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?

Dr Guthrie and the Blind Organist

When Dr Guthrie came to Edinburgh in 1837, he was appalled by the sights he saw in the Cowgate.  Day after day he would visit squalled tenements where he would find horrific poverty and little interest in the gospel.  Even those with some income often squandered what they had in the ‘dram houses’ or tippling shops’ which Guthrie did so much to shut down.  As he said on one occasion: ‘Nobody can know the misery I suffered amid those scenes of human wretchedness, woe, want and sin.’  It was out of these experiences that Guthrie would emerge as the ‘Apostle of the Ragged School Movement’ and the ‘Apostle of Temperance’.  So what were Guthrie’s views on poverty?  How did he think poverty could be alleviated or even cured?  How does this compare with the rather narrow modern day debate which is almost exclusively financial?

In his ‘Sketches of the Cowgate’ which were reprinted in ‘Out of Harness’ Guthrie tells the story of a house he visited which was like a traveller lighting on an oasis in desert sands.  Unlike the houses he usually visited that were filthy, this house was clean and bright: ‘The door opened on an apartment lighted by windows whole and clean, neither patched with paper, nor stuffed with rags, nor crusted with dirt like bottles of old wine; a floor white with washing, and sprinkled with yellow sand, stretched to the fireplace, where the flames reflected from shining brasses, danced merrily in the grate over a well-swept hearth-stone.’  Guthrie, as always, uses very vivid language to tell the tale.  He was seeking to contrast what normally greeted him when a door was opened in the Cowgate.  The couple were members of his own church and he was delighted to find such a well presented home.

As Guthrie writes about this visit 25 years later (probably for the Sunday Magazine), he remembers how convinced he was that it was a God fearing home: ‘It was a Bethel; God was in the place; and though, like the patriarch, I was in a sort of wilderness, this pleasant sight was a reality – no vision, like the ladder and angels of his dream.’  The house that Guthrie had entered was that of the ‘blind organist’.  Every day this man sat at the top of the Mound grinding a barrel organ.  His face was horrendously scarred by small-pox and he was blind, no small disadvantages in Victorian Scotland.  If there was any house where dirt might have been excused and the signs of poverty expected it would have been in this house.  Yet as Guthrie says: ‘it was remarkable by their absence.’ What was the difference between him and his neighbours?  Well Guthrie gives us the comparison:

·         They never went to church; he did.

·         They had no respect for the Sabbath; he kept it holy to the Lord.

·         They had no religion; he was a man of devout habits.

·         They indulged their vices; he practised the virtues of Christianity

As Guthrie says: ‘So even in the world, his religion was of more advantage to him than their eyes were to them.  It made him careful, and frugal, and temperate.’  As Guthrie left the home he said he desired to chalk on the wall of that house for his neighbours to see: ‘read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.’

 

Surely the blind organist proves to us that ‘Godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come’ (1 Timothy 4 v 8).  Of course there are exceptions to any rule but generally speaking those who live a godly life can say with the Psalmist: ‘I have been young and now am old, yet I have never saw the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging bread’ (Psalm 37 v 25).  To make this a rule without exception would be unwise.  We are certainly not claiming that those who fear God will not experience poverty.  This would go against many Biblical examples including Christ himself.  As Guthrie says of the exceptions to this rule: ‘All good people are not wise.  There may be devotion without discretion; saint-ship, but little common sense; and an examination of those cases where piety is associated with poverty and does not succeed in this world, will often discover the peculiarities of the circumstances.’  What we are seeking to argue is that if there are limited resources, godliness, as in the case of the blind organist, can certainly make these resources go much further.  A house where there is alcohol and drug addiction, gambling and poor budgeting is a place where poverty will undoubtedly be exacerbated.

Guthrie certainly believed that, despite the exceptions to the rule, the house where God was worshiped, would more often than not be a house where though there might be poverty, there was enough to live on.  There may be several reasons for this but surely the main one is that Christianity teaches a man self-denial.  As Guthrie says: ‘this virtue lies at the foundation of success in every business and pursuit…’  He continues: ‘It teaches him to say, No! – to sacrifice his passions to his interests; and abstain from those indulgences which, wasting time, squandering money, impairing health, injuring character, lead to the results that, though often attributed to misfortune, are usually due to misconduct.’  Guthrie wasn’t naïve to the injustice that many workers suffered despite working their fingers to the bone: ‘Alas! That many of our working people should doom themselves to toil on till they sink into the grave; or till, amid privations and infirmities that gather about their grey heads like clouds around a setting sun, they have to accept the bitter bread of charity, and at an age when transplanting suits them as ill as it suits a hoary tree, are torn up by the roots and removed to the dreary walls of a Poor House, - to be nursed, when dying, by hirelings, and thrust, when dead, into a pauper’s grave.’  While showing mercy throughout his ministry Guthrie fought injustice at every turn, as we to are commanded to do.  He was certainly not blind to the exploitation that was rampant in Victorian Scotland, but he believed that a difficult situation could be made much worse if meagre wages were squandered on drink.

The second aspect that makes poverty less likely in a Christian is that he is willing to work.  Idleness and sloth are condemned throughout scripture.  As 2 Thesselonians 3 v 10 reminds us ‘If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.’  Now of course this is not saying that if there is no work available it is wrong to accept help and charity, it is saying that if work is available but somebody choses rather to do nothing, our system should not encourage this.  One of the key aspects of the Ragged Schools was that the children were taught a trade so they could go on to work and earn a wage.  Guthrie sought to break generational poverty by giving young people a trade so they could be delivered from the cycle of poverty and charity. As he says in a speech to the Evangelical Alliance in 1867: ‘From a hundred prisoners, there may be 99 who come into prison by drink.  Now, give Bible and porridge, and the bottle will be put away.  But we give them still more than the Bible and soup – bread for the soul and body.  We try to make them men and women.  They are trained to industrial occupations; and formed to several professions in order to become good handicrafts; often they are sent to the colonies.’  In other words, the Ragged Schools offered these young men and women a new life as well as the simple basics they lacked.  

The Blind Organist reminds us that while we may come across people with many disadvantages, self denial, hard work and ingenuity can go a long way in transforming a situation. This is in no way to underestimate the devastating effects of poverty.  Those experiencing poverty and marginalisation appreciate financial help but most of all they need acceptance and community which the church is able to offer in abundance.  Even more than that they need to transforming power of the the gospel that can set them free from the sin that traps so many in a cycle of deprivation and destruction.

In our next article we'll see how both Thomas Guthrie and Thomas Chalmers worked to eradicate poverty in the Parish System sometimes referred to as the 'Parochial System.'