its ministers (conformist and nonconformist) God’s Spirit may bend the
most stubborn will. Those ministers have a great responsibility. God’s
Spirit has been imprisoned in phrases about the duty of contentment
and the sin of drink; the stubborn will has been strengthened by the
doctor’s opinion as to the necessity of living apart from the worry of
work, and by the teaching of a political economy which assumes that
a man’s might is a man’s right. The ministers who would change the
habits of the rich will have to preach the prophet’s message about the
duty of giving and the sin of luxury, and to denounce ways of business
now pronounced to be respectable and Christian. Old teaching will
have to be put in new language, giving shown to consist in sharing,
and earning to be sacrifice. For some time it may be the glory of a
preacher to empty rather than to fill his church as he reasons about
the Judgment to come, when ‘twopence a gross to the match-makers will
be laid alongside of the twenty-two per cent. to the shareholders,’ and
penny dinners for the poor compared with the sixteen courses for the
rich--when the ‘seamy’ side of wealth and pleasures will be exposed.[3]
For some time the ministers who would change habits may fail to attract
congregations. It is not until they are able again to lift up the
God whose presence is dimly felt, and whose nature is misunderstood,
that they will succeed. In the knowledge of God is eternal life. When
all know God as the Father who requires rich and poor to be perfect
sharers in His gifts of virtue, forgiveness, and peace, then none will
be satisfied until they are at one with Him, and His habit has become
their habit.
[3] Prices paid according to the Mansion House report are: Making of
shirts, ¾_d._ each; making soldiers’ leggings, 2_s._ a dozen; making
lawn-tennis aprons, elaborately frilled, 5½_d._ a dozen to the sweater,
the actual worker getting less.
It may, however, be well here to suggest in a few words what may be
done while habits remain the same by laws or systems for the relief of
poverty.
It would be wise (1) to promote the organisation of unskilled labour.
The mass of applicants last winter belonged to this class, and in
one report it is distinctly said that the greater number were ‘born
within the demoralising influence of the intermittent and irregular
employment given by the Dock Companies, and who have never been able to
rise above their circumstances.’ It is in evidence that the wages of
these men do not exceed 12_s._ a week on an average in a year. If, by
some encouragement, these men could be induced to form a union, and if
by some pressure the Docks could be induced to employ a regular gang,
much would be gained. The very organisation would be a lesson to these
men in self-restraint and in fellowship. The substitution of regular
hands at the Docks for those who now, by waiting and scrambling,
get a daily ticket would give to a large number of men the help of
settled employment and take away the dependence on chance, which
makes many careless. Such a change might be met by a _non possumus_
of the directors, but it is forgotten that to the present system a
weightier _non possumus_ would be urged if the labourers could speak as
shareholders now speak. A possible loss of profit is not comparable to
an actual loss of life, and the labourers do lose life and more than
life as they scramble for a living that the dividend or salaries may be
increased.
(2) The helpers of the poor might be efficiently organised. The ideal
of co-operating charity has long hovered over the mischief and waste
of competing charity. Up to the present, denominational jealousy, or
the belief in crochets, or the self-will which ‘dislikes committees’
has prevented common work. If all who are serving the poor could meet
and divide--meet to learn one another’s object and divide each to
do his own work--there would be a force applied which might remove
mountains of difficulty. Abuse would be known, wise remedies would
be suggested, and foolish remedies prevented. Indirect means would
be brought to the support of direct, and those concerned to reform
the land laws, to teach the ignorant, and beautify the ugly would be
recognised as fellow-workers with those whose object is the abolition
of poverty. Money would be amply given, and the high motives of faith
and love applied to the reform of character. The ideal is in its
fulness impossible until there be a really national Church, in which
the denominations will each preach their truth, and in which ‘the
entire religious life of the nation will be expressed.’ Such a Church,
extending into every corner of the land and drawing to itself all who
love their neighbours, would realise the ideal of co-operative charity,
and so order things that no one would be in sorrow whom comfort will
relieve, and no one in pain whom help can succour.
(3) Lastly, the qualification for a seat on a board of guardians might
be removed and the position opened to working men.[4] The action of
the poor-law has a very distinct effect on poverty, and intelligent
experience is on the side of administration by rule rather than by
sentiment. In poor-law unions, where it is known that ‘indoors’ all
that is necessary for life will be provided, but that ‘outdoors’
nothing will be given, the poor feel they are under a rule which they
can understand. They are able to calculate on what will happen in a way
which is impossible when ‘giving goes by favour or desert,’ and they do
not wait and suffer by trusting to a chance. Public opinion, however,
does not support such administration, and as public opinion is largely
now that of the working men, it is necessary that these men should be
admitted on to boards of guardians, where by experience they would
learn how impossible it is to adjust relief to desert, and how much
less cruel is regular sternness than spasmodic kindness. A carefully
and wisely administered poor-law is the best weapon in hand for the
troubles to come, and such is impossible without the sympathy of all
classes.
[4] It might be necessary at the same time to abolish ‘the compounder,’
so that the tenant of every tenement might himself pay the rates and
feel their burden.
By some such means preparation may be made for dealing with poverty,
but even these would not be sufficient and would not be in order at a
moment of emergency.
If next winter there be great distress, what, it may be asked, can
possibly be done? The chief strain must undoubtedly be borne by the
poor-law, and the poor-law must follow rules--hard-and-fast lines.
The simplest rule is indoor relief for all applicants, and if for
able-bodied men the relief take the form of work which is educational,
its helpfulness will be obvious. The casual labourer, whose family is
given necessary support on condition that he enters the House, may,
during his residence, learn something of whitewashing, woodwork, and
baking, or, better yet, that habit of regularity which will do much to
keep up the home which has been kept together for him.
The poor-law can thus help during a time of pressure without any break
in its established system. If more is necessary, perhaps the next best
form of relief would be an extension of that adopted by the Whitechapel
Committee of the Mansion House Fund. By co-operation with other local
authorities the guardians might offer more work at street sweeping, or
cleaning--which in poor London is never adequately done--under such
conditions of residence or providence as would prevent immigration,
but would be free of the degrading associations of the stone-yards.
The staff at the disposal of the guardians would enable them to try
the experiment more effectively than was possible when a voluntary
committee without experience, time, or staff had to do everything.
By some such plans relief could be afforded to all who belong to what
may be called the lowest class; for the assistance of those who could
be helped by tools, emigration, or money, the great Friendly Societies,
the Society for Relief of Distress, and the Charity Organisation
Society might act in conjunction. These societies are unsectarian, are
already organised, and may be developed in power and tenderness to any
extent by the addition of members and visitors.
These means and all means which are suggested seem sadly inadequate,
and in their very setting forth provoke criticism. There are no
effectual means but those which grow in a Christian society. The
force which, without striving and crying, without even entering into
collision with it, destroyed slavery will also destroy poverty. When
rich men, knowing God, realise that life is giving, and when poor men,
also knowing God, understand that being is better than having, then
there will be none too rich to enter the kingdom of heaven, and none
too poor to enjoy God’s world.
SAMUEL A. BARNETT.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
III.
_PASSIONLESS REFORMERS._[1]
[1] Reprinted, by permission, from the _Fortnightly Review_ of August
1882.
The mention of the poor brings up to most people’s minds scenes of
suffering, want, and misery. The vast number of people who, while
poor in money, are rich in life’s good, who live quiet, thoughtful,
dignified lives, are forgotten, and the word ‘poor’ means to many
the class which we may call degraded. But the first class is by far
the largest, and the wide East End of London (which the indolent
think of only as revolting) contains at a rough calculation, say,
twenty of the worthy poor to one of the degraded poor. It is curious
how widely spread is the reverse idea. Many times have I been asked
if I am not ‘afraid to walk in East London,’ and an article on the
People’s Entertainment Society aroused, not unjustly, the anger of
the East London people at the writer’s descriptions of them and
of her fears for her personal safety while standing in the Mile
End Road! One lady, after a visit to St. George’s-in-the-East and
Stepney, expressed great astonishment to find that the people lived
in _houses_. She had expected that they abode, not exactly in tents,
but in huts, old railway carriages, caravans, or squatted against a
wall. East Londoners will be glad to know that she went back a wiser
and not a sadder woman, having learnt that riches are not necessary to
refinement, that some of the noblest characters are developed under
the enforced self-control of an income of a pound or thirty shillings
a week, that love lived side by side with poverty without thought of
exit by the window though poverty had trodden a beaten path through the
door, and that books and ideas, though not plentiful enough to become
toys, were read, loved, and lived with until they became part of the
being of their possessors.
But distinct from this class--among whom may be counted some of the
noblest examples of life--there is the class of degraded poor. Here
the want is not so much a want of money (some of the trades, such
as hawking, flower-selling, shoe-blacking, occasionally bringing in
as much as from ten to twenty shillings a day) as the want of the
common virtues of ordinary life. In many of these poor, the mere
intellectual conception of principle, as such, is absent; they have
no moral ideal; spirituality to them is as little understood in idea
as in word. Sinning (sensual low brutal sins) is the most common, the
to-be-expected course. The standard has got reversed, and those who
have turnings towards, and vague aspirations for, better things too
often find it impossible to give these feelings practical expression
in a society where wrong is upheld by public opinion; where the only
test of right is the avoidance of being ‘nabbed’ by the police; and the
highest law is that expressed by the magistrate.
How can these people be raised to enjoy spiritual life? Too often
the symptoms are mistaken for the disease. In times of illness, bad
weather, or depression of their particular trade, their poverty is the
one apparent fact about them, and tender-hearted people rush eagerly to
relieve it. That poverty was but the natural result of their sinful,
self-indulgent lives; and by it they might have learnt great lessons.
The hands of the charity-giver too often, in such cases, act as a
screen between a man and his Almighty Teacher. The physical suffering
which should have recalled to him his past carelessness or sin is thus
made of no avail. Mistaken love! gifts cannot raise these people.
Better houses, provident clubs, savings banks, &c. are all useful and
do necessary work in forming a good ground in which the seed can grow,
but thought must be given lest such efforts leave the people in the
condition of more comfortable animals. Materialism is already so strong
a force in the world that those who look deeper than the material
part of man should beware lest they accentuate what is, in whatever
form it appears--whether in the low sensuality of the degraded or the
enervating luxury of the æsthete--a circumscribed, ungodly life.
The stimulus of ‘getting on’ is also used, but it is a dangerous
influence, sapping ofttimes the one virtue which is strong and
beautiful in the lives of these people, their communistic love; and if
adopted by minds empty of principle may become a new source of wrong.
‘Getting on’ regardless of the means is but another way of going back.
Influences calling themselves religious are tried, and chiefly, all
honour be to them, by the evangelicals who, filled with horror at
what they hold to be the ultimate fate of such masses, go fearlessly
and perseveringly among them, preaching earnestly, if not always
rationally, their special tenets. Heaven, as a material place, they
still paint in the poetic terms which represented to the Oriental mind
the highest spiritual happiness, and is offered as a reward to men
imbued with the materialistic spirit of the age, and living coarse and
sensual lives. Hell, as a place of physical suffering, is so often
threatened that it becomes to many people the most likely thing that
they shall go there. The story is perfectly true of the clergyman
who, preaching to one of these oft-threatened congregations, tried to
show them that sin (according to his explanation removal from God)
was hell, and that the awfulness of hell did not consist in being a
place where the body would be uncomfortable, but in being a state from
which all good and God were absent. Walking behind some of his hearers
afterwards, he overheard, ‘Parson says there be’ant no hell, Dick.
Where be you and I to go then?’ Imagine feeling homeless because there
may be no hell!
But even if the talk of hell still awakens some fear and dread, it is
again only a material horror--it but exaggerates the importance of the
body, and projects into an after-death sphere the selfish animal life
already being led. This will not cultivate spirituality. No! religion
thus materialised is a dead-letter; it will not feed the spiritual
needs of the people. We have forgotten the words of the Divine Teacher
about casting pearls before the swine, and the swine have turned again
and rent us. As an old Cornish coachman said the other day in answer
to a question about the services of a church which we happened to be
passing, ‘Ay, yes, there’s a great advance in church activity, no
doubt of that, but little in spirituality somehow. The people’s souls
have been preached to death.’
The religionists have taught until the people know all and feel
nothing; they have talked about religion till it palls in the hearer’s
ears. They have blasphemed by asking _pity_ for our Lord’s physical
sufferings when His thoughts and being were at _one_ with God; when He
was exulting (as only noble souls can faintly conceive of exultation)
in His finished work.
Religion has been degraded by these teachers until it is difficult to
gain the people’s ears to hear it. I have often watched congregations
who, keenly interested so long as personal narratives are told, books
discussed, or allegories pictured, relax their attention so soon as
religion is reverted to, with an air which is told in every muscle of
‘knowing all that.’ The story once humorously told by the lamented
Leonard Montefiore of his experience as a Sabbath-school teacher is a
little straw showing withal the way of the stream. Feeling somewhat at
a loss as to what to teach, the class being a strange one, he thought
he would be safe in telling them a Bible story; so he began on Moses’
history, painting, as only he could paint for children’s minds, the
conditions of the times, making Egypt, with its gorgeous palaces and
age-defying temples, live again, showing the princess as a very fairy
one, and letting them see through his well-cultivated mind the very
age of Rameses. All went well, the children breathless with interest,
until he came to the familiar incident of the little ark and the crying
babe--‘Oh! ’tis only Moses again!’ cried one boy, and their interest
vanished; they half felt they had been ‘taken in,’ and for the
remainder of the lesson they gave him a bad time.
The experience of many a popular preacher would, if he confessed
honestly, be much the same as Mr. Montefiore’s. One body of
evangelists, in order to attract the people, started a band which,
playing loud, blatant marches or swinging hymn tunes, brought hundreds
of people, who sat and listened with interest to the music. On its
stopping and the preacher rising to speak, the people got up and poured
out through the large open gate. The preacher paused, and on a sign the
music recommenced and the audience sat down again. Three times was the
effort made. No! though the preacher was advertised as the converted
swindler or gipsy, or some such attractive title, it was of no avail.
The people would not listen to the ‘old, old story’--‘Bless you, my
children,’ said he, at last, sitting down in despair, ‘but I wish you’d
mend yer manners.’ It was a larger rent than their manners which wanted
mending. These people’s lives are already too full of excitement.
There is no rest nor repose in them. Dignity has given way to hurry.
To attract them to religion, further excitement is often resorted to,
and sensationalism with all its vulgarity is brought to play upon the
buried soul which we are told we should ‘possess in quietness.’
I was once present at a religious meeting where the preacher narrated,
with much gusto, accounts of sudden and unexpected deaths and the
ultimate fate of the dead ones, making the ignorant audience feel
fearful that their every breath might be their last. Finding that even
this did not sufficiently stir the people, he pleaded that God in His
mercy ‘would shut the doors of hell--aye, even with a _bang_!’--for
a few moments until he had saved the souls before him. After the word
‘bang’ he paused in an attitude of attention as if listening to hear
the slamming doors. The excitement was intense; many weak-minded people
went into hysterics and others hastened to be converted and ‘made safe’
while the hell-doors were shut. To such means have some religionists
reverted to teach the people the Gospel!
No, alas! the old channels are no longer available for the water of
life; without it the people are dead, live they ever so comfortably.
A spiritual life is the true life; as men become spiritualised, as
the moral ideal becomes the source of action, the old words and forms
may regain meaning. Phrases now to them meaning nothing or only
superstition will then express their very being; but without a belief
in the ideal they are but empty words, like ‘the sounding brass or
tinkling cymbal.’
How can these degraded people be given these priceless gifts? The
usual religious means have failed, the unusual must be tried; we must
deal with the people as individuals, being content to speak, not to
the thousands, but to ones and twos; we must become the friend, the
intimate of a few; we must lead them up through the well-known paths
of cleanliness, honesty, industry, until we attain the higher ground
whence glimpses can be caught of the brighter land, the land of
spiritual life.
Hitherto the large number of the degraded people have appalled the
philanthropist; they have been spoken of as the ‘lapsed masses’; and
efforts to reach them have not been considered successful unless
the results can be counted by hundreds. But there is the higher
authority for the individual teaching; He whom all men now delight
to honour, whose life, words, and actions are held up for imitation;
He chose twelve only to especially influence; He spent long hours in
conversation with single persons; He thought no incident too trivial
to inquire into, no petty quarrel beneath His interference. We must
know and be known, love and be loved, by our less happy brother until
he learn, through the friend whom he has seen, knowledge of God whom
he has not seen. All this must be done, and not one stone of practical
helpfulness left unturned, and
God’s passionless reformers, influences
That purify and heal and are not seen,
must be summoned also to give their aid. Among these are flowers, not
given in bundles nor loose, but daintily arranged in bouquets, brought
by the hand of the friend who will stop to carefully dispose them in
the broken jug or cracked basin, so that they should lose none of their
beauty as long as the close atmosphere allows them to live: flowers
(without text-cards) left to speak their own message, allowed to tell
the story of perfect work without speech or language; all the better
preachers because so lacking in self-consciousness.
Not second among such reformers may be placed high-class music, both
instrumental and vocal, given in schoolrooms, mission-rooms, and, if
possible, in churches where the traditions speak of worship, where
the atmosphere is prayerful, and where the arrangement of the seats
suggests kneeling; just the music without a form of service, nor
necessarily an address, only a hymn sung in unison and a blessing from
the altar at the close. To hear oratorios--_St. Paul_, the _Messiah_,
_Elijah_, Spohr’s _Last Judgment_--I have seen crowds of the lowest
class, some shoeless and bonnetless, and all having the ‘savour of the
great unwashed,’ sit in church for two hours at a time quietly and
reverently, the long lines of seated folk being now and then broken
by a kneeling figure, driven to his knees by the glorious burst of
sound which had awakened strange emotions; while the almost breathless
silence in the solos has been occasionally interrupted by a heart-drawn
sigh.
To trace the result is impossible and not advisable; but who can doubt
that in those moments, brief as they were, the curtain of the flesh was
raised and the soul became visible, perhaps by the discovery startling
its possessor into new aspirations?
One man came after such a service for help, not money help, but because
he was a drunkard, saying if ‘I could hear music like that every night
I should not need the drink.’ It was but a feeble echo of St. Paul’s
words, ‘Who can deliver me from the body of this death?’ a cry--a
prayer--which given to music might be borne by the sweet messenger
through heaven’s gate to the very throne beyond.
Then there are country visits; quiet afternoons in the country, not
‘treats’ where numbers bring wild excitement, and only the place,
not the sort of amusement, is changed; but where a few people spend
an afternoon quietly in the country, perhaps entertained at tea by a
kindly friend; parties at which there is time to _feel_ the quiet;
where the moments are not so full of external and active interests
that there is no opportunity to ‘possess the soul’; parties at which
there is a possibility of ‘hush,’ in which, helped by Nature’s ritual,
perfect in sound, scent, and colour, silent worship can go on.
For people spending long years in the close courts and streets of ugly
towns, the mere sight of nature is startling, and may awaken longings,
to themselves strange, to others indescribable, but which are the
stirrings of the life within.
The stories of great lives, and of other religions, very simply told,
as far as possible leaving out the foreign conditions which confuse
the ignorant mind, are sometimes helpful. It is generally considered
wise to hide from children and untutored people the knowledge of other
religions, for fear it should awaken doubts concerning their own;
but in those cases where their own is so very negative, it is often
helpful to learn of faiths held by the large masses of mankind. To hear
that the great fundamental ideas of all worships are similar would
perhaps suggest to the hearer that there might be more in it than ‘just
parson stuff’ and lead him to inquire further; or, if it did not do
this, it would be some gain to remove the ignorance which, more than
familiarity, breeds contempt of the despised foreigner.