06. A CHRISTIAN CRUSADER

A CHRISTIAN CRUSADER

IT is often assumed that a man immersed, in a measure beyond the ordinary run of his fellows, in the things of the spirit, lacks adaptability in mundane affairs. Not seldom this assumption is reared on valid grounds, and we are quite ready to make allowances and offer apologies for such a man and regard them as being fully justified. But F. B. Meyer was a standing refutation of all such classification. He allied himself with every movement, and used every means, through which he deemed God to be working His will in the world. Nothing was common or unclean. Secular and sacred was a meaningless distinction for him. They were just differing aspects of complex Divine Person­ality. They were opportunities to save and uplift man­kind, and he utilized them all. In Leicester first, then in London, he proved himself an ardent social reformer, and strove mightily not only to preach the Gospel of salvation, but to labor for the betterment of physical conditions, and the elimination of elements which were inimical to righteous living and Christian citizenship.

He felt that the Spirit of the Lord was upon him, and that he was anointed to open prison doors to those who were chained to poverty, to give revelations of beauty to those who were blind to her charms, to lift to the bracing air of freedom those whom tyranny had crushed, and to preach to the poor the acceptable year of the Lord. Such he understood to be his mission, and resolutely set himself to study the facts of society in all their ugliness and obstinacy, sought out their meaning, and boldly devoted days and nights to the work of displacing grinding poverty by comfort, sordid living by enjoyment, and godlessness by a virile and happy religion. Moreover, he blazed with the passion for public righteousness. The zeal of the Lord’s house ate him up, and the hot assiduity and efficiency of the devil almost put him beside himself. But he was saved by his faith, and knowledge was kindled and sheered both by his inspiration for the just and right, the kind and good, and "for the people, Lord, the people!" Under Christ, these two made up his passion. He certainly believed that social enterprises found the Church’s way to God for his generation. He was a true soldier-citizen-saint.

Right from the earliest days of his ministry he desired, as he himself expressed it, to "deal with individual souls". In that sentence you see the man and his religion. He knew that there could be no such a thing as absolute standardization, and that to do effective work he must know the needs and temptations of the individual heart. If he essayed to help John Smith, he must know John Smith’s life, and not be content with a general survey of the Smith family the world over. He tells us of the days of his early Leicester ministry; how, when passing down London Road he met a long stream of factory operatives hurrying down the wide thoroughfare in the dinner hour, and said to himself: "Shall I ever know these people, or understand them, or win their love?" Recollections rose within him of men who had wielded a mighty influence on these same masses by the force of an eloquence, a brilliance of thought and diction, a clear-headedness and directness of statement of which he felt himself to be destitute. But he had yet to learn that the true way to the heart of a great center of population was open to any minister of God eager to use the golden key of kindness and concentrate his energies to deeds of mercy, the opportunity for which lay all about him, no matter how limited his powers or circumscribed his means and sphere.

One of the outstanding features of the work Meyer now came to undertake in addition to what, hitherto, had been his interpretation of the work of a minister of the Gospel, was the establishment of the Prison Aid Society, which came about in the following fashion: A young girl who attended Melbourne Hall came to Mr. Meyer one day in deep distress about her father, who was in jail and due to be released on the following morning. She wished the minister to meet her father at the prison gates, and do his best to save him from the bad associates who would be waiting for him out­side the prison. This Mr. Meyer readily undertook to do; and out of this comparatively trivial incident the whole of the splendid work Mr. Meyer was enabled to do along this line in the town of Leicester arose.

Thus was the prison-gate work begun. Mr. Meyer went to the prison each morning and met the men as they were discharged, and walked with them to a coffee-house with which an arrangement had been made, thus diverting them from the saloon and the evil company awaiting them. When the prisoners were numerous, the minister had with him one or two discreet and willing helpers.

We located them in a corner of the coffee-house [he relates], where they were screened from the immediate observation of those who came into the bar, and agreed that we must give them something more substantial than mere bread and butter. It is probable that we there and then instituted the plate of ham, which was in all after days to prove so great an attraction to palates which had been long accus­tomed to skilly and brown bread. This, with two or three cups of tea, coffee, or cocoa, and as much bread and butter as the hungriest could eat, cost about sixpence per head. Sometimes it seemed that the digestion turned against the richer food, and we gave the breakfast to be taken away in the pocket in the shape of sandwiches. This work continued during the rest of the time that Meyer ministered in Leicester. As it became known, gifts came for the project from all parts of the com­munity, which enabled this whole-hearted servant of breakfast with more than six thousand discharged prisoners of both sexes during his stay in the Midland town. So all comes back to me again as I write [was his word, later], and stirs again the old love for this direct and personal work among the lapsed. I seem now to be called to somewhat other work, but my heart clings to the memory of those dear and blessed days at Leicester prison gate. Their memories will be green in my heart till death. And my earnest advice to all young ministers is---to mix freely with the people; to visit systematically and widely; to study men as well as books; to converse with all classes and conditions of men: always on the alert to learn from some fresh pages of the heart opened to the view of the sympathetic soul. The success of F. B. Meyer’s work among the dis­charged prisoners was faced with all sorts of difficulties. A man came out of jail resolved to reform. He had made up his mind not to drink or mix with his old mates, and to go straight; and as soon as he had had his breakfast he started out in pursuit of employment. The air was fresh, it was a delight to be free, the man’s hopes were high; let him but have work, and all would be well. But the day’s search was in vain. He went to his home, or to some shelter for the night, believing that the morrow would bring better fortune. But to­morrow came and went, and many such days, charged with fruitless search. Every door is closed, some rudely and roughly. Want stared the man in the face. His resolution and sense of independence died down. He began to loaf about the streets again, and met with men who never meant to work so long as they could sponge on others, or procure liquor. Thus, in sheer desperation, the man who started well a week before, would be back again in nearly the same position of drink and crime as before.

Just at this time, it was said, unfairly, that a man had to get into jail before Meyer would do anything for him. Indeed, rumor had it that some men actually committed certain trifling offences, so that, by way of the prison-cell, they might come to the preacher’s hands. This appeared to put a premium on crime. Meyer thereupon determined to discover some way by which respectable men, who were out of employment, might be enabled to help themselves. So he proceeded to found his Window-Cleaning Brigade.

I bought a ladder or two, some pails, and leathers, and started one or two men on the job [he writes]. Cards on which my name was printed, which guaranteed their respectability, were left from door to door, to be followed up a day or two after. My friends throughout the town were very kind; and I think that, in many cases, windows were burnished to an extent that was a little out of the ordinary. Thus encouraged, I felt emboldened to try a larger venture, more especially as my ladders were too short to reach upper windows; and, notwithstanding my guarantees of respectability, my friends did not see their way to admit my prot?g?s within their houses. Besides which inducements were held out to me that I could do the large factories of the town at so much a window, if only I had ladders long enough to reach them. The result was that in a short time, at the cost (I almost shudder to say it) of some £20, I found myself possessed of two of the longest ladders in the town of Leicester. I think I can see them now, with my name printed down one side, "Rev. F. B. Meyer’s Window-Cleaning Brigade". They were evidently so cumbersome, that when they were brought to the coffee-house one morning, I gave instructions for a special cart to be constructed to carry them; and the whole needed at least four men to push the cart to and fro, and to set the ladders up and move them. The result of this experiment, as far as employing men who were out of work was concerned, amply justi­fied the expenditure. Mr. Meyer had the satisfaction of employing a large number of men until they secured a less precarious mode of livelihood, an opportunity which their moving about the town among the manu­facturers and private residents afforded. As he was constantly about the streets, the young preacher met different members of his brigade, carrying their ladders and pails. "I have always thought kindly of my people at Melbourne Hall", he wrote later, "that they were not scandalized at the eminently practical side of their pastor’s character." Of course, in all the splendid work which F. B. Meyer carried on in Leicester, there were many dis­appointments. Sometimes it would be almost more than he could bear; and he declares that had it not been for the perpetual remembrance of the much patience which his Lord had had with him, and how His love had conquered, he could not have borne the terrible disasters with which some of his most hopeful cases met. A man might go on well for a time, and then break out drinking and undo everything, losing situation, self-respect, clothes---everything. In all such cases it was useless even to seem to lose temper, and berate the delinquent. To do so would have been, perhaps, to drive the tempest-tossed bark from its only haven. Besides, it had to be remembered that con­science had already used its scourge pretty severely. And so Meyer always endeavored to restrain any feeling of natural resentment, and allowed his prot?g?s to see that their fall had caused him real, personal sorrow.

Reference to the magnificent work which F. B. Meyer did in London along social reform lines should, by rights, have found place in this chapter. But it seemed altogether incongruous to separate it from his other activities at Christ Church; so due notice was given it in Chapter IV. No Christian minister ever did finer work then Meyer "down Lambeth way". Those who knew that dark part of London in the nineties, knew, also, that the conditions described by Somerset Maugham in ’Liza of Lambeth, and which shocked London, were, if anything, underdrawn. Meyer attacked these evils with intrepid spirit, and proved himself there, as elsewhere, a dauntless Christian crusader.