The Religious Life of London. James Ewing Ritchie
metropolis.
When the Great Fire had devoured the eighty-nine parish churches of London, Sir Christopher Wren superintended the building of fifty-three at the same time that he was building St. Paul’s. Various Acts were passed in the reign of Queen Anne and George I. to increase church accommodation in London, and Commissioners were appointed to apply the coal duties from the year 1716 to the year 1724, to the building of fifty-two new churches. Much of the money was misappropriated and only eleven were built, and a subsequent fund of 360,000l. was granted, to be paid in instalments of 21,000l. a year. In 1818, Parliament was prevailed on to vote a million and a half for building churches throughout the country as a thank-offering for the termination of the war; and in the same year the Incorporated Church Building Society was founded, to build, enlarge, and repair churches; of which many, such as those in Bethnal Green, Hackney, St. Pancras, Battersea, were in London. Daniel Wilson, Bishop of Calcutta, persuaded the vestry of Islington to vote 12,000l. for church building. In 1836 Bishop Blomfield inaugurated the Metropolis Churches Fund, to which he himself gave up sinecure patronage at St. Paul’s to the extent of 10,000l. a year. Sixty-eight churches were built by this fund at the cost of 136,787l., before it was merged, in 1854, in the Diocesan Church Building Society. During the twenty-eight years of his episcopate, Bishop Blomfield consecrated 108 churches in London. The whole number of churches ten years ago, writes Mr. Bosanquet in 1868, was only 498. Now Churchmen aim at absorbing the entire metropolis. “But in order to secure for every 2000 of our population one clergyman,” said the present Archbishop of Canterbury in 1867, “we shall need twice as many additional clergymen as we have yet, with a proportionate number of schools.” And here as elsewhere it seems to be true that supply creates demand. As soon as a church is opened it is well filled.
The Bishop of Winchester’s Fund, also known as the South London Church Extension Fund, is a similar effort to supply the spiritual need of that part of London which belongs to the diocese of Winchester.
THE DEAF AND DUMB AT CHURCH
In London there are two thousand persons born deaf and dumb. To the sweet music of speech, whether in the way of conversation or lecture, grave or gay, or song however sacred and Divine, they are insensible. It follows almost as a natural consequence that they are mute, that from their lips can never come the thoughts that breathe and words that burn. It is almost impossible for us to measure adequately the greatness of their loss or the depth of their desolation. How in some degree to make it up to them, to raise them in the scale of being, to teach them to think, and feel, and learn, and to enable them to communicate to others the results, is certainly not one of the least praiseworthy of the many praiseworthy Christian efforts of our day. With this view two courses of action have been followed. A Jewish school has been established at 44, Burton Crescent, where the system of teaching by articulation and lip-reading is pursued. For some time a similar system has been in successful operation in Rotterdam. As to the merits of the system a warm dispute has been for a considerable time in progress in America. Its advocates tell us that when these results shall have been made known, and the attention of the philanthropist and man of science shall have been directed to them, the days of the old system of dactylology, or communication by the aid of fingers, will be numbered. They ask, triumphantly, What parents will be content that their children shall continue to communicate their thoughts and wishes by the aid of signs, when it can be proved to a demonstration that 999 deaf mutes out of every 1000 possess the faculty of speech, and that such faculty can be successfully utilised? Mr. Isaac tells us, that at Burton Crescent, after only eighteen months’ instruction, a deaf child who had never previously uttered a clear sound, recited a verse of the National Anthem in a way that brought tears into the eyes of many hearers. The questions are put by the teacher in audible language; and the deaf mute, by aid of lip-reading – another marvel of the system in which the eye does duty for the ear – comprehends every question, and gives answers audibly and distinctly. The Association in aid of the Deaf and Dumb, of which the Rev. Samuel Smith is the able and indefatigable secretary, are, however, doubtful of the new system – and certainly lip-reading seems liable to give facilities for great misapprehension as to the speaker’s meaning – and prefer to continue the system which the society was organized in 1840 to teach, and under which it has worked more or less successfully ever since. Under this system has sprung up a deaf and dumb church-going public. On Sundays there are five or six places opened for such in London; on Tuesday evenings there are two, the principal one being held in the fine old church of St. Lawrence Jewry, near the Guildhall – one of Sir Christopher Wren’s churches – in which are monuments to Wilkins, the learned Bishop of Chester, and Archbishop Tillotson, whose lot was no peaceful one, and of whom it is worthy of remark that in the language of Jortin he broke through an ancient and fundamental rule of controversial theology, “Allow not an adversary either to have common sense or common honesty.” Poor Tillotson, you see, never got over the disadvantages of Dissenting training.
But to return to the deaf and dumb. Inside this handsome church you will find any Tuesday evening about eight o’clock, some fifty or sixty of them sitting near the reading desk. Most of them are men and women in a humble position in life, engaged in various callings in the neighbourhood, more, however, in the east than the west. The desire to profit by such services seems on the increase. They have, for instance, at St. Lawrence, double the number they had, and the same may be said with regard to the services conducted morning and evening at the Polytechnic Institution. Nor are these services held in vain. Every year some are prepared for confirmation, and special celebrations of the Holy Communion are held for their benefit. To the ordinary attendants, including even such as have little need of an interpreter to explain the subject or to help them to follow the services in church, the committee report, “these services and lectures are profitable.” “I have felt it a great privilege to attend the services,” said one, “which have been a great comfort and benefit to me, and I hope I shall remember what I have heard” (it is to be presumed, by “heard,” the writer means what he saw: his language is conventional). “After I left school I felt so lost I could not hear what was said in churches, and now I am very happy in attending them.” In another way, also, the religious condition of these afflicted ones is kept in view. The Society employs missionaries engaged in house-to-house visitation. By these missionary agents, acting in concert with the parochial clergy, a personal acquaintance is maintained with the deaf and dumb scattered over London, and a most marked improvement in their character, conduct, and intelligence is the result of the supervision exercised. The society is also engaged in promoting the erection of a church for the deaf and dumb. For this purpose 550l. have already been subscribed. In the Old Kent Road there is a Deaf and Dumb Asylum, and in other parts of the metropolis there are societies for their special benefit. Of course no mere outsider can give an account of a service with the deaf and dumb. It is easy to realize songs without words, but not so easy to realize public prayer and preaching in which no audible sound is heard, in which the service is conducted as it were by pantomime. As much as possible the rubric is observed, the deaf and dumb obey the instructions of the Prayer-book, and stand where standing is prescribed, and “sign” the response to the Lord’s Prayer, Creed, Confession, &c. As to the sermon, all that can be said is that it comes up to the Demosthenic standard for eloquence – action, action, action. Among the deaf and dumb the best preacher must be the best actor. Not merely are the fingers in constant requisition, but every part of the preacher’s face, as much as possible, is speaking all the time, either in the way of exhortation or entreaty. Great use, as we may imagine, is also made of the arms, and the body sways backward and forward as if to lend expression to such ideas as it may be the design of the teacher to convey. The great aim of these services is educational. They are intended to afford such an insight into the meaning and use of the Book of Prayer, that the deaf and dumb may be enabled to join intelligently in the public worship of the Church of England, and undoubtedly it is desirable that the terrible sense of isolation so natural under the circumstances should be got rid of, that the deaf and dumb should feel that they are part and parcel of the universal Church. Nevertheless there must be a deaf and dumb pulpit from which may flow the ever fructifying stream of Christian truth – a pulpit which the deaf and dumb may feel exists especially for them. Of this pulpit at present the Rev. Samuel Smith is the most distinguished orator, and as you watch him, though you cannot understand him, you cannot but wonder at his marvellous skill. Evidently his heart is in his work; equally evident is