Chapter VII: Introduction (6)

The obstacle to Church reform is not the doubt as to its possibility or difference of opinion as to its method. The real obstacle is the general indifference to religion. The zeal or enthusiasm which passes as religious is most often roused by opinions, and, as Wesley said, ‘Zeal for opinions is not zeal for religion.’ In the noise of controversy and in the hurry of trade the very nature of religion seems forgotten. The arguments of theologians and the sensationalism of revivalists are discussed as religious problems, in which it is well to show an intelligent interest, but men do not feel that their daily lives, the lives of the poor, and the hope of England depend on their relation with God. If it were really seen that it is on religion, that is, on keeping up the communication between the little good within and the great good without, between man’s broken light and God’s full light, that trade, happiness, and life depend; if it were seen that England cannot be virtuous till Englishmen drink of the Fountain of virtue, then Church reform would be undertaken without delay. No difficulty would seem too great to prevent the vast resources of the Church being brought to the service of religion, and the highest intelligence of statesmen would be devoted to making perfect the organisation for spiritualising life.

It may not be in the power of those of less intelligence to tell the method of reform, but all who are weary at the thought of the present condition of the people may refresh themselves with hopes. Those who reflect on the cheerless faces so common to East London, the dull, weary round of the workers, their deathful life and their hopeless death, are borne down by the thought that each lives in the parish of some Church minister. They weary themselves wondering how the servant provided by the State might better serve the needs of the poor, how the great Church organisation might eradicate unfit houses, bring wealth to the relief of poverty, and make the means of joy more equal. They ask themselves in vain how the house of God might be a house for God’s children. Unable to answer, they may at any rate gladden themselves with an ideal.

The People’s Church then may be so close to the best thought of the nation that it will reflect that thought in every parish, as the ministers who have gathered light from the greatest teachers of science and history direct that light on to the lives of the hardest workers. It may be so near to every individual that its buildings will be the meeting-place of all, the scene of the Holy Communion, where men will learn to know and love God and man. It may so bring together rich and poor, the cultured and the ignorant, that the efforts and the money now fitfully wasted by rival philanthropists will be directed to the effectual remedy of ignorance and poverty. The ministers of the People’s Church may be near to God and near to men, a means by which the avenues to the highest are kept open, the spiritual teachers who, by their lives and doctrines, touch the divine within the human, and make all men respond to the call of right and duty, and settle life on eternal calm.

The conception of such a Church is possible, though it is not possible to say how it may be accomplished; or how these competing claims of creeds and rituals to be religion may be satisfied; or how the rights of men and the rights of their little systems may be sunk in the thought of duty. The organisation of the Church of the future is not now to be sketched. The first step which it is for this generation to take has been made clear. All progress has been through the people, and the Church must be in fact, as in name, the people’s Church. There must be a parish parliament and not a parish despot, and the government of the Church must be by the people as well as for the people.

This is the first step, and what will follow is in God’s counsels. It is the people who govern the nation and decide on peace or war. They have moulded the machinery by which justice is administered and freedom secured; the people must also mould the machinery by which right will be taught and life spiritualised. If they are excluded from exercising their will upon the Establishment, nothing can hinder them from destroying it. God speaks in every age; He has not forgotten to be gracious, and the people are now His instruments, as in old days were kings. It is by them His will is being done, and in that belief the people may be trusted so to order the Church that by its means the Holy Spirit will once more show among men the fruit of virtue and honesty.

SAMUEL A. BARNETT.

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X.

_WHAT HAS THE CHARITY ORGANISATION SOCIETY TO DO WITH SOCIAL REFORM?_[1]

[1] A Paper read at a meeting of members of the Charity Organisation
Society, held at the Kensington Vestry Hall on February 28, 1884.

I feel not a little shy at speaking to so large and thoughtful a body of workers; and I should not have ventured to accede to Mr. Loch’s proposal had I not felt myself to be an old friend of the Charity Organisation Society. I cannot say that I have ever seen its founder, neither was I present at its birth, but I was at its christening, when some long names were given; and later, at its confirmation, I heard the duty undertaken, and indeed the declaration made, that the main object of its existence was ‘to improve the condition of the poor.’

I am very proud of our friend; but, being a Charity Organiser, I can see his faults, of which, to my mind, one of the chief is that he has forgotten his baptism! I do not mean his name, but some of the promises then made for him. Far from forgetting his name, he thinks rather too much of it, having fallen into the aristocratic fault of believing a name more important than a character; and inasmuch as ‘on what we dwell that we become,’ he has run the danger--and we will not say wholly escaped it--of sacrificing the one to the other. He has, in short, unkindly ignored the thoughts and wishes of some of his god-parents. Have not his friends a right to be aggrieved?

We hear nowadays much about Social Reform, which, being interpreted, means, I suppose, the removal of certain conditions in and around society which stand in the way of man’s progress towards perfection.

Every human being, surely, ought to be able to make a free choice for good or evil. It is, no doubt, possible for each of us to choose the higher or the lower life ‘in that state of life in which it has pleased God to call us’; but the condition of some states keeps the higher life very low.

The moralists may tell about the educating influence of resistance to temptations; but are not temptations strong enough in themselves without being buttressed by conditions? Even the most ingenious of Eve’s apologists has never ventured to advance the view that she was hungry.

It should be a matter of man’s free will alone that determines which life he lives. Social conditions, over which as an individual he has no power, now too often determine for him, for there are forces in and around society which crush down the individual will of man and which bind his limbs so tightly that not only his course, but too often his gait, has been determined for him.

1. Great Wealth.--Can a man live the highest life whose abundance puts out of daily practice the priceless privilege of personal sacrifice--from whom effort is undemanded--whose floors are padded should he chance to fall--whose walls, golden though they be, are dividing barriers, high and strong, between him and his fellow-men?

2. Great Poverty.--Can a man live the highest life when the preservation of his stunted, unlovely body occupies all his thoughts--from whose life pleasure is crushed out by ever-wearying work--to whom thought is impossible (the brain needs food and leisure to set it going)--to whom knowledge, one of the prophets of the nineteenth century and a revealer of the Most High, is denied?

3. Unequal Laws.--Is a man wholly unfettered in his choice of life when his country’s laws have allowed him to become a victim to unsanitary dwellings--when they permit him to sin, by providing that his wrong should (on himself) be resultless--when its ministers of justice, interpreting its laws, declare in the strong tones of action that bread-stealing is more wicked than wife-beating? Or is the highest life made more possible by laws that allow so much of our great mother earth--God-blessed for the use of mankind--to be reserved for the exclusive benefit and enjoyment of the upper classes?

4. Division of Classes.--Love is the strongest force in the universe. At least the ancient teachers thought so when they renamed God, and left Him with the Christian name of Love. But love, a certain kind of love for which no other makes up, becomes impossible by the great division between classes. We cannot love what we do not know; it is as the American said, ‘Oh, Jones! I hate that fellow.’ ‘Hate him?’ asked his friend; ‘why, I did not think you knew him.’ ‘No, I don’t,’ was the reply; ‘if I did, I guess I shouldn’t hate him.’ The division between classes is a wrong to both classes. The poor lose something by their ignorance of the grace, the culture, and the wider interests of the rich; the rich lose far more by their ignorance of the patience, the meekness, the unself-consciousness, the self-sacrifice, and the great strong hopefulness of the poor.

5. Besides these conditions, others exist, forming barriers and hindering a man from leading his true life, such as want of light, space, and beauty. The sun-rising is to a large number of town livers only an intimation--and rarely an agreeable one--that they must get out of bed. It is but the lighting of a lamp, and not, as Blake said, the rising of an innumerable company of the heavenly host consecrating the day to duty by crying, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.’ And even if there is the space to see the sky, there is still the absence of leisure to watch its unhurried changes. We all haste and rush, we hurry and drive. The very parlance of the day adopts new words to express dispatch, and one dear old body whom I know, who is sixty years old and of appropriate proportions, constantly informs me that she ‘flew’ hither and thither--a method of locomotion which, in earlier years, I remember, she reserved strictly for future and more heavenly purposes.

But enough has been said of the ills of society. We all know them. The hearts of some of us have been very sick for many a weary year. The hands of those who have sat on the height and watched the progress of the battle have become tired, and have been upheld only by faith and prayer. But reinforcements have arrived; friends for the poor have arisen; from all sides press forward willing volunteers, who say, ‘Put us in our place. Let us do something. How can we break down these barriers--unloose the golden fetters of these imprisoned souls--or relieve the burdened shoulders of those pale dungeoned creatures? How are we to make strength out of union--to right wrongs, and give to every man the light by which to see to make his choice?’

If one is to carry heavy weights one must have trained muscles. If one is to reply one must know. The Charity Organisation Society is the watchman set on a hill, who by his very constitution has special facilities for giving an answer--and a wise one--to these questions. He has exceptional opportunities for knowing both the classes in which social reform is most needed, and knows them under the best conditions. The rich come to him with ‘minds on helpfulness bent’; the poor come at a time when their hearts are sore, when their lives are troubled, when their sorrows have made them ‘unmanfully meek,’ and they are willing to lay their lives and circumstances bare to inquiring eyes. For fifteen years the one class has been meeting the other in the thirty-nine district offices provided by the Society, and some 230,000 families have asked for succour when they have been either morally, physically, or circumstantially sick. Last year alone 14,132_l._ passed through the hands of this Director of Charity, and at this moment there are more than 2,000 men and women actively engaged in his work, while he records the names of nearly 3,000 subscribers whose money is an earnest of sympathy and potential working power.

But magnificent as this sounds, and _is_ (for there can be no doubt about it that our friend is a very fine fellow), still there are flaws both in his past and present constitution and character which make his work less effective than it otherwise might be. Briefly, his heart is not large enough for his body--his circulation is slow--his movements are ponderous--and, being slightly hard of hearing, he does not take in things until some little time after other people have done so. Then, too, he is somewhat a creature of habit; his mind does not readily assimilate new ideas, and he does rather an unusual number of things because ‘he always has done so.’ His _raison d’être_, his whole work, is founded on the first word of his name--Charity--(which the new translators tell us we may call love, if we like), and yet he is sometimes curiously persistent in ‘thinking evil,’ and he hardly, I fear, ‘hopeth all things,’ nor yet lives up to his standard of ‘never failing’; or what does 463 cases thrown aside as ‘undeserving and ineligible’ mean in this last month’s returns of work?

Then he has an odd way of talking about his work. I have often seen ordinary, commonplace, every-day sort of people begin to listen to him with keen interest, but gradually drop eyelids and lose sympathy as he threads his way through investigations, organisations, registrations, co-operations, applications, administrations, each and all done by multiplication!

This is a pity, for of course the every-day sort of people are most wanted to help him. He cannot only work with people who have been cradled in blue-books and nourished with statistics, nor yet with those who are like the man who ‘did not care to look unless he could see the future.’

Some people dislike this faulty creature very much. They see no good in him, and call him all sorts of hard names; but then one is apt to find faults in large people more unbearable than in little ones. Clumsy people, if big, are so very clumsy; they tumble over the furniture, and kick the pet dog, and if they do chance to tread on toes it hurts so very much! and that is partly the case with him. But he has virtues, and plenty of them; he is not afraid of work, and he really cares for the poor; he is exceedingly honourable about money; he is methodical and business-like; he is thorough in all he does, thinking no detail beneath his notice; he is accurate about his facts and moderate in his statements; he is most even in his temper (though personally I should like him better if I could once see him in a rage), and he is patient and painstaking; he is humble, though conceited, too; that is, with the sort of conceit that one sometimes meets with in swimmers who know that they do the stroke ‘quite perfectly’ but yet are somewhat afraid of deep water; fearful, not of their breath or strength failing, but of the cramp, or jelly-fish, or other unknown dangers of the deep.

But that he is a fine being we shall all agree, with a full, rich nature; and if he could or would add to his many virtues that of adaptability; if he would become a little more elastic in his fingers as well as in his body; if he would take digitalis, in the shape of hearty hand-shaking, to improve his circulation; if he would determine every week to do some new thing, ‘just for a change’; if he would, having been awakened by all his baptismal names, remind himself--just while he was dressing--of the main object of his existence; if he would not be above using an ear-trumpet, particularly on those occasions when he leaves his papers and goes to ‘sup sorrow with the poor’--if he would do some or all of these things we might yet see his strong arm foremost among those who remove barriers to let in light; we might yet hear his strong voice giving out with no uncertain sound the charitable--the loving--answer to some of these soul-stirring questions.

For instance (and you will perhaps pardon me for carrying you into Committee for a few minutes), here is the case of Williamson, a man of forty, with his wife, three living children, and the recollections of the funerals of two. He is a casual dock-labourer, working when he can get work, and then only if his bad leg allows him. His wife asks for a loan to enable her to stock more fully her street-hawking basket. The father is described as a ‘quiet, steady man.’ The mother is a ‘decent woman.’ The decision of the Committee is ‘ineligible,’ and Williamson goes away a sadder and no wiser man.

And why is the case ineligible? Because the Committee think that money will do the family no good. The people are below the stage when money help can be useful. They have drifted till they are, in fact, ineligible for what the Society, materialistic as the age which counts money the greatest good, feels itself alone able to give, and by the decision of the Committee they are allowed to drift still. And yet not one of us could say that this family did not need help. On the case-paper, in the very middle of the first page, stand two _helpable_ facts. Williamson is only casually employed by a great permanent company. Williamson is in no club.

Charitable _effort_ needs organising even more than charitable _relief_. Some people fear the devil more than they love God; or, in other words, they fear to do harm more than they love to do good. Seeing that money unwisely bestowed does great harm, they have hastened to organise it, neglecting meanwhile to organise effort, which for the creation of good is stronger than money for the creation of evil.

Williamson, with his rough, decent wife and his three unkempt children, is, let us grant, ineligible for charitable relief, but not for charitable effort. That might be directed to induce him to belong to a club, to take intelligent interest in the actions of his country, to realise, helped by Sir Walter Scott or Tourgénief, the thoughts of other nations, the character of other centuries or classes. Let effort be used to help him to accept the strength which union gives to resistance, be it to personal temptation or to public wrong.

And could not charitable effort undertake that Mrs. Williamson’s tiring day be less degradingly tiring? Could it not provide a cosy parlour-club, or a chair more tempting than an upright Windsor, in which darning and mending would be possible? And perhaps that dull task would not be so wholly distasteful if enlivened by a sweet voice, who would read ideas into the stitches, or sing patches into rhythmical relations. Such effort would soon make a difference in the unkempt appearance of the little Williamsons, and maybe evenings given up to those who cannot ‘ask us again’ or Sunday-planned walks would not be entirely wasted efforts, and if multiplied to any extent might have a perceptible influence on our country’s conscience, though it might perhaps reduce our country’s revenue from excise and customs.

Charitable effort, too, might make gutter-mud and street-fights less attractive to John, Sarah, and Jane by providing them with playgrounds as well as something--and perhaps young philanthropists will add somebody--to play with. And could not charitable effort take the children for a few weeks out of the one room to learn ideals of cleanliness and to have some fun which is not naughty in the cottage homes of our country villages?

And wisely directed effort might, too, aim at abolishing the system of casual labour at the docks--a system which keeps thousands of half-fed men hanging each morning about the dock gates because on one day in ten all may be wanted--a system which degrades men by forcing them to scramble for their work and almost enjoy the chance on which homes and existence depend. Such a system is not to be justified on the plea of profit or on the fear of strikes. But, granted that even my friend’s great strength is powerless before Giant Dock Companies, yet is not this an occasion when, if he could do nothing else, he might use strong language, to which it is often noticed that neither animals nor companies are wholly indifferent?

So much for Williamson. But Committee is not over yet, and here are the papers of Mrs. Canty--56 years of age--a poor shrivelled old woman, ugly and uninteresting in appearance, unable to work from a dreadful complaint in her face, living with her two children, the only survivors out of a goodly family of six. The children, a boy of 20 and a girl of 16, are earning 24_s._ between them, and the Committee decide that the case is one ‘not requiring relief.’ Perhaps not--in money, but is cold, hard money the only relief that the Charity Organisation Society has to offer? Surely charitable effort could be organised for the benefit of this family. Some one could be sent with time and tact who would help the poor widow to other pleasures than those of regretful memories; for we read she was ‘well-to-do in her husband’s lifetime.’ Some one who would make bright half-hours for her and take her mind from dwelling on her poor painful face, guiding her to draw strength from the thought of other lives and hope out of greater interests.

Is not some one’s carriage at the Society’s disposal in which she may be taken--she is too weak to walk and has not been out for two and a half years--to catch a glimpse of the bright spring flowers and the new-budding trees?

For the boy too. He may be in a good place and earn enough for bare necessities; but he has not the means of getting books, the opportunities for joining a gymnasium, nor the knowledge of the club, where he could be re-created and form friendships. These may all be within reach, and would certainly be for the relief of such a lad’s hard and monotonous life; but the Charity Organisation Society, declaring that he does ‘not require relief,’ lets him go without an effort to give him what would influence his life far more radically than the asked for half-a-crown a week.

And for the girl also. She may be training for good work, but she must often be tired of the drudgery of her five years’ nursing done without the help of a competent doctor--for the old lady ‘doctors of herself’--and done, too, between the intervals allowed by her business of widow-cap making. Does she require no relief which the Charity Organisation Society can give--the relief which comes through books and patience-preaching pictures, the relief which follows the introduction to the singing class leading to the choir, or which comes through the hand-grasp of the wiser friend when the road is unusually drear?

Relief through such agencies would often make later relief unnecessary--relief which we _dare_ not withhold, and yet ache as we silently give it to lock hospitals, reformatories, and penitentiaries. Might not--may not charitable effort be organised to remove some of the social conditions which stand as barriers to prevent, or anyhow make it painfully difficult for these eight people to live the highest, fullest, richest life?

And the hindering barriers to the rich man’s life. I have hardly said a word about him, yet I am quite sorry for him, more sorry than for his poor neighbour; but there is not so much need for anyone to look after him, because he himself already does it. He had better be forgotten for a bit, so that he may be helped to forget himself. ‘He that loseth his life shall find it,’ and the good, if unsought, will come to him. When he, with ‘all he is and has,’ goes to reform his neighbour’s conditions, he will find them wondrously interwoven with his own. He will find, if he digs deep enough, that the foundations of both palace and court are of the same material, and also that he both sees further and breathes easier after having melted down his golden walls to frame his neighbour’s pictures.

But the Charity Organisation Society could help him. It must help both the rich and the poor. It must make of itself a bridge by which the one set of condition-hindered people can cross to reach the other condition-hindered people; and, as is sometimes the case in fairy tales, the hindrance will in individual cases disappear in the very act of crossing the bridge.

I do not mean that the mere meeting will in itself be a social reform, but it will tend to it, and that in the best way. Which of us having once been in a court disgraceful to our civilisation, and yet all that forty or fifty families have to call ‘home,’ would lose a chance of promoting a Sanitary Aid Committee or of getting the law enforced or amended? Which of us, having once seen a Whitechapel alley at five o’clock on an August afternoon, and realising all it means, besides physical discomfort, could go and enjoy our afternoon tea, daintily spread on the shady lawn, and not ask himself difficult questions about his own responsibility--while one man has so much and another so little? The answer would, maybe, have legal results. Which of us, having sat by the sick-bed of the work-worn man (not having relieved ourselves by giving him a shilling), can return and drink for our pleasure the wine which might be his health? Which of us, having become acquainted with the low ideas, the coarse thoughts, the unholy hopes of (pardon the expression) the ‘outcast poor,’ can reject the privilege of self-sacrifice for their help; can neglect, at the cost of any personal trouble, a single effort which will aid their ‘growth in grace’?

Evil is wrought from ignorance as well as want of thought; and the rich suffer from not knowing, as much as the poor from not being known. Both classes want help. They cannot alone break down their barriers, and alone they cannot live their best life. Our Society must help them--our Society, guided by wise rules as to what not to do, can introduce, as the children say, Mr. Too-Much to Miss Too-Little; it can be the ‘Helpful Society,’ helping the man stifled with too much; helping the man starving with too little; helping the idler whose true nature is literally ‘dying for something to do’; helping the worker who seeks the grave gladly from fatigue; helping the lonely man to find his place in the crowd, and the crowd-tired man to opportunities of solitude; helping the owner of knowledge to outpour his treasures, and the ignorant to receive the same; helping the merry-maker to make merry, and the sorrowful to teach the lessons of pain; helping those who have found the true meaning of life to ring out their news to those of us who are still groping and restless for assurance; helping, in short, all who will give effort to wise uses.

Practically the thirty-nine district offices might each be the centre of all those forces which, under any name, are directed against the evils and hardships of life. Their rooms might be the places in which the members of charitable societies would hold their meetings. And, instead of dreading association with the Charity Organisation Society, all honest workers might hope to find in connection with it associates the most helpful. One day the committee-room would be occupied by a Relief Society, which would make its grants; another day would find ladies gathered to consult on some Befriending Society. Each day the office would have its charitable use, and people of all sorts would meet, thinkers and workers; the clergy and the laymen; the man with the new scheme and the well-worn worker in the old paths; the practical reformer and the enthusiast. A kind of registry might be kept by which those wanting to help might be introduced into empty posts of helpfulness. It would no longer happen that a man should be kept years at case-writing when he had within him a divine gift for managing boys. Clergymen, members of societies, by advertising their vacant posts, could then find among other societies able helpers.

Practically it seems a small thing to say, let the offices be more generously used; let the secretaries make it their business to find out the vacant posts of usefulness in clubs, night schools, &c. Such a simple practical reform might have great issues. Frequent meetings would result in action, weak local boards be strengthened, pressure brought to bear on neglectful officials, vacancies in the ranks of teachers and visitors filled, and a public opinion formed strong enough to condemn both luxury and suffering--both over and under work. If such a scope of action frightens those who are conscious of thin ranks and limited resources, let them remember that it is the thought of wider action which will tempt in recruits. Many who have no taste for ‘case work’ and Committee forms will be glad co-operators when, in any way, they can be brought face to face with the poor; when they can feel that, by their organised effort, some steps are being made in social reform.

I do not for a moment mean to imply that I believe society will be reformed if the Charity Organisation Society were to decide to adopt a larger policy or a more embracing area of work. Even those of us who most believe in it must acknowledge that it is but one among many influencing forces; but it is possible to hope that all such influences working together may make a community where conditions (as mountains in landscapes) will only make variety in the level of humanity. A flat country is dull. Mountains and valleys are much more beautiful; but then the hills lend their beauty to the dales--their torrents fertilise the low-lying lands, and the lofty mountain crag which first gains the light, and is the last to lingeringly let it go, gives back its reflected glory to gladden the shadowed valley.

A sameness of circumstances might not mean social reform (indeed, personally, I doubt if anything but love for God will mean social reform), but reform is necessary, and with that we all agree. ‘Effort is bootless, toil is fruitless’; with that we do not agree--our very presence here denies it. There only remains then that organised effort should be directed towards reform, noticing, by the way, that, having swept the room, we do not leave the broom about! If those who make the effort will, not neglecting statistics, returns, and order, keep their eye on the far-away issue, which is the life of man raised to its perfect fulness, our children may, ‘with pulses stirred to generosity,’ rejoice to tell the tale of what the Charity Organisation Society did for social reform.

HENRIETTA O. BARNETT.

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XI.

_SENSATIONALISM IN SOCIAL REFORM._[1]

[1] Reprinted, by permission, from the _Nineteenth Century_ of February
1886.

Theudas and Jesus were alike moved by the suffering of the Jews. Theudas, ‘boasting himself to be somebody, drew away much people’; Jesus, who did not ‘strive nor cry,’ had only a few disciples, and died deserted by these.

The present method of reform is by striving and crying. The voice of those who see the evils of society is heard in the streets, and much people is drawn to meetings and demonstrations. Many, moved by what they hear, profess themselves to be ‘frantic,’ and the country seems ready for a moral revolt.

What shall the end be? Will the evil cease because the bitter cry of those who suffer is heard in the land? Will the ‘frantic’ striving of many people relieve society from the slavery of selfishness and lead to a moral reform, or will it be that after a few months some one like Browning’s Cardinal will be found saying, ‘I have known four-and-twenty leaders of revolt’?

This is a question to be considered, if possible, with calmness of mind, without prejudice for or against sensationalism. It may be that what seems sensational is but the bigger cry suited to a bigger world, and therefore the only means of making known the facts which must afterwards be weighed and considered. It may be that some must be made frantic before any will act. It may be, on the other hand, that this trumpeting of sorrow and sin is the vengeance of the crime of sense, itself a sense to be worn with time; that men trumpet sorrows for mere love of noise and size, and become frantic over tales of sin to wring from each tale a new pleasure. Sensationalism in social reform is either the outcome of self-indulgence or it is the divine voice making itself heard in language which he that runs may read.

Not lightly at any rate are Midlothian speeches, ‘bitter cries,’ and religious revivals to be passed over. They, by striving and crying, by forcible statements and strong language, have caused public opinion to stop its course of easy satisfaction, and to express itself in new legislation. For the sake of the Bulgarians a Ministry was overturned; because of the cry of the poor an Act of Parliament has been passed; and the success of the Salvation Army has modified the services in our churches. In face, though, of these results on legislation, and of other results represented by various societies and leagues, the question still is, Will the same causes result in raising character? Professor Clifford, in one of his essays, speaks with religious fervour on the importance of character in society:--

Our words, our phrases, our forms and processes and modes of
thought are common property fashioned and perfected from age to
age.... Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every
man who has speech of his fellows. An awful privilege and an awful
responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which
posterity will live!

Further, he goes on to point out that a bad method is bad, whatever good results may follow, because it weakens the character of the doer and so weakens society.

If (he says) I steal money from any person, there may be no harm
done by the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss,
or it may prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help
doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest.
What hurts society is not that it should lose its property, but that
it should become a den of thieves; for then it must cease to be
society. This is why we ought not to do evil that good may come; for
at any rate this great evil has come, that we have done evil and are
made wicked thereby.

In judging, therefore, of methods of reform it is not enough to show that laws have been passed and leagues formed; it must also be shown that the character of all concerned is raised. Jesus drew few people after Him and died alone, but He so raised the character of man that His death inaugurated a permanent reformation of society. It is as the character of men is raised that all reforms become permanent.

Oppressed nationalities depend for effectual help on the widely spread growth of sympathy with freedom; the poor will have starvation wages till the rich learn what justice requires; and religion will fail to be a power till men are honest enough to ask themselves in what they do really believe. Methods of reform are valuable just in so far as they tend to increase sympathy, justice, honesty, reverence, and all the virtues of high character. The answer, therefore, as to the end of this striving and crying of modern philanthropy is to be found in the effects which such methods have on character.

On the side of sensationalism it is urged (1) that laws and institutions are great educators. By the many laws against theft thieving has come to be regarded as the great crime, and by societies like that for the prevention of cruelty to animals kindness has come to be a common virtue. If, therefore, it is argued, by some rough awakening of the public conscience, laws have been passed and institutions started, something is done to develop the higher part of character. ‘Principles,’ it has been said, ‘are no more than moral habits,’ and if agitation leads to laws which enforce moral habits, sensationalism may thus have the credit of forming principles which make character.

It is further urged (2) that, if association be the watchword of the future and the educational force of the new age, it is by noisy means that associations must be formed, because the trumpet note which is to draw men together from parties and classes between whom great gulfs are fixed must be one loud enough to strike the senses.

Lastly, it is said (3) that many whose imagination has been made dull by the modern systems of education could never know the truth unless it were shown to them under the strongest light. They have been so rarely taught in school to take pleasure in knowledge or to stretch their minds, they have so little accustomed themselves to think over what is absent or to trace effects to causes, that it is more often by ignorance than by selfishness that they are cruel. They have been so eager in managing their inheritance of wealth that they have failed to use their other inheritance--the power of putting questions. Such people, it is argued, hearing of atrocities, learning the cost at which wealth is made, and seeing the brutal side of vice, get such development of character that they question habits, customs, conditions which they before accepted, and become more just and generous.

On the other hand, against this use of sensationalism, keeping still in view the effects on character, it is urged (1) that actions caused by the excitement of the emotions before they can be supported by reason are followed by apathy. The people who became ‘frantic’ at the tale of the Bulgarian atrocities have since heard almost with equanimity of suffering as terrible. The many who wrote and spoke of the bitter lot of the poor hardly give the few pounds a year required to keep alive the Sanitary Aid Society which was started to deal with what was allowed to lie nearest the root of the bitterness--the ill-administered laws of health. The leaders of the Salvation Army, pursued by this fear of apathy, have continually to seek new forms of excitement, just as politicians have to seek new cries.

Such examples seem to show that the wave which is raised by the emotions must fall back unless it is followed by the rising tide of reason, and that the effect on character of neglecting the reason is to make it unfeeling and apathetic. According to Rossetti’s allegory, they who are stirred by the sight of vice become, like those who look on the Gorgon’s head, hardened to stone.

Let not thine eyes know
Any forbidden thing itself, although
It once should save as well as kill; but be
Its shadow upon life enough for thee.

The emotions, certainly, cannot be strained without loss. Of the greatest English actress it is told that she paid in old age the price of early strain on her feelings ‘by weariness, vacuity, and deadness of spirit.’

It is urged further on the same side, (2) that the advertisement which is said to be necessary to promote association promotes only organisation, or that if it does promote association it fills it also with the party spirit, which is a corrupting influence.

Organisations, we have been lately told, are weakening real charitable effort. They have at once the strength and the weakness of the standing army system, they produce a body of officials keen to carry out their objects and careless of other issues, and they release individuals from the duty of serving the need they have recognised. That the sensational method of rousing the charitable activities has resulted in organisation rather than in association may be seen by reference to the Charities Register, with its long record of new societies and institutions. That it also inspires with party spirit the associations which it forms is more difficult of proof. Strong statements which are necessary to advertisement can hardly, though, be fair statements, and loud statements can rarely be exhaustively accurate. Where there is in the beginning neither fairness of feeling nor accuracy of thought there will be afterwards a repetition of the old theological hatred.

‘Ye know not what spirit ye are of,’ said Christ to His disciples, who, ignorant of His purpose, would have used force in His service against the Samaritans. The same party spirit still sometimes inspires those who hold grand beliefs and support great causes, the height and depth and breadth of which they have had neither time nor will to measure; and such a spirit degrades their character. It is not a gain to a man to be a Christian or a Liberal if by so doing he becomes certain that there is no right nor truth on the side of a Mohammedan or of a Tory. He has not, that is, risen to the height of his character: rather, as Mr. Coleridge says, ‘He who begins by loving Christianity better than the truth will proceed by loving his own sect or Church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.’ A teetotaller will not add so much to society by his temperance as he will take away from society if his character becomes proud or narrow.

Party spirit--the spirit, that is, which is roused and limited by some hasty view of truth or right--is likely to make men unjust and cruel, and so a method of reform which produces this spirit cannot be approved. In the name of the grandest causes, missionaries were in old times cruel, and philanthropists are in modern times unjust.

Lastly, (3) those who have claimed for sensationalism the parentage of some law have been met by the paradox that laws and institutions rarely exist till they have ceased to be wanted. In England public opinion condemns cruelty to animals, and so a society has been created. In Egypt, where the need is greater, but where there is no public opinion to condemn the cruelty, there is no society. Certain it is, at any rate, that the statute-book is cumbered with laws passed in a moment of moral excitement which remain without influence because they have never represented the true level of public opinion.

Where arguments are so urged for and against sensationalism it may be useful if, out of thirteen years’ experience of East London life, I shortly collect what seem to be some of the effects on character developed during this period.

The first effect which is manifest is the great increase of humanity in the richer classes. This is shown not only by talk, by drawing-room meetings, and by newspaper articles, but by actual service among the poor. The number of those who go about East London to do good is largely increased. The increase is, though, I believe, greatest among those philanthropists who aim to apply principles rather than to provide relief. There have always been people of good-will ready to give and to teach; there is now an increase in their numbers, but the marked increase is among those who, following Mrs. Nassau Senior, work registry offices, on the principle that friends are the best avenues by which young girls can find places; or, following Miss Octavia Hill, become rent collectors, on the principle that the relation of landlord and tenant may be made conducive to the best good; or, following Miss Nightingale, take up the work of nursing, on the principle that the service of the sick is the highest service; or, following the founders of the Charity Organisation Society, examine into the causes of poverty, on the principle that it is better to prevent than to cure evil; or, following Miss Miranda Hill, give their talents to making beauty common, on the principle that rich and poor have equal powers of enjoying what is good; or, following Edmund Denison, come to live in East London and do the duties of citizens, on the principle that only they who share the neighbourhood really share the life of the poor. In all these cases the increase began more than thirteen years ago, and it must be allowed that the development of humanity which they represent is not of that form which can as a rule be traced to the use of sensationalism.

Another effect I notice as generally present is increase of impatience.

The richer classes seeing things that have been hidden, and ignorant that any improvement has been going on, have taken up with ready-made schemes. Irritated that the poor should find obstacles to relief in times of sickness, they, in their hurry, give the pauper a vote, but leave him to get his relief under degrading conditions. Angry that children should be hungry, but too anxious to consider other things than hunger, they start an inadequate system of penny dinners which keeps starvation alive. Stirred by the news of uninhabitable houses, and insanitary areas, and brutal offences, they pass stringent laws and take no steps to see that the laws are administered. Affected by the thought that the majority of the people have neither pleasure-ground, nor space for play, nor water for cleanliness, they raise a chorus of abuse against London government, but do not deny themselves every day the bottle of wine or the useless luxury which would give to Kilburn a park or to East London a People’s Palace. Hearing that the masses are irreligious, means are supported without regard as to what must be the influence on thoughtful men of associating religion with things which are not true, nor honourable, nor lovely, nor of good report.

On all sides among persons of good-will there seems to be the belief that things done _for_ people are more effective than things done _with_ people. There is an absence of the patience--the passionate patience--which is content to examine, to serve, to wait, and even to fail, so long as what is done shall be well done.

The same impatience which takes this shape among the richer classes is, I think, to be seen among the poorer classes in a growing animosity against the rich for being rich. Strong words and angry threats have become common. All suffering and much sin are laid at the doors of the rich, and speakers are approved who say that if by any means property could be more equally shared, more happiness and virtue would follow. Schemes, therefore, which offer such means are welcomed almost without inquiry. Artisans, roused by what they hear of the state in which their poorer neighbours live, misled often by what they see, do not inquire into causes of sin and sorrow. Scamps and idlers come forward with cries which get popular support, and the mass of the poor now cherish such a jealous disposition that, were they suddenly to inherit the place of the richer classes, they would inherit their vices also and make a state of society in no way better than the present.

There may be such a thing as a noble impatience, but the impatience which has lately been added to character of both rich and poor is not such as to make observers sanguine of the social reform which it may accomplish. The old saying is still true, ‘He that believeth shall not make haste.’

The other effect on character which has become manifest is one at which I have already hinted. It is a growing disposition among all classes to trust in ‘societies,’ whose rules become the authority of the workers and whose extension becomes the aim of their work. Men give all their energies to get recruits for their ‘army,’ recognition for their clubs, and more room for their operations. ‘Societies’ seem thus to be very fountains of strength, and the only method of action. Bishops aim to strengthen the Church by speaking of it as a ‘society,’ and individual ministers try to keep their parishes distinct with a name, an organisation, and an aim which are independent of other parishes. The lovers of emigration have for the same reason grouped themselves in no less than fourteen societies, and it has seemed that even to give music to the people has required the creation of three large societies.

A ‘society’ has indeed taken in many minds the place of a priest, its authority has given the impetus and the aim to action, but it has tended to make those whom it rules weak and bigoted. I see, therefore, in the members of these societies much energy, but less of the spirit which is willing to break old bonds and to go on, if need be, in the loneliness of originality, trusting in God. I see much self-devotion, but more also of the spirit of competition, more of the self-assertion which yields nothing for the sake of co-operation.

If now I had to sum up what seems to me to be the effect on character of the method of striving and crying, I should say that the possible increase of humanity is balanced by increase of impatience, by sacrifice of originality, and by narrowness. Whether there is loss or gain it is impossible to say, but it will be useful, considering the end in view, to see how the most may be made of the gain and the least of the loss.

The end to be aimed at is one to be stated in the language either of Isaiah or of the modern politician. We all look for a time when there shall be no more hunger nor thirst, when love will share the strength of the few among the many, and when God shall take away tears from every eye. Or, putting the same end in other words, we all look for a time when the conditions of existence shall be such that it will be possible for every man and woman not only to live decently, but also to enjoy the fulness of life which comes from friendships and from knowledge.

For such an end all are concerned to work. Comparing the things that are with the things that ought to be, some may strive and cry, others may work silently, but none can be careless.

None can approve a condition of society where the mass of the people remain ignorant even of the language through which come thought, comfort, and inspiration. Let it be remembered that now the majority are, as it were, deaf and dumb, for the mass of the nation cannot ask for what their higher nature needs, and cannot hear the Word of God without which man is not able to live. None can approve a condition of society where, while one is starving, another is drunken; where in one part of a town a man works without pleasure to end his days in the workhouse, while in the other part of the town a man idles his days away and is always ‘as one that is served.’ None can look on and think that it always must be that the hardest workers shall not earn enough to secure themselves by cleanliness and by knowledge against those temptations which enter by dirt and ignorance, while many have wealth which makes it almost impossible for them to enter the kingdom of God. A time must come when men shall hunger no more, nor thirst any more, when there shall be no tears which love cannot wipe away, and no pain which knowledge cannot remove. For this end everyone who knows ‘the mission of man’ must by some means work.

That all may avoid the loss and secure the gain which belongs to their various methods, it seems to me that they would be wise to remember two things--(1) that national organisations deserve support rather than party organisations, and (2) that the only test of real progress is to be found in the development of character.