THE CHRISTIAN REVIEW AND Clerical Magazine. JANUARY 1828. The Mansion House; or, no Preaching in the open Air throughout the City of London: being a serious Address to the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor (Alderman Brown), &c. &c. By the Rev. G. C. SMITH. The State of the Metropolis; or, the Importance of a Revival of Religion in London. By the Rev. JAMES HALDANE STEWART, Minister of Percy Chapel. The Second Annual Report of the Society for promoting Christian Instruction in London and its Vicinity, &c. 1827. WE are really at a loss where to begin upon a subject so full of horrors as the present state of London. It is a subject, however, on which we cannot be silent, without incurring serious guilt. Should the watchmen of religion hold their peace on the countless abominations which are going forward in the heart of our land, and of which the cry has mounted up to heaven, how could they expect the blessing of God upon their persons and their labours? It is, therefore, our fixed determination we can hardly say, to expose the vice which no longer skulks into holes and corners, but stalks along our streets with a forehead of brass, but-to awaken serious Christians to the duty of endeavouring, to avert by fervent prayer the just indignation of the Almighty, and to reduce, by unremitted exertions, the mass of crime and misery, which is weighing down this great city into perdition. The statement, furnished by Mr. Smith, of the multitudinous depravity which reigns and revels in London is indeed appalling. At the first contemplation of it, the mind seeks relief in incredulity; and tries to reject it, as the overcharged fiction of a morbid fancy, which has accumulated all that is loathsome in crime and squalid in wretchedness, and then assigned to his frightful creation "a local habitation and a name." But a very little reflection compels us to admit, that the pamphlet before us is no splenetic effusion, no rancorous diatribe; but a picture drawn to the life by an exact and indefatigable observer. London, with all its commercial and political importance; London, to which no city of the world is a rival " in glory and in greatness; "The mistress of the world, the seat of empire, That humbled the proud tyrants of the earth, London, which is the acknowledged metropolis of Protestant Christendom, so far does it tower above its sisters of the Reformation in spiritual advantages;-this mighty, this majestic London, contemplated from another point, is Satan's chosen residence, preeminent for ungodliness and sin. We are not setting our seal to a railing accusation against our mother. The proofs collected by Mr. Smith from a vast field of personal inquiry, and the attestations derived from other quarters, make it impossible to dispute the fact, that, if national iniquity ever calls for humiliation, the inhabitants of this land have abundant reason to take pattern by contrite Nineveh, and, though not with the like penitential forms, yet with equal abasement of spirit, to implore the incensed Majesty of Heaven not to deal with them according to their offences. We shall endeavour to contract into a narrow compass the immense panorama of evils, which is unfolded in the public journals, in Mr. Smith's Letter to the Lord Mayor, and in several other documents. Among these moral evils the profanation of the Sabbath stands foremost. When we recollect that Almighty God consigned his favoured people to a long and dismal bondage, very much on account of their habitual neglect of the sabbatical years, we cannot doubt of his regarding the violation of the Fourth Commandment as an affront peculiarly affecting his regal dignity and rights. If, therefore, He were to avenge the dishonour offered to his name in this city of Sabbath-breakers, by turning upon us that tide of calamity which has desolated Continental Europe, could we complain of not having been sufficiently forewarned by the declarations of his Word and Providence? It is not without a pang that we denominate this capital The City of Sabbath-breakers. But can we obliterate the phrase and substitute a milder, with the dreadful fact staring us in the face, that out of a population of fourteen hundred thousand souls above a million are utterly neglectful of the public worship of God? We believe this calculation to approach very near the truth: and, after liberal allowance has been made for the numbers withheld by insurmountable causes, or on justifiable grounds, it is clear that of wickedly systematic Sabbath-breakers the multitude will still be immense. But the tale of guilt and misery does not end here. The question arises, how these absentees from public worship are engaged. And the answer of facts is, that, while many of them devote the day to sloth, many to business, and many to frivolous amusements, a large proportion is intent upon vice of the foulest kind or the most audacious. Neque metus ultrà, neque pudor est. Not only is the God of heaven entirely shut out from their homage and regard, but the " god of this world" is worshipped with the sanguinary and lascivious rites so agreeable to the author of evil. On other days immorality is sipped, so to speak, with hasty catches and at considerable intervals, their secular calling not allowing more; but on the holy day of God the majority of artisans and labourers, set at large from the yoke of business, endeavour to indemnify themselves for six days of restraint by outrageous licentiousness, and "drink in iniquity like water." We appeal to all who have any acquaintance with London and its environs, and to those more particularly who venture into its alleys and courts on a Sunday, whether that day be not the harvest of publicans and tavernkeepers. Again and again have we sorrowfully remarked, when duty has taken us into the outskirts of the metropolis, how the tea-gardens and public-houses were thronged with profligate men and women, to the disgust and affright of decent people, to the great dishonour of God, and to the ruin of themselves, "in soul, body, and estate." On the Sabbath, also, every hackney and pleasure-boat performs treble duty, in carrying parties to and fro on their unhallowed expeditions; and an extraordinary demand is made on all the instruments and agents of sensual indulgences. It were impossible for a Christian pen to recount the abominations by which the Sabbath is polluted above the other days of the week. It is the day of drunkenness, and gambling, and prize-fighting, and prostitution. It is the day of filthy obscenity, and ribald profaneness, and ruffian violence. It is the day in which innocence is first contaminated, and faulty propensities are consolidated into vicious principles and habits. It is the day in which covetous and revengeful sentiments mature into rapine and murder; in which deeds of the blackest die are perpetrated, and plans are concerted for re newed crime and augmented licentiousness. be as this day, and much more abundant." "To-morrow shall And here we cannot withhold the expression of our indignant sorrow at the sale of Sunday Newspapers being connived at, if not sanctioned, by public authorities. More fruitful sources of crime do not exist than the prints to which we allude; which are, for the most part, highly spiced with irreligion, disloyalty, and lewdness, in order to adapt them to the taste of depraved readers. The number of such papers issued every Sabbath-day is estimated at forty-five thousand; and it cannot be an excessive computation, which assigns five or six readers and hearers to every copy-that is to say, between two and three hundred thousand to the total issue. Now it may safely be assumed, that many stay away from church or chapel for the express purpose of poring over these vehicles of mischief. And certainly the anecdotes recorded in them of the great in wealth and station, and the ludicrous garb in which vice is dressed up in the Police Reports, are not a little calculated to produce a general contempt of the Sabbath, and to sap those strong barriers against misdoing, conscience and shame. The man whose place of resort on Sunday is the ale-house instead of the church, and who discards the Bible that he may peruse the Sporting Calendar, can hardly be expected to display through the week much regard to religious duties or to social decency. He will doubtless exhibit a rapid decline in all that constitutes a valuable member of society, the result of the moral poison which he weekly drinks in; and he will communicate to all within the range of his influence more or less of the disease that preys upon his own vitals. His wife, his children, his work-fellows, will all, it is probable, in one degree or other, be infected by their contact with him. And be it remembered, that such a man is no rarity, not one in a thousand; but is a specimen of the wretched beings with whom the capital swarms. His associates are mostly akin to him in depravity of taste, and have imbibed the same poison with the same avidity. What, then, must be the effect of the mutual reaction of vast masses of people, who devote the Lord's-day to fomenting those passions which it was its hallowed purpose to restrain, and to stifling those seeds of principle which its proper employment would cherish; of people, whose only notion of the Sunday is, that it is to be a season of boisterous mirth and unbridled intemperance, and who reckon it wasted unless it have been signalized by some extraordinary indulgence of the grossest appetites? It sickens the heart to reflect how many boys, who have scarcely passed the confines of childhood, are specially trained on the Sabbath-day to vice and infamy. But a few days ago we read, in one of the journals, that fourteen little boys had been taken before the magistrate, and committed to prison, for gambling in a public-house. For the nefarious publican himself, the penalty of twenty shillings was either the highest infliction allowed by the law, or was deemed commensurate with the offence by the gentle magistrate! * If the law cannot visit an atrocity like this with a sharper scourge, it does indeed call for amendment; but if the fault lie with the magistrate, we beg leave to remind or to inform him, that he must answer for his cruel lenity before that Sovereign Ruler, "whose minister he is, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.” Too many people, we are aware, are so destitute of religious sentiment, as not to discern any evil in a practice which can only be shewn to pour dishonour upon God. But if there be any one criminal pursuit, of which the baneful effect on society at large is palpable and notorious, surely that pursuit is gaming. Its immoral influence on the minds of persons in high life and easy circumstances would not be of difficult proof. But proof and reasoning would be utterly superfluous on the glaring tendency it has to demoralize the lower orders, and to lead away those, whose legitimate income arises from their regular industry, to try for an ampler livelihood by a summary and fortuitous process. Let the poor man once contract a taste for the idleness, the excitement, and the gratification of avarice, to which gambling ministers, and his ruin is decided. There is no depth of villany to which his progress is not easy. The gaming-table is the cradle of the thief and the murderer. Whoever frequents it is speedily bereft of all virtuous principle: his sense of honour is perverted; his domestic affections are quenched; a moral jaundice takes possession of his soul, and he regards all around him as plunderers or as prey. When his passions want their accustomed food, he has recourse to other modes of excitement, only one degree less hurtful: reckless of futurity, he never pauses for an instant, even on the margin of destruction; and * We have just seen in a newspaper, that a bench of justices in a western county has condemned a poor woman, for stealing from her master crockery of a few shillings' value, to imprisonment for two years, of which term the first and the last six months are to be passed in solitary confinement! So rigorous a sentence, contrasted with the measure dealt out to the publican for a much greater crime, would lead to a suspicion, that some dispensers of the law have a mode of estimating crime and punishment which bids defiance to every rule of Christian equity. |