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 London Congregational Association has four District Missions. It has
aided in planting and sustaining eight Churches and Missions in four
districts. They ask 1000_l._ a year, with which, aided by local support,
they undertake to plant ten new district Missions in spiritually
destitute localities, and sustain them until they are enabled to support
themselves. As an illustration of what may be done in this way I give
the following account of the District Mission established by the Church
and Congregation under the care of the Rev. Dr. Raleigh, of Hare Court
Chapel, Canonbury, as drawn up by the Rev. J. H. Wilson, of the Home
Missionary Society.
The parent Church selected necessitous districts, in which they have
opened schools and mission-rooms; in these a number of the congregation
begin to labour as teachers, visitors, evangelists, &c. The result is
the early formation of a branch Church, where the poor people secure all
the privileges of Christian fellowship, and the fine feeling of a
Church-home, a place which they call “our Chapel,” and where they look up
to some one whom they call “our pastor,” and soon those so gathered
together become co-workers with the parent Church in extending its
influence in the locality—rising out of these movements, the Church at
Hare Court Chapel have now five branch Churches. From the last report
(1868) it appears that there are now three rooms for religious service
for the young, and several others for meetings with the poor and
ignorant; three day schools, and five Sunday or ragged schools; two large
week evening schools, and several smaller ones; seven mothers’ meetings;
a district nursery for children and infants, whose mothers require to
leave them during the day; coal clubs; home for little boys, where thirty
are fed and clothed; three paid ministers; six lay evangelists or
pastors; two Bible-women; six paid teachers, and seven paid monitors for
day schools; and to aid them, there are from 300 to 400 members of the
Church and congregation earnestly engaged as evangelists, pastors,
teachers, helps, visitors, Scripture readers, &c. During the year about
120 had joined the Church. The Sunday and ragged schools are attended by
1300 children; the day schools by 900, and the evening schools by upwards
of 400. Besides, there are temperance societies and Bands of Hope, and
in the summer months out-door services.
Another society worked by the Congregationalists is the Christian
Instruction Society, founded in the year 1825, to aid in evangelizing
London. House-to-house visitation was from the beginning and still is
its main characteristic. Its other agencies are lay-preaching in and out
of doors; the Sunday afternoon opening of places of worship; lectures on
prevailing immorality and vice, and united quarterly prayer meetings.
This society, however, is by no means sectarian. At its united quarterly
prayer meetings ministers of the Baptist, Presbyterian, and Independent
denominations join.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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