OUR LONDON LETTER by M. Ellsworth Olsen

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 24, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 52.

OUR LONDON LETTER.

By M. Ellsworth Olsen

The Education Bill—Ritualism and Liberalism—Progress of Romanism—Increase of Crime—Condition of the Poor.

The Education Bill, treated at some length in our previous communication, has passed the committee stage in the House of Commons, and Mr. Balfour expects to finish with it before the Christmas holidays. Naturally the opposition party has been doing its utmost to delay and possibly ward off the bill entirely; but the government, with its large majority, has been able to make steady progress by vigorous use of the closure. Moreover a few very slight changes have been accepted; which, while not altering the essential character of the bill, have made some of the nonconformists look on it with a degree of tolerance. In its main features, however, it is the same, and means added influence on the part of the Church of England over the children and youth of this country.

Heresy, Higher Criticism, and Creed.

Another matter has come up to set people in church circles to talking. Dr. Fremantle, the dean of Ripon, a church dignitary of considerable prominence and popularity, astonished his friends and the public at large a few weeks ago by an address in which he practically denied the virgin birth, the miracles, and the resurrection of Christ. The daily papers took up the matter, especially the London Daily Express, and much was said on both sides: “I was very pleased to read the splendid speech of the Dean of Ripon,” writes one correspondent of the Express, “and more especially the broad views expressed therein. I think his critics would do well to bear in mind that the Bible was not written for people with a twentieth-century education.” Another of different convictions asks: “In the face of his recent statements how can the Dean of Ripon stand up and publicly recite the Apostles’ Creed, not to speak of the Nicene and the so-called Athanasian Creeds? . . . If the dean has any sense of the fitness of things, he will resign his preferment.” “Do those,” writes another correspondent, “who ask the Dean of Ripon to resign his position also require the resignation of every clergyman who disbelieves in eternal torment in a physical hell? If so, there will be some thousands of vacant pulpits.”

These quotations give a fairly correct view of the opinions expressed by the laity. There will be seen to be two general classes, the sticklers for the creed and those of so-called liberal views who entirely side with the dean. There has been a notable absence of reference to the Word of God itself as settling the matter. The same is true of the editorials dealing with the controversy. The Guardian, for instance, says of the dean’s teaching, that it is impossible “to reconcile it with even the loosest interpretation of the creeds; and the Church Times, organ of the Ritualists, condemns the dean in a two-column editorial, on the ground that his teaching ‘looses the bands of orthodoxy.’”

Reference has been made by several to the still more “advanced” views advocated by Dr. Cheyne, canon of Rochester in his “Biblia Encyclopedia,” and now it is advertised that Dr. Cheyne will answer his critics in an article to appear next month in a popular review. Meanwhile a book which Dean Fremantle wrote some time ago on various religious themes is having a rapid sale.

There can be no reasonable doubt that England is following very rapidly in the wake of Germany as regards higher criticism. Strange to say, too, the very ones, in many instances, who reject the Bible, on the ground of its not being reliable, turn most ardently to Ritualism.

The human soul seems bound to have something it can lean on. When the Word of God with its living oracles is laid aside, ceremonials, costly pageants, and arbitrary human authority and leadership are soon taken up with. A correspondent of one of the daily papers says he doubts whether “one-half of the clergy of the Christian Church and their followers

unfeignedly believe even half of what they say they believe.” He is probably right.

The Christian World, a prominent religious paper of independent views, calls it a sign of the times that a “Society of the Catechism” has just been formed, and has held its first public meeting under the presidency of the Bishop of Rochester. The founders express their dissatisfaction with religious teaching based upon the Bible, whether in day-schools or Sunday-schools. They propose to promote religious teaching which shall be “all based upon the Church Catechism,” as this, to their mind, is “more scientific.”

Progress of Romanism.

Romanism is, of course, making steady progress, largely through the dissemination of literature. Here is a specimen taken from a pamphlet dealing with “confession”: “Ought young people to go to confession without the leave of their parents? This I grant is a difficult question sometimes; but we can answer that on one occasion the child Jesus (the example for young people), tarried behind, tho Joseph and His mother ‘knew not of it,’ etc., etc. The argument finally closes with the statement ‘that there may be circumstances under which even parental authority must bow to that of the Power which created it.’ It is not difficult to imagine the effect of such literature industriously circulated all through the kingdom. ‘The priest in the family,’ says one writer, ‘is evidently becoming as great a danger in Protestant England as in Roman Catholic Spain and Italy.’”

Crime and Poverty.

“Crime’s Growing Army” is the title of a brief but startling article in a recent London daily. The Chief Commissioner of Police for Greater London reports that the criminal offences for 1901 exceeded those of 1900 by 838. One of the leading criminal lawyers has called attention to the marked increase in crimes of violence and suicide. Perhaps the saddest feature of it all is the strange development of the criminal instinct in children. A ten-year-old lad has just died of drunkenness. The other day three lads aged thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen respectively, were “birched” at Edinburgh for drunkenness. And very recently a woman was most brutally assaulted by a child of four. This infant terrible was incited by his brother, a lad of twelve.

These poor children are the product of the slums. They have been brought up “on the bottle,” and in knowledge of evil things are old beyond their years. Even the homes of respectable working people are bare and cheerless, and anything but tidy, owing to the appetite for drink which is more or less freely indulged by both parents. The writer spent the better part of a day recently visiting the homes of the working classes in Walthamstowe, a suburb of London, and was surprised beyond measure to note the squalor and filth, and utter destitution that reigned within, tho the houses appeared fairly respectable on the outside. Of course it need not be said that the public houses (saloons) were doing a thriving business, with a stream of customers, mostly women, coming and going.

This is a dark picture, but London, viewed as a whole, has little of encouragement to offer. The crime and want and ignorance are simply appalling. The faces of the people one meets on the street are careworn, anxious, dissatisfied. Disease is rapidly increasing. The very poor live on the free hospitals, which treated considerably over a million cases last year. Overcrowding is a terrible and growing evil. A fire which happened the other day in the East End, and caused the death of three persons, revealed the fact that in one small tenement with four or five rooms, thirty persons were domiciled. It was a marvel that all were saved except three. The only result of present conditions would, in the natural order, be some great social upheaval that would wreck the present social system and precipitate a civil war. M. ELLSWORTH OLSEN.