The Religious Life of London. James Ewing Ritchie
has thus come to pass that heresy in London and the country has been confined within narrow bounds. Whatever Churchmen may have thought, the creed and the public utterances of the Church have been orthodox. Popular dissent has followed suit – heresy has been avoided by some as a temptation of the devil, by others as an obstacle to worldly success, but no religious life can exist without it. In the religious world, as a rule, heresy is life, orthodoxy death. “Are you a Christian?” asked one well-known man of another. “When I am a good man,” was the reply; but, say the orthodox, it is on his belief or rejection of dogmas that a man’s Christianity depends. One cheering sign of the times is that the religious public is beginning to realize the fact, that it does not follow that because a man holds heretical opinions he will pick your pocket, elope with your wife, or make away with your silver spoons. It is well when people come to think that there may be something purer, higher, holier, than unreasoning uniformity of opinion or than a blind assent to scholastic terms and definitions. Mental stagnation is not Christian life, neither does sterile orthodoxy deserve the name. It was the recognition of this idea that gives to the Apostle John a special claim to admiration and regard. “If,” says he, “a man say I love God and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen?” It was under the influence of the same spirit that the Master rebuked the zeal of his disciples when they would have hindered one who was according to their own account doing good, merely because “he followed not us.” The passage is worth transcribing. “And John answered him, saying, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name and he followeth not us, and we forbade him, because he followeth not us. But Jesus said, Forbid him not, for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name that can lightly speak evil of me; for he that is not against us is on our part. For whosoever shall give you a cup of water in my name because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you he shall not lose his reward.”
CHAPTER II.
the jews
Of the many definitions of London, perhaps the truest is that which describes it as several cities rolled into one. The rich inhabit Belgravia, the poor Bethnal Green. In Mark Lane on a Monday morning you might fancy, if you were to shut your eyes and listen to the conversation around, that you were in primitive East Anglia; on the contrary, in Chancery Lane, and all the places of resort contiguous, the talk is of writs, of issuing executions, of levying a distress, and of all those horrible processes by which law seeks to secure property from its natural enemies, poverty or rascality. Irish abound in Drury Lane, and in unsavoury Houndsditch the seed of Abraham congregate.
The traveller from the palatial West will perhaps shrink from leaving on his right hand Aldgate Pump, and plunging in the dark alleys and crowded lanes in which the Jews reside. Nor, if he be of a fastidious stomach, would I much blame him. In Meeting House Yard, for instance, I saw a pool of dark fluid, around which little pale children were playing, suggesting something very rotten in the state of Denmark. It is in this neighbourhood that the far-famed Rag Fair is held on the Sunday, and all the week there is more or less dealing in such articles as come under the denomination of “old clo’,” respecting which it may as a general rule be safely affirmed that, whilst we may dispute the title of clo’, as regards much there vended, there can be no dispute as to the appropriateness of the descriptive adjective. In the lanes and courts around us are names familiar to us from infancy. Lazarus keeps a second-hand book-shop, and Moses sells fried fish. You see a printing-office, with posters up; on those posters are Hebrew characters. In Duke Street there are a couple of book-shops, but the books are all or chiefly Hebrew. In this neighbourhood you can easily forget that you are in London at all. It is not the English tongue you hear; or, if it be, it comes to you disguised in such a foreign accent as to be scarcely intelligible. Through the mist and fog dark eyes, all redolent of the far-off East, flash on you; and now and then a tall figure in flowing robes, sad and solitary, stalks by; and you rub your eyes to be sure that you are not in a dream. This temporary delusion will be stronger if you visit this neighbourhood on a Friday evening just after sunset. In Whitechapel and Aldgate the gas is flaring, and a busy trade is carried on; in Leadenhall Street, in the offices of the great Navigation Companies or of the leading shipbrokers, clerks are busy writing, and weather-beaten skippers from Australia or the Cape or New Zealand are tearing about, if we may use a colloquial expression much in vogue, like mad. It is a contrast to pass from this busy scene into the Jewish quarter, where the shops are all shut up and where all is still. How is this? The answer is, it is the eve of the Sabbath, and the Jews are at their synagogues. There are three in this neighbourhood. The first and oldest is that of the Portuguese Jews in King Street, Duke’s Place, erected in 1656. The first German synagogue, also in Duke’s Place, was built in the year 1691, and occupied until 1790, when the present edifice was erected. This is called the Great Synagogue. The New Synagogue, as it is denominated, in Great St. Helens, is a very elegant and ornamental structure. The interior is very beautiful. In so dark and dolorous a neighbourhood you are not prepared for anything so fine. Very liberally must these ancient people have subscribed for the fitting worship of their God. From the ground spring up pillars highly decorated, and in the side are windows of a rich arabesque pattern in stained glass. The ceiling is semi-dome with octagonal coffers containing gilded flowers upon an azure ground; and the pavement, which is of polished marble, forms a perfect circle. The ministers of the Great Synagogue were considered the leading ones. It is not so now. Dr. Adler is the head rabbi. He has been long in office, and is universally esteemed by Christians as well as Jews. He is an old man, and as his English is that of a foreigner it is clear that in his public addresses you get an inadequate idea of his talents or attainments. This remark applied to most of the Jewish ministers in London. They were foreigners, and in speaking English did not succeed much better than we do when we attempt to speak German or French. Now two-thirds of the Jewish ministers are English.
Very far back in English history we find the people whose descendants have taken possession of Houndsditch and all around, and turned it into a Jewish colony. More or less they have always been with us. In Anglo-Saxon times we seem to have had a fair sprinkling of them. After the Conquest they arrived here in great numbers. By William Rufus they were especially favoured, and Henry I. conferred on them a charter of privileges. They were enabled to claim in courts of law the repayment of any money lent by them as easily as Christians, and while the latter were forbidden to charge any interest on their loans, there was no restriction in this respect put upon the Jews. At this time, doubtless, they laid the foundation of their subsequent wealth. The sovereign rather encouraged them, as the richer they were the more gold could be forced from them – and with our earlier as well as with many of our later kings, gold was a commodity always in request. During the former part of the reign of King John (a. d. 1199–1216) they seemed to have gained the favour of that monarch, or at any rate obtained permission to exist, and trade and worship in this country on sufferance. Subsequently, however, they appear to have suffered much persecution, and were eventually banished from the country in 1291 (19 Edward I.), continuing in exile for 367 years. Menasseh Ben Israel, a Jewish rabbi of great learning in Amsterdam, petitioned the Protector Cromwell, in the year 1649, on behalf of his brethren, for a liberty which the Latin Secretary of the Lord Protector it is to be hoped would be foremost to advocate. During the interval the Jews lived secretly in England, but did not possess any “Jewries,” or publicly organized congregations. Ultimately they obtained permission to return, though the Commonwealth refused to give any formal sanction to their re-appearance, merely tacitly consenting to it. The people of England, says Rebecca in “Ivanhoe,” “are a fierce people, quarrelling ever with their neighbours or among themselves, and ready to plunge the sword into the bowels of each other. Such is no safe abode for the children of my people. Ephraim is an heartless dove. Issachar an overburdened drudge, which stoops between two burdens. Not in a land of war and blood, surrounded by hostile neighbours and distracted by internal factions, can Israel hope to rest during his wanderings.” There is, however, reason to suppose that nowhere, except for a short interval in Spain and always in Holland, have the Jews fared better than in this country. In our time they have been allowed to take their seats as M.P’s. We have seen a Prime Minister of England of Jewish origin. Need we say more? Jews are in all respects on an equality with Christians; in art, and literature, and science, and the acquirement of wealth, they have displayed a genius equal to our own. In practical piety – in the benevolence which teaches the rich to give