The Religious Life of London

CHRISTMAS MORNING WITH THE YOUNGSTERS

Amongst the most unpleasant recollections of an otherwise not unpleasant childhood are those connected with attendance at chapel on the evenings of Christmas Days. On such occasions there were circumstances, needless to explain, and in which the reader would take no interest were they explained, which compelled the writer to leave the pleasant fire and the games and mirth of the season, and, putting on his coat, trudge manfully in the dark and through the snow to shiver for an hour and a half at least at meeting. Other people the writer well knew were enjoying themselves. Father Christmas was not the rage then that he is now; Christmas-trees were a later invention, and so were Christmas tales; but still even in those far-away and benighted times there were cakes and ale, and homely Christmas carols and a little fun on a Christmas night, when blind-man’s-buff was in fashion, and snapdragon was to the little ones a wonder and a joy. The writer felt, as he sat in the comfortless square box of green baize and deal, and surveyed the scattered congregation, how much more agreeable it would have been had the old meeting been shut up on such a night, had the old minister saved his sermon, had the old ladies and gentlemen who formed the congregation dozed comfortably in their old arm-chairs at home. He arrived at the conclusion then which he has ever since retained – a conclusion the correctness of which no subsequent consideration has induced him to modify – that services at church or chapel on Christmas nights are an immense mistake. Christmas morning special services, however, are quite a different thing, and especially where children are concerned. They at any rate realize Christmas more fully than their elders, and assuredly it is by them the religious aspect of the day may be most vividly felt.

This is not a question for argument. More than forty years ago the late Dr. Fletcher, of Finsbury Chapel, instituted a special morning service at his own place of worship for Sunday-school children from the Sunday-schools of the district. The avowed object of that service was the benefit of the young. In time past it has been found to have had a salutary effect. It has been continued by Dr. Fletcher’s successor, the Rev. A. M‘Auslane, a minister whose manner, and personal appearance, and mode of speaking qualify him especially for so delicate and difficult a task. Mr. M‘Auslane hails from the land where Christmas is unknown. He was a student under Dr. Wardlaw at Glasgow. He commenced his pastoral duties in Dunfermline, but he has travelled south, and at Newport, in Wales, where he stayed a short while, and latterly at Finsbury Chapel, where he has now been eight years, he has caught something of the English regard for Christmas Day, and preaches accordingly. I scarce think London has a prettier sight to show than that of Finsbury Chapel on a Christmas morning. It is full in every part. On the ground floor and the first gallery are ranged the children and their teachers, and up above there is another gallery full of adult spectators. As they sing some of the finest of our hymns, such as —

“Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,”

the swell of their young voices is beautiful to hear. Their faces, full of joy, were equally beautiful to see. To be preached to by a learned man in a gown in a big chapel is something indeed for a little ragged urchin to think of. Then what pains must have been taken to master the tunes and sing them so well. Nor is this all by which the event of the year – as it must be for some of them – is characterized. At some of the schools the children, I believe, have a breakfast given them by the teachers previous to starting. At all of them there is a distribution of something satisfactory in the shape of buns. The muster is considerable. The schools represented at the service I attended, in addition to that belonging to the place, were Mile End, King Edward Street, Wood Street, Spitalfields, Willow Walk, Ark Street, Paradise Street, the Weigh House, the New Tabernacle, Bell Alley; Red Lion Street, Clerkenwell; Andrew Street Ragged-schools, Union Walk, Jewin Street, James Street, City Road, Ropemakers Street. The service commenced with singing —

The Rev. W. Tyler then read a part of the fifth chapter of Matthew, and offered up an appropriate prayer, in which a special reference was made to the evangelistic work carried on in the City. Another hymn was sung, and then came the sermon, the subject of which was Christ blessing children, and the text of which was in Mark x. 14 and 16. Mr. M‘Auslane described how a painter had portrayed the scene; not having the picture there to show them, he would attempt a description of it in words. Some might have thought Jesus too busy or children too insignificant. In reality it was not so, and he believed that if Jesus came in this year into London, He would act now as He did then. Sometimes people forget – the butler forgot Joseph. Jesus Christ never changes. The preacher endeavoured to bring out what the text teaches about Jesus and children: – 1. It taught that Jesus is attractive to children. Some men and women children don’t like at all; others they go to cheerfully and willingly. Jesus Christ draws them to Him just as the sun the flowers. He is spoken of as the Sun of Righteousness. Why is a child not afraid to walk through the valley of the shadow of death? It is because he sees Jesus, and when he has passed through on the other side there is Jesus, the most attractive in all that land. 2. The text taught that Christ takes a deep interest in children. It was clear the Apostles did not, or they would not have tried to prevent them from coming forward. He takes the same interest now. It was to Him children had to be grateful for bodies and souls, for kind friends, and the comforts of life. All power is given to Him in heaven and on earth. Salvation is the gift of Christ, and that is another proof of the interest He takes in children. If any boy there had no father or mother, sister or brother, or friend, if he stood in this cold world alone, let him take this thought with him – in the morning as he rose from his humble cot, in the evening as he retired to rest – Jesus cares for me. Here the preacher paused while the children refreshed themselves by singing “The Pilgrims,” the boys asking, the girls replying, and all joining in the chorus, the last verse of which is —

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

DR. PARKER AT THE POULTRY

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

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

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

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

“Touched Isaiah’s lips with hallowed fire,”

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

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