Part 15 (2/2)
R W CHURCH, _Human Life and its Conditions_
It was ion habitually expressed itself in Social Service I cannot reed into the poor, the sick, the underfed, and the miserable The motive of all this incessant ministration was the Christian Faith, and its ion in which the children of an Evangelical hoetic principle, passionate on its emotional side, definite in its theory, iible in its effects If a boy's heart--
”Were less insensible than sodden clay In a sea-river's bed at ebb of tide,”
it could scarcely fail to carry with it into the world outside the i I can remember quite clearly that, even in my Harrow days, the idea of Life as Service was always present toof sucheducated either for life or for fashi+on Which is it? What is your ambition? Is it to continue, with fewer restrictions, the arossed you here? Is it to be favourite or brilliant members of a society which keeps want and misery at a distance? Would this content you? Is this your idea of life? Or may we not hope that you will have a nobler conception of what a Christian manhood may be made in a country so rich in opportunities as our o presents?”[55]
In Dr Butler's serhts were directed to such subjects as the Housing of the Working Classes, Popular Education, and the contrast between the lot of the rich and the lot of the poor ”May God never allow us to grow proud, or to grow indolent, or to be deaf to the cry of hu” ”Pray that God may count you worthy to be fore purity to the ho of the day when the longing of our coet not the complaints, and the yetof your own life, and the gratification of your own happiness, may be linked hereafter with some public Christian labour”
Thus the influences of school co-operated with the influences of hoe, a lively interest in Social Service; and that interest found a practical outlet at Oxford When young ; and a Sunday School at Cowley and a Night School at St Frideswide's were the scenes of h my devotion to St Barnabas', I became acquainted with the homes and lives of the poor in the then squalid district of ”Jericho”; and the experience thus acquired was a valuable coricultural poor which I had gained at home It was at this ti voice of Ruskin taught us the sanctity of work for others A fascinating but awful book called _Modern Christianity a Civilized Heathenis hearts; and in 1875 Dr Pusey made that book the subject of a sermon before the University, in which he pleaded the cause of the poor with an unforgettable solemnity[56]
For two or three years, illness and decrepitude interfered with my active service, but the ideal was still enthroned infor others becaradual process, and, if one had ever ”despised the day of ss,” one now learned to value it When I caraduate friends at Oxford, for One of the party has since been a Conservative Minister, one a Liberal Minister, and one a high official of the Central Conservative association Sisters joined their brothers, and we used to jog off together on Saturday afternoons to the Holborn Workhouse, which, if I re street called ”Shepherdess Walk” The girls visited the woes and flowers to the wards, give short readings froossip with the bedridden about the outside world We always had the kindest of welcoreat was their enthusiasm when they learned that two of their visitors had been returned to Parliament at the General Election of 1880 As one of the tas a Conservative and one a Liberal, the political susceptibilities of the ere not offended, and we both received congratulations from all alike One quaint incident is connected with these memories Just outside the Workhouse was a sort of booth, or ”lean-to,” where a very respectable woman sold daffodils and wall-flowers, which we used to buy for our friends inside One day, when one of the girls of our party washer purchase, the flower-seller said, ”Would your Ladyshi+p like to go to the Lady Mayoress's Fancy Dress Ball? If so, I can send you and your brother tickets You have been good custolad if you would accept them” The explanation was that the flower-seller was sister to the Lady Mayoress, whom the Lord Mayor had ratefully accepted; and, e asked the giver if she was going to the Ball, she replied, with excellent sense and taste, ”Oh, no My sister, in her position, is obliged to give these grand parties, but I should be quite out of place there You must tell me all about it next ti this ”day of s on all round us, in the spheres of thought and conscience; and the earlier idea of individual service had been, not swamped by, but expanded into, the nobler conception of corporate endeavour
It had been a work of time The Christian Socialism of 1848--one of the finest episodes in our moral history--had been trampled underfoot by the wickedness of the Criround and died After two years of aimless bloodshed, peace was restored in 1856, and a spell of national prosperity succeeded The Repeal of the Corn Laws had done its work; food was cheaper; times were better; the revenue advanced ”by leaps and bounds” But commercialism was rampant It was the heyday of the Ten Pound Householder and the Middle Class Franchise Mr Podsnap and Mr Gradgrind enounced the social law Bright and Cobden do The Universities were fast bound in the rim idols orshi+pped--unrestricted competition, the survival of the fittest, and universal selfishness enthroned in the place which belonged to universal love ”The Devil take the hindere and hideous cities, the awful problem of Industry lay like a bad drearound We were assured that the free play of competitive forces was bound to discover the true equipoise No intervention could really affect the inevitable outcome
It could only hinder and disturb”[57] The Church, whose pride it had been in rees to be the Handmaid of the Poor, was bidden to leave the Social Problem severely alone; and so ten years rolled by, while the social pressure on labour becae was proceeding underground, or at least out of sight Forces orking side by side which knew nothing of each other, but which were all tending to the sa aside the trammels which had bound her to wealth and culture, went down into the sluht the beauty and romance of Worshi+p to the poorest and the most depraved, and compelled them to come in
Whenever such a Church as St Alban's, Holborn, or St Barnabas, Oxford, was established in the sluious influence, but of social, physical, and educational refornized in the doh econoholds of Supply and Demand _Unto this Last_ beca of Maurice filtered, through all sorts of unsuspected channels, into literature and politics and churchmanshi+p In the intellectual world, Huxley transfor us devote ourselves to the task of fitting as many as possible to survive At Oxford, the ”home” not of ”lost” but of victorious ”causes,” T H
Green, wielding a spiritual influence which reached farther than that of ht that Freedo but a callous fraud, implies conditions in which men are really free to contract or to refuse; and insisted that all wholesome competition implies ”adequate equipment for the competitors”
It is impossible to say exactly how all these influences intertwined and co-operated One man ayed by one force; another by another; and, after long years of subterranean working, aseed deep-hidden in the furrohen it must pierce the superincuround[58]
The General Election of 1880, by dethroning Lord Beaconsfield and putting Gladstone in power, had fulfilled the strictly political objects which during the preceding three yearsto attain So ho entered Parliament at that Election, were set free, at the very outset of our public career, to work for the Social Reform which we had at heart We earnestly desired to hter, andaar dust of office-seeking and wire-pulling, into the purer air of unselfish endeavour To some of us it was much more; for it meant the application of the Gospel of Christ to the practical business of modern life But the difficulties were enor to its miserable old mumpsimus of _Laissez-faire_, and steadily refused to learn the new and nobler language of Social Service
Alone a men, Mr Chamberlain seemed to apprehend the truth that political reform is related to social reform as the means to the end, and that Politics, in its widest sense, is the science of hue to ”a Social Philosophy which, however ht have becoelianism hich we had been touched It took its scientific shape in the hands of Karl Marx, but it also floated to us, in drea the unity of the Social Body, as the Law of Love, and the Solidarity of Humanity”[59]
At the sound of these voices the old idols fell--_Laissez-faire_ and _Laissez-aller_, Individualism and Self-content, Unrestricted Competition and the Survival of the Fittest They all went doith a crash, like so ons; and, before their startled worshi+ppers had ti broke upon our ears _The Bitter Cry of Outcast London_, describing the enor, startledthe duty of the State to cope with the evil Then caress and Poverty_, and, as Dr Holland says, he ”forced us on to new thinking” That ”new thinking” took so facts of huuides as Ricardo and Bastiat and Fawcett has signally failed to cure or even ospel of the Single Tax He may, or may not, have found the remedy, but at any rate he has shown us more clearly than ever the i it to continue We profess and call ourselves Christians Is it not about tis, whether Economic or Socialistic, we tried to see what the Gospel says about the subject, and about our duty in regard to it?”
Out of this stress of mind and heart arose ”The Christian Social Union”
It was founded in Lent, 1889, and it set forth its objects in the following statement--
”This Union consists of Church objects at heart:--
(i) To claim for the Christian Law the ultimate authority to rule social practice
(ii) To study in common how to apply the moral truths and principles of Christianity to the social and economic difficulties of the present time
(iii) To present CHRIST in practical life as the Living Master and King, the enehteousness and love”
The Christian Social Union, originating with soe, which had fallen under the inspiring though i Westcott was, in some sense, the continuator of Mauricianism; and so, when Westcott joined the Union, the two streams, of Mauricianism and of the Oxford Movean, tell the rest of the story--”We founded the C S U under Westcott's presidentshi+p, leaving to the Guild of St Matthew their old work of justifying God to the People, while we devoted ourselves to converting and i the solid, stolid, flock of our own church folk within the fold We had our work cut out for us in dislodging the horrible cast-iron formulae, which were indeed wholly obsolete, but which seehter possession of their last refuge in the bulk of the Church's laity”