Twenty-five years as Bishop of London

By Charles Herbert

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Title: Twenty-five years as Bishop of London

Author: Charles Herbert


        
Release date: October 3, 2026 [eBook #79708]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Wells Gardner, Darton & Co. Ltd., 1926

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[Illustration:

                                                       [_Photo: Alfieri_

THE BISHOP OF LONDON PHOTOGRAPHED AT FULHAM PALACE]




  TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AS
  BISHOP OF LONDON

  BY

  CHARLES HERBERT

  LONDON
  WELLS GARDNER, DARTON & CO. LTD.
  3 AND 4 PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, E.C. 4




  A great life is the reflection of
  the age in which it is lived.

  [Illustration]

  PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
  WELLS GARDNER, DARTON & CO., LTD.




INTRODUCTION


The first quarter of the twentieth-century moon is noticeable for
the number of men and women who have rightly gained reputation and
influence in all departments of life. It is more noticeable when it is
remembered how difficult the process must have been.

It is not as if the ordinary level of attainment during this period was
low. But it was a time when ordinary standards of fitness were very
high. This fact carried with it as a corollary, that to surpass them
meant the possession of very special gifts. We may, therefore, take it
for granted that those who have been accorded position as leaders in
the world of art, literature or drama, science or medicine, invention
and industry, philosophy and religion, politics and sociology, have
been really great men, whose lives will be worth while careful study.

But there is a further reason for such a study. This is that during the
eventful period referred to, every department of human life has been
changing. Points of view have changed; methods of appeal and work have
changed; the conditions of life have changed; the problems presented by
life have changed. It follows that those who, in such a period have
been able successfully to lead others must have possessed great gifts
of adaptability on the one hand, and a readiness for adventure on the
other. They must accurately have gauged the times in which they lived;
rightly interpreted its needs; fearlessly answered its questions, and
provided methods for the expression of its spirit. As a consequence, to
study them means that one is also studying the present age--the story
of their personal efforts is the reflected history of the period which
produced and directed them. In telling one, you are telling the other.

That is the justification for this short biography of the Right
Reverend Arthur Foley Winnington Ingram, the present Bishop of London.
In himself--as one of the most remarkable men in a remarkable Age--his
life calls for a detailed study; and, beyond this, the story of his
career is the reflected history of the Church of England, and the City
problems it has had to face during three reigns--the latter part of
Queen Victoria’s, then King Edward’s, and, finally, in the days of our
own gracious King George.

                                                        CHARLES HERBERT.




PUBLISHERS’ NOTE


There have been many Bishops of London, but few who have occupied
the See for twenty-five years, and when it was suggested that the
celebration of Dr. Winnington Ingram’s twenty-five years’ Episcopacy
called for some record of his work, and some description of the great
changes in religious life during the last thirty years, it seemed very
fitting that such a volume should bear the imprint of the publishers
who have issued the Bishop’s books since the days before he was Bishop
of Stepney.

At the same time, the name of Wells Gardner, Darton and Company, Ltd.,
upon the title-page necessitates an explanation that this book is,
in no sense, official, nor is it issued with the Bishop’s authority.
Rather it is a tribute, from an outside source, to Dr. Winnington
Ingram, both as London’s loved Bishop, and as a man.




CONTENTS


                                                   PAGE

       INTRODUCTION                                 iii

       PUBLISHERS’ NOTE                               v

CHAPTER

    I. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE--SCHOOL DAYS
       AT MARLBOROUGH--KEBLE COLLEGE                  1

   II. ST. MARY’S, SHREWSBURY--LICHFIELD             21

  III. OXFORD HOUSE                                  42

   IV. BETHNAL GREEN                                 59

    V. STEPNEY                                       70

   VI. THE BISHOPRIC OF LONDON                       86

  VII. THE BISHOP DURING THE WAR                    107

 VIII. PERSONALIA                                   112




TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AS BISHOP OF LONDON




CHAPTER I

BIRTH AND PARENTAGE--SCENES OF BOYHOOD--FAMILY HISTORY--CLERICAL
ANCESTRY


Arthur Foley Winnington Ingram was born on January 26, 1858, at
Stanford Rectory, in Worcestershire.

This statement, brief as it is, is indicative of certain facts: for the
names “Foley,” “Winnington,” and “Ingram” given him hint at particular
family connections. It would appear that in the eighteenth century
Sir Edward Winnington, the first baronet, married a Miss Ingram, of
Ribbesford House, one of twenty children who all lived to grow up, and
came to reside at Stanford Court, in the County of Worcester. Thus the
“Ingram” connection was established.

Sir Edward had an only son, Edward, who married the youngest daughter
of Lord Foley, and thus the link with the Foleys was formed. For
family reasons his second son was induced by the then Mr. Ingram, of
Ribbesford House, to adopt the double-barrelled name of “Winnington
Ingram.” That is why in the personal name bestowed upon the future
Bishop there is a hint of the far-reaching family connections and
traditions of “Winningtons,” “Foleys,” and “Ingrams.”

The second fact that he was born at Stanford Rectory is not surprising.
His father, the Rev. Edward Winnington Ingram, of Ribbesford House,
Worcestershire, was also actually Rector of Stanford-on-Teme at
the time of his birth; so that even in his earliest childhood his
environment was that of the clergy. His mother had inherited similar
traditions, being herself the daughter of Bishop Pepys, Bishop of
Worcester; another influence, which, unconsciously, set the course of
the boy towards his future career. Both from his mother’s and father’s
side, the pre-natal factors in his nature made for the religious
temperament.

The surroundings of his early years must have steeped his boyhood in an
ecclesiastical atmosphere. The Rectory itself must have been the centre
of parochial matters, and some of the parish problems must have emerged
in table-talk; while from the mother’s relatives and friends must have
come much of the gossip of the Cathedral Close at Worcester. The boy,
of course, could not adequately understand all that was said; but, if
it dawned upon him that there was a great struggle being waged in the
Church of England, it would not have been surprising. Certain it is
that he must have grown up alive to many facts in which other boys had
no concern, and with a mind unconsciously affected by the priestly life
of his father, and the episcopal life of his grandfather.

From his mother he would probably learn how the Church in
Worcestershire had been a great help in uplifting the people. How the
monks of Malvern Priory had begun the forest clearing which reached
from the hills to the Severn; and, how many other religious houses had
spread over the county; until, at last, most of the land in it was
owned by them. So it came to pass that the Bishop of Worcester became
the real head of the county, and had to be a “battling bishop” in order
to defend it. She would tell him that the See was founded nearly 1,200
years before, much to the annoyance of the then Bishop of Lichfield.

Perhaps he heard from her the story of how, when St. Wulfstan began to
rebuild the ancient Church of St. Oswald, one of his monks noticed him
standing in sad silence in the corner of the cemetery, and rallied him
with the old-fashioned words: “Wherefore look ye so sadly to-day?” And
Wulfstan replied: “We are pulling down the labours of holy men that we
may gain honour and reputation for ourselves. The good old time was
when men knew not how to build magnificently, but thought any roof good
enough, if under it they could offer themselves a willing sacrifice to
God. It is a miserable change if we neglect the souls of men and pile
together stones.”

There were many such tales to tell--tales of the pilgrims who thronged
from far and near to the shrines of the departed saints, St. Oswald and
St. Wulfstan, and if the telling added a touch of the mystical in the
development of the lad, we should not wonder.

When he was about ten years old he would hear much said about the work
which was just being begun of restoring Worcester Cathedral. Seven long
years did the work take, and it was completed and re-opened, Easter
week, 1874. The choir between the tower and the eastern transept was
restored, redecorated and adapted to the needs of a more dignified
ritual. Surely when the growing lad saw the glory of the restored
church, with its wonderful reredos, it was another lesson! Yes, from
the buildings he knew best, and the people he loved most, and the
visitors he met most often, there must always have been impressions
being absorbed at an age when the mind is “like wax to receive, but
like marble to retain.”

So much for the environment hinted at in the brief statement that
Arthur Foley Winnington Ingram was born at Stanford Rectory! The name
indicates the social environment of Winningtons, Foleys, and Ingrams,
and the place the ecclesiastical environment.

But there is another factor which counts for a great deal: I mean the
actual nature-surroundings. Here again, he was most fortunate!

Stanford itself was described by Mrs. Sherwood, who lived there in her
early girlhood, as a sweet place “utterly impossible to give an idea
of through the medium of any words which could be selected. I have
travelled far, but I have never seen any region of the earth to be
compared with Stanford--the verdant and rich English scenery, where
every feature of the landscape of a somewhat northern climate is so
assembled as to compose the most extraordinary beauty.”

But the Rectory itself in which the boy now tabernacled for a time was
actually in the very centre of all this sylvan beauty.

What was most remarkable in his father’s house at Stanford was that it
commanded four different views from the four sides, so distinct that it
could hardly be conceived how these could be combined in a panorama. On
the front of the house, toward the east, a great lawn, with many fair
orchards beyond, sloped down to the bed of the Teme, from which arose
on the opposite side a range of bold heights, richly diversified, at a
distance so considerable as to show only the most pleasing features,
with copses, farm-houses, fields of corn, villages with churches, and
ancient manor-houses, the heights being terminated by the range of the
Abberley and Woodbury hills.

On the south his father’s house looked over Stanford Court--through a
series of woody valleys beyond to the remote heights of Malvern, and
still more distant Broadway; this range of valleys being no other than
the bed of the Teme.

The hills and woods on the west rose up almost precipitously, or rather
seemed to do, for the shrubberies and gardens lay between from the
windows of his father’s house, and there was such a rich mass of forest
scenery, and such inequalities of ground, such magnificent dingles and
waterfalls, such abrupt and bold heights, as years could not exhaust in
examining; and these formed the third view.

The fourth was unlike all the rest, and presented itself at the north
of the house; it commanded a deep dingle, or valley, rich with orchard
and cultivated fields, from the bottom of which arose a lofty ridge of
land which presented its side to the eye, and which, in its character,
as far as it went, had all the appearance of some vast mountain, being
partly covered with thick coppices, the fields under these coppices
being almost precipitous in the manner in which they were disposed.

And, as without the house, so within; the superintending genius of Dr.
Butt, Mrs. Sherwood’s father, who improved it years before, had given a
character to every room. There was a hall of considerable height, with
a hanging staircase. The rooms were all spacious, and the apartments
upstairs commanded a fine view of the high woods. So that within and
without, space, beauty and elegance were the settings of the future
Bishop’s boyhood.

One local story he would be sure to hear, which would impress the mind
of any growing boy with a sense of injustice. It would be certain to
be told him, as he, with the rest of the family, visited the wonderful
Southstone Rock, near Stanford.

The people there were very interesting from the very old stories they
could tell of ancient Stanford. They would point out that where there
was now a magnificent lake, there once stood a village; all the former
inhabitants of which were simply turned out of their cottages to enable
“the improvements” to be carried out. The villagers were left to find
a refuge as they could. He would hear that the church at Stanford
once stood on the lawn, between Stanford Court, and what is now the
pool, and that there under the green sward were still the bones of the
forefathers of the villagers. But the then lord of the manor moved the
church to the hill where it now stands, with the coffins of the family,
and levelled all the graves in the old churchyard, thus incurring much
local odium. He succeeded in his determination to make a solitude round
his mansion, and improved the view from his windows, but it was done
at the expense of much suffering entailed upon others. Years before the
future bishop heard the tale, it had been told to an impressionable
girl, Mrs. Sherwood, and the burst of sympathy it caused in her for the
unfortunate villagers was probably repeated in the growing boy. It is
the very kind of incident which would fire a juvenile imagination, and
perhaps laid the foundation of that extraordinary sympathy with the
poorer classes that has ever characterised the career of the lad when
he became a man.

It was in beautiful sylvan scenery such as this that the early days of
the boy were passed; so that it is certain that his first impressions
were not the swift, fleeting, panoramic, confused ones of a city boy.
Country life may be uneventful, but its world is a microcosmos and all
that is seen is noted.

But there was another factor at work in his life, and that was that in
the rectory where he lived there was a crowd. The Rector of Stanford
had ten children, Arthur being the fourth son; and that means that
every one of them lived under the perpetual necessity of “give and
take” and regarding themselves rather as part of a family than as mere
individuals. There is little chance for the growth of egoism in a
family of ten.

Then came his school days. He went at first to Hartford House,
Winchfield, Hampshire, to undergo a preparatory training for a Public
School, and when he was twelve years old he secured a Foundation
scholarship at Marlborough and proceeded there in his thirteenth year.
Winnington Ingram himself, preaching many years after at his old
school, indicates what this experience meant to him. “A little boy
has to leave home for the first time. He says good-bye to father and
mother, and the old servants, and the landmarks of his home disappear
one by one; and as the train at last fairly steams out of the station,
he feels he has launched upon a great unknown. He leaves the private
school to come up to Marlborough, and it is a launching into the deep!
The private school had become like a little home to him: he is called,
perhaps, even by his Christian name. Then he comes up, and finds
himself in the mass of a great school, with the sound of the ocean as
it were in his ears, lost among the crowd again. All his individuality
seems almost swamped in the mass of humanity in which he finds himself.
Then in a few years, Marlborough is quite familiar to him. He is in
the Sixth; he is in the Eleven; his last term has come; he is quite
surprised to think he ever looked on Marlborough as a great deep.”
His elder brother, Francis Herbert Winnington Ingram, had been there
already for about twenty months, and Arthur must, therefore, have been
well acquainted with the life of the school to which he was now going.

The School at Marlborough had been founded years before, chiefly for
the sons of the clergy; and had kept its character ever since. When
Francis entered it it was under the Headship of Dr. Cotton, afterwards
a well-known missionary Bishop in India; but at the time of Arthur’s
entrance, Dr. Farrar had accepted the post.

A slight digression as to Marlborough itself will not be out of place
here.

When Dr. Farrar’s predecessor, Dr. Cotton, went to Marlborough, the
school was at a crisis of its history. But he faced the difficulties,
and strove to gather around him a band of enthusiastic students as
masters. For this purpose he watched degree lists, and one of the
results was that he approached F. W. Farrar, inviting him to take a
mastership, which he did.

The school itself at that time had an unenviable reputation for the
insubordination of its pupils, which had proved too much for the old
régime, and had culminated in an open rebellion. Beyond that, the
college was overwhelmed with debt, and one of the first remarks the
Head made to Farrar was: “You know, any day the school may disappear in
blue smoke.”

The great difficulty was the commissariat department, and one of
Farrar’s earliest recollections was seeing a huge chalk inscription on
the wall, “Bread or Blood!” But the masters, headed by Cotton, took the
finances into their own hands, out of those of the then bursar, and in
one year’s crisis saved the school.

Even in those days the outstanding characteristic of the place
was its number of parsons’ sons, who afterwards had distinguished
ecclesiastical careers. Mr. Farrar tells us he remembers seeing “a
boy chasing another who wore a scarlet cap, and shouting after him,
‘_Keblépuris! Keblépuris!_’--Greek for the ‘Redcap,’ and the boy had
taken it from ‘The Birds of Aristophanes,’ which we were then reading.”
The boy who was the pursuer became the Rt. Rev. the Primate of
Australia; the boy in the red cap became the Rt. Rev. the Lord Bishop
of Glasgow. On this incident Farrar remarks that it reminded him of
Shenstone’s lines, the mere quoting of which reveals the trend of the
master’s mind:

    “Yet, nursed with skill, what dazzling fruits appear!
      E’en now sagacious foresight points to show
    A little bench of heedless Bishops here
      And there a Chancellor in embryo.”

I wonder if he ever recalled the same quatrain as he thought of Arthur
Foley Winnington Ingram in later years.

But this was before the boy was born, and as assistant-master he
remained until Harrow stole him away, and kept him fifteen years. Then
he returned as Head of the Marlborough School, and among the first
batch of entrants who looked upon him with awe, not only as the new
Head, but _their_ new Head, was young Winnington Ingram. Practically
Dr. Farrar and he started their life at Marlborough together.

It was the height of good fortune which brought this Worcestershire boy
under the influence of such a man, though, of course, for years that
influence would be indirect, and Farrar actually left a year before
Winnington Ingram. He was only thirteen years old at the time; but that
even then Dr. Farrar’s effect on him may have been great is suggested
by the words of another Marlburian, who was at school with Winnington
Ingram. “No one who heard the sermons ‘In the Days of thy Youth’ can
wholly forget the overpowering intensity of conviction, or the fiery
eloquence with which the master drove home to his boys the great truths
of righteousness. I was a lad of fifteen when I heard these sermons
preached.”

The Bishop himself relates: “I remember so well that Dr. Farrar used
to tell us the famous old story of the two figures which once appeared
before a youth--the attractive, alluring figure that led him down the
path of pleasure, and the dull, unattractive figure that pointed to the
path of duty. And even to this day I remember how, with a word-power
which I would not attempt to imitate for a moment, he narrated how that
dull, unattractive figure at last flung back the veil, and there was a
face of immortal and eternal loveliness.”

It was under such a man that this other lad of thirteen came to live.
Fifty-five others came in with him; another dozen joined up in April;
fifty-two more in August; and nine more in September--one hundred and
twenty-eight new boys in all to make impact on one another. Out of them
it is characteristic to notice that fifty-eight hailed from rectory and
vicarage, and were the sons of priests.

From among “his year” there sprang twenty-two military officers,
amongst them Major-General Kekewich; twenty priests, amongst them the
Very Rev. Dean Kite, of Hobart, Tasmania; and Arthur Winnington Ingram,
Lord Bishop of London; while two years later, Arthur Chandler, who
became the Rt. Rev. the Bishop of Bloemfontein, joined the school.
There were also fourteen future members of the legal profession, four
others who became doctors, amongst them Archibald Edward Garrod,
M.D., who later gained fame as a physician, and an authority on
rheumatic affections. Nine of young Winnington Ingram’s year became
assistant-masters in great public schools, or Heads themselves. As for
the rest, taking the year as a whole, it distinguished itself rather
by producing boys who in architecture, stock-broking, business, farming
and civil engineering, served their day and generation, as they were
called on to play the part.

One may look in vain for any mention of the name of Arthur Foley
Winnington Ingram in the calendar of Marlborough as a prize-winner;
or as having outstanding excellence in cricket or football, rackets
or swimming. He appears to have produced no impression during his
residence there beyond that of a boy who plodded on for the sake of
keeping up with the others. But it was at Marlborough he gained that
love of sport which never left him.

A year later his brother Francis left the school, and in the following
year he had the pleasure of introducing to the school life and ways his
own younger brother, George Frederick, eighteen months younger than
himself.

He found himself placed in the New House under the house-mastership of
Mr. F. Storr.

The assistant-masters during his residence there were, in 1871, George
Farrer Rodwell, Gabriel Henry Cremer. In 1872, William Joseph Toye,
Henry Marty Lindsell, Walter Percy Smith. In 1873, Rev. Philip Read,
Frederic John Boden, Edward Ferdinando Sutton Tylecote, Henry D’Olier
Drury, Rev. Stirling Cookesley Voules, George Henry Dawson, Frederic
Lewis Barnwell, Granville Sharp. In 1874, the Rev. William Mordaunt
Furneaux, Rev. Darwin Wilmot, Charles Hepworth Gibson, Thomas Oliver
Harding, Nevil Masterman, William James Fourneaux Bashon Baker, Lewis
Edward Upcott, John Pearce Way, Manus Herbert Gould, Robert Alford,
William Henry Payne-Smith, Charles Copeland Perry. Then came the
mastership of the Rev. J. C. Bell in Winnington Ingram’s final year,
and as _his_ assistants, George William Rundall, William White, William
Justice Ford, Fred Some Hewson, Herbert Leaf.

It must be clear from this account of the school and “the boys
who started with him” that young Winnington Ingram had entered an
institution which was deservedly becoming famous, under a deservedly
famous Head. The influences behind the thirteen-year-old boy were, as
we have already seen, mighty--the influences around him now were many
and stimulating; it only remained to see how the boy would react to
the pull and the push. The effect of the life of Marlborough upon Dr.
Winnington Ingram has been very great. Marlburians have always appealed
to him, and he to them. He has made his old connection with the school
a bond which has strengthened through the years. He has visited the
school again and again: he is a prominent member of the council, and
has annually addressed the boys for a long period. One of the first
visits he paid after his appointment to the See of London was to
Marlborough, and he told the boys that in undertaking the duties he had
just entered upon he did it feeling that Marlborough would be behind
him. He stayed at the school till 1877, and then at nineteen years of
age he gained a leaving scholarship and went up to Oxford with its aid.
But his choice of a college there already showed the trend of his mind,
for he entered himself at Keble College.

Keble College, Oxford, was founded in pious memory of John Keble
“Sometime a Priest in the Church of God.” It was intended to be “A
school of simplicity.” The idea was to provide the opportunity of a
frugal life for young men, differing from the standards prevailing
in so many Oxford colleges. “Some thought at the time that it would
turn out a monkish institution, and would breed young monks who would
do a great deal of mischief in England. Such suspicions speedily
disappeared; but the very spirit of the college was to show that the
highest character of an Englishman is that of the cultivated and
religious man to whom wealth is a mere accident.”[A]

[A] Archbishop of Canterbury’s speech at Keble College, St. Mark’s Day,
1876.

According to the Marquis of Salisbury, speaking at the same meeting
already referred to, Keble had fulfilled its aim. It had shown that it
was not necessary, in order to enjoy the advantages of college life,
that expenses hitherto associated with college life should be added as
a drawback.

It was also founded with the object of doing more in Oxford for the
training of the clergy. But the careers of the college students, the
place they made for themselves in the athletic life of the University
also proved that the devotional life of Keble, did not tend to mere
pietism, but existed synchronously with physically vigorous manhood.

Canon Liddon said: “The day will come, I suppose--when young men
looking at the buildings will ask the question, ‘Who was Keble?’ To
have made it inevitable that that question should be asked is to have
added to the moral wealth of the world. For the answer to that question
cannot but do good commanding wealth, or great public exploits or wide
popularity of opinions, which explain the foundation of this college.
It was raised to the memory of a quiet country clergyman, with a very
moderate income, who held tenaciously to an unpopular school all his
life. Keble College is a witness to the homage which goodness carried
into the world of thought, or, indeed, any other sphere of activity,
extorts from all of us. It is a proof that neither station, nor wealth,
nor conspicuousness, nor popularity, is the truest and ultimate test
of greatness. True greatness is to be recognised in character, and in
a place like this character is largely, if not chiefly, shaped by the
degree in which moral qualities are brought to bear upon the activities
of mind.”

It was to “a place like this” that Arthur Foley Winnington Ingram now
came!

When Arthur Winnington Ingram came up from Marlborough to Keble, Keble
College was under the wardenship of the Rev. Edward Stuart Talbot, who
had already been there for seven years, and who was destined to remain
there for another eleven. He little dreamed that the student who had
entered would one day meet him again and have close relationships with
him as a fellow Bishop. But so it was, for from 1905 to 1911 he was
Bishop of Southwark, where his diocese touched that of his old student
on its southern borders; and for ten years previously he had been
Bishop of Rochester, a See where in Metropolitan Kent he had to share a
great deal of the Bishop of London’s episcopal work. But, nevertheless,
he certainly was one of the first men to be impressed with the promise
of this young student; he never lost sight of him and it was at his
instigation that later on he became Head of Oxford House, Bethnal Green.

For the first two years of Winnington Ingram’s residence in Oxford,
the Dean of the College and his tutor was the Rev. Francis Jayne,
afterwards the Bishop of Chester. But the man who was to have a mighty
influence over the young student was Canon King, then a Lecturer in
Pastoral Theology at Oxford. He was afterwards referred to by him as
“one of my great spiritual masters.” Over and over again in Winnington
Ingram’s published utterances occur quotations from phrases of Canon
King, such as this:

“I remember so well dear old Bishop King saying to us--I have often
quoted it: it remains in my mind after thirty years: it must be an
inspired seed thought--‘Now, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘remember, when you
are ordained you are ordained for the world!’”

He was also very fond of telling how once when Canon King was warning
them against being nervous, or yielding to presentiments, he said:

“I had a presentiment that I should die when I was twenty-six. And sure
enough, after I was ordained, it happened that in the parish where I
was working, smallpox broke out. Here, I thought, is my presentiment
coming true: I am twenty-six. But I had to go to the patients in
pursuance of my duty. I had to sit up with them. I had to bury one
myself. But,” smiling, “here I am, gentlemen, this morning. Nothing
should be allowed to stand between us and doing our duty.”

Amongst the men who had gone from Marlborough immediately before him,
Winnington Ingram found J. B. Kite; while R. E. Fiske and Ernest
Frederic Newman, of his own year at Marlborough, went up with him, and
a little later they were followed by Herbert J. Glennie.

His work at Oxford was not distinguished by any outstanding
proficiency in scholarship, nor in athletics. His life was practically
a continuation of the old Marlborough plodding combined with the
cultivation of every form of healthful exercise. He entered readily
into all sport, especially fives, and did his best on the river. He
became honorary secretary of Keble College Boating Club, and was
appointed to the coxswainship of his College eight. At the end of 1881
he gained his B.A., taking a First Class in Classical Mods. and a
Second Class in Greats.

One might have expected he would quite naturally have proceeded at once
to take Holy Orders. But here occurred a curious break in the apparent
direction of his career. In some of his later public utterances he
refers to a period of doubt which had existed in his life. Speaking
quite frankly he appealed to his audience, as one who had faced in his
own soul, in private, every doubt which he thought it was possible
to have about the Christian faith. It can be readily understood that
at this particular period, all manner of doubts would appeal to any
thoughtful young man before he decided on seeking ordination in the
Church of his fathers. In a history of the last hundred years of the
Church of England, afterwards referred to by the Bishop, he says:
“There were 800 pages, about 400 devoted to the Ritual question, the
struggles as to the real meaning of the Ornaments Rubric: Are vestments
to be worn or not? Is incense to be burnt or not? Is a stole legal?
What is the real worth of a Privy Council judgment? The Gorham Case;
the Mackonochie case; the Peter Green case were still agitating
clerical minds. There had been the Colenso controversy, and then the
controversy about _Lux Mundi_.”

“Now,” said the Bishop, referring to this period, many years
afterwards, when he was preaching to an audience on “New Wine in
Old Bottles,” “I should be the last to deny the importance of some
of these controversies, but it is hard to realise how trivial, how
petty, many of them must have seemed to the toiling millions of our
fellow-countrymen, or how, at any rate, far above their heads the whole
hurly-burly sounded.

“There they were fighting and struggling for daily bread; here we were
convulsed with a question of whether a stole was legal. There they were
working out their own salvation as best they might; here we were ranged
into two rival camps of High Church and Low Church, and too intent upon
defeating one another to have time to attend to their growing hunger
for a life which could be in any sense called real life, and a home
which was indeed a home.”

That was the position as Bishop Winnington Ingram described it years
later, on looking back. Perhaps when he left Oxford the short break in
his strictly ecclesiastical career may have been occasioned by some
such line of reasoning, prompting him to ask if it were worth while.
More than this he himself hints that even when he was a boy in the
Sixth at Marlborough he went through a “most distressing time.” By
his nickname of Chuckles, it is clear he was supposed to be one of the
lightest-hearted boys in his school--and yet, referring to this period
in after life, he says: “I remember hours of sadness when I was by
myself. I remember the time when I wandered about in the playground,
or elsewhere, and wondered what was behind everything: could I believe
there was a God at all? I see now it was the questioning mind of the
boy. I was bound to ask as a boy before I could believe as a man.”

Well, imagine that boy, with this reflective type of mind placed in
the very midst of the intellectual difficulties of Oxford, and faced
by the special problems of the Church, which were sure to urge for
a solution at Keble, and it is not wonderful if he craved a period
in which to find out his own mind and to settle whether he could be
obedient to the call to give himself to serve the Church. The very fact
that Canon King’s dictum already referred to made such an impression on
his mind, before he was ordained--“Remember when you are ordained you
are ordained for the world”--reveals the mental attitude of the young
undergraduate. So it is not surprising that Winnington Ingram did not
seek ordination at once, but turned his attention to private tutorial
work.

The greater part of the next three years after leaving Oxford was spent
in Continental travel, and it was then that he acquired his taste
for Alpine climbing. But all this time his mind was at work, and the
direction in which it was working is indicated by his own story of a
lengthy paragraph which he read in a book which had been written by a
strange character--William Law--who had been a clerk in Holy Orders a
hundred and seventy years before. He had been a tutor to the father of
Gibbon, the historian, and lived for years in his house at Putney. The
book which he issued, “The Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life,” in
1729, became a deep influence, and it was not surprising that when it
fell into the hands of Winnington Ingram some of its passages produced
the same effect it had had upon so many others, including the Wesleys.
The Bishop says: “I can never forget a story that made the deepest
impression on me which I read in Law’s ‘Serious Call’ when I was a
young man before I was ordained. Here is the passage: ‘A young man was
dying, and his family and friends were round him, and they thought
he could not hear what they were saying, as they remarked what a sad
thing it was that he should die like this. “Why,” they said, “he was
the best man at a bargain in the City, and had everything to live for.”
But he raised himself in the bed and spoke to them thus: “I heard what
you have been saying, but if you could change places with me, and knew
that not all the gold in the world could buy back five minutes of life,
and that in five minutes you had to meet your God, you would speak
differently. I have to meet my God empty handed with nothing to show
for my life.”’”

This sense that he must have something to show for his life weighed
with Mr. Winnington Ingram, and he determined to take Holy Orders. He
was ordained Deacon in 1884; became a curate at St. Mary’s, Shrewsbury,
and was ordained priest at the end of the year.




CHAPTER II

ST. MARY’S, SHREWSBURY


Winnington Ingram was ordained on Sunday, March 19, 1884, by Dr.
Maclagan, who was then Bishop of Lichfield and afterwards Archbishop of
York. Thus, the young curate became one of the assistant clergy in the
diocese of one of the most remarkable men of the time.

Dr. Maclagan was a singularly robust and broad-minded man. This
enabled him to preserve his equanimity at a period when there was
very much which was disturbing, and to insist on tolerance when
others were calling for prosecutions of those who were endeavouring
to revive the Catholic faith and practice. Not only did he adopt this
attitude towards his fellow-Churchmen, but he assumed it also towards
the members of other communions. At a time, when the passage of Mr.
Morgan’s Bill in the House of Commons, throwing open parish churchyards
to other burial services than those of the Established Church, produced
bitter feeling, he was one of the Bishops who practically viewed it
with unconcern.

In an address given by him at the Church Congress in 1887 at
Wolverhampton, after referring to the wholesome issue of the Education
Acts, which had also been the subject of gloomy prognostications, he
had the courage to say amid cheers:

“Not less remarkable has been the result of the Burials Act. What
gloomy anticipations were rife amongst us as to the disorder and
scandal which would be witnessed in our churchyards if this measure
should ever come to pass! And what has been the result? The Act has
been to a large extent a dead letter. Our churchyards are as peaceful
and orderly as they were twenty years ago. Here and there, at rare
intervals, a burial service other than that of the Church of England
may take place, but the Act in the main has made very little difference
after all the alarm and foreboding which it excited before it passed
into law.”

When Archbishop Tait was dying, Dr. Maclagan came to see him, and in
the course of conversation the Archbishop remarked: “I hope you are
not a great alarmist about the present state of things”--referring to
the ritual difficulties in the Church. Dr. Maclagan replied: “I am not
at all!” He never was. His attitude towards most matters was fair and
judicial and prompted by an anxiety to see the other side of things;
and it may be that from his influence during the years afterwards spent
at Lichfield by Winnington Ingram that the young clergyman’s own kindly
and tolerant spirit was induced.

Again and again, in his public utterances later on, Dr. Ingram shows
how he readily sat at the feet of teachers of other communions, if
he found they had anything to tell him. He frequently refers to Dr.
Dale--the famous Congregationalist minister of Birmingham--and calls
him “that grand old man of Nonconformity.” He says of him: “He brought
home to me in one of his books the necessity for the Justice of God.”
Again and again he quotes John Wesley thus: “I saw the course of light
and love flow over the ocean of darkness and death and in this I saw
the infinite love of God.” Again and again he quotes Dr. Gordon, the
American divine, from his “Quiet Talks on Power.” Several times he
mentions Andrew Murray, the African Presbyterian minister, quoting from
his devotional works. All of this goes to show that Winnington Ingram
had gained that habit of mind, which can pluck fruit in all manner of
orchards, and understand that there are diversities of operation but
the same Spirit shineth through them all.

It was this which induced Winnington Ingram’s future tolerant
attitude towards the Anglo-Catholic revival. Only a man of judicial
fair-mindedness could have said what he did after the great Albert Hall
meeting of the Anglo-Catholics:

“Now the intellectuals (and I may include among them many of the
Bishops in the past) have never been fair to the movement, and yet
you had only to look into the Albert Hall about a year ago to see the
immense hold it has got over thousands of our fellow-countrymen, and
there is not a doubt that brighter and more ornate services appeal to
many of our poorer fellow-citizens who can be reached often through the
eye more easily than through the ear.

“At any rate, having the opportunity this morning, I would ask those
present to lay aside prejudice and to judge accurately, as you would
judge a case, and, while strengthening the hands of the Bishops in
putting down real disloyalty, sympathise with the revival of spiritual
life in parish after parish on lines absolutely different from those
to which you are accustomed yourselves, and which certainly would not
and do not appeal to you.”

This might have been Dr. Maclagan speaking. The voice is the voice of
Winnington Ingram, but the spirit is that of Maclagan.

Well, it was under such a man that he now enlisted as one of his
assistant clergy at the Church of St. Mary, Shrewsbury. He started
out with two factors working in his mind. One was a memory which came
from his Oxford days, of an Oxford Don, who, at the risk of his life,
visited and nursed a graduate who was suffering from a contagious
disease. It taught him the greatness of sacrifice, when in the line of
duty. The other sprang from a layman, and how it came about can be best
told in the Bishop’s own words:

“I always remember advice given me by a learned judge at a time when
I was a young layman. ‘How,’ I asked him, ‘were you to be sure that a
doctrine was of God?’ ‘Soak in the Gospels,’ was his reply. I find what
he said was true advice; if you want to know if a piece of music is by
Handel, you soak in Handel’s style, and then when you hear it played,
you can tell; do you want to know if a saying is from God, soak in the
sayings of God, and you will know.”

He started out in this spirit, but none the less he admits:

“I do not myself remember realising at all what religion meant until
I was in the midst of two thousand poor people in my first curacy. I
found myself suddenly looked upon as a sort of earthly providence, and
it was a surprise to me that they should look to me for sympathy and
help. I was a comparatively young man, and it quite drew me out of
myself and made me realise Christ’s love in a way that nothing else
could.”

But the actual contact with the facts of life, and the responsibility
which was flung upon him as he went in and out of the homes of the
2,000 people who were under his charge in the parish of St. Mary’s, in
Shrewsbury, brought the habit of reliance for power to say what he had
to say, and to do what he had to do, upon the Spirit of God, Himself,
in ever greater degree. He refers to one of these experiences in the
following touching words:

“My memory goes back to a time, now many years ago, when, as a newly
ordained deacon, I was called upon to watch through the night by the
side of a little dying child. The doctor had done what he could, and
had left the child for me to tend. Hour after hour of the night passed,
and at last she could only say, ‘Oh, dear! Oh, dear!’ over and over
again. I spoke to her, held her hand, prayed by her; and at last, in
the early morning, she passed away. But the worst part had not come.
The mother came next day. She lived in the country, far away from
telegrams, and, though the telegram had gone as quickly as might be,
she arrived too late. Never to my dying day shall I forget taking that
mother into the dead-house of the Infirmary to see her dead child. As
she looked at the face of the child, whom she had parted with but a
few weeks before, a shriek of absolute anguish rang from her lips. ‘My
little lamb! My little lamb!’

“I would ask you to consider what you would have said to her that
morning.”

One of his friends, who afterwards made his acquaintance at Lichfield,
has pointed out to us that the fact of Winnington Ingram being ordained
Deacon in March, and Priest later in the same year, was indicative of
the very high opinion Bishop Maclagan had of him--it was a proceeding
so very unusual that it was emphatic, and at the time it occasioned a
good deal of kindly notice.

The Bishop’s opinion of him was speedily justified by Winnington
Ingram’s success as a curate at St. Mary’s, Shrewsbury. St. Mary’s was
an old historic church, and a leading church in the town itself. It was
a trying thing for any young man to become a curate there, but there
was no doubt that his advent was quickly followed by popularity to an
almost phenomenal extent. He appears to have rapidly made a reputation
for stirring preaching, which was characterised by practical thinking
and vigorous delivery. He wrote his sermons with an eye upon the most
distant listener, and broke them up into short sentences, so that they
could be readily followed. In a very short time he became appreciated
by many people in the town. Fortunately for him he had as his rector a
first-class organiser, in the person of the Rev. Canon B. Lloyd, who
afterwards deservedly was appointed Archdeacon of Salop. Through him
he received a glimpse of successful methods of organisation and the
business side of the life of a parish. Canon Lloyd himself resided
out of the town, but he had a parish room near the church, and at two
o’clock every day he regularly met his curate to arrange the next day’s
work, and to receive reports of the day before.

The town itself contained a population of nearly 27,000. It was the
Parliamentary Borough, and the County and Assize town of Shropshire.
Its historic associations were very appealing. There were a large
number of antique timber houses among them, in Butcher Row, the former
town residence of the Abbot of Lillishall. There were the remains
of the town ramparts built as far back as the reign of Henry III.
The castle built by Roger de Montgomery had been dismantled in the
seventeenth century, but there still remained the archway of the
interior gateway, the walls of the inner porch, and two large round
towers erected in the time of Edward I. Roger de Montgomery also
founded in 1083 the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul, which was of
great extent, and very richly endowed. At the dissolution the abbey
was destroyed, except part of the nave and the western tower of the
church. This was converted into a parish church, under the name of
“Holy Cross.” There was St. Julian’s, dating back before the Conquest;
St. Alkmond’s, dating from the tenth century; and St. Giles, dating
from the time of Henry I. The old church of St. Chad, which had been
destroyed by the fall of the tower in 1788, still had the Bishop’s
chancel remaining. But amongst all these churches the one of special
interest was St. Mary’s, where Winnington Ingram was curate. It was
founded in the tenth century, and was a fine cruciform structure, with
a tower and spire 222 feet high. The interior was specially worthy of
notice for its elaborate details, its stained glass, and its ancient
monuments.

The population around the church gained its living chiefly in glass
staining, the spinning of flax and linen yarn, iron founding,
brewing, malting, the preparation of brawn, and the manufacture of
the well-known Shrewsbury cakes. The presence of the ancient market
constantly brought the town into touch with the County agricultural
interests. Other denominations beside the Church of England had
flourishing causes in the town; so that practically Winnington Ingram’s
first curacy was spent in a position where _every_ problem--county,
municipal, and parochial--would present itself, either in the form of
industrial, educational, or denominational. It was a fine training
ground, differentiating in its experiences from that which might have
been his lot had he been starting in some more rural district.

In the short time he was there, Winnington Ingram put in a good deal of
steady work. His visiting was easy, for it was welcomed, and in after
days, as he faced the grave difficulties connected with visitation in
the East End, he would often refer, humorously, to the way in which
people used to dust chairs for him, and show their delight in seeing
him. These country townfolk seemed to be of opinion that “calls” should
be returned; and, as the curate left them after paying one, it was a
common thing to hear: “You will see us at church on Sunday, sir!”

His hard work told, and in a very short time he became thoroughly
appreciated. In the ordinary way the young curate would have received
his reward by staying on; but from the time of his ordination Bishop
Maclagan was closely observing him, and at the end of eighteen months
took the earliest opportunity of suggesting his removal to Lichfield
itself. That opportunity presented itself on this wise, and--the scene
was changed!

The Bishop suddenly had a double opening present itself. He needed a
private secretary-chaplain, and right-hand man for himself, and at
the same time there occurred a vacancy in the City foundation of St.
John’s Endowed Hospital. These endowments were for the Master and the
Chaplain. There were snug quarters for both: and Winnington Ingram
moved into his Chaplain’s quarters at St. John’s, and performed the
duties on Sundays for the inmates, and also for any of the Lichfield
public who cared to come. As a matter of fact, a good number did
usually resort to the services, especially after the coming of Mr.
Winnington Ingram, for he soon grew as popular as he had been at St.
Mary’s.

The appointment to St. John’s relieved the young priest of parochial
work, and he spent much of his time as practical secretary of the
Bishop. Thus he came more intimately than ever under Dr. Maclagan’s
personal influence. Some of Winnington Ingram’s contemporaries at
the time in Lichfield thus describe Dr. Maclagan: “He had brought up
with him from his parish ministry at St. Mary, Newington, the result
of experiences which had shown him to an unusual extent the working
of what may be called ‘the _personal_ influence of religion,’ in its
effects of conviction of personal sin and guilt, and the personal
touch of God upon the individual. Few men seemed to realise it more
deeply.” “He might almost have been a Methodist in his fervour and
his insistence upon personal experience,” said one. “Yet, in the same
man you had the other side which was perpetually laying emphasis on
the importance of the Church’s system, and the administration of its
Sacraments.”

There is no doubt that these two sides of Bishop Maclagan were
afterwards reproduced in later life by his young Chaplain. The fervour
and the sense of the necessity of experimental religion has always
characterised Arthur Winnington Ingram, and the emphasis laid by Bishop
Maclagan upon attention to doing all things decently and in order has
been apparent also. Canon Petit says that “at the services in Lichfield
Cathedral everything was thought out with meticulous care. It was
especially so at ordinations. Everything went through on oiled wheels,
and without muddle. The Bishop would become the centre of the scene,
as he stood there, in those days without cope or mitre, but the moment
there was a chance for personal contact with the ordinand he would
carry it out on a personal line. Yes, it was impossible to live at the
side of Dr. Maclagan as Winnington Ingram did, without a deepening
conviction of the power and necessity of the personal touch of God upon
the individual soul, and the equal power and necessity of the personal
touch of man with man.

“When Winnington Ingram had been in Lichfield a short time, the Bishop
appointed him as one of the lecturers at the Theological College.
He delivered two lectures a week, each taking about an hour. The
curriculum of the College was practically divided into the students
of the Senior Group, and those of the Junior Group. Winnington Ingram
lectured to the Senior Group, and I myself to the Junior. But apart
from visiting as a lecturer, he was, in reality, sent there by the
Bishop for quite another purpose. He had perceived the extraordinary
gifts for _camaraderie_ possessed by young Winnington Ingram, and he
got him to go to the College that he might chum up with the students.
He did! He played with them at fives and tennis. It was a marvel to
see his rapid play at the latter, and in their Common Room he managed
to make the acquaintance of the men on a personal basis before they
would have to appear before the Bishop officially. Then, when that
happened, and the shy students came to the Bishop’s house, Winnington
Ingram was there to set them at their ease. ‘Ah, we have met before,
haven’t we?’ And a chat would follow before which all nervousness and
diffidence melted away. One of the students then resident, afterwards
the well-known Anglo-Catholic preacher, Father Passmore, says: ‘I well
remember him, and the knack Mr. Winnington Ingram had of putting his
arm round your shoulder, while he was speaking to you. He had the most
winning way with him.’”

Similar personal testimonies have come to us from many quarters
from which we gain a mental photograph of the young chaplain, as a
hand-on-your-shoulder, cheery, sympathetic, always friendly kind
of man, ever on the lookout for opportunities of comradeship as an
essential part of his work, and a real side of his influence.

The life in the Cathedral town introduced him to quite another type of
experience. When he arrived he found among the clergy Elmer Harding,
afterwards Principal of St. Aidan’s, but who later on returned to be
Principal of Lichfield itself; Burrows Southwell, who afterwards
became the Head of Bishop Jacob’s Hostel at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and
later on, Resident Canon of Worcester Cathedral; and Canon Petit, now
the Secretary of the Additional Curates’ Society.

He found himself mixing with men who were members of a very curious
Corporation which was a survival of an ancient foundation. “The Minor
Canons’ Corporation of Lichfield Cathedral consisted of the Minor
Canons and the Lay Clerks.[B] They were not a bit dependent on the Dean
and Canons. They were independent possessors of a freehold, and could
not be turned out except for moral unfitness and clear incapacity.
They had their own endowments, perfectly independent of the Cathedral
authorities, invested in the hands of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners,
who sent the dividends on their investments four times a year to divide
among themselves. The people who founded the Corporation in the Middle
Ages felt that the younger clergy who did the singing might spend too
much on dress and personal life. If they did not spend enough on food,
their health would suffer, and if their health, then their voices would
suffer, and that would mean the Cathedral services would suffer. So
they saw to it that it was laid upon the Dean and Canons to provide the
Minor Canons ‘with sufficient unto their daily maintenance, to wit, not
less than threepence a day.’ The whole time I was there, in addition
to my share of the dividends, I received under this curious provision
one shilling and ninepence per week. We had a little Close all to
ourselves. Winnington Ingram used frequently to drop in, especially
if he had failed to find someone to play with him at fives: then he
would look me up during those very times when I was resting before my
somewhat strenuous voice efforts in that very long Cathedral. The time
he had at his disposal was very limited, and it happened to fit in
with the time I had at mine. So I saw a good deal of him in this way,
and I can assure you that I remember him as a charming personality
altogether, and a very welcome visitor in the parishes around. He and
old Bishop Bromby held the posts of Master and Chaplain, and carried on
the services of St. John’s between them, and he resided in the Master’s
house.

[B] Canon Petit.

“There was one fact which no doubt remains in the Bishop of London’s
memory, which is connected with Lichfield Cathedral. During the Civil
War between the King and the Commonwealth, the Close and the Cathedral
became a fortified Royalist stronghold. Cromwell gained it, and his men
stabled their horses in the nave. For their amusement they pelted the
saints who were represented by the images in the niches in the west
front. At the top of it all stood the figure of our Blessed Lord which
they also smashed, until there was no more to smash. At the Restoration
of Charles II., there were, of course, great Royalist rejoicings, and
they determined to restore the damage which had been done. But money
was scarce and the extent of the damage could not be repaired all at
once: so they determined to fill in the great central niche where the
sculptured figure of our Blessed Lord had stood, and they did it by
putting in its place a statue of Charles II. himself, a fact which is,
perhaps, a practical commentary on what they thought in those days of
the Divine Right of Kings.”

It was in these surroundings that Winnington Ingram passed three years
of his public life; but meanwhile it is very evident that in his inner,
personal experience there were-things-which-were-happening. The young
priest himself told the story twenty-two years after.

“It was a very historic moment of my life. It occurred during a sermon
in Lichfield Cathedral. Now I will just paint you that. I do utterly
dislike speaking about myself, but when one is addressing people who
are about the same age as one was oneself then, it sometimes helps them
if one honestly tells them of one’s own experience. There was brought
to me in that sermon a conception, which I have never forgotten, of
the work of the Church as one vast Cathedral in which we are working,
and which fills the world. The reason I remember the sermon is this.
I was at Lichfield. I was very comfortable. I had the dearest little
church--St. John’s Hospital--in which I preached every Sunday evening.
I was honorary lecturer at the College, and played games with all the
young men--twenty to thirty young men--who were my great friends. I was
treated much too kindly by the Bishop, whose private chaplain I was.
Everything was _couleur de rose_. At that time, the Bishop of Brisbane,
Bishop Webber, came over to try and find someone to take the place of
my dear old friend, Bernard Wilson, who was _his_ chaplain at Brisbane.
He talked to me, but the old Adam was against it, and I did not want
to go. I felt, however, that the call could not be resisted, and in
that service, for the Church Guilds of the district, I was waiting for
the voice from Heaven to decide. An old man, Canon Twells, preached;
I can see him now; I knew him afterwards as a personal friend; and
this only shows how a sermon may speak home; I can still hear his
short sentences, ringing through the Cathedral, as he pointed out that
‘to every man was his work.’ I can never forget the most entrancing
conception which was put before us that day--of the great Cathedral
stretching throughout the world, in which you hear the chipping of the
stones, far away in the distant aisle, while you may be working in
another part of the same Cathedral. It made no difference if you were
chipping a stone in the Brisbane aisle far away, or polishing up the
reredos in the Lady Chapel at home. You hear sounds of what is going on
in this one great glorious Cathedral throughout the world. Possibly it
was that sermon which has always made me write, even at night--which is
a bad thing to do--to many of those brothers who have gone out in the
world. They want to hear the chipping of the stones at home. It cheers
them in doing their duty, and they value it tremendously. They are
working far away, but it is all one work, at home or abroad.

“That was the deciding message to me. In the evening I offered myself
to go, never dreaming, of course, that I should not be allowed so to
do.”

We think it very probable that Bishop Maclagan placed his veto upon
it. Winnington Ingram had already proved his value in the work of the
Lichfield diocese and especially in connection with the work of the
hostel; but from whatever cause, his application was refused, and the
young chaplain stayed on for a time.

One other experience he had which he himself has preserved for us.
It occurred at a time when there was a retreat for the clergy--some
hundred of them--at Lichfield Cathedral also. Bishop Gott was the
Missioner, and he stood before them, and dropped the startling remark:
“Don’t you think, my brethren, that if God dropped His hold on any one
of us, we might fall anywhere?” One of his listeners at any rate was
impressed; and to him it was as he confesses a searchlight question for
many a year.

It is from the pen of the Bishop of London himself that we have the
best sketch of Bishop Maclagan.[C] He describes him as his second
father; mentions the extreme nervousness he felt at his first interview
with him, and hints that while he was at St. Mary’s, Shrewsbury, he
saw little of him, except at meetings which were held by him for the
younger clergy.

[C] “Memoir of Archbishop Maclagan,” by F. D. How. Pp. 210 _seq._ Wells
Gardner, Darton and Co.

“When I left the people of my district in Shrewsbury, to go to
Lichfield as the Bishop’s private chaplain, I soon found myself under
a guidance and training which, as it turned out, was fitting me for
the work of my later life. To go round with the Bishop, hear his
delightful addresses to Confirmation candidates, or see the readiness
with which he always had the right thing to say on every occasion,
was an inspiration. What better text could you find for an address to
agriculturists at the Royal Agricultural Show of the County than his,
‘Is not a man better than a sheep?’

“During the three years I was his private chaplain I never once
received a cross word. In the little church where I preached every
Sunday to the congregation including the old men of St. John’s Hostel,
to my horror I once saw him in the audience. I need hardly say there
was nothing remarkable in the sermon, but what was remarkable (and it
has been a lifelong lesson to me) was the loving encouragement given to
the young preacher by the Bishop afterwards, the remembrance of which
has never failed to make me encourage and not depress the efforts of
young preachers.”

Apparently Bishop Maclagan was very eager that deacons should be
_trained_ to preach, and no deacon was allowed to preach a sermon of
his own composition more than once a month: all other sermons were to
be read, copied, or learned by heart from various books selected by
the Bishop. This restriction applied to the Parish Church only. Every
deacon had to send his monthly sermon to Lichfield, where they were
sent on to the various examining chaplains, and then redistributed to
them with their notes and comments.

“But I might gossip on for long on that Lichfield time, certainly
one of the happiest in my own life. What ‘days off’ we had--when we
got them! When the Bishop drove us all off--and he was an excellent
whip--to some distant valley, where we picknicked in the sunshine. It
was really the sense that it was _too_ happy a life for a man of thirty
which made me offer myself, first for Brisbane, and then, when the
Bishop would not allow that, for East London six months later.

“For years no holiday of mine was complete without a week at
Lichfield, and afterwards at Bishopsthorpe, or at some beautiful place
in Wales, and always I found the Bishop the same. Some men change
towards you as life goes on. I never felt that about the Bishop (or,
rather, Archbishop). There was always the same smile of welcome, the
readiness to be interested in what you were doing, and the best kind
of sympathy in your joys and griefs. Looking back, if I were asked to
choose the adjective which best described him, I should say he was one
of the most lovable men I have ever met.”

This impression was _penned_ by the Bishop of London in 1911, but it
was _made_ during the four and a-half years in which young Winnington
Ingram first came under the influence of Bishop Maclagan.

One other thing he owed to Dr. Maclagan, and that was a system of rules
for the conduct of his ordinary life, to which the Bishop has not
infrequently referred. These were the rules:

I. To devote a fixed time daily to private devotion, including Prayer,
Intercession, and Meditation.

II. To give one hour, at least, in every day, or six hours in each week
to definite Theological Study.

III. To be specially faithful in visiting both the sick and the whole.

IV. To be methodical, punctual, and thorough in all things; rising
early and at a fixed hour; having as far as possible definite times for
different duties; and keeping a daily record of the work done for the
Master.

V. To devote a fixed portion of our income to the service of God and
the relief of the poor.

VI. To observe in a loyal spirit, as God may guide us, the rules and
directions of the Church.

VII. On one of the days of each Ember season to read over on our knees
the vows and exhortations of the Ordinal; and to make the day as far as
possible a day of retirement for self-examination and prayer.

VIII. Once in each year to seek for one or more days seclusion from the
world at some Retreat or Clerical Conference, for the reviving of our
spiritual life, and for higher instruction in the ways of God and in
the work of our calling.

IX. To daily endeavour ourselves to follow the blessed steps of His
most holy life, Whose we are and Whom we serve, and to adorn the
doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.

It would appear that one of the most intimate friends of Dr. Maclagan
was G. Howard Wilkinson, afterwards Vicar of St. Peter’s, Eaton Square,
and later, Bishop of Truro, and later on still, Bishop of St. Andrew’s,
and Primus of the Scottish Church. He became to him the most closely
related of all his friends.

It was perfectly natural, therefore, that a friend such as Bishop
Wilkinson should meet this much younger friend, Winnington Ingram, and
become deeply interested in him:--an interest which was as great on the
part of the young chaplain, as of his more elderly friend. Winnington
Ingram refers to him again and again as “my great spiritual master.”
The one thing which impressed him about Dr. Maclagan’s intimate friend
was his intense belief in the Holy Spirit. Speaking of him years later,
he said, coupling his name with that of Bishop King, of Lincoln: “No
one would have said they were men of striking intellectual gifts; no
one, in all probability, would have said at school or at college that
they were going to leave a lasting mark on their generation, compared
perhaps with their more brilliant contemporaries. But those two men
have died in a blaze of glory which will illuminate the world for years.

“I have a precious possession now--a thumbed Bible with the leaves
almost falling out, which was used every day by Bishop Wilkinson; and I
value that like the sword of Goliath.

“I remember so well that one day, when I was walking in Scotland
with Bishop Wilkinson, I said to him: ‘I cannot thank you enough for
teaching me the lesson of living “day by day” which comes out in your
book the “Laws of the Kingdom,” in which one of the chapters is called
the Law of Day by Day.’

“So he turned quickly to me, and said: ‘Did I say that?’ I answered:
‘Of course, you said it. You said it in the whole chapter.’

“He did not say to me anything more that day, but next day he said: ‘It
was curious, Bishop, your speaking to me about “day by day.” I was so
dreadfully worried yesterday about something, and it was the very thing
I wanted someone to say to me.’

“I have never forgotten what Bishop Wilkinson told me about his
addresses at St. Peter’s, Eaton Square; for he said that those
addresses of his which were sold, I believe, at half-a-guinea a piece
in West London for some charity, and which the whole of West London
poured in to hear, were the same addresses, in substance, which he had
given to the miners in his old parish.

“Bishop Wilkinson was a man who all his life had to struggle against a
tendency to melancholia; yet he had his head above the mist all the
time, and because he had his head above the mist he was able to convert
thousands in London, and throughout the world. This man was living in a
real world which gave him his extraordinary power.”

Such was the influence upon the young chaplain of the impact upon his
character of this truly consecrated man.




CHAPTER III

OXFORD HOUSE


It was in 1888 that Mr. Winnington Ingram, right in the very midst of
what we have already seen he described as a very comfortable life, and
a very happy one, felt moved to listen to the wooing of the man who
had been his former Warden at Keble College, Dr. Talbot, and to offer
himself for the new Settlement work which had been started at Oxford
House, Bethnal Green, in East London.

In these days the idea of such a Settlement as that of Oxford House,
and the certainty of its value, is quite familiar to us, but in those
days there was something of an adventure about such a scheme. According
to Charles Booth in his volume dealing with Religious Influences,
in his series “Life and Labour in London,” the Settlement should be
described as a Residential Club with a purpose--the purpose being
connected with the social, moral, or religious improvement of the
neighbourhood in which the Club is established. The practical aims
of all may be grouped under the headings of Education, Recreation,
Charitable Effort, and Local Government. Of these four sides of the
work, one or other may come into greater prominence; here, Lectures
and Classes, and there, Clubs; in one case, Exhibitions; in another,
Concerts or Entertainments; in this one, the Organisation of Charity,
and in that, the active participation in the government of the
district; but in some shape these four are always present. There is,
moreover, a constant community of aim found in the underlying idea of
neighbourliness--the “making of friendships,” which is sometimes spoken
of as the fundamental idea of all Settlements alike. And, finally,
there is the religious motive, whether in the foreground or the
background, always present.

Practically it would be right for Settlements to inscribe over their
portals, “I consider nothing alien to me which is of interest to
humanity.”

Now the Oxford House in Bethnal Green was established in order that
Oxford men might take part in the social and religious work of the
Church in East London on these very lines. Their aim in doing this was
that on the one hand they might learn something of the life of the
poor, and on the other that they might try to better the conditions
of the working classes, as regards health and recreation, mental
culture and spiritual teaching. But above all, that they might offer
an example, so far as in them lay, of a simple and religious life.
Established shortly before Winnington Ingram came as its Warden, it has
now for many years tried to be a beacon of light in the East End, and
to help young men to acquire the mind of Christ, to look at things from
His point of view, to be able to maintain it with their fellows, and to
show that the mind of Christ should be the modern mind after all. To
carry out these ideals was the aim of Oxford House, and it was to be
the leader in these efforts that Dr. Talbot urged Winnington Ingram.

Certainly by his gifts of _camaraderie_, no one could have been better
fitted for the task.

Before he came, and at the beginning of the movement, the scope of the
work had been, so it was thought by the promoters, sufficiently covered
by providing a curate to aid the labours of the curate-in-charge at
St. Andrew’s, Bethnal Green. A Mr. Jackson was appointed, and it was
emphasised that he was to have the guidance of any Oxford men who might
volunteer to take up occasional or permanent work in East London; and
he was also to act as a sort of _liaison_ officer between such workers,
and any clergy who applied for their help. But in the working out of
this arrangement the several volunteers from Oxford found it necessary
to have a kind of headquarters. This they fixed upon in the disused
school of St. Andrew’s itself. Little by little, and room by room, it
was roughly fitted up as the premises of the Oxford House Club; and, by
degrees, because it was found necessary, it assumed the character of a
residence.

Soon after, the Rev. J. G. Adderley took charge of the Settlement,
and because it was found better in actual work, it was carried on
independently of the parish of St. Andrew’s, although it still occupied
the school building. Mr. Adderley was immediately succeeded by Hensley
Henson, now Bishop of Durham, who, after some months of strenuous
work left to become Vicar of Barking. It was on his departure that
Winnington Ingram took his place as Head of Oxford House.

He entered on his new duties on New Year’s Day, 1889. He found the work
so little known in the neighbourhood that on his arrival at Bethnal
Green it was difficult for the cabman to find the place. Out of that
cab he stepped, entered the apartment assigned to him, and sat down,
determined that one of the first things he would do, would be to move
out from these rooms and start building afresh. His plans matured in
eighteen months. The foundation-stone of the new quarters was laid at
the end of twenty-two months, and seven months later the new premises
were opened in Mape Street, Bethnal Green.

At the opening ceremony a short service was held in the chapel, and
afterwards H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught declared the building open.
Among the speakers were Dr. Benson, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and,
of course, Dr. Maclagan, who made it the occasion of testifying to his
own personal loss, when Mr. Winnington Ingram had left him.

The new premises could house twenty-one resident students, and had
several public rooms, a dining-hall, a library, and a big lecture-hall.
The increased accommodation successfully drew a large number of
students from Oxford. All those who came to take part in the social
and spiritual work connected with Oxford House voluntarily paid thirty
shillings a week during their residence. It got out in the desultory
chat of the public-houses that “this ’ere Oxford ’ouse is a kind of
bloomin’ ’otel. Mr. Ingram, wot’s the ’ead of it must make a fine
fing out of it.” It was a considerable time before it dawned upon the
residents in the side-streets, and the public-house loafers in general,
that these men were supporting themselves, while they learned how to
help men like their critics, and that, as for Mr. Ingram, he was only
receiving “a wage” of £3 a week, and “everyfink found.”

Now what were the problems which faced the new Head? It certainly was
with considerable trepidation that he confronted them. His life at St.
Mary’s, Shrewsbury, and his comfortable existence at Lichfield, had not
exactly qualified him for laying skilled, deft, experienced fingers on
the tangled social and spiritual skein around him. We do not mean that
it had disqualified him in any sense; for every such experience as he
had had in dealing with men before naturally fitted him for dealing
with others. Human nature, whether country-town or cathedral-city, is
at the roots identical with the human nature of the crowded byways of
a great City like London and even the East-End part of it. After all,
one man is not merely “One man, but all Mankind’s epitome.” But in the
case of the country-town and cathedral-townsman, there were no walls to
be scaled. The walls were down. In the case of the streets surrounding
the new Head of Oxford House the walls were still up and would need
scaling. But he knew that the weak spot in the walls would be the
children, especially the boys--those young hooligans, who made the
streets resound with their noise by day and by night. When they were at
school they were under authority, but the moment they were out of it
they were simply a mass of irresponsibles, unless, as in the case of
a good many, they were working as boys in a shop out of school hours,
or taking on a half-time job of some kind. As for the elder boys who
had just got into trousers, they imagined themselves men, and simply
came back from the work connected with their first “jobs” to loaf about
the streets, chaff the girls, or cadge for a drink at the corners of
public-houses.

The first skirmish with these was effected by the formation of clubs.
It was clear that unless some place was found as a rallying spot for
them that they could only be expected to gather as they did. Unless
some reasonable and attractive means was found for them of spending
their time, it was only reasonable to expect them to mis-spend it. So
Oxford House became the centre of many boys’ clubs, and the Head saw to
it that he was one with them all when the lads did come. He knew that
he must approach them on their own level if at all; so to the rough
and ready lovers of fighting he offered the inducement of boxing, and
the fish rose to the bait. He joined them at it himself and put on the
gloves with them.

It did not take long for the news to spread. Suspicion naturally lurked
in their minds; but when they found that here there were provided
opportunities for them to be themselves, in a far better way than they
could manage _by_ themselves, and out of the way of the disturbance of
“the copper” whom they regarded as their enemy, they began to flock in
and stay in. That was the opportunity of comradeship, and Winnington
Ingram used it to the full.

There now remained the next problem, which was to get at the men. But
reaching them was no easy matter. They were out early in the morning,
and at any rate during that period of Labour development they were
rarely home until seven o’clock in the evening, and never stayed there!
Out they went to their “favourright” pub, where they met their pals and
spent their evening and their money, either loafing inside or outside.

The only thing to do was to drop all self-consciousness, and saunter up
and down the street, at the corners of which so many of them loitered,
or linger outside the public-houses, and drift into conversation with
them.

Anyone who has ever tried the business will know how difficult it is.
There is the absolute indifference to you as a stranger which has to
be thawed, and for this purpose there must be some common ground, and
it is a common ground you will have to establish yourself. You cannot
say what you will, and when you will. It must be said at a convenient
moment, and it must be said in an “As-You-Like-It” fashion. A journey
or two up and down the streets, saying nothing, contenting oneself with
casual interested looks, will accustom them to the sight of you, and in
a day or so the interested look can merge into “Good-evening, mates!”

Another day or so will justify your pausing to make a remark, and then
comes the crux! It will probably meet some rough, chaffing response,
and, unless swift at repartee, you will not get your chance again,
but if you can manage a ready, good-humoured retort it is instantly
appreciated. London men love men with a gift-of-the-gab: men who sense
the right thing to say, and know the right way to say it.

This Winnington Ingram had in large degree, and in establishing
relations with these East-Enders, this asset was more serviceable
than any other. Passion for souls might have been eager, sympathy for
suffering might have been intense, but unless these could be manifested
in a readily understood form, then, to these men, it would have been a
case of the root being there, but there would have been no flower--no
flower they could recognise as one.

It was not long before these rough men were discussing in their
public-houses, and at the corners of streets, the advent of this
stranger.

“Who is ’e?” “Wot’s ’is little game?” “’Ead of Oxford ’Ouse is ’e?”
“Well, wot’s Oxford ’Ouse? Wot’s Oxford ’Ouse to do with we?”

Cute comments were made as to his business there in Mape Street.

“Oh, he’s some little game up his sleeve!” “P’r’aps he’s going to stand
for Parliament, and trying to get at us like this.” Some even thought
“He’s out to write a book about us.”

But whatever they thought the main thing was he had secured that they
did think, and think about _him_. Down came the barrier of strangeness,
and so the first step was taken.

But having managed to become on speaking terms with the men, there was
yet to be broken down the working man’s inveterate distrust of the
parson. They regard him as a “chap who ’as an easy job.” If he visits
their homes in their absence, he is known as “a cove who goes to see my
missus.” It takes much time and patience before they can be convinced,
that a man has come among them to seek their good, and is making
nothing out of it himself.

Presently, however, there filtered into their prejudiced minds the
gossip they heard from their boys about Mr. Ingram. Facts are stubborn
things, and when they saw these lads who had been their chief anxiety,
dropping their loafing ways and hooligan habits, as they came under the
influence of the Webbe Institute, and the Repton Club--both connected
with Oxford House; when they heard them speak of the parson, as one who
not only taught them to box, but boxed with them, played games with
them night after night: and, whenever opportunity offered, football and
cricket; when they saw him with their own eyes, coaching their lads in
the art of rowing on the River Lea; or even joining with them in their
crude attempts at playing “harriers,” then the conviction forced itself
upon them that here was no ordinary parson.

Little by little, he got to know them personally: a few in this street,
a few in that. This man’s girl was in one of his Clubs; that man’s boy
was in another. The “common ground” had been found at last!

When the “common ground” had been discovered, and the men had been
reached the next thing was to hold them. This had to be done by the
establishment of Working Men’s Clubs.

Winnington Ingram was of opinion that “Club life is more than merely
jolly. Clubs are the homes of friendship. They think like this: ‘There
is “Old Tom” with whom I have a chat every night, or Jack who gives
me points at billiards or bagatelle.’ A big Club is like a big Public
School!”

So he established clubs for men, and with the aid of bagatelle,
billiards, a reading-room, debates, lectures, concerts, dramatic
performances, and non-intoxicating refreshments, he tried to get and
keep a hold of the men. The Oxford House Working Men’s Club, and the
University Club, very quickly became a power for good in the streets
around Mape Street, and even much further from the Settlement. But
there was a reflex good, which was also gained by the men who were
residing at Oxford House. Here was provided at close quarters contact
with men who spelt out life in different words from themselves, and who
certainly looked at it from different angles. But the language and the
angle was real enough to many thousands: yes, and to many thousands
more than those young men from Oxford could ever number themselves.
These East-Enders represented the type of many millions like them. The
young Oxford men stood for a type, who in various ways would somehow
have to think for these others, perhaps legislate for them, perhaps
work amongst them as doctors, as priests, as lawyers, and even as
employers; and if in the coming years their thoughts were based upon
a clearer understanding of these men and their interests, gained at
Oxford House, it was all to the good of both parties and the nation
as a whole. But while these young University men gained incalculably
from the contact they also gave. Quite insensibly the prejudice against
Class broke down, as these ordinary men found themselves in touch with
those who had had advantages for which they and their children could
never hope, and yet put on no “side” about it.

We would point out, however, that no Settlement at Oxford House or
elsewhere, wherever it may be, can ever achieve all this, as a piece
of machinery. Its success depends, quite clearly depends, upon the
enthusiasm and personality of a few resident men, who have gained
their enthusiasm by a fire lit from within and lit from above. Mere
professionalism would not do. In the early years of Oxford House there
might have been all these splendid buildings and well-organised clubs;
and yet the problems of the neighbourhood not have been adequately
tackled, let alone solved. There is no getting away from the fact that
it was the fire that was burning in Winnington Ingram and in some of
his helpers that warmed the souls of the boys and men with whom they
now came in contact.

Men came and went, staying for six months, twelve months, but
Winnington Ingram and Mr. Douglas Eyre stayed and worked, and worked
with one aim before them, and that was how, now they had got these men
and boys into their clubs, they were able to bring real religion to
work in their lives.

“Religion,” said the Head of Oxford House, “is the only thing that does
any good. It is the only thing that holds them. I have seen this over
and over again. We had, of course, hundreds of boys round about Oxford
House, Bethnal Green, and to keep a boy from stealing and from lying,
and from all kinds of bad habits, which I need not mention, the one
thing essential was to make him believe in God, say his prayers, and
ask for strength; then he changed.”

So with this in view, the men were invited to Sunday services, and so
were the lads to Bible Classes. With regard to the latter from fifty
to sixty came every Sunday of their own accord, so that they might
again meet those whom they had met in the week, even, if now, they did
speak to them of the things about which lads are shy. But the men had
to be magnetised in a different way. They had to be attracted by the
announcement of subjects, and the subjects had to be such as even the
most flippant commonly discussed among themselves.

For instance: with a constant mortality occurring in their crowded
streets, there was one question continually cropping up: the old
question, “If a man die, shall he live again?” What will happen
after death, is a matter of considerable moment to those who
frequently witness people passing away, or their funerals passing
along. The subject becomes one of--well, shall we say “interesting
speculation”--if only to put it mildly. Mr. Ingram knew this, and
advertised that he would speak one Sunday evening on “What shall I do
five minutes after death?” That drew them, and once they were there
they found another real attraction in the fact that immediately after
the address he threw open the meeting to free discussion.

This was a practice he invariably adopted, and it led to lively scenes,
but it furnished the necessary spice of real interest, and the meetings
grew in size; so that he knew, that the day after the things which had
been said were being repeated and canvassed in many a workshop, factory
and yard, to say nothing of their homes.

For many years he carried on these services, and induced many speakers
to come and give the men their views, and that he did not shirk the
great issues which were raised is clear from the many and varied nature
of the questions. Here are some of them: Are we men or clocks? Will you
kindly define God? Does Science contradict Genesis? Is there a God?
If so, can He be a good God to allow so much suffering in the world?
Will a man who has never been baptised, but who has in every way led
a good life, be an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven? What is the
good of going on praying for something when the answer does not come
to the prayer? What is the soul? Do you think of Heaven as a place or
a condition of mind? Why did our Lord come to this little planet to be
crucified? Why not on one of the other millions? How could a good God
have created a bad devil? What happens to a man, when he dies, who has
been a great sinner during life, never going to church, never seeing
a priest or taking the Holy Communion? Why did God go on creating
when the first man and woman proved such a failure? Is everything
predestined; if so, how can we help ourselves? Is it true that when
I die I shall meet my friends again? Or shall we be separated? Who
was Cain’s wife? Do you believe that Balaam’s ass really spoke? Can
you really credit that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still? Is
it practicable to take no thought for the morrow, as the Bible tells
us? What is the meaning of our Lord’s startling statement which He
made when many crowds came to Him, “If any man come to Me, and hate
not his father, and mother, and wife and children, and brethren and
sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple”? Would
you consider it wrong to consult a Christian Scientist? Has not a man a
right if he has, say, a shilling he can afford to spend upon amusement,
to find his amusement in risking it on a bet?

So these questions, utterly varied in scope, would be placed before
the speakers Sunday after Sunday, and whatever the question and
whatever the answer, there was a certainty that the discussion would be
continued in groups the same evening, and during the week, “when the
congregation had broken up.”

But, at first, it was not plain sailing when they tried to get the men
interested in lectures of any kind during the week. Mr. Ingram has left
it on record that “when we started Oxford House, East London did not
want to be enlightened at all. We wanted to enlighten them, and Mr.
Fisher, one of the most brilliant of young Oxford men from New College,
came to help us. At his first meeting there was no audience when the
lecture began, so we went into the Lecture Hall and banged the chairs
about for a quarter of an hour, to make the Club men outside think
there was something going on. Mr. Fisher, meanwhile, was lecturing to
no one. After a quarter of an hour one man came in, then another came,
and then another, and that is the way the thing began.”

But making provision for sermons and lectures to the boys and men, and
providing for them the opportunities of Club life; and taking care
that always there was amongst them the magnetic influence of the Head
or one of his similarly enthused resident lieutenants, was by no means
all that had to be done. It was impossible to attempt one single branch
of work without, in some way, coming slap up against the necessity of
applying religion as a brake. For example, it was an easy matter to
start the boating Club connected with Oxford House; but the Bishop has
often referred to the fact that it led to the men of the Boating Club
coming to ask about their rowing on Sunday morning. “I explained to
them that I could not remain their President if their Club races were
held on Sunday morning, that it was impossible for me to commit myself
to the principle that Sunday morning was the time for a boat-race,
but that I had no right merely as Head of Oxford House to dictate to
them as individuals what they should do, though I lived down there to
try and lead them to better ways of spending Sunday morning. And the
deputation, with that perfect frankness and trust which they always
gave me, said: ‘We quite understand, Mr. Ingram. You have come down
here to lead us, and not to drive us.’ They could not have hit off the
work of a priest of God, if he works faithfully in the spirit of God,
more perfectly straight than that.”

There were questions connected with conduct which had to be faced. In
the many homes to which he and his workers now had the _entrée_, they
naturally found themselves not infrequently faced with “arrangements”
existing between men and women which had never been sanctioned by
marriage. These could not be winked at, nor ignored, but it needed
considerable tact to induce them to put matters upon a better basis.
There was the ever-recurring question of gambling: an open sore,
and a most terrible hindrance to really healthy life in any crowded
working-class community, and a curse which has meant stern fighting in
all the years the Bishop has been in London starting from his early
days at Oxford House. There was the equally recurrent question of
drunkenness, and its indirect effects upon the treatment of their wives
and children by men. The public-houses had to be watched; licensing
questions had to be settled! And last, but not least, the “private
view” which Mr. Ingram obtained of their lives, and their necessities,
called for his interference as a matter of course, for the preservation
of their public rights. For instance, over two hundred years before,
there had been given to the poor of Bethnal Green for ever about
seven acres of land, on condition that it was to be unoccupied by
any buildings. The greater part of the trustees were moving to gain
the consent of the Charity Commissioners to erect a Town Hall, a
Free Library, and an Infirmary on the Trust Grounds. “No,” said Mr.
Ingram. And he organised an opposition to the attempt; aroused genuine
resentment against it on the part of the people, who otherwise would,
perhaps, have let the matter slip through; gained a good deal of
influential outside support; and, finally, fought a successful action
in the Law Courts. Mr. Ingram himself became Chairman of the Board,
and in 1895 the land was opened to the public as their own, and so it
remains until this day.

Here, then, we see that to be Head of Oxford House meant infinitely
more than to be the Warden of a mere set of buildings. It _could_ have
meant just simply that, but not to a man of the type of Winnington
Ingram. To declare a place “open” and to make it “an opening” are two
distinct things. Mr. Ingram was under the urge of the old cry: “Compel
them to come in!” But the compulsion he exercised was that of magnetism
and comradeship. At the first “the personal equation” counted for
everything. Afterwards the personal equations of the men he attracted
to reside, and the men he attracted to influence, supplied him with
the material on which to work. After that, there was the danger,
the awful danger that always threatens mere Settlement work, the
danger of carrying on a merely ethical influence. But Mr. Ingram and
his lieutenants kept the spiritual ideal before them in it all. They
were not out to tune the piano down to the level of those round them,
but to tune it up to concert pitch. Nothing is more evident from an
examination of the records of Mr. Ingram’s work at Oxford House, than
that he never lost sight of the highest aim of the priest, which is
“bringing many sons unto glory.” This could only be done as it was done
by our Blessed Lord Himself, by practising a veritable “kenosis,” a
self-emptying in order to reach men on the level where they stood, that
they might be brought up to the level where he and his workers stood.

It was a glorious ideal! There is something which, to the writer, seems
almost pathetic, in this carrying on for years of work so multitudinous
in its petty details, as this work of Oxford House, by men whom
after events proved had been all the time capable of occupying great
administrative positions. There have been many things which have been
done by the Bishop of Stepney and of London since; but he has never
done anything which surpasses, in the simplicity and beauty of its
service, those years of commonplace routine, in which he found his
way into the hearts of men and women, and boys and girls, in the gray
streets which abounded around the Oxford House Settlement of Bethnal
Green.




CHAPTER IV

BETHNAL GREEN


During the years that Winnington Ingram had been at Oxford House, he
had received several honorary appointments. He had become Chaplain to
the Bishop of St. Albans; and when the man who had shown such great
interest in him already--Bishop Maclagan--had become Archbishop of
York, he also appointed him to a similar post. He was also invited
three successive years to become the Select Preacher at Oxford and at
Cambridge.

In 1895 Dr. Temple, who was then Bishop of London, was faced with the
difficulty of finding an Incumbent for St. Matthew’s, Bethnal Green.
It was a position which would call for a man of an unusual order of
gifts: the particular kind of gifts which Mr. Ingram had already proved
he possessed. The idea impressed itself forcibly on Dr. Temple’s mind
that it would be found practicable for Mr. Ingram to unite the two
posts--_i.e._, the Headship of Oxford House and the Rectory of Bethnal
Green.

On the suggestion being made to him, Mr. Ingram accepted: turned the
Rectory into a residence for his curates, and proceeded to officially
administer the parish with Oxford House as his headquarters.

It is a little difficult, therefore, to make this chapter distinctively
treat of his work at Bethnal Green, as its Rector, since that and his
work at Oxford House now, naturally overlapped one another. There was
the same kind of work to be done throughout the parish, which had been
already accomplished in the district around Mape Street; but, as he
still carried on his open-air work at Victoria Park, until he removed
it to St. Matthew’s, some amount of space must necessarily be allotted
to this part of his work.

Mr. Ingram always found this open-air work a fruitful source of
influence. In the first place it brought him into touch with many
men who scorned to come to his Club, or to Oxford House, or to any
centre of what they termed with scorn “Organised Christianity.” The
audiences consisted largely of men who belonged to one of five classes:
first, those who utterly disbelieved in God and religion of any kind;
second, those who gave a kind of general patronising assent to the
existence of a Deity, and to the claims of religion; third, those who
were curious or indifferent; fourth, those who were simply speculative
concerning religious matters; and fifth, those who were religious, but
aggressively denominational.

In the first class stood men who declared they failed to find any sign
of a plan, or a Providence, in the universe. One of these was cleverly
imagining the difficulties of a parsonic character, whose name he
borrowed from Charles Dickens, “The Rev. Mr. Stiggins.” Sarcastically,
for the purpose of his argument, he placed him in an Indian jungle.
Into his mouth he put these words: “Look at that beautiful fawn!
Notice the designs of Providence in its lightness and beauty!” With
a gesture the lecturer suddenly indicated the entrance of a tiger,
exclaiming: “Now notice the designs of Providence in its marks and
colour that the tiger may easily conceal itself! But at this moment the
providentially-striped tiger leaps upon the providentially-shaped fawn,
and devours it. Oh, Mr. Stiggins, oh, Mr. Stiggins! notice the designs
of Providence now! And if you have any reverence for Providence you
will stay yourself to be the tiger’s next meal! But Mr. Stiggins rushes
with horror from that place of Providence!” So much for the first kind!

As for the second kind, a curious story illustrates their attitude told
by Mr. Ingram. “I remember once in Victoria Park a man who was standing
at one of the meetings, who evidently wished to encourage me, and
exclaimed: ‘Well, Mr. Ingram, I vote for the existence of a God!’ and
he held up his hand, and they all voted round.”

As for the third class, they merely formed the background of men who
listened to arguments on both sides with equal respect, and found their
highest bliss in never coming to a conclusion. Their attitude: “it
don’t cut much ice neither way, so far as I can see!”

As for the fourth class, they were generally burning to air some new
theory of their own. One of them used to try and persuade his hearers
that Christianity was a Sun Myth, and his efforts were attended with
considerable success. Others had a great deal to say about Plato.
Others were great upon asserting that all the religions of the world
were equally inspired. Others that those same religions were equally
untrustworthy. To them it was merely the favourite engagement for their
minds; they belonged to the class of whom Thomas Carlyle well said:
“Their religion is no deeper than the merely argumentative region of
them, if indeed as deep as that.”

Finally, the fifth class were exclusively denominational in their
outlook. They were Baptists who stood for adult responsibility; they
were Congregationalists, who stood for freedom from creed, and from
forms, and for the democratic government of the Churches; they were
Plymouth Brethren--Fundamentalists--who based all their thinking upon
the _ipsissima verba_ of Scripture; they were Christadelphians, who
believed that their bodies were their souls, that Jerusalem was heaven,
and that no one could be saved except Christadelphians.

All these represented a mixed multitude, not many of whom in all
probability would have been reached anywhere else but in the open-air,
or by any other methods. For years Mr. Ingram became a familiar figure,
and as popular as he was familiar; for he faced the facts, and “never
hedged.”

What was the net result of all this? Mr. Ingram thought that the
results were these: (1) That with perfect friendliness many creeds had
met without in any way compromising their principles by attendance; (2)
that a great silent mass who did not speak heard three-quarters of an
hour’s lecture on Why they should be Churchmen; (3) that arguments on
the other side at any rate received an answer.

But there is, we think, another result which must be added. We mean the
exploding of the current idea which rules among working-men that if you
are to become a Christian you must not think: you must be prepared to
swallow wholesale whatever you are taught; and between Modern Thought
and the day of Jesus Christ there is great contradiction. They believe
the attitude of the Church is “Open your mouth and shut your eyes and
see what I will give you!” To such men the fearless appearance of Mr.
Ingram, and men like him, and their direct reasonableness in argument,
is an effective witness.


PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF RELIGION TO PARISH PROBLEMS.

As the Incumbent of the parish, Mr. Ingram found himself faced with
all manner of public problems, which he now felt it was simply his
duty to tackle. He used to go round with the Sanitary Committee of the
Bethnal Green Vestry, to see if houses were fit for human habitation
or not, and he told all his Church workers to report at once any cases
where landlords were not doing their duty to their tenants. “One
house alone had eight little rooms, with a family (and in some cases
a large family) in every room, where they had to eat and sleep. Three
of the houses abutted on a little court a few yards square, which had
to serve for the accommodation of all. The rent for these rotten,
insanitary, dilapidated hovels, with the water coming in at the roof,
was half-a-crown or three shillings a week for the single rooms, and
the whole formed a profitable property, and belonged to a rich man in
the West End of London. And,” said Mr. Ingram, “where a clear case of
injustice or oppression is made out, the Church is the tribune of the
people, and in the teeth of any amount of opposition to its work, or
loss of subscriptions, must bear its witness against the wrongdoer,
and like Nathan before David, must say, ‘Thou art the man!’”

Then came the question of the supply of East London water! He found for
three summers in the hottest part of the year that Bethnal Green was on
short supply, drains were unflushed, smells increased, inconveniences
meeting the people at every turn. Mr. Ingram himself, to moisten the
lips of a dying girl, had himself to go half a mile and fetch some
of the water they had stored themselves from the brief early morning
supply. The question had to be tackled and forced into prominence, and
Mr. Ingram did not shrink from his share in doing it.

He also set about discovering the causes of the great infant mortality,
and set on foot the instruction of the people, and their purveyors, as
to the care to be taken with the milk supply, on the final settlement
of which depended lives of hundreds of thousands of children in the
crowded East End.

Finally, he tackled the housing question. He said: “What the moral
effect of overcrowding is no one who knows the facts can doubt; what
the physical effect is the doctors can tell us. What can I do? you ask.
One thing, at any rate, you can do. You can join a Sanitary Committee
of the Mansion House Council, or start a Committee where there is
not one. Ours in Bethnal Green is worked by a lawyer, and has on it
doctors, surveyors, one or two gentlemen of leisure, and working-men;
or you could come and live here, and after a time get elected on to the
Local Vestry, and when you have got the confidence of your colleagues
get them to use the large powers put in their hands by the Local
Government Board.”

Of course, in all this public work, a man like Mr. Ingram naturally
made enemies; for he was up against vested interests of Water
Companies, the milk trade, and the landlords. The race still exists,
concerning former members of which it was said in ancient times: “It
grieved them that there had come a man to seek the welfare of Israel.”
To them it seemed “officiousness,” “interference,” and over and
over the opinion was expressed that “the parson should stick to his
spiritual work.”

He did! And how he did it can be best told from the following incidents
told by the Rector at various times. Here is one picture:

“I remember a lad coming to me, his face pale as death, and--what was
rare with a London boy, because as a class they are so reserved and
unemotional--he flung himself on his knees and caught hold of me. I
said: ‘Well, lad, what is the matter?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Mr. Ingram, do
help me!’ The boy’s story was a common one. He had chucked our Club,
and been drawn into the public-house by someone for a drink. There he
had been induced to put his money on horses which were going to make
his fortune, and that night he came to me with terror in his eyes to
say that he had lost £9 from the Shop Club entrusted to him by his
mates. Of course, I lent him the money.”

He collected a number of girls into a Club, and got them to attend the
Church for their first service. After the service the Committee of the
Club wrote: “Dear Rector,--We think it our duty to inform you that in
your opinion our Club Service was a success, and we beg you to have
such a service for us every month _until further notice_.”

Here is another picture:

“I remember one Christmas Day going into a home, not half a mile from
the Church, where I found a blind man in terrible pain. I said to the
wife: ‘What do you do when he has such terrible pains?’ ‘Oh, little
Alice generally sings to him.’ ‘Then let her sing now!’ I said. And
there stood up in the room a little Church-taught child and sang:

    O give me Samuel’s mind,
        A meek unwavering faith,
    To Thee obedient and resigned
        In life and death.
    That I may read with childlike eyes
    Things that are hidden to the wise.

And as she sang that which she had learned at Sunday School, in her
clear, childish treble, the tears coursed down the blind man’s cheeks,
a look of beautiful happiness came into his face and the lines of pain
faded away. A fortnight afterwards he was taken down from his cross,
and passed from his pain into the land where there is no more pain, but
even in Paradise he will hardly hear a sweeter sound than he heard from
his little child that Christmas Day.”

Here is another hint of the rector’s manifold duties:

“Every Monday for nine years did I spend in one of our great hospitals;
and what I saw then convinced me of the truth--the truth the doctors
tell us with one voice--that whole wards of our hospitals might be shut
up. I actually heard a doctor say so myself--if only the drink curse
could be cured in the district. I used to go up to one of the patients
and say: ‘My friend, what brought you here?’ And the answer would be:
‘I slipped on the curb, Mr. Ingram, on Saturday night.’ I did not need
to ask him any other question.”

Here, finally, are two human documents which show the intimate nature
of the rector’s spiritual work:

“I found Jane Crease and Dick Ede in the slums in the East End. Jane
Crease had been in pain for something like fifteen or sixteen years,
and she was left absolutely alone, except for a hard-working father and
mother, who did their best for her, but with no friends, and nothing
to do all day, lying there in the little street in which she lived. I
can remember my first visit, and how she welcomed me when I took on
the parish work, as Rector of Bethnal Green. I raised up people to go
down and bring hope to that poor girl. After about twelve months I
remember going in--_of course, I had been in every week to see her_;
but on one particular visit, when some friends had been down to cheer
her up, and read to her, I remember her waving her hand round to her
photographs, and saying with a smile on her face: ‘It is a changed life
to me, Mr. Ingram. You see I have all my friends here with me. My life
is changed now, and I owe all these friends to you.’ Now the last five
years of that little woman’s life was a different thing, because she
was surrounded by hopeful people who came with bright faces to tell her
about this and that. We used to carry her into Bethnal Green Parish
Church for her Communions when she could not move; and by the Hope of
the Church her life was changed. She died about five years afterwards,
bright and happy to the last.

“Dick Ede was long dying of consumption in that slow way which lasts
for years. I took into him my young brothers from the Settlement at
Oxford House. Many a young clergyman to-day has been educated by Dick
Ede! Many a one has, at his first pastoral visit, learnt from that boy
his patience and other lessons which he has never learnt elsewhere.”

So in the _camaraderie_ which he exercised amongst the men and boys and
women and children, as Head of Oxford House; and in fulfilling the many
calls upon his time in preaching in Victoria Park, and in his public
duties incurred in watching over the movements which affected and
guarded the social needs of the people; and, finally, in the intimate
spiritual work of Rector of the parish, Mr. Ingram passed from nine to
ten years of his life. In the last year of this period he also added
the care of all the churches which fell upon him as Rural Dean of
Spitalfields.

At the close of this period, Lord Salisbury offered him a vacant
Canonry at St. Paul’s Cathedral. His acceptance of the new post
necessitated his resignation as Head of Oxford House; for he would
have to take up his residence at Amen Court, but, when Dr. Creighton,
the then Bishop of London, was informed by Mr. Ingram of the offer, he
urged that he should take it, for he was just about to recommend him
for the Suffragan Bishopric of Stepney. Whereupon, Mr. Ingram accepted
the Canonry, and a short time later, Canon Winnington Ingram was
consecrated Bishop-Suffragan of Stepney, following Dr. Forrest Browne,
who had just been appointed Bishop of Bristol. The following year his
old University honoured him with the degree of D.D.

Now it was that, as Canon of St. Paul’s, a far larger circle began to
come into touch with the new Bishop. His sermons on Sunday afternoon at
the Cathedral drew congregations of thousands; but it was chiefly for
his work as Bishop of Stepney, and his efforts in connection with the
East London Church Fund that he now became known.




CHAPTER V

STEPNEY


When the Letters Patent of April, 1895, were issued for “The See of
Stepney, in the Diocese of London,” there was no attempt made to define
the exact area contained by the bishopric. That was left to the Bishop
of London to determine.

Geographically speaking, it is bounded on the east by the River Lea.
All to the east of Metropolitan London--that is, what is popularly
known as “The City”--is in the Stepney district, and furnishes the
eastern portion of the responsibilities of the Bishop. When Dr.
Winnington Ingram was consecrated to the work it contained the Deanery
of Stepney, with forty-one parishes, and nearly 400,000 souls. It also
contained the Deanery of Spitalfields, with twenty-three parishes, and
200,000 souls, as well as the Deanery of Shoreditch, with twenty-one
parishes, and 150,000 souls; the Deanery of Hackney, with twenty-seven
parishes, and 220,000 souls. This represented the work of East London.
But in a northerly direction it contained the Deanery of Islington,
with thirty-nine parishes, and 350,000 souls, and the Deanery of
Enfield, with thirty-four parishes, and over 200,000 souls. In
addition to this the Bishopric included the Deanery of St. Sepulchre,
with twenty-three parishes, and 150,000 souls. So altogether, when
Winnington Ingram assumed the episcopal supervision of this vast
district it contained nearly one and three-quarter million souls in
its 208 parishes. For the spiritual needs of the people there had been
provided 210 incumbents, and 340 assistant curates, making in all 550
clergy, or about one to each 3,000 of the total population. This meant
a total of 318,000 families to be shepherded, and the facing, for their
own sakes, of the problems concerned with the betterment of their lives.

The Bishop took up his residence in the fine old house situated just
off Amen Corner, Paternoster Row, and from here, as a centre, he
worked to meet the calls from the varied portions of his diocese,
which, roughly speaking, covered an area of twenty miles, teeming with
population.

The main problem which presented itself to the Bishop was how to
increase the number of the clergy, and how to augment the usefulness
of those who were there, by the provision of more lay workers, both
visitors and residents. To settle the clergy problem, Dr. Winnington
Ingram had, as his main source of income, the resources of the East
London Church Fund. Besides this there was a very large amount of
monetary help given every year in private gifts to individual parishes,
and there were other public societies which took some share. Much of
the money which came from the Bishop of London’s Fund, as distinct from
the East London Church Fund, was invariably allocated to purchasing
sites and making grants towards building churches and mission rooms.
That assistance, though specially earmarked in this way, was greatly
needed. In many of the districts it had been shown by experience that
no sooner did the people rise, even slightly, above the level where the
work of the Church had found them, than they proceeded to move off in
the endeavour to get better air, and less trying surroundings. It was
no uncommon experience to discover that a complete roll of communicants
was worked off and passed away in about five years. In fifteen years
one incumbent had seen three numerically large sets of communicants
pass from under his hands, the vast majority of whom had moved to more
open districts. True, more came, but it was equally true that they had
gone. The Bishop found it was absolutely necessary, in order to keep
pace with these rapid removals, to put up mission churches in the new
districts, and with the help of the Bishop of London’s Fund, to make
provision for their spiritual necessities. He found when he asked the
builders of the long rows of little houses which were fast covering
so many of the once pleasant and pretty fields, that build as they
would, the houses were let before they were finished. “Something fresh,
something not dreary, something that has hanging about it some sort
of reminiscence of blades of grass and leaves of trees not smutched
with smoke, not curled and browned with chemicals, that it is that
draws them from their seasoned houses in the paved streets; draws
them irresistibly, though the homes to which they go have their walls
reeking with damp plaster, and the roads are mere cart tracks of deep
mud.” Yes, to the north and in the east, building operations were going
on with startling rapidity. To make provision for that fact was one of
the problems facing the new Bishop.

But there was another problem equally pressing which has already been
hinted. We refer to the paucity of workers, both clerical and lay, in
the congested districts. There was practically no supply on the spot
of laymen and laywomen to help the clergy as district visitors and
in other ways. There was, of course, a very large amount of lay help
voluntarily given by those who lived in the parishes; but from the
nature of their own work they could only give this help on Sundays,
and for a short time on week-day evenings. So it came to pass that the
incumbent of a parish might have a devoted band of helpers of this
kind among his parishioners, and yet not have one single person beyond
himself and his curates, who could go to read to a sick person, or
be sent for in any case of emergency which happened in the day-time.
Bishop Winnington Ingram declared that so far as he could judge no
other difficulty hampered their work as much as this.

Dr. Winnington Ingram set himself to plead in West-End pulpits and
drawing-rooms for the voluntary assistance of ladies and gentlemen who
had leisure to go. He told them “the visits of our West-End neighbours
are the ozone of our East-End atmosphere. The bright presence, and the
gentle and genial sympathy of well-dressed men and women, supply oxygen
to priests and people alike. The clergyman, who has not, perhaps, in
all his parish one family of his own social position and education, is
wonderfully revived by this whiff of the air he once regarded as an
essential necessary of life, of healthy moral life; of any life worth
living, as he once estimated what it was that made life worth the
living. The sick man, lying in his poor squalid room, finds matter to
think of and talk over for a week, in a quarter of an hour’s visit from
some fellow-man of a type so different from anything he has himself
been accustomed to; one to whom the sad, small cares that make up his
own anxieties are quite unknown, but who feels for the cares he himself
has to face, and gives the sympathy that is infinitely soothing and
bracing to the tired and broken man. The worn mother of a sickly little
family--sickly, but less sickly than the surroundings would lead you to
expect--has a glimpse of quite a different world from any she has known
or dreamed of in that half-hour’s quiet talk, on equal terms as far as
hearts are concerned, with a vision of fairness and freshness. That
‘fairness’ seemed to her ‘fairiness,’ until she found that the bright
brave woman has her trials and her sorrows too; and that in motherhood,
and in a mother’s cares for the children God has given, there is a
bond that makes them equal, makes them one. Not poor women only, but
poor men, are strangely stirred and strangely soothed by that gentle
presence. And not those men and women only whose whole state is summed
up at its worst in the word ‘poor,’ or ‘very poor.’ When I hear--as I
have to hear--of irreclaimable cases; when I hear of men and of women
gone hopelessly wrong, as people say, I know that the best chance
for them would be secured if we could bring them under the influence
of some delicately nurtured woman. Nothing is nearly so likely to
bring to them that which is, humanly speaking, the turning-point to
recovery--namely, that beginning of a desire to feel once more some
sort of self-respect.”

The Bishop was successful in his attempts. One rich man came to him,
and said: “I am tired of writing cheques for charities, and merely
subscribing to this and that. What I want myself is personally to
serve. I want to go and tell somebody myself personally about Christ
and His love. Can you give me half a dozen invalids in East London that
I can go and visit personally?” Of course, the Bishop did. It was a
touching thing to see that man in the evening, when his City work was
done, personally serving those poor people in East London. He had a
great desire, a deep human instinct to do something personally himself;
and he found a joy in it which he had never had before. Others gave up
their leisure during the day, and not a few actually came and lived in
the district themselves, cheering the pathway of those around them by
the unconscious influence which emanated from their presence.

It was no wonder that the appeal of the Bishop succeeded, for he
forcibly brought before the people of the West End the exact facts
of the East. Speaking one day at a drawing-room meeting in the West
End, he said: “When I come to this or similar meetings in this part of
London, I always take stock of the houses that I pass by. I find I can
walk for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour and more, without seeing
one house that says to me anything of this kind: ‘The people here need
the individual attention of the parish clergy: they are poor; they are
illiterate; they are ignorant. They have no amusements, nothing to
brighten their lives. A visit of their clergyman or his wife will be an
event in their weekly life. It will bring them into unwonted contact
with a trained intelligence, a well-stored memory, a cultivated life,
far and away above their own. It will do them an amount of good which
cannot be over-estimated.’” Then he went on in ringing tones: “That
which is not true of the very large proportion of the houses in many
parts of the West--nay, not only not true but _ridiculously_ the
opposite of the truth--that _is_ true of every house, of every floor,
of every room, in many and many a parish of the districts of which
I speak. Not one room in all the parish in which the visit of the
clergyman, or one of his living agents, is not urgently needed. Not
merely a visit once in a way, so that on the whole every room may have
been visited once in a year; but frequent visits, systematic visits, a
regular siege laid to each individual case, if Christ’s work is to be
really done. Imagine the labour that that entails. Imagine the staff
of labourers it would require, if it were adequately done. I would
to God that people like yourselves who have money and who have heart
could have just a week or so of my opportunities of knowing what a
bitter contrast there is between the staff we ought to have and the few
workers here and there which are all that we can possibly provide.”

Audiences which were spoken to in this way naturally responded to some
extent. One after another families have left West London, and gone
to settle in the East End. Often it is a widow and her daughter, or
a young husband and his wife, and the Bishop has declared that “in
no single case have I seen a family leave the West End and settle in
the East without a great blessing on the sacrifice, and without their
finding the spirit of the promise of the Gospel: ‘He that loseth his
life shall find it.’”

It is perfectly true that there were cases in which some young girl
who wanted to spend four or five evenings in the East End found that
her mother had arranged certain things for her in Society; and the
Bishop asserted that it was positively wrong for her to derange all her
mother’s plans. All the same, he has been accustomed when he invited
people to come to live in East London to put before their eyes as the
chief attraction that they would “escape the tyranny of the card-case.”
None the less, the Bishop was the first to acknowledge that there were
social duties in the West of London that needed to be carried out.

The begging of funds, and the solicitation of workers for such a vast
area as the Bishop of Stepney had in his hands, would seem to represent
such colossal work and of such a nature that there would be the risk
of a spiritual leader becoming a mere organiser, or mere official. But
the Bishop escaped all that. He flung himself heart and soul into the
affairs and difficulties of the 208 parishes, and became a familiar
figure in every part of his diocese. Take several varieties of the work
into which he threw himself as examples.

He is asked to go about eight o’clock in the evening to a parish room
to receive deputations from the various parish guilds and societies,
and say a few words to each about their work. When he arrives he
discovers there are forty such guilds and associations, and three
representatives from each. Allowing three minutes for each deputation
to pass once up and once down the long room to speak to the Bishop,
and to be spoken to, takes two hours. And three minutes is below the
average. There are Church workers to be spoken to besides, and groups
from a great choir that has meanwhile been singing through a long
oratorio. The result is the Bishop does not get back to Amen Corner
till some time after midnight, though it is not a twenty minutes’ drive
home.

The next Sunday he goes to preach there. The spacious church is full,
aisles and all, people standing at the west end. Throughout the sermon
he cannot find one pair of eyes that does not look straight into his--a
congregation of completely poor men and women, all evidently anxious to
listen.

Take another kind of work--work in which he specialises amongst men. He
goes to one parish after another on Sunday afternoons, where there are
services for men only. One afternoon, six to seven hundred are present,
and the same genius for attention manifests itself. The men are there
to listen, to ponder and consider. It is to them a piece of thoughtful
business which will provide discussion and consideration for home and
workroom. Another afternoon he goes to a church where there are only
about a hundred and fifty present. Next Sunday he speaks to about one
hundred men. Most of them appear to be clerks in good positions. When
the address is over he discovers that the work of the men is only
beginning. They have determined to do something for the boys and girls
in the streets, the children of the very poor who are left to run at
large on Sunday. They go out and collect the children to one place or
another, themselves providing all the money, and taking a delight in
keeping the children occupied and amused.

He is asked to go down to a very poor parish, to be present at the
annual declaration of the amounts raised in the parish for his own
fund, the East London Church Fund. The large parish room is full
of poor people keenly interested. It is one of the real events
of the year, to learn what the whole amount contributed is. So
they gather--fathers of families in plenty and mothers, and their
families--a real parish gathering. The boxes from scores of poor
households have been opened. The upshot of the whole is that after
deducting £8 for expenses, the Bishop is cheered by a cheque being
handed to him for £111. As he passes out of the room the incumbent
speaks to a labourer’s wife, and afterwards the Bishop asked him: “Had
she a box?” “Yes.” “Had she a family?” “Yes.” “Had the man been in full
wage?” “Not all the year, but about ten months.” “How much was there in
her box?” And the answer was “Twelve and six!”

After experiences of this kind he discovers that the poorest of the
poor give with a generosity absolutely astonishing. He hears from one
incumbent that he found a woman at her wash-tub as he went on his
rounds. The previous Sunday the incumbent had asked at the mission
church that the people would provide some kind of ornament for the
perfectly bare walls. She now said to him in a jerky way: “I wanted to
give something in memory of that little lad, that little child of the
Missioner, who lately died.” And to the incumbent’s amazement she gave
him a guinea towards the purchase of a cross for the church. Next day,
while the same incumbent was visiting, three women met him in one of
the poorest streets. One of them angrily asked why he hadn’t been to
her for money for the church before. She gave him ten shillings, and
the other two gave five each.

“And,” said the Bishop, when relating all these stories, “this very
rochet I am wearing now was a gift from a working-woman in East London.”

But amidst all these episcopal labours, the Bishop still voluntarily
carried on the work of his boys’ clubs in Bethnal Green, and other
parishes, tearing down from Amen Court on his bicycle, and regarding
it as a form of necessary physical exercise. On Saturday afternoons he
frequently set aside time to conduct parties of East End factory girls
around the Cathedral, holding them spellbound with stories concerning
St. Paul’s, and the men who had occasioned some of its monuments.
Afterwards he would entertain them all to tea. On the Sundays he would
be the guest at some vicarage, and nothing delighted him more than
to fraternise with the nursery element which he found in the varied
homes. For three years he enthusiastically carried on the work of this
East End diocese; and during that time he effectually built the bridge
between the people in the West End and the people in the East. If ever
a man deliberately translated in his life the spirit of the words “I
am among you as one that serveth,” it was the Bishop of Stepney. The
marvel is how he found time for it all: it was only done by rising
early, and staying up late, and going on “going on”--“just a day at a
time.”

However, his reward was coming. It came first in the absolute worship
of the people, who had known him for so many years in Bethnal Green,
the existence of which was proved by a singular incident. It occurred
while he was taking part in the re-opening services of a church in
Bethnal Green. Some disturbance arose at the end of the church, and
the news flew through the neighbourhood that a crowd of interrupters
were spoiling the service and insulting the Bishop. How do such
panic-impressions get abroad? However, this one flew like lightning
through the streets around, and the folk in the district hotly resented
it. When the Bishop, after the service, came out of the vicarage where
he had been chatting with the clergyman about his work, he found to his
astonishment a huge mob who had gathered, as they thought, to protect
him. They were all very poor people, many of them not Church-people
at all; but the instant they caught sight of him there was a roar of
cheers, and on his inquiring what they wanted, they said: “We’ve come
to see you safe home!” The situation was rather embarrassing; for they
insisted that he was in danger, and nothing he could say would shake
them off, and they tramped around and behind him for half a mile,
until at last he managed to get into a car, and was driven home to
Amen Court. The experience was as delightful as it was spontaneous.
For years he had carried on through many a discouragement, and nothing
to help him forward, except those hidden compensations, which no man
knows saving he that receiveth them; a period of his life never better
described than in Matthew Arnold’s famous words:

    “’Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead
    Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green,
    And the pale weaver, through his window seen
    In Spitalfields, looked thrice dispirited.
    I met a preacher there I knew, and said:
    ‘Ill and o’er worked, how fare you in this scene?’
    ‘Bravely!’ said he; ‘for I of late have been
    Much cheered with thoughts of CHRIST, the Living Bread.’”

But the crowning encouragement of all was to come quite early in the
next year, 1901, for on March 8 the Bishop-Suffragan of Stepney was
nominated by the Prime Minister to take up the Bishopric of London, and
on March 25 the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s Cathedral unanimously
accepted the nomination, and the election was publicly declared
and confirmed on April 17, when in the church of St. Mary-le-Bow,
Cheapside, Dr. Winnington Ingram took his oath as Bishop, both to the
King and the Archbishop of Canterbury. On April 30 his enthronement
took place in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

He was only forty-three years of age at the time. Eleven of them had
been spent in the Worcestershire home; twelve of them in Preparatory
School, and at Marlborough and at Keble College, Oxford; three as a
tutor. In was after this that he decided to take Holy Orders and in
following up his decision he had now been between sixteen and seventeen
years entirely engaged in work connected with the Church. Putting
aside his work, which was done at the side of Dr. Maclagan, when he
was Bishop of Lichfield, which occupied three years of the sixteen, as
the Bishop’s secretary and chaplain, we see that he had been allowed
to spend ten years in practical performance of priestly and parochial
duties in poverty-stricken parishes; and three more in carrying the
administrative responsibilities connected with those parishes as a
whole. Roughly speaking, his career had divided itself into two halves.
The first half and a little more than the first half had seemed the
kind of training likely to produce a cultured, almost courtly type of
ecclesiastic. Marlborough with its crowd of the Sons of the Clergy;
Keble with its somewhat austere traditions; Oxford with its atmosphere
of conservatism; Lichfield with its Cathedral associations: these were
all factors which might have been expected to produce the kind of man
whose manner, methods, and outlook would have fitted him to be the
popular incumbent of some wealthy and aristocratic parish. It scarcely
appeared the right introduction for the work he would have to do in the
grim streets of the East End. On the other hand, the years he spent in
facing the problems of men and women who were passing their lives in
“pulling together two ends which somehow never seemed to meet” scarcely
seemed the exact preparation for one, who would one day be “A Prince
of the Church,” and, the friend of Monarchs, Cabinet Ministers and
ecclesiastical dignitaries. Yes, to the merely casual observer, there
must seem years in Winnington Ingram’s life which at the time did not
appear to tell upon the final result.

Ah, but they told upon the man who had to live it! In the counsel and
purposes of God nothing is wasted. While we, in our short-sightedness,
would shape the environment of men with a view to some special purpose,
He _shapes the men who have to fulfil it_.

It was thus that Winnington Ingram was shaped! The _strong_ man
that London now needed must of necessity have been a _strung_
man. To comprehend London’s problems he would have to be a
man who _understood_; and that means “one who stands under,
stands-at-the-roots.” But not merely at the roots of one part of
its life. His experiences in the East End gave him the necessary
understanding of the sacrifices, suffering, and struggles of London’s
poor. The Headship of Oxford House, the rectorship of Bethnal Green,
did that for him. But the East End of London is not all London. There
is a West End, where there is wealth and refinement and a different
type of existence. This could only be reached and led by one who
understood all this: had had its advantages himself and knew its points
of view. Marlborough, Oxford, Lichfield did this for him. But the East
End and the West End is not all London. There are great suburban cities
within and without its borders where dwell many professional people
and workers, who belong to neither one nor the other. The man who can
lead them must understand _them_ too. Winnington Ingram’s Bishopric
of Stepney gave him this power. In North and North-East London he
became familiar with their peculiar type of life. Hampstead, Highgate,
Stamford Hill, Wood Green had much to say to him that neither West
End nor East End could teach him; but when at last he had had this
threefold experience he understood them all--stood-at-the-roots of
all their lives; knew them at their best and their worst; knew their
possibilities and their limitations; knew their beliefs and their
prejudices. The way in which he had gained it was a strange way. But
at the end of the way he stood there an instrument ready and fitted for
the Master’s use: and the man who understood London was called to lead
it in spiritual things.

God knows and God knows best; and while we in our short-sightedness
would shape the thing we call life, _He shapes the men who have to live
it_.




CHAPTER VI

BISHOPRIC OF LONDON


The appointment of Winnington Ingram to the Bishopric of London proved
to be very popular. It had already crept out as a likely fact when
he addressed a meeting at the Mansion House on March 18, 1901, and
he received a tremendous welcome. The comments of the day concerning
his appointment were unanimous in their approval; and on April 30 the
ceremony of his enthronement was conducted in St. Paul’s Cathedral,
and the man who had faced so many difficulties in the past until he
had looked them down now confronted the forest of difficulties in the
London diocese.

It was a task to make any man flinch!

The See itself had, of course, always been one of great importance, for
the simple reason that it was the diocese containing England’s capital.
Whoever might be its Bishop could never have escaped the pressing
questions of the period in which he lived. National questions, civic
questions, ecclesiastical questions, would all be certain to arise for
discussion in London, if they were there at all! For example, one feels
sorry for the former Bishops of London who exercised their jurisdiction
during the struggle between the Stuarts and the people. Nor could it
ever have been an easy task to tactfully administer the affairs of
the many churches in the City, and in the immediate suburbs, even when
those suburbs did not extend very far, and Fulham Palace itself was
considered the summer country residence of the Bishops.

But with the increase in size of London itself there naturally came
added responsibilities. It is not necessary to labour this point,
for the facts emerge startlingly from the figures. Three hundred and
twenty-five years ago the population of London was 180,000. Exactly 100
years before Winnington Ingram was enthroned, it had reached 864,000.
Forty years later it had added a million; ten years later another
half-a-million; ten years later still nearly another half-a-million;
and twenty years later still, viz., in 1881, it had again increased by
over a million. It was then that the problems of the London diocese
began to be acute!

It came about in this way. There was already the beginning of the
“flock-to-the-towns-movement” in every part of the United Kingdom,
which has brought it to pass in these days in which we write, that out
of every hundred inhabitants of the United Kingdom seventy-nine and
more are town-dwellers and town-workers. This drift to the towns was
already beginning to be noticed in 1871 to 1881; and nowhere was it
more marked than in London.

Had the huge crowds which had thronged London simply entered in and
dwelt there, making use of the churches already erected, even then the
task of shepherding such masses effectively would have called for a man
of great power. Why, to have merely made the round of them would have
been a 365 day task, taking only two parishes per day. To have had
the knowledge a true Bishop should have of his clergy would have meant
intimate acquaintance with battalions of rectors, vicars, curates,
cathedral officials, and hospital, asylum, and barrack chaplains. To
meet the demands of the increased population, and to have enlarged the
existing accommodation, would have meant providing for an expenditure
that would have taxed the most ingenious Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Yes, it would have meant all this, if the people had simply naturally
increased; and if the others had simply thronged in, urged by the
“drift-to-the-towns” movement.

Gradually, however, there was another problem added.

For many years shopkeepers and merchants, who used to live over their
shops and warehouses, had begun to erect for themselves residences a
little further out. These emigrants did not go far at first. In the
west they went towards Bayswater; in the east, towards Stepney; in
the north, towards Highbury and Holloway; and in the south towards
Kennington and Denmark Hill. There they built for themselves important
looking houses, stately-fronted, porched or terraced; and drove
Citywards in the mornings by carriage, hansom, and omnibus.

It only needed a few years more, and they had moved still further out.
Anywhere, anywhere, to escape the crowd! They left their former houses
to be let to their managers and clerks. _This was stage Number One._

A few more years yet, then these also had drifted onwards to long rows
of suburban villas, from which they came in by train, and the big
houses, formerly let to them by their employers, _now reached the
second stage_. They were left behind by the salaried people who had
now emigrated to the huge suburbs which sprang in Chelsea, Brompton,
Willesden, Watford, Queen’s Park, Battersea, Wandsworth, and Clapham;
Upton Park, East and West Ham, Forest Gate and Ilford; Camberwell,
Peckham, and Deptford; Lee and Blackheath. The houses they left behind
became tenanted by the upper wage-earning classes, who let off some
portion of the house; and where one family had lived there were two or
even three now found. _This was the third stage!_

A few years more and even these had travelled some little distance
further; and the large residences became mere tenement dwellings.
Little by little, room after room became let by itself, and many
families struggled along under one roof. At night time, in a
twelve-roomed house, there might have been counted any number from
twenty upwards of sleeping people, and in the daytime the children
simply swarmed in the streets. _This was the final stage!_

This was the condition of affairs that stretched before the gaze of the
new Bishop of London. The immigration into London had presented one
problem, the emigration out of London into Greater London presented
quite another. The density of the population, on the one hand, called
for religious provision, and the churches in its midst had to be
encouraged. But the emigration from London meant that “Down Town”
churches also multiplied, and “Out Town” churches had to be built and
financed.

The situation bristled with difficulties; for side by side with
Changing London came the saddening fact that the people in London were
changing also. Take the West End! In Bishop Wilkinson’s day, the houses
around St. Peter’s, Eaton Square, were occupied by church-going people;
and St. Paul’s, Onslow Square, where Prebendary Webb-Peploe preached,
once crowded every Sunday with throngs of fashionable worshippers,
were two examples of the way in which the Week-End and Sunday golf
habit were disastrously beginning to affect the congregations. And, if
men like Prebendary Webb-Peploe, eloquent in speech, and spiritually
gifted, from whom we had the statement, discovered this, what must the
other churches have done? It simply meant that a large majority of
the wealthy town-dwellers were too busy to pay any attention to soul
culture, or to show devotion to their parishes.

A large number of others were living in expensive flats, and leaving
them at the week-ends in the same way.

Another feature of London life was being produced in the better-class
boarding-houses. There were many many thousands living in the
boarding-houses of London, an irresponsible, undomesticated existence.
The home sense--utterly destroyed--and the home ties, that counted
for so much in the past, weakened! Ever on the wing, the spirit of
discontent and fault-finding at every fresh house was fostered. The
Sundays, if possible, were spent away. If not, then they perhaps
went to the nearest church, for which they felt no devotion, like
the former residents of the parish, and contented themselves with
dropping anything from a penny to sixpence into the plate. Hence, the
offertories of the churches were depleted, and the efficiency of their
work hindered.

Turning to the type which was being produced among the poorer classes,
the observer was faced with a phenomenon unique in the world’s history.
There was a generation growing up which, in millions, had been living
in the mean streets, and courts, and crowded ways of this great city,
cramped in its bodily surroundings, living a hot, fretful life, working
long hours of sedentary, unhealthy toil. Had you witnessed a Bank
Holiday scene on Wormwood Scrubbs, or Hampstead Heath, or Battersea
Park, you would have known what it meant. For hours there would be a
seemingly endless stream of tired, carelessly dressed, worn-out looking
mothers, with babies in their arms, and dragging at their skirts. Gangs
of loud-voiced youths, and equally loud-voiced girls, were all wending
their way to the centre of a noisy, roaring, rattling fair. Then they
would return once more to their old cramping surroundings. Numbers of
them were passing their existence losing touch with Nature, and except
for a holiday, all too brief, seldom getting their vision enlarged
by the sight of vast spaces, or by contact with the working of the
mysterious Force of the ocean’s tide “rolling in fullest pride,” or
of the equally mysterious Force of Growth in the fields. In the early
years of this century, when Winnington Ingram began his work as Bishop,
a great deal was heard about the irreligiousness of the masses. It was
not easy to remember God, or to feel desire for worship in such a life
as theirs. A new type of individual was being developed, remarkable
neither for physical strength, mental power, nor spiritual genius;
remarkable for nothing except the quick-wittedness born of their
constant rubbing shoulders with a crowd.

Quite apart from these very poor, who were represented by 300,000
families, _yet always on the fringe of their condition_, there was a
great working-class population who were found in Walthamstow, Nine
Elms, Battersea, the back streets of Chelsea and Brompton, and the
unbroken lines of the Queen’s Park estate. We had occasion to find a
working-man in one such house in Battersea, one of a long lane of tiny
dwellings, and we called at several before we could find him. They were
all the same. A dirty hall, a common staircase. The street outside
the playground of the children, and the rooms inside small and close.
As we walked the streets scarcely one pretty face, or one lad of fine
physique could be discovered. They looked undersized, crude, rude, and
without ideals. The women’s faces were hard, the girls’ pert, and the
men toil-worn. And miles upon miles of similar streets held hundreds of
thousands of similar men and women and children. This was the London
that faced Winnington Ingram as he assumed the episcopal responsibility
for this--the largest city in the world!

Without hesitation he bent himself to the task.

One month after his consecration as Bishop he started to do for the
“Bishop of London’s Fund” what he had been hitherto doing for the East
London Church Fund. Twelve days after the enthronement in St. Paul’s
he preached at Christ Church, Lancaster Gate, and secured £1,500 for
his fund. In the year he had wooed out of the people nearly £29,000.
This he felt was the duty that lay nearest to his hand. He saw the
city as we have described, and he felt that its one hope lay in making
more provision for its changing needs; that if any uplift was to be
preserved for them it must come this way. None but the churches could
fight the tendency to materialisation of spirit that unchecked and
unleavened was bound to come in city life.

It was with this consciousness that the Bishop of London set first and
foremost in his programme of activities the provision for the spiritual
needs of his vast diocese. And, in the years that followed, he never
weakened in his conviction that the one thing which could save London
would be the multiplication in its midst of a race of devoted clergy.

Yet no effort for the future was allowed to induce him to neglect the
multitudinous duties which came upon him in carrying out the _details_
of his episcopal position.

To record how, year after year, during his twenty-five years’
episcopate, his life was crowded with the fulfilment of many claims
which were thrust upon him would call for far more space than the
limits of this book could furnish. It will be sufficient to select one
such year at random--one of the earliest years of his experience as a
Bishop, and to say: “This is a sample!” Here it is:--

He addresses a New Year’s letter to his diocese. He visits the Royal
Naval College at Osborne. He speaks to a Men’s Meeting at the City of
London School. He receives a deputation from American Church Bishops.
In the interests of the Church of England, seeking to weld her in bonds
of sympathy with the great Eastern Church in Russia, he journeys to
St. Petersburg. He is received by the Tsar and Tsaritza. As he returns
home he visits Berlin. Immediately upon his return he addresses the
“Frances Holland” School for Girls. He goes to St. Christopher’s
Working Boys’ Club. On the midnight march of the Church Army through
Westminster, he joins in the procession. He holds a Confirmation at the
Chapel Royal, St. James’s. He opens the “Bishop Creighton” House at
Fulham. He addresses the London Diocesan Conference as its President.
He gives a Garden Party at Fulham to German clergy. He presides at a
display by the London Diocesan Branch of the Church Lads’ Brigade. He
distributes the prizes at St. Mary’s Hospital, Paddington. He receives
honorary degree at Cambridge. He opens the new Parish Room at St.
Chad’s, Haggerston. He consecrates the Church of Emmanuel at Northwood.
He shares in the Lenten Mission at St. Paul’s, Covent Garden. He
addresses a great meeting at the Albert Hall. He is present at the
Balkan Committee’s Meeting on Macedonian Reform. Goes to Bethnal Green
to address assembly of East London men. Rushes down to Bournemouth
to plead for the East London Church Fund. Preaches at Christ Church,
Lancaster Gate. Again at Christ Church, Mayfair, on “Socialism.” Speaks
at Church House to Women’s Diocesan Society; again in connection with
the Central Board of Missions; again to the Waifs and Strays Society;
again on the East London Jews’ Fund; again on the Education Bill;
again on the work of the Society of Sacred Mission, Kelham; and again
on South London Church Work. He goes to St. Peter’s to unveil the
Bishop Wilkinson memorial. At Fulham he speaks on Settlement work in
the light of his Oxford House experience. At Fulham Parish Church he
dedicates the tower and bells. He pleads at Grosvenor House for the
Bishop of London’s Church Fund; at the Guildhall for Missions. Gives an
address at the Kensington Town Hall on the Education Bill. He speaks
at Lincoln’s Inn on the Incorporated Inns of Court Mission; and at the
Mansion House in connection with the Pan-Anglican Congress on “Women
and their Responsibility.” Speaks at the Portman Rooms on the claims of
his own Church Fund. Addresses the Queens’ College students. Delivers
an address at Queen’s Hall on the Chinese Opium Traffic; speaks on the
Licensing Bill, and again on “Morality.” Again, at the Representative
Church Council on the Licensing Bill. Again, at the Royal Albert
Hall on Anglo-German relations; and again at the same place, on the
Licensing Bill. Goes to St. Dunstan’s-in-the-East. Gives Good Friday
addresses at St. James’s, Piccadilly. Visits St. Margaret Pattens!
Gives an address at St. Mary’s Hospital on the Medical Profession and
the Church. Is present at St. Michael’s, Cornhill, and addresses City
men. At St. Paul’s Cathedral on Easter Day. At Sion College; and speaks
at Union Street on Church Schools Maintenance. Preaches at Westminster
Abbey for London Hospitals. Is present at the Church of England
Pageant. Appeals to the public concerning the condition of the Congo
Free State. Pleads the cause of the Seaside Camps for London Working
Boys.

One year’s work that emerged and could be noticed publicly! But beside
all this there was the church visitation in the week and on Sundays
to which the Bishop refers in his letter as “visiting 133 parishes.”
Beside all this the great amount of time spent in committees, and the
still greater in correspondence!

Before the letters were all disposed of, those with whom interviews had
been arranged began to arrive at the Palace, or more usually at London
House as being more convenient for the clergy of his diocese.

If the Bishop’s engagements for the day were so heavy that he would
have no other opportunity for a little exercise, he interviewed his
clergy while walking briskly in the open air.

If to be caricatured often hits off a truth better than in any other
way, then the witty lines published in _Punch_ reveal better than
anything we can say the stress of the Bishop’s public and private life:


THE LAY OF THE SUFFERING BISHOP

    From morn till evening, from evening till night,
    I preach and organise, lecture and write.
    And all over London my gaitered legs fly.
    Was ever a Bishop so busy as I?

    When writing my sermons, the best of my work’ll
    Be done in the trains on the Underground circle;
    I can write one complete, with a fine peroration,
    Between Charing Cross and Mansion House Station.

    For luncheon, I swallow a sandwich of ham,
    As I rush up the steps of a Whitechapel tram;
    Or with excellent appetite I will discuss
    A half-penny bun on a Waterloo ’bus.

    No table is snowy with damask for me;
    My cloth is the apron which covers my knee:
    No manservants serve and no kitchenmaids dish up
    The frugal repasts of this suffering Bishop.

But the mere details of his work could not be allowed to monopolise his
efforts. As Bishop of London, and one of the spiritual Peers in the
House of Lords, he was called to watch over the interests of the Church
of England. He had only been the episcopal leader in the London diocese
for little more than a year, when the struggle over the Education Bill
in 1902 forced him into the arena. In the debate in the House of Lords,
the Bishop of London expressed his determination to later on move an
amendment to the Bill, providing for the right of the parish clergyman
to teach in the school; and also safeguarding that the repairs for
which the parish school was liable should only be structural.

He felt so strongly on the matter that in view of the County Council
Elections at the end of 1903, he addressed a letter to the Press and
the diocese, in conjunction with the Bishop of Rochester, which,
while deprecating having to adopt a course which brought him, even
defensively, into active collision with large bodies of Nonconformists,
yet called upon Churchmen to throw their strength into the election of
candidates who would be ready to work the Act impartially.

On December 30, 1903, he wrote to the people of his diocese this New
Year Letter:

    “DEAR PEOPLE,

      “It has been a busy year for all of us: unmarked by any great
  incident, and undisturbed by any great calamity. I have continued
  my course of visits around the diocese, and have visited 133 more
  parishes during the past year. The rate at which this diocese
  increases may be gauged by the fact that I have consecrated ten
  new churches this year; and it would have been quite impossible for
  me to have borne the ever-increasing burden, if it were not for the
  unfailing work of my Suffragan Bishops and Archdeacons, backed up in
  each locality by the Rural Deans, with their band of faithful clergy
  behind them.”

He then referred to that letter he had already sent in conjunction with
the Bishop of Rochester to _The Times_ and other papers. He then laid
it down:

  “The principle we believe to be in danger is a threefold one. (1)
  That the teaching of definite religious truth is an integral part
  of true education. (2) That the religious truth taught the children
  should be the religion of their parents. (3) And that it should be
  taught them by those who believe it. Let it be made clear that we
  cannot surrender these principles in the case of the schools which
  have been built by voluntary effort.

  “If the ideal of the Free Church Council expressed in their
  resolutions at Leicester is realised, then all schools are to be
  of one type. Only simple Biblical instruction is to be allowed. No
  test of any sort is to be applied to the teachers; and apparently no
  inquiry is to be made as to the fitness of the teacher who gives the
  Biblical instruction. What is quite clear is that we clergy have to
  oppose this policy root and branch.

  “Is it for this we have spent £10,000 a week for eighty years on the
  teaching of the poor? Is it for this that one million new school
  places were added to our schools after the passing of the Education
  Act of 1870? No, it was in order that, at any rate, three millions
  of children in the Voluntary Schools throughout the country might be
  taught without restraint the religion of their parents, and so be
  enabled to start in life with a definite religious faith. In London,
  at any rate, there can be no talk of Nonconformist children being
  forced to come to Church schools against their will. There is a Board
  School within reach of every child: and so large is the additional
  grant to be made by the County Council in respect of the poor schools
  which it is taking over, that for the first years, at any rate, no
  rates will be used for the Voluntary Schools at all.”

He then proceeded to urge them to place men upon the Council, who would
see that the Church interests were safeguarded, and he went on thus:

  “Side by side with that a parallel duty will be laid upon us. We must
  not hesitate to do our part under the Act. We must hand over our
  schools free of debt. That will mean that, after recognition, the
  grant due from the Government on the appointed day will leave the
  sum of over £30,000 to be raised. When this appeal has come out, I
  wish it to be made the occasion of a great Lenten Self-Denial Week,
  through every parish in the diocese, whether rich or poor.

  “Some day the principle for which we have contended for so long, that
  the ‘children shall be taught the religion of their parents, and by
  those who believe it,’ may be seen by all our fellow-citizens to
  be essentially sound and just. Then we may hope that facilities in
  all schools may be granted for definite religious instruction, and
  in such cases we shall be quite willing ourselves to grant similar
  facilities in our own schools to those who wish to avail themselves
  of them. But meanwhile, our immediate duty is to safeguard the
  spiritual interests of the 180,000 children still in the Voluntary
  Schools of London.

  “If I have dwelt specially upon the religious question, it is because
  _that_ is the question which to us as Christian men is the most
  fundamental, and because that is the issue upon which, as Churchmen,
  we are called to act in defence.

    “Your affectionate friend and Bishop,
                          “A. F. LONDON.”

These two sides of his ecclesiastical career have always been evident
in the life of the Bishop of London. On the one hand, with the fervour
and faith of a spiritual leader, he would eagerly assume great
responsibilities in erecting and supporting churches in his vast
diocese; and, on the other, show himself ready to devote time and
energy to publicly asserting the interests of the Church of England as
a whole.

It was during the public side of his work, as exhibited in the course
of his many years’ episcopate, that we get a clear insight into the way
the Bishop’s mind approached great vital questions. There are leaders
who are always ready to oppose change because they are out of sympathy
with changes of any kind; or if they are found willing even for an
experiment it is on the grounds of mere utilitarianism. It is rare in
public life to discover a man who is willing to bring everything to the
touchstone of principle.

The Bishop of London proved himself just such a man.

We find him in 1904 speaking in the House of Lords on the Licensing
Bill; and he stated that he regarded the withdrawal of licensing powers
from the local magistrates as a blow at local patriotism, and declared
that he favoured the fourteen years time-limit for the licenses. It was
not the working of the Bill which appealed to him, but the principle of
removing control from any but those affected by it; and the other of
creating a vested interest by annual renewal of the license as a matter
of course, till by its renewal a custom had been established, which
could be pleaded as a reason for further renewal.

When the “Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Bill” was passed, making it legal
to marry the sister of a deceased wife, he was much exercised in his
mind by the clear interference of the State with what had hitherto been
regarded as an ecclesiastical matter, never in question, until it was
now disturbed by regard to mere utility. He implored the Archbishop
of Canterbury to make clear to the clergy what their duty really was
and whether they could be justified in refusing the Holy Communion to
those who, from the point of view of Church Law, were living in sin.
The Archbishop replied in a long letter, in which he set forth that no
one who was living within the scope of the Statutes of the Realm could
be said to be “A notorious and open evil liver”--on which grounds alone
Holy Communion could be withheld from any applicants. But at the same
time he pointed out that the Church could not permit dictation from
the Legislature as to the provisions of its own spiritual discipline.
However, this appeal by the Bishop of London to the Archbishop revealed
that his own mind was working towards setting spiritual issues above
obedience to a merely utilitarian and popular measure.

The same attitude was revealed by his joining in the agitation against
the proposed Johnson-Wells pugilistic contest, which prevented the
fight coming off--an action on the part of the Churches, which at the
time was anything but popular.

His readiness to risk anything in what he considered the cause of
right, however conservative his action might appear, was indicated by
the fact that in February, 1914, he presented a petition, signed by 676
priests of the Diocese of London, to the Upper House of Convocation,
expressing anxiety at the unchecked denial of Christian truths by
office-holders in the Church, and at the tendency to approach the
problem of reunion in a way inconsistent with the recognised necessity
of episcopal ordination. On April 30 this House adopted the resolution
and asserted the determination of the House to maintain unimpaired the
faith in the Trinity and in the Incarnation contained in the creeds and
the report of the Lambeth Conference of 1908, affirming the historical
facts contained in those creeds to be part of the doctrine of the
Church. They also re-affirmed the principle that no man should be
suffered to perform priestly functions without episcopal ordination.

This same attitude was emphasised in 1904 by his protest at the
teaching of Canon Hensley Henson on the subject of the Virgin Birth,
a protest which brought forth an answering letter addressed to the
Bishop by Dr. Henson himself. But the Bishop complained that “there is
so much ambiguity in the language of Canon Henson and of other similar
writers; so much readiness to discuss possible effects of the results
of historical criticism, as if these results were already assured;
there are so many admissions, lightly made which would carry those
who make them further probably than they themselves think, further
certainly than the faith of the Church permits; that there is ground
for legitimate anxiety as to the nature and consequences of much of
this modern teaching. I am, however, very grateful for the kind tone
Canon Henson adopts throughout the letter to me personally and for the
respect he expresses for my office. The propositions which he lays
down in his published letter may be summed up in the one proposition
that--‘We must follow Truth wherever it leads.’ This principle I have
not shrunk in any way from applying, as he suggests I have, to the
New Testament, and, therefore, in a sermon of mine, and an address
delivered to the London Diocesan Conference, I have given the reasons
which lead me to believe in the Virgin Birth of our Lord.”

But though this particular incident closed on a kindly note, there
was none the less a great gulf fixed between the schools of thought
represented by Canon Hensley Henson and Winnington Ingram: and, years
later, this fact was emphasised by the Bishop of London’s personal
action over the consecration of his former friend, Hensley Henson, to
the episcopate.

He explained his action in the following letter:

                                                     _January 19, 1918._

  “The Bishop of London has acknowledged, through the Archdeacon of
  London, a memorial presented to him by the clergy of the diocese,
  on the subject of the consecration of Hensley Henson to be Bishop of
  Hereford. He says, ‘Before I received it I had come to the painful
  decision to take no part in the consecration of Dr. Henson as Bishop
  of Hereford. I say “painful” because he is an old friend of mine for
  twenty-nine years, and was my predecessor at Oxford House. I only
  abstain because of what I consider his dangerous views with regard
  to the Virgin Birth and Resurrection, and certain miracles wrought
  by our Lord, as exemplified in passages quoted by the Bishop of
  Oxford in his public protest. I shall always hope that he will, if he
  becomes a Bishop, lay aside the controversial pen, and develop that
  pastoral side of his character that we who knew him and loved him at
  Bethnal Green knew to be so strong in him.’”

It can readily be perceived that one who, like the Bishop of London,
would definitely take such a step as to refuse to support by his
presence even the consecration of an old friend, would not easily yield
one jot or tittle to any claims but those of his own conscience.

It was the same over the Woman’s Suffrage question. For years the
struggle was intense and protracted. The members of the Militant Party
amongst the suffragettes were attracting attention to their cause by
measures which, in the then existing conditions, had brought them into
open breaches of the law. It was in vain they were arrested and fined.
They retorted by accepting prison sooner than pay fines, and once in
prison, went on hunger strike, to obtain their release. Nothing would
have been easier for a man of such intense sympathy as the Bishop of
London than to show it actively on the side of these women. But from
his point of view they were in revolt against Constitutional methods.
On January 24, 1914, he visited Holloway Gaol, and interviewed Miss
Rachel Peace, who, it was stated, had been forcibly fed. He reported
that the statement was unfounded, but pleaded that she must be released
on license. His plea was refused, and on January 31 he published a
letter stating the fact. Its publication was followed by a wilful
interruption of his service at a consecration of a church at Golders’
Green. The next day a deputation asked him to visit two women prisoners
in Holloway, and then come and state his experiences before a meeting
of the Woman’s Social and Political Union. He refused to do the latter,
but he visited the prison and talked with the women, and found they
complained of no personal unkindness beyond forcible feeding. He told
them that their action was not only wrong, but impolitic. The result of
his statement was that the militants picketed his house. Here again was
a clear case of his willingness to risk unpopularity in asserting his
own personal and considered views.

Even in the Church of England itself, the same fact came out when
he found it necessary to deal with practices which seemed to him to
involve greater issues, and an instance of this was found in his
decision concerning the methods adopted at St. Peter’s, London Dock, in
1909.

He sent them a letter practically removing the episcopal ban on the
Church, and the Vicar, the Rev. L. S. Wainwright, read it publicly.
The Bishop wrote:

  “With regard to the use of incense--in view of the fact that incense
  has been used in your Church for forty years and more, I make no
  order dealing with the matter of the Reservation of the Sacraments.
  I sanction its being reserved for the purpose of communicating the
  sick, but I direct that it shall be reserved in the Mortuary Chapel,
  pointed out to me on the occasion of my visit, instead of in the side
  Chapel where it is now reserved.”

From the instances quoted above, the position of the Bishop becomes
lucidly clear. It becomes apparent that he felt he was there to protect
the people in the 593 parishes of his diocese from any errors which
might creep in, either of doctrine or of practice. He asked only one
question: What was the principle involved? And on the principle he took
his firm stand, whether within or without the Church this was always
his attitude.

So the years passed, in the exercise of his episcopal duties, in the
rapidly extending diocese of London; in willingly fulfilling the
extra duties thrust upon him as a man of commanding influence; and in
fearlessly asserting his conscience as a spiritual peer of the realm,
and one of the spiritual leaders of his own Church.

Then, like a bolt from the blue, came the Great War in 1914, and to all
the difficulties which had hitherto faced him was added the shouldering
of responsibilities which a state of war thrust upon every man in high
position and peculiarly upon himself.




CHAPTER VII

THE BISHOP DURING WARTIME


It was a singular thing that in 1909 the Bishop of London issued a
volume of addresses entitled “Into the Fighting Line.” He little
dreamed that five years later that title would have to represent the
attitude of the whole nation and of himself as one of its prominent
leaders. It was so. In 1914 the Great War began, and the testing time
of the Church came. It had to inspire the nation to a high-minded line
of policy, to fill the sailors and soldiers with fortitude and courage,
to give them abundant provision for the spiritual and sacramental help
they needed; to set an example of self-sacrificing service; to visit
the sick and wounded; to comfort mourners who were at home and to
lead day and night the intercessions of the people. The Church rose
nobly to the call. Within the first fortnight of the war, in addition
to those who placed their services at the disposal of the Admiralty,
it offered two thousand men to the War Office to be Chaplains--that
is, to share the risk of danger and death with the rest of the Army.
Further, the Church encouraged every young man under its influence to
volunteer at once as a duty to God. Seventy per cent. of the new army
were Churchmen. The Bishop himself was not long before he paid a visit
to the Front; and spent two months in visiting the camps at home; but
he declared that “I look upon the nine and a half months spent at the
daily grind of Diocesan work as far more ‘heroic’--if such a word is to
be used at all.”

During his visit to the Front in August and September of 1914, he spent
every day with his own men--the Rifle Brigade of which he was the Hon.
Chaplain.

From the very beginning, the Bishop in his public addresses, sounds
a clarion note of conviction as to the righteousness of the cause of
the Allies, and in the strength of that conviction urged upon all to
take some personal part in the struggle. The addresses he published in
1915 will be a storehouse of incident and statement for some future
historian to draw upon, when he seeks information as to the point of
view of our nation during the struggle, and the ways and habits of the
soldiers.

During all this time and the years of protracted struggle which
followed, he was busy holding quiet days for the clergy at home on
the one hand, and organising help for those abroad on the other. He
had to face the problems in the Churches at home, whose finances were
depleted, whose congregations were thinned down; and to find a sweet
reasonable faith for those who were in the audiences, which would
enable them to go on when there seemed nothing for them to go on
for. He did it and laboured through the wearying days because of his
absolute conviction that the Allies were fighting for the cause of “The
Nailed Hand against the mailed fist.”

At a great meeting at the Guildhall, the Bishop of London said, after
he had listened to the addresses of the Statesmen, who were with him
on the platform: “The Church is behind the nation in this war, and I
am prepared to offer to place the whole organisation of the Church in
London at the disposal of the Government.”

As for the impression that he produced while he was in France, we have
the testimony of the Field-Marshal Commanding in the Field at the
Front, who wrote:

  “The Bishop of London arrived here and left during April. During
  the course of his visit his Lordship was at the Front every day,
  and I think I am right in saying that there was scarcely a unit
  in the Command which was not at one time or other present at his
  services. Personal fatigue and even danger was completely ignored
  by his Lordship. The Bishop held several services virtually under
  shell-fire, and it was with difficulty that he could be prevented
  from carrying on his ministrations under rifle-fire in the trenches.

  “I am anxious to place on record my deep sense of the good effect
  produced throughout the Army by the self-sacrificing devotion on the
  part of the Bishop of London, to whom I feel personally very deeply
  indebted.”

Out yonder at the Front, as he passed through the trenches, there was
one touching incident which connected him with his old days at Bethnal
Green. One young man, little more than a boy, who was carried in from
the trenches shot through the shoulder, and who was being carried to
hospital, held out his arm to the Bishop with a radiant smile. The
Bishop thought for a moment that he was in a delirium, but he turned
out to be an East End lad, a communicant in the old Bethnal Green
Church, who saw the Bishop passing, and knew him at once, and thus
welcomed him.

In the lines at the Front the Bishop made a great point of regarding
himself as having a first call upon all his efforts from the
London Rifle Brigade, and insisted upon keeping his time free for
administering Holy Communion to them. But, none the less, he placed
himself at the disposal of many others, and amongst those others
were the Canadians. The Bishop, owing to his previous visits to the
Dominion of Canada, was well known to many of the Canadian soldiers,
and he once took occasion to address the troops from the balcony of
the Town Hall in the town where they were located. There were 10,000
of the Canadians, and the volume of welcoming sound which greeted him
indicated their cheery recognition.

“This is a sight,” he began, “which reminds me of Montreal and Toronto!”

“How about Winnipeg?” several shouted.

The Bishop was not slow to let them know that we in Great Britain
rejoiced to feel that the men of Canada and Great Britain were standing
shoulder to shoulder.

They cheered.

“Yes, you may cheer that,” he replied.

He passed on to speak of the great cause of Freedom for the world for
which they were fighting, and they cheered again.

“Yes, you may cheer that too!” he cried, “while I get breath again.”
And then, after he had turned to deeper thoughts, he closed by adding:
“Now, we will say together the Lord’s Prayer.”

The sound of the deep-toned voices of the men as they uttered the words
was like the voice of many waters. Then, in absolute silence, the
Bishop gave the blessing, and as he left the balcony a Staff Officer
turned to the Bishop’s Chaplain, and said:

“That is a really great man!”

That was the impression he produced upon all with whom he met.
Probably it was deepened by the sight of his lifeguardsman height and
princely presence; but it was chiefly occasioned by the simplicity and
directness and simplicity of his speech and the winning nature of his
ways.

So the years passed, and at length there came the day when the Great
City of which he was Bishop met for thanksgiving in St. Paul’s
Cathedral; and once more the Bishop was able to confine his attentions
to the ever old problems of his diocese; with those added which now
emerged in the time of unsettlement of all classes, which has ever
since followed the war.




CHAPTER VIII

PERSONALIA


It would be as well, before this short book is closed, to examine
some of the ways in which the mind of the Bishop has always worked.
We have seen in the foregoing pages how intensely practical was his
outlook upon life. It could scarcely be otherwise after spending his
first years in actual contact with the ugly facts of life, which
emerged during his Headship of Oxford House and his incumbency of St.
Matthew’s, Bethnal Green; or, again, as he faced the indifference and
materialism of the West End. To him the fact that work of any kind told
in the Kingdom of God was sufficient to prove its source to have been
the Spirit of God. He was fond of telling how a lad on one of our foggy
days held in his hand the end of a long piece of string, the other end
of which was hidden by the murky atmosphere. “What have you there?”
the lad was asked. And he answered, “I am holding my kite!” “Your
kite!--You cannot see your kite!” “No,” he replied. “But I can feel it
pull!”

And the Bishop said: “We cannot be wrong, we priests of God,
Churchworkers, lay-readers, duchesses, servant-girls, men in the
factories, clerks in the City--we cannot all be wrong when we say we
have felt it pull.”

Another thing which kept alive the personal faith of the Bishop was the
impression made upon him by the witness of those around him. According
to him, Bishop Wilkinson, Bishop King and Canon Body were his great
spiritual masters. He says of them:

“If you had known those three as I knew them, you would be as certain,
as you are certain of the sun, that those men were living in a real
world which gave them an extraordinary power. Take Bishop Wilkinson,
a man who all his life had to struggle against a tendency against
melancholia; yet he had his head above the mists all the time, and
because he had his head above the mists he was able to convert
thousands in London, and throughout the world. Take Bishop King,
quite a different man in temperament, with a bright cheerfulness of
disposition. He, too, moved above the mists, and the same was true of
Canon Body. I learnt from them an intense belief in the Holy Spirit.
That is to say, I believe that the Holy Spirit may use what is said and
done. It is perfectly astounding how God can use the weakest word.”

A deep impression was made upon him by the workers whom he met. He told
the story of the Vicar of All Saints’, Margaret Street, after he was
lying dead:

“I think it was about two or three years ago he wrote me a letter,
and he said: ‘I have more money in this living than I had in the last
place where I was. I find there are so many hundreds a year which I do
not want for my board and lodging. If Jesus Christ were visibly alive
to-day, I should give that money to Him; it all belongs to Him; it is
His money. As I cannot actually place it in Jesus Christ’s own hands,
and you are His chief representative in this diocese, I hand it to
you.’ And every penny that that faithful parish priest did not want for
support himself--of course, it is the first duty of a man to pay for
his lodgings and his clothes--he handed over to me every year to spend
for Jesus Christ. He said: ‘Spend it as you like, but I would like the
preference given to educating young men who cannot afford it for Holy
Orders.’ I suppose, perhaps, £400 or £500 a year used to come regularly
during these years into my hands.”

He refers to the impression made upon him by another living man, the
Rev. H. R. L. Shepherd, as a further instance of a man with his head
above the mists: “Let me say I persuaded Mr. Shepherd to be ordained
when he was at Cambridge. I sent him to be Head of Oxford House. I sent
him to this church. I believe the secret of his marvellous influence is
this--that he is a friend of Jesus. It is not his eloquent sermons, it
is not anything particular that he says, but you do feel that you are
in correspondence and in touch with a real friend of Jesus Christ. That
is why this church (St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields) has gone on so well in
his absence. (Mr. Shepherd was away ill at the time.) He did not lead
you to himself: he led you to Christ.”

“Who can forget the names of Benson and Gott? Archbishop Benson will
always stand out to me as I saw him at the consecration of two Bishops
in Bethnal Green Parish Church, characteristically arranged by him so
that East London people might see what the consecration of a Bishop was
like. Always thinking for others.”

It is in references like these that we catch glimpses of the way in
which the Bishop’s mind works and the things which impressed him and
gave him a radiant faith that the men with their heads above the mists
of self, who were living for their Lord and His people, were the men
who could say, like that boy, “I can feel the pull!” and were the men
who could exercise it.

Having now seen the way in which the mind of the Bishop of London
is itself influenced, it will be as well in bringing this book to a
conclusion to indicate how he himself influences others.

He is a great believer in speaking to his audiences without the
restrictive fetter of notes. We heard him quite recently on Good Friday
speak at the Regent Theatre at the People’s Service. He stood there
before the great audience perfectly at home, beating time with his
hymn-book to their singing, and afterwards addressing them on David’s
saying, “Give me the sword of Goliath, there is none like it!” In the
plainest words, and with a perfect flow of language, he enlarged his
theme, driving home his points with telling illustrations in the use of
which he is a past-master. As a matter of fact, his addresses always
abound with them. For instance, he will enforce personal responsibility
thus:

“The situation is just like the case of two boys who are sent to school
by their parents; to one is given the journey-money and the supplies,
but the father hardly thinks that it is necessary to tell him that he
has to share it with the other boy, and would be horrified if the other
boy was to be left by himself on the platform at Willesden without any
money and without any food. If he was, in all probability the elder
boy would have been severely punished the next time he went home to
his parents. At any rate, he ought to have taken it for granted that
he was to share the money and the food, even if little had been said
by the parent about it. The analogy holds good in life. I am sent with
other lives linked with mine, and I am the elder brother, and I have
the journey-money and the supplies are given to me. But not alone for
myself.”

The necessity of self-control is hit off thus:

“There were two men driving into Cambridge in the last generation after
a shooting-party. One of them was my own old father, who was a great
shot in his day, and his friend--my father was driving--took off the
top of the ramrod, and screwed it in the dark into the horse’s back.
The horse started off at a wild gallop; the dogcart was overturned;
the drunken man, as is often the case, got off scot-free, and my poor
father was nearly killed. You have got an animal to control, and it
is possible to control it, and you are the man to control it; but do
not screw a ramrod into the horse’s back. What do I mean by that? Do
not put into those bodies of yours in any great measure--of course, I
believe that you had better not do it in any measure at all, but at any
rate in anything but the smallest measure--that alcohol which is the
irritant to the wild forces in you.”

He is alert to catch and capture an illustration anywhere as in the
following:

“An illustration was forcibly brought home to me in a church in which
I was preaching, where the organ of the church had lain in fragments
for years, and at its restoration that morning was breathing forth
beautiful music, restored to its original shape and form. The question
we have a right to answer to those who tell us that when the grey
matter of the brain ceases to act the person dies is this: ‘When that
organ was lying in fragments, was the organist dead?’ He was not.
He could not use the instrument at the time, but when the organ was
beautifully restored, it was the same man who drew out the music from
the organ. If the organ, the instrument, is in ruins, the organist
lives on!”

Nothing is too commonplace for him to use and claim as grist for his
mill. He is evidently not concerned to secure acknowledgment for
anything but his message. He is great enough to be simple and wise
enough to be clear.

In these foregoing pages we have tried to trace the growth of that
individuality which has given the Bishop of London his commanding
force. “The plastic circumstances”--to use a favourite term of his
own--“the plastic circumstances” in which that growth has occurred have
been many and varied. Country rectory, public school and university
life, country curacy and life of the cathedral-close, were certainly
no unusual avenue for a man to tread whose career was to be that of
an ecclesiastic. But the element of the unusual appears at Oxford
House and in Bethnal Green, if we watch the years there in the light
of what we know now of his future. But it was there that the direct
ways and simple methods of Winnington Ingram were acquired. All the
power of popular appeal that exhibited itself afterwards at St. Paul’s
Cathedral, when he was Canon, and later as Bishop of Stepney, as he
swayed crowds in the City and East and West to sympathy with his aims,
was gained in dealing with men and women, who, if they were to be
moved at all, needed one amongst them who would “stir them up,” as St.
Peter puts it. It is this mission of “stirring men up” that the Bishop
appears to regard as peculiarly his own--a fact which has emerged in
many parochial missions he has conducted, and particularly in his
great London mission a few years since. He has all his life through
apparently been obsessed with the idea that the one thing evil wants is
“to be let alone.” He determined that his whole life should embody his
refusal to do this. He was called for “interference,” and “interfere”
he has. Only the other day, in our hearing, a well-known, highly placed
clergyman said of him in tones half amused, half deprecatory: “If only
he would let things alone!”

It was the finest compliment ever paid him!

Could there be a finer judgment of any man than to describe him as “one
who refused to let things alone, who kicked over stones beneath which
noisome things wriggled and crawled, and ruthlessly let in the light on
dark corners”? Could there be a finer judgment of any man?




Books by the Bishop of London

3_s._ 6_d._ _net each_.


THE SWORD OF GOLIATH

A Mission book by the Bishop of London, with its central theme running
through each chapter, is always the most popular of his writings. In
“The Sword of Goliath,” as in previous Mission volumes, the enquiries
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_Other Mission volumes are_:

  THE SPIRIT OF JESUS
  A MISSION OF THE SPIRIT
  THE CALL OF THE FATHER
  THE LOVE OF THE TRINITY
  JOY IN GOD
  THE MYSTERIES OF GOD
  SECRETS OF STRENGTH
  THE GOSPEL OF THE MIRACULOUS

Popular editions in paper covers are issued of these 8 volumes--“The
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  REBUILDING THE WALLS.
  THE SPIRIT OF PEACE.
  VICTORY AND AFTER.
  THE POTTER AND THE CLAY.
  RAYS OF DAWN.
  INTO THE FIGHTING LINE.
  UNDER THE DOME.
  BANNERS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH.
  WORK IN GREAT CITIES.
  THE GOSPEL IN ACTION.
  THE CHURCH IN THE TIME OF WAR.
  EYES OF FLAME.
  THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF GOODNESS.
  THE FAITH OF CHURCH AND NATION.

[Illustration]


Other Books by the Bishop of London

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  GOOD SHEPHERDS.
  MESSENGERS, WATCHMEN, AND STEWARDS.
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  THE AFTERGLOW OF A GREAT REIGN.

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A CHARGE delivered to the Clergy and Churchwardens of London, in St.
Paul’s Cathedral, October 19th, 1905. 1_s._ _net_.

A CHARGE delivered to the Clergy and Churchwardens in the Diocese of
London, 1911. 1_s._ _net_.

MESSAGE FOR THE SUPREME MOMENT. Delivered to the assembled clergy of
the London Diocese at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, November, 1915.
_Sewed_, 6_d._ _net_.

MESSAGES OF TO-DAY. Selected passages from the writings of the BISHOP
OF LONDON. An appropriate Easter Gift. Printed in red and black. 1_s._
3_d._ _net_.

  WELLS GARDNER, DARTON & CO. LTD.,
  3 & 4, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, LONDON, E.C. 4.
  And all booksellers.

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