There is no more hopeful sign in the Christian Church of to-day than the
increased attention which is being given by it to the poor and outcast
classes of society. Of these it has never been wholly neglectful; if it
had it would have ceased to be Christian. But it has, as yet, only
imperfectly realised and fulfilled its mission to the poor. Until
recently it has contented itself with sustaining some outside
organizations, which have charged themselves with this special function,
or what is worse, has left the matter to individuals or to little bands
of Christians having no organization. For the rest it has been satisfied
with a superficial and inadequate district visitation, with the more or
less indiscriminate distribution of material charities, and with opening
a few rooms here and there into which the poorer people have been
gathered, and by which a few have been rescued. All this is good in its
way and has done good; but by all only the merest edge of the great dark
region of poverty, misery, squalor and immorality has been touched. We
are not losing sight of the London City Mission, whose agents are
everywhere, and whose noble work our investigations have led us to value
more than ever, but after all has been done the churches are making the
discovery that seething in the very centre of our great cities,
concealed by the thinnest crust of civilization and decency, is a vast
mass of moral corruption, of heart-breaking misery and absolute
godlessness, and that scarcely anything has been done to take into this
awful slough the only influences that can purify or remove it.
Whilst we have been building our churches and solacing ourselves with
our religion and dreaming that the millennium was coming, the poor have
been growing poorer, the wretched more miserable, and the immoral more
corrupt; the gulf has been daily widening which separates the lowest
classes of the community from our churches and chapels, and from all
decency and civilization. It is easy to bring an array of facts which
seem to point to the opposite conclusion--to speak of the noble army of
men and women who penetrate the vilest haunts, carrying with them the
blessings of the gospel; of the encouraging reports published by
Missions, Reformatories, Refuges, Temperance Societies; of Theatre
Services, Midnight Meetings and Special Missions. But what does it all
amount to? We are simply living in a fool's paradise if we suppose that
all these agencies combined are doing a thousandth part of what needs to
be done, a hundredth part of what _could_ be done by the Church of
Christ. We must face the facts; and these compel the conviction that
THIS TERRIBLE FLOOD OF SIN AND MISERY IS GAINING UPON US. It is rising
every day. This statement is made as the result of a long, patient and
sober inquiry, undertaken for the purpose of discovering the actual
state of the case and the remedial action most likely to be effective.
Convinced that it is high time some combined and organized effort was
made by all denominations of Christians, though not for denominational
purposes, the London Congregational Union have determined to open in
several of the lowest and most needy districts of the metropolis,
suitable Mission Halls, as a base of operations for evangelistic work.
They have accordingly made this diligent search, and some of the results
are set forth in the following pages, in the hope that all who have the
power may be stimulated to help the Union in the great and difficult
enterprise which they have undertaken.
Two cautions it is important to bear in mind. First, the information
given _does not refer to selected cases_. It simply reveals a state of
things which is found in house after house, court after court, street
after street. Secondly, there _has been absolutely no exaggeration_. It
is a plain recital of plain facts. Indeed, no respectable printer would
print, and certainly no decent family would admit even the driest
statement of the horrors and infamies discovered in one brief visitation
from house to house. _So far from making the worst of our facts for the
purpose of appealing to emotion, we have been compelled to tone down
everything, and wholly to omit what most needs to be known, or the ears
and eyes of our readers would have been insufferably outraged._ Yet even
this qualified narration must be to every Christian heart a loud and
bitter cry, appealing for the help which it is the supreme mission of
the Church to supply. It should be further stated that our
investigations were made in the summer. The condition of the poor during
the winter months must be very much worse.