CHAPTER VI—­DRURY LANE THEOLOGY

Such were some of our disciples.  I do not think that church or chapel would have done them much good.  Preachers are like unskilled doctors with the same pill and draught for every complaint.  They do not know where the fatal spot lies on lung or heart or nerve which robs us of life.  If any of these persons just described had gone to church or chapel they would have heard discourses on the usual set topics, none of which would have concerned them.  Their trouble was not the forgiveness of sins, the fallacies of Arianism, the personality of the Holy Ghost, or the doctrine of the Eucharist.  They all wanted something distinctly.  They had great gaping needs which they longed to satisfy, intensely practical and special.  Some of these necessities no words could in any way meet.  It was obvious, for instance, that Clark must at once be taken away from his gallery and his copying if he was to live—­at least in sanity.  He had fortunately learned shorthand, and M’Kay got him employment on a newspaper.  His knowledge of his art was by no means perfect at first, but he was sent to attend meetings where verbatim reports were not necessary, and he quickly advanced.  Taylor, too, we tried to remove, and we succeeded in attaching him to a large club as an out-of-doors porter.  The poor man was now at least in the open air, and freed from insolent tyranny.  This, however, was help such as anybody might have given.  The question of most importance is, What gospel had we to give?  Why, in short, did we meet on the Sunday?  What was our justification?  In the first place, there was the simple quietude.  The retreat from the streets and from miserable cares into a place where there was peace and room for reflection was something.  It is all very well for cultivated persons with libraries to scoff at religious services.  To the poor the cathedral or the church might be an immense benefit, if only for the reason that they present a barrier to worldly noise, and are a distinct invitation by architecture and symbolic decoration to meditation on something beyond the business which presses on them during the week.  Poor people frequently cannot read for want of a place in which to read.  Moreover, they require to be provoked by a stronger stimulus than that of a book.  They willingly hear a man talk if he has anything to say, when they would not care to look at what he said if it were printed.  But to come more closely to the point.  Our main object was to create in our hearers contentment with their lot; and even some joy in it.  That was our religion; that was the central thought of all we said and did, giving shape and tendency to everything.  We admitted nothing which did not help us in that direction, and everything which did help us.  Our attempts, to any one who had not the key, may have seemed vague and desultory.  We might by a stranger have been accused of feeble wandering,