Chalmers and Guthrie on the 'Charity of Kindness'

What is charity?  Is it just the widespread and indiscriminate distribution of money? How effective has this been over the last 50-60 years in our own country?  Is there a connection between poverty and morality?  Well as we saw in a previous article 'Dr Guthrie and the Blind Organist', Guthrie believed that the effect of the gospel which should create self denial, frugality (thriftiness, carefulness) and discipline could have a significant effect on a poor household.  Guthrie believed that there could be exceptions to this rule but generally speaking he held to the principle of Psalm 36 v 25: 'All my life I have not seen the righteous left forsaken, or begging for food.'  As he says: ‘I have made extensive enquiries; and feel perfect confidence in asserting that foresight and frugality would place our people, save in a few exceptional cases, beyond the reach of want or the need of charity.  It is the want of these that makes Poor Laws necessary – if they are necessary.’

Like all great social reformers Guthrie challenged sin as much as encouraging virtue.  He was like William Wilberforce who fought on the one hand against slavery but on the other fought for a reformation of manners.  We have a slightly idealised view of the Victorian era.  The reality was that as Eric Metaxas says in his biography of Wilberforce, Victorian society was particularly 'brutal, decadent, violent and vulgar.'  Like Wilberforce, Guthrie fought on various fronts to see a better society.  The simple provision of mercy was never enough for Guthrie, he sought a complete reformation of society at a moral and spiritual level.  It was a natural progression for Dr Guthrie to go on to become a fighter for temperance because he saw the huge damage that alcohol did among the working classes.  It was a development of his earlier views while still at Arbirlot (1830-37) where he established a savings bank.  As he says in his Memoirs: [this bank] ‘was a great success; training up the young to those habits of foresight, self-denial, and prudence, which are handmaids to virtue, and, though not religion, are nearly allied to it.’  Guthrie maintained that while we should fight the injustice of poverty at every turn, as he did, poverty can be compounded by addiction.

In his Second Plea for Ragged Schools Guthrie addresses himself to those who have, as yet, given nothing to the cause of Ragged Schools.  He quotes the verse in Proverbs 19 v 17: ‘He that lendeth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord, and he will repay.’  He then says: ‘The money which is lavished on sturdy beggars on the wasteful slaves of vice, on the reckless and improvident, you have no right to expect payment of.  These are not the poor.  On the contrary, they plunder the poor, and prey on poverty; and hardening men’s hearts by their frauds, inprovidence, crimes, and detected impostures, against the claims of real poverty, they deserve not charity, by chastisement.’  He continues: ‘It is a scandal and a shame that such devouring locusts are permitted to infest our city, and swarm in its streets.  The vices of a system which the police strangely tolerate, and our charity unwisely maintains, are visible in the blotched and brazened features of those thriving solicitors.  The very breath with which they whine for charity smells of the dram shop.’   To me this is the problem we have today with a faceless and bureaucratic welfare system.  Far from helping many people it traps them in a cycle of poverty where they simply exist rather than being given the help they need to realise their full potential.  While is seems harsh to our 21st Century sensitivities to hear Guthrie saying that a particular group are 'not the poor', he would have been the first to help those addicted to alcohol if they genuinely sought help.  Far from writing them off, Guthrie was seeking to bring them to their senses by not indulging their addiction.

Rev Thomas Chalmers

It was Thomas Chalmers who proved with the revived 'Parochial' or 'Territorial' system that voluntary charity could almost always achieve greater results than state welfare.  This was because it was local, more personal, better tailored to people’s needs and more flexible to changes. When Thomas Chalmers was appointed to St John’s Parish, Glasgow in 1819 he agreed along with the Town Council that all new cases of destitution would be met out of the church funds.  Thomas Chalmers divided the Parish into 25 areas and appointed an elder and deacon to minister to both the spiritual and temporal needs of each area.  The instructions were few but clear:

‘When one applies for admittance through the deacon upon our funds, the first thing to be inquired into is, if there be any kind of work that he can yet do so as either to keep him altogether off, or as to make a partial allowance serve for his necessities; the second, what his relatives are willing to do for him; third whether he is a hearer in any dissenting place of worship, and whether its session will contribute to his relief.’  

Along with the introduction of Sunday Schools and widespread education it is little wonder that the rate of Poor Relief was drastically reduced in the Parish of St John’s. As Rev William Hannah says:

‘The drunken were told to give up their drunkenness, and that until they did so their case would not even be considered; the idle were told to set instantly to work, and if they complained that work could not be gotten, by kindly applications to employers, they were helped to obtain it; a vast number of primary applications melted into nothing under the pressure of a searching investigation.’  

After three years of this experiment, and despite St John’s accepting all the poor who had been on the sessional role of all three parishes that made up St John’s, the whole cost of ‘pauperism’ reduced from £1400 per year to £280.  As Chalmers says in his works: ‘our proposal was not met with an incredulity which was all but universal.’

Dr Guthrie and Rev Chalmers didn’t believe in ‘casual charity’ but in charity that offered hope and transformation.  This is why they both believed so passionately in the parochial or territorial system.  This is why Guthrie so passionately furthered the cause of Ragged Schools.  His aim was not just to relieve the suffering of ragged children but to offer them a new life.  

Psalm 41 commands us to ‘wisely consider the case of the poor’ not simply to franchise our responsibilities to the state.  Poverty is not just caused by a lack of money so our response can never be simplistic.  Poverty involves much more than financial poverty - it involves marginalisation, isolation, stigmatisation and being disenfranchised from others in society.  Chalmers and Guthrie show us that poverty relief must be personal, robust, bespoke, generous, enduring and always with an eye on long term transformation.  As Chalmers said in the General Assembly of 1822: ‘a safe and easy navigation has been ascertained from the charity of law to the charity of kindness; and, therefore, be it now reviled, or be it disregarded as it may, we have no doubt upon our spirits, whether we look to the depraving pauperism or to the burdened agriculture of our land, that the days are soon coming when men, looking for a way of escape from these sore evils, will be glad to our own enterprise, and be fain to follow it.’

Given the rampant poverty that we have today, might this be a moment when we look to experiments like St John's and perhaps think of a better way than the indiscriminate distribution of money? Benefits can be suspended almost on a whim and people are left utterly destitute.  Wouldn't a more personal, compassionate system, delivered in partnership with faith based, Third Sector Charities make for a better system?  Wouldn't it be better to be honest about the challenges people have (such as addiction) and offer them real help rather than ignoring it for years?  Shouldn't we provide the charity of kindness rather than the charity of law?

Everything to live for

It was good to see the response from exiled Scot David Murray to the Princess Trust research that 9% of UK young people say they have nothing to live for with the figure rising to 21% for NEET's.  These young people need our investment but most of all they need the gospel.  What is the gospel?  How about this;

 

Truth in a world full of lies

Peace in a world full of war

Love in a world full of hate

Life in a world full of death

Forgiveness in a world full of vengeance

Power in a world full of weakness

Certainty in a world full of confusion

Purpose in a world full of pointlessness

Beauty in a world full of ugliness

Hope in a world full of despair

In reading David Murray's blog I couldn't help but think of all the hope Thomas Guthrie gave to young people through his Ragged School movement.  In his remarkable 'Plea for Ragged Schools' he paints a picture of thousands of hopeless young people in Edinburgh consigned to a life of poverty and crime because of the circumstances they were brought up in. His response was not to encourage the government to punish and deprive these young people of the little they had, but instead to stir up voluntary love, care and kindness from the Christian (and wider) public.  As he said; 'These Arabs of the city are wild as those of the desert, and must be broken into three habits, - those of discipline, learning, and industry, not to mention cleanliness.  To accomplish this, our trust in the almost omnipotent power of Christian kindness.'  Guthrie developed a unique curriculum which incorporated vocational training alongside education and Christian teaching.  Young people were given the basic tools to live, work and most importantly were given new Christian values to rebuild the broken foundations they had been given by dysfunctional and often abusive families.  

 

It was also interesting to read in the research that a staggering 72% of young people not in employment, education or training have nobody to confide in.  Again Guthrie, 160 years ago,  had much to say on this; 'the solitude of a crowd in the most painful of all' and again 'the solitary of a city is a lonesome being.'  The young people Guthrie sought to champion were seen as pests, scum and even vermin.  It was Guthrie's Christian worldview that infused his vision of Ragged Schools.  This quote sums it up well; 'Yes it is easy to push aside the poor boy in the street, with a harsh and unfeeling refusal, saying to your neighbour, "These are the pests of the city."  Call them, if you choose, the rubbish of society; only let us say, that there are jewels among that rubbish, which would richly repay the expense of searching.  Bedded in their dark and dismal abodes, precious stones lie there, to shine, first on earth, and hereafter and for ever in our redeemers crown' (all quotes from 'Seed-Time and Harvest; or Pleas for Ragged Schools').  Guthrie gave these young people a new family, a new supportive community where they received the help, support and love they needed to succeed.

 

 

As Guthrie proves to us, with a bit of vision, and with the blessing of God, so much can be achieved for God's glory.  Recently I took a trip to Ardoch in Loch Lomond to see around the Columba 1400 centre.  From small beginnings in 1997 this remarkable leadership academy for young people has had a huge effect on the lives of so many young people.  With centres now in Skye, Loch Lomond and West Calder, they are bringing hope to some of the most marginalised young people in the country.  This is just one inspirational example of how people are responding to the increasing challenge of NEET's. 

 

But what are we doing?  Perhaps we don't know what to do and are frightened of failure.  Doing nothing is not an option.  Let me leave you with the closing words of Guthrie in his First Plea for Ragged Schools,  to encourage you; 'It were better far in such a case to fail, than to stand idly by and see the castaway perish.  If the drowning man sinks before we reach him, it will be some consolation to reflect that we did our best to save him.  Though we bore home but the dead body of her boy, we should earn a mother's gratitude and blessing.  We had tried to save him: and from that blessed One who made himself poor that He might make us rich, - who was full of compassion, kind and patient to the bad, - and who hath set us an example that we should follow His steps, - we should at least earn this approving sentence, "They have done what they could."

 

 

A Spark amongst Combustibles - Guthrie publishes 'A Plea for Ragged Schools'

St John's Parish Church, Victoria Street , Edinburgh where Guthrie ministered from 1840-43

Dr Thomas Guthrie is famous for his 'Ragged Schools'.  The schools went on to become a huge movement that saved thousands of children from a life of crime and abuse.  But as with every great movement it had humble beginnings at Guthrie's church plant in Victoria Street in 1840.  They had a huge room in the basement and the elders initially agreed to set up a ragged industrial feeding school for '20-30 waifs'.  As time drew near for the launch the elders took fright and the project was abandoned.  While Guthrie was cast down, and felt like a man who has 'launched a good sturdy boat, sees her before she has taken ten strokes from the shore seized by a mighty billow, flung back, and dashed to pieces on the strand.' 

 

It was this disappointment that led Guthrie to launch a considerably bolder project and he wrote his first 'Plea for Ragged Schools'.  He hoped to stir up the wider Christian public beyond his congregation.  Little did he know what effect this little booklet would have. Writing to a Mr Carment 18 months after he published his booklet Guthrie recounts some of his misgivings and anxiety around the publication; 'I published my Plea with fear and trembling, and but that I was, with yourself, a very vehement advocate of Ragged Schools, I would never have ventured on such a walk.  If a man's fire is kindled and passion up, he'll run along the narrow ledge of a precipice, where, in his cooler, calmer moments, he would not venture to creep'.  This was Guthrie's first publication but it was the start of a long and fruitful career in writing and editing.  When he eventually retired from Free St John's, Edinburgh because of ill health in May 1864, Guthrie was invited to become the editor of the Sunday Magazine which at its height had a circulation of 100,000.  I have written a separate article on the Sunday Magazine here.  Many of Guthrie's serialised articles were republished and made Guthrie a well know author in the second half of the 19th Century.

 

Every great author has to start somewhere but Guthrie had no idea what was to come from this little publication.  Returning home after leaving his manuscript at the printers, Guthrie says; 'Well, what a fool I have made of myself!'  Dr Guthrie had no idea that his little publication was to become the start of a great movement that would impact the lives of thousands of children not just in the United Kingdom but right across the world.  Soon Guthrie's mailbag was full with letters from far and near.  He says; 'I was astonished at the result of my first Plea for Ragged Schools.  It fell as a spark amongst combustibles; it was like a shot fired from the Castle, and it brought me more volunteers to man my boat than she could well carry.' 

 

Like so many authors, Guthrie was astonished at the power of the printed page.  He went on to write a further two 'Plea's' which were eventually published in one book entitled 'Seed Time and Harvest of Ragged Schools'.  This was reviewed by The Times in September 1860 and rightly confirmed Guthrie as the 'Apostle of the Ragged School Movement'.  Guthrie's little booklet was the spark that set off a fire.  His legacy continues even today through our universal education system and welfare system.  Were it not for Christian philanthropists like Guthrie Scotland would be a very different place today.