The London Pulpit - James Ewing Ritchie

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farce to keep them open. In some of the city churches, thirty persons form an unusually large audience. But most of them are well attended. To these churches and chapels belong, in round numbers, 700 clergymen. The appointments of ministers to the parish churches are, in most cases, under the control of the vicars or rectors of their respective parishes. In the case of private chapels, the party to whom the property belongs has, of course, nominally the right of appointing the minister; but, eventually, that appointment rests with the congregation, for to thrust in an unpopular preacher against their wishes would be to destroy his own property. For the parish churches, again, the right of appointing the clergymen is vested in various hands according to circumstances, which it would require too much time and space to explain at sufficient length to make them understood. The patronage is, in a great many cases, invested in the Crown; but the Bishop of London is also a large holder of metropolitan patronage. The Archbishop of Canterbury is patron in several cases, and, in some instances, holds his patronage conjointly with the Crown. In such cases, the right of appointment is exercised alternately. The Lord Chancellor is sole patron of four or five livings in London, and in six or seven other cases exercises the right of patronage alternately with the Archbishop of Canterbury, with the Bishop of London, with private individuals, and with the parishioners. The parishioners possess the sole right of patronage in only three or four instances; and, in one or two cases in the City, particular corporations possess the right of appointing the clergy. The doctrines of the Church of England are embodied in her Articles and Liturgy. Her orders consist of bishops, priests, and deacons. Besides, there are dignitaries – archbishops, deans and chapters, attached to cathedrals, and supposed to form the council of the bishops, archdeacons, and rural deans. The average income of a beneficed clergyman is £300 a year; of a curate, £81. The number of church-sittings in London and the surrounding districts, according to Mr. Mann, is 409,834.

      Next in order are the Independents or Congregationalists, who differ from the Church of England more in discipline than doctrine. They maintain the independence of each congregation – that a church is simply an assembly of believers. Only two descriptions of church officers are regarded by them as warranted by Scriptural authority – bishops or pastors, and deacons; and the latter office with them is merely secular. Amongst them the deacon merely attends to the temporal affairs of the church. In the Episcopalian Church, the deaconship is the first step to the priesthood. In London and its neighbourhood the Independents have about 140 places of worship. Mr. Mann’s return does not give them so many, but he states the number of sittings to be 100,436.

      The Baptists have much in common with the Independents. Like them, they believe in the unscriptural character of state churches; and, like them, believe each church or assembly of faithful men to be able to manage its own affairs; but they differ from nearly every other Christian denomination on two points – the proper subjects and the proper mode of baptism. According to them, adults are the proper subjects of baptism, and immersion, not sprinkling, is the proper mode of administering that rite. As an organized community, we find them in England in 1608, about thirty years after Robert Brown had begun to preach the principles of Independency. The Baptists have many subdivisions. The Particular Baptists preponderate: they are Calvinistic. A remarkable unanimity of sentiment has always existed among them, except on one particular point – the propriety of sitting down at the communion table with those who reject adult baptism. Mr. Horace Mann gives the general body 130 chapels; Mr. Low, 109. The Census returns give them accommodation for 54,234.

      The Methodists have, in all, 154 chapels in London, the larger number of which belong to the Wesleyans, who are Arminians, who are governed by a Conference, and whose ministers are itinerant. Mr. Mann tells us they seldom preach in the same place more than one Sunday without a change, which is effected according to a plan generally re-made every quarter. London is divided into ten circuits. Then there are the Calvinistic Methodists, who were originated by the labours of George Whitfield, aided by that devoted Countess of Huntingdon whose name yet lives in connexion with one of the most remarkable revivals of religion in our land. There are several sub-divisions besides. The original Wesleyan body has suffered much of late in consequence of the operations of the Wesleyan Reformers. It is stated that, by this division, the connexion sustained a loss of 100,000 members. In London, the Methodists, including, as in the case of the Baptists, six or seven sub-divisions, have sittings for 69,696. Of the number of attendants it is calculated about 12,000 are church members, or communicants. It may be as well to mention here, that, with the exception of the Irvingites, and, of course, the Roman Catholic Church, which only admits priests to the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, and of the Quakers, who do not profess to observe that ceremony at all, there are two classes of persons attending all churches and chapels – the common hearers, and the smaller class who profess to be converted and regenerated men. In the Church of England the theory is, every baptized man is this; and therefore every one has a right to approach what is called the Table of the Lord. In the Church of Scotland, we presume, it is the same. An anecdote, which was told by Mr. J. Haldane, implies this: – that gentleman stated that once he was present at a Highland parish church on a sacramental occasion, when there was a pause, for none of the people seemed disposed to approach the tables; on a sudden he heard the crack of sticks, and, looking round, saw one descend on the bald head of a man behind him. It was the ruling elders driving the poor Highlanders forward much in the same manner as they were accustomed to pen their cattle. Among Dissenters only a certain class are supposed to have this right – that class consisting of those who profess to have become in their natures changed and sanctified to God, who are considered to be ‘a chosen generation – a peculiar priesthood!’ They are received into the church after, generally, a careful scrutiny as to their motives and convictions and character, and, at any rate, amongst Dissenters are generally considered as the Church, for whom a Saviour died, and on whom he devolves the conversion of the world.

      The remaining divisions of the church and chapel goers of London may now be disposed of.

      The Presbyterians have 23 chapels, some in connexion with the Church of Scotland, and some not. The number of chapels thus connected is 5, and the number of Scotchmen settled in London being about 130,000, it is more than probable that Sawney is not the church-going animal abroad, he most undoubtedly is when he is at home. It seems that the Scotch attending Presbyterian churches in London, even if they occupy every sitting, are not more than 18,211; and, if Sawney were not proverbially an economical fellow, one would be inclined to hint that you will catch him taking a cheap railway excursion on the very day in which, in his ‘land of the mountain and the flood,’ it is deemed sinful to do more than walk from one’s home to the nearest kirk.

      Next, as regards numbers, come the Unitarians, who have 9 chapels in London, and about 3300 sittings.

      By-the-bye, we ought to have mentioned before this the Roman Catholics, who have 35 chapels, and of whom there were, on the Census Sunday, 35,994 worshipping at one time. In no case do the Census returns give us the real attendance. We have merely the number of sittings, or attendants, morning, afternoon, or evening. In the case of Roman Catholics, we have given the number of persons attending in the morning, there being this difference between them and other sects, that with the latter, the number of sittings will be generally much greater than that of the attendants, whereas with the Roman Catholics the reverse is the truth, as they get more out of their chapels than any other denomination can.

      It seems the mild, drab-coloured men, who call themselves Quakers, and wear broad-brimmed hats and square collars, and say ‘thee’ and ‘thou,’ of whom Belgravia knows but little, but who, nevertheless, are foremost when some great good is to be done, and some outcast class is to be reclaimed and saved, are but a feeble folk, as far as numbers are concerned. The ‘youngest of the four surviving sects which trace their origin to that prolific period which closed the era of the Reformation,’ they promise to be soonest extinguished. In 1800 they possessed 413 meeting-houses; in 1851 they had but 351. Mr. Low gives them 9 chapels; Mr. Mann but 4, with sittings for 3151. This latter number, small as it is, appears to be considerably more than is required for their services. The real truth, probably, is, that Quaker worship is too calm and phlegmatic for this bustling go-a-head age. In George Fox’s time, men held communion with the Invisible and Eternal – with Him who dwells in the light to which no man can approach. There are but few who care to do so now, and therefore is it that that race of practical philanthropists was

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