Many religious thinkers, ecclesiastical and Nonconformist, whose
friendship I value, will expect from me in these autobiographic
papers some account of the origin of opinions in which they have been
interested. Sermons, speeches, pamphlets, even books have been devoted
to criticism of my heresies. It is due to those who have taken so much
trouble about me that I should explain, not what the opinions were--that
would be irrelevant here--but how I came by them. That may be worth
recounting, and to some serious people perhaps worth remembering.
Confessions are not in my way. They imply that something it was prudent
to conceal has to be "owned up." Of that kind I have no story to
tell. An apologia is still less to my taste. I make no apology for
my opinions. I do not find that persons who dissent from me, ever so
strenuously, think of apologising to me for doing so. They do right in
standing by their convictions without asking my leave. I hope they will
take it in good part if I stand by mine without asking theirs.
My mother did not go to the Established Church, to which her father
belonged. She had natural piety of heart, and thought she found more
personal religion among the Nonconformists than in the Church.
She attended Carr's Lane Chapel, where the Rev. John Angell James
preached--who had a great reputation in Birmingham for eloquence and
for his evangelical writings. He was notorious in his day for denouncing
players and ambitious preachers seeking to excel in the arts of this
world; which caused the town people to say that he was dramatic against
the drama and eloquent against eloquence. His name, "Angell" James,
begat a belief that it was descriptive of himself, and that his
doctrines were necessarily angelic. It seems absurd, but I shared this
belief, and should not have been surprised to hear that he had some
elementary development of wings out of sight At the same time, Mr. James
gave me the impression of severity in piety, and my feeling towards him
was one of awe, dreading a near approach.
Some years after, I held a discussion of several nights with the Rev.
W. J. Winks, of Leicester, who wrote to Mr. James to make inquiries
concerning me. In 1881, some thirty-five years after the discussion,
Mr. Winks' son showed me a letter which Mr. James wrote in reply saying:
"Holyoake was a boy in my Sunday School five years. He then went,
through the persuasion of a companion, to Mr. Cheadle's for a short
time, then to the Unitarian school (I believe entered a debating
society), and became an unbeliever. He is a good son and kind to his
mother, who is a member of one of our Baptist churches."
The Rev. Mr. Cheadle, of whom Mr. James speaks, was a Baptist minister.
It is true I went to his church--my sister Matilda became a member
of it--but I never joined it The ceremony of baptism there was by
immersion. It seemed poetical to me when I read the account of baptism
in the Jordan; but I could not make up my mind to be baptised in a tank.
The reason, however, that I gave at the time was the stronger and
the true one--that I did not feel good enough to make a solemn public
profession of faith. Mr. James was misinformed; I never belonged to a
debating society.
It was very good of him to write of me so, when he must have been very
much pained at the opinions he believed me then to hold. A man may
speak generously privately, but he means it when he says the same thing
publicly; and Mr. James did this. He wrote to a similar effect in the
_British Banner_ at the time when the Rev. Brewin Grant was painting
portraits of me in pandemonium colours.
A small Sunday School Magazine came into my hands when I was quite a
youth. It was edited by the Rev. W. J. Winks. As communications were
invited from readers, I sent some evangelical verses to him. The first
time of my seeing my initials in print was in Mr. Winks's magazine.
After a time, partly because the place of worship was nearer home, my
mother joined a little church in Thorpe Street, and later one in Inge
Street. They were melancholy little meeting-houses, and, as I always
accompanied my mother, I had time to acquire that impression of them.
A love of art was in some measure natural to me, and I thought that the
Temple of God should be bright, beautiful and costly. As I was taught to
believe that He was always present there, it seemed to me that He should
not be invited (and all our prayers did invite Him) into a mean-looking
place. It was seeing how earnestly my mother prayed at home for the
welfare of her family, how beautiful and patient was her trust
in heaven, and how trouble and misery increased in the household
notwithstanding, that unconsciously turned my heart to methods of
secular deliverance. She had lost children. I remember the consternation
with which she told us one Sunday night that her pastor, the Rev. Mr.
James, had stated in his sermon his fearsome belief that there were
"children in hell not a span long." That Mr. James believed it seemed
to us the same as its being in the Bible. Another time he preached about
the "sin against the Holy Ghost, which could never be forgiven, either
in this world or the world to come." My mother's distress at the thought
made a great impression upon me. A silent terror of Christianity
crept into my mind. That one so pure and devout as my mother, who was
incapable of committing sin knowingly, should be liable to commit this,
and none of us know what it was, nor how or when consequences so awful
were incurred, seemed to me very dreadful.
The first death at home of which I was conscious, occurred at a time
when Church rates and Easter dues were enforced and augmented by a
summons. None of us were old enough to take the money to the public
office, and a little sister being ill, my mother, with reluctance, had
to go. A small crowd of householders being there on the same errand,
she was away some hours. When she returned, my sister was dead; and the
thought that the money extorted by the Church might have succoured, if
not saved the poor child, made the distress greater. My mother, always
resigned, made no religious complaint, but I remember that, in our
blind, helpless way, the Church became to us a thing of ill-omen. It was
not disbelief, it was dislike, that was taking possession of our minds.
A man in my father's employ, who was superintendent of a Congregational
Chapel School at Harborne, a village some three or four miles from
Birmingham, asked me to assist as monitor in one of his classes. I was
so young that John Collins, who preached at times in the chapel, took me
by the hand, and I walked by his side. The distance was too far for
my little feet, and in winter the snow found its way through my
shoes. Collins afterwards became known as a Chartist advocate, and
was imprisoned in Warwick Gaol with William Lovett, on the ground of
political speeches. They jointly wrote the most intelligent scheme
of Chartist advocacy made in their day. Elsewhere I have recounted
incarcerations which befel many of my friends, proving that, within the
memory of living men, the path of political and other pilgrims lay by
the castles of giants who seized them by the way.
In the Carr's Lane Sunday School I was considered an attentive,
devout-minded boy. All the hymns we sang I knew by heart, as well as
most parts of the Bible. The only classic of a semi-secular nature my
mother had in her house was Milton's "Paradise Lost"; we had besides
a few works of ponderous Nonconformist divines, of which Boston's
"Fourfold State" was one, to which I added Baxter's "Saints' Everlasting
Rest." I devoured whatever came in my way that was religious. Being
thought by this time capable of teaching the little that was deemed
necessary in an Evangelical Sunday school, I came to act as a
small teacher at the Inge Street Chapel. These people were known as
Paedo-Baptists--what that meant not a single worshipper knew. The point
of doctrine which they did understand was that children should not be
baptised when their small souls were in the jelly-fish state and knew
nothing. When their little minds had grown and had some backbone
of sense in them, and some understanding of religious things, the
congregation thought that sprinkling them into spiritual fellowship
might do them good.
Though my mother admitted that adult baptism was more reasonable, she
never listened to the doctrine of baptism by immersion. She disliked
innovation in piety. She had great tenacity in quiet belief, and thought
public immersion a demonstration--very bad bathing of its kind--and
might give you a cold.
Few young believers showed more religious zeal than I did in those days.
On Sunday morning there was a prayer on rising, and one before leaving
home. At half-past seven the teachers were invited to meet at chapel
to pray for a blessing on the work of the day. When school commenced at
nine o'clock the superintendent opened it with prayer, and closed it at
eleven with another prayer. Then came the morning service of the chapel,
at which I was present with my class. That included three prayers. At
two o'clock school began again, opening and ending with prayers by the
superintendent, or by some teacher who was asked "to engage" in it,
in his stead. At the close of the school, another prayer-meeting
of teachers was held, for a blessing on the work done that day. At
half-past six evening service took place, which included three
more prayers. Afterwards, devout members of the congregation held
a prayer-meeting on behalf of the work of the church. At all these
meetings I was present, so that, together with graces before and after
meals three times a day, and evening prayers at time of rest, heaven
heard from me pretty frequently on Sundays. Many times since I have
wondered at the great patience of God towards my unconscious presumption
in calling attention so often to my insignificant proceedings. Atonement
ought to include the sin of prayers.
Nor was this all. At chapels in Birmingham (1834), when anniversary
sermons had been preached on Sunday by some ministers of mark, there
would commonly be a public meeting on Monday at which they would speak,
and to which I would go. On Tuesday evening I went to the Cherry Street
Chapel, where the best Wesleyan preachers in the town were to be heard.
On Wednesday I often attended the Carr's Lane sermon. Thursday would
find me at the Bradford Street chapel, where there usually sat before
me a beautiful youth, whose sensuous grace of motion gave me as much
pleasure as the sermon. I remember it because it was there I first
became conscious of the charm of human strength and proportion. I had
the Greek love of beauty in boys--not in the Greek sense, of which I
knew nothing.
On Friday I generally went to the public prayer-meeting in Cherry
Street, because Wesleyans were bolder and more original in their prayers
than other Christians. In frequenting Wesleyan chapels I could not help
noticing that their great preachers were also men of great build, of
good width in the lower part of the face. Afterwards I found that their
societies elsewhere were mostly composed of persons of sensuous make.
Their preachers having strong voices, and drawing inspiration mainly
from feeling, they had boldness of speech; and those who had imagination
had a picturesque expression. Independents and Baptists often tried
to solve doubts, which showed that their convictions were tempered by
thought to some extent; but the Wesleyan knew nothing of thought--he put
doubt away. He did not recognise that the Questioning Spirit came from
the Angel of Truth. To the Wesleyans, inquiry is but the fair-seeming
disguise of the devil, and to entertain it is of the nature of sin.
These preachers, therefore, knowing nothing of the other side, were
under none of the restrictions imposed by intelligence, and they
denounced the sceptics with a force which seemed holy from its fervour,
and with a ferocity which only ignorance could inspire. So long as I
knew less than they, their influence over me continued. Yet it was not
vigorous denunciation which first allured me to them, though it long
detained me among them--it was the information I had received, that they
believed in universal salvation, which had fascination for me. There was
something generous in that idea beyond anything taught me, and my heart
cleaved to the people who thought it true. This doctrine came to me
with the force of a new idea, always enchanting to the young. Had I been
reared among Roman Catholics, I should have worshipped at the church
of _All_ Souls instead of the church of One Soul. Any Church whose name
seemed least to exclude my neighbours would have most attracted me.
All the fertility of attendance at chapels recounted did not, as the
reader will suppose, produce any weariness in me, or make me tired
of Christianity. The incessant Bible reading, hymns, prayer, and
evangelical sermons of Carr's Lane, Thorpe Street, and Inge Street did
tire me. There was no human instruction in their spiritual monotony. My
mind aches now when I think of those days. When I took courage to visit
various chapels, the variety of thought gave me ideas. The deacons of
the Inge Street Chapel bade me beware that "the rolling stone gathered
no moss."* Yet I did gather moss.
* Thomas Tusser, of the sixteenth century, to whom the
phrase is ascribed, said: "The stone that is rolling can
gather no moss."
Though I was then hardly fifteen, the other teachers would gently ask me
if I would engage in prayer in their meetings, which meant praying aloud
among them. The idea made me tremble. I was very shy, and the sound of
my own voice was as a thing apart from me, for which I was responsible,
and which I could not control. Then, what should I say? To say what
others said, to utter a few familiar scriptural phrases, diluted by
ignorant earnestness, seemed to me, even at that time, an insipid
offering of praise. Then it occurred to me to notice any newness of
thought and expression I heard in week-day discourses, and with them I
composed small prayers, which brought me some credit when I spoke them,
as they were unlike any one else's. But only once--at a Friday night's
church meeting--did I pray with natural freedom. Afterwards I avoided
requests to pray, as I thought it unreal to be thinking more of the
terms of the prayer than the simple spirit of it, and I hoped that one
day fitting language would become natural to me.
It is proof that my mind was as free from scientific inspiration as
any saint's, since I had no misgiving as to the effect of prayer. If
Christianity were preached for the first time now to well-to-do people,
able to help themselves, it would be treated like Mormonism in America;
but to the poor who have neither money nor reflection, Christianity, as
a praying power, is a very real thing. People who have no idea that help
will, or can, come in any other way, are glad to think that it may
come from heaven. It had never been explained to me that low wages
were caused by there being too many labourers in the market, or that
ill-health is caused by poor food and hard condition. It was my daily
habit to pray for things most necessary and always deficient, not for
myself alone, but for others to whom in their need I would give, at any
cost to myself--to whom, if disinterested prayers were answered, any God
of sympathy would give. Yet, though no prayer was answered, it did not
strike me that that method of help failed. Prayer was no remedy, yet I
did not see its futility. Had I spent a single hour only in "dropping
a bucket into an empty well, never drawing any water up," I should not
have continued the operation without further inquiry. It never struck me
that, if preachers could obtain material aid by prayer, or knew any form
of supplication by which it could be obtained, they might grow rich in
a day by selling copies of that priceless formula. No Church would be
needy, no believer would be poor.
In those days Christianity was a very real thing to me. What was part of
my conviction was also part of my life. So far as I had knowledge, I was
like the parson of Chaucer, who--
"Christ's love and his Apostles twelve
Taught, and _first he followed it himselve_."
This I did with a zeal of spirit which neither knew nor sought any
evasion of the letter.
At this time there came to Birmingham one Rev. Tully Cribbace, a
middle-aged man with copious dark hair, pale, thin face, and earnest,
unceasing speech. The zealous members of many congregations went to hear
him. He interested me greatly. He rebuked our Churches, as is the way
with new, wandering preachers--_without appointments_--for their want of
faith in the promise of Christ, who had said that "Whatsoever ye shall
ask in My name, that will I do." I had the belief, I had asked in His
name; but nothing came of it. With insufficient clothing I had gone out
in inclement weather to worship, or to teach, trusting in that promise
that I should be protected if no gifts of clothing came from heaven. No
gifts did come, but illness from exposure often did. In a very anxious
spirit I went to Mr. Cribbace's lodgings in Newhall Street, where he had
said inquirers might call upon him. When he asked me "what I wished to
say," I at once, not without emotion, replied, "Do you really believe,
sir, what you said? Is it true that what we ask in faith we shall
receive? I have great need to know that."
My seemingly abrupt and distrustful question was not a reflection upon
his veracity of speech. Mr. Cribbace quite understood that from my
tone of inquiry. It never struck me that his threadbare dress, his
half-famished look, and necessity of "taking up a collection" the
previous night "to pay expenses," showed that faith was not a source of
income to him. Yet he had told us that faith would be all that to us,
and with a sincerity which never seemed to me more real on any human
lips. He did not mistake the earnestness or purport of my question. He
parried with his answer with many words, and at length said that "the
promise was to be taken with the provision that what we asked for would
be given, if God thought it for our good." Christ did not think this; He
did not say it; He did not suggest it. Knowing how many generations of
men to the end of the world would imperil their lives on the truth of
His words, He could not suffer treacherous ambiguity to creep into His
meaning by omission. His words were: "If it were not so, I would have
told you." There was no double meaning in Christ, no reticence, no
half-statement, leaving the hearer to find out the half-concealed words
which contradicted the half-revealed. All this I believed of him, and
therefore I trusted Christ's sayings.
St. Chrysostom, in the prayer of the Church Litany, does not stop, but
keeps open the gap through which this evasion crawls. "Almighty God," he
says, "who dost promise that when two or three are gathered together in
Thy name, Thou wilt grant _their_ requests. Fulfil _now_, O Lord, the
desires and petitions of Thy servants, as may be most _expedient_
for them." Christ was no juggler like St. Chrysostom. A prayer is a
deposit--the money of despair paid into a bank; but no one would pay
money into a bank if they were told they would get back only as much as
was good or expedient for them.
My heart sank within me as Mr. Cribbace spoke the words of evasion.
There was nothing to be depended upon in prayer. The doctrine was a
juggle of preachers. They might not mean it or think it straight out,
but this is what it came to. Christ a second time repeated the words:
"If ye shall ask anything in My name, I will do it." However it might be
true in apostolic days, it was not true in ours, and the preachers knew
it, and did not say so. Christ might as well be dead if the promise
had passed away. Christianity had no material advantage to offer to the
believer, whatever else it may have had.
Mr. Cribbace spoke the truth now; I could see that. Never did that
morning pass from my mind. That answer did not make me disbelieve, but I
was never again the same Christian I had been before. The foundation on
which every forlorn, helpless, uninformed, trusting believer rests had
slipped--slipped away from under my feet. Whatever Christianity might
be, it was no dependence in human need. The hard, material world was not
touched by prayer. How else it could be moved I then knew not.
For myself, I did not think about the terms of the Bible, but believed
them. If there was an exception, it related to the saying of Christ that
every "idle word" men should speak should be recorded against them. If
"idle words" were to go down, then angry or wicked words would also be
recorded. At night, as I made my last prayer, I tried to think over
what I had said or done which might have been added to that serious
catalogue, and thus I suffered more than my fair share of alarm. I did
not know then that the rich have a much smaller account against them
above than the poor, and that they fare better than the indigent in
heaven, as they do on earth. A gentleman has his house and grounds, no
one he dislikes can enter his home. His neighbour cannot much annoy him;
he is at a distance from him. If he has a feud with his annoyer, he does
not meet him above once a year, perhaps at a county ball, and there he
can "cut" him; while a poor man lives in a house where he has several
fellow-lodgers, who have done him a shabby turn, and whom he meets four
or five times a day on the stairs. Evil thoughts come into his heart,
evil words escape his lips, and he himself employs a recording angel
all his time in taking down his offences, while the rich man has,
peradventure, only a single note made against his name once a week.
It was after I had been some time at the Mechanics' Institution--which
was quite a new world of thought to me--that I was asked if I would
conduct a class at the New Meeting Unitarian Sunday school. The rooms
in which the Mechanics' Institution was held were those of the Sunday
school of the Old Meeting-house, no other being obtainable. Since
anything I knew had been taught me by these generous believers, it
seemed to me natural that they should invite me to assist in one of
their schools, and that I should comply. My consenting was not because
I shared their tenets. The Rev. Mr. Crompton, whose sister subsequently
became Mrs. George Dawson, asked me after a time what my view was as to
the unity of Deity. My answer was that I believed in three Deities.
I had never thought of the possibility of all this great world being
managed by _one_ Being. My preference for the acquaintance of Unitarians
was that there was so much more to be learned among them than among any
other religious body I had known. My invitation to their school was to
teach Euclid to one class, and the simpler elements of logic to another.
These were subjects never thought of in the Evangelical Sunday schools
to which I had belonged. The need of human knowledge had become very
clear to me. I could see that young men of my age trained in Unitarian
schools were very superior to Evangelical youths, who had merely
spiritual information. Devoutness I knew to be goodness; but I could
see it was not power. My personal piety did not conceal from me my
inferiority to those better informed. This made me grateful to the
Unitarians, who cared on Sundays for human as well as spiritual things;
and I thought it a duty to help them, as far as my humble attainments
might enable me.
As soon as this was known in the Inge Street church, to which I was
considered to belong, the elders spake unto me thereupon. I was invited
to a prayer-meeting, which I readily consented to attend, when I found
that all the prayers were directed against me--were mere solicitations
to heaven to divert my heart from continuing to attend the Unitarian
schools. It would be wronging my sincere and well-meaning friends
of that time, to recount the deterrents they used and the fears they
expressed. Religion refined by human intelligence was regarded then as a
form of sin. At the end I did not dissent from their view, but I made
no promise to do what they wished. It seemed to me a sin that any youths
should be as ignorant as I had been, and I refuse to give them such
knowledge as I had acquired. In this matter of teaching I said it
was right to do as the Unitarians did, but wrong to believe as they
believed. This opinion I held all the while I was a teacher in their
Sunday school.
Had these prayerful friends of mine succeeded in their object of
persuading me from association with these larger believers, they would
have shut the door of freedom, effort and improvement for me. My lot
would have been to spend my days inviting others, with much earnestness,
to cherish like incapacity. Yet I have no word of disrespect for their
honest-hearted endeavour to advise me, as they thought, for the best.
It was the desire of knowledge which saved me from their dangerous
temptation.
The Meeting-house to whose Sunday school I went, was the one where Dr.
Priestley formerly preached. It was my duty on a Sunday to accompany my
class into chapel during the morning service. The scholars' seats were
near the gallery stairs. The other teachers sat at the end of the forms,
farthest from the stairs. I always chose the end nearest the stairs.
When invited to sit elsewhere I never explained the reason why I did
not. My reason was my belief that the wickedness of the preacher, in
addressing only one Deity, would one day be resented by heaven, and that
the roof would fall in upon the congregation. As I did not share their
faith, I thought I ought not to partake of their fate; and I thought
that by being near the stairs I could escape--if I saw anything
uncomfortable in the behaviour of the ceiling, which I frequently
watched. Being the person who would first understand what was about to
happen, I concluded that my descent would be unimpeded by the flying and
unsuspecting congregation. It seems to me only yesterday that I sat
calculating my chance of escape as Mr. Kentish's sonorous and
instructive sermon was proceeding.