A Few Days in London

I do love a wee trip to London.  Most people faint when they hear I was born in Wembley when my father was working for the Banner of Truth in 1972.  Despite leaving at the tender age of 1 (I apparently has a cockney gurgle) I do love going back.  Most of my Englishness has vanished except a love for West Ham United and an interest in Oliver Cromwell.

 

Along with my colleague David McAdam from Caring for Ex Offenders Scotland we were down on Thursday and Friday last week to see round the London City Mission and attend the Prison Ministry Conference at HTB.  A fellow Scot and London City Mission Director, Duncan Cuthhill, very kindly set up some visits for us.

 

We stayed in the London City Mission Hostel in Tower Bridge Road along with some of the students taking a gap year to work around London in evangelism.  We ate both evenings at a restaurant looking out on to the HMS Belfast which after the Imperial War Museum is probably my favourite destination in London.

Captain Murray at the helm

On Thursday morning we started off our day by visiting the LCM Webber Street Day Centre.  We were taken down to the basement where they serve breakfast to around 80 people per day.  It was great to see a quote from Proverbs 12 v 25 on the blackboard 'weariness in the heart of man maketh it stoop; but a good word maketh it glad.'  It was a good summary of what we witnessed for the next 3 hours.  Watching the staff show love to so many people who the world had forgotten was a real inspiration.

 

One of the volunteers, David, who has been volunteering for 11 years and Tim Fielder the 'Floor Coordinator'

Around 9am the doors opened and around 80 men and a few women came in.  The centre seeks to offer spiritual and practical help to homeless and vulnerable people in London and amazingly serves around 15000 breakfasts per year! 

 

All the staff and volunteers were incredibly warm and hospitable and after tea and coffee we listened to a short talk from Matthew 16 'Who do men say that I am?'  Everyone listened with great respect.  Anyone who doesn't want to listen to the talk is allowed in after the talk is finished. 

 

Before I could lift my eyes from the short prayer about 50 of the guys had sprinted to the kitchen hatch to queue up for a hearty breakfast of beans, fish fingers, toast and croquets!  The two guys I was sitting with were from (where else?) Glasgow.  One of them spoke about being evicted from homeless accommodation for not paying his service charge.  He is currently rough sleeping just of Fleet Street.  It was great to hear that Webber Street were not only feeding him but helping him find alternative accommodation.

 

After breakfast the guys can hang around and read papers, play chess or chat to staff.  For those who had booked a shower (up to 15 per day) their number was called and they went up to the next floor.  As well as getting a shower those who had booked a shower could choose some new clothes at the clothing store.

 

 



As well as clothes and showers, those visiting Webber Street can request to see an NHS Nurse.  There are also agencies that come in offering support with mental health issues and addiction.

 

The centre is open 5 days per week.  Fridays are for 1 to 1 sessions to try and help people find accommodation or get support for addiction.  On Saturdays a church come in and serve food which is a great example of Christian organisations and churches working together.

 

Leaving Webber Street we made our way East to Tower Hamlets and the Isle of Dogs.  Travelling on the Docklands Light Railway you see incredible wealth side by side with poverty.  We were travelling to Café Forever run by the London City Mission.  During the week it is a normal café with internet access and lovely food (personally sampled). 

 

At weekends there is a church that meets led by City Missionary Tom Carpenter (see picture below).  It was great to chat to Tom about the work he is engaged in.  There is a huge Muslim population around the centre with 7-8000 attending the local mosque every weekend.  Like most church planters Tom spoke of the long term nature of the work and that fruit only comes through building trust with individuals and the wider community.

 

 

As well as Café Forever, Tom Carpenter and his team have been instrumental in turning a local park (St John's) into a space where the community can gather.  The Café Forever team run a variety of events for young people and families in a place which was know for crime and anti social behaviour.  They also run the little café in the middle of the park during the summer which brings the community together and allows for relationships to be formed between the City Mission team and the local community.

 

 

On Friday David I attended the Prison Ministry Conference at Kensington.  I attended this conference last year and found it inspirational and great for meeting people.  The testimony from Shane Taylor was incredible and proves the incredible power of the gospel.  Other speakers included Paul Cowley, Nick Gumbel and Paul Williams (Bishop of Kensington).  It is great to hear the amazing stories from around the country about how churches are mentoring offenders as they come out of prison.  Even better that we now have Caring for Ex Offenders in Scotland!

 

Our little trip to London ended with a monsoon shower as we came out of HTB.  We were utterly soaked as we ran to Kensington Tube Station only to find it shut due to a police incident!  There was a mad run and taxi journey to get to Kings Cross for the train back to Edinburgh.

 

What did I learn?  It was great to see in Webber Street that Christian love and professional care services can be combined.  Homelessness is never caused by one issue and the response needs to be comprehensive and person centred.  As well as responding to the crisis of homelessness, Webber Street helps people to take control and move on.  Most of all, the centre provides a safe community and some hope for those who find themselves in the desperate situation of homelessness.

 

It was great to see the work in Tower Hamlets.  As Keller once said, church planting needs to be low key, relational and long term.  Tom Carpenter and his team live this out on a daily basis.  Transformation doesn't happen overnight and often it takes years before we see any results.  People see through gimmicks.  It is authentic, consistent Christian living combined with patient discipleship in a community that will bear long term fruit.

 

What always strikes me about so many of the projects I visit is the incredible commitment of so many volunteers.  Without these incredible individuals so many projects just wouldn't run.  It reminds me of that great Thomas Guthrie quotes which we would all do well to remember; 'If the world is ever conquered for our Lord, it is not by ministers, nor by office-bearers, nor by the great, and noble and mighty, but by every member of Christ's body being a working member; doing his work; filling his own sphere; holding his own post; and saying to Jesus, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"

 

Learn more about the London City Mission here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 





 



 



 

 

Guthrie on the Lords Day

Like most Christians of his time Thomas Guthrie believed the Lords Day (Sunday) was to be kept as a special day of rest and to be used for public and private worship.  Like marriage the Lords Day is a creation ordinance.  If God rested on the seventh day, it is a fairly powerful argument that we need to rest one day in seven.  We believe that the Sabbath moved from Saturday to Sunday when Christ rose from the dead.  The Christian Sabbath, of course, used to be a great protection against exploitation of the poor and it is sad today  to see the Lords Day swept away in our 24 hour consumer driven culture. 

There are many stories about peoples negative experiences of the Lords Day, of swings being chained up on Sunday and children being cooped up all afternoon without being allowed to blow off steam.  No doubt there has been legalism in the past with greater concern on the outward form rather than the inner reality, but there can be little doubt that the loss of the Lords Day in Scotland has been a huge blow to our national life.  Research abounds that families are not spending enough time together and the decline in the traditional Sunday get together had has a damaging effect on family life.  It is unusual even to find Christians today who believe in the Lords Day and the Church is poorer as a result.  There is more teaching on the reformed view of the Lords Day at the bottom of this post.

We as a family, make the Lords Day a really positive family day and my hope is that my own children look forward to it as a day of rest, learning, enjoying God's creation and worshipping with the people of God.  Some of our best memories as a family are visiting our local Bellsquary Woods on a Sunday afternoon to feed the ducks.

Thomas Guthrie was a great proponent of the Christian Sabbath and was frequently asked to speak at rallies and meetings on the subject.  He often mentions how grieved he is about those who do not keep the Lord Days in his Memoirs.  Guthrie expresses his shock when travelling through London on his way to France in 1826; 'I see no religion here; they sell and buy openly upon the streets on Sunday.  I was shocked the first Sabbath upon leaving my lodgings, when a fellow in the street asked me if I would buy an umbrella.  When I went a little further I was asked to buy fruit' (Autobiography and Memoir, 1896, page 229). 

He was further shocked when he arrived in France and in a letter home on 17th January 1827 he says; 'It is on the Sabbath more than any other day that I think of you all at home: the awful scenes which obtrude themselves upon my view suggest by contrast the very different circumstances in which you are placed.  When I see the tricks of the jugglers and hear the music of the musicians, and observe the busy traffic of the merchants, and the reckless levity of the people on the Sabbath day, I think of the quiet streets of Brechin; and the stillness of our house is brought sadly to my remembrance, when I hear, in this one the light song instead of the sacred hymn, and see, instead of the Bible, the cards and dominoes upon the table, and the people, instead of repairing to church, driving off every Sunday night to the playhouse' (Autobiography and Memoir, 1896, page 231). 

Later on in his Autobiography when Guthrie was in Arbirlot, he talks about a farmer who took his harvest in on the Lords Day. The farmer was an adherent rather than a member of Guthries church but it was still very unusual to do any work on Sunday.   It must have been around around 1835 and it was a very wet summer.  Suddenly on a Friday the clouds began to clear.  Most of the community turned out on Sunday to thank the Lord for the change in the weather and were all set to get to work on Monday.  But one farmer had gathered his 'servants and cottars' together on Sunday and ordered them to gather in the harvest on the Lords Day.  Despite remonstrating with the farmer, the workers were conscious that their livelihoods depended on him and they carried out his orders with an uneasy conscience.  Being members of Guthries church, the workers were summoned before the session, but due to the circumstances, the session recommended to Presbytery that great leniency and tenderness should be shown to them. 

Guthrie says that the 'petty tyrant raged and fumed!  talking tall, big words about the liberty of the subject, and ending personal attacks on me by a challenge to defend myself and my Sabbatarian views at a public meeting in the church.'  Eventually a meeting was arranged in the manse and Guthrie says that the farmer had little to offer against his own thorough Biblical knowledge.  The farmer exerted great pressure to get the Presbytery to erase all records of the incident which they refused to do. 

It turned out that the farmer had harvested too early.  Guthrie tells us; 'Other farmers waited till Monday before they lifted stook or sheaf; and when they were stacking their crops in good condition, his barn-yard was smoking like a kiln.  His grain had not been ready for carrying on the Sunday, and every stack built on that day heated, as they call it, and had to be taken down on Monday; so this oppression of his underlings and breach of the Sabbath-day cost him, besides loss of character, loss of labour, of time and grain.  The people, as well they might, were much struck with this: his sin had found him out, and his neighbours who feared God, respected His law, and trusted in the old promise of harvest as well as seed-time, saw in the sound condition of their stacks and stack-yards how, in the words of Scripture, he that believeth shall not make haste'  (Autobiography and Memoir, 1896, page 108). 

Guthrie was a confessional Christian and held that the teaching of the Bible was summarised through the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and  Shorter Catechism.  If you have never read them I would encourage you to read them.  One of the most helpful books for understanding the catechism is Thomas Watsons Body of Divinity published by the Banner of Truth.  Chapter 21 of the confession summarises the Biblical teaching on the Lords Day;

7. As it is the law of nature, that, in general, a due proportion of time be set apart for the worship of God; so, in his Word, by a positive, moral, and perpetual commandment binding all men in all ages, he hath particularly appointed one day in seven, for a Sabbath, to be kept holy unto him: which, from the beginning of the world to the resurrection of Christ, was the last day of the week; and, from the resurrection of Christ, was changed into the first day of the week, which, in Scripture, is called the Lord's day, and is to be continued to the end of the world, as the Christian Sabbath.

8. This Sabbath is then kept holy unto the Lord, when men, after a due preparing of their hearts, and ordering of their common affairs beforehand, do not only observe an holy rest, all the day, from their own works, words, and thoughts about their worldly employments and recreations, but also are taken up, the whole time, in the public and private exercises of his worship, and in the duties of necessity and mercy.

Charles Dickens and The Devils Acre

My good friend Rev Dr John Nicholls, Chief Executive of the London City Mission recently sent me an interesting link to a website entitled 'Cholera and the Thames'.  Within the website and under the section on 'Cholera in Westminster' there is a section entitled 'The Devils Acre'.  I find it slightly amusing that the heart of political power in the 1840's was once an area of '...thieves...and charlatans' (no change there then).  All quotes below are from the website unless otherwise stated.

The Devils Acre was 'located in what is currently the prestigious heart of Westminster. Yet at the time of the cholera outbreak, the Devil’s Acre was little more than a dismal swamp, home to a community of beggars, thieves, prostitutes, and charlatans. It was said that it was the area most ideal for housing criminals of all types as the police only made rare visits to the area—and when they did the local inhabitants vigorously repelled them. Charles Dickens’s campaigning magazine ‘Household Words’ featured the area in its very first edition in 1850 and helped to popularise the infamous name that had been given to an area that lay between the pillars of state; Westminster Abbey (Church), Buckingham Palace (Crown) and the Houses of Parliament (State). The streets that encompassed The Devil's Acre were Old Pye Street, Great St Anne's Lane (now St Ann Street and the location of Westminster Archives) and Duck Lane (now St Matthew Street) in the parish of Westminster St Margaret and St John.'

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens would have been very familiar with the area as a young parliamentary reporter and summarised it as follows; 'There is no part of the metropolis which presents a more chequered aspect, both physical and moral, than Westminster. The most lordly streets are frequently but a mask for the squalid districts which lie behind them, whilst spots consecrated to the most hallowed of purposes are begirt by scenes of indescribably infamy and pollution; the blackest tide of moral turpitude that flows in the capital rolls its filthy wavelets up to the very walls of Westminster Abbey.’

The website confirms the incredible effect of the Ragged School Movement which was taken up by Charles Dickens and others such as Anthony Ashley-Cooper (7th Earl of Shaftesbury), Angela Burdett-Coutts and of course in Scotland Thomas Guthrie.  The famous 'One Tun Pub' in Old Pyre Street, London was a training centre for young street kids who were made in to career criminals.  Dickens was inspired after visiting a Ragged School to write his second novel 'Oliver Twist' or 'The Parish Boys Progress' (an allusion to John Bunyan's Pilgrims Progress).  The story of the One Tun Pub parallels the story of Oliver Twist very closely except that the One Tun was converted into a Ragged School and many were helped to choose a different direction in life.

Early attempts to respond to the huge needs of the Devils Acre came from the London City Mission which was begun in 1835 by a Scot named David Nasmith;  'The plight of children in the area, many of them street orphans, also shocked those who went into the area to try and help. The City of London Mission felt that the area was so depraved that it had to be re-conquered for Christianity. For the last half of the 19th century its missionaries compiled reports on the area based on door to door visits in the neighbourhood. One report by missionary Andrew Walker described the extent of the depravity. He was shocked to discover that street orphans were taken off of the streets into ‘the School of Fobology’ which was based in the One Tun pub in Old Pye Street. The ‘Fagin like’ master of the school gave them a master class in the art of pick pocketing. This shocked one wealthy philanthropist Adeline Cooper into buying the pub and converting it into a ‘Ragged school’ with the help of the famous social reformer Lord Shaftesbury. Angela Burdett-Coutts was also a prime mover in the ‘Ragged School’ movement, which sought to provide basic education for poor children. Her involvement in education in the area was long term and eventually she helped to build a school for local children, that still bares her name in Rochester Street, SW1.'



7th Earl of Shaftesbury

Dickens was going to write a pamphlet on the work of Ragged Schools but instead went on to write 'A Christmas Carol.'  Through this and his magazine 'Household Words' Dickens went on to support the work of the Ragged School movement.  Below is a (very lengthy) letter from Charles Dickens to The Daily News in February 1846 after visiting the Field Lane Ragged School.  Towards the end of the letter Dickens seems to suggest some slight reservations about the schools by saying; 'So far as I have any means of judging of what is taught there, I should individually object to it, as not being sufficiently secular, and as presenting too many religious mysteries and difficulties, to minds not sufficiently prepared for their reception.'  Despite these reservations about the Christian nature of the education, Dickens goes on to heartily recommend the project and appeals to Christian philanthropists to commit money to the building of future Ragged Schools.  Below I have pasted most of the letter but the full version can be found here;

'This attempt is being made in certain of the most obscure and squalid parts of the Metropolis, where rooms are opened, at night, for the gratuitous instruction of all comers, children or adults, under the title of RAGGED SCHOOLS. The name implies the purpose. They who are too ragged, wretched, filthy, and forlorn, to enter any other place: who could gain admission into no charity school, and who would be driven from any church door; are invited to come in here, and find some people not depraved, willing to teach them something, and show them some sympathy, and stretch a hand out, which is not the iron hand of Law, for their correction.'

The letter continues;

'For the instruction, and as a first step in the reformation, of such unhappy beings, the Ragged Schools were founded. I was first attracted to the subject, and indeed was first made conscious of their existence, about two years ago, or more, by seeing an advertisement in the papers dated from West Street, Saffron Hill, stating "That a room had been opened and supported in that wretched neighbourhood for upwards of twelve months, where religious instruction had been imparted to the poor", and explaining in a few words what was meant by Ragged Schools as a generic term, including, then, four or five similar places of instruction. I wrote to the masters of this particular school to make some further inquiries, and went myself soon afterwards.

It was a hot summer night; and the air of Field Lane and Saffron Hill was not improved by such weather, nor were the people in those streets very sober or honest company. Being unacquainted with the exact locality of the school, I was fain to make some inquiries about it. These were very jocosely received in general; but everybody knew where it was, and gave the right direction to it. The prevailing idea among the loungers (the greater part of them the very sweepings of the streets and station houses) seemed to be, that the teachers were quixotic, and the school upon the whole "a lark". But there was certainly a kind of rough respect for the intention, and (as I have said) nobody denied the school or its whereabouts, or refused assistance in directing to it.

It consisted at that time of either two or three--I forget which-miserable rooms, upstairs in a miserable house. In the best of these, the pupils in the female school were being taught to read and write; and though there were among the number, many wretched creatures steeped in degradation to the lips, they were tolerably quiet, and listened with apparent earnestness and patience to their instructors. The appearance of this room was sad and melancholy, of course--how could it be otherwise!--but, on the whole, encouraging.

The close, low chamber at the back, in which the boys were crowded, was so foul and stifling as to be, at first, almost insupportable. But its moral aspect was so far worse than its physical, that this was soon forgotten. Huddled together on a bench about the room, and shown out by some flaring candles stuck against the walls, were a crowd of boys, varying from mere infants to young men; sellers of fruit, herbs, lucifer-matches, flints; sleepers under the dry arches of bridges; young thieves and beggars--with nothing natural to youth about them: with nothing frank, ingenuous, or pleasant in their faces; low-browed, vicious, cunning, wicked; abandoned of all help but this; speeding downward to destruction; and UNUTTERABLY IGNORANT.

This, Reader, was one room as full as it could hold; but these were only grains in sample of a Multitude that are perpetually sifting through these schools; in sample of a Multitude who had within them once, and perhaps have now, the elements of men as good as you or I, and maybe infinitely better; in sample of a Multitude among whose doomed and sinful ranks (oh, think of this, and think of them!) the child of any man upon this earth, however lofty his degree, must, as by Destiny and Fate, be found, if, at its birth, it were consigned to such an infancy and nurture, as these fallen creatures had!

This was the Class I saw at the Ragged School. They could not be trusted with books; they could only be instructed orally; they were difficult of reduction to anything like attention, obedience, or decent behaviour; their benighted ignorance in reference to the Deity, or to any social duty (how could they guess at any social duty, being so discarded by all social teachers but the gaoler and the hangman!) was terrible to see. Yet, even here, and among these, something had been done already. The Ragged School was of recent date and very poor; but he had inculcated some association with the name of the Almighty, which was not an oath, and had taught them to look forward in a hymn (they sang it) to another life, which would correct the miseries and woes of this.

The new exposition I found in this Ragged School, of the frightful neglect by the State of those whom it punishes so constantly, and whom it might, as easily and less expensively, instruct and save; together with the sight I had seen there, in the heart of London; haunted me, and finally impelled me to an endeavour to bring these Institutions under the notice of the Government; with some faint hope that the vastness of the question would supersede the Theology of the schools, and that the Bench of Bishops might adjust the latter question, after some small grant had been conceded. I made the attempt; and have heard no more of the subject from that hour.

The perusal of an advertisement in yesterday's paper, announcing a lecture on the Ragged Schools last night, has led me into these remarks. I might easily have given them another form; but I address this letter to you, in the hope that some few readers in whom I have awakened an interest, as a writer of fiction, may be, by that means, attracted to the subject, who might otherwise, unintentionally, pass it over.

I have no desire to praise the system pursued in the Ragged Schools; which is necessarily very imperfect, if indeed there be one. So far as I have any means of judging of what is taught there, I should individually object to it, as not being sufficiently secular, and as presenting too many religious mysteries and difficulties, to minds not sufficiently prepared for their reception. But I should very imperfectly discharge in myself the duty I wish to urge and impress on others, if I allowed any such doubt of mine to interfere with my appreciation of the efforts of these teachers, or my true wish to promote them by any slight means in my power. Irritating topics, of all kinds, are equally far removed from my purpose and intention. But, I adjure those excellent persons who aid, munificently, in the building of New Churches, to think of these Ragged Schools; to reflect whether some portion of their rich endowments might not be spared for such a purpose; to contemplate, calmly, the necessity of beginning at the beginning; to consider for themselves where the Christian Religion most needs and most suggests immediate help and illustration; and not to decide on any theory or hearsay, but to go themselves into the Prisons and the Ragged Schools, and form their own conclusions. They will be shocked, pained, and repelled, by much that they learn there; but nothing they can learn will be onethousandth part so shocking, painful, and repulsive, as the continuance for one year more of these things as they have been for too many years already.

Anticipating that some of the more prominent facts connected with the history of the Ragged Schools, may become known to the readers of The Daily News through your account of the lecture in question, I abstain (though in possession of some such information) from pursuing the question further, at this time. But if I should see occasion, I will take leave to return to it.'

First published February 4, 1846, The Daily News

If you look over to the section on 'Ragged Schools' within this blog you will see an interesting obitury to Andrew Walker, London City Missionary who is referred in the website.  Many thanks to John Nicholls and others in the London City Mission for sending me items from their archives.