The Religious Life of London
TextCHAPTER XVI.
the london ecclesia
In the independent way, Baxter, describing the Westminster Assembly of Divines, says, “I disliked many things.” After mentioning what those things were – their making too light of ordination, their unnecessary and unscriptural strictness about the qualification of church members – he adds, “I disliked also the lamentable tendency of this their way to divisions and subdivisions and the nourishing of heresies and sects.” The soul of the good man was wearied, as well it might be, with these differences, so trifling yet so fiercely discussed, with this waste of power, with this spirit of wrangling and contention, with these quarrels of Christian with Christian, when the world was only to be made better, and the true Church only to be built up, by a holy life. In our time the tendency of some minds to fly off into fresh sects is greater, perhaps, than ever. In one street you see a placard up stating that here the Gospel is preached, and nowhere else. A good man says he is weary of all this sectarianism, and at once hires a room and starts a new sect. A man’s conscience is too sensitive to allow him to worship with a one-man ministry, or with any existing denomination. He shakes his head, and mourns over their worldliness, their carnality, their want of spiritual life; but does he better it by standing aloof, by shutting himself up with a few dismal-minded people, who come with their Bibles, and see in them, not what sound scholarly criticism teaches, but that which their own morbid fancy suggests? As men of the world, these things are to be looked at practically, and by the light of common sense. Here are certain religious agencies at work – by them people are being strengthened in the Christian life, trained to Christian work, in their way promoting the welfare of man, and glorifying God. I may affect a superior piety, I may refuse to associate with common Christians, I may leave them; but what is the result? That as far as I can I put hindrances in their way. Ignorant people look up to me as a saint, and the church and the minister where I have any influence are to the extent of that influence damaged. A gentleman writes to me – “Those who now represent the London Ecclesia, in recognition of the constitution and order of its organization, are, in this metropolis, myself and three others;” and then quotes – “‘Strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.’” It is in Peckham this new religious body meets. At such meetings they do not admit strangers, in fulfilment of the ordinance of the Lord which enjoins us to assemble “ourselves together to worship God in spirit and in truth,” and commands us – “If there come any unto you and bring not this doctrine (the doctrine of the Christ), receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed.”
For the doctrines of this new sect I must refer the inquirer to a pamphlet published at 22, Paternoster Row, called “The Truth as it is in Jesus, defined in the Constitution and Order of the London Ecclesia, or immersed believers of the things of the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ.” In this pamphlet we have a summary of the faith delivered to the saints contrasted with the erroneous dogmas of popular theology, and also the apostolic rules for an ecclesiastical organization. In America, and many parts of England, Ecclesias, as they call them, exist. The document to which they subscribe their names is an exceedingly lengthy one, nor is it very intelligible. I should say that wherein they differ from other Christians in point of doctrine is this, that “everlasting life is the gracious gift of God through our Lord Jesus the Christ – the clothing upon the living soul or mortal body of life of a justified believer, with the quickening spirit or house which is from heaven, or the swallowing up of his death nature in the life of the Divine nature, so that this corruptible puts on incorruption, and this mortal puts on immortality by an impartation of spirit-life energy into every fibre of its organism, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, during the sounding of the last trumpet; and according to his type the Lord Jesus, the saint then becomes a son of God in power by a spirit of holiness, through a resurrection from among the dead, and cannot sin because he is born of God, and lives and moves and has his being in the essential goodness and peace and blessedness of the Divine existence.” Hence “the physical and moral impossibility of an immoral agency of evil exercising the attributes of an uncreated spirit – omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence – emanating from the Supreme Good, to antagonize His purposes and defeat the counsels of His will concerning the redemption of the Adamic race for the glory of His name.”
So far I quote what the followers of this new sect call their Marturion. As people generally can neither understand nor find time to read such verbose and minute confessions of faith, let me add that they believe that punishment on the finally impenitent is “the infliction on him as a living soul or mortal body of life of the many or few stripes in execution of his sentence until the appointed hour of his final doom arrives – to utterly perish in his own corruption.” Furthermore, I glean that with them the Devil simply means sin in the flesh. As the reader will have gathered from the title of their confession, they baptize with immersion; they deny, amongst other things, the common doctrine of the Trinity, or that Christ is God and had an existence independent of the Father; that the Holy Ghost operates of His own power as God; that God fashioned man after His own image; that the serpent was an incarnation of an immoral intelligence; they deny the common ideas of heaven and hell; that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses the sin of the whole world, so that infants, idiots, and believers obtain eternal salvation under the covenanted and uncovenanted mercies of God; or that the knowledge of the glory of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the seas, through the instrumentality of the orthodox ministry as ambassadors of Christ, beseeching men in His stead to be reconciled to God by believing in the Gospel, and in the Jesus they present as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that Christ is with them always, even to the end of the world. Their appeal is, however, to the Bible, and its inspiration is one of the cardinal articles of their creed.
Let me now speak of their order. They meet every Sunday for worship, and for the purpose of celebrating the Lord’s Supper, and have, besides, occasional meetings for the exposition and study of Scripture. The executive consists of a presiding elder and deacons elected by the members. A candidate for church membership is required to make a written confession, and every one joining the Ecclesia, either by immersion or by admission from other Ecclesias, is to sign the articles of constitution and order of which I have given a brief outline.
As regards the service, any brother is at liberty to take a part. Of course this is the defect of this system – as of all such, where the public are concerned. As a rule, nothing can be more inedifying or dreary or repelling than amateur preaching, and this is manifestly the weak point of all the good people who find preachers so unprofitable, and who so delight in the sound of their own voices. As evangelizing agencies they are a failure. They produce no impression on the world. Men of sense want something more thoughtful, more in accordance with the facts of life, and the young are driven to the other extreme. I believe this remark will hold good of most of these super-refined Christians. They have a wonderful command of Scripture language. They can talk by the hour, and they are intensely ignorant, as all people who shut themselves to one book and ignore God’s Word in His works must be. They may edify each other, they certainly have no power of edifying any one else.
The rules of their Sunday service are – Prayer, singing, comprehensive prayer, offered up by one of the brethren at the instance of the presiding brother on behalf of the members of the one body, the administration of the Lord’s Supper, exhortation from or exposition of the Word by any brother who wishes to respond to the invitation of the presiding brother, and the Lord’s Prayer in conclusion. After the communion, there is a box placed on the Lord’s table to receive, at the close of the service, the free-will offering of the brethren for the common good of the Ecclesia in every work of faith and labour of love. Besides, there is a monthly charge made to each of the brethren which is handed over to the brother responsible for its satisfaction on the last Sunday of every month. I find I have omitted to state that one article of faith is the restoration of the Jews, and the reign of Christ and His saints upon the earth for a thousand years. Already there has been, as was natural, division in the camp. The Christadelphians are an offshoot, as I understand. They are very adventurous people, these Christadelphians. They welcome strangers in their midst. The original Ecclesias contend for the application of the principle of separation in communion worship.
THE CHRISTADELPHIANS
The love of names is one of the strongest passions of which human nature is susceptible. In starting a newspaper, in publishing a book, in opening a shop, a good name is half the battle. Years and years ago there was an individual advertising his academy as Hogflesh. How disgusting! Respectable parents objected, and the name became Hoflesh. A little while since a poor fellow, tortured by the jeers of the world, advertised that, for the future, instead of bearing the monosyllable unpleasantly suggestive bequeathed him by less scrupulous or thicker-skinned parents, he would henceforth call himself, and be called by others, Mr. Norfolk Howard. (I should not wonder if by this time, with his new name, the man has married an heiress.) Poor Charles Lamb once wrote a farce, but as it turned out that the hero of it was Mr. Hogsflesh, good society would have none of it, and straightway it vanished into limbo. Our fathers can remember what ridicule was showered down on Dissenters by the Edinburgh Review, and what laughter there was at them all over the land when the Rev. Sydney Smith told how Mr. Shufflebottom was ordained at Bungay. It is to be feared that in the religious world names have had even a greater influence than amongst the profane. What good men have been persecuted and suffered wrong because they bore the name of a sect distasteful to an imperious majority! How the mob have thirsted for their blood! “These are Christians – away with them to the lions,” said they of old Rome. “Down with the Roundheads!” was the cry of country squire and rural parson when a few devout men such as Richard Baxter and others more or less known to fame met in a small room to keep alive the spirit of piety and prayer amongst themselves. It was the same when Wesley and Whitefield, often at the peril of life, proclaimed in parishes of England sunk in ignorance Gospel truths. There are thousands who, like the late Isaac Taylor, of Ongar, could tell how a “Church and King mob” kept them in perpetual fear, because they were “Meetingers.” There are yet parishes in Suffolk and Norfolk where to go to chapel is to insure your being despised as a “Pogram,” and cut by all the dignities of the village, even if you have the learning of a German professor and the piety of a saint. In the Babel of London, however, it is different; here, there is a rage for new names, and there are preachers and people ever ready to resort to a new name, as if novelty were a possibility in our day, after eighteen hundred years of theological hair-splitting and threshing of straw. The Christadelphians are the latest production in this way. They meet in Crowndale Hall, Crowndale Road, St. Pancras Road, every Sunday; in the morning, at eleven, for the breaking of bread, and worship; in the afternoon at three, when there is a Bible-class especially for inquirers, when opportunity to ask questions respecting the one faith is afforded; and at seven in the evening, when we are told the Word of God is expounded in harmony with the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus anointed. One of the most active teachers is Mr. Watts, late of Vernon Chapel, King’s Cross Road. The Athenæum Hall, Temple Road, Birmingham, seems to be the headquarters of Christadelphian publications. There are published there the Christadelphian Shield, the Biblical Newspaper, and the Ambassador, monthly periodicals, and other publications more expensive, and aiming to be standard works.
This, I take it, is the epitome of their faith: —
“One God, the Eternal Father, dwelling in heaven in light of glory inconceivable; one universal irradiant Spirit, by which the Father fills all and knows all, and when He wills, performs all; one Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, begotten by the Spirit of the Virgin Mary, put to death for sin, raised from the dead for righteousness, and exalted to the heavens as a Mediator between God and man; man a creature of the ground, under sentence of death because of sin, which is his great enemy – the devil; deliverance from death by resurrection, and bodily glorification at the coming of Christ and inheritance of the kingdom of God, offered to all men on condition – 1, of believing the glad tidings of Christ’s accomplishment at His first appearing, and of His coming manifestations in the earth as King of Israel and Ruler of the whole earth at the setting up of the kingdom of God; 2, of being immersed in water for His name; and 3, of continuing in well-doing to the end of this probationary career.”
This is the teaching of the new sect. They rejoice in their emancipation from the bondage of orthodoxy. Mr. Watts says: – “My past nineteen years of religious life I regard as so much lost time taken up with the fables and follies of man’s fleshly mind, systematized upon a pagan theology; and although I honestly thought myself right, and strove hard to lead others, yet I am now fully persuaded it was all done in ignorance of the true knowledge of God.” He tells us the Evangelical party in the Church or Dissent do not know the Gospel. “Nothing can be more clear,” he says, “than that this (their doctrine of the resurrection) first item of the Gospel as preached by Jesus and the Apostles does not form any part of the teaching either of those who pretend to be the successors of the Apostles, or the sects and parties of Dissenters who have imbibed their system of theology from the same polluted stream.” The doctrine of the soul’s essential and inherent immortality is a pagan myth. For the heathen there is no future life; for them what Macbeth wished has come to pass, and life is indeed
“The be all and the end all here.”
The mere belief of this doctrine relieves orthodoxy of the perplexing problem, What becomes of the heathen? and of course strikes at the foundation of the doctrine of purgatory. Yet we are not to suppose there will be no punishment for the wicked and the disobedient; they shall beaten with stripes, and then, according to the righteous Judge, enter upon that second death state, from which there shall be no resurrection – an opinion the direct opposite of that of Origen and Archbishop Tillotson, first promulgated in modern times by Dr. Rust, Bishop of Dromore. The Calvinistic formula is also, in the opinion of the Christadelphians, a mere travesty of the subject of the atonement. As to man in general, he is born to die. God treated the first man federally. He put him on probation, and in him all his successors stood or fell. We never read of immortal, never-dying souls in Scripture, and to foist such a meaning on 2 Cor. v. 8, as that it proves the existence of a separate state of disembodied spirits, is to handle the Word of God deceitfully. Once Mr. Watts believed in a kingdom in the sky, a throne in the heart, a seed of Israel, a New Jerusalem and promised land, all mystically referring to something at present existing in the so-called Christian Church. He does so no longer. His eyes are opened, the light is come, and he and his friends, chiefly juveniles, rejoice; and if they have the true light, who shall say they have no reason to rejoice? Farewell, writes Mr. Watts, in a poem considered poetically of doubtful merit —
“Farewell to the false, I welcome the true,
And begin the year with Christ anew.”
This reference to poetry reminds me that the Christadelphians have a hymn-book of their own, to frame which appears to have been a matter of no little trouble. With the hymns used by Christian churches in general they find much fault. They require something manly and robust, whereas the churches of all denominations rejoice in what is sentimental, and their songs of praise and devotion are described as “oceans of slops.” Whether the Christadelphians have much improved theirs, I leave the reader to judge. As a specimen I quote one verse from Montgomery’s well-known poem, “The Grave.” In their hymn-book I find it printed thus. I quote from memory: —
“There is a calm for saints who weep,
A rest for weary Weyyah found;
In Christ secure they sweetly sleep,
Hid in the ground.”
At present the Christadelphians do not seem very flourishing. In their little room – which is miscalled a hall – there are about forty of them of an evening, quibbling earnestly, and to the best of their ability.
In taking leave of the Christadelphians, let me refer to a passage in our Church history. It is notorious that the celebrated Henry Dodwell, Camden Professor of History in the University of Oxford, in order to exalt the power and dignity of the priesthood, endeavoured to prove that the doctrine of the soul’s natural mortality was the true and original doctrine, and that immortality was only at baptism conferred upon the soul by the gift of God through the hands of one set of regularly ordained clergy.
CHAPTER XVII.
some minor sects
There are two classes of people of whom a wise man should be wary. He who comes to you in a jolly, confidential sort of way, and tells you that you know that he never pretended to be much of a saint, and he whose saintship is so sublimated that he finds all denominations in grievous error, and must form a new sect for himself. It is to be feared that such men are in a very bad way, and have most erroneous conceptions of God and His dealings. It is certainly remarkable that they are chiefly to be met with in the most ignorant sections of professors – amongst the
“Petulant capricious sects,
The maggots of corrupted texts.”
Any liberal culture seems fatal to them. As soon as they manage to pronounce their h’s and to talk grammatically, they can worship with other Christians, can rejoice in the magnificent inheritance which has come down to the Church of our day from the sanctified intellect of former times – can derive edification from an educated ministry – possibly may sing the songs of a Keble, and may be able occasionally to join in a form of prayer which was found adequate for the expression of the spirituality of a Martyn or a Wilberforce.
THE PECULIAR PEOPLE
In London, if we are to believe what we hear in some quarters, the real seat of true and undefiled religion is to be found amongst the small body who meet in an obscure street leading out of the Walworth Road. The neighbourhood is not a very attractive one, and is inhabited chiefly by retail tradesmen, who must find it in these hard times a struggle to make both ends meet. You must look sharp to find the place of which you are in search. In a row of shops opposite Lion Street you will see one in the day-time with the shutters up. On the shutters you will see one or two little bills headed Christian Meeting House, containing an invitation, as follows: – “Dear friend, you are affectionately invited to the following meetings.” Then you have a list of the times of meeting, an announcement that all seats are free, and the text, “For both He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all one, for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren.” If you enter, you see a few benches in what is meant for a shop, and a few more in the room behind. Where the window is there is a desk, at which the chairman or conductor of the meeting sits. By the door is a little box into which the offerings of the faithful are poured. As a rule the place, which cannot hold more than forty or fifty adults comfortably, is well filled by very poor people. It is the only place of meeting of the sect in London. They are numerous, so they say, in Essex, Sussex, and Surrey, but in the Walworth Road they are few and not popular with their neighbours, who possibly know no better. Now and then up comes a street-boy and makes a hideous noise through the keyhole; but the Peculiar People have got used to that. I should fancy with the keen-witted artisans of London they make but little way. The reader may remember that a little while ago some of these people figured in a police-court. They had refused all proper medical aid for a child, and it died in consequence. They have great faith, these poor people. They have great scorn also for people more benighted than themselves. They speak contemptuously of the time when they knew no better, when they trusted in forms, and attended on a one-man ministry, and were humbled and dejected on account of sin, and called themselves miserable sinners, and confessed that they had done the things they ought not to have done, and left undone those things which they should have done. All that sort of feeling and talk is all wicked in their opinion; for theirs is the glorious liberty of the sons of God and joint heirs of heaven. Religion has no difficulties for them, no mysteries; nothing beyond the reach of man, heights to which he cannot ascend, depths which he cannot fathom. To come together and declare their unspeakable joy is all that they have to do. For this the beginner is as competent as the grey-headed believer, the sister as well as the brother, the ignorant man as well as he who has had a college education. Triumphantly they ask —
“When the Lord would speak,
Think ye he needs the Latin or the Greek?”
Of course not. And thus in turn they all preach and pray with a zeal which literally is not according to knowledge. If a man cannot say he lives without sin, they set him down as no Christian. At one time they held that as the Spirit of God only teaches one thing, that if true so-called Christians disagreed in Church matters, one of them was a child of the devil; and as they were not at all backward in applying this doctrine, they were split up as fast as they gathered together. They have a great deal of the Methodist leaven amongst them, and at prayer, or while speaking is going on, express their feelings in a way which, to a stranger, may be considered unnecessarily noisy. Their leaders seem to be a small tradesman in the Southwark Road, and a little, pale, wizened female, whose utterances and prayers are of the most extraordinary character – a sort of sing-song, now rising and then dropping, in a way which in a secular personage and on secular subjects would be ludicrous in the extreme. But they profess to have no leaders. They have elders, who are simply elders. They become such by lapse of time alone.
As to their organization, I much question if they have any. One brother assured me there were rules, but as the price was fourpence, and as trade was slack, he had been unable to procure a copy of them. In answer to our appeal, an elder said there were such, but they were under lock and key, and he could not find them for us; whereupon another brother reached out a New Testament, with the assurance that there, and there alone, were their rules. What information we could get we had to fish out by questions. As to Church membership, they have no preliminaries. All who come are of the Church; those whom the Lord calls will join them, and if the Lord has not called them they will soon drop away. They consider that every service is the sacrament, and they have no special form. In the same way they have no baptism – infant or adult, creeds, confessions of faith, forms of prayer, ministers set apart and trained to preach; – all these things they have done away with. By communion as brother with brother, and sister with sister, they can cherish the true Christian life. If one of them lack anything, let him or her ask of God. How familiarly and at times irreverently they pray, the reader can well imagine. It is difficult to say common things with propriety, says the old Latin proverb. It is more difficult to introduce them into prayer, to inform the Lord that Brother Jones would have been present had he not been unable to come, and to explain the peculiarly distressing circumstances of Sister Smith. For acting on the world outside, they have great faith in out-of-door preaching, an exercise in which they take great delight, and for which they consider themselves peculiarly qualified. They forget, as one has wittily remarked, that if the Lord does not need man’s learning, still less does He need man’s ignorance. As to the financial question, they get over that without much difficulty. Their expenses are next to nothing, and each brother or sister is ever ready to contribute his mite. They have nothing to pay for pew-rents; they have no minister’s salary to collect; they have no educational institutions to support; the rent of a room in a back street is no serious item; and as to church furniture, that is easily supplied – a door-mat, a dirty desk, half a dozen old forms, a second-hand Bible or so, a greasy hymn-book that has done duty many times, and they have all that they require. It is not for me to judge my brother. To show him how fatal is his fluency of tongue, how presumptuous his hope, how unfounded his joy, is a thankless task. All I would suggest is, that he should exercise a little of that charity of which he stands in need himself, and not fancy that to him has been revealed what men of greater piety and higher intellect have been unable to discover. Another objection may also be taken. In an ancient town, with a fine old castle, many, many years ago, there was an attempt to form a volunteer regiment. Unfortunately all wanted to be officers; the consequence was, the regiment came to grief. The Peculiar People have too many officers. Where every one has an equal right to teach, the number of the taught will be small indeed.