THE INDEPENDENT RELIGIOUS REFORMERS
The Theists in London are, we are told, very numerous, and yet, till about ten years since, no steps had been taken by them to provide public buildings in which to assemble for instruction and conversation, and no church had been opened in which they could invite their friends to hear the principles of Theism explained and defended. In order to supply that want, Dr. Perfitt, a layman, resolved upon renting South Place Chapel, Finsbury Square, for the purpose of delivering lectures and discourses upon various religious topics. In 1858 the Society of Independent Religious Reformers was organized out of the hearers he had thus gathered around him. A committee was elected, rules were passed, and the following were declared to be the objects of the Society: —
1. To secure the association and co-operation of all persons who are desirous of cultivating the religious sentiment in a manner essentially free from the evil spirit of creed, from the intolerance of sectarianism, and the leaven of priestcraft; of those persons who respect the authority of reason, and reverentially accept the decrees of conscience.
2. To discover and methodize truths connected either with the laws of nature, the progress of thought, or the lives of good men in all ages and countries, so that they may be rendered of practical value as guides to a healthy, moral, and manly life.
3. To assist, as in the performance of a religious duty, in the regeneration of society by co-operating with every organized body whose aim is to abolish superstition, ignorance, drunkenness, political injustice, or any other of the numerous evils which now afflict the community.
To carry out these ideas the noble painting gallery, built by the late Sir Benjamin West, in Newman Street, Oxford Street, was procured and fitted up. This large hall seats 1500 persons. A good organ was erected, and schools and a library were talked of. At this place, on Sunday mornings, the public are treated to what is called a free religious service, based upon the great facts and principles of intellectual Theism. In the evenings popular lectures are delivered bearing upon science, history, or religious free thought. In both cases Dr. Perfitt is the orator. On many occasions the Doctor has appeared in public. Under not very pleasant circumstances – for he had little support – he appealed to Finsbury, but in vain, to send him into Parliament. It is clear, then, what of success the man has accomplished, or of good the man has done, has been chiefly in connexion with the Society of Independent Reformers. We were told in 1863 “the church in Newman Street is but the forerunner of hundreds which will rest upon the same foundation.” Dr. Perfitt has been more than seven years in Newman Street, and quite twenty at his work. A man can do a great deal in such a space of time if he has a fluent tongue, as is abundantly illustrated, not to go beyond our age, in the careers of Father Mathew, Father Ignatius, John B. Gough, or Mr. Spurgeon. Irving did not last so long, yet, metaphorically speaking, he managed to set the Thames on fire. It is clear Dr. Perfitt has peculiarly advantageous conditions under which to work. In the first place, as his aim is —
“To serve the truth where’er ’tis found,
On Christian or on heathen ground” —
he has a wide field over which his oratory may range. It cannot all be barren from Dan to Beersheba. In the second place, according to the Independent Religious Reformers, the great want of our times is such as they are. “It is well known,” they tell us, “that although the orthodox religious establishments are earnestly supported, they cannot gain the hearts of the people. The intelligence of England has outgrown the old creeds and formulas. Theism is secretly approved by thousands.” The time, then, is ripe for such a mission as Dr. Perfitt proposes. The hour has come, and he is the man. It is not in his negative and critical aspect that he is to be judged. In the position in that respect he has assumed there is no novelty. Unfortunately, the Church of England, like all established churches, more or less lays itself open to the most irreverent criticism. The new wine cannot be put in the old bottles. We can quite agree with him that “the majority of the clergy have no just conception of what, according to the nature of things, they are called upon to do;” that St. Paul would find himself sadly out of place were he called upon to preach to the congregation of a fashionable suburban church; and that there would indeed be a flutter and commotion raised were “the Archbishop of Canterbury, cutting himself adrift from the level of Belgravia, to stand out before men denouncing woe upon the butterflies of fashion and the Dundrearies of Parliament as Jesus denounced the Scribes and Pharisees of old.” But the saying these things does not constitute a man the founder of a new and better sect. Mr. Froude tells us “the clergyman of the nineteenth century subscribes the Thirty-nine Articles with a smile as might have been worn by Samson when his Philistine mistress bound his arms with the cords and withs.” It is scarcely possible to write a bitterer thing of the clergy, yet Mr. Froude is not, so far as we are aware, an Independent Religious Reformer. Even of the Church of which such hard things may be said, and justly said, we may argue that its theory of the identity of Church and State is a noble one, and that the dream of such men as “the judicious Hooker,” of Coleridge, of Dr. Arnold, is that of all who, in stately cathedral or humble conventicle, pray Sunday after Sunday to the common Father, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done upon earth as it is in heaven.” Man is a religious animal; the heart is true to its old instincts. There is no peace for his soul, no rest for the sole of the foot, no shelter for him in the storm, no brightness in the cloud, no glory in the sun, no hope in life, no life in death, unless he can believe, adore, and love. But we have forgotten Dr. Perfitt. Well, we need be in no hurry. If you go to Newman Street you will find very few people there by eleven. The exclusively religious service, as one of the hearers informed us it was, generally commences at a quarter past, where in the large hall about a hundred may be collected together, the majority, of course, males, chiefly of the lower section, I should imagine, of the middle class. There is music; then the Doctor reads a chapter of the Bible, and takes it to pieces; then there is more music; then a prayer, and a half-hour’s sermon, from a regular text, according to the fashion of the orthodox, but generally coming to a very unorthodox conclusion. Indeed, the former come off hardly at the Doctor’s hands. He demolished them as easily as if they were so many men of straw; President Edwards, Richard Baxter, Mr. Spurgeon, the apostles, and their great Teacher, all look very small by the side of the clear, logical, learned, fluent, sarcastic, infallible Doctor, who is the heir of all the ages under the sun; who talks of Zoroaster, and Vedas, and Shasters; who is as familiar with Brahma and Buddha as if he had assisted at their birth, and who knows what’s o’clock in Sanscrit better than you or I, my good sir, in ordinary English. After the sermon comes the collection, and the congregational dinner-hour, for the sale of the beer for which, the neighbouring publics open just as the Independent Religious Reformers, exhausted by the Doctor’s omniscience, require the refreshing fluid.
“Hae, sirs!” said an elderly female in a remote part of Scotland, as for the first time she saw a black man; “hae, sirs, what canna be done for the penny!” Assuredly some such feeling must be entertained by the listener who for the first time hears Dr. Perfitt in his rostrum in Cambridge Hall. For a pound a year you may have this pleasure every Sunday, and become one of the Independent Reformers. What more can man desire?
SOUTH PLACE, FINSBURY SQUARE
The religion of humanity has been for a time dominant in South Place, Finsbury Square. Its oldest and original teacher in connexion with the place was the late W. Johnson Fox, M.P., a popular writer and eloquent orator, who did much in his day and generation on behalf of freedom in trade, in politics, and religion, and did it well. Nor did he labour in vain as regards himself. Born in an humble position, he became a student at Homerton College and an orthodox Dissenter. In a little while he joined the Unitarians, and then left them for a freer and fuller religious creed and form of worship. He had many friends. His letters, signed “Publicola,” in the Weekly Dispatch, were the delight of the working classes; and his Anti-Corn-law orations charmed all, and there were tens of thousands who had the privilege of listening to them. He was returned to Parliament by the electors of Oldham, and a monument erected to his memory there still perpetuates his name. He died at a ripe old age, ever having preserved the character of an independent and honourable man. As a religious teacher he was no extraordinary success. It was rarely indeed that South Place was very full. Of course, the hearers were the very élite of the human race. Wherever you go – especially among sects not particularly orthodox or popular – the men and women with whom you come in contact are no ordinary men and women. By a happy dispensation of Providence they fail to see themselves as others see them, and are as firmly convinced of their own intellectual superiority over a benighted British public as they are of the truth of their principles and of their ultimate success.
“There is a religion of humanity,” said Mr. Fox, “though not enshrined in articles and creeds, though it is not to be read merely in sacred books, and yet it may be read in all wherever they have anything in them of truth and moral beauty, – a religion of humanity which goes deeper than all because it belongs to the essentials of our moral and intellectual constitution, and not to mere external accidents, the proof of which is not in historical agreement or metaphysical deduction, but in our own conscience and consciousness, – a religion of humanity which unites and blends all other religions, and makes one the men whose hearts are sincere, and whose characters are true, and good, and harmonious, whatever may be the deductions of their minds or their external profession, – a religion of humanity which cannot perish in the overthrow of altars or the fall of temples, which survives them all, and which, were every derived form of religion obliterated from the face of the earth, would recreate religion as the spring recreates the fruits and flowers of the soul, bidding it bloom again in beauty, bear again its rich fruits of utility, and fashion for itself such forms and modes of expression as may best agree with the progressive condition of mankind.”
It was in accordance with these ideas that the Sunday morning services in South Place were carried on.
After Mr. Fox came Mr. Ierson, and a nearer approximation to regular Unitarianism. But the place did not prosper; there were far too many empty benches. He was succeeded by a gentleman formerly a Baptist minister, but who had outgrown his sect, and for a little while there was harmony and progress. Again there was an interregnum. “Seekers are,” said old Oliver Cromwell, “next best to finders.” In London, especially in these unsettled days of free inquiry, are many such, and to such the pulpit of South Place was freely offered. I do not fancy as a rule seekers are good preachers. To say anything effectually you must have something to say. To make others weep you must weep yourself. With mere negations you can never sway the minds or influence the lives of men. In orthodox places of worship there is often much of dreariness. The clergyman whose heart is not in his work is a miserable spectacle for gods and men, but the dreariness of heterodoxy is infinitely greater; and of all things under the sun the most miserable in the clerical way is the sight of a would-be philosopher feebly diluting or expanding, as the case may be, windy platitudes or transcendental moonshine. Under such an infliction, as it may well be imagined, South Place did not flourish greatly. At length, in due course, a man appeared to continue the work which Mr. Fox had originated. His name is Mr. M. D. Conway. I believe he is of American origin, and evidently under him the cause is in a prosperous state. When I say prosperous, the term is not to be understood as it would be in orthodox circles. The latter class of religionists, when they say that a place is prosperous imply by the use of such language that a place of worship is well filled; that men are turned from sin to holiness, from serving the devil to serving God, that the place is a centre of religious life and activity, and that all, young and old, rich and poor, are to the best of their power and means co-operating in Christian work. Prosperity in this sense cannot be predicated of South Place. Its doors are only opened once a week. There is no religious, or educational, or philanthropical agency connected with the chapel; but there are more attendants than there were, and that encourages Mr. Conway and his friends. Indeed, there is a talk amongst them of establishing a Sunday-school. At the same time it seems to me that the class of people who go to South Place are not socially or intellectually what they were in Mr. Fox’s time – when the Cortaulds would come up all the way from Braintree to hear Mr. Fox, when City lawyers like the late Mr. Ashurst, and City magnates like the late Mr. Dillon, were amongst the audience; when on a Sunday morning might be seen there such men as Sir J. Bowring, or Macready, or Charles Dickens, and others equally well known to fame. They left when Mr. Fox left. I believe Mr. P. Taylor, M.P., still keeps up a connexion, more or less fitful and uncertain, with the place. Sir Sydney Waterlow also still retains a couple of sittings, but he is rarely there. Nevertheless, the congregation has greatly increased; the chapel is quite three parts full. Still they use the little book of hymns and anthems selected by Mr. Fox; and the musical part of the service, always a great matter at South Place, is as well conducted and as attractive as ever.
Mr. Conway is a very advanced thinker. The character of his preaching and praying is purely theistic. He wars with dogmas in every form. It may be a wing to-day, a fetter to-morrow. For him there are no sacred books, or rather he places them all on an equality. For his motto he goes to India, and quotes the Brahma Somaj. In this respect he is a true follower of the late Mr. Fox, whose fascinating oratory owed very little of its charm to that which orthodox Unitarians or orthodox Christians hold highest and holiest; whose aim was more to pull down than to build up, and who had a greater faculty for the exposition of Christian fallacies than for the enunciating of truths and principles needful to humanity in its hour of temptation, distress, danger, or death. Few have his exquisite humour, his power of sarcasm, his acquaintance with modern literature, his copious command of polished language, his expressive yet calm delivery, his gentleness almost as touching as that of woman; but that which was lacking in him often made men his inferiors in intellect, his superiors in the art of arousing the spiritually dead, or in giving to the moral wastes in our midst the vigour, the beauty, the fertility of life.
THE SECULARISTS
It is a sign of the times when Infidelity visits the workshop or the factory, and challenges the admiration of the men in fustian – the men whose hard labours and horny hands have helped to make England what it is, and who in an increasing ratio are making their influence felt on the Exchange where capital seeks investment, in the ancient halls where the teachers of the next generation are training, in the study of the political philosopher, in Parliaments where practical people assemble to legislate after their necessarily imperfect fashion for the general weal. It is said of Sir Godfrey Kneller that he was deeply shocked at hearing a common labourer invoking imprecations on his own head. Some such feeling must be entertained by the old-fashioned, scholarly sceptics at all times met with in highly intellectual communities. Religion was a good thing for the poor; it taught them to know their place, to be humble, industrious, and not to murmur when deprived by human agency of the rights to which all are born, or when by the same agency they were made to bear innumerable wrongs. For such religion was intended; and for such considerations it was right and proper that it should be accepted by society – sanctioned by the law – its ministers rewarded and salaried by the State. It was under the influence of some such feeling that Napoleon the Great is reported to have said, if there were no God, it would be necessary to invent one; and in a proportionate manner do the philosophers feel alarm and indignation when the working man, for whom such trouble has been taken, – for whom religion has, as it were, been discovered, – for whom an Establishment, the most richly endowed with this world’s goods in Christendom, rejoices to call itself the poor man’s Church, – turns round, and, in his coarse, rough way, says, “Ladies and gentlemen, I am much obliged to you. I see your little game. Pray don’t take any trouble on my account. Please to leave me to go to the bad in my own way. Give me the right to the free inquiry you claim for yourselves, and don’t quarrel with me on account of its results.” Really it seems to me the Secularist has the best of it. I may regret his conclusions. I cannot blame his independent spirit.
Of the men who talk in this way it may be said, at any rate as regards the metropolis, Robert Dale Owen was the teacher and apostle. Owen was the first to proclaim to the masses that there was no such thing as moral responsibility; that a man’s character was formed for him partly by nature at his birth, and partly by the external influences to which he was exposed. As man, there was for him no choice of right or wrong. Any religion, and emphatically that of Christ, which proceeds upon the supposition that man can lay hold of eternal life, can accept the offer of God’s mercy, can believe and live, is false and to be rejected with disdain. Owen was a man of blameless life – a man who made great sacrifices of wealth, and time, and labour, on account of his ideas. As his last apologist has well stated, “his condemnation of religion was not the result of libertine excesses, nor of a philosophical conceit, but followed honestly from the shallow theory he had adopted.” Amongst the poor, ignorant, superficial denizens of our crowded cities he was hailed as the regenerator of manhood, and made many converts. Nor are they to be blamed. Owen met with an attentive hearing from such as Brougham and Bentham, Earls Liverpool and Aberdeen, Jefferson and Van Buren, the Duke of Kent and the King of Prussia; actually, we believe, he was presented at Court. It is true in his old age he became a believer in spirits, after all, and was buried in the little churchyard of Newton, Montgomeryshire, in the sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection to eternal life; but by that time the truth or falsehood he had proclaimed had sunk into many minds, had been re-uttered by many tongues, had been commended to the working classes by no less a master of language and argument than George Jacob Holyoake. Certainly, in the hands of the latter, Owenism, under its new name of Secularism, lost none of its power. The master was apt to be egotistic – dogmatic – much given to repetition – very diffuse. Mr. Holyoake’s enemies cannot conscientiously say he is that. His friends, many of them the cleverest of London men, claim for him talents of no common order. A shop in Fleet Street was opened – the Reasoner was established – and Mr. Holyoake went all over the land to emancipate the human mind, spell-bound by priestcraft, and to roll back the double night of ages and of ignorance. In a little while he retired from business, the shop in Fleet Street was shut up, the Reasoner reasoned no more – Mr. Holyoake ceased perambulating. Still we have a genuine Apostolical succession: Mr. Bradlaugh takes up the wondrous tale, and the National Reformer records the triumphs of his cause. According to him, all is prosperous. Hope paints a glorious future – when man’s
“Regenerate soul from crime
Shall yet be drawn,
And Reason on this mortal clime
Immortal dawn.”
Yet what is the fact? The National Reformer costs 10l. a week, and it does not pay. Its readers tell us their name is legion; yet it does not pay. At any rate, it is constantly appealing to its public for support. In every workshop or factory, in all our great hives of intelligence and life, the Secularists boast their thousands. All the intelligent operative manhood of England is, according to their own account, theirs; yet their organ – the child of a giant – is very weak on its legs, and very short of wind.
The headquarters of the Secularists is Cleveland Street, a street lying in that mass of pauperism at the rear of Tottenham Court Road Chapel. In that street there is a hall, originally erected, I believe, by Owen himself. At any rate, it is the resort of the illuminated to whom his philosophy has opened up a new moral world, – which, as regards appearances, is little better than the benighted Egypt out of which they have departed. Here you will find no free Gospel. The Secularists are determined to make the best of this world. If you wish to enter, you must pay; if you wish to show your gentility and sit near the lecturer, you must pay twopence more. Previous to the lecturer commencing, a boy goes up and down the room selling copies of the National Reformer, and a table at one end is devoted to the sale of publications of a similar character.
Cleveland Hall, every Sunday evening, then, is devoted to what are called Popular Free-thought Lectures. The doors open at seven, the lectures commence at half-past. The programme for the month of August, which I have now before me, will give the reader an idea of what is meant by free thought: —
“On Sunday evening, August 2, Mr. Charles Watts – An Impartial Estimate of the Life and Teachings of the Founder of Christianity; on Sunday evening, August 9, Iconoclast (Mr. Bradlaugh) – Capital and Labour, and Trades’ Unions; on Sunday evening, August 16, Mrs. Harriet Law – The Teachings and Philosophy of J. S. Mill, Esq.; on Sunday evening, August 23, Mrs. Harriet Law – The Late Robert Owen: a Tribute to His Memory, Drawn from a Comparison of Present Institutions and their Effects, with those Advocated by that Eminent Philanthropist; on Sunday evening, August 30, Mrs. Harriet Law, an Appeal to Women to Consider their Interests in Connexion with the Social, Political, and Theological Aspects of the Times.”
Let me add, discussions are invited at the close of each lecture, and that, as may be anticipated, after a discussion the combatants remain of the same opinion. Nevertheless, the Secularists enjoy these discussions immensely – and no wonder, as on all such occasions they form not a majority merely, but almost the entire assembly. It is not often they find their match. Men who can meet them on a common platform are rare. A sincere Christian is shocked and pained, and loses his temper. Every cock can crow on his own dunghill; and at Cleveland Hall the Secularists have it all their own way, and are merry at the expense of their opponents. Nor is this all; they often indulge in a style of abuse which sounds even to tolerant ears uncommonly like blasphemy. In fact, they are often needlessly antagonistic, and vulgar, and coarse.
I have said Cleveland Hall is the headquarters of the society, for there is a society of which Mr. Charles Watts is secretary. There is another hall in the City Road; lectures are also, I believe, delivered elsewhere in London on a Sunday evening, and there are at least four or five secular societies. In the summer time they have open-air lectures on a Sunday morning in different parts of London. When the writer has been at Cleveland Hall, the room has generally been half full of respectable and sharp working men, all very positive and enthusiastic. There are not many women present, but, of course, there is the irrepressible baby. The lecturers are generally the persons whose names I have already given, who occasionally vary the scene of their labours by provincial engagements. Their work, whatever it may be, has now been going on for some years. This argues, on their part, some special fitness, and an adaptation of what they say and think to the class to whom they appeal. In this respect they set many of the clergy a good example. The people at Cleveland Hall do not call out for quarter of an hour lectures. Nor do they require anything in the way of music, or choral performances, or floral decorations, or altar lights, to make the service interesting. For children, whether they go to church or chapel, you must provide shows. For men nothing more is needed than logic and the human voice.