of peace who lie buried here Sir Thomas Lawrence } 
 Sir Edwin Landseer, William Turner, Opie, Dance, 
 Fuseli, Barry, West, Cruikshank, and kindred spirits 
 who have adorned their own age, reflected honour 
 on their country, made the world their debtors. 
 
 A couple of man-of-war's-men, with open breasted 
 shirts and baggy trousers, carrying parcels tied up sailor 
 fashion in coloured pocket-handkerchiefs, walk about 
 with heedless glances until they come to Flaxman's 
 figure of Nelson, for which they have evidently been 
 in search. Having found it, they lioger before the 
 monument, read the inscription in brass, and whisper 
 confidential comments to each other. Close by them 
 stands a group of ladies, no longer in the enjoyment 
 of the wild freshness of youth, but spectacled, prim, 
 and demure, who are making a round of the church, 
 guide-books in hand. And in their footsteps follow 
 various little knots of women and children who when 
 seated later on at the dinner or supper-table, will 
 recount the wonders they have seen. A trio of blonde
 
 190 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 and spectacled Germans survey the building critically, 
 and a Frenchman with a pointed beard, stands lost 
 in wonder before the new reredos with its crucifix 
 and figures of angels and saints. 
 
 But soon the hour for service arrives, and the 
 sombre figure of a verger advances to bid all sight- 
 seers cease from wandering and the curious to be at 
 rest. Yellow flames of gas-jets light the choir, and 
 are reflected on the polished oak stalls, superbly carved 
 by Grinling Gibbons at a cost of fourteen hundred 
 pounds, and already the first notes of the voluntary, 
 low, deep, and solemn, steal through the vast church as 
 if to prepare its occupants for prayer. A clock in the 
 tower strikes four, and suddenly the congregation rises 
 as a procession, headed by vergers in black gowns, carry- 
 ing silver staves, followed by choir boys and singers in 
 black cassocks and flowing surplices, and officiating 
 clergymen in hoods, to the number of nine-and-forty 
 in all, leave the vestry, and two abreast filing into 
 the choir take their places. The dean intones the 
 opening words of the service, and the choir responds 
 in clear, rioging voices that at the Amen end in swelling 
 harmony. Then comes a Te Deum and a Benedictus, 
 by Stainer, in which the boys' voices, wild and sweet, 
 pure and passionless, supported by tenors, baritones, 
 and basses, rise and sink, and soar again like incense
 
 EVENSONG SERVICE AT ST. PAUL'S. 191 
 
 to the great dome, dying gradually away in dim and 
 doleful echoes among the lofty arches of the fretted 
 roof. A Lesson is then read in a low, monotonous 
 voice, which leaves its hearers in ignorance of the 
 words spoken. 
 
 The service is religiously followed by most of those 
 nearest the choir, a congregation that shifts and 
 changes day by day ; but those in the lower portion 
 of the sacred edifice take no part in it, and merely 
 listen to the music, or stare at the rows of white 
 figures seen in relief against the black background 
 of oak stalls. Here sits a lad seeking rest from 
 the heavy burden of parcels beside him which with 
 sore weariness he has yet to deliver. Near him are 
 a weary-footed tramp and his wife, who have drifted 
 in from the tumult of the thoroughfare outside, and 
 are now enjoying the forgetfulness of struggle in 
 the profoundest of slumbers. Both bear traces, not 
 only in their worn garments but in their pinched 
 and pallid faces, of their bitter and pitiless fate, and 
 one wonders what their end will be. Lower down 
 sits one who at every footstep he hears, anxiously 
 turns his head to gaze behind in expectation of seeing 
 her he has asked to meet him here. A couple of 
 girls chat with a freedom that ignores their sur- 
 roundings, save when a half-suppressed laugh causes a
 
 192 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 neighbour to regard them with curiosity or with 
 reproof. 
 
 A pale young man, down at heel, the ends of his 
 trousers frayed, the collar of his coat turned up 
 around his neck, reads an evening paper, probably 
 seeking some advertisement which he will presently 
 answer with a hopeful heart by the wan light of a 
 tallow candle in his lonely garret near the roof. 
 Not far removed from him, a dark - complexioned 
 little man, with a deep-lined countenance and a 
 spare figure shabbily clad, kneels on the pavement 
 between the forms, his back turned towards the 
 choir, and with uplifted hands and upraised eyes, 
 prays aloud. They who notice him smile, evidently 
 attributing a fervour which heeds no man, but is 
 centred on the Maker of all men, to a mind 
 diseased. A hollow-cheeked woman, young in years, 
 pallid-faced, miserable in appearance, ragged in dress, 
 with some undefinable air of refinement, some in- 
 destructible appearance of gentle birth yet clinging to 
 her, looks at him with a quiet, speculative gaze, 
 perhaps wondering if heart-rising prayer will give 
 him what he desires, or if it would secure to her 
 that she has sadly missed in life, that she may soon 
 seek in death. Behind her sits that most intolerable 
 of nuisances, the man who snuffles every three seconds
 
 EVENSONG SERVICE AT ST. PAUL'S. 193 
 
 with the regularity of clockwork ; but she takes no 
 heed of him, nor has she eyes for the little old lady 
 in short skirts and pattens, who wears a black poke 
 bonnet adorned by a veil, and carries a basket on 
 one thin bare arm, the whiteness of which is accen- 
 tuated by the sable colour of the shawl from which 
 it peeps. Heaven only knows from where she came. 
 She certainly belongs to a bygone age, and looks 
 more like a figure that might at midnight drear haunt 
 the oak-panelled rooms and lofty corridors of some 
 venerable mansion than a modern lady that had come 
 into the temple to pray. 
 
 But pray she does not. Now and then she plunges 
 into her basket a ghastly, mysterious-looking hand, 
 such as might touch a sleeper's face in darkness and 
 chill his blood a thin and wasted hand, covered with 
 a black kid glove having twisted finger - tops and 
 draws out some edible which disappears within the 
 black poke bonnet and is seen no more. From 
 where she sits it would be impossible for her to 
 hear the words of the Second Lesson now being read; 
 but having music in her strange and perhaps dis- 
 traught soul, she listens attentively to the singing 
 of an anthem by Walmesley, that rolls in echoing 
 billows down the aisle. Maybe she finds consolation 
 in the fact that insignificant as she is she can hear 
 
 VOL. II.
 
 194 TEE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 the gladsome harmonies to which the ears of the 
 great and noble company lying in the cold and 
 joyless crypt below are deaf for ever and for aye. 
 Many leave the church when the anthem is finished, 
 but more remain behind for the Magnificat and the 
 Nunc Dimittis, which the choir sings with sweetness 
 and solemnity. Then, the Responses being intoned, 
 the service concludes, and vergers and choir, dean 
 and canons, pass in procession to the vestry. 
 
 By this time the windows in the dome look pale 
 and wan, for the light behind is faint. Deepening 
 shadows have gradually crept up the aisle, and in 
 the gathering gray and wavering gloom the white 
 figures of dead heroes seem as spectres who would 
 scare the living from longer intrusion on their rest.
 
 THE MORAVIANS. 
 
 SUNDAY MORNING IN FETTER LANE CHAPEL. 
 
 THE Moravians or United Brethren, are a religious 
 body of whom little is known. Its members regard it 
 as a continuation of the Bohemian Church, which 
 having dwindled down under persecution almost to 
 extinction, was revived in the eighteenth century by 
 Count Zinzendorf a man of rank and wealth, who 
 being banished from Saxony devoted his life and 
 property to the establishment of this sect. For a while 
 the Moravians contemplated the idea of affiliating them- 
 selves with the Lutherans, but on casting lots they 
 decided to remain a separate body under the name 
 of the Unitas Fratrum. Certain articles of faith and 
 rules of discipline were drawn up, under the guidance 
 of Count Zinzendorf, as the basis on which the new 
 society should rest. 
 
 Somewhere about the year 1738 the sect was intro- 
 duced into England by one Peter Boehler, and soon 
 gained followers. Peter Boehler occasionally held con- 
 
 o 2
 
 196 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 ferences with John Wesley, and the disciples of both 
 leaders met in the same house of worship, situated in 
 Fetter Lane. But confusion and misunderstandings 
 continually arose, until at last John Wesley boldly 
 denounced what he was pleased to call the errors of 
 those differing from him. " I have warned you thereof 
 again and again," he told them, " and brought you to 
 turn back to the law and the testimony. I have borne 
 with you long, hoping you would turn ; but as I find 
 you more and more confirmed in the error of your ways, 
 nothing now remains but that I should give you up to 
 God. You that are of the same judgment follow me." 
 He then withdrew his congregation to Upper Moorfields, 
 leaving the Moravians in Fetter Lane where they 
 continue to meet to the present day. 
 
 For a while the body was regarded with suspicion 
 and jealousy, and in 1745 when party feeling concern- 
 ing the Stuarts ran high, they were accused of being 
 Papists in disguise and favourers of the Pretender, who 
 transacted treasonable matters at their meetings. Some 
 of their chapels were wrecked, many of the congrega- 
 tions were imprisoned for declining to take the oath of 
 allegiance they believing, like the Society of Friends, 
 that the taking of oaths was unlawful. In 1749 they 
 presented a petition to Parliament, asking for a strict 
 examination into the doctrines and institutions of their
 
 THE MORAVIANS. 197 
 
 Church, in order to free themselves from suspicion and to 
 obtain a confirmation of their civil and religious rights. 
 A Bill was introduced and after encountering opposition, 
 was subsequently passed. It acknowledged the Unitas 
 Fratrum to be " an ancient Protestant Episcopal Church, 
 which had been countenanced and relieved by the kings 
 of England, his Majesty's predecessors," and declared 
 its doctrine differed " in no essential article of faith from 
 that of the Church of England as set forth in the Thirty- 
 nine Articles." Moreover, a simple affirmation in the 
 name of Almighty God was allowed to such members 
 of their Church as had conscientious scruples against 
 the form of an oath ; a dispensation from serving as 
 jurymen in criminal cases was granted them ; and they 
 were exempted under certain conditions from actual 
 military service. 
 
 In its doctrines the Moravian Church resembles 
 Calvinism, but its government is episcopal. Its clergy 
 are divided into three classes bishops who ordain, but 
 only with the permission of elders ; presbyters who in 
 other respects are equal to bishops, and preside over 
 congregations ; and deacons, who assist the presbyters 
 and are aided by deaconesses who teach and help the 
 members of their own sex. The congregations are 
 separated into a similar number of orders, consisting of 
 catechumens, comprising the children of the brethren ;
 
 198 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 communicants, who are regarded as members of the 
 Church ; and prefects, or those who have proved them 
 selves prudent and zealous. From these last are 
 selected by a majority of votes the lay elders, who 
 direct and govern each congregation "with reference 
 to the doctrine, walk, and conversation of all its 
 members, the concerns of the choirs, and of each 
 individual person." They are bound to visit each family 
 at least once in three months, and to report to the pastor 
 if worship is regularly maintained in each household, 
 or whether the various members are conducting them- 
 selves in a pious and sober manner. But this personal 
 surveillance does not end here, for every congregation 
 has a committee, whose duty it is to watch over the 
 domestic and business affairs of the brethren, and to 
 settle all disputes that arise between them. 
 
 The general management of the Church is con- 
 ducted by means of synods, composed of brethren who 
 were for a time entrusted with the direction of the 
 community, by bishops and ministers, and by deputies 
 sent by various congregations. They form themselves 
 into a synod and select a president. Female elders 
 are permitted to be present but are not allowed to 
 vote. At these meetings the condition of each church 
 and mission is separately considered ; as well as the 
 education, state of religion, and doctrine of each con-
 
 THE MORAVIANS. 199 
 
 gregation. The synod of Herrenhut the head-quarters 
 of the Church maintains a general supervision over 
 the entire body. In the ruling of their affairs, be it 
 private or public matters, they are actuated according 
 to the interpretations given to Scripture ; but occasion- 
 ally when uncertain as to their actions, they decide by 
 lot, believing Providence will by this means direct 
 them aright. Some years ago when marriages were 
 not allowed to take place except sanctioned by the 
 elders, it was their custom to decide in this manner 
 the fate of those desiring to be united ; but this 
 probably being found intolerable by youthful members 
 of the congregation, has now been abandoned. 
 
 A high-class education is not considered necessary 
 to the ministry ; knowledge of the Bible, piety, and 
 zeal being regarded as sufficient qualifications for the 
 office. Formerly, in imitation of the early Christians, 
 all property was held in common. There are yet 
 many houses where the brethren live in community ; 
 the single men and single women, widows and 
 widowers, dwelling apart, each governed by elderly 
 persons of their own sex and state. In such com- 
 munities those who are able, and who are not possessed 
 of independent means, labour in the occupation to 
 which they were bred, and contribute a stipulated 
 sum for their support.
 
 200 TEE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 The Christian Church is not confined, they believe, 
 to one sect or party ; and moreover with singular 
 charity, they believe themselves spiritually joined in 
 bonds of love to all followers of Christ. Their manner 
 of administering baptism and communion differs from 
 the forms observed on such occasions in the Established 
 Church. At baptism, not only the officiating minister, 
 but both godparents, or witnesses, bless the infant 
 by the laying on of hands. Formerly a mode of 
 exorcism to expel all powers of darkness from the 
 new-born soul was practised, but is now seldom used. 
 Before communion, commonly celebrated on the even- 
 ing of every fourth Saturday, the minister exhorts- 
 those about to receive the sacrament to examine their 
 consciences. Afterwards, whilst kneeling, they ask for 
 absolution. Then the minister, wearing a white surplice, 
 distributes the bread, assisted by the deacons. This is 
 held in the hands of the communicants, who stand until 
 all have received it, when they kneel and eat, whilst 
 the minister says, "Take, eat, this is my body which 
 is delivered for you." They then rise and receive 
 the wine standing, passing it from hand to hand, 
 after which they give each other the kiss of peace. 
 Once it was their custom to observe the ceremony 
 of pediluvium, or feet-washing, before receiving com- 
 munion ; but this is now only practised on particular
 
 THE MORAVIANS. 201 
 
 occasions, such as Holy Thursday; then women wash 
 the feet of their own sex, men keeping to the same 
 rule regarding themselves. 
 
 Another observance of the Moravians is when one 
 of the congregation is near death, the elders assemble 
 round his bed, sing hymns, offer prayers, and bless 
 him by the imposition of hands. At his burial 
 all the brethren in the neighbourhood attend him 
 to his grave. Their method of celebrating Easter 
 contains much that is solemn and beautiful. On the 
 rising of the sun on that day they flock to the burial- 
 ground, usually preserved with great care. Here the 
 minister turning to his flock, says, " The Lord has. 
 risen," when with joyous tones they cry aloud, "He 
 is risen indeed." Hymns are then sung, a confession 
 of faith in the form of a prayer is repeated, and 
 a solemn commemoration made by name of those who 
 during the previous twelve months have passed from 
 their midst and sleep in peace. At the beginning 
 of each year a collection of texts, to which are added 
 a few lines from appropriate hymns, are printed for 
 every day, and circulated throughout the Church, in 
 which manner all the congregations are " fed with 
 the same truths on the same day." From Christmas 
 to Easter they read the life and death of Christ ; at 
 Whitsuntide they begin the Acts of the Apostles ;
 
 202 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 afterwards they read the Epistles in the order in which 
 they were written. Love feasts, in imitation of the 
 Agapse of the early Christian Church, are occasionally 
 celebrated by them. 
 
 Congregations of the Moravians are scattered 
 throughout Switzerland, Holland, and America, settle- 
 ments having been made in the latter country since 
 1742. In England they have schools at Fulneck in 
 Yorkshire, Fairfield in Lancashire, and Ockbrook in 
 Derbyshire. Each community provides for the erection 
 of a church, and maintenance of ministers and schools. 
 Their missionary labours began in 1731, when Count 
 Zinzendorf became acquainted with a negro, who gave 
 an account of the sufferings endured by slaves in 
 the island of St. Thomas, and spoke of their desire 
 for religious instructions. This interesting the Count, 
 he made the facts known to his congregation, the 
 result being two members volunteered to travel to 
 the West Indies, and if necessary submit to slavery 
 that they might gain access to the ignorant and 
 afflicted. They were not obliged to undergo this 
 ordeal, but supported themselves by manual labour, 
 whilst teaching the heathen. Their example was 
 followed by others, who went to various parts of 
 the world preaching the Gospel ; since which time 
 missions have been established in Greenland, Labra-
 
 TEE MORAVIANS. 203 
 
 dor, Jamaica, South Africa, Barbadoes, and Australia, 
 both men and women, known as a Congregation 
 of Pilgrims, having zealously undertaken to spread 
 Christianity. 
 
 In England and Wales the Moravians have thirty- 
 four chapels. Their place of worship in London is 
 situated in Fetter Lane, a small and singularly plain 
 building, entrance to which is gained by a hall running 
 through a private house. The building narrowly 
 escaped destruction during the great fire of 1666, 
 and since then has undergone but such changes as 
 paint and whitewash may effect. The grim cheer- 
 less chapel is historical ; for from its pulpit Eichard 
 Baxter "preached as a dying man to dying men," 
 as though he might never see them more ; and 
 John Wesley held forth to his first followers. The 
 walls of this chapel are coloured a blue -grey hue, 
 and skirted with drab-painted boards to the height 
 of some five feet. At one end stands a pulpit, 
 beneath it a table ; uncomfortable stiff-backed forms 
 are ranged over the rough boarded floor, uncarpeted 
 save at the entrance passage. A gallery runs down 
 one side of the building and across the end wall, 
 and here is a small, wheezy organ, whose internal 
 arrangements are hastening to decay. A highly 
 polished stove stands near the half-glass door, which
 
 204 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 on being opened or shut, shakes its panes sadly, as 
 if craving tender treatment because of age. 
 
 No sign of decoration or embellishment is visible, 
 there is nothing on which the wearied eye might 
 rest with pleasure or relief. Walls of drab and 
 grey, a whitewashed ceiling, clean-scrubbed floor, and 
 mahogany - coloured pulpit, are not picturesque. Nor 
 is the congregation sparse indeed in numbers, the 
 men sitting at one side, the women at the other. 
 Judging the former from their light -hued, close- 
 cropped hair, pale complexions, blue eyes, stiff port, 
 and somewhat stolid expressions, they chiefly hail 
 from the Fatherland. Concerning the fairer sex, it 
 is more difficult to decide, but it can be said with 
 justice, their beauty and grace were not such as 
 would readily distract the gaze of devout worshippers. 
 
 Soon after a clock hidden in the recesses of a 
 vestry, had given eleven strokes, thin-sounded and 
 feeble as if every one might be its last, a man in 
 a black frock-coat ascended the pulpit, and after a 
 slight pause, as if pondering in silent sadness over 
 the empty forms which faced him, he began the 
 service. This differs considerably from that of the 
 English Church, and mainly consists of the recital 
 of short prayers to which the congregation responds 
 aloud.
 
 THE MORAVIANS. '205 
 
 "0 come," he begins, "let us worship and bow 
 down ; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker." 
 
 To which those present answer : " For He is 
 our God ; it is He that hath made us ; we are His 
 people and the sheep of His pasture." 
 
 Again his voice is heard saying : " Enter into 
 His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts 
 with praise ; be thankful unto Him and bless His 
 name." 
 
 And once more comes the response : " For the 
 Lord is good ; His mercy is everlasting, and His 
 truth endureth to all generations." 
 
 He next reads some sentences from Scripture, 
 selections from the Psalms, the Gospels of St. John 
 and St. Luke, and the Books of Daniel and Exodus, 
 after which he repeats aloud the Lord's Prayer. 
 Then comes a long Litany, read by him in slow, 
 measured tones, and answered by his flock, they 
 praying, as many have need to pray, that they 
 may be preserved from the " unhappy desire of 
 becoming great, from self - complacency, from un- 
 timely projects, from needless perplexities, from the 
 murdering spirit and devices of Satan." Occasionally 
 the Litany is interrupted that a verse may be 
 sung, the organ buzzing loudly before its notes 
 have been touched, as if anxious to begin, and
 
 206 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 likewise humming when its music has ceased, as if 
 loath to end. 
 
 Long prayers follow; petitions are offered for 
 the preservation of the Royal Family and the 
 guidance of Parliament ; passages of Scripture arc 
 read, and hymns are sung by the congregation, 
 which sits the while. The rendering of the part 
 singing is fairly good, for the foreign element 
 present has an ear for time and tune. In this 
 manner a very simple service is gone through. 
 The congregation is however not yet dismissed, 
 for a sermon follows read aloud in tones that 
 rise and fall in measured cadence, like a schoolboy's 
 recitation of hackneyed verses, until the monotony 
 becomes either sufficiently soothing to induce sleep, 
 or irritating enough to produce madness, according 
 to the temperament and mood of the hearer. If 
 a book fell, a door banged, or a worshipper snored, 
 some relief might be experienced from the dreadful 
 sound of a voice never still, but steadily and 
 unflinchingly it winds its slow way through time, 
 until ultimately it seems to have escaped the con- 
 trol of its owner, to whom silence was no longer 
 possible. 
 
 Just before the minute hand of a clock hanging 
 under the little organ loft, and therefore facing the
 
 THE MORAVIANS. 207 
 
 offender, had completed its round since the beginning 
 of his discourse, the preacher ended his wearisome 
 sermon. Then a final hymn was sung with hearty 
 gratitude, a benediction pronounced, and the service 
 was concluded. 
 
 The doctrines of the Moravians are in accordance 
 with the Confession of Augsburg. A synod held 
 near Rugby in 1775 declared "the chief doctrine to 
 which the Church of the Brethren adheres, and which 
 we must preserve as an invaluable treasure com- 
 mitted unto us, is this : that by the sacrifice for 
 sin made by Jesus Christ, and by that alone, grace 
 and deliverance from sin are to be obtained for all 
 mankind. We will, therefore, without lessening the 
 importance of any other article of the Christian Faith 
 steadfastly maintain the following five points : 
 
 " 1. The doctrine of the universal depravity of 
 man : that there is no health in man, and that since 
 the Fall he has no power whatever left to help 
 himself. 
 
 " 2. The doctrine of the Divinity of Christ : that 
 God, the Creator of all things, was manifest in the 
 flesh and reconciled us to Himself; that He is before 
 all things, and that by Him all things consist. 
 
 " 3. The doctrine of the Atonement and satisfaction 
 made for us by Jesus Christ : that He was delivered
 
 208 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 for our offences and raised again for our justification, 
 and that by His merits alone we receive freely the 
 forgiveness of sin and sanctification in soul and body. 
 
 " 4. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the operations 
 of His grace : that it is He who worketh in us con- 
 viction of sin, faith in Jesus, and pureness of heart. 
 
 5. " The doctrine of the fruits of faith : that faith 
 must induce itself by willing obedience to the com- 
 mandments of God from love and gratitude." 
 
 The motto of the Moravians is "to humble the 
 sinner, to exalt the Saviour, and to promote holiness."
 
 SATURDAY AFTERNOON WITH THE SEVENTH 
 DAY BAPTISTS. 
 
 THE Seventh Day Baptists claim to be able to trace 
 their practice back through the centuries to the 
 Apostolic Church. Amongst the Eastern Churches 
 the Armenian, the Nestorian, and the Abyssinian, 
 from the earliest times to the present have kept 
 the seventh day holy. In the reign of Elizabeth, it 
 occurred to many conscientious and independent 
 thinkers, " as it had previously done to some Pro- 
 testants in Bohemia, that the Fourth Commandment 
 required of them the observance, not of the first, 
 but of the specified seventh day of the week, and 
 a strict bodily rest, as a service then due to God. 
 They became numerous enough to make a con- 
 siderable figure for more than a century in England, 
 under the title of Sabbatarians, a word now exchanged 
 for the less ambiguous appellation of Seventh Day 
 Baptists." 
 
 Prominent amongst the converts to this belief at 
 
 VOL. II.
 
 210 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 this period were John Trask and his wife, the latter 
 being keeper of a private school. John Trask was 
 tried in 1618, when Bishop Andrews argued against 
 him, sentence being passed upon the offender that 
 he be "set upon the pillory in Westminster, and from 
 thence to be whipped to the Fleet, there to remain 
 prisoner." This punishment had the effect of changing 
 his opinions concerning the keeping of the Sabbath, 
 when he was released. His wife, however, was 
 not moved from her convictions by fear of the 
 law ; she stoutly refused to teach on the seventh 
 day, and was accordingly arrested and flung into 
 prison. 
 
 A quaint historian says : " Mistress Trask lay for 
 fifteen or sixteen years a prisoner for her opinions 
 about the Saturday Sabbath, in all which time she 
 would receive no relief from anybody, notwithstanding 
 she wanted much, alleging that it is written, ' It's a 
 more blessed thing to give than to receive.' Neither 
 would she borrow. She deemed it a dishonour to her 
 head, Christ, either to beg or to borrow. Her diet 
 for the most part of her imprisonment that is, till 
 a little before her death was bread and water, and 
 roots and herbs ; no flesh, nor wine, nor brewed 
 drink. She charged the keeper of the prison not to 
 bury her in church or churchyard, but in the fields
 
 SEVENTH DAT BAPTISTS. 211 
 
 only, which was accordingly so done. So there was an 
 end to her sect in less than half a generation. Tis 
 true it begins of late (1661) to be revived again, but 
 yet faintly. The progress it makes is not observed 
 to be much. So that, notwithstanding all gangrenes 
 of spirit with which the times are troubled, as yet 
 it spreads little, and therefore it is hoped a short 
 caveat such as this may suffice against it." 
 
 The sect was by no means suppressed, though its 
 members met in private to evade persecution. John 
 Trask wrote in favour of seventh day observance, as 
 did likewise Theophilus Brabourne, who may be re 
 garded as having founded in England the Sabbatarians, 
 or Seventh Day Baptists, about the year 1620. The 
 necessity for secrecy has made the history of these 
 people difficult to trace ; the fate which awaited 
 themselves and their property succeeded in destroying 
 their records and papers. It is certain that in the 
 year of the Kestoration the sect had one church at 
 Natton, and another was founded at Pinner's Hall 
 on "the fifth of the first month, vulgarly called March, 
 in the year 1675-6, by the labour and care of that 
 eminently pious minister of Christ, Mr. Francis 
 Bampfield." 
 
 The latter was a clergyman who held a living in 
 Dorsetshire. Discovering that the Church of England
 
 212 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 needed reformation, he "set about making the laws 
 of Christ his only rule," a proceeding which has ever 
 drawn on men the persecution of the world. Amongst 
 other observances he regarded the seventh day as 
 the true Sabbath, to cure him of which belief the law 
 cast him into prison, where he remained for nigh nine 
 years. When released he wished to receive baptism 
 according to the rules of the Baptists, and for this 
 purpose set out for Battersea, but was prevented from 
 fulfilling his intentions. Subsequently "he, with 
 one more, travelled from London to Salisbury, where 
 about the middle of the day, in the broad river of 
 that city, which runs with living water, he received 
 his being baptized as by the hand of Christ Himself, 
 in the face of the Heavens, and so passed under water, 
 and baptized another." 
 
 It was after this ceremony he held public worship 
 in his own house in London for about two years and 
 a half, when it was considered by his congregation 
 tiiat they might have a more public place of meeting. 
 One of them writes that various sites for the new 
 building were proposed, and " after they had laid aside 
 their own prudential determinings in this matter, and 
 had sought the Faces of ^Elohim to choose for them, 
 they gave forth lots : one for Great Morefields, a 
 second for Spittlefields, a third for Pinner's Hall, and
 
 SEVENTH DAT BAPTISTS. 213 
 
 a fourth for elsewhere, we being not to limit the All- 
 free Agent, the Faithful Creator, the Gracious Redeemer. 
 Having agreed upon one to draw the lot, we all looked 
 up to the God of Heaven, expecting His allotment; 
 the lot opened spake Pinner's Hall to be the place of 
 our solemn assembling for instituted worship." 
 
 The minister and his congregation were not long 
 allowed to meet in peace. One day in February, 1662, 
 a constable with a posse of halberdiers burst into the 
 chapel and ordered Francis Bampfield to come down 
 out of the pulpit in the King's name. 
 
 "I discharge my office in the name of the King 
 of Kings," replied the minister. 
 
 " I have a warrant from the Lord Mayor," cried 
 the constable. 
 
 " I have a warrant from Christ, who is Lord 
 Maximus," answered Francis Bampfield, whereon he 
 was pulled down from the pulpit and with six of 
 his hearers brought before the Lord Mayor. That 
 dignitary fined several of them ten pounds, but bade 
 the pastor go about his business. This injunction 
 he strictly obeyed by preaching that afternoon in 
 the same place, when he was again dragged from 
 the pulpit, but the constable having no warrant 
 for his arrest was obliged to let him go, when the 
 minister continued the interrupted service at his own
 
 214 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 house. A third time in the same month his meeting 
 at Pinner's Hall was interrupted by the constable, 
 who marched him triumphantly before the Lord Mayor, 
 accompanied by a mighty throng, some of whom 
 jeered and laughed, whilst others pitied and praised. 
 He was thrown into Newgate Prison, where he died 
 in 1684. 
 
 Another congregation of Seventh Day Baptists held 
 their meetings at Bull Steak Alley, Whitechapel, 
 their pastor being the Rev. John James. Whilst 
 preaching to his followers on the 19th of October, 
 1661, he was hauled down from his pulpit and with 
 a number of them, taken before a bench of justices 
 sitting at a tavern. He was accused of treason and 
 committed to Newgate, and after a weary trial in 
 which he strove to make clear his innocence, was 
 condemned to death. His devoted wife petitioned 
 for his pardon, but in vain. The day before his 
 execution the hangman demanded twenty pounds, 
 " that he might be favourable to him at his death." 
 He fell to ten and then to five pounds, to which 
 John James said. " he must leave that to his mercy 
 for he had nothing to give him." On the 26th of 
 November he was tightly pinioned, laid on a sled, 
 and drawn through the mud and filth of the streets to 
 Tyburn. On the scaffold he continued the discourse
 
 SEVENTH DAT BAPTISTS. 215 
 
 which was interrupted in his chapel, and prayed 
 for those who had borne false witness against him. 
 When he had ended, the executioner said : 
 
 " The Lord receive your soul." 
 
 " I thank thee," he answered. 
 
 " This is a happy day," said a friend and follower 
 who stood near. 
 
 " I bless God it is," he replied. 
 
 He was then executed, his heart was torn from 
 his body and burnt, his head and quarters flung into 
 a basket and taken to Newgate, " and from thence 
 were disposed by the King (Charles II.), viz., his 
 quarters to the gates of the city, and his head first 
 upon the bridge, but afterwards by appointment taken 
 down thence and put upon a pole in Whitechappel, 
 over against the passage to the meeting-place where 
 he and his company were apprehended." 
 
 John James is said to be the founder of the Mill 
 Yard Church, Leman Street, which existed until a 
 few years ago, when it was pulled down by a rail- 
 way company. Notwithstanding banishment, fines, 
 imprisonment, and death, the members of this sect 
 continued firm in their belief, which they handed 
 down to younger generations. At present their 
 numbers are small in England, but are numerous in 
 America. "Whilst the congregation of Mill Yard Church
 
 216 THE FAITHS OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 are waiting for another place of worship to be built 
 for them, they hold services in a school -house in 
 Commercial Road, Whitechapel. Their pastor is the 
 Rev. William M. Jones, D.D., a scholar in the 
 true sense of the word, proficient in knowledge of 
 Eastern languages, a traveller who has preached in 
 French in Hayti, and in Arabic in Palestine. 
 
 In all points save that regarding the Sabbath 
 they agree with the Baptists. In this particular all 
 Christendom is astray. The Rev. William Jones says 
 the testimony of Church history is that the Eastern 
 Churches kept the Sabbath until the fifth century. 
 The first Sunday edict was issued by the Roman 
 Emperor, Constantine, the 7th of March, A.D. 321, as 
 follows : " Let all judges and city people, and all 
 tradesmen, rest upon the venerable day of the sun ; 
 but let those dwelling in the country freely and with 
 full liberty attend to the culture of their fields, 
 since it frequently happens that no other day is so 
 fit for the sowing of grain or the planting of vines ; 
 hence the favourable time should not be allowed to 
 pass, lest the provisions of heaven be lost." "There- 
 fore," remarks this Seventh Day Baptist pastor, 
 " heathenism is the father of Romanism and the 
 mother of Sunday keeping. Why then should Pro- 
 testants esteem it as a sacred day ? " This question
 
 SEVENTH DAT BAPTISTS. 217 
 
 he fails to answer; but he has placed on record his 
 reason for keeping Saturday holy. This is because 
 God commands it. " The seventh day is the Sabbath 
 of the Lord thy God." Exodus xx. 10. " The Sabbath 
 was made for man. The Son of Man is Lord also of 
 the Sabbath." Mark ii. 27, 28. 
 
 " In more than one hundred and sixty Asiatic, 
 African, and European languages," he adds, " I find 
 only one uniform week of seven days, beginning with 
 Sunday and ending with Saturday, the seventh day, 
 which in one hundred and eight of them is called 
 Sabbath, or the seventh day. There are various 
 reckonings of years, as the Old Style and New Style, 
 Mohammedan, etc., but the week has been always 
 uniformly the same with Jews, Christians, Moham- 
 medans, and the Heathen. Hence the identity of 
 Saturday as the seventh day, the true Bible Sabbath 
 God's memorial of His creative work, His testimony 
 against idolatry and atheism. Sunday is kept in 
 honour of the resurrection of Christ; but the New 
 Testament nowhere enjoins it, either by precept or 
 example. Christ rose 'late on the Sabbath day,' not 
 the first day. The death and the resurrection of 
 Christ are memorialised by Baptism and the Lord's 
 Supper, and not by a day," 
 
 The chapel in which the Seventh Day Baptists 
 
 VOL. II. Q
 
 218 THE FAITES OF THE PEOPLES. 
 
 now hold their meetings on the first Saturday of 
 January, April, July, and October, is a small building 
 in the Commercial Road, Whitechapel. A fireplace, a 
 sage-green dado, and five doors in the end wall give 
 the chapel the appearance of a room ; but a tiny 
 pulpit, an harmonium, and some chairs and forms 
 ranged in line, favour the idea of its being a house 
 of worship. 
 
 To a congregation of a dozen adults and two 
 boys the Rev. Mr. Jones began the service, which 
 in no way differed from that of the Congrega- 
 tionalists. The doxology, one of the Psalms, and 
 a chapter from St. Luke were read by Mr. Jones, 
 junior, an anthem and hymns sung by the congre- 
 gation, and a short sermon preached by the pastor. 
 The service, which was simple in form and earnest 
 in spirit, was constantly interrupted by the roll of 
 traffic, the bells of a tramcar, and the hammering of 
 a stonemason. And in this way those within were 
 reminded that the outside world differed from them 
 in the keeping of the Sabbath Day. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 CHARLES DICKIN8 AWD EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PBESS.
 
 CHEAP EDITIONS OF POPULAR WORKS. 
 
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