MR. CHARLES LOWDER.* Tins is the record of a very
noble life. From his boyhood to his death Mr. Lowder appears to have had no other end in view than the doing of as much good as his means and opportunities allowed him. Born to the prospect of affluence, the failure of his father's bank (from no fault of his father's) left him penni- less, in the midst of his Oxford career. The bounty of a friend Of the family enabled him to finish his University education, with second-class honours in the Classical list. His mind was from the first set on missionary work, either at home or abroad ; but his parents' reverse of fortune obliged him to stay at home, to comfort and help to support both them and the younger children. Mr. Lowder's name first came into public note during the St. Barnabas riots, in the year 1851. The curate in charge of St. Barnabas's at that time was the well-known Mr. James Skinner, who has contributed a most interesting letter to this volume. " The points of ritual to which we had attained," says Mr. Skinner, " and which raised such fury against us, were very simple :-1. Procession of clergy and choristers from and to the vestry. 2. Obeisance towards the altar on entering and retiring from the sanctuary. 3. The eastward position [in celebrating the Holy Communion]. 4. Coloured coverings for the season on the altar." All these have ceased to be marks of Ritualism, and may be seen without causing offence in churches which claim to be "moderate." Yet the St. Barnabas riots agitated all England, and compelled
• Charles Lowder a Biography. By the Author of "The Life of St. Teresa." London : O. Kogan Paul and CO.
the resignation of one of the most popular incumbents in Lon- don. The High-Church clergy of that day were sometimes nicknamed " Rubricians." Their offence, it seems, was not "lawlessness," but too strict conformity to law. Bishop Blomfield admitted that the law was on the side of the clergy of St. Barnabas, yet he commanded them to yield obedience to his orders, on pain of having their licences arbitrarily with- drawn.
But it is for his work among the poor and outcasts of the East of London that Mr. Lowder is best known. His aim on entering on that work was, as described by himself, to cultivate " a life of poverty and self-denial and dedication to God's service, and, if it may be, the revival of a really religious Order for missionary work, men trained in holy living for the work of winning souls." " I quite long to go and cast myself into that Mission," wrote Bishop Wilberforce. " If only now we had a Bishop of London who would go and spend a day or two in Wapping with those zealous men, what might we not do ?" And to Mr. Lowder himself he wrote,—" If there is anything in which I can aid you, without in the slighest degree inter- fering with the Bishop of London, call upon me for aid. Two things only occur to me,—secret alms and secret intercessions. For the first, call on me when you want help ; for the second, I will try to offer them for you. For even though you are not in my diocese, you may count on my hearty sympathy." Very different, we are sorry to be obliged to say, was the treatment of Mr. Lowder by his own diocesan. It was in the parish of St. George's-in-the-East, and at the earnest solicitation of its Rector, Mr. Bryan King, that Mr. Lowder started his arduous mission. The parish had been woefully neglected. Mr. King's predecessor "had only appeared once in the parish during the seven preceding years, and had only one curate." The result of this neglect maybe imagined. " The East London Association, formed for the suppression of, at least, outward vice, caused a careful survey to be made of a considerable section of the popu- lation contained within a parallelogram of four streets within which St. George's Church is situated. This section was found to contain 733 houses, of which 40 were public-houses and beer- shops, and 151 were houses of ill-fame." Like the shrine-makers of Ephesian Diana, these traffickers in vice recognised in Mr. Lowder's Mission . a serious danger to their " craft." They organised accordingly the disgraceful riots of St. George's-in-the- East. Those riots continued for months, connived at—almost openly encouraged—by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. In- stead of instructing the police to do their duty, the Chief Commis- sioner of Police lectured the Rector on his Popish ritual, namely, chanted Psalms and the surplice in the pulpit. Magistrates resolutely refused to punish such rioters as were summoned before them, and the Bishop of London, sad to say, gave the influence of his great position and authority to the ringleaders of disorder. The ritual in the parish church did not go beyond an ordinary choral service and preaching in the surplice. But the Eucharistic vestments were used in Mr. Lowder's Mission Chapel. It was only two years previously that these vestments had been declared legal by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, the Bishop of London himself being one of the assessors on the occasion. The Bishop wrote a letter to the vestry of St. George's-in-the-East, characterising the use of the vestments as " this childish mummery of antiquated garments," which, supposing the description just, was certainly very im- proper language at a time when the effect of it was to weaken the hands of men who were engaged in a noble struggle against sin and vice. He assured the vestry, at the same time, " that though, in consequence of the legal decision in their favour, he would not appeal to a Court of law upon the question, yet he would not hesitate to deprive of his licence any assistant-curate who should use them who had not the legal protection enjoyed by an incumbent." In the parish church the vestments had been given up, in deference to the Bishop's desire. Yet the riots went on
unabated ; for what the rioters really wished was the expulsion from the parish of a religious agency which was seriously imperilling their infamous gains. The vestments being gone, the Bishop wrote again to say that •' the chief cause of remaining irritation and disturbance is the practice of turning
round in the pulpit with the back to the oongregation, after the
sermon." The obnoxious practice was given up, but the riots were not. On two successive Sundays, a band of howling ruffians " took
possession of the choir stalls, pelted and defaced the altar hangings with orange-peel and bread-and-butter, and threw down the altar cross. On the following Saturday, the Bishop sent an informal monition to the churchwardens [one of them a local publican], to remove the choir stalls, the altar hangings, and the altar cross." " The clergy, deprived of their stalls, had retreated to seats placed within the altar-rails, as the only place left free for them ; but the mob soon invaded the altar itself, taking possession of the seats of the clergy and choristers. On the following Saturday an order arrived from the Bishop to the churchwardens to remove the forms which had been placed within the altar-rails for the clergy, to hinder them from walking into church in procession." Counsels' opinion was at last taken on the Bishop's arbitrary proceedings, with the result that the present Chief Justice Coleridge, Sir R. Phillimore, the late Mr. Prideaux, Q.C., and the late Mr. Stephens, the well- known counsel for the Church Association, unanimously de- clared that the Bishop's " monitions " were " not worth the paper upon which they were written."
It is pleasant to record that such recognised leaders of the Broad-Church party of that day as F. D. Maurice, Dean Stan- ley, and Thomas Hughes, placed themselves energetically on the side of the persecuted clergy of St. George's-in-the-East. Mr. Maurice and Dean Stanley preached and lectured for Mr. Lowder, and in other ways identified themselves with his gal- lant battle against frightful oilds,—a battle which more than once endangered his life by mob violence. Mr. Thomas Hughes was often among the devoted band of laymen who attended Mr. Lowder's mission services for the purpose of protecting the clergy from outrage. A number of Broad Churchmen at last, headed by Dean Stanley and Mr. Hughes, provided funds for giving the Rector of the distracted parish a year's rest. The letters in which Mr. Hughes made known this offer to Mr. Lowder
are truly noble You may rely upon it," he says, "that I would take no part in any plan which I did not think a good one, from your point of view. I most heartily respect and sympa- thise with you, and your work down there is a noble one, and it is a most painful thing to me as a Churchman to see it inter- rupted in this way." The arrangement proposed by Mr. Hughes was carried out. Mr. Bryan King went abroad, and Mr. Septimus Hansard took charge of the parish, on the understand- ing that the services were to go on as they then were, "exactly the same as those in English Cathedrals, except that hymns were sung instead of anthems." At this time Mr. Lowder was merely one of Mr. Bryan King's curates, though in charge of a mission in the parish which, through the kindness of the Rector, was practically independent, and afterwards grew into the parish of St. Peter's, London Docks, with its present stately church. But "the riots increased rather than abated ;" for the question was really not at all a question of Popery or of Protestantism, but of religion and rampant vice. Still. the Bishop of London would not see it in that light. He prohibited the use of surplices for the choir, ordered the Psalms to be read instead of chanted, and the black gown to be substi- tuted for the surplice in the pulpit. Rather than obey this monition, and thereby violate the concordat drawn up under the auspices of Mr. Thomas Hughes, Mr. Septimus Hansard honourably resigned his charge.
But Mr. Lowder and his brave band of fellow-workers toiled on, enduring misrepresentation and obloquy; and at last they got their reward. In the year 1866 the East of London was ravaged by a malignant invasion of cholera. Even good and courageous men quailed before the frightful visitation, and fled from the district ; but Mr. Lowder, and his brother-clergy, and the Sisters of Mercy stuck to their posts, visiting infested dens and ad- ministering the last Sacrament to infected lips. Mr. Lowder was sometimes seen hurrying to the hospital with a cholera patient in his arms. The rough people of the East of London, the rioters of days gone by, were won at last. After the passing of the Public Worship Regulation Act, the Church Association made various attempts to discover three aggrieved parishioners in Mr. Lowder's parish, but without success. A Protestant Association, too, organised an attack on the parish, and collected a number of roughs from a distance for the pur- pose. But they beat a hasty retreat, on discovering that even the roughs of the London Docks, though they might not go to church, loved "Father Lowder," and were quite ready to break the heads of any who should molest him. It is right to add, too, that both the present Bishop of London and his predecessor learnt to appreciate Mr. Lowder's work, and had the courage to protect him from vexatious prosecutions. During the cholera visitation, Dr. Tait wrote,--" You will not fail to coin- mend my services, if I can be of any use." Mr. Lowder, in reply, suggested that the Bishop should visit the infected district, and. preach a sermon. The Bishop at once complied, and not only preached a sermon in Mr. Lowder's church, but visited, together with Mrs. Tait, the cholera wards of the hospital and workhouse, as well as the sisterhood.
Oar space will not permit us to describe the numerous good works established by Mr. Lowder. Let it suffice to say that by his self-sacrificing devotion he tamed, and to a large extent civilised, one of the rudest and most lawless and vicious districts in the metropolis. Very striking and pathetic is the contrast between the crowd of mourners who turned out to swell the procession which followed him to the grave, and the crowds of yelling rioters who sought to expel him from the parish twenty years before :—" Onee, during the St. George's riots, his friends had made a line across the dock-bridge which bounds the parish, and held it against the mob who had hunted him down, threatening to throw him into the docks. And now, in the streets where he had been pelted and ill-treated, the police (who then refused to help him) were obliged to keep a line amidst the crowd of weeping men who pressed forward to see and touch the pall beneath which their benefactor slept."
But Mr. Lowder was a Ritualist; not by preference, as we learn from this volume—for he liked a plain and simple cere- monial—but because he found that style of worship attractive to the poor people among whom he spent his life. And what we wish to ask is, whether it really has come to this, that there is no room in the Church of England for men like Mr. Lowder? It is obvious that if the Bishops and Magistrates of twenty years ago had had their way, with a Public Worship Regula- tion Act to give effect to their "monitions," Mr. Lowder, instead of civilising a barbarous population, would have wasted his life in a prison cell. Would that have been well done? As for our- selves, we are content to follow in the footsteps of Mr. F. D. Maurice, Mr. Charles Kingsley, Dean Stanley, and Mr. Thomas Hughes, and to claim for the Ritualists of to-day the toleration which the Broad-Church party of that day claimed for Mr.. Lowder.
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