the children. It is almost impossible to cure; it is, comparatively
speaking, easy to prevent. And so, if we are going to make any real
effort towards removing these two national disgraces and dangers, it
must be in the treatment of our children. Even then you have fatal
odds against you, for heredity marks down many for its own prey, and
it will take many generations before heredity will be conquered.
But environment may be improved, and I contend that every man and
woman, who tries to train their children properly, creates the needed
environment. If only we could reform the parents there would be very
little difficulty about the children, and I believe that the truest
measure of all work like ours is the care that parents take about their
children. While the mother is actually nursing her child she will make
for it every possible sacrifice, but, alas! as the well-springs of
nourishment dry up, the well-springs of love dry up too, and you will
oftentimes wonder why Almighty God gave such mothers so many children.
Poverty and uncertainty as to wages have a good deal to do with the
parents’ difficulty in disciplining their children. I wonder if
well-to-do people ever consider these mothers. They have no servants;
however ill they feel there is no one to do anything for the children
but themselves; headaches, lassitude, even the knowledge of impending
sickness, is for them no excuse. They have no strengthening diet, no
power to satisfy the common wants of their children in food or clothes;
no baize doors between the nursery and the bedroom. I speak advisedly
of the mother alone as the trainer of her children, because the father,
in work, has no time, out of work no heart. My wonder is, not that
they slave so little for their children, but rather that they slave so
much. Religion alone can mend all this--I have seen it work miracles
in homes--the belief that the child is God’s gift, that He is its
Father, that He will give her strength for her every need, and that the
prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread,” God will answer. My truest
joy at Landport were these converted homes, but even these homes, and
far more the homes of the careless, necessitate something more for the
children. Religion quickens within the mother the power of creating a
true environment round the child; but, alas! after ten years there are
many parents untouched by religion in our parish. Of course we have
done what we could with our Sunday School, though there is no greater
mistake than to suppose that the Sunday School can in any way take the
place of the home school. Our Sunday School has never attracted very
many children. My desire has been to train a few children well, and the
preserving of discipline, and insistence on outward reverence, in a
parish like ours made our Sunday School unpopular; a mother once said
to one of my sisters, “I shan’t let my boys go to your school any
longer, because kneeling wears out the knees of their trousers.”
A child, who had lately joined, said to another sister, “I am leaving
your school for the one round the corner, because you go to your treat
in the train, and the other school goes in brakes.”
I do not suppose that we have ever had more than five or six hundred
children in it, but thanks to a most excellent staff of teachers,
many of whom have been with us all the ten years, our children are
in perfect order, and answer extraordinarily well. We have always
thought, too, that it was far more important for a child to come
to the Children’s Celebration at ten o’clock than to the afternoon
instruction. Indeed we very soon discovered that this ten o’clock
celebration was the most important religious factor in the whole
parish. It has been maintained oftentimes with great personal
difficulty; I have often myself had to say four Masses on Sunday,
and, until the Rev. John Elwes came to help us, one of us had always
had to say two; but we felt that no amount of inconvenience could be
a possible excuse for depriving our children of this most necessary
factor in their religious education. Assuredly we have been well repaid.
I bless God for many things at S. Agatha’s, but for none more than the
dignity of the younger acolytes, dear Barratt’s earnest leading of the
children, the singing of the older girls who composed the choir, and
the reverent behaviour of all the children, even the infants taking
part in every word that was said or sung, thus enabling us to make
the children’s service their chief education in all religion. If this
service should ever be given up, I should indeed fear for the future
of S. Agatha’s. With us the Sunday School has the merit of being
perfectly voluntary, parents, as a rule, taking no trouble about making
their children come; as long as they get rid of them they do not care
whether they go to Sunday School or not, and, unless you have to punish
a child, the parent often remains to you an unknown quantity.
All this made us very anxious to acquire Day Schools, and, like
everything else, God sent them to us, when we were ready for them. One
little corner of our district had been cut off, because the mother
parish wished to preserve her schools, built in the year 1823. In 1889
they had fallen into such decay that they were practically unfit for
use, and were condemned by the Education Department. The then vicar
offered them to the Board. I saw at once that God meant me to take
them. I called all our people together, and told them that the real
difficulty was money, for I should have to lay out £1000 on the schools
immediately. I knew, of course, that they could subscribe no money,
but we have ever found at S. Agatha’s that praying people are more
potential than giving people. They decided that they would devote one
day a month to perpetual prayer, beginning at half-past five in the
morning and continuing till ten at night. We have kept that custom up
ever since. It is an extraordinary sight to see poor ignorant people
coming in for their half-hour’s prayer, each one responsible for their
own time, and, if they cannot attend, sending someone else, so that
the chain of intercession is never broken. Sometimes in the afternoon,
when the women have leisure, or in the evening, when work is all over,
there are fifty to a hundred people all praying silently for what we
need. The Blessed Sacrament is reserved all day, and the poorest bring
their flowers to deck the altar. No spot in the world will ever be so
beautiful to me as that little flower-covered altar. At any rate the
intercession worked the first miracle for us, for in just over two
months we had collected the £1000 we needed for the first outlay upon
the schools, and the getting of this money was all the more wonderful
because there was such a strong feeling in the diocese, and elsewhere,
against us. I insert a letter received from the Bishop of Guildford,
himself a most ardent supporter of Church Schools, which you will see
was not intended for publication, but which his Lordship has very
kindly allowed me to publish, as a proof of how really miraculous it
was that we got that sum.
“THE CLOSE, WINCHESTER,
“_October 30, 1889_.
“DEAR MR. DOLLING,--I have not answered your letter
hurriedly because I wanted to think over it before I did so. The
pleasantest plan for me personally would be simply to accede
to your request, but I cannot reconcile it to my conscience to
do so. It may perhaps already have struck you that I have not
responded to appeals for pecuniary help for your mission. This
has not arisen from inadvertence. I am always ready and glad to
do all I can as regards Episcopal or Archidiaconal ministrations
in your parish, and I can honestly say that the confirmation
which I held in your chapel was one of intense interest to me.
I can also perfectly honestly wish you heartily ‘God speed’ in
your work, and honour you for your work’s sake. But I do long
that the views which you hold were not of the very extreme
character which, judging from utterances which I occasionally
see in print, they are; and that the ritual which you think it
your duty to carry out were of a simpler character than it is,
and used in accordance with the wishes of our own Bishop, who
certainly does not make a man an offender for a word. I need not
enlarge upon this point, but, feeling it as I do very strongly,
I could not conscientiously _help forward_ a scheme which
would bring the children of the district referred to under your
direct church teaching. It seems to me a wholly different thing
for me in my position as Suffragan to come and minister in Holy
things as a Bishop to those who are, as a fact, under your
spiritual charge, and by my own free act and deed to endeavour
to bring your influence to bear upon children who are not as
yet, at any rate ecclesiastically, a portion of your flock. I
hope you will give me credit for thus acting from conscientious
motives, and believe that I can still quite truly and
unfeignedly pray that a blessing may rest upon your labours, and
that all our mistakes and errors may be pardoned and over-ruled
for good.
“I am, dear Mr. Dolling,
“Always yours very truly,
“GEORGE HENRY GUILDFORD.
“REV. R. DOLLING.”
In all, the schools have cost me over £3000; but they have a splendid
record, and I do not grudge one single penny. In 1889 the average
attendance was 350, the Government grant £276; in 1895 the average
attendance was 519, the grant £476. Let me say, at once, this was due
to our teachers. Never have any schools had such devoted teachers,
their one object in view not the gaining of the grant, but the moral
character of the child.
[Illustration: OUR BAND.]
The ease with which my sisters and others have been able to mould our
younger girls into their present excellent state, is very largely due
to the splendid foundation laid by Mrs. Berrow, the mistress of the
girls. Her indefatigable labours during many years in which she has
managed the girls’ school, are beyond all praise. Over and over again,
when in utter amazement I have said to a girl, “Who warned you of that
danger which you have been able to avoid? who put before you that path
of duty which you have had the grace to follow?” the answer was, “Oh,
Mrs. Berrow, of course!” The “of course” is so characteristic, because
it just shows how perfectly naturally the most difficult duty was
performed. I would that I had words to express the gratitude I feel to
this most Christian lady.
When our boys’ school had reached its lowest ebb, discipline and
teaching having been twice condemned by the Inspector, I asked my
dear friend Saunders, whose father was a very valued friend of mine,
to lead a forlorn hope in the boys’ school. The ardour with which he
commenced his work has never for a single moment slackened. He found
the school the worst in the town. I leave it under his management, one
of the very best. But I do not value his teaching powers so much as his
influence over the boys’ futures. He has created a school library and
a school band. He has managed for three years the best continuation
school in the whole district. The Bible-class, into which he gathers on
Sunday the lads who have left him, is one of the most valuable helps
to religion in the whole parish. It would vex them if I were to tell
you of the extraordinary sacrifices they have made for S. Agatha’s
schools; but, as I believe God gave me the schools, so I believe He
gave me my head teachers, and the rest of the school staff; and I am
confident, as long as the schools remain under their management, there
will ever be an influence amongst those of the flock most dear to our
Lord, such as He Himself desires His little ones should be affected by.
No one can measure what England owes to the Board Schools; it would
have been impossible for the Church to have kept pace with the increase
of population, and with the new thought, which has not yet been half
realised, that every child has a right to the best education. But there
is one truth that I am sure we shall all, sooner or later, hold--it is
not the business of the State to teach religion. If some means could
be devised by which each denomination might appoint teachers to give
the religious instruction, the education difficulty might be solved.
But we are told this is impossible--an impossibility, I fear, arising
largely from the laziness and jealousy of those who ought to be the
religious teachers. If religion is taught in a school it is the most
vital of all subjects; it needs the most skilful handling, the most
God-sought and God-given tact, and yet it is just the one subject upon
which no enquiry can be made as to the fitness of its teachers. In
fact, it is possible for a child to be taught by teachers of every, and
of no, religious opinions. Then there is no such thing as unsectarian
religion: the very words are contradictory. Every teacher has his own
bias, and he would be more than human if he did not convey this to the
children. People think that this does not matter, because children
are too young to understand, or because such teaching can do them no
harm. But it is far easier to teach a dogmatic truth than to make a
child understand, or gain any benefit from, a whole chapter of the
Bible. To hold up Christ as an example, and His words as precepts,
and not to teach the child the method by which Christ conveys to him
the power of copying the example, is a cruel wrong. I believe even in
many Church Schools there has been a great want of definite teaching.
We have taught far too much, yet far too little--far too much about
the Old Testament and the services of the Church; far too little about
those saving truths which even quite young children can apprehend,
and assimilate to themselves. Just before Christmas we were asked to
take in a little soldier from Aldershot, a lad of about sixteen. His
father and mother had died when he was four. An uncle, who played a
whistle outside public-houses in the southern parts of Scotland, had
adopted him. When he came to us he said that, until he had joined the
army, six months before, he had never slept three consecutive nights in
the same place; indeed, most nights a doorstep or a hayrick had been
his bed. It is almost impossible to conceive a worse bringing up. On
Sunday he went to church with our own boys; and Conibeere, who looks
after them, remarked, on coming out of church, “I think he must be a
Roman Catholic, because he was so reverent.” Alas! soldiers, sailors,
and tramps coming from all parts of England are seldom reverent. That
Sunday night he told me all about himself. It was almost impossible to
believe that so pure a soul should have matured under circumstances so
adverse, but he had a talisman that had never failed him; he had never
forgotten the few soul-saving truths he had learned as a little child.
Bishop Virtue, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portsmouth, very kindly
confirmed him, and now the little man is on his way to India. But he
wrote us before he sailed that he would never forget S. Agatha’s, for
there he had first learned what a home was. He knew nothing about
the Bible, Old or New Testament; but he knew what repentance meant,
what prayer meant, what communion meant. He knew it so thoroughly
that neither the temptations of the street nor of the barrack-room
had robbed him of it. Surely that is what we ought to teach every
child. Let us recognise that some children are born religious--I mean
they love the Bible and the lives of the saints; they have a power
of expressing much fervour--I do not know that they are always the
best children--and they will certainly acquire all the unnecessary
part of religion. But every child has the capacity for acquiring the
necessary part, and surely it is the duty of the Church to see that
all her children have the chance of its acquirement. Every energy is
now being put forth by the Church to retain, or even to increase, her
schools. Thirty years ago she had almost the whole of the schools of
England in her hands. Was she true to her enormous chance? Did she turn
out Churchmen and Churchwomen? Are the Sacraments frequented to-day
by those whom she taught? In all honesty let us face this question,
Why this anxiety to-day? and let us earnestly pray Almighty God that
it means her united effort to teach her children as they ought to be
taught, refusing to accept diocesan schemes that insist on an amount
of teaching altogether unnecessary and superfluous; and, above all, the
getting rid of that hideous system of examinations which ruins not only
religious, but all secular, education.
Measure the increase in good education which has taken place since the
passing of the Education Act, and every true Englishman will surely
rejoice. Recognise that all that the State ought to do is to teach
secular education. If the Church, by possessing schools, can help
the State in this matter, and therefore get a better opportunity of
teaching her own children, let her rejoice, but let her recognise her
twofold responsibility, that the religious education must be ample
and complete, the secular education the best that can be given. If
she fails in either of these two duties she has no right to remain
a teacher, and it would be fatal to her duty if, for the sake of
gaining a little money, and thereby lessening the continual burden of
subscription, she either gives an inferior education, or has inferior
buildings, unsanitary or such like, which the State should not for
a moment permit, or else allows some outside control to interfere
with the religion which she is bound to teach, or with her method of
appointing teachers. It is easy to accept unfettered money from a
Conservative Government, but no party remains in power very long in
England, and the taking of money now may possibly be an excuse for
another Government to enforce its own terms. I had the honour to serve
on the School Board in Portsmouth for three years. I know the zeal
and energy with which its members manage the schools in the town. I
am grateful beyond expression for the benefits they have conferred
on education in Portsmouth. I confess that their energy has been
the incentive to all the Church Schools to progress, for they set a
standard of education which is extremely useful to the whole district.
But I, for one, would far rather have seen them merely imparting
secular knowledge. I believe that, if we knew that no religious
teaching was given, every Dissenting minister and every Church
clergyman would throw far greater energy into the work of teaching
religion to their own children. I believe that oftentimes the knowledge
that religion is taught is a salve to the conscience, an excuse not to
realise our duty towards our children far more than we do. It is an
awful thought, that of a Godless England. It is a thought that should
strike terror into the conscience of every single man, whether he be
cleric or laic; yet I believe that there are thousands of children
to-day who, if a year after they leave school were questioned about
their religion, would, as far as actual knowledge went, be discovered
to be Godless.
My service on the Board, I think, taught me another benefit in Church
Schools. The daily visit of the clergy and other Church workers is not
only an enormous encouragement to the teachers, but creates altogether
a more humane atmosphere. It tends, too, to more softened ways and
more refined manners on the part of the children, and it gives often
a greater opportunity for getting work for children and keeping a
hold over them when they have left school. I think that there were a
few members of the Board who tried to do something in this way, but
the most of us were far too busy. I am told that under the London
School Board this omission is corrected by a system of managers,
who are in touch both with the children and the teachers. I fear in
the Portsmouth Board we should have been jealous of delegating any
authority. I believe, too, that if there had been a more personal
touch between the members of the Board and the teachers, several
little difficulties, which have lately arisen, would have disappeared.
Indeed, I blame myself very much that during my three years’ service
I did not get more personally acquainted with the teachers, though I
threw open my gymnasium twice a week to the younger ones, and many
joined our debating society. The increase of population in Portsmouth
has been so abnormal, that the expenditure of the Board in creating
places and plant has necessarily been very great, and consideration
for the ratepayers’ pockets is the reason why our salaries do not
compare favourably with those in like-sized towns. And there were some
other little vexatious arrangements, which I believe more personal
intercourse between the Board and the teachers could easily have
re-arranged.
I say all this because I am conscious that the two difficulties which
Englishmen must face with regard to the Board School question are
these--first, that the State cannot, and therefore ought not to be
expected to, teach religion; and secondly, that a danger exists in all
elected bodies that they may become merely machines, and so create in
those they employ a merely mechanical habit of performing their duties.
VI.
=Our Penitentiary Work.=
When society is brave enough to say a “fallen man,” as well as a
“fallen woman,” the so-called fallen woman will soon disappear. Alas!
we talk so glibly of young men’s “wild oats,” oftentimes speaking of
sin as a necessity, as if to do wrong in this direction, being human,
is natural, that it has become almost recognised that the so-called
fallen woman is a necessity. This kind of thing was said over and
over again to me by clergymen and others, when I talked to them about
the state in which I found my parish, until I was forced to recognise
that I must look at this question from two points of view--first, the
reclaiming of the sinner; secondly, the removing from amongst my own
children the awful danger of infection. I want you to pray, before you
read this chapter, that no word of mine may hurt or wound you, as I am
praying God the Holy Ghost to give me grace to write it bravely and
wisely.
As far as the reformation of this sinner goes, it can only be effected
by the loving compassion of a good woman, and God sent me in the hour
of my need a woman who practically worked miracles. She is dead now, so
I may call her by her name, Mrs. Waldron, a sister of Prebendary Grier.
She lived in one of the little cottages which now form the site of the
new church, weak in body, yet of such an untiring courage and energy
that I have often known her for more than twelve hours at a stretch
without food or rest, labouring for some poor soul. I gave her _carte
blanche_ when she came, asking no questions, discussing no case
unless she desired to discuss it with me, but I know that in a short
time more than a hundred poor girls had made their determination for a
better life under her influence. And it was no wonder, for harder than
marble would have been the heart that resisted her love. In the lives
of the saints one reads of those who, nursing the lepers, rejoiced to
kiss their sores. That is a physical action, which I suppose anybody
could accustom themselves to do. But to touch with your soul a leprous
soul, to bear with the blasphemy, the vulgarity, of those who have lost
all shame, and perhaps never have had any, to bear with it continually
day by day, to have your kindness and hospitality repaid by having all
your things stolen, and yourself flouted to your face, mocked at and
derided; to find that poor one sick and tired just at the moment when
change is possible, to bring her home again without one word or even
look of reproach, to do it all without any excitement, any telling of
it to anyone else, loving the most hideous for the dear Lord’s sake,
treating them in the dear Lord’s own way, no wonder the success was
phenomenal. And joined to this an even harder work, to persuade parents
to allow their children, their girls of ten and eleven and twelve, to
go into preventive homes. For when we first went to Landport that was
the only solution of the difficulty possible. We discovered many, many
little children from whom no secret of sin was hidden; and we could
not remove in a moment their awful instructors, who, directly they
were old enough, and that age came sometimes as young as thirteen or
fourteen, would give them an easy opportunity of turning instruction
into practice. So, though I have never myself been in favour of taking
children from their own homes, there was nothing else that we could do.
I determined that by God’s help I would not only endeavour to get the
girls out of the bad houses, but the houses out of the parish. The
present law is so very difficult to put in force, that I felt that,
even if I was successful in invoking the law in a few instances, I
should create great prejudice against the work, and effect practically
very little reform. So by degrees, with the help of my sister and some
of our most earnest mothers, I got a complete list of all the bad
houses in the parish. I wrote to all the owners, taking for granted
that they did not know the bad purposes for which their houses were
being used. I have written these letters week after week, in the hope
of shaming them by my persistency or worrying them into taking some
steps. After a time, I generally wrote to the Superintendent of Police,
and he very kindly did all he could. If there were little children in
the house, Mr. Silk, the School Board officer, was also an efficient
helper. Then at last the owner, wearied or ashamed, as a rule gave
notice to his tenant, and thus in detail, and one by one, our plague
spots were removed, until just before I left the parish I bought for
£250 the only bad house remaining. The poor woman, now in a lunatic
asylum, was her own landlady, and that was why it was so difficult to
move it.
You will be quite sure that every effort was made by dealing personally
with all the inmates, for when Mrs. Waldron left us, one of my sisters
undertook this special work. It would be unbecoming of me to speak of
her tact and tenderness; nay, by reason of the salutary rule we had of
never talking over cases, I hardly know of them myself; all that I do
know is that no poor girl ever left my parish without having the truest
womanly love offered her--love which, after seeking her in the worst
streets of the town, often found her in the wards of the hospital or
poor-house; love which she had refused in the day of her strength, and
which now triumphed in the day of her weakness.