ST. SAVIOUR'S, LEEDS. THE TRACTARIAN

MODEL CHURCH.

"THE story contained in the following pages will interest but a few.” Perhaps; and yet if we had thought so, we might scarcely have undertaken to recapitulate it even in the briefest way. The language which we have quoted is that of the "Rev. John Hungerford Pollen, M.A.;" and it meets us in the first sentence of his preface to a narrative of five years at St. Saviour's." It appears to us that the author has greatly under-rated the curiosity with which the fortunes of the Tractarian model church had been, and are, watched by all classes of British Protestants; for in our own experience of it, at least, his book so far from justifying his prefatory prognostic, has proved to be one of the most interesting and suggestive that we have recently perused. With respect, indeed, to mere execution, it is open to a severity of criticism, which, for the sake of what we deem to be more important objects, we have resolved to spare. The narrative is perplexed and disorderly, the style occasionally tawdry, and the Work throughout written in that halfmaudlin, half-petulant tone now quite familiar to us, in which disappointed Tractarianism, deeming that it does well to be angry, is accustomed to murmur its sense of meek injured innocence. Of these qualities we by no means wish to transfer the native flavour to our simple pages. But, believing that the interest of the subject is not due to them, nor to any private affection or singularity of taste in ourselves,—that, on the contrary, it arises directly out of the facts of the case,- -we venture, in spite of Mr. Pollen's discouraging intimation, to submit these facts shortly to the consideration of our readers.

The church of St. Saviour's was indebted for its peculiar character, and indeed for its existence, to a variety of confluent and co-operating causes. Of these, the first that we shall notice lay in the condition, moral, social, and religious, of the population of Leeds. So far as we know, that town is neither better nor worse than other inland manufacturing towns in Yorkshire and elsewhere, but the average is deplorable and appalling enough. "The evils," says Mr. Pollen, "which minister to the growth of fortunes in Leeds and its fellow-towns, are great indeed, and the growth of wealth ordinarily recks nothing of these evils. They who own the mills, with few honoured exceptions, whom may Almighty God repay abundantly here and hereafter for their good deeds, can neither value nor see the evil. They have been once, what those they govern, now are; and as those who went before them, so are they, not careful whether religion, or truth, or morals suffer under their operations -not bringing home to themselves any responsibility on those subjects -not nice to think those that serve them any otherwise affected by themselves, than as regards the punctual payment of wages and the keeping of material order and decency during the working day. Probably they hate the clouds and din of the smoky town, and live in their country houses, attending during the day at the mill, as they may be required, and committing the care of works and work-people to a fore

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man or inspector; and as they return day by day to their cheerful home, feel a comfortable assurance that they have done that which it was their duty to do, and have earned their share of the earthly consolations that await them.

"The day ends differently with the labourer. He is one whom this mill brought to dwell in one of the new streets that run up the hill from the street in which the mill is, and by whose patience, industry, and punctuality the owner became what he is. These are the free and enlightened countrymen' by whose help he hopes some day to mount to theGreat Council of the Nation,' upon whose shoulders he leaned when he raised the cry of liberty and universal suffrage, but from whom, as his worldly elevation increases the distance, so the professed community of thought and purpose lessens and becomes indistinct daily.

"In the short days, after dark and before the light, a crowd of young persons of both sexes, some of them never baptized, return to their homes in these narrow lanes and passages. In a back street or lane, not many hundred yards removed, is a large upper-room lighted most nights. This is a place for balls, where a band plays, and socialists invite the labouring young to come and enjoy themselves. Further on is a larger building still. It is a Socialist hall, and there are places in plenty, worse, if that is possible, than these. In the summer months a band parades the streets from the socialists, to lure them to these attractive haunts, where the restraints of society' have no hold and are not known. It will be wondered at, that education, that is, instruction in reading and writing, narrow as its sphere has been, has not still some whom it has raised to higher employments, and tastes less fearfully debased. That vast church, those schools of the Wesleyans, Baptists, and others, over and above a few kept going by the Establishment, have they done nothing to mend this, at least where their influence has penetrated? Well, follow a youth that has gone from home as his sisters are, the youngest of whom, thirteen years old, has been about the last half-hour in the streets and passages, in the dark. He is perhaps not attracted to the dancing-room, or but occasionally. He is gone to hear an old man who is lecturing many listeners on many subjects of science, &c. This one has twenty-five reasons for being an atheist.' A printed copy of them is handed to the youth, and he is considering reason 13th, that no two persons have the same idea of God exactly. The benevolent man believes that God is a merciful Being, the cruel man that he is revengeful. The idea originated when mankind was in a savage state through ignorance, men not being able to comprehend nature's laws, and the idea has been perpetuated by crafty, tyrannical, ignorant priests, who live by raising the hopes, and exciting the fears, of their followers.

"From this he infers, 1st, that the idea is not innate; 2dly, that it arose through ignorance and design; 3dly, that it is upheld by base means for the most tyrannical purposes," or another reason which convinces him that "any person confirmed in their opinions, whether Christian, Mahometan, Jew, or Idolater, can die happy, believing their respective creeds or faith to be true." Whence he infers that death-bed scenes, if faithfully represented, prove too much for the Christian bigot,

&c. Before leaving the lecture-room he is enrolled a member of the Society of Rational Pioneers.

"Another of his neighbours, though self-educated, has read an amazing quantity of books of various kinds. He was led to long and intricate calculations of the number of souls that have been created, judging from the averages affirmed to die daily, hourly, &c., by the statistics of political economists, and calculating on the increase or decrease of populations during revolving centuries. That the mass of these should be lost, and only a few, here and there one, saved, &c. All this, he says, led him to doubt the sayings of Scripture, and his reading took him further and further from his older prepossessions.

"At a later hour coarse oaths and blasphemies, and other revolting sounds and sights, break the solemnity which, in this place of remorseless toil, is known only to the dead of night. But a worse element of evil, is the early inculcation of the knowledge of what is bad. A familiarity with corruption begins in early youth. The great numbers of each sex so constantly together, either during work, or on the way to and fro, are a guarantee, per se, of the loss of simplicity and purity of life, supposing even that the sexes are, in general separate; but where, besides this corrupting collection of numbers, society is without restraints at home, the evil is complete. It is also true that in some mills the power of those in authority, viz. owners and their connections, is morally unlimited, and liable to most fearful abuses. Manufacturing towns and districts, and mills within them, differ in this respect; some are worse than others. Still, if religious restraints do not work on the many in any class of society, they do not in the ruling class in these; and natural faults and tendencies are tried, but not improved, by such a course as that which many a master has gone through. Public opinion, indeed, is his law, and an effective law, but there are wide regions under the power of most of them, to which public opinion cannot reach, or from which it dies out in indistinct uncertain murmurs, the interest of parents over-ruling higher considerations, should such disquiet them. Many are the haunts and allurements, many the forms and ministers of evil which find, among and throughout the labouring classes, familiar and willing votaries from the tenderest age.

"When the bye-laws of society are based on the necessities of finishing for the home and foreign markets so much, or at such and such a ratio of cost, where the only appreciable excellence is punctuality and industry, a head clear from intemperance for more adequate service of the master, not a conscience, or a closer sight of Him above ;-bodily strength free from nature's burdens, not a soul free from stain or pollution, and for the better obedience, and more complete devotion to the advancement and increase, not of the kingdom of the great King, but of the worldly means of the present employer; where these are the real standards of what is good that have occupied the common observation, there it is not unnatural that the license of the earthly will should reign without the restraints known and exercised in a more refined and plausible society, even though the influence of religion has penetrated but little deeper into it. There is no need to draw pictures, God forbid !

of what it is a sore burden ever to have had to know. The discoveries of mechanical means of production, the rapid growth of populations and towns, have occasioned vast and unwholesome disproportion even between the numbers of the labourers in manufacturing districts, and the due arrangements and foresight in the material order of rising suburbs and towns, the structure of streets and houses, drains, wells, pavements, and the like. And the sadder fact, that to the Holy Church of Christ, these growing populations are practical aliens and strangers, is familiar among us to a proverb. The masses' are in spiritual destitution,' as it is called. The clergy of the Established Church are entrusted with the responsibility,' by their bishops, of vast assemblages of human souls, to the numbers of tens of thousands, thirties of thousands, fifties of thousands, &c., on a soil where their predecessors held peaceful spiritual sway over a quiet village, or unenlightened' country town. powers reign there now. The strong man whose dominion is in this world keeps his house armed, and till a stronger than he shall overcome him, his goods are in peace." (pp. 3-10.)

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Ignorant though we be of Leeds, we are nevertheless convinced that this mournful picture has not been overdrawn. Any suspicion which we might have entertained respecting its substantial accuracy, would have been removed by a letter of Mr. Slatter, inserted by our author (pp. 16-21), which enters more into detail on the subject, and discloses things, over the record of which the heart sickens, and the eyes grow dim. But while we recognise the general truth of Mr. Pollen's statement, we feel ourselves bound to protest most energetically against the tone which he has seen fit to adopt. The tone !-nay, he has contrived to convey indirectly, and as it were sotto voce, sentiments with respect to the social state and mutual relations of our manufacturing population, which seem to us not only unsound and misleading, but also, in these times, pregnant with danger. We presume that he and his colleagues at St. Saviours taught both publicly and privately in this same strain, and than such teaching the wild theories of French and other socialists could hardly be more pernicious, for it could only exasperate the employers, while it both exasperated and deluded the employed. That masters at Leeds and elsewhere are often exacting, or even tyrannical, is certain enough; that they and their overseers sometimes flagrantly abuse their opportunities for licentious purposes, admits of no doubt. We deplore these things, and devoutly wish that a remedy, at once sure and speedy, could be applied to them. But the difficulty of reaching such evils by force of law is a part of the price which we must be content to pay for our British liberties; and for our own part, we have far more confidence in the corrective efficacy of that public opinion which Mr. Pollen scouts, capricious though it be, than in the Popish nostrums to which he has surrendered his faith. The moral and religious improvement of the masses in our large towns presents to Christian benevolence a problem whose effectual solution is defended by immense and glaring obstacles. Perhaps time alone will eventually solve it, and that in some way of which philanthropists had never dreamed. But we may very safely conclude that the happy consummation will never be

attained otherwise than through the patient industry and manly self-reliance of the people themselves. The blessings of civilization and moral advancement are never simply superinduced. There may be many ministries of help co-operating ab externo; but in the main, men must work themselves out of the sloughs of debasement,-and such elevation as they may attain must be the true victory which crowns a true struggle. Mr. Pollen's muttered bitterness,-the croaking accompaniment of his open utterances-tends to postpone and defeat this great result. Still he is true to his own papistical system, which would disenthral men from every other superior, by enslaving them to itself. Taking a complete charge of them, soul and body, conduct and conscience, it would wrest them from the influence of their employers, to make them mere automata in the hands of usurping priests.

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But we are loitering, while we have a long, if it be not an arduous, pilgrimage before us. Dr. Hook was vicar of Leeds-a man of undoubted benevolence, who, therefore, could not contemplate, without intense anxiety, the pari h which had been committed to his charge. He was then, as we suppose he still is, decidedly a High Churchman. He was also then, whatever he may be now, a personal friend of Dr. Pusey, and an abettor, open and bold enough, of the tractarian party. To Dr. Pusey, then and now the Coryphaeus of that school, he is reported to have said, 'We have heard of your sayings,-let us hear something of your doings.' We have no right to suppose that the remark was made on the one side, or taken on the other, as the language of defiance; though, if it had been so, the practical result at least would not have contradicted that hypothesis. It seems quite certain that the selection, by Dr. Pusey, of Leeds as the locality and scene of a great experiment, was due to Dr. Hook's provocative. And Dr. Pusey had then in the year 1838, a penitent!' "That unknown person,' says Mr. Pollen, cast about to do what he could to repair the ravages of sin over the fair face of his native country, in thankfulness to him who, whatever it was over which he sorrowed, (more or less in men's eyes), had given him, as he hoped, repentance for it. He desired to begin where that evil was worst, in the manufacturing districts. He desired that others, on whom the yoke of sin pressed, should partake with him of the ministry of reconciliation. The plan gradually opened before him. First, he thought of a church; then he wished that his church, if God should enable him to build it, should be a part of a plan for providing efficiently for the poor of some large district, instead of the plan, less frequent happily now than then, of seeming to do what was not done, providing nominally for a population, by putting a church among them which could contain only a small fraction of them, and a clergyman who must of necessity be a stranger to most of them. St. Saviour's was meant to be the mother church of as many chapels as should be required for whatever population should be assigned to it. It was obviously a part of his plan that the clergy should live in a college together, so that the poor people around might look upon them as friends, who, for their sakes, were almost as poor as themselves, and were visibly living