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
The religion of humanity has been for a time dominant in South Place,
Finsbury Square. Its oldest and original teacher in connexion with the
place was the late W. Johnson Fox, M.P., a popular writer and eloquent
orator, who did much in his day and generation on behalf of freedom in
trade, in politics, and religion, and did it well. Nor did he labour in
vain as regards himself. Born in an humble position, he became a student
at Homerton College and an orthodox Dissenter. In a little while he
joined the Unitarians, and then left them for a freer and fuller
religious creed and form of worship. He had many friends. His letters,
signed “Publicola,” in the _Weekly Dispatch_, were the delight of the
working classes; and his Anti-Corn-law orations charmed all, and there
were tens of thousands who had the privilege of listening to them. He
was returned to Parliament by the electors of Oldham, and a monument
erected to his memory there still perpetuates his name. He died at a
ripe old age, ever having preserved the character of an independent and
honourable man. As a religious teacher he was no extraordinary success.
It was rarely indeed that South Place was very full. Of course, the
hearers were the very _élite_ of the human race. Wherever you
go—especially among sects not particularly orthodox or popular—the men
and women with whom you come in contact are no ordinary men and women.
By a happy dispensation of Providence they fail to see themselves as
others see them, and are as firmly convinced of their own intellectual
superiority over a benighted British public as they are of the truth of
their principles and of their ultimate success.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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