The Religious Life of LondonRitchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing)
Religion
The Religious Life of London
Ritchie, J. Ewing (James Ewing)
London (England) -- Religion; Religious thought -- England -- London
Long, long ago the wise men came from the East, and from the east of
England has come to us a man wise, in the opinion of his friends, in the
best wisdom. It is of Mr. Jonathan Grubb I write, who has been living in
Sudbury for many years, and who for the last twelve or fourteen has
almost entirely devoted himself to missionary work in various parts of
England, Scotland, and Ireland. I think as a temperance lecturer he
first came before the public. It was the sin of drunkenness which first
led him to lecturing. He had seen the evils of intemperance; he had seen
what poverty, what wretchedness and crime were its results; and much and
deeply moved thereby he mounted the platform, which more or less ever
since has been familiar with his name. While in Cornwall on one occasion
he found an opportunity of talking on something else—on that common
salvation without which, in the opinion of pious people, temperance
itself is of little worth. The opportunity was one of great spiritual
benefit, and ever since he has been engaged in what is called by the
denomination to which he belongs—the denomination whose energetic and
untiring philanthropy has been honoured all the world over—the
denomination which, from the days of George Fox, has ever borne a silent
protest against the frivolities of fashion and the vanities of
life—public preaching. In the opinion of those excellent people an
ordinary minister is not a public preacher at all. They reserve that
title exclusively for one who, like Mr. Grubb, goes out into the world,
as it were, collects the crowds by the wayside, on the seashore, in the
crowded street, and there, to those for whose souls few care, who
otherwise would perish for lack of knowledge, proclaims that Gospel which
tells how, for such as they, pardon can be secured and life and
immortality brought to light. In our day no Friend is more extensively
engaged in this work than Mr. Grubb. In all parts of Suffolk his labours
have been many. In various districts of the metropolis he has been
similarly engaged. He has also spent much time in Ireland—where he has
been listened to and aided by Roman Catholic and Protestant alike. It
was only on one occasion that he has ever been prevented from preaching
by the intrusion of a mob, and that was (tell it not in Gath, publish it
not in the streets of Askalon) in no less ancient and respectable a
borough than that of Bury St. Edmunds. In the filthiest and most
depraved districts of London, in the very heart of Roman Catholic
Ireland, he has never been interfered with at all. Of course some of
this success is due to Mr. Grubb himself. With his one aim to tell how
sinners may be saved, he has been remarkably successful in avoiding
collision with class feelings and sectarian animosities. His manner is
also eminently kind and gentle; but after all does not his experience
also show, what we have long believed, that honest, simple, faithful
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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