Chapter I: Introduction

Man is undoubtedly a religious animal. In England at any rate the remark holds good. No one who ignores the religious element in our history can rightly understand what England was, or how she came to be what she is. The fuller is our knowledge, the wider our field of investigation, the more minute our inquiry, the stronger must be the conviction in all minds that religion has been for good or bad the great moving power, and, in spite of the teachings of Secularism or of Positivism, it is clear that as much as ever the questions which are daily and hourly coming to the front have in them more or less of a religious element. It is not often foreigners perceive this. Take Louis Blanc as an illustration. As much as any foreigner he has mastered our habits and ways--all that we call our inner life; yet, to him, the English pulpit is a piece of wood--nothing more. According to him, the oracles are dumb, the sacred fire has ceased to burn, the veil of the temple is rent in twain; church attendance, he tells us, in England, besides custom, has little to recommend it. There is beauty in desolation--in life changing into death--

"Before Decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers;"

but not even of this beauty can the Church of England boast. Dr. Dollinger--a more thoughtful, a more learned, a more laborious writer--is not more flattering. The Church of England, he tells us, is "the Church only of a fragment of the nation," of "the rich, cultivated, and fashionable classes." It teaches "the religion of deportment, of gentility, of clerical reserve." "In its stiff and narrow organization, and all want of pastoral elasticity, it feels itself powerless against the masses." The patronage is mostly in the hands of the nobility and gentry, who regard it as a means of provision for their younger sons, sons-in-law, and cousins. Our latest critic, M. Esquiros, writes in a more favourable strain, yet even he confesses how the city operative shuns what he deems the Church of Mammon, and draws a picture of the English clergyman, by no means suggestive of zeal in the Master's service or readiness to bear His yoke. Dissent foreigners generally ignore, yet Dissent is as active, as energetic as the State Church, and may claim that it has practically realized the question of our time--the Free Church in the Free State. In thus attempting to describe the Religious Life of London, I touch on a question of which I may briefly say that it concerns the welfare of the community at large.

IVY COTTAGE, BALLARD'S LANE, FINCHLEY,
_April_ 4_th_, 1870.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
PAGE
ON HERESY AND ORTHODOXY 1
CHAPTER II.
THE JEWS 16
CHAPTER III.
THE REFORMED JEWS 37
CHAPTER IV.
THE GREEK CHURCH 47
CHAPTER V.
THE ROMAN CATHOLICS 58
CHAPTER VI.
THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 76
THE DEAF AND DUMB AT CHURCH 87
A SUNDAY IN JAIL 93
HIGH CHURCH REVIVALISTS 100
A SUNDAY WITH THE LUNATICS 107
LAY WORK IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND 113
AN EVANGELICAL PREACHER 121
CHAPTER VII.
AMONG THE PRESBYTERIANS:--
AT COLEBROOK ROW 131
PARK CHURCH, HIGHBURY 139
CHAPTER VIII.
CONGREGATIONALISTS AND BAPTISTS 146
THE SEVENTH-DAY BAPTISTS 159
CHRISTMAS MORNING WITH THE YOUNGSTERS 169
DR. PARKER AT THE POULTRY 177
MR. LYNCH'S THURSDAY EVENINGS 187
CHAPTER IX.
THE UNITARIANS 193
AGGRESSIVE UNITARIANS 204
CHAPTER X.
THE WESLEYAN METHODISTS 210
AT A WATCH-NIGHT SERVICE 223
CHAPTER XI.
THE QUAKERS 232
JONATHAN GRUBB AT THE AGRICULTURAL HALL 236
CHAPTER XII.
THE MORAVIANS IN FETTER LANE 244
CHAPTER XIII.
THE SWEDENBORGIANS 252
CHAPTER XIV.
THE IRVINGITES, OR APOSTOLICAL CHURCH 271
CHAPTER XV.
THE FREE CHRISTIAN UNION 279
CHAPTER XVI.
THE LONDON ECCLESIA 291
THE CHRISTADELPHIANS 298
CHAPTER XVII.
SOME MINOR SECTS 306
THE PECULIAR PEOPLE 307
THE SANDEMANIANS 313
THE SOUTHCOTTIANS 320
THE SPIRITUALISTS 328
THE CAMPBELLITES 335
THE MORMONS 344
CHAPTER XVIII.
ADVANCED RELIGIONISTS:--
THE CHURCH OF PROGRESS 352
THE INDEPENDENT RELIGIOUS REFORMERS 359
SOUTH PLACE, FINSBURY SQUARE 365
THE SECULARISTS 371
CHAPTER XIX.
THE IRREGULARS 380
IRREGULAR AGENCIES 381