THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESENTED BY PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID .^-/^^/^^^^ 02 .^^l^i^. THE LANCASHIRE LIFE BISHOP FEASER. BY JOHN AV. DiaGLE, M.A., Vinar of Mossley Hilf, Liverpool; Hon. Canon of Liverpool ; Rural Dean of Childwall. Aurnon OF "godliness and manliness"; "true RELioroN"; ^'rainbows," etc. EDITOR OF "BTSHOP FRASER'S SERMONS." WITH THREE ILLUSTRATIONS. PEOPLE'S EDITION LONDON : SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE & RIYINGTON, LIMITED, Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, E.G. 1891. LONDON : PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LI.MirKD, ST.vii:''o.:D sr-is.-ir axd c;i.\.u:.\a caoj.s. TO THE WORKING PEOPLE OF ALL CLASSES IN LANCASHIRE THE LANCASHIEE LIFE OF BISHOP EKASER 10 €)etiicateti. PEEF ACE, In publishing the People's Edition of Bishop Frasers Lancashire Life the author begs to gratefully acknowledge the generous reception accorded to the Library Edition. The story of Miles Platting and Cheetham Hill has been altogether omitted from the present volume, as it is too long for insertion in its entirety, and could not be abridged without danger of injustice to the persons and questions involved. Some other omissions also have been made ; but it is hoped they will not alter the essential character of the book. With these exceptions, the People's Edition is a reproduction of the Library Edition ; and is now sent forth in the hope that it may help, in some degree, to perpetuate the memory and confirm, among the people, the spirit and the work of this great Bishop of the People. iOi??nQ>i n>^ CONTENTS. CHAPTEE I. SOME PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. PAGE Personal Appearance and Bodily Strength— Bodily Health — Moral Health — Impulsiveness — Dignity — Courtesy — Industry — Speech at Shrewsbury School— Frankness — Truthfulness — Unselfishness — Intellectual Roominess — Earnestness — Power of Observation — Geniality — Hospitality — SimpHcity of Habits — Directness — The Citizen-Bishop — Politics — Churchmanship — Theology — Belief in Providence — Practice of Prayer— Knowledge of the Bible — Love of Righteousness — Righteousness and Ritualism— Love pf Liberty — Summary ......... ] CHAPTEE II. APPOINTMENT TO MANCHESTER. Offer of Bishopric — Letters of Advice — Dean Church's and other Letters — Acceptance of Bishopric — Congratulations ... 33 CHAPTEE III. ARRIVAL IN MANCHESTER. Consecration — First Sermon— His Preaching — Pulpit and Press — Mauldeth Hall— His Mother's Diary 43 CHAPTEE lY. AT WORK : MANCHESTER MISSION. Introduction — Organization of Diocese — Summary of Work — Description of Diocese — The Mission — Medical Students — Railway Employes Yin CONTENTS. — Cab-drivers — Slaughtermen — Theatre Employes — Bishop's Address in the Theatres — Baroness Burdett Coutts's Letter — Private Theatricals — Letters to the Bishop — The Bishop's Letter on Theatres — Conclusion of Mission ,».... 53 CHAPTER V. THE LANCASHIRE STRIKE. The Bishop and Strikes — A Strike an Industrial "War — Sermon on Strikes — Letter to Mr. Broadhurst — Causes of Strike — Proposed Remedies — Commencement of Strike — Letters and Sermon at Leigh — The Lock-out — The Riot — Letter to Weavers' Association — Sermons at Rishton and Halliwell— Proposed Compromise — The Bishop's Letter to the Manchester and London Press — Termination of Strike G9 CHAPTER YI. COMMERCIAL DEPRESSION. Commercial Distress — The Panic — The Bishop's Letter — The Relief Committee — Indiscriminate Benevolence — Savings Banks — Social Christianity — Improvidence — The Elberfeldt System — Organized Charity— The Organization of Relief— Thrift .... 96 CHAPTER YII. CO-OPERATION — SOCIAL SCIENCE. The Co-operative Movement — Co-operative Congress — Co-operation and Agriculture — Co-operaiion and the Church — Social Science — Popu- lation of Cities— The Interment of the Dead — Recreation — Social Science and Religion. , 110 CHAPTER VIII. DIOCESAN SYNODS AND CONFERENCES. Institution of Conferences Constitution and Purpose of Diocesan Conference — Definite Belief— Church of Rome — Ceremonialism — Ceremonial Innovations — The Church and the Masses— Sermons — Bishop and Clergy 119 CONTENTS. IX CHAPTER IX. LAMBETH CONFEEENCE— CONVOCATION— CHURCH CONGEESSES. PAGE The Larabctli Conference— Convocation — The Athanasian Creed- Christianity and the Masses — Church Congresses —Sheffield Con- gress—The Church and the Stage— Brighton Congress— Impure Literature— Newcastle Congress . . . . . .128 CHAPTER X. CONFIRMATIONS AND OEDINATIONS. Confirmations— Accrington Confirmation, 1877 — Confirmation Addresses — Ordinations — Ordination Addresses — The Work of the Ministry — Notes of Ordination Addresses — Standards for Examination — Ordination Service — Cardinal Newman's Letter .... 142 CHAPTER XL OBITER DICTA. Religion — Formalism — Dogmatism — Comprehension — Benefits of Dis- cussion — Ecclesiastical Drugs — Family Religion— Education — Denominational Schools — Sunday Schools — Prize-giving — Desul- tory Education — Education and Youth — Self-made Men — Educa- tion of Women— Eloquence — Power of Plain Preacliing — Curates and Clerical Incomes — Improvident Marriages — Heredity and Marriage — Cookery — Church Choirs — Hymns — Hymns and Music — Country Parsons — High Art — Sunday Opening of Museums — Funeral Reform — Cremation — The Volunteer Movement — Tempta- tions of Youth — The Opium Trade — Fashionable Religion — Following Christ — Personal Salvation — The Prince Imperial — Dean Stanley — Dean Stanley and Lord Hatherley — Death of General Garfield — Dr. Pusey — Death of Dr. Tait, the Archbishop of Canterbury — Death of the Duke of Albany — General Gordon , 157 CHAPTER XII. THE BISHOP OF ALL DENOMINATIONS. Churchmanship — Simplicity in Religion — Worship — Reverence — Sym- pathetic Christianity — Intelligent Christianity — Interpretation of Scripture — Truth and Holiness — Comprehension — Absolution — The Holy Eucharist — The Priestly Office— Historic Churchman- ship — Apostolic Succession — Establishm^ent and Endowment— CONTENTS. Disestablishment — Purchase of Livings— Voluntaryism and En- dowment — Defence against Disestablishment— Church Keform — Nonconformity and the Church — The Bishop and Nonconformists — Religious Tolerance — The Bishop of the Jews — Letters . .196 CHAPTEE XIII. THE CITIZEN BISHOP. Religion and Politics — Bishops in Parliament — Clergy and Laity — Civil and Religious Liberty — Christian Socialism — Religion and Morals — Licentiousness — Purity — National Prosperity — National Dec£^y — Christianity and Citizenship — Christianity and Patriotism — Christianity and War — Phoenix Park Murders — Assassinations in Ireland — The Irish Question — Greatness of Manchester — The Town Hall— The Bishop and the Press 222 CHAPTER XIV. THE BISHOP AND THE WORKING CLASSES. I Incidents in the Bishop's Relationships to the Working Classes — Modern Christianity — Modern Society — Classes and Masses — True Happi- ness — Religious Enthusiasm — Religious Fervour — Religion of Working Classes— Kearsley Colliery Explosion — Clifton Hall Ex- plosion — The Bishop's Sympathy— Duty — Athletics — Luxury — High Aims — Bishop and Railway Men— Evidences of Christianity — Patriotism — Extravagance and Thrift — The Bishop and the Poor — Letters to Working Men— Church and People . . . .215 CHAPTER XV. SECULARISM — SCIENCE — FAITH. Atheism — Infidelity — Social Christianity — Religion and Science — Reason and Faith — Christianity and Atheism — Science and Con- ' science— Mr. Darwin — The Bishop and Professor Huxley — ^Religion and Knowledge— Bishop of all Classes— Belief in All Truth . . 286 CHAPTER XVI. Letters « • • • ...•*«. 30^ CONTENTS. XI CHAPTEK XVII. HOME LIFE. FAGE The Bishop's Devotion to his Mother and his Home — Miss Duncan — The Betrothal — Mrs. Duncan's Death — Domestic Economy — Con- stancy of Mind— Eumours of Marriage — The Bishop's Marriage — Dean Stanley's Address — Punch's Letter — Return Home — Home Happiness — Hospitality 337 CHAPTER XVIII. CLOSING SCENES. Hrme Life — "Wedding Gifts — Statistics of Diocese — His Lancashire Work — Premonitions of Death — Last Visit to Ufton Nervet — Last Letter — Last Illness — Death — Funeral — Ufton Nervet — Ufton Church — The Burial — After Death — Mrs. Eraser's Letters . Index 397 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. CHAPTEE I. SOME PEKSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. Personal Appearance and Bodily Strength — Bodily Health — Moral Health — Impulsiveness — Dignity — Courtesy — Industry — Speech at Shrewsbury School — Frankness — Truthfulness — Unselfishness — Intellectual Roomi- ness — Earnestness — Power of Observation — Geniality — Hospitality — Simplicity of Habits — Directness — Tlie Citizen- Bishop — Politics — Churchmanship — -Theology — Belief in Providence — Practice of Prayer — Knowledge of the Bible — Love of Righteousness — Righteousness and Ritualism — Love of Liberty — Summary. The Bishopric of Manchester was offered to the Eev. James Fraser, M.A., Eector of Ufton Nervet, Berkshire, on January 3, 1870. Mr. Eraser was then in robust middle life, having been born on August 18, 1818, at Oakland House, in the parish of Prestbury, Gloucestershire. Nature had bestowed upon him a fine physical constitution. His frame was tall, broad, erect, well built, muscular. His chest was ample and deep ; his forehead massive and open ; his chin large and firm ; his eyes clear, shining, and wide apart ; his nose prominent and strong ; his lips distinct and thin ; his countenance, in action, bright and sympathetic ; but, in repose, pensive, almost to sadness ; his voice a sweet, penetrating tenor, capable of almost every variety of expression, from the joy of laughter to the sorrow of tears ; while, by the shake of his hand, he could convey an electric current of friendliness and goodwill. There was something in Mr. Eraser's very tread which attracted attention ; his step was elastic and 2 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. long — the step of health, of purpose, and of power. " Along with an active step," writes the Kev. James Lons- dale, "it seemed almost as if he carried a bright light with him. Men looked at him as if they were saying to themselves, * There goes one who is perfectly sincere, one whose business it is to make others happy, whose vocation is to spread joy.' " In his early days he had been very fond of horses, a first-rate rider and a good whip. Soon after his ordination he gave up the practice of hunting, but he continued to appreciate the points of a horse till the close of his life. In an address to working men at the Sheffield Church Congress, October 3, 1878, he said : "Though no one admires horses more than I do — and I think I under- stand the points of a horse as Avell as a man can Who comes from a southern county — I must say that the modern style of horse-racing does not commend itself to me as an element in our progress and development as a nation." On one occasion, after the Bishop came to Manchester, he wanted to buy a horse. The Archdeacon of Lancaster, the Yenerable William Hornby, was staying with the Bishop when the dealer brought a horse on approval. " We must try him," said the Bishop to the Archdeacon ; and forthwith his lordship mounted the horse and cantered round the field. Upon his return, pulling up opposite the Archdeacon, he said, " Now, Hornby, let me see you have a gallop; I don't ride as I used to do; for one thing the apron bothers me." In a letter dated June 12, 1877, the Bishop said : " As for riding, fond as I used to be of it — and no one could be prouder of his horses than I used to be ; it was my only serious extravagance — I always would keep two good nags in my stable, one for myself and one when occasion arose for a friend — now I have only been on a horse's back twice since 1 have been a bishop. Once was two years ago when I paid a short visit to the Archbishop of Canterbury at Addington, and rode with him one afternoon about his beautiful park ; and I don't suppose I go into my stable (where, however, I still have two good horses) once in three months." SOME PEKSONAL CHAEACTERISTICS. 3 Bishop Eraser's whole physical frame overflowed with strength ; the strength of natural constitution, well preserved by exercise, by moderation, by industry. As you looked at him, you felt he had all the energy of a man, and all the simplicity of a child. For Bishop Eraser was no less healthy in moral feeling than in physical frame, being an admirable specimen of the Mens sana in corpore sano. His conscience was as true as his face ; and his heart as robust as his body. He might make mistakes; a man of his metal generally makes frequent mistakes. Mr. Phelps has admirably said, " A man who never makes mistakes seldom makes anything," but Bishop Eraser's mistakes were always of the head, never of the heart. ** People tell me," said the Bi.^hop, " I have the courage of my opinions. It would be more true to say that I have the courage of my impulses. When, e.g.y I hear or read of the clergy as a class being described as tyrants, despots, bigots, who * wish to keep the villagers of England in the deep ditch of poverty and ignorance,' I confess, as Sam Slick says, my * dander rises,' and I feel more tempted to wax angry than is perhaps becoming in a bishop." Now and again he was tempted into keen controversies ; but in his most pugilistic moments he never hit below the belt. He would stand with his back against the wall and iight, but he never violated the rules of the contest ; and never cherished animosity against his antagonist after the contest ended. On one occasion he held an animated discussion concerning his use of patronage with one of his disappointed clergy, who, in the heat of debate, said some hard things to the Bishop. In his turn the Bishop said some hard things back again ; but, the next morning, the clergyman, who was poor, and had just been put to the expense of changing houses, found upon his breakfast table a £10 note from the Bishop, to help in defraying the cost of removal. Grasping the hand of an antagonist, upon another occasion, he said, with great goodwill, " You have hit me hard, but you have hit me fair." It used to be said that " the Church of England is dying B 2 4 BISHOP FRASEK'S LANCASHIRE LlFfi. of dignity." Bishop Eraser was naturally dignified, but lie has done much to put off the death, and to strengthen the life of the Church of England. There is dignity and dignity. There is the pompous dignity of the mere official, a symptom of emptiness and decay; and the princely dignity of the born ruler — an evidence of the richness and fulness of life. Bishop Eraser had none of the false dignity of the pompous official. He always insisted on carrying his own bag : a habit which occasionally provoked adverse comment. In a speech delivered at Keighley, October 8, 1879, he said : " There are false standards in society of gentility, of respectability, and the like. Some people seem to think that it is beneath my dignity as a bishop to carry my own bag. What indignity is there in carrying a b^, I want to know? If I am strong and healthy, why shouldn't I catry my own bag ? " His friendliness, graciousness, courtesy, were simple and remarkable. After staying at a house he would often say to a servant, " So much obliged to you for all your goodness." He had the royal gift of recollecting names and faces ; he could pat a child on the head ; and shake a collier by the hand ; and convoy a poor woman across a street. Travelling in the train on one occasion with Mr. E. P, Charlewood, his secretary, when the railway porter shut the door of the carriage, Mr. Charlewood said, " Thank you." " That's right Charlewood," at once rejoined the Bishop, " I always like to hear people say * Thank you.' " A friend tells me that he once sent the Bishop a present of game, and, to spare him the trouble of acknowledging the gift, he only put his initials on the label ; but in a few days he received a letter of thanks from the Bishop who had taken great pains to discover the anonymous donor. So resolute was the Bishop's habit of courtesy ! In the presence of women his courtesy rose into chivalry. To all women he was chivalrous, not because they were beautiful, or fascinating, or rich, but because they were women. His devotion to his mother had glorified and consecrated all womanhood for him. .SOME PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 5 From a child James Fraser had cultivated the habit of regular strenuous industry. His industry, moreover, had the merit of not springing out of sheer necessity or indigCDce. James Fraser was never, in the narrow sense of indigence, poor. His father — a Kincardineshire man, one of the Frasers of Durris — had been successful as a merchant in India ; his mother was the daughter of a leading solicitor in the town of Bilston in Staffordshire. When Fraser was only fourteen years of age, his father died ; and before his death had the misfortune to sink the greater part of his money in unpro- ductive mines. It was, therefore, something of a struggle for the widowed mother, in her reduced circumstances, to maintain and educate her six sons ; and James, the eldest, was never weary of telling the touching story of his mother's self-denying nobleness. In an address delivered at the Keighley School of Art, October, 1879, the Bishop made the following beautiful and pathetic allusion to his aged mother : " When I was fourteen years of age I lost my father. He had engaged — having come home from India comparatively a young man, with what was then considered a good fortume — in iron speculations in the Forest of Dean, in the course of which he lost the greater part of his property ; and died, I really believe, a broken-hearted man, leaving his wife to bring up a family of seven children, of whom I was the eldest, with small resources. My mother was not a clever woman, but a woman of sound sense, and one who would do anything for the benefit of her children. Five of her children grew to be men. She said, * I can't give them a large fortune, but, by denying myself, I can give them a good education.' She gave them a good education ; I do not know how she managed it. Three went out to India, two of them laid down their lives for their country — one in the Indian Mutiny. Another was the Head of the Department of Public Works under the Government, and you know what I myself am, and 1 simply say that, if my brothers who are dead could rise up, they would all, along with those who are living, call their mother blessed for the sacrifices that she made in order that they might have careers open to them in the world. By God's good providence I have that dear mother still spared to me, and, although she is paralysed and speechless and helpless, yet every day, when I go into the room and see her sweet face, I think of all I owe to her." The manly and beautiful tribute of a successful son to his self-sacrificing mother, but a tribute which must not be 6 BISHOP FRASEK'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. permitted to mislead the judgment in forming a true estimate of the real character of that son's industry ! For Eraser's industry was never in need of being quickened by the lash of penury. It was the industry of praiseworthy ambition, of filial gratitude, of conscientious principle. The pecuniary losses of Eraser's father had reduced the family below the rank of affluence ; but all through his life Eraser was in circumstances which are generally considered com- fortable. He was able to go to Oxford on a scholarship worth only £38 a year, and to spend while in Oxford £200 annually, without incurring any debts. Directly he gained his Eellowship he set up a horse. When Eector of the small college living of Cholderton — where he also took pupils — he contributed £100 to the new church, £300 to new schools, and nearly £200 to rebuilding barns, coach- houses, &c. His mother, who assisted him most liberally in all his parochial schemes, also paid £200 per annum towards house expenses, " so that," as he himself said, " I have a considerable surplus — and shall be able and, I think, justified in putting by £100 a year towards decorating my little country church." He once told a Manchester friend, " It is comparatively easy for me to give donations to good objects, because all my life I have happily been able and accustomed to give." " James Fraser," writes one well acquainted with the Bishop's personal affairs and manner of life, *' was always a most careful man and never wasted a halfpenny, and was a wonderfully sound and clear-headed man of business. When I went through his papers after his death I was struck with his excellent investments, and also with the fact that many of them were in his name as of Oriel, Cholderton, Ufton Nervet, &c., showing that from the time he supported himself he laid by something every year." He was as economical as he was generous ; by never wasting he could both freely give and reasonabh' accumulate. No estimate of Bishop Eraser's character can be valuable ; no attempt to penetrate to the essence of his life, and to set forth that life, as an inspiration to others, can be thorough, SOME PERSONAL CHARACTEBISTICS. 7 which fails to recognize the true nature of his continuous industry. He was among the most simple and most indus- trious of men ; but neither his simplicity nor his industry was the result of the straitened circumstances of his early life. Both sprang from a source nobler than necessity. When he was working ten hours a day for " the Ireland," * his aim was not the £30 a year, but the University distinction and the fulfilment of a plain duty ; and, perhaps, most potent of all, the longing to gratify his widowed mother. "I am reading as hard as I can," he writes, in reference to the approaching examination for an Oriel Fellowship, " but with little prospect of success." When his success was announced, the first letter he wrote began thus : — " My dearest mother, I am delighted to be able to inform you, that you may con- gratulate your first-born on being this day elected Fellow of Oriel." This incident is typical of Bishop Fraser's wholr course of life. When he saw anything to be done he did it ; any duty to be performed he performed it ; whether the sphere of the duty was small or large. At his first ordination, one of the Archdeacons was asking an old friend of th(; Bishop's how he accounted for the hold which the Bishop, even then, had taken of the diocese. " The great point about Fraser," was the friend's reply, "is, that if he sees anything needs doing, and he can do it, he does it ! " At that moment the door of the room opened, and the Bishop appeared carrying a coal-scuttle in his hand. He had seen that the fire needed replenishing, and, instead of asking any one else, he got the coals himself. " That," whispered the Bishop's old friend, " is an example of what I mean." This habit of industry and promptitude of action he carried into every department of his Lancashire life. * Dean Ireland founded his scholarships in Oxford for the " promotion of classical learning and taste." They are worth £30 a year for four years, and are among the Blue Ribands of an Oxford career. A French journal, commenting upon Fraser's appointment to Manchester, in connection with the circumstance that he had been an Ireland scholar, said, "Such an appointment is another instance of Mr. Gladstone's desire to conciliate Ireland 1" 8 BISHOP FKASEK'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. " Oh," said the Bishop of CarHsle, " how constantly and how cheerfully and manfully he worked ! How he made his influence or rather the influence of Christ felt through the mighty city of Manchester and the whole country round ! How men who know better than most what work means wondered at him, who seemed to work harder than all and to he never weary, always ready for every effort of intellect, every call of charity, every ecclesiastical or evangelical duty ! " Preaching in 1882 at the public opening of the new buildings of Shrewsbury School, where he had once been himself a pupil, he said — and the utterance is evidently a page of autobiography unfolding the secret motiyes of his untiring industry, even from the days of boyhood : ** This never was a school for idlers. In my day it was almost Spartan in the fewness of its comforts, the hardness of its discipline. I do not know that it was any the worse preparation for after-life on that account. If we lacked culture in its modern idea, we did not lack earnestness, industry, and a praiseworthy ambition ourselves to contribute something to the reputation of the school. I remember how those honour-boards in the head-master's old room stirred our young hearts with the hope that some day our names too might be enrolled there. How we counted up the distinctions won at the university by some Kennedy or Hillyard, and wondered whether we should ever be able to rival those brilliant careers. And I remember well the boys who were the salt of the school in my time, who made us ashamed of telling a lie or practising a deceit, of being a coward, of meanness of any and every kind. I know what I myself owe, in the way of influence and example, to those boys of stronger and better natures than my own. Arnold's great principle of governino; his school through the Sixth Form was not developed among us ; but still the best, and bravest, and truest boys were the acknowledged leaders of the rest. . . And now, boys, I bid you farewell and a * God speed.' Determine that the New School shall suffer no declension in fame or character at your hands. Be jealous for it, almost, to use a phrase of Paul's, * with a godly jealousy.' I know you are proud of its reputation; add to that fame new laurels. Above all, maintain among yourselves a high and generous tone. Be real, earnest, brave, truthful, pure. Dark days seem to be threatening our country, and the hope of England in dark days must be in the public spirit of her sons. A genuine patriotism ; more purity of domestic and personal life ; more simplicity of public manners ; more sympathy between class and class ; more surrender of private aims to public interests ; quicker recognition of the calls of duty — these, and such as these, are qualities we need to sustain the fair name of England, and to hand on to them that come after the noble heritage we have received. SOME PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 9 Keep these aims before you, as the lode-star of your lives ; and you too shall be remembered in your turn as those who, in their generation, added another honourable page to the famous record of the old school." It was this open-air healthiness of moral sentiment which made Bishop Eraser almost irresistibly charming. You might disapprove of what he said and did, but you could not cherish any feeling of vexation against him ; for he was always perfectly open and transparent, never keeping any- thing back. " When he came to Lancashire," writes a correspondent, " what struck every one was the openness, frankness, almost boyishness — if one may use the term — of his manner and speech. He was utterly unconventional — completely unlike the usual style of bishop. His views and ideas were all his own ; and he always spoke evidently from his heart. It was the same in his set speeches and sermons as in his unstudied conversations. He was impulsive in speech, perhaps injudicious and unguarded. He sometimes said things which he afterwards regretted, and sometimes used expressions hastily which he would have afterwards withdrawn. But he seldom or never got into any scrapes by this impulsiveness ; because it was evidently so genuine and honest and hearty, that men felt he had a kind of right to say what he liked and to say it as he liked. He was absolutely frank — seemingly careless — in expressing his opinion about people, no matter what their position might be. But somehow his frank speeches never appeared to give offence or to do any harm." " Perhaps," writes Chancellor Christie, " the most striking point in his character was his absolute and transparent truthfulness. It not only never entered his mind to go a hair's breadth beyond the absolute and peifect truth on every occasion, but he could never bear even to conceal the smallest matter. It was in expressing his own opinions that this characteristic was especially apparent. Whatever his opinion was, and whether it was right or wrong, he was prepared, in season or out of season, to express it in his earnest and most open manner, nor could he ever be prevailed upon in the slightest degree to modify the open expression of his opinion by representations that it was inexpedient so to state it. I have more than once endeavoured, but unsuccessfully, to induce him in letters to insert some vague phrases of a complimentary nature, but unless they commended themselves to him as entirely and absolutely truthful he never would insert them; he never would use the most trifling conventional phrase unless it expressed in the clearest way his real opinion, nor could he ever be induced in his speeches at societies or committees to speak words of praise or approval such as the promoters or committees desired to be spoken except he was thoroughly satisfied that they were deserved ; and, 10 BISHOP PEASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. as the habit of his mind was critical as regards details, the promoters of a meeting were always a little nervous when he got up to speak, lest the expected blessing should turn out to be a curse. Of balance sheets and accounts he was an expert critic, not always to the satisfaction of those who had drawn them up, and though, his criticisms were never unfair they were always sound." In season and out of season this truthfulness asserted itself. He could not address a temperance society without confessing that the day before he had been much the better for a glass of bitter beer. If he addressed the Education Union, after stating (with unquestionable truth) that the vast majority of parents desire a religious education for their children, and that the " religious difficulty " was in practice an infinitesimal one, he added : " If a better or simpler formulary than the Church catechism can be found, I am prepared to accept it." On some disputed social questions he was warned that " a dignified neutrality " was the proper attitude for a Bishop ; he replied promptly, " A dignified neutrality is not my attitude on any question I think im- portant." But, while the Bishop always expressed in the simplest, clearest, and most decided manner his own opinions, it never entered into his mind to be offended with the like criticisms of his own sentiments made by others. " On one occasion I remember," writes Chancellor Christie, "some- thing he had said at a meeting had been warmly criticised by a gentleman present. A few days after he showed me a note from the gentleman in question, expressing his hope that the Bishop would not be offended by his adverse criticism. The Bishop handed me the letter to read with a smile, saying in his usual off-hand way: *Why should this fellow think that I should be offended at >\ hat he said ? Jic has as much right to his opinions as I have to mine.' " Closely allied to his open frankness and unhesitating truthfulness was his manifest unselfishness. " I do not," he said, " believe in self-seeking. I have never found a self- seeker either a really happy or successful man. Men do not like to see a man succeed who in his success thinks of nothing and nobody but himself. I am thankful to know that in these northern counties, more than anywhere SOME PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 11 else in England perhaps, the public recognition of the heart of a good and right-minded people follows the men who sacrifice themselves for the good of others. I know that the men most honoured in Manchester, for instance, are the men most bent on doing good to their fellow-citizens." These qualities of unselfishness and truthfulness with which Bishop Eraser was naturally endowed, and which he diligently cultivated to a rare degree, imparted to his conduct the charm of a genuine altruism. He threw him- self spontaneously, apparently without effort and yet irre- sistibly, into the griefs and joys, the needs and interests of others. He had the happy gift of taking everybody to his heart. He was never inattentive. As you talked to him you always felt he was listening and really trying to understand your case. In the light of sympathy you saw yourself reflected in the mirror of his heart. "You felt sometimes," writes one of his clergy, "almost as if he must have a special liking for you ; he was so kind and so much interested in your affairs ; yet you knew he was the same towards all men. And how lie remembered our names, and our children, and any little incidents he had heard of us ! " Nor did he forget you when you were gone from sight. His was not the cheap sympathy of an outward manner, but the true emotion of the inward self. To your surprise, when you had left Bishop Eraser with a sense of shame at having occupied, in your interview, so much of his overcrowded time, you would find the next morning a letter upon your table giving his fuller and more mature opinion of your plans or course of action. " Out of sight," you were not with Bishop Eraser " out of mind." Indeed, some of his kindest actions, as his correspondence shows, were done to people whom he had never seen, but of whose necessities he had indirectly heard. Not being engrossed with schemes and ambitions of his own, his heart was at leisure from itself to soothe and to sympathize with the sorrows and necessities of others. Even at the meridian of his joys he was thoughtful and compassionate. The follow- 12 BISHOP FEASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. ing letter was written by him two days after his marriage to a young friend whom he seldom saw and who had no sort of claim, either of kinship or neighbourhood, upon the Bishop's sympathy : Belgeave Hotel, Torquay, Januarij 17, 1880. My dear young Friend, — With what sorrow, in the midst of my own deep and strong joy, did I read that announcement in the Times of yesterday of the dark sad shadow that has fallen upon that which I so well remember as your bright and happy home, bearing as it did in every detail the impress of that gentle womanly presence which now it knows no more. It is no mere form of words when I say you have my own and, I may add, my wife's true sympathy. She knows of you and has heard of you, through that Mrs. M , to whose husband you were so kind a friend, as I believe you have since been to her. Our feelings for you were awakened together as I read aloud after breakfast this morning the sad lines in the Times announcing your wife's death. Thank God, one's own sense of happiness is not always of a selfish character ; and this is perhaps why at this moment my heart seems especially touched by the sorrow of one called to give up a treasure, the preciousness of which he knew, and which I have so recently gained. May He, Who alone can, give you of His exceeding and sufficing comfort. Believe me, my dear young friend, yours sincerely and affectionately, J. Manchester. This complete unselfishness gave Bishop Eraser great intellectual roominess. Koominess (if the term be admissible) was one of his most remarkable characteristics. His hospit- able mind could supply room and lodgment for everything ; from the cedar in Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall. No subject came amiss to him. To-day he presides over a Diocesan Conference, to-morrow he goes upon a trip with the Mayor of Manchester to survey the Thirlmere watershed, and the next day he sits as arbitrator in some wage-dispute between employers and employed. Many-sidedness of intel- lectual interest is not unfrequently a source of intellectual feebleness and dissipation; breadth being unaccompanied by depth, variety relaxing tenacity, and largeness of view ending in shallowness of penetration. When a man spreads his intellect over many things, of necessity he sometimes spreads it very thin. This was Bishop Eraser's danger : SOME I^ERSONAL CHAHACTERISTiCS. 13 nor was he always successful in escaping it. He himself would have been the first to acknowledge this infirmity. Many of his utterances were ephemeral : they were as sparks in the forge, showers of radiant coruscation, pleasant and beautiful for the moment, but soon lost in darkness and forgotten. Indeed he never posed as a profound thinker. His career at Oxford was successful, almost brilliant ; but, in after life, he laid little claim to the erudition of a scholar. He knew Greek well ; but he was among the last men in the world to have composed a laborious theme upon Greek particles. He was often, and by the necessity of his much speaking, superficial ; but he was never, by purpose or intention, a smatterer. No man could have set himself more determinedly against intellectual softness and frivolity, or have insisted more strenuously upon the importance of discipline, hardness, and concentration of mind than Bishop Eraser. If sometimes his information was superficial, yet his feeling was always profound. From his lips people liked to hear the repetition even of commonplace sentiments, because of the earnestness and singleness of purpose with which his sentiments were invariably inspired. The Uni- versity Church was always crowded when he preached in Oxford ; and in the vast congregations could be seen, eagerly listening, many of Oxford's ripest scholars and pro- foundest thinkers — men at whose feet he himself would humbly have sat as a disciple. One of these great scholars being asked why he always went to hear Bishop Eraser preach, replied, " We go to hear Eraser not for information, but for inspiration. He is an inspiring man" His evident seriousness of purpose, his contagious enthusiasm for hu- manity, his downright belief in God, redeemed his many- sidedness from its frequently accompanying vices. There was no indifference, no aimlessness, no half-belief in him — his intellect was broad, but his heart was deep. "I am not at all sure," he said, "that the very highest form ot greatness, though not perhaps the most brilliant, is not that which 14 BISHOP FKASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. elevates mankind not materially, nor intellectually, nor even politically and socially, but morally. Qlie greatness that is I'elt as an influence on the side of goodness ; that vindicates virtue ; that represses vice ; that makes men hear the voice — or, if they will not hear the voice, makes them feel the sting — of conscience; that keeps in awe the scoffer, the ribald, the foul-tongued, the scurrilous, the infidel — tJiat, in my judgment, is true greatness." Another characteristic which distinguished Bishop Fraser in a remarkable degree was his faculty of observation. Nothing was too trivial to escape his notice and care. The moment he laid his eye upon you, you felt he had scanned you completely from head to foot. When he entered your house he seemed to see everything without noticeably looking at anything. If you sent him a report of an institution or society, he appeared, by a sort of instinct, to perceive immediately the important details; When he came to preach in your church he generally made you feel, by some gesture or remark, what his opinion of your service was ; and whether your church was slovenly or well tended. His observation, however, was not the observation of the critic, far less of the cynic ; it was simply the observation of the keen and interested man. This habit of quickly noticing and kindly commenting upon everything made you soon and completely at ease and at home with him. As a guest in the house he was perfectly delightful. It occasionally happens that Bishops are not easy persons to entertain ; the very look of a Bishop is, at times, oppressive and silencing. But Bishop Eraser soon succeeded in making you forget his lawn-sleeves, his apron and hat, by his obvious interest in you and your affairs. He was a singularly interesting, because a singularly interested, man. If he stayed a day in your house he knew all about you, your children, your servants, your pictures, your garden, your stables, before he went away. He dandled children upon his knee. " What would you like to be, my little man ? " he once asked a rosy-cheeked boy of four years old who was riding on his knee. The boy, undismayed by either apron or gaiters, and simply charmed by their wearer, replied : **' I should like to SOME PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 15 be a bishock." " A Bishop ! " laughed Fraser. Then the pensiveness gathered over his face and he added : " If you had tried it for ten years, I think you would change your mind." In the same simple way he would talk to your wife about all her domestic interests, walk with her in the garden and tell her " not to plant her peas so deep ; " and to " pick off the faded rhododendron flowers ; " and when he was gone she would tell you " the Bishop was the most courteous, the most charming guest she had ever entertained." He was as genial in the street as in the house. His open face, and dignified yet pleasant bearing, as he strode along the streets of Manchester, bag in hand, won for him hundreds of friends, who never had an opportunity of speaking a single word to him. If you happened to walk with him through the streets of a Lancashire town-^a feat not easy to accomplish unless you were a quick walker — it was almost pathetic to watch the eyes of the passers-by, upturned to their Bishop, not in idle curiosity, but in admiring love. When he said " Good morning," there was a ring in his voice, which made music in your heart. His " How-do-you- do ? " was irresistible. It was true good-nature and simplicity. " He (lid not morbidly meditate on his own feelings," writes Mr. Lonsdale, " being a man mainly of action. No;* did he fight against his natural bent to joy as though it were sinful to be joyous. By keeping his child's heart to the end in spite of the cares and troubles of a diocese, both large and responsible, he continued to be, though ever gaining in grace, in the main the same man, and will be remembered for many a day as the 'joyous Bishop.' " Bishop Fraser's hospitality was like his greeting ; it had nothing conventional about it, and nothing forced. It was a great treat to spend a few days at Bishop's Court. This volume will unfold at a later page the exquisite naturalness of his home-life ; but an introductory sketch of his personal character would be notably incomplete which made no mention of his hospitality. His was the genuine hospitality of the heart. He ran to meet you at the door, helped you to take off your coat, stirred the fire, and poured out the tea for you. And how he chatted ! It was wonderful to 16 BISHOP FKASER'S LANCASHIBE LIFE. listen to the ease, the variety, the vigour of his conversation. Upon his shoulders lay the weight of the second largest diocese in England; yet so remarkable was his power of mental detachment that, amid many cares and responsibili- ties, he had all the lightness and all the grace of a leisurely country gentleman. His table was ever most generously supplied; but it never groaned beneath the weight of luxuries or dishes out of season. Luxury was one of his deepest aversions. He saw clearly the demoralization caused by luxury, and, both in word and act, he set his face steadfastly against luxury in every form. He delighted in bounty, in refinement, in elegance ; but he simply hated all vulgarity of display. His estimate of things was fixed not by their market- value, but by their intrinsic worth. He preferred to take a dish of tea with a poor curate who was unselfishly struggling amid poverty to elevate his flock, than to dine off gold plate with a self- indulgent, extravagant millionaire. *' I never," he said, " visit the Peel Park at Manchester without thinking what an amount of wisdom there is in the few words inscribed on the statue of Mr. Joseph Brotherton, formerly member for Salford — 'My wealth consists not in the largeness of my means, but in the fewness of my wants.' " Again, in an address delivered to an overflow meeting of working men at the Sheffield Church Congress, October 3, 1878, he said : " I am quite sure that the simpler our lives are the happier they will be. I am sure that no man ever made his life really richer or brighter or happier by surrounding himself with artificial wants and superfluous luxury. What is a luxury to-day becomes a necessity to-morrow. Those who are your true friends regret more than anything else that habits of thrift have not yet made their way amongst the working classes of this country to the same extent as in almost every other country. I am afraid there is a very large number who are unthrifty. When times were good and wages were running high, perhaps you spent too much money on things which you once never dreamt of, and which now, I dare say, you can hardly do without. During the last five or six years all classes in this country have been spending a great deal too much money." SOME PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 17 -One story in relation to simplicity of life, associated with largeness of heart, Bishop Fraser was very fond of telling. The following account of the story has been supplied by the pen of a trustworthy correspondent : " I remember well, soon after Bishop Fraser came into the diocese, that he had to consecrate one of the finest, handsomest churches in South Lancashire, built at a cost of £20,000. A week or two afterwards, I met him at the dinner-table of a friend. He was lost in amazement at what he called an extraordinary peculiarity of the Lancashire character, i.e. the simplicity and homeliness of the lives of many of those who made large gifts for public and religious charities. "* I got out at B Station,' he said, ' and after a sharp walk of twenty minutes came in sight of the church at the distance of about a mile. I was struck even then with its nobility. " Can you tell me where Mr. W lives," I inquired of a pedestrian, " the gentleman who has built this noble church ? " " Oh, ay, it's yon cottage against yon bank." Thinking there was some mistake, 1 went on, and presently overtook a girl in Sunday attire, " Can you tell me where Mr. W lives, who built this noble church ? " " That's it," she replied pointing to the same unpretentious cottage, " I'm going to th' consecration." " ' Still I considered there was an error somewhere, but made my way to the door. An old woman, simply but respectably dressed, answered my knock. I dared not ask if Mr. W was in! I repeated my question, " Can you tell me where Mr. W lives, who built this noble church?'* " Oh, you're the Bishop are you ? He's bein' expecting on you — Come forrard, you'll find him i' th' kitchen." Ushered into the kitchen I found an old, but fine-looking man sitting by the fire smoking a churchwarden pipe. " So you've come, have you," said the smoker, " JSTowt like being in good time — There'll be a snack of something when you've done." " You have done nobly by the district, Mr. W ," I said, seizing his hand and giving it a hearty "^rasp. He gave me an equally hearty squeeze, but seemed surprised. " Naw, naw," he said, " I made the population with my mills, so I mun do my duty by them.' "' " ' In the South of England,' continued the Bishop, * such a gift, and such a function would have brought the whole county society together, and the donor would have been the recipient of unbounded admiration and praise. It was a new experience.' " No one could have been less of an ascetic, either by temperament or conviction, than Bishop Fraser; yet he was, both by nature and upon principle, a plain, simple, self- restraining man. " The more simply I live myself," he said, "the better able I shall be to encourage simplicity of living o 18 BISHOP FEASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. in others." At the close of a sermon preached in West- minster Abbey June 2nd, 1878, he said : " you, who would be valiant for truth, good soldiers of Christ, doing something to stay the inroads of selfishness and frivolity and vice, practise simplicity, and do not cease to believe in goodness — not the mere ethical goodness of the heathen schools (though that was not wholly impotent to produce results), but the same faculty of the human soul when it has been touched by, and conformed to, the example of Him who went about doing good and heahag every one that was oppressed. If once the hearts of men, under the over-mastering influences of a self-idolizing and luxurious age, cease to recognize the beauty of this Divine Ideal, and to be attracted by it, then indeed peace, like the fabled Astra3a, will be found only in heaven, and the earth must be left to its self-created confusions from which every pure and quiet soul will desire to flee away." Bishop Eraser's simplicity was closely connected with his directness. He had a strong distaste for anything round- about. He loved to go straight to the point. Soon after he was ordained, he wrote to his mother : " I wish you and Aunt Lucy would give me your candid opinion about my sermons; do you think the language plain and intelligible to ordinary minds, as well as sufficiently definite and practical? how far do you think my sermons adapted to awaken a hearer, and lead him to apply what is said to himself? I want my sermons to be useful to others, and not a display of any learning or eloquence of my own." That he was very successful in achieving this aim is shown by the following story: A very thoughtful, well- educated man being asked, " What is the effect of Bishop Eraser's preaching on you ? " " The general effect," he replied, "is, that I go from Church resolving to try and practise in my life what he preaches." Bishop Eraser is well said by Professor Bryce, himself a keen observer of men and intimately associated with Mr. Eraser in educational work, to have " created a new and admirable type of English bishop." There are several distinct types of bishop. There is the old Court-Bishop : the highly cultivated gentleman, with exquisite relinement of manner, polished and elegant, quietly and gracefully SOME PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 19 dignifying religion in the high places of the earth. There is the Grammar-Bishop : profound upon particles and various readings, industrious in deciphering manuscripts, proud of his store of literary curiosities, but more at home among books than men. There is the G-ladiator- Bishop : the mere party man, the pugilist of the platform, the advocate of a school, who has lost in the hot conflicts of theological battle both the power of large sympathy and the irresistible sweetness of a reasonable mind. There is the Schoolmaster-Bishop : more accustomed to command than persuade, whose chief concern is good discipline, and with whom familiarity is of the nature of offence. There is the Statesman-Bishop : the man capable of instituting reforms, wise in administration, long-sighted in suggestion, weighty in Parliament, trusted by the people. There is the Saint-Bishop : the man of deep inward piety, of sweet, lofty yearnings, not always worldly-wise, but always spread- ing around him a rich, hallowing influence. Bishop Eraser did not belong to any of these well-known and frequently recurring types of bishop. Bishop Eraser was the Citizen- Bishop: the lawn-sleeved citizen, the prince and leader in every movement of civic progress, civic elevation, civic righteousness. This was his distinguishing charac- teristic as a bishop. He was not only the Chief Church- man in Manchester — he was also Manchester's Premier Citizen. He threw himself, heart and soul, into the civic life of his diocese. Mayors and Corporations were not less interesting to him than Archdeacons and Eural Deans. He cared for well-ventilated rooms and good drainage and pure water, as well as for church-building and lay-readers and mission-women. He threw the spirit of religion into every manner of good and useful work. With him things secular were not on one side of the hedge and things sacred on the other; both were comprised in the one field of a good citizen's interest. " With Fraser," writes Professor Wilkins, " body, head, and heart were alike in the nineteenth century. He was always ready to bear his witness 2 20 BISHOP FKASEK'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. for tlie Christian faitli ; but it was almost always as bringing the only solution to those social problems which pressed upon his heart so heavily. He spoke of it as an evil hour when the Church thought itself obliged to add to or develop the simple articles of the Apostles' Creed. * Without relaxing my hold,' he said, * on what I believe to be the great truths of Christianity, I still feel that the great function of Christianity is to elevate man in his social condition.' " Bishop Eraser's ct>nspicuous devotion to the civic welfare was partly the result of natural taste and temperament, and partly the result of assiduous training. Few men have had so remarkable a preparation for the episcopate as Bishop Eraser. His was not the preparation of the schoolmaster or the college don ; of the country rector, or the metropolitan preacher; it was pre-eminently the preparation of the parliamentary commissioner. He worked upon four com- missions; each commission being associated with the question of education. In the course of his inquiries he became acquainted with the minds of men and the condition of things, both in England and America. Each succeeding commission broadened his interests in the life of the nation, and enlarged his knowledge of that life. The result of the four commissions was to thoroughly humanize and laicize his sympathies. Such work as this, done with his thorough- ness, and in his spirit, raised him to the greatness of the public-spirited citizen. As the mind of the young states- man is emancipated by travel in distant countries, and residence at foreign courts, from a too severe bondage in the fetters of political party, so, judging from the beneficent result in Bishop Eraser's case, it would seem well that the young clergyman should be set, for a while, to some layman's work, or some civic task, that his mind may be strengthened against the narrowing influences of clericalism. If Bishop Eraser's training had been purely theological, it is scarcely doubtful that his episcopate would have been both less famous and less useful. It was his knowledge of men and acquaintance with affairs, and splendour of public spirit, that made his Lancashire Life so grand and strong. He merged his distinction as a Bishop in his devotion as a Citizen. The SOME PEKSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 21 Bishop's heart was with the people, and the people's heart was toward their Bishop. In a great community like the English Church there is room and need for more than one type of bishop; but if the type created by Bishop Eraser is largely cultivated the perils besetting the English Church will be largely diminished. A candi- date for parliamentary honours, who, for some time, had been wooing a constituency in south-east Lancashire, in the interests of the Liberation Society, is reported to have relinquished all hopes of success on the ground that the Liberation programme was dead in south-east Lancashire. Being asked, " Who killed it ? " he gave the emphatic reply, " Eraser ! " But, although Bishop Eraser was a keen-spirited citizen enthusiastically interested in every department of civic life, yet he seldom engaged in the conflicts of political parties. " My complaint," he said, " against politics is their extreme unfairness — men do not give others credit for the same sincerity they nsk for themselves. Political articles in the newspapers too frequently fail to give credit for fair dealing and sincerity. I will tell you what politics properly mean. They do not mean being a Conservative or a Radical, belonging to a Liberal or a Tory club ; but they mean seeking the best interests of the nation, the greatest happiness of the greatest number, by every legitimate means. That was what political science meant when Plato and Aristotle taught it. And Christianity teaches such things as these : it teaches public spirit, patriot- ism, and obedience to the law. Above all things, it teaches men to be fair towards their opponents, and to discountenance all mean and pitiful ambitions. What does it matter who is prime minister of England so long as whoever fills that high position is seeking the best interests of the people ? I am neither a Conservative nor a Liberal ; I hardly ever gave a vote at an election in my life; but I do desire that the country shall be governed by men, come from what side of the House they may, who are trying to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Do you think Christ would say that a man who offered or took a bribe was acting in the spirit of His Gospel ? He would have spurned such a man from His presence. Christianity, if more widely diffused, would purge our political atmos^jhere, as it has purged our moral and social atmosphere." On another occasion he said : *' As I have been speaking of poHtics, I will say a word, which I have 22 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. said before in other places, about political clubs. Of course, the leaders of parties profess to rejoice at their establishment, and make grand speeches when they are opened. But knowing what political clubs have done in other constitutions, both in ancient and modern times, in the democracy of Athens and in the democracy of Paris, I cannot pretend to share the satisfaction. Of course their usefulness consists in their being a machinery to enable the wirepullers of a party to have greater command over those who follow their leaders like sheep ; but even in this aspect I doubt if they tend to develop, I will not say political moderation — for that they do not pretend to do — but even political intelligence.. And in too many instances I know — as is the case with many working men's clubs, from which I once hoped better things — they degenerate into mere haunts for a class ot loafers, who want a place where they can booze, or smoke, or bet, or play billiards ; and only at the time of a contested election is their political in- fluence, such as it is, felt or exercised at all. I cannot but regard them as hindrances, and not helps, in the way of forming the temper which I have •called * fairness of mind.' " It must be admitted that there is a better and nobler side of politics and political clubs than the side here exposed, and in an address delivered to working men at the Sheffield Church Congress, October 3rd, 1878, Bishop Fraser clearly confessed this nobler side. " Since I have been in Manchester I havp had a very difficult part to play. There is nothing that I have endeavoured to keep more clear of than party politics. But I do feel that there are great questions of political principles which it does seem to me that Christianity, if it is to touch human life at one of its most salient points, ought to concern itself, and with which I have had no scruple to meddle, whether wisely or unwisely. I felt I was in my place, as bishop, in taking a little part in the movement connected with the agricultural labourers ; and I also do not think I was moving out of my sphere when I tried, perhaps not successfully, to bring to an end, upon terms of mutual confidence and sympathy, the unhappy strike which for nine weeks last spring made so many looms and spindles in Lancashire silent. These questions surely are questions in which the clergy have a right to meddle ; but at the same time I should be extremely sorry — in fact, it has been a reproach, justly, or unjustly, levelled at the Church of England — to see the clergy of the Church of England as a body, decidedly and emphatically, political partizans. I don't think you want them to be that. I don't think that people go to church on Sundays to be indoctrinated with partizan politics. But I do think that in view of, we will say, a contested election, it is a perfectly legitimate thing for a clergyman to jflace before his people those great outlines of national duty and true SOME PERSONAL CHAEACTERISTICS. 23 patriotism which ought to make a man ashamed of selling his vote for a bribe, or giving it otherwise than according to the best of bis understand- ing, or the guidance of his conscience. That is not a question of partizan iwlitics." As in political, so also in ecclesiastical affairs, Bishop Eraser eschewed the narrowness of mere partizanship. He belonged exclusively to no single party in the Church. ** I wish you were not so Low," he laughingly said to the late Canon Bardsley. "And I wish your lordship were not so Broad," was the merry rejoinder. In the early part of his ministerial life he was chaplain and chancellor to the saintly, and High Church, Bishop Hamilton of Salisbury ; among his most intimate friends he counted the comprehensive and Broad Church Dean Stanley of Westminster; while some of his most thoroughly trusted and warmly esteemed clergy, during the period of his Episcopate, belonged to the Evangelical School. Wherever Bishop Eraser saw goodness, reverence, truth, he recog- nized and loved it. He was pre-eminently an Evangelical High Churchman with Broad Church sympathies. He ad- mired the width and progressiveness of the Broad Church leaders ; he inculcated the liturgical and reverential spirit of the High Church leaders ; he was jealous, after a godly sort, of the spirituality of temper which characterizes the Evangelical leaders. He attached himself to no single one of the three great parties of the English Church lest he should, by so doing, weaken in his own character the distinctive qualities belonging to the other two. He was, in the best and highest sense of the term, a simple Catholic Churchman ; and the result upon his diocese of his apprecia- tive catholicity was remarkable. ** When Bishop Eraser was consecrated at the cathedral," writes a Man- chester correspondent, " the minds of the clergy were largely exercised as to whether they should wear surplices or gowns. Nous avons change tout cela. There is now a united diocese. Clergy and people are one in their interest in Church matters. There are practically no Church parties in the diocese now. There are a few extreme men on both sides still among us — but they are few in number and of no practical influence. 24 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. "We are Chiirclimen now, Churchmen pure and simple without any distinguishing partizanship. All this change was the work of Bishop Fraser." . In simple, comprehensive, earnest Churchmanship, Bishop Eraser seemed to find the strongest anchor for Christianity amid the storms which are perpetually raging on every side : " I see," he said, " advancing on the one side with gigantic strides the spirit of scepticism and infidelity, and on the other side with almost equally rapid strides that gigantic system of spiritual domination of which we have the highest example in the Church of Kome, and which some, I fear, are more or less endtavouring to introduce into the Church of Englaad. In face of these great and menacing dangers, I think that Englishmen will do well to consider how far their national Church, with her historic faith, with her apostolic organization, with her simple and Ipeautiful forms of worship, with her sober, calm, and moderate mind — how far she may not be the safest meeting-ground for earnest and devout men who would gather together and present a firm and serried front ; men whose faith is grounded upon a reasonable interpretation of God's word and a rational adhesion to historic evidence ; men who desire to oppose on one side the spirit of latitudinarianism, scepticism, and infidelity, and on the other side the spirit of priestcraft, sacerdotalism, and spiritual aggression and domination. " To those who appreciate the value of a solid basis for unity — of a primitive and apostolic form of government — of the security that is given to law by freedom — of a ritual at once sober and reverent — of a liturgy breathing the very spirit of a devout and chastened piety — of a parochial §jstem which, if truly carried out, would be the perfection of an eccle- j^iastical organization — the Church of England can commetd herself on solid and sufficient grounds." As Bishop Eraser's Churchmanship was comprehensive rather than exclusive, so his theology was spiritual rather than scientific : " Christianity," he said, " has been too much elaborated into a system or a philosophy. Erudite treatises, forcible arguments may have done much in support of the faith ; but a holy life does more. Grant me a right to believe in a personal God — in a living Christ — in an indwelling Spirit — in a life of the world to come ; and, like that ship driven up and down in Adria, upon which no small tempest lay, I shall have, as it SOME PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 25 were, my four anchors cast out of the stern, while I wait for the day. As I survey the phenomena of the age, the chief fear in my mind for the future of religion is lest it should get dissevered from morality ; lest it should become a matter of dogma and ritual, that is, of opinion and senti- ment rather than a principle of conduct. It has been truly said that * Conduct is three-fourths of life.' It is the main affair. Orthodoxy is good, but morality is better." In his address to working men at the Sheffield Church Congress, Bishop Eraser said : " I just want to bring before you, as plainly as I can, what seem to me at any rate the fundamental principles of Christianity. They are very few. Men have multiplied them, no doubt; and there are those who say that there are something like seven hundred theological propositions in the thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England ; and I suppose there are a great many more than seven hundred theological propositions in the West- minster Confession ; and certainly there are in the dogmatic statements of other religious communities. When my Bible tells me that Christ came to make a simple way to heaven, in which a wayfaring man, though a fool, should not err; when we are told that He came to preach the Gospel to the poor, and that the common people heard Him gladly ; when we read the practical utterances preserved in the 5th, 6tli, and 7th chapters of St. Matthew, or even the deeper and mysterious utterances in the Upper Chamber of Jerusalem — will any one attempt to persuade me that it is necessary for any man, for the life of his soul, to subscribe to seven hundred theological propositions ? When men have lost all sense of pro- portion, sometimes that which is minutest and least important is made more of than the principle that covers and embraces all. When Paul would tell me what is the gospel I ought to preach if I would be a follower of him, he speaks of the fundamental principles of repentance towards God and faith towards Christ — matters about which no living Christian men have two opinions ; and we ought to labour to bring men back to the simplicity which is in Christ Jesus, and to the rudimentary truths which all acknowledge, though they do not obey them. I want to see Christianity more human. I want to see it deaUng less with pictures of hell and heaven ; and more with the difficulties and trials and temptations of this present life. I know very little about the world beyond the grave. I do not know as much as I wish to know about this world in which I am living and moving. I want to see Christianity a good deal more human than in these later days it has been made to be. Christianity in Christ's hands was profoundly human; profoundly sympathetic; profoundly helpful. Many other things may be uncertain, but there is one thing of which T seem to be certain. It is that moral truth is a higher thing than speculative truth ; that righteousness is a nobler and grander thing than 26 BISHOP FKASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. orthodoxy; and what we have to strive after is, if we can, and God helping us we can, to make the world happier and nobler, by making it better and purer." Yet, although Bishop Eraser was rendered averse to narrow dogmatism by the quality of his temperament, the course of his training, the nature of his interests, and the simplicity of his faith, still he had a clear and strong perception of the value of dogma both to the organization of the Church and the stability of her life. He was not an analytic, speculative. Churchman ; but he was a decidedly doctrinal Christian. He clung most tenaciously to what Scotchmen call "the fundamentals," and was ever ready to do battle on their behalf. To him the very idea of Christianity without creed appeared untenable ; a creedless Church, he thought, was amorphous, unstable, impotent. His favourite description of Christianity was a " simple, reasonable faith, having also a dogmatic basis." Preaching at Holmfirth in December, 1875, he said : "I should not set up my judgment in the matter of medicine, which I have not studied, against the judgment of a competent medical practitioner. If I were called in by a man of business to give an opinion upon the strength of materials or the best mode of carrying out a complicated piece of engineering, I should feel myself most utterly incompetent to give a judgment, and should submit my reason to those who are better informed upon the subject. In like manner, if there is such a thing as theology, if Christianity is rej)resented as a scientific form of truth, if it is not a mere floating mass of feeling and emotion, if it has a history, a development, and a * law of progress,' it is perfectly plain that everybody, well-informed and ill-informed alike, is not equally competent to pass a judgment upon matters of such momentous concern : and therefore the Church of England holds that the Church has authority in controversies of faith. I remember noticing not long ago an utterance of an eminent Nonconformist minister in my own diocese, who said that no one attending his chapel was ever called upon to utter the words * I believe ' ; in other words, every man's individual belief was a matter of his own concern, and the Church did not put before him as an historic fact that Christianity had any creed at all. Now, I think that upon that basis it is perfectly plain the result must ultimately be chaos. I think that the disintegration of Christian belief amongst us is largely due to the acceptance of this principle." SOME PERSONAL CHARACTERISTIGS. 27 In a similar strain he spoke at St. Mary's Church, Crump- sail, in April, 1876 : " It has been said that the day has gone by for creeds, that the invention of printing has sealed their doom, that they are the products of darkness and of ignorance, and that now it is only necessary to put the Scriptures into the hands of the people. But as Churchmen we feel we need a creed • — something which should put in simple language what we believe. It is not the positiveness of ignorance but the desire to have a definite standing- ground for faith that has given birth to creeds. No doubt creeds have been used as battle cries, but that is not their proper purpose. They are meant to be the bond^ of brotherhood, the seals of Christian unity, the watchwords of a common faith and a common hope, the qui va la, as it were, by which in the darkness of the night one recognizes a brother and a friend." Bishop Fraser had an immovable belief in the guiding hand of an ever-present, all-ordering Providence. In a letter dated April 24th, 1877, he says : "A very providential mercy happened to me last Friday. I was confirming at night in a church at Accrington. There have been for some time rumours — I believe ill-founded — of its stability. There were about four hundred candidates and a congregation in all of about 1500, filling the church in all parts. In the middle of the service a large piece of plaster fell from the ceiling of the gallery, and in a moment the congregation was in a panic — the women began screaming, rushing from their places, &c.f and I was afraid a serious catastrophe might ensue. Happily the clergy and the churchwardens kept cool, and in a few moments we got the people calm and in their seats again. But for the special mercy of God many lives might have been lost in wild efforts to escape. I have seldom felt more truly thankful to God." This simple-hearted faith in the all-ordering Providence of God was part of Bishop Eraser's nature — to have changed it would have been to have altogether changed the man. So, when the offer of the Bishopric was made, it found him responsibly ready, but not ambitious, to accept it. He accepted Manchester not because he desired any prominent position — he had already refused Calcutta — but because he believed it was God's will that he should take it. 28 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. *'My dear ," he said, to a clergyman who wanted his help in' getting a deanery, "do not seek any office. The responsibilities and anxieties are weighty enough if the office has come unsought. They would be overpowering, indeed, if one had gone out of his way to obtain the office." Even in his last illness it was just the same. The con- stancy of his absolute trust in the Providence of God never for a moment forsook him. Among his last words were these : " I am content either way. God knows best. I must leave it in His hands. We must wait. I am in good hands." And, as the Bishop was a firm believer in the ordering of Providence, so was he a diligent observer of the practice of prayer. He had cultivated the habit of daily prayer from very early years. When a boy at Shrewsbury, he had noticed that a schoolfellow who occupied the same room as himself was in the habit of kneeling at his bedside every night in earnest, fervent prayer. At Whitsuntide, 1884, Bishop Fraser preached a sermon to the boys in the chapel of his old school upon " The duty and privilege of prayer." As an illustration he recalled the incident of his own school- days, and told " how deep an impression the example of his own earnest, praying school-fellow had made upon him, how it had given a turn to him for good, had made a lasting im- provement in his character, and a corresponding increase in his happiness." It was of the nature of a privilege to hear him read prayers with his household ; he seemed to throw so much simplicity, pathos, childlike fervour into every sentence. When at home (and in the days of her solitude and illness he was seldom absent for a night), he always went up to his aged, deeply loved, deeply venerated mother's room to say together their evening prayer. And after- wards his daily delight was the simple morning and evening prayer read quietly with his wife. " I do so enjoy our little office together," he said. "It strengthens and refreshes me." Another characteristic mark of Bishop Fraser was his SOME PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 29 knowledge of the Bible, especially of the Pauline epistles — a knowledge which, for its fulness and accuracy, was most remarkable. " It is curious to trace," writes one correspondent, " in an old Greek Testament which the Bishop used and marked as a hoy and a young man, how his attention had been drawn to the very same lines of thought that were his delight in his maturity. The self-same texts which were his favourites when he was bishop are underlined in the Greek Testament of the schoolboy. But when one speaks of favourite texts one remembers that all texts seemed favourites. He seemed equally familiar with the whole Bible: as some one who often heard him preach remarked, *The Bishop isn't fair; he is always quoting texts that no one else even heard of.' Many a time has the Bishop said before service, * I really don't know what to preach about. I have been so knocked about from pillar to post that I have had no time to think.' And then he would go into the pulpit and preach a sermon full not only of deep spiritual thought, but also of Scriptural references, giving chapter and verse for all. Fortunately for the Church, he had had time to read and think, to lay his foundations deep, and to make his knowledge firm, before he came to Manchester. After he came to Manchester his work left him little opportunity for reading or research. What time and quiet he could secure he needed and he used for the inner life of his own soul." At the close of one of his village sermons, he exclaims : " Oh, that we would all read our Bible with more teachable hearts, with more determined will to find out what it has to say to us about our calling here, our destiny hereafter ; that we would store up \tsprecepts in our memory, to be our strength in the moment of temptation, its examples in our imagination, to be the pattern and model of our daily lives ! Do not think that having a Bible, or reading a Bible, is any good, except so far as we live by the Bible. The Bible is the rule of life as well as of faith, of what we are to do, as well as of what we are to helieveJ'* The thought of righteousness was an ever-present, ever- dominant thought in Bishop Fraser's mind ; the righteous- ness of nations, of churches, of individual men. His hostility to ritualism (for it is impossible to gainsay that he was very hostile to the most recent developments of ritualism) arose not from any lack of love for devoutness * ' Paronhial Sermons,* p. 142. 80 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. ill demeanour, and reverence in worship; nor from any slackness in realizing the great work done by the Kitualists for the promotion of this reverence and devoutness; but from the deep-rooted and fast-growing fear lest a too intense concentration of thought upon outward ceremonial should result in the peril of inattention to the culture of inward righteousness. " There is," he said, " ritualism and ritualism. Divine worship cannot be performed without some ritualism — some acts and words and postures and ceremonies. And the more these conduce to reverence, devotion, and a proper conduct of Divine Service, the more they seem to me to be after the mind of that Great Apostle who tells the disorganized Church in Corinth that all ' things done in God's house should be done decently and in order.' Ritualism means in itself nothing more than the form or rite with which a religious service is conducted. It may be a high ritualism or a low ritualism ; a histrionic ritualism or an intelhgible, pious, reverend ritualism. Any ceremonial in the act of worship which really conduces to edification is a reasonable service and a justifiable act of worship ; but any ritualism that is simply a superstition, or that is introduced for the purpose of veiling doctrines which are not the legitimate doctrines of the Church of England, is an unreasonable service, an illegitimate service, and cannot be defended by any reasonable man. ... I am quite sure that where there is true inner spiritual life it will express itself outwardly in a reverent ritual : I quite admit that an irreverent man is not really pene- trated by the spirit of worship : and that we are a long way from becoming too reverent or too devout in our worship in our churches ; . . . but, on the other hand, I am not at all equally sure that a gorgeous ceremony is a proof of, or will help to generate, that holiness without which in the ordinance of divine worship no man can really see God. There is a ritualism creeping here and there in the English Church which does seem to me a most distinctly superstitious ritualism, and as such has no place in our worship. If anything can stifle all true spirituality of soul, it must be the mechanical habit of uttering so many words, or taking part in so many acts of devotion merely as a form. Another thing we have to dread is the theory of sacerdotalism destroying or obscuring the power of true religion in the individual life or in the individual conscience : substituting body worship for spirit worship, and intruding upon the immediate com- munion which ought to exist between our souls and God. . . . There is a sad fact which we can neither hide from others nor ignore ourselves — viz., th& fact that excessive ceremonialism is often attended by moral torpor and religious decay. Can history point to a single age, from the womb of time, in which an excessive addiction to ceremonialism and the SOME PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 31 externals of religion was not accompanied by a corresponding dulness of the conscience and a proportionate deadness to the higher forms of duty?"* Bishop Fraser's attitude towards freedom of thought was very similar to his attitude towards ceremonialism in worship. As he had a reverent fondness for devout ceremonialism, so he had a profound affection for intellectual liberty. He rejoiced in every kind of freedom, but most of all in freedom of mind. He felt no jealousy of the "scientific temper." " It is the prevalence of the scientific temper," he said, " more than anything else, which has redeemed religion from superstitious corruptions. The philosophic has taught the religious inquirer the proper frame of mind in which every inquiry, if it is to have a good result, must be pursued. The philosopher has often shown more faith than the theologian in the conviction embodied in the maxim, * Magna est Veritas et prxvalebit.' He has seldom been willing to enforce his conclusions on those whom he cannot persuade. He seeks to impose no creed by mere authority. He feels that dogmas must rest upon sure, or at least probable, warrants before they can be thoroughly received. And he would be no wise man who would wish to return to the bondage of superstition in order to escape from the possible perils of scepticism. . . . The Church of Christ has been slow to claim her high prerogative as a child not of the bondwoman but of the free. She has too often been the slave of antiquity, of precedent, of stereotyped ideas. What we want in this nineteenth century is the liberty of which Paul spoke." But, as Bishop Fraser's love of religious ceremonial did not hinder him from seeing clearly the dangers attendant on it, neither did his devotion to intellectual liberty make him blind to the excesses into which this liberty occasionally runs : " Admitting and deploring the failures of the Gospel — weeping at the very thought that a thing so mighty as Christ's Gospel might have been for the regeneration of man, for the healing of the grievous sores and the sad sorrows to which humanity is liable, has been frustrated by the faint- * ' University Sermons,' p. 200. 32 BISHOP FRASEE'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. Iieartedness and half-heartedness, the lethargy, the indifference and the fashionableness of men and women — admitting all this with the sadness of shame, I yet must confess that I do not exactly see the reason why clever men should seem to find so exquisite a pleasure and so much delight in destroying high ideals. The Gospel puts before man high ideals : it tells him what he is and to what image he may hope, by patience, goodness, and hohness to attain. I can never be brought to believe that the principle of reason is contrary to the principle of faith ; or that the liberty to think is synonymous with the licence to deny." In every department of life, and thought, and action Bishop Eraser pleaded for liberty ; but it was the liberty of the good and earnest man, not the licence of the merely clever, or the disdainfully selfish man. " I hope," he said, " I am not narrow in my sympathies : but with this epicurean cynicism, cruelly mocking at life, itself secure ; abjuring every high aim in the lofty pursuit of personal comfort ; checked by no moral considerations whatever in its fro ward path of pure selfishness ; carelessly wrecking woman's honour ; wickedly shattering simple faith ; discussing the most solemn verities — at least the most solemn questions — toothpick in hand, over olives and wine ; with this unhappy, but only too legitimate, offspring of an age that has resolved religion into phrases, and God's service into a gorgeous ceremonialism, I do not feel disposed to hold either truce or terms. Christ can have no concord with Belial, nor he that belie veth with this type of infidel." * Such were some of the personal characteristics of the man whose Lancashire Life the following pages will endeavour to tell. A simple, brave, hard-working, God-fearing man ; a man full of faith, but void of superstitions ; a reverent and a righteous man ; an advocate of the utmost freedom of mind so long as the freedom was earnest and unselfish ; a lover of all things honest, beautiful, true, and of good report ; fond of exercise, horses, and the open air ; no particularist in religion, but of a piety penetrating to every detail of life ; a loyal, ardent Churchman, with a hand stretched out to every one who names the Name of Christ and departeth from iniquity ; a strong, healthy man whose eye was moistened and his heart warmed by every thought of * ' University Sermons,' p. 202. SOME PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 33 another's sadness, or sorrow, or suffering ; a Biskop inde- pendent of all party trammels, whether political or ecclesias- tical, with more thought of the duties than the dignity of his office ; a people's Bishop, understood by the people, believed in by the people, loved by the people ; a Citizen-Bishop, with an earnest devotion to the civic welfare ; a Bible-loving disciple of his Master, working in prayer, and praying in work, with a steadfast faith in the providence of God, and a keen sense of the necessity of labour; spiritual but not ascetic ; intensely devout and sagaciously practical ; a pure- minded, noble-hearted, high-souled man; a Bishop whose pleadings from the University pulpit with the under- graduates of Oxford, to gird themselves for the work of life, are evidently the echoes of his own aspirations and resolves. " There are," he said, in one of these noble appeals, " lives worth living to be lived in England ; even in this unromantic age. In country villages, in manufacturiDg towns, in the metropolis, in trade, in commerce, in the clerisy, at the bar, in Parliament, England needs as emphatically as ever men who will do — will try to do — their duty. Who will bind the red cross on his arm in a cause nobler than any old crusade, and follow Christ through all the perils and swayings of the fight, strong in the conviction that the cause of righteousness must prevail, and that there are yet powers in the Living Word of God, which, far from being exhausted, have as yet hardly been tried ? " CHAPTER II. APPOINTMENT TO MANCHESTER. Offer of Bishopric — Letters of advice— Dean Church's and other Letters- Acceptance of Bishopric — Congratulations. The offer of the Bishopric of Manchester was made by Mr. Gladstone to the Rector of Ufton Nervet in the following letter : Hawajiden Castle, January 3rcZ, 1870. Dear Mr. Fraser, — I write to place the See of Manchester at your disposal. I will not enumerate the long list of qualifications, over and D 84 BISHOP FRASEK'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. above entire devotedness to the sacred Ccalling, for which I earnestly seek in the selection of any name to submit to Her Majesty with reference to any vacant bishopric. But I must say with perfect truth that it is with reference to qualifications only that I make the present overture. As respects the particular see, it is your interest in, and mastery of, the question of public education which has led me to beheve that you might perform at Manchester, with reference to that question, a most important work for the Church and for the country. Manchester is the centre of the modern life of the country. I cannot exaggerate the importance of the see, or the weight and force of the demands it will make on the energies of a Bishop, and on his spirit of self-sacrifice. You will, I hope, not recoil from them, and I trust that strength to meet them all will be given you in abundance. Believe me, faithfully yours, W. E. G. It would be difficult to imagine, and more difficult to de- scribe, the emotions which such a letter, worded in generous terms, and charged with lifelong issues, would vividly arouse in a nature like Mr. Eraser's ; a nature simple and intense, a nature slow to accept promotion, yet still more slow to shrink from labour. Not in conventional humility, but with a profound sense both of his own un worthiness, and of the magnitude of the task set before him, Mr. Eraser begged for the grace of a week's opportunity to consider the proposal ; and to consult a few of his wisest and most trusted friends. To the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone. TJfton, January 5th, 1870. Dear Sir, — Your letter, and the utterly unexpected offer it contains, has profoundly moved me. Am I making an unreasonable request, in asking to be allowed a week to consider the answer I ought to give to it ? My first impulse was, from, a most real and unaffected consciousness of unworthiness, to decline. But probably every one to whom such an offer was made would have the same feeling at first ; and my life, as I read it, seems to have been such a succession of providences, that my second" thought was, that by refusing to enter on a wider sphere of usefulness I might be drawing back from a call. Happily I have no desire for either wealth or rank, nor any ambition beyond that of wishing to be as useful a citizen, both of the realm of England and of the Kingdom of our Lord, as I have the power to be. I quite feel all that you so justly say about the noble opportunities offered by such a diocese as Manchester. All I mistrufct is my own adequacy to them. I should therefore wish for time APPOINTMENT TO MANCHESTER. 35 to take counsel with some of my friends, who have known me longest, and by whose judgment I should like to be guided in a matter of this kind — my Provost, Dr. Hawkins, Church, Liddon, Edward Hamilton, etc., for time also to think over so important a step — important not only to my own happiness, but to the highest interests of an imperilled Church at an anxious time — calmly with my own family, and earnestly as in the sight of God. I humbly trust I shall be guided aright. At present I need say no more, than that I will not allow any merely personal con- sideration of ease, or comfort, or ambition to determine my resolve. With a deep sense of not only what is implied in your offer, but of the manner in which it has been conveyed, I beg to remain, my dear sir, yours most faithfully, James Eraser. To the Eev. James Eraser. Hawarden, January Ithj 1870. My dear Sir,^— I have received your letter, which does you so much honour in every sense, and I accede of course to your request, only adding that I am sure you will render the interval as short as you possibly can. I am, etc., etc., W. E. Gladstone. To the Rev. T. H. Tooke. IPrivate.'] Ufton, January 6th, 1870. I am in a grave perplexity, and want the honest counsel of sincere friends. Gladstone, in a most touching and generous way, has offered me the Bishopric of Manchester. On all personal grounds, I should at once shrink from such a perilous responsibility ; but second thoughts tell me that, in doing so, I might be shrinking from a call, and that personal considerations ought to be over-balanced by the claims of public duty. So I have asked for a week to consider the matter calmly as before God, and to take counsel with my friends. Without any undue or affected depreciation of my own powers, I am profoundly sensible of my inade- quacy to the work of a Bishop at the present time. The perfect conception of a Bishop is of one who can lead men, inspire and sustain work, repair breaches, reconcile differences, mitigate bitterness, help men to the solution of the problems that hold the reason, and even the conscience sometimes, in suspense. No one can be more aware o imy unfitness for the more difficult parts of such work than I am myself. But who is sufficient? At any rate, if you know any cause or just impediment — and you know me intus et in cute — don't let me take a step, which must be irrevocable ; and which may be full of the gravest consequences, not to myself merely, but to the Church of Christ; don't let me take the step unwarned. We have known one another long D 2 36 BISHOP FEASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. enough to speak the truth face to face, and I have no such hankering after rank, or wealth, or a more conspicuous station, as to desire to be placed in a post the duties of which I should be found unequal to discharge. Keep this communication in confidence till I have made up my mind, help me with your counsel, and pray for me that I may be guided to a right conclusion;" "Besides writing to his distant friends," says Judge Hughes,* "he went over to consult Sir John Mowbray," " He came directly after breakfast, with Mr. Gladstone's letter in his hand," Sir John writes, " looking as pale as a sheet. I read it, and said * You are the very man for the place.' He expressed, in very strong terms, his unfitness. I replied, * Mr. Gladstone and I seldom agree on any subject, but our coincidence on this is remarkable. If you will come into the drawing-room, and see my wife, she will tell you that I said, years ago, " if I were Prime Minister I would make Fraser a Bishop, and send him to Lancashire or the Black Country, as I think he is eminently qualified to influence such a population." ' And when, in 1867, Lord Derby made George Selwyn Bishop of Lichfield, I said to my wife, ' There is Man- chester still left for Fraser.' I pressed him most strongly to accept, and he said he would take a week to consult Church, Liddon, and others." The two following letters, typical of many others, show the nature of the advice which Mr. Eraser received. The Yery Kev. Dr. Church wrote : My dear Eraser, — I must begin by sayino; that I am very glad, and that I am not surprised, that Gladstone should have made the ofier. I will say next that I am not surprised either that you should hesitate. The time is critical and dark ; and men ought not lightly to be accused of shrinking from responsibilities, if they feel the burden too much for them. I think there may be as much courage shown in resisting the opinion of too kind friends as in undertaking what one dreads. And now, as you have asked me, I will venture to submit why I should wish to see you accept the charge. (1) I think you have the great qualification of having seen and known many men and many ways ; and with this wide experience, much wider than that of most men, you have joined an independence and moderation of judgment which has made that experience fruitful. (2) Next, I think you would be a generous, fair, sympathizino:,- warm-hearted Bishop, having your own opinions, and courageous in speaking out, but able to allow for much that you do not perhaps like, and to make people feel that you understand them, even when you have Memoir of Eraser,' pp. 186, 187. APPOINTMENT TO MANCHESTER. 37 to go against them or check them. (3) You have power of work, and power of saying what you want to say, which all men have not. (4) You have had an example, both of what a Bishop ought to be, and of what a Bishop ought to guard against, in the good and single-hearted man with whom you were so closely connected at Salisbury ; and it seems to me a great thing for a man to have had such a lesson, and to have studied it with deep sympathy and admiration, yet with a judgment of his own. For these reasons, I hope earnestly that the Church may be able to have your services. The Key. Canon Liddon wrote : My deab Eraser, — I hope that you will see your way to accepting the Bishopric of Manchester. In saying this, I do not lose sight of the differences to which you allude in so kind a way, and of which perhaps, from the intellectual necessities of the case, I am obliged to take a more serious view than you do. They do not, however, oblige me to close my eyes to the predominating reasons which I have for wishing to see you at Manchester. On moral and social grounds (I mean the moral and social interests of religion), I should hail your going to Manchester with downright enthusiasm. I would rather see you there, I think, than any man whom I know. There must be plenty of latent heart in that vast population to be enlisted on the side of God, which nobody, as yet, has attempted to touch. And your moral force, your business* habits, your sympathy with popular life and popular interests — not least your command of the Education Question, are very strong reasons, as it seems to me, for your being in your right place there. I hope you will accept the Bishopric^ because your doing so would be, I believe, under our existing circumstances, a real blessing to the Church of England. Pressed upon all sides, and with a large variety of reasons, Mr. Fraser wrote (though, as will afterwards appear, reluctantly and with a heavy heart) to Mr. Gladstone the following letter, definitely accepting the appointment : Upton, January 8, 1870. My Dear Sir, — There is no advantage in prolonging unnecessarily a period of suspense, and it will be even a relief to me, as well as an act of due consideration to yourself, to apprise you of my resolve, as soon as formed. I consulted nine of my most valued friends, upon the soundness of whose judgment I thought I could rely, with reference to this solemn trust you have offered me, and I have yesterday, and to-day, received answers from them all. Though men of very different views and positions, they unite in telling me that I ought not to shrink from the responsi- bilities even of such a bishopric as Manchester; and encourage me to 38 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. believe, that, with the good hand of mj God upon me, I may be found not unequal to its charge. And so, although I cannot quell the throbs and misgivings of my own heart, I seem to have no alternative but to accept the trust you are willing to commit to me. It will be my desire, if called upon to administer this great diocese, to do so in a firm and inde- pendent, but at the same time generous and sympathizing spirit. I never was, and never could be, a partizan. Even when seeing my way most clearly, I am always inclined to give credit to others, whose views may be different from my own, for equal clearness of vision, certainly for equal honesty of purpose. As little of a dogmatist as it is possible to be, I yet see the use, and indeed the necessity, of dogma ; but I have always wished to narrow, rather than to extend, its field ; because, the less peremptorily articles of faith are imposed or defined, the more hope there is of eliciting agreements rather than differences. Especially have I been anxious to see the Church adapt herself more genially and trustfully to the intellectual aspirations of the age, not standing aloof, in a timorous or hostile attitude, from the spirit of scientific inquiry, but rather endeavour- ing (as in her functions), to temper its ardour, with the spirit of reverence and godly fear. And finally, my great desire will be, without disguising my own opinions, or wishing one set of minds to understand me in one sense, and another in the opposite, to throw myself on the heart of the whole diocese, of the laity as well as of the clergy, of those who diff"er from the Church as well as those who conform to her. I have a high ideal of what a Bishop of the Church of England ought to be — an ideal which, for fifteen years of my life, it was my happy privilege to see very nearly realized ; and, though I am never likely to attain to it, I can at least keep it steadily before my eyes, and reach after it. If after this frank statement of what I desire to be, you still think me qualified for the administration of such a diocese, and as the adviser of the Crown to recommend me to Her Majesty, I shall be prepared, though not without deep anxiety, to undertake the ofiice, and will endeavour, by the help of God, to do my duty. In the event of my promotion, the next presentation to the living which I now hold (which is in the patronage of Oriel College) will, of course pass, to the Crown. I shall be glad to communicate any particulars respecting it which may be desired. I may briefly say here, that few livings can unite in themselves greater advantages. With a deep sense of the motives which you say have led you to single me out for this appointment, and a humble hope that I may not disappoint your expecta- tions, I remain yours most faithfully, James Fraseb. Mr. Gladstone replied : Hawarden, January 10, 1870. Dear Mr. Eraser, — I have received your letter, and read it with sympathy and admiration. Your appointment is settled as far as Her APPOINTMENT TO MANCHESTEK. 39 Majesty is concerned, and the steps will now be taken for the conge-d'elire. Should you be in town after the 20th or 21st, I shall be happy to see you, although the transaction between us as one of mere business is concluded. Believe me, sincerely yours, w. E. a. In due course the appointment was publicly announced through the authorized channels ; and letters of congratula- tion poured in upon Mr. Fraser with a flood. The Dean of Westminster (Dr. Stanley), wrote : "I am delighted to hear you have accepted Manchester. I have always, desired to see you a Bishop, and, in some respects, Manchester is most suitable to you ; and it would have been very difficult to have found any one more suitable for Manchester. It is a splendid field, in one sense, the most splendid of all the bishoprics, because it contains within itself more of the germs of the future. Pray do not take, or, at least, indulge a desponding view. I consider the total collapse of the opposition to Temple (out of *20,000 clergy and 25,000,000 of laity a petition signed by 1500) and the enthusiastic reception which he has met at Exeter, a proof both of the superiority of the mass of the clergy and their party leaders, and also of the thorough appreciation of real worth in a bishop by the public at large. There are great dangers, no doubt, but these are very much increased by the dismal forebodings of those who ought to encourage and cheer as friends. I do indeed wish and pray all blessings for you, — above all, that you may still retain your power of speaking out your own mind and of acting independently of your order— and, therefore, in its highest interest. The only drawback, to ray mind, is that you will not be in the southern convocation." Bishop Temple (newly appointed to the see of Exeter) wrote : " I cannot help writing a line of most warm welcome to you on your entrance into the Episcopal Body. Gladstone could not have made a better choice, and I am sure that you will be most useful, and give all parties the greatest satisfaction. No one will call you a heretic 1 " Lord Lingen wrote : " I congratulate you very sincerely. Manchester lies on one of the outer orbits of life, and passes through much more space in the same time than Ufton Nervet. The change has something about it far more desir- able than pleasure. The greatest results have been achieved by men who bring body and mind unbroken from comparative quiet to the front rank of affairs at a time of life which implies experience, but not decay. All 40 BISHOP FRASEE'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. the reading, all the thinking, all honest application (down to the minutest detail) is so much action in posse, ready to be energized when the call comes. I shall perhaps see you a sadder man, if we both live ten years longer, but I shall be much out in my reckoning if I don't see you a man who has made his mark upon his time. No man is better able to take things as he finds them ; but you are now in a position where this great element of success co-exists with the responsibility of being one of the foremost not only to wish them, but to make them, better. I hope you won't think this too little of a cheery letter. I really feel very cheery about you. But going to the wars is never all laughter on the part of the soldier's friends." Professor Bryce wrote : " Will you let me congratulate you most heartily on the nomination to the See of Manchester ? It is what your friends have been looking for for some time and hoping for, not more because it will give you a worthy sphere of activity than for the sake of the Church of England herself. Knowing Lancashire pretty well, and knowing how much is to be done there for education in particular which you will enjoy doing, I am especially glad that it is to the diocese of Manchester you are going, the rather too as I may hope oftener to see you there than one could hope for in other parts of England." The Venerable Archdeacon Norris wrote : "I rejoice unfeignedly to see that you go to Manchester — ^knowing Manchester well and that North Country, belonging to Cheshire and Lancashire narpoBev and firjrpodev. There is in Lancashire an immense amount of real good honest Churchmanship which has never been properly developed. May God help you to carry it home to them that the Church of England inherits simply the traditions of the * Acts of the Apostles,' and knows no other Churchmanship, and you will rally them round you as one man ! " It must have been a source of great encouragement and strength to Mr. Fraser to receive the multitude of letters, of which those quoted are only a very small and typical selec- tion. He alone seems to have been doubtful and fearful ; all his friends were bright and confident. The idea of becoming a bishop was not new to him. Ten years pre- viously he had refused the Metropolitan See of Calcutta. His friends had often talked to him of the probability of his elevation to the English Episcopate. He had been " very APPOINTMENT TO MANCHESTEE. 41 near " Oxford. When Salisbury and Exeter were vacant he was thought, by a large number of persons, to be " the very man " for those dioceses. And probably, had one of these southern sees been offered him, he would have felt less Hesitation in accepting it. For although Mr. Eraser had '*seen and known many men and many ways "; had been upon four occasions a Koyal Commissioner ; had contri- buted, perhaps, as much as any single man in England to form public opinion upon the great question of National Education ; yet he was essentially a man of southern England. All his clerical life had been spent in the Dioceses of Oxford and Salisbury. He was, by taste and preference, a country parson. More than once he had been pressed to undertake a London parish ; but he seemed to have a strong and deep shrinking from the hurry and bustle, the smoke and streets, of large and crowded towns. He was never a man of the cloister or the cell, but all his life he had been a lover of the meadow and the village. Left to himself, Manchester is probably one of the very last places he would have chosen spontaneously as his sphere of work. But " There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Eough-hew them how we will." Bishop Eraser had a firm and tenacious faith in this ever- guiding, ever-ruling providence of God. In a speech at Bacup, 1870, he said : " I have come to Manchester, trusting simply to this, that I am following a call of Providence, and that the same strength which has sufficed me in the past will suffice me in the future." " Bishop Eraser," writes the Rev. James Lonsdale, " stayed a few days at my house after he had accepted the Bishopric of Manchester. His having been nominated to be Bishop had not made the least difference in his simple and friendly nature, except that he appeared to be at times somewhat depressed by the thought of what by the advice of various friends he had undertaken. There was in him a contending Nolo and Volo : a Nolo for the dignity and appendages of a bishopric, a Yolo for the enlarged means it might give of doing good. One thing I remember his saying was, ^ I do hope that I shall always he straightforward J " 42 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. At the closing meeting of the Manchester Missionary Exhibition (which was the occasion of Mr. Eraser's first public appearance in Manchester), January 11, 1870, he spoke of his appointment in the following terms : " I am not at all familiar with platforms, nor am I in the habit of addressing crowded audiences. I have always lived in a little quiet country parish, and nothing was further from my hopes, I may unaffectedly and honestly say, and nothing further from my desires, than to be made a Bishop of the Church of England in these troublous times. I shrink from the possibility of failure. But the whole course of my life has been a succession of providences. Whatever I have been and whatever places I have filled have been given to me, and I have never once gone in search of them. The call, to become Bishop of this diocese came to me on a Monday morning, as I took up my letters from the breakfast table, having no idea of the contents of any one of them ; but I saw in the corner of one letter the name of the Premier, and that the letter was * to be forwarded.' A sort of presentiment told me what the letter contained, and on opening it I found that it contained the offer of the Bishopric of Manchester. I can only say that, if there is any one who doubts the perfect loyalty and allegiance of the great statesman who is now directing the destinies of this country to the true interests of the Church of England, I can only wish that such person could have read the letter in which Mr. Gladstone com- municated the offer of the See of Manchester to me. I asked Mr. Gladstone to allow me a week to consider the offer, telling him that my first impulse was at once to decline it ; but that, as I felt I might by declining the offer be drawing back from a call to a position of more usefulness, I woultl take counsel with my most trusted friends and be guided by the advice they gave me. Not one of those friends gave me so much as an excuse for drawing back, and so here I am, coming to the work in fear and much trembling, but hoping that I may be sustained in my efforts to promote the glory of God and the welfare of His Church. I feel sure that I shall receive a warm welcome from the warm-hearted people of Lancashire, and I trust that during my episcopate, whether it be long or short, though I may make, and am certain to make, some mistakes, you will give me credit for honest purposes and straightforward motives, and will construe my failures leniently, and give me good advice, which will be always welcome, to show me the course on which I ought to go." These simple words, simply spoken, together with his manly bearing and open countenance, at once drew to him the heart of Manchester, and prepared the way for the work which he was destined to accomplish in his Lancashire Life. ( 43 ) CHAPTEK III. AREIVAL IN MANCHESTER. Consecration — First Sermon — His Preaching — Pulpit and Press — Mauldeth Hall — His Mother's Diary. " I SHALL be glad when the present transition state is over ; for work is bracing ; and when the mind is occupied, it has not leisure to be moody." Bishop Eraser's words in this instance, as in many others, are a clear mirror of Bishop Eraser's self. He had immense power of work ; to him work was bracing ; he gloried in work. As a boy he had been a great worker ; as a country parson he worked harder still ; as a Bishop he worked hardest of all. In a speech at Bacup, 1870, he said : "I have always felt great pleasure in working. I have never lived the life of an idle man. Even in my small Berkshire country parish I found I had abundant opportunities for the exercise of all the talents which God had given me. The only fear-I had about myself in Lancashire was that I should be found wanting perhaps in some of those qualities of judgment and discretion — for my nature is somewhat apt to be impulsive — which I feel are emphatically required in any one that pretends to be a leader of the people." On another occasion he said : "When I left my Berkshire parish, the other day, with only 370 people living in it, how did I leave it in respect of education ? I left it with seventy children at the day school, and an average daily attendance of more than sixty ; and I had twenty-five agricultural clodhoppers, as they are called, coming to me three nights a week, making themselves smart and tidy, and walking, perhaps, two miles to the school after a hard day's work following the plough over miry fields." Work kept him cheery. In his leisure moments he was inclined to be pensive, and occasionally despondent ; but in harness, and pulling hard, he was spirited, almost prancing. Wherever he went every one recognized and honoured his love of work. He possessed many fine qualities which 44 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. especially endeared him to the working classes ; not least of these qualities was this hearty, happy devotion to work. Critics called him " the talking Bishop " ; the masses called him " our working Bishop." But, like many ardent workers, Mr. Fraser was some- what impatient of waiting. The more he loved work, the less he loved waiting; suspense and transition were a burdensome load to his impetuous nature. It was, there- fore, with a sense of relief, not unmingled with solemnity, that he saw the dawn of the day of his consecration, Friday, March 25, 1870. The assemblage in " Th' Owd Church," as the Manchester Cathedral is affectionately termed by the Manchester people, was enormous; many persons being grievously disappointed that there was no corner left into which they could squeeze themselves. The consecrating prelates were Dr. Thomson, the Arch- bishop of York, Dr. Jacobson, the Bishop of Chester, and Dr. Bickersteth, the Bishop of Kipon. The Mayor of Man- chester (Mr. John Grave), Alderman Nicholls, and the Town Clerk (Sir Joseph Heron), represented the City Council and sat in the Corporation pew ; the clergy completely tilled the chancel ; and the nave was thronged with representatives of every class of the general public. The sermon was preached by the Eev. Professor Lonsdale, from St. Luke 1. 33 : " He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever ; and of His kingdom there shall be no end.'' It is narrated by several witnesses that during the entire service the new Bishop seemed wrapt in deep, calm thought, but that the calm was occasionally broken by an intense, quivering expression of responsibility which burst across his face and compelled the tears down his cheek. One who was present at his consecration writes that the clear and decided utterance of the Bishop's answers in the Ordinal will remain with him to his dying day, as will also the manifest fervour with which he, in each answer, implied his strong and firm reliance on the Divine assistance, " The Lord being my helper," '' So help me God." ARRIVAL IN MANCHESTER. 45 On the following Sunday (quietly without any public announcement), the Bishop preached his inaugural sermon at the cathedral from St. John xiv. verses 1-7, in which the following noteworthy passages occur. The passages are given at length, because they strike the key-note of Dr. Eraser's Lancashire Life; his manly simplicity, his all-enfolding sympathy, his robustness in religion, his deep spirituality. " The Gospel of Christ has been the fullest and final revelation of God's will and purposes towards the creatures of His hands. In the Gospel of Christ has been made known the fullest revelation of the righteousness of God and of that eternal principle upon which He administers the moral government of the world. In the Gospel of Christ has been made known the fullest revelation of man's duty and man's destiny. The Gospel of Christ has been a source of calm and peace in a world of unrest and disturbance — a spring of steadfastness amid perpetual change, a stream of joy that brightens and lightens up the darkest hours to strangers and pilgrims and weary wanderers, and reveals to them what the Lord Jesus calls in the text * the mansions ; ' that is a rest and home. The world is a world of unrest, anxiety, and change. Watch those crowded streets of yours and the multitudes of those who traverse them ; mark their faces as they hurry to and fro, the men of business and the hard-handed sons of toil ; notice the lines on their faces as they reach to manhood — lines that have been drawn by care and labour, lines telling us that they want the feeling — the feeling of the blessedness of rest. And so the Gospel em- phatically was preached to the poor ; to those whose lot in life was hard ; to those who knew most what that unrest means — short hurried sleep, broken rest, scanty meals, and the pinches of poverty ; those to whom, if their hearts have not grown callous and insensible, the message of rest, remaining for the people of God, must be most dear. Also the Gospel is preached as a message of rest to the sinner. Yes, to him who has tres- passed against his brother and against his God, not seven times only but it may be seventy times seven. Christ is not weary of calling even though we have grown weary of hearing ; Christ still searches where the wearied are to be found ; Christ still knocks at the door often, though we are slow to open it. He came to call sinners to repentance ; theirs is the painfullest unrest of all. There is no trouble so great as that of a broken heart lying crushed and bruised under the burden of sin, and no joy so great as that which hears and obeys the invitation, ' Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.' Yes, rest, even here in this world of sin and strife ; and rest, in all its fulness and completeness, there where strife and sin have passed away. Do not suppose, dear friends, that this rest in Christ and Christ's Gospel, either here or there, 46 BISHOP FKASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. is identical with sloth. Little as we know of that life in the world to come, and in wHich we profess to believe, if it be life, if it be not lethargy, it must be activity, and it probably will be progress. Here in this world we are expressly told that we are to labour to enter into God's rest. The worst of all forms of unbelief into which a man can fall, to my mind — worse far than any mere speculative doubt, for which, perhaps, many an excuse can be found — is the unbelief expressed by an idle, unprofitable, and wasted life — a life which has added nothing to God's glory, and contributed nothing to the furtherance of any of the high interests of man. It is what 1 venture to call practical atheism, an abnegation of all duty to the Supreme Governor of the world. Of all the doctrines of devils, none seems to me so earthly, so sensual, so devilish as that which teaches that a man can do just as he wills with his own, and live as best pleaseth himself in this present world. Against such an atheistic theory of life the life of the Lord Jesus is a most emphatic protest. That life is, and ever must be, an ideal of human life, rising into and mingling itself wdth the Divine. And, so that we may lead this higher life and realize its blessedness, the apostle tells us that we must believe in God, and in that Son and His love. He is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life ; no man cometh to the Father but by Him ; or, as St. Paul changes it into his own phrase, * We are complete in Him, and by Him we have all access, through One Spirit, to the Father.' And to this Jesus, the Saviour of God's people from sin and from the power of sin, as well as from the consequences of sin, I love to think there are many w^ays. Some come to Him in a faith that may be called their own; some are brought by others, and let down as it were from the roof where He is teaching ; some humbly come behind and touch the border of His garment and are made whole ; some, bolder in faith, but not always with like success, venture to go out to the ship and meet His approaching form on the waters ; to some He comes uninvited, to others He is almost an unwelcome guest ; some He calls, and some, at first. He seems almost to repel ; some He humbles by rebukes, as Peter once was humbled ; and others He lifts up by encour- agement, as Peter again was lifted up ; some find Him most readily in the duties of active life, as Martha did ; some like Mary at Bethlehem, sitting at His feet ; some like the disciples, when they withdrew themselves from the crowd, and spent the night on the lone mountain in prayer ; some, when there are two or three together in a little congregation, and He in the midst of them ; and to some He makes Himself only truly known in the breaking of bread. But what matter how we come, or in what company — though in some companies we may find Him more likely than in others — so long as we do come, and so long as we find Him ? Yes, it is my unshaken belief that He wdll be found by all who seek for Him earnestly. Let us not lay down peremptorily exclusive narrow landmarks. Better allow something for human infirmity, human differences, human pecu- liarities, human freedom ; better urge all to seek than attempt to define ABRIVAL IN MANCHESTER. 47 beforehand the precise mode, time, or place in which they can find Him. In God's home are many resting-places. In the great tower of Babylon the sightseers mounted from terrace to terrace by flights of stairs, and there were many sitting-places ; so, even in the great flight of stairs by which we have to ascend to heaven, there may be resting-places at lower levels for those who fail to attain the highest summits of possible happi- ness. Christ is preparing a place for us ; and more than that, and better than that. He is preparing us for the place. He is not only the Way, but the Truth and the Life. Not only where He is there will His servants be, but they are to be like Him. Even the body of humiliation which we bear with us now shall yet be fashioned like unto His glorious body by His mighty and regenerative power. He assumes that we know the way. We may know the way without knowing the precise whither. If I see, for instance, a finger-post pointing to Manchester, I may travel on securely in that direction though I may never yet have seen Manchester or pictured to myself what manner of city it is. In God's providence there are direction posts set up at all uncertain turnings and by-paths, so that only a blind or careless traveller can miss the road. With his face — as his Master's face was once set — steadfastly towards Jerusalem, the traveller may travel securely on. And, should you ever be in doubt for a moment as to your road, look, I pray you, whether you cannot see, somewhere close by you, under your very feet almost — certainly within range of your eye — footprints that look like the footprints of Jesus — some trail that seems as if the Cross had been borne along the road, through the gateway, up the rising hill ; or if you fail to discern these — though, if you look for them, you will not fail to discern them — still if, in your blindness, you fail to discern these, see whether in God's providence there be not about you, almost within hand's-reach, some of tliose who have companied with Jesus, who wear His livery, who belong to His household — the household of faith — who call themselves by His name, and if such you find, inquire of them. Personal influence and the power of a good example are in my judgment the most potent instruments which the Holy Spirit most commonly uses for the salvation of souls. I love to think of Andrew bringing his brother Peter, and of Philip conducting his friend and com- panions, to the Messiah, the Jesus whom they found. According to the words of Paul, which sank deep into my ears last Friday, to help to save those who hear them is the very work of Christian bishops and Christian ministers. And this, my friends, is the work that I desire to the utmost of my poor ability to do. I never sought this high office to which I have been called. But yet I have accepted it — accepted it with a profound sense of all its perilous responsibilities and of my own manifold insuffi- ciencies. Yet, as I have always found my happiness hitherto in an honest attempt to discharge my duty as a minister of Christ's Gospel, so I trust it may be still. 1 have been deeply touched by, and feel profoundly grateful for the warmth of the kindness, the generosity, and the confi- 48 BISHOP FBASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. dence with which, as yet, I have been received. I humbly hope I may not prove undeserving of all this. Specially do I desire to keep ever printed in my memory that picture of a Christian Bishop which Paul has drawn : A servant of the Lord must be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those who oppose themselves, avoiding foolish questions which engender strife, following with all them that call on the Lord Jesus out of a pure heart, righteousness, faith, and charity and peace. I desire to be a Bishop in the old Pauline and not in the pontifical sense — ' a true servant of the Son of God.' Let me in these my first days — days of inexperience — be often remembered in your prayers." Thus spake, for the first time in a Manchester church, the voice which was destined soon to send forth its utterances, with responsive echo, not through the churches only, but through the assembly halls, the exchange rooms, the clubs, the workshops, the mills, the homes of Lancashire. It is sometimes said that Bishop Eraser " did not know how to preach ; that his sermons were speeches, and his preaching was lecturing ; that to him the pulpit was what the platform is to other men." Doubtless the Bishop's temptation, as a preacher, lay in the direction thus indicated ; and, as his episcopate proceeded, the temptation was increased by the deepening pressure upon his time, which left less and less opportunity for preparation. But the accounts of his sermons which appeared, some- times daily, in the public press, give an entirely erroneous impression of the true character of his preaching, and through no fault of the public press. As a rule, and not including that portion of the press avowedly religious, the daily press of England does not report sermons at all. And one reason why the press takes so little note of the pulpit is, because the pulpit fails to occupy, as it should, the region of the present life which belongs to itself in common with the press, and confines its utterances too exclusively to other-worldliness. In Bishop Eraser, however, the press soon discovered a preacher who did not ignore the message of Christianity to this present life ; a preacher whose sermons, in some part of them, pursued a path in which the press could follow — the path which is common to both ARBIVAL IN MANCHESTER. 49 civilization and Christianity — or, rather, the path which Christianity has, of itself, prepared for civilization. In every sermon of Bishop Eraser's there were portions relating either to Scriptural exegesis, or distinctive dogma, or per- sonal religion, or eternal hope, or the judgment to come ; but there were portions also directly bearing upon social manners, or civic duties, or economic problems, or ecclesias- tical interests, or national righteousness. "I remembetV writes Dean Maclare, "his asking me one Whit Sunday what he should preach about. I said, ' I want you to preach a sermon.^ * Of course,' he said, * I have come for that.' I rephed, * You do not always preach ; we want nothing about cotton sizeing,' &c. He asked for pen and paper, and went into my study, afterwards producing a most powerful sermon on the work of the Holy Spirit, the subject I had suggested. Characteristically enough, at the end of it he went off into a little aside in some practical references to a passing event, and this latter, not anything in the sermon itself, appeared in the morning's newspaper." The newspaper reports of his sermons were often intro- duced with some such sentence as this : " The early part of the Bishop's sermon was of a purely religious description, but, towards the conclusion of his remarks, he said . . .'* Then follows the account of those portions of the sermon which were eagerly seized upon by the press, because they dealt with topics common to both the preacher and the press. Such utterances were recorded, printed, circulated in the columns of dozens of newspapers. They were the message of the Church to the world ; and the world read them, quoted them, was grateful and better for them. But the other portions of the sermon — the sermon proper as some may think — the sermon on its spiritual side, the daily press naturally omitted to record. These portions lay outside its proper scope and region. None the less were they the pith and marrow of the sermon; and the multitudes who flocked, and flocked in ever-growing numbers, to hear Bishop Eraser preach, would soon have turned aside from him if his sermons had consisted solely of the portions recorded in the daily press. People do not E 50 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. go to church to hear the same utterances which they take up the newspapers to read. Their attitude towards the pulpit and the press is different. Both pulpit and press are agents of incalculable influence ; the modern world can dispense with neither ; but, as the pressman would fail who spoke only as a preacher, so the preacher would fail who spoke only as a pressman. That Bishop Eraser's power as a preacher continued, and increased, to the very end of his life, is in itself a proof that His preaching touched chords in human nature, aroused apprehensions and kindled aspirations, which belong to the dominion of the pulpit alone. There was something in the very face of Bishop Fraser — a sweet sadness ; a clouded, yet intense, hopefulness ; a gentle severity ; a chastened affection ; a brave sympathy ; a calm joy ; a spiritualized sagacity ; a tender manliness, which won the listener's heart. " It is as good as a sermon to look at him," was a common expression. His look was always eloquent, even when his utterances were ordinary. " I always liked to see the Bishop," writes the Kev. K. Judson, " when he was preaching. There was something in his eye which had quite a remarkable power over me. I feel unable to describe it, but its influence was a very holy one." He seldom had leisure to play the orator ; but he never failed to be the plain-speaking man. To the multitude his plainness of speech was a great attraction. "I can't understand our curate," said a church-going artizan in Manchester ; " his sermons are too learned for me ; but I can always understand the Bishop, he preaches plain." But prayer was a greater power with him than plainness of speech. " Let me be often remembered in your prayers," was the first and chief favour he begged from his diocese ; for " to help to save those who hear them is the very work of Christian bishops." But while Bishop Fraser was entreating his diocese for their prayers, and proclaiming that " the very work of a Christian bishop is to help to save those who hear him," thus showing forth the spiritual side of his character, he ARRIVAL IN MANCHESTER. 51 was also "setting his house in order," and corresponding with his registrar and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, about selling Mauldeth Ilall (the palace of his predecessor, five miles from Manchester) and obtaining a residence within easy reach of the centre of his work, and accessible to his clergy everywhere, thus showing forth the practical and common-sense side of his character. On May 25, 1871, the Bishop wrote to the Eev. W. H. Parker : — " I hear of no purchaser of Mauldeth, and I am afraid that I shall have to take up my residence there next year. How I shall get on in that big place without a wife, I don't know ; and I have no time to look out for one. The gossiping world some time ago gave me away to a lady whom at that time I had never seen ! " Again, on June 6, 1872 : — " I am getting anxious about my house at Manchester. If I cannot sell Mauldeth this summer I mean to resign the see, as I cannot live there and work the diocese, nor can I afford to have on my hands a big house like that, unoccupied, and with the responsibility of repairs resting upon me. My mother and aunt, I am happy to say, are very fairly well for two old ladies of 79 and 82." At length, however, a purchaser for Mauldeth Hall appeared in the person of Mr. W. Romaine Callender ; and Broughton House, afterwards called Bishop's Court, was purchased. There the Bishop took up his abode on December 18, 1872, having resided since April, 1870, at KSt. Luke's Rectory, Cheetham Hill, which he had obtained, at a yearly rent, through the kindness of the Rev. J; Chippendall, M.A. Bishop's Court is a convenient roomy dwelling, with about three acres of garden, upon the slope looking west- ward from Broughton across the valley of the Irwell on to the not unpleasing prospect of Kersal Moor, and the opposite heights of Pendlebury ; and is situate within two miles of the central parts of Manchester upon the Bury New Road — the tramcars passing the gates every seven minutes, thus enabling the Bishop and his clergy to be in E 2 52 BISHOP FRASEB'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. easy and constant communication with each other. Some additions were made to the house, with the intention of rendering it more appropriate and more serviceable for the special requirements of a Bishop's residence ; the chief of these additions being the private chapel — the windows in the apse being given by the Dean and Chapter — with a room underneath for the examination of candidates for ordination. Upon their first arrival in Manchester, the Bishop, with his " dear old ladies " (as he fondly called his mother and aunt), had felt keenly the greatness of the change from their quiet life in the country to the rushing life of the city. " I was never meant to be a Bishop in a town like this," said the Bishop to an old schoolfellow ; " I am at heart a country parson." " The ladies, my Lord," said another, " will feel it a great change to come from the quiet country side to this busy, bustling place." " Yes," replied the Bishop, " they feel it very much. They came last night, and we all had a good cry over ^Y." The following extracts from the diary of Bishop Eraser's mother, for the year 1870, may fitly close this chapter. Wednesday, Jan. 5, 1870. — Dearest James has charming letter from Mr. Gladstone offering him in most handsome way the Bishopric of Manchester. James begs in reply a week's reflection ere he decide : he writes to several tried friends on subject of his fitness. J. B. H. is delighted; but it has cast a sad gloom on dear James's bright face, of anxiety and responsibility of the sacred charge. Dear James writes to ask many of his old tried friends and advisers who know him well whether they think him qualified for so important a diocese. Thursday, Jan. 6. — James receives some beautiful replies to his letters, all telling him that he is not only fit for the sacred ofiice, but that duty earnestly " calls," and he cannot refuse the " call." James has night school. Saturday, Jan. 8. — James has a great many most interesting letters in reply to his enquiries, one and all in the same tone urging him to accept the bishopric as a duty to God and the Church : Providence still bidding him on to a higher sphere in His service. He writes Mr. Gladstone to- night a beautiful letter accepting. Saturday, Jan. 22. — Dear James returns very low in spirits from his visit to Manchester, feaiing he's made a sad mistake in accepting bishopric, AT WORK; MANCHESTER MISSION. 53 which makes us feel very sad and low to see him. He had kind welcome and reception at Manchester, but could not endure Mauldeth Hall Palace, and would not live there ! Sunday, Jan. 23. — After tea James seems again disturbed at the thought of his position ; can't throw it off his mind, fearing he has made a great mistake, but recovers a little after talking it over. Tuesday, Jan. 25. — James returns safely, rather more cheered: sees Mr. Gladstone, who tells him " John Bright was pleased with his appoint- ment " : had his photo taken in Baker Street, and seemed tired to death fagging about London. A bad cold to boot. Friday, March 25. — Our beloved James consecrated at Manchester Cathedral. Tuesday, March 29. — Letter from A. B. telling how dear James had won all hearts at Manchester, and what a magnificent sermon he gave in the cathedral on Sunday morning. Tuesday, April 19. — Arrive at St. Luke's Parsonage with all our things. Most miserable first evening. Find James well, but very low and uncomfortable. CHAPTEE IV. AT WORK: MANCHESTER MISSION. Introduction — Organization of Diocese — Summary of Work — Description of Diocese — The Mission — Letter — Medical Students — Railway Employes — Cab-Drivers — Slaughtermen — Theatre Employes — Bishop's Address in the Theatres— Baroness Burdett Coutts's Letter — Private Theatricals — Letters to the Bishop — The Bishop's Letter on Theatres— Conclusion of Mission. In some great lives the man makes his opportunity; in others, the opportunity brings out the man. Occasionally both the opportunity and the man appear so to combine that each makes the other greater and more fruitful than either could have been singly of itself; the man magnifies the opportunity, and the opportunity magnifies the man. This was eminently the case with Bishop Eraser and Man- chester. His Lancashire Life is an illustrious instance of the man splendidly developed by his opportunity, and of the opportunity splendidly developed by the man. If 54 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. Bishop Eraser was just the man for Manchester, so. also Manchester was just the sphere for Bishop Eraser. If no other bishop could have better suited Manchester, neither could any other diocese have better suited the Bishop. He had been, as one correspondent puts it, " within an ace " of the Bishoprics of Exeter, Salisbury, and Oxford. Had his lot fallen upon any of these three dioceses, it is almost certain that both the character and the measure of his influence would have been entirely different, and, probably, enormously less. The man himself would, of course, have remained the same in all essential points and qualities. He would, in himself, have been just as simple and industrious, as truth-loving and outspoken, as sympathetic and catholic in any of these dioceses as he was at Manchester ; but, probably, in none of them would these qualities have found so free and large a scope as they found in Manchester. The character of the diocese is varied in its several parts — but its dominating feature is business; and the bulk of its population is gathered in towns. So extraordinary has been its commercial prosperity, and the corresponding growth of its population — chiefly congregated in mining districts and manufacturing centres — that, in the forty years of the existence of the diocese (1847-1887) the number of its inhabitants has increased by more than a million. The population of the city of Manchester, and its neighbour- hood, during the episcopate of Bishop Eraser, was as large as the population of the whole diocese at the commencement of his predecessor's reign. And besides the great central city " there are probably a dozen towns of more than 50,000 in- habitants within easy reach of Manchester, and at least three times as many so-called ' villages,' larger than most south of England towns, each with its various institutions, religious and secular, denominational and undenominational, in full activity." Into the midst of this active, energetic population Bishop Eraser was thrown in his 52nd year. Tne work which he set before himself, from the commencement of his AT WORK: MANCHESTER MISSION. 55 episcopate, lay, not so much in the direction of invent- ing new organizations, as of enlarging and quickening into more vigorous life the organizations already exist- ing. He was far indeed from being negligent of the organizations of his diocese. He founded the Diocesan Board of Education, established a Bishop's Fund for Manchester and Salford, re-arranged the course of Con- firmations, convoked Synods and Diocesan Conferences, revived the custom of Visitations, and formed a third Archdeaconry, that of Blackburn, from the northern part of the Archdeaconry of Manchester. Still, the prominent feature of his episcopate was not organization ; for, although Bishop Eraser was an admirable and kindly critic of the organizations of others, yet he was not always successful in founding, and carrying forward to success, organizations of his own. His temperament was less that of the organizer than of the prophet — an impressive personality, a rush of energy, an overpowering magnetism of sympathetic will, a brave largeness of heart which evokes enthusiasm. It has been fortunate for Manchester that her first bishop was a builder — a strong, firm man who clearly conceived and solidly compacted the machinery of the diocese ; and her second bishop a prophet, who called forth the heart of the diocese to realize the living mission of the Church, of which the machinery was but the symbol and the instrument. In his first Charge, the Bishop said : "I do not court popularity; I know its clangers. I do not resent criticism ; a public man must be prepared for that ; but I do desire that you shoidd give me credit, and that you should have grounds for giving me credit — whether you think I always act rightly or wrongly, wisely or foolishly — for a real desire to do my duty. I think I know what that duty is ; and, according to the grace given me, I endeavour to fulfil it." The manner in which " this real desire to do his duty " was carried into action sufficiently appears from the fact that, in the first three years of his episcopate, he made the personal acquaintance of upwards of 700 of his clergy; 56 BISHOP FEASEE'S LANCASHIEE LIFE. either preached or confirmed, or performed some other episcopal act, in all but 108 out of the 420 churches of his diocese ; consecrated 26 new churches ; held 160 confirma- tions, laying hands upon upwards of 29,000 candidates; superintended nine examinations for Holy Orders and (exclusive of those who had been ordained deacons elsewhere and of three or four candidates ordained by letters dimissory from other bishops) admitted 86 persons into the sacred ministry of the Church. In addition to these official duties, he delivered scores upon scores of speeches in connection with every variety of civic and social enterprise ! " Thought runs in Manchester," he said, " almost with the quickness of an electric current from one end of the body social to the other. Life teems with an even superabundant activity. Discussion is frequent and energetic upon almost every conceivable topic. A Bishop of Manchester cannot, if he would, as long as he has health and strength, lead the life of a recluse." Nothing could have been more remote from the Bishoji's practice than the habits of a recluse. He was incessantly preaching and speaking. Men are differently constituted ; and Bishop Fraser's method of administering his diocese appeared to some to be lacking in quietness and spirituality. Yet, perhaps, according to his own conception of the spiritual life, few men have striven after " spiritual perfec- tion " more ardently than Bishop Fraser. Accordingly he threw himself with characteristic energy into the great Manchester Mission which was held in the year 1877, during the twelve days commencing January 27 and ending February 7. The following letter shows the depth of the Bishop's anxiety for a blessing upon the mission, and the variety of the labours connected with the mission in which he himself was preparing to engage : " To-morrow we begin the Manchester and Salford Mission. I am very full of anxiety about the result. There are a number of men of the extreme school — Mackonochie, Lowder, Bodington and others, who will be here, and in the present state of excitement I can hardly tell what they AT WOKK: MANCHESTER MISSION. 57 may say or do. To-moiTow afternoon at 3.30 there will be a service in the cathedral specially for those engaging in the mission, clergy and laity, and I am to address them : pray that my thoughts may be guided aright. For the whole of the twelve days I expect to be incessantly engaged, mainly addressing large bodies of working men at the various great in- dustrial factories, «fec., of the town and neighbourhood — the mill-hands, mechanics, railway officials, omnibus and cab drivers, &c. I am even asked to address the people connected with the theatres, if they can be got together. One of the managers is quite favourable to the project. The work will be both delicate and difficult. " Some result, however, of a permanent kind, I trust, will follow. I was at Bradford, in Yorkshire, last night — going there after my morning's work at Heaton Moor — and preached to a church full of a thousand people. The vicar, a truly earnest man, told me that the Bradford Mission had certainly borne fruit ; and this encouraged me. " My dear invalids are wonderfully well just now, though my mother is as helpless as ever ; we are just getting her on to an air-bed to-day, which I hope will make so much bed-keeping less wearisome. " You tell me I ought not to despond about my work ; but you don't know all the difficulties, and all the things there are to depress and dis- courage one. I am naturally sanguine, but the work is wholly beyond my power." Besides frequently preaching sermons during the course of the mission the Bishop gave special addresses of a less formal kind to various bodies of people. To Medical Students, he said : " It is the function of medical men to deal with the body, and, as their investigations, analyses, dissections, or applications of the microscope do not carry them beyond matter, it is not altogether surprising that they should be tempted to think that there is nothing but matter in the world. I have read books by eminent medical men which teach very plainly that vital force is not all to be accounted for by any of the phenomena of matter, and I have not the slightest doubt that wise membcBS of the medical profession will say that there are things in the world far beyond what they have discovered, or, perhaps, * dreamt of in their philosophy.' Many old philosophers held that matter was inherently vile. The New Testament teaches us the dignity, I might almost say, the sacredness of the body. In all your dealings with the human body, never forget that the body is something for. which Christ died ; the body is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. The thoughts and speculations of many materialistic writers, in these days, seem to carry them far away into dreamland; the dreams are anything but comforting, refreshing, or strengthening; but either sorely perplex the brain, distress the heart, 58 BISHOP FKASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. or disturb the conscience. Against all the speculative theories I am content, for myself, simply to set the simple Bible story of the origin of man, rationally interpreted and rationally understood. I do not ask you to accept irrational interpretations, or to do violence to your conscience or your reason either. In these great parables, if they are parables, given in the first chapters of Genesis, we are told the relation of the human race to God and to the world ; we are told of the unchangeable nature and sub- duing power of sin ; we read the law of death with which medical men are perfectly familiar ; and we have disclosed to us the power and promise which make it possible for frail men and women to live pure and noble and unselfish and worthy lives. On one occasion Christ said, ' Ye believe in God, believe also in Me.' He says still, Believe in God ; believe in Me ; and I would also say. Believe in yourselves. By this, I mean that you are not to think that when you die you will leave your bodies, as scientific men have done, to be dissected and then cast away on a dung-heap, and that that will be the end of all. I ask you, each and every one, to have faith in your destiny, in your work, in your capacities, and above all in your responsibilities. If men would only realize their destiny, their powers, their opportunities, and their responsibilities, how they would be rescued from the low, sordid, almost bestial lives which too many are content to live. Let me urge all present to live uprightly and to act up to their highest and worthiest convictions." To Eailway Employes, he said : " The mission has been organized by and in connection with the Church of England, but you will be making a great mistake if you think the object of the mission is to proselytize. It is not to make more or better Churchmen, but if possible, by the help of God, to make more and better Christians. I certainly hope we shall make more and better Churchmen ; but I should consider it no triumph, nothing to boast of, if by any word of mine I should draw away a pious or godly Wesleyan or Baptist from the communion to which he had belonged hitherto to the pale of the Church of England. I should not think such a thing a triumph or something to glory of. There is work enough for all religious men. There is work enough and to spare for them all in Manchester, without endeavouring to draw any one away from one religious denomination to another, except in so far as the spirit of God moves them." To Cab-drivers, lie said : " The life of cab-drivers, whom I have come this afternoon specially to address, is a peculiar, and certainly, from a religious point of view, an embarrassing and perplexing life. They cannot often go to church : that is certain. Their time is very little their own. Their work is very hard. They have to rough it in all sorts of weather. When he gets home at the AT WORK: MANCHESTER MISSION. 59 end of the day, a man must often be so tired and chilled that the only thing he can think about is to get a hot supper and hurry off to his warm bed. They are in all companies. They are at the mercy of every one who chooses to hail them. They must drive people to very queer sorts of places at times, and must often have very curious sorts of people in their cabs. Again, there are a great many bad habits in society, of which cab- men are the victims. There is the practice of treating with drink. Every time I see a cab at the door of a spirit vault, I know it most probably means that some one, who has been travelling in the cab, is treating the cabman to a glass of beer or gin. I am not going to condemn a nian who drinks a glass of gin, or ale, after a long cold drive, though I doubt whether such refreshment answers its supposed purposes. Doctors say that it does not, but really lowers the temperature of the body instead of raising it. But I warn you, one and all, against allowing the habit of drinking to grow upon you by submitting to these occasional treats. When I consider the case of such men as policemen, postmen, and lamp- lighters, cab and omnibus-drivers, milkmen, and night-soil men, and others who are condemned to habits of irregularity and exceptional temp- tation, because .they are ministering to the public comfort and well-being, I often feel perplexed : but at the same time I am wonderfully encouraged and sustained by reflecting on the inexhaustible resources of the love of God, and the manifold ways in which He can and does draw men's souls to Him. Although I have been in the habit of attending church twice a Sunday myself ever since I can recollect, yet I believe, and know, there are many men quite as religious as I who cannot attend church once on Sunday, or even once in the year. Society seems hardly to care a snap of the fingers whether these men who are ministering to their comforts are being helped heavenw^ards themselves or not. If a fashionably dressed young man with his hair parted down the middle, and a sixpenny Havana cigar in his mouth, were to hail a cabman at his stand, on a Sunday afternoon, to take him four or five miles out into the country, and the cabman were to say, ' Sir, I was just going home to put up my horse and get a chance of going to church, that is, if you can spare me,' in all pro- bability the fashionable young man would come out with an oath, and say, ' Hang your church ; drive me to Stockport.' This is the way in which society expects everything to minister to its convenience, and never stops for a moment to count the cost of ministering to it. If, any night, a poor lamplighter was taken suddenly ill, and the lamps in a particular street or quarter were not lit in consequence, would not there be a row next morning in the newspapers — ^letter after letter complaining of the administration of the town, and that, forsooth, society has to suffer, because a poor lamplighter has been taken suddenly ill? I say that society is extremely reckless. Just take the case of the milkman. When I go to church on Sunday morning, in whatever quarter of Manchester it may be, I find the milkmen running about the streets, doing the work 60 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. which they usually do about seven in the morning, at any time from nine to one, just because people are lazy and like to lie in bed on Sunday morn- ing, and do not care a snap about the milkmen's souls. These are things which society has to lay to heart and think about, and I should be most terribly perplexed if I did not believe that many roads lead to Christ, though all are up-hill, and not to be trodden without effort and self-denial. Now, just let me point out that cabmen, amidst all their difficulties, have also many opportunities. A cabman may sit on his box and say a prayer, or while he is waiting for a fare he can sit inside his cab, as I sometimes see them doing, and read something better than the Sporting Life ; he could read his Bunyan's ' Pilgrim's Progress,' or his Bible, or something that would feed his mind and nurture his soul, and I do not think a cus- tomer would be slower to call a cabman if he knew him to be in his cab reading his Bible. Again, his mind may be employed with good thoughts, and these good thoughts and prayers will stand him in good stead when he is brought into temptation. I must again warn you against the sin of drunkenness, against the habit of profane swearing or the use of coarse and brutal language ; and let me also plead with you to be merciful and kind in your treatment of your horses." Of an address delivered to Slaughtermen, no record of which has been preserved, he himself, in one of his letters, speaks thus : " The slaughtermen were really delightful, so hearty, earnest, ready to be reached, if one only spoke kihdly and straight to them. When I talked to them of man's proper conduct towards woman, there really seemed to be kindled a spark of chivalry in their souls ; and even when I spoke of what to many of them, I fear, would be almost a strange idea, the power and blessing of prayer, those strong, careless men were for the moment at least softened and subdued. They really gave me such an ovation as almost made me afraid of that peril, ' when all men speak well of you.' At any rate, I had another illustration of how the most neg- lected classes have that in them which can be reached if only we try to reach it." But the addresses which attracted most attention were those which the Bishop delivered at two most interesting and impressive gatherings of the employes of the Manchester theatres. " You can easily imagine," he said, *' that it is with feelings very mingled, in which anxiety very largely predominates, that I have accepted the invitation to address you in this theatre. Those who know their Bibles — and all, I hope, know them more or less — will AT WOKlt: MANCHESTER MISSION* 61 remember in the days of old that in a great Asiatic city, a seat of luxury and vice, a great preacher of the gospel once on a memorable occasion was advised by a message from his friends * that he would not adventure himself into the theatre.' I fancy I must be the first Bishop of the Church of England, if I am not the first Bishop of the Church of Christ, who has ever addressed a congregation in a theatre. It was not that Paul was afraid of testifying to the Gospel of the grace of God anywhere or everywhere — it was not that he had any cowardly or selfish^ fears for his own personal safety or his life ; he was ready when the occasion demanded to spend and be spent in the service of his Master, but in that theatre of Ephesus there was an excited and an angry crowd, not in the humour to listen to reason — their ears would have been deaf to the gentle pleadings of the Spirit of God — and he wisely yielded to the counsels of his friends and did not enter those theatre walls. I see before me those who are willing to listen, or else, I suppose, you would not be present; and, therefore, Ihave adventured myself into this theatre, hoping that by the help of God I may be enabled to say something to you which will profit you in what I feel — and 1 suppose in what you feel — is the delicate and difficult, and, I need not add, somewhat perilous work that you are engaged in doing. The fathers of the early Church were very severe in their judgment upon stage-players, and the early canons of the Church refused Baptism and even Holy Commuiuon to actors until they had renounced their trade. The theatre in the early days of the Church was utterly corrupt and degraded. Any one who has read the picture of manners to be found in the pages of Juvenal, and in those of later writers — in the pages of Gibbon, as to what a Eoman theatre was in those days — can easily understand how men of earnest and somewhat over-stern minds would feel, that those who could lend themselves to such degrading exhibitions as were to be witnessed in the Roman theatres and amphitheatres could have no claim, no part nor lot, in the blessed work which C^jrist did for the world. Yet I think that somehow or other Christianity should penetrate into the theatre. I remember how, in the old tale in the old book, the wandering tribes of Israel in the sandy deserts of Arabia, perishing for lack of water and grievously afilicted with thirst, came to a fountain where they hoped to slake their thirst, but found the waters bitter and well-nigh poisonous, and how Moses, taught by God, bade them cut down some wood that fortunately was close by and throw it into the bitter fountain, and the waters then became sweet and wholesome. The old interpreters said that the wood typified the Cross of Christ, which alone could sweeten the bitter waters of life and make them wholesome to those who drank of them. So I think that somehow or other the power of the Cross of Christ ought to be able to reach within the walls of the theatre. It would be, perhaps, an idle dream and a mere parade of words to say we could ever have a directly spiritual influence brought into theatres — though I am told that the recent Passion Play in 62 BISHOP FIIASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. Germany had a most directly Christianizing influence upon those who witnessed it, and that those who acted in it, although they were only common peasants, seemed to throw themselves into that wonderful exhibition with a realization of the great truths they were there to exhibit. Still, I do not expect that. I should be quite content if the wholesome and sound moral influence of Christianity, which makes us know and feel the value of purity and modesty in word and deed, and gesture and con- duct — I would be quite satisfied if this could be found always to be the ruling principle of the Theatre Boyal, Manchester, and of every theatre, whether royal or not, in the land. A great heathen teacher and philo- sopher, Aristotle, taught me that tragedy was a great instrument for purifying the passions — that through the influence of fear and pity it wrought out the purification of the passions. And I think no one will say who has seen any well-graced actor playing a part — a leading part — in any of Shakspere's great tragedies, * Lear,' or ' Hamlet,' or * Othello ' (though, no doubt, the incidents in the drama here and there verge on difficult and delicate points and the language of the age was somewhat coarse and gross), yet I think no one ever left a theatre where he had seen * Hamlet ' or ' Othello ' well performed without in some sense or other feeling his whole nature elevated and strengthened, and, even if not spiritualized, at any rate the waters had been wholesome to him that he had drunk at. One thing you are to look to is that the parts you play are honest, pure, and worthy parts. I do not think that any player ought to be ashamed or afraid to refuse to take part in any drama which to any extent would compromise his proper dignity as a man or her proper modesty as a woman. If that resolution were in men's hearts and women's hearts too, the stage would be purified. There are those who think it would be better for society if theatres were swept away. That was once tried in England in the days of the Commonwealth, v/hen what were called Puritan principles were in the ascendancy. Theatres were closed, and no one was allowed to see a play performed ; but there came a terrible re- action — there came the period of the Restoration, there came the plays which are now never seen, which no actor would study, no manager would put upon his boards — plays of Congreve, Farquhar, Wycherly, and Vanbrough, and a woman (Mrs. Afra Behn) wrote a play which even men to-day would blush to read or see. " The great Roman critic Horace tells us that those things which pass through the ear stimulate the mind much less than those things which are presented to the eye. I do not agree with those who say that it will be better for society if theatres are swept away. I believe that it will be infinitely worse for society. I do not want to abolish the theatre ; I want to purify it. I want to make it a great instrument for providing healthful and harmless recreation to those who would always be seeking recreation. I have not the slightest wish to Puritanize society ; I wish to purify it. We may preach until doomsday, but as long as God has given AT WOKK: MANCHESTER MISSION. 63 men the faculty of laughter and amusement, as long as men have often- times dreary hours to spend in an evening, which they find they cannot spend at home, they are sure to go in search of amusement, and of various forms of amusement ; and I am not one of those who wish the theatre doors closed — I wish to see them open that they may present to those who go into them things that are lovely, and beautiful, and praiseworthy, and of good report. I hope it is not unreasonable to hope that the pubUo taste may be improved. It is difficult, I know, to bring about a reform ; but, if managers and actors in theatres will co-operate in the great cause of purifying the public taste, that desirable result may yet be achieved. I ask you honestly whether you can say that theatres in the last twenty years have improved or have deteriorated as places of pubhc amusement and of public recreation ? (The manager : ' Yes ; they have improved.') Well, I am glad to hear that. I have enjoyed the opportunity in my life of making to a slight extent the acquaintance of one or two actors. I remember in 1858, when I was employed on a Government Commission, I went to Sherborne in Dorset, and there I found, living in his own house and occupied with all good things — teaching the ignorant, going night by night to the ragged school — the great tragedian of the last age, Macready. Again, in 1865, when I was travelling in Canada, I met on a steamer careering down the St. Lawrence Mr. and Mrs. Charles Kean. I spent two or three days in their company, and I never enjoyed any person's company more. Last year I had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Theodore Martin (Miss Helen Faucit) at Lord Eger ton's at Tat ton, and a more accomplished lady I think you cannot find. I therefore say that the stage need not necessarily be degrading to any one, and that it may be animated and pervaded by high and worthy motives. I do not think I ever was in a London theatre half a dozen times in my life ; but the last time I was in one was about thirty-five years ago, when Mr. Macready and Miss Helen Faucit were performing in ' Othello.' I remember in those days the play bills used to announce at the Theatre Eoyal that * His Majesty's servants will perform such and such a play to-night.' That was a mern phrase for describing actors at the Theatre Royal, which the King sometimes used to attend. But we are still His Majesty's servants, onh-^ the King whom we serve is not the King who lives in Windsor Castle or the Queen who holds diawing-rooms at Buckingham Palace, but the great King who came into this world to redeem us and to sanctify every lawful path. I will not say that the actor's path is unlawful. I will not put any obstacle or stumbling-block in your way, for I do not believe it is unlawful ; but I do believe the actor is the servant of the King of King.-;, and that the rules, maxims, and principles of the Gospel are bound to govern the singer, the actor, the ballet-dancer, the scene- shifter — every one who connects himself or herself with a public theatre. You ought to realize when you go to a play that you are His Majesty's servants, who are bound to present to other servants of the same 64 BISHOP FRASEE'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. great King something that will instruct them, and which, if it will not spiritualize them, will, at any rate, send them out unharmed and none the worse for what they have seen and heard. I am perfectly aware that there are all kinds of complicated interests involved in a great theatre. This theatre, I believe, to a certain extent belongs to a company, and it is said that companies have no consciences. I have been talking to some of the directors, and I know that they have a conscience, and that they wish to see the theatre conducted in all respects decently and in order. But it may be said, * Society expects these things, and people won't go if you establish these maxims of propriety that you talk to us about.' I do not know how that may be, but I know that a great number of people have scruples about going to theatres, because they are liable to see things they do not like, and which they do not want their daughters to see or hear. There is a great peril in that fact. Directors urge that they must pay a dividend — their 10 per cent. ; the actor may say he does not like the part, but cannot refuse it, and a woman especially may say, ' I have the natural and maidenly feelings of a woman, and I do not like to pose myself before a great audience, many of whom are coarse and wanton men, who look upon me with lustful and lascivious eyes — I do not want to pose myself before them in an attitude and in a costume which degrade me as a Christian maiden in their eyes and in my own, but what am I to do ? My bread depends upon it, and if I remonstrate I shall be told that somebody will be got in my place who will have no such scruples.' Well, I do not know how they are to get out of these things, unless there is more consideration on all sides — unless there is more consideration for the souls of men and women. I hope that by degrees certain things which I am sure every right-minded person amongst you laments at present — certain costumes, certain dances, certain interludes, will by degrees — it may not be done in a day or in a year — be abolished. I hope there will enter into theatres a spirit of higher morality, and that all will feel that the great principles of purity and modesty ought never to be compromised. I am always jealous of the influence of woman upon society. She has a special mission here, not merely to soften us, but also to purify us. If we men had had wanton mothers and wanton sisters, where should we have been ? Oh, how our ears would have tingled when we heard their names mentioned. Anything which compromises the modesty or dignity of woman always excites strong feelings in my mind ; and I feel sure that, when woman fails to keep her proper place in society, then society will go down with a run. I remember Juvenal said of society in his day, * We are going down with a run.' Whether theatres are getting better or worse, I cannot say, but all our great cities are multiplying places of dangerous amusement which to a very great extent are corrupting old and young, and therefore I want to see what I would call legitimate places of amusement which shall stand like breakwaters amongst the surging waters of vice ; I want to see theatres kept free from the taint which is spreading AT WORK: MAKCHESTER MISSION. 65 Somewhat far and somewhat widely. You can do something in that direction. If I have spoken any word that has touched a chord in your hearts or awakened long dormant thoughts in your consciences, I earnestly pray that God's Blessed Spirit, Who alone can give the increase, will deepen that impression in your souls, and make the calling which you have chosen for yourselves, and against which I will not be thought to have said a single word, nobler and worthier, because purer and more Christian." Of this address, Dean Stanley wrote to the Bishop : " I so very much admire your address to the actors. You appear to me to possess the singular gift of going to the very verge of imprudence, and yet never crossing it. That, in your position, is almost perfection.'* Letters from all parts of the country poured in upon the Bishop in recognition of the " manly but discriminating " support which he had given to the Drama ; and of the warm, tender, earnest manner in which he had preached Christ's Gospel to actors and actresses from the stage of the theatre. The following will be read with interest : Bear Lord Bishop, — I hope your lordship will pardon me and not think me to be impertinent if I venture to express a sense of deep personal obligation at your recent bold and noble action at the theatres in Manchester. I have no right to express a single word to your lordship on the matter. I certainly should not think of doing so, if I had not some especial interest in the people to whom your lordship spoke. The principal dancer — solo dancer as she calls herself — at the Theatre Royal is well known to me. She is not very educated, but is one of the very nicest and best girls I have ever met with. She has been on the stage since she was ten years old, and during her career she has been the chief support of her mother and sister. I never met a more simple or gentle creature, and her sense of maidenly reserve and modesty is most acute. She wrote to tell me about your lordship's address, and this morning I have received a copy of the Manchester Evening Mail from her. It may be some satisfaction to your lordship to know that your gallant effort to speak a word in season to ballet-dancers is met by the warmest appreciation on their part, and that, in the person of one who has to pose herself before the public eye in this most dangerous calling, there does dwell the brightness of a spirit undefiled, and a heart true, tender, and pure as that of a little child. I beg once more to thank your lordship for your goodness to these poor people. Prince's Theatre. My Lord, — Let me, as a hearer of your able discourse on Friday at the Prince's Theatre, beg leave to express my appreciation of the sentiments F 66 BISHOP FKASEK'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. your lordship uttered, and also to ask permission to offer the accompanying drawing * which I trust may be personally interesting to you. Believe me to remain, your lordship's most obedient servant. Scenic Artist. Theatre Eoyal, Leicester. My Lord,— May I be allowed as a humble member of the dramatic profession to thank your lordship for the kind words addressed to the actors in Manchester and through them to us all. I am thankful that a class too often (especially I regret to say by ministers of religion) looked upon as pariahs and " outsiders " of society, should have been recognized by your lordship as worthy of Christian counsel and advice. When I read that your lordship had spoken /rom the stage I felt proud, but when I read what your lordship had said my heart was full to think how kindly you had recognized the fact that the stage in good hands is an advantage and not a curse to society. I cannot help thinking that much of the decline of the stage is due to the " snubbing " many of us get because we are actors. I myself have been refused admission to houses when seeking apartments, because I was an actor, for no other reason ; and this is only one specimen of what members of the profession have to submit to. Your lordship will therefore understand how much that address will break down prejudices now existing. It will also cheer actors in their efforts (and they do try) to improve the tone of their profession. I brought your address under my manager's notice and (with his per- mission) have taken the liberty of printing it on programmes, not I assure your lordship for advertising purposes, but in order that your liberal views may be circulated in this somewhat narrow-minded town, and I also propose to send copies freely to other theatres. The Bishop's own feeling and opinion, in reference both to the general character of the mission and the special effort at the theatres, may be gathered from the following letters : " Last night I addressed about seven or eight hundred of the employes in about twenty of our great drapery establishments congregated within the walls of the largest. I never spoke to a more attentive audience. They seemed profoundly in earnest, and, as I spoke kindly and encourag- ingly, and did not forbid cheerfulness or amusements so long as they were pure, I hope that some of my wofds may have done good. With Coventry * This drawing, a water-colour of the Manchester Cathedral, the Bishop hung in his drawing-room and highly prized. AT WORK; MANCHESTER MISSION. 67 Patmore, * I hold delight half discipline.' Paul bids the Philippians * rejoice,' and I am not one of those who hold that, to be religious, you must be gloomy, or forswear anything that is good and lovely in the world ; and so I tried to teach the people who are exposed to so many perils, that even in Manchester it was possible to lead pure lives." " I quite agree with your estimate of the profanity of Mr. 's speech about the theatre. I thought it in very questionable taste ; and I entirely differ from him in holding that what is lawful for a layman is lawful, or (to use St. Paul's words) ' expedient,' for a clergyman. This was one of the subjects on which I spoke earnestly to my young candidates for ordination the other day, in one of the evening addresses I always give them in the examination week. I may wish — and I do most earnestly wish — to purify the theatre; but I am not going to attempt that by myself attending theatres." " It is unfair and untrue of Mr. to say that I * recommend ' the theatre. I certainly do believe that society would be worse rather than better — i.e. would be more likely to choose coarser than purer amusements — if theatres were swept away ; but the whole tendency of my address was not to recommend the theatre indiscriminately, as it is, but to call upon the profession to elevate it, and the actors, and society, at the same time." " I hope this mission will help to show men the * more excellent way.' So far as I can judge, and as things have yet gone, God's blessing seems to rest abundantly on the work. There is a great ' hush,' as it were, in the air; men's lighter thoughts seem subdued and their more generous sympathies awakened. Congregations grow everywhere ; in some of the churches they are overflowing ; and all is being done calmly, and, I believe, wisely. I have, myself, been mainly engaged with addresses to masses of working people — in numbers from five hundred to fifteen hundred — in some of the great iron-forges, mills, and factories. The earnest attention of the hearers is most remarkable. Oh, the fields are, if not white for the harvest, at any rate, ready for sowing the seed ! Yesterday I had the most delicate and difficult business I ever undertook — to address the actors and employes at our three principal theatres. I hope you will be able to sympathize with what I. said. I do so feel for all those actors, who by reason of their vocation are exposed to so many perils, and are (apparently) so little shielded. I want to see the theatre purified. It is useless to denounce it ; that is only beating the air. But there is no reason why it should not become a place of pure and legitimate amusement. I don't know when I have been more touched, than when yesterday Mr. Henry, the manager of the Prince's, shook me by the hand, and said, 'Ah, you have spoken kindly to us ; if all bishops would do the same, perhaps wa should be better than we are ! ' " F 2 68 BISHOJP i^RASER'g LANCASfilHE LIJ^E. Again, in another letter, the Bishop writes : " I do not complain of being misreported ; but sometimes, when very accurately reported, it is my ill-luck to be misunderstood. It may be remembered that a short time ago I ventured into the theatre for the purpose of addressing the stage-players and managers there, and I made some remarks, which I do not think the most perverse ingenuity could interpret into commending theatres as they are. The point of my remarks was, a recommendation to make theatres as I conceived they should and might be, so that people might go and receive no harm from them. In one of our amiable Christian newspapers quite a different interpretation was given, and a correspondent actually held me responsible for that fire at Higher Broughton, which destroyed a considerable amount of property belonging to Mr. Hazzopulo. Bishops are made responsible for many things ; but I never knew one to be made responsible for the burning of a house before. It was alleged against me, that I recommended people to go to the theatre, that the servants of Mr. Hazzopulo went, the house was burnt in their absence, and therefore I ought to be made responsible for the financial damage. This is sufiBciently amusing; but it only shows that you must be indulgent to poor bishops, and make some aUowance for us." Immediately after the mission the Bishop convened a conference for the purpose, "while impressions were still vivid, of ascertaining results, comparing experiences, and giving the opportunity of hearing what methods have been found most successful in the various departments of spiritual work with which the missioners have had to deal.'* The conclusions arrived at by the conference may fairly be inferred from extracts from a sermon preached by the Bishop immediately after the conference had been held : " We have just passed through a period of more than ordinary solemnity — the twelve days of the Manchester and Salford Church Mission, with all its hopes and all its fears, all its encouragements, and all its anxieties. The mission period has passed away, and the preachers who have stirred men's hearts have returned to their own pastoral work ; but there still remains what I call the hopes and fears, the encouragements, and anxieties. To me, as one who has moved about a good deal during the mission, it seemed a period of power and of conspicuous blessing. Good seed has been scat- tered freely, and has found entrance into many a heart ; the question is, whether it has taken root there and will bring forth fruit. There was one peculiar characteristic of the mission which must have struck every one, and that was the entire absence of anything like unhealthy excitement or AT WORK: MANCHESTER MISSION. 69 morbid tumultuousness of feeling. It was a kind of marked quietness, almost calm, that could be felt. Every one who is honest with himself, every one who searches out his own motives, and compares his resolution with his conduct, must be quite aware that there was a very grievous peril in all such work as that in which we have just been engaged. I will only speak of one special form of peril, which is the subtle one of self- absorption, by which I mean, lest you should come to think that the only thing that you and I have to do is, as the phrase goes, ' to save our own souls,' and lest, in the selfish endeavour to save ourselves from the general wreck, w« should forget the duties we owe to others. Only yesterday a lady was telling me of an incident which occurred on board the * North Briton,' fourteen years ago, when that vessel, in a stormy night, struck on a rock off the coast of Labrador. There were about three hundred souls on board, including a large number of troops, and all made up their minds to die. The lady, who was among the passengers, said there was an admirable spirit of resignation and of courage among all but one man, and he began to offer $100 for a life-belt, $160, $200, until at last he offered $1,000. He thought merely of saving his own miserable life, and did not care whether the other two hundred and ninety-nine were saved or not ; but by the providence of God, without spending his thousand dollars, and without a life-belt, he and all on board got safely to land. Religious selfishness, is, perhaps, the subtlest and the most dangerous of all forms of selfishness. I venture to put it before you as a distinct and unquestionable Christian axiom, that the less you think of your own souls — that is, anxiously, fretfully and doubtfully, like a hypochondriac patient who is always feeling his pulse and putting his hand upon his heart to see whether it is regular, thus engendering the very disease from which he hopes to escape — and the more you think of your neighbours' bodies and souls the better will it be for yourselves, not only morally but spiritually." CHAPTEE V. THE LANCASHIRE STRIKE. 1 he Bishop and Strikes — A Strike an Industrial War — Sermon on Strikes — Letter to Mr. Broadhurst — Causes of Strike — Proposed Remedies — ■ Commencement of Strike — Letters and Sermon at Leigh — The Lock-out — The Riot — Letter to Weavers' Association — Sermons at Rishton and Halliwell — Proposed Compromise — The Bishop's Letter to the Manchester and London Press — Termination of Strike. The year a.d. 1878, the year of the great Lancashire Strike, was a year of special anxiety and indefatigable labour to 70 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. Bishop Fraser. " This sad cotton strike," he said, " is on my mind night and day, and I don't think people half realize the magnitude of the issues which it involves." Everything which touched the interests and the progress of the masses of the people was deeply interesting to this Bishop of the people ; and the great Lancashire Strike set his whole nature on flame with desire to guide and help them by every means within his reach. The Strike of 1878 was not, however, the first occasion on which Bishop Fraser had exerted his influence in settling disputes between employers and employed. In May 1871 he had pleaded against the strike threatened by the cotton operatives in Oldham ; in November 1872 he had counselled the employes of the London and North- Western Kailway Company " not to be so foolish as to follow noisy agitators who had no stake to lose, but, in case of dispute with their employers, to choose men from their own body to talk over the matter fully and freely in a friendly spirit, thus avoiding the strikes which are threaten- ing trade and becoming a very serious element of danger to society." In March 1874, and again in March 1876, he was chosen arbitrator between the house-painters of Man- chester and their employers. In the spring of 1875 he had written his famous letter to the Times upon the lock-out of the agricultural labourers in the Eastern Counties, espousing the cause of the labourers : and in the following year he had been invited to arbitrate in a wage-dispute between colliers and their employers. In all these instances he had shown himself scrupulously just towards the capitalist and sympathetically generous towards the work- man. He withheld his approval both from combinations of masters and unions of men ; not because he was hostile to the principle of combination — a principle which, if rightly developed, is productive both of strength and sympathy — but because he believed that the purpose of these particular combinations, as distinguished from their principle, was a purpose of war. THE LANCASHIKE STKIKE. 71 Mr. Eobert Little writes : " It was my business as cashier to the secretary of the Manchester Conservative Ckib, at whose office the executive committee of the Dis- charged Prisoners' Aid Society held its meetings, to receive subscriptions. The Bishop, I believe, contributed to this society annually, from the com- mencement of his episcopate to the end. " It was a time of severe commercial depression. Machinery was idle and operatives were starving. Bitterness was made more bitter by in- cessant strikes. Masters were furious. The Bishop came in to pay his subscription, and my principal stumbled on the theme of the hour. He informed the Bishop that the masters had it in contemplation to form a union, analogous to, and to cope with, the union of operatives. Suddenly there was a pause — he seemed thunderstruck — his lace blanched and the cloud burst : ' It is WAE 1 1 1 ' then another pause, * and 1 don't believe in war 1 ' " A strike he regarded as an industrial war — a lock-out as a process of starvation or siege. And the same motives which prompted him to condemn international wars prompted him also to condemn industrial wars. He was ever ready to acknowledge that cases may arise in which war is essential, righteous, beneficent (and upon this topic he frequently quoted Professor Mozley's great sermon, Sermon V. in the volume of University Sermons). But, as he was keenly alive to the horrors of war : — the heaps of slain, the desolation, the starvation, the agony, the wounded and the maimed, the sick and the dying, homes deserted, fields uncultivated, children fatherless, wives widows : so he anxiously dreaded the results of strikes and lock-outs : — the alienation of masters and men, the gendering of bitterness and hatred, the insurrectionary violence of demagogues, the loss both to employers and employed, the triumph of riot and lawlessness, the sufferings of wives and children, the rancour which, upon one side or the other, must inevitably follow upon defeat. In this spirit he wrote to Mr. Broadhurst, the Secre- tary of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress, from whom he had received a bound copy of its last year's publications, with a complimentary letter in 72 BISHOP FEASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. recognition of his valuable speeches and letters on the Labour Question : Bishop's Court, Manchester, October 25, 1877. Sir, — I am very much obliged for the report of your Committee, and for the kind letter which accompanied it. I shall read the volume with great interest, as it touches upon many questions upon which I desire to he accurately informed. I will not deny that I take a profound interest in these social problems, which are second in importance to none as affecting the well-being of the community and our industrial future as a nation. Christianity, if it cannot solve them, yet ought to be able to help in their solution, by preparing the mind for a calm, unbiassed, and equit- able consideration of the case in all its elements ; and, in what you are pleased to say I have done in this matter, I hope I have not stepped beyond my province as a minister of the Gospel, in pleading that this is the temper in which discussions touching the rights of capital and labour should be conducted on both sides. It surely indicates that something is needed, when at Bolton it has just required a strike of nine weeks, involving severe distress and a loss of £90,000 in wages, to arrive at a settlement which might as easily have been arrived at without a strike at all. — I remain, sir, in entire sympathy with every really upward aspiration of the working people of this country, Your faithful servant, J. Manchester. To Mr. Henry Broadhurst. The Bishop's sympathy did not confine itself to words ; in cases of true need he was as ready with his purse as with his speech. October 16, 1877. My dear Canon Powell, — I am much concerned about this Bolton strike, both at its continuance and at the distress it appears to be causing amongst those who are not members of the Union. Surely some effort ought to be made to bring about a reasonable agreement between the two sides. Meanwhile, as a mark of my sympathy with those who are suffering apparently from no fault of their own, will you accept the enclosed cheque ' for £20 as a contribution to the funds of the local Relief Committee, which you told me when you saw me was being formed for dealing with such cases. Believe me to be yours sincerely, J. Manchester. The Rev. Canon Powell. The course which the Bishop followed upon public ques- tions often, as was natural, roused against him a spirit of yiolent antagonism j and, although he was fearless in follow THE LANOASHIKE STKIKE. 73 ing any path whicli he believed to be right, yet the tender- ness 01 his nature made him sensitive to attacks ; and, not seldom, when suffering from the bitter onslaught of some critic, the confidence of the people acted on his wounds like a soothing balm. " I heard from a clergyman at Bolton yesterday, something that gave me unfeigned pleasure. He said : * I am glad that, in your sermon at' Astley Bridge last Sunday week, you did not take any side on the question of the strike : for I believe the men are thinking of asking you to arbitrate between them and their masters, as they say they can have confidence in your fairness.' These duties are not very pleasant or easy to discharge ; but still I feel that I ought not to refuse the task when I am asked to undertake it. There are 10,000 pairs of hands unemployed in Bolton now, and a loss of at least £10,000 in wages per week ; and this has been going on for three weeks or a month. Surely it is worth while, and not outside a Bishop's proper duty, to try to bring such a state of things to an end. I have been into Manchester and waited with a deputation upon the Mayor about an altogether different subject ; but, having a few minutes' private conversation with him before my colleagues assembled, he told me that he thought of proposing to the joiners of Manchester, who have been out on strike for some ten or twelve weeks, to have an interview with himself and me, in the hopes that we might be able to suggest something that should bring the present unhappy state of afifairs to an end. Whether we can succeed in this or not, I shall at least feel a satisfaction in the attempt ; and confidence shown in this real way is an abundant set-off against any number of rabid attacks." The Bolton strike, in the autumn of 1877 — a strike which lasted nine weeks, and involved a loss of at least £90,000 — was but a precursor of the more general strike which took place in the spring and summer of 1878 — a strike in which 300,000 persons were immediately concerned, and which involved, in wages alone, a loss to the working classes of £75,000 a week. An intricate complication of causes led to the declaration of this industrial war. The state of the cotton trade was simply deplorable. There had been three bad harvests in succession; and bad harvests at home, although they temporarily stimulate the carrying trade between England and foreign countries, ultimately diminish the purchasing power of the masses of the English people. 74 BISHOP FKASER»S LANCASHIRE LIFE. The price of wheat had risen, in two years, 20s. a quarter. Mr. Caird computed that, owing to the insufficiency of the harvests and various other causes, from 1872 to 1877 £160,000,000 more had been paid for foreign corn than in the previous ^yo years from 1867 to 1872. Moreover, " the energy, ingenuity, and capital of civilized nations, especially of England, had been devoted for more than a quarter of a century to the development of the manufacturing branch of commerce, without any corresponding development of new markets for consumption ; with the result that the power of producing manufactured articles had grown so great that whenever a demand for a commodity sprang up it was rapidly met," not only by the supply, but by an over-production of the supply, of that commodity. It was also alleged that, in times of prosperity and abundance, wages had been advanced, and hours of labour shortened, to an extent which could not be maintained in times of depression and scarcity. Moreover, the impending gloom was not, by any means, confined to the manufacturing industries of England. The whole world seemed menaced with catastrophe and distress. In the previous year gaunt famine had stalked through large districts of India and China, and South America, strewing its path with the emaciated forms of the dying and the dead. In North America commercial panics were frequent. Upon the continent of Europe the whole atmosphere of politics was charged with suspicion and alarm. The still unsolved Eastern Question was in an acute and critical condition. At home the people had not recovered from the ferment into which they had been thrown by the Bulgarian agitation. Mr. Gladstone had declared his conviction that Turkey should be dismissed from Europe " bag and baggage." Politicians were divided into Eussophobes and Eussophiles. The Jingo spirit (as it is called) was in a state of frenzy. The condition of Egypt was a condition of threatening inse- curity. International uneasiness and want of confidence had, for the time, overthrown the foundations of commercial prosperity. The markets of the world were in a state of THE LANCASHIEE STRIKE. 75 plethora and partial collapse. A less auspicious season could scarcely have been chosen by the people for the pro- secution of an industrial war. Neither party in the conflict disputed the fact of the depression of trade; their disagreement arose upon the causes of that depression, and the best means for remedying it. The masters contended that the chief causes were the political alarms which, by their operation upon markets, placed blocks in the ordinary channels of distribution; together with the height of wages which, by increasing the price of commodities, checked the process of consumption and so restricted the demand. The men, without denying the influence of political uneasiness, contended that the chief causes of the depression were the glut of markets consequent upon the rapid increase of machinery, and the excessive working of overtime, together with the adulteration of cotton cloths, which had not only degraded the prestige of English goods in the estimation of the world, but had also led to the establishment of cotton-spinning and manufacturing com- panies in the great emporiums of India and China. This antagonism of opinion concerning the causes of the strike was accompanied by an equally distinct antagonism of opinion concerning the best means for remedying them. The masters contended that by a reduction of wages the price of commodities would be lowered and the demand for them proportionately increased. The men contended that, by^ ceasing to adulterate their goods, the masters might restore the prestige of English manufactures in foreign markets ; and by shortening the hours of labour, and so limiting the quantity of goods produced, the glut, caused by over-supply, would gradually be relieved. The masters, moreover, con- tended that foreign competition was an important element in commercial depression at home — a competition rendered all the more severe by the lowness of wages abroad ; the men replied that any lowering of wages in England would only benefit the foreign consumer, and lessen the purchas- ing power of the people at home. 76 BISHOP FEASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. Between oiDinions so adverse as these, and held on both sides with unflinching tenacity, no compromise appeared to be possible. The strike of 1877 in Bolton had resulted in a ^Ye per cent, reduction of wages, not only in Bolton and its neighbourhood, but also in many other towns of South Lan- cashire, where cotton-spinning is carried on on a large and extensive scale. At the close of the same year the employers of North and North-East Lancashire proposed a similar reduction in wages of five per cent. The men pleaded that this reduction might be a while delayed in the hope of a revival in trade, and an increased activity among the looms and spindles of Lancashire. But inasmuch as trade, instead of reviving, became more generally depressed in the spring of 1878, the masters resolved upon a reduction in wages of ten per cent. To this resolution the employes very strongly demurred. They agreed to a reduction of five per cent., but entirely refused to accept a reduction of ten per cent., unless the reduction of wages were accompanied by a reduction in the hours of labour. At a mass meeting of cotton operatives, including power-loom weavers, over- lookers, tape-sizers, twisters and drawers, winders and warpers, held on Saturday, April 13, 1878, in the Exchange Hall, Blackburn, to finally consider and decide whether the ten per cent, reduction of wages should be accepted or not, a resolution was passed, amid much cheering, and by an overwhelming majority : " That, in the opinion of this meet- ing, when the time of notice expires on Wednesday next (April 7), we refuse to work at the ten per cent, reduction of wages." An amendment, although supported by Mr. Birtwistle and Mr. Whalley, the Chairman and Secretary of the Wages Committee, to the effect that a reduction of wages by ten per cent, should be accompanied by a reduction of labour to four days a week ; a ^ye per cent, reduction to five days a week ; and those working full time to receive full wages, was rejected with hissings and groanings. At this meeting representatives from many manufacturing centres, including Chorley, Darwen, Great Harwood, Clitheroe, l^HE LANCASHIRE STRIKE. 17 Accfington, Church, Padiham, Burnley, Clayton-le-Moors, Nelson, Haslingden, Kamsbottom, Kossendale, and Preston, were present, and gave expression to their views. Upon the day previous to this meeting of the Men's Union, a meeting of the Masters' Association, presided over by Mr. Eaynsford Jackson, had been held in Manchester, at which it was resolved that the ten per cent, reduction of wages should be uniformly enforced. Thus began the great Lancashire Strike of 1878 — a strike which, during its career, aroused intense bitterness between masters and men, caused widespread suffering, and entailed vast pecuniary losses upon both employers and employed. The Bishop's mind was filled, and his heart distressed, by the conflict. On April 20, he wrote : " The strike is hardly a less important question than the war. It is said to affect 120,000 workpeople ! Three of the leaders of the operatives waited upon me last Tuesday, but did not ask me to do anything. They wished me, however, to read an article from the Manchester City News, which they said exactly stated their case. They told me frankly that they had only funds to continue the struggle for a month ; and what the issue will be it is impossible to foresee. There is to be a mass meeting of operatives held in Manchester to-morrow, the papers say. Amid all the abuse I get — and I assure you I get a good deal — it is at least some reward that these working people have some faith in me, as not being devoid of sympathy, fairness of mind, and common sense. This makes up for a good deal of unmerited abuse — charging me with sympathy with Ritualists, a desire to embarrass the Government, and what not besides — which at times I feel it rather hard to bear." On April 29 : " I find that I am, much against my will, occupying some share of public attention, and a place in a leading article in the Times to-day. It seems that on Saturday the operatives on strike agreed to refer the question in dispute to a commission of arbitration, of which I was named the President. They had never broached the subject to me, and I am afraid that arbitration on such a difficult and complicated problem is * above my might'; but I perhaps ought not to shrink from it on that account, if the misery that is certain to follow a strike could so be obviated. But I fear that the masters will not consent to arbitration, and the Times article, which is very one-sided in its tone, will tend to support them in that resolution. Now I hope you will not think me vain if I do feel a 78 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE* LIFE. little pride in this mark of confidence. These encouragements help one to bear a good deal of discouragement." On May 11: " I shall be in the midst of the strike again on Sunday. The present state of tension cannot last long, though at present there are no signs of either side giving in, and the general lock-out begins to-day. I don't quite think it is a case for arbitration. The two parties to the quarrel must know much more about the real merits of the case than any outsider can do, and they ought to settle the difference by a reasonable compromise among themselves. It is difficult to . get at the real facts and figures ; but, so far as I understand the matter, I think that a reduction of wages, as proposed by the masters, is the only way of relieving the trade." PreacHing in Leigh parish church, on May 4, the Bishop said: " The last two days I have spent in East and North-East Lancashire. I have been at Colne, Burnley, Padiham, and Accrington. In this district, as you are aware, a large strike prevails. Yesterday I saw strong men and women, strong boys and girls, what they call * playing ' in the streets of Burnley, Padiham and Accrington. They were all quiet, orderly, and well- behaved. I did not see anything that might be called a row. I did not see anything approaching disorder among these people. I saw them idle, and was told that eighty persons had applied to the Board of Guardians for relief, and had not been relieved. I was told that already the resources of many families had come to an end and their credit too. All this struck my heart most deeply and solemnly. I thought of those 120,000 men standing idle, and representing perhaps very nearly half a million of people. A worthy Baptist minister gave me a frightful description of the Forest of Dean, and he told me it was true, if people would only pay a visit to the coal and iron districts of the Forest of Dean or South Wales, they would see that the country had the appearance as if the scourge of war had actually passed over it. The whole of that country is becoming depopu- lated, and the remnant of the population is starving or half-starving. Lord Aberdare told me himself he did not think the iron trade would ever revive in South Wales. People say this is through the unsettled relations between capital and labour. If so, it is time these relations were read- justed upon a more safe and sure foundation. As things are at present, it is bringing ruin both to the people employed and to the capitalist. People are starving, and if the strike lasts a month in North and North-East Lancashire the month's earnings of the operatives, which I estimate at £300,000, will be thrown away. That is something frightful to think about — at least it is to my mind. These poor people are suffering, and THE LANCASHIRE STRIKE. 79 perhaps the masters won't recover the effects of the strike for years. I and the Rector of Burnley went into a house there the other day, and there the baiUffs were in for a paltry debt of £2 : 3s. The parties could not pay it, and in all probability their furniture will have to be sold to discharge the debt. That is only one sample of the distress which might become widespread. We ought therefore, I say, to pray for peace and for a restoration of those grounds of trust and confidence which used to prevail between master and man, employers and employed, and which just now seem to be somewhat rudely shaken. I am not here to suggest a remedy, but the fact is apparent on all sides that at present the cotton industry is not remunerative. Capital is not making a profit. There has been a gigantic development of what is called co-operative industry in Oldham, and some three years ago everybody was anxious to take part in it. Mills were built in Oldham by shares, and over a million and a half of money was vested in those mills. One mill was built at a cost of some £40,000 or £60,000, filled with machinery, and stocked with the requisite quantity of cotton to set it going. The parties who invested their money thought they were secured for the rest of their lives. Some of the mills paid a good percentage for a time, but others were built which had never paid a smgle dividend. About three years ago an aged couple who had saved over £200 invested it in a co-operative mill which was paying 28 per cent. I know that was true, because I saw a halt-year's coupon, which showed 14 per cent, for the half-year. Well, this state of things did not last long. A change came over the cotton trade, and the shares for which the old couple paid £200 are not now worth £35. They rested assured in the hope of receiving £58 a year for life, but it has all gone. If there are no profits in a co-operative mill, surely the profits of a mill, managed by one capitalist, cannot be large. The fact is, as I have already observed, the whole of the cotton trade is not remunerative, and men and masters must face that fact. What is wanted is a restoration of con- fidence. In" bad times, if one member suffers, all must suffer — the employer and the employed ; and, if good times come again, the men will have a right to claim their old rate of wages. That seems a sensible and rational, and I may say Christian, way of settling the difficulty, which, if unsettled, will be of alarming consequences. If anything has to be done to bring about a restoration of that confidence, it must be done at once, as I am told the masters in East Lancashire are going to lock the hands out on Wednesday next unless the matter is settled. I hope wise counsels will prevail, and that no false notions of honour on the one side, or dogged obstinacy on the other, will ]Drevent an amicable arrangement being arrived at. I hope the masters will be prepared to receive the men on fair and equitable terms, and I hope the men will not be too proud to go and ask to be received on fair and equitable terms." It is characteristic of the hold which utterances of the §0 feiSHOP ERASER'S LANCASHIRE LlJ^il. Bishop, guch as these, had upon the multitudes of the Lancashire people that, in this time of their anxiety and distress, they should naturally have looked to him as the rightful arbitrator and referee in their cause. By his know- ledge of the details of the question at issue, he had won their confidence in his wisdom ; by his outspoken fearlessness he had won their confidence in his courage ; by his constant appeals to righteous Christian principle, he had won their confidence in his integrity ; by his generous appreciation of their difficulties he had won their confidence in his friend- ship. But, although the men desired the appointment of a Board of Arbitration "to be presided over by the Bishop of Manchester or any other impartial gentleman," the masters, who for some time had been working their mills at a loss, contended that there was no room for arbitration ; and that the terms already offered to the men were the l3est which it was possible to offer. The refusal of the masters to submit the points in dispute to arbitration had the effect of hardening and irritating the temper of the men. The men charged the masters with wanton unfairness and a tyrannous lust for mere conquest in the strife. The masters charged the men with a wilful ignorance of the real causes of bad trade, and a self-interested docility to the fiery invectives of paid and noisy demagogues. It was w^ar to the knife. The men appealed to the Trades Unions throughout the country for assistance in the strife; an appeal which was widely, and not ungenerously, met, The masters drew together in a compactly organized association ; and, per- ceiving that the operatives on strike were maintained by the operatives at work, they resolved to lock out the workers until the strikers had yielded. By this step at least 8000 persons were thrown out of employment ; and, instead of being contributors to the Sustentation Fund, became a source of weakness and impoverishment. The effect of the lock-out was instantly perceived in the deepening of the spirit of hostility between masters and THE LANCASHIRE STRIKE. 81 men. In some instances, grave and simple, even pathetic, language was used. " We fear we are unable to cope with the organized force and power of the Masters' Unions, but we shall peacefully and quietly resist until starvation enforces submission." In other instances, their language was the language of excitement, of menace, of infuriated bitterness. Mobs thronged the streets. The evil- disposed among the masses fanned the flame of disorder for their own criminal purposes. In Great Harwood almost every factory window was broken. In Blackburn vitriol was thrown in the eyes of a landlord. In Preston, and other large towns, the authorities, apprehensive of serious rioting, had called in the aid of military force. The house of Mr. Eaynsford Jackson, Chairman of the Masters' Association, was, with its contents, completely destroyed by fire. Under these circumstances, seeing that arbitration was impossible, it was the intense desire of all good men to promote a spirit of conciliation. The masters were naturally exasperated by the excesses and wanton destructiveness of the mob ; but the Bishop, from the first, knowing and respecting the true character of the majority of the people, steadily refused to allow that the lawless and brutal conduct of mobs of rioters was rightfully chargeable against the whole people. In almost every sermon preached at this time, he publicly expressed the opinion that " the outbreaks at Blackburn would be found to be the work not of the better class of operatives on strike, but of what has been called the floating scum of our great cities, aided probably by a mob of reckless people, mostly young, of all occupations and of both sexes. I see that Lord Shaftesbury in the House of Lords, and the Home Secretary in the House of Commons, expressed the same opinion. It was also the opinion of two of the Manchester papers, the Examiner and the Courier. I came to that conclusion partly from what I had read hastily of the character of the outrages ; partly from what I knew, or believed I knew, of the character of the better class of the working men in this great district ; partly also because, having been in the strike district on the previous Sunday, I was full of hope when I saw the orderly character of the population of Blackburn, who were thronging the streets in all directions, innocently enjoying themselves, and, as their faces seemed to indicate, without on G 82 BISHOP FKASEE'S 'LANCASHIRE LIFE. single thought of evil in their minds. 1 also knew how admirably the working class and their masters had behaved during that somewhat trying period of eight weeks' strike in Bolton. This morning I was having some talk with the station-master at Pendleton. He told me he had lived at Blackburn among the operatives for twenty years, and knew them well, and he felt satisfied that the better class amongst them would be revolted at the sad scenes that have taken place. I say I should be glad to be of the same opinion, but I confess that matters have assumed a somewhat different aspect since the first outbreak, and I think it is time, if the great mass of the operatives on strike would retain public sympathy, that they should show themselves guiltless of those discreditable acts of violence — that they should place themselves by some distinct act on the side of order." " The general features of the strike," he writes in a letter dated May 17, " you will have learnt from the newspapers. It certainly is causing very serious anxiety, and though many people think that the worst is over, and that if the operatives kept themselves quiet for two or three days a settle- ment would be arrived at, yet, when the people are so much excited, the slightest spark may produce a conflagration ; and, as an expected settlement did not take place to-day, many persons are feeling extremely anxious lest there should be a renewal of rioting and destruction of property to-night in the disturbed districts. Remembering how quiet and orderly everything looked in Blackburn last Sunday evening, I never was more taken by surprise than by the violent outbreak of Tuesday night. I think the masters were far too peremptory in their answer to the deputation of operatives who waited upon them to propose a settlement, and the two sides seem to have separated mutually exasperated. The feeling of disap- pointment was, no doubt, intensely bitter; and as Colonel Jackson is the chairman of the Masters' Association, and also, rightly or wrongly, is believed to have been the most resolute in counselling no concession, when * ruffianism took possession of the streets, he naturally became one of the first objects of vengeance. I fear if he had himself fallen in their way, while their passions were at the hottest, his life would have fallen a sacrifice to their fury. They certainly displayed a most diabolical temper in the way in which they wrecked his house and property. I feel pretty certain, nevertheless, that the best class among the operatives have had little or nothing to do with these outrages, though they have not condemned them as I should have liked them to do. I think Lord Shaftesbury was quite right in what he said on the subject last night in the House of Lords. I said exactly the same thing in a sermon at Heyside, near Oldham, on Wednesday, for which the Manchester Guardian took me to task the next morning. I still, however, hold to my belief. The mobs are comiDosed of the low population to be found in all our towns, with a large proportion of reckless young men and girls. I have looked through the lists of those apprehended for rioting, and they are almost entirely of this class. It is THE LANCASHIRE STRIKE. 83 time, however, as Lord Shaftesbury told them in the Lords and as I said in my sermon at Heyside, that the great body of the operatives, if they would not have all public sympathy withdrawn from them, should show themselves on the side of order. There was to be a meeting of delegates at Blackburn at one o'clock, and Mr. Birtwistle said he thought a telegram from me, urging moderation, would do good. He had been able to get his own way hitherto, but the men had now broken away and could hardly be kept under any control; and the hands of those who wish for peace wanted strengthening. I dechned to send a telegram, but said I would write a letter if he would undertake to go to Blackburn to deliver it (for it could not reach its destination in time by ordinary course of post). This he promised to do." The Bishop's letter to the delegates ran thus : To the Chairman and Secretary of the Weavers' Association. May 16, 1878. Sirs,— I understand that you are holding another meeting of delegates to-day, to see if it be not possible to come to terms with the masters in relation to this unhappy strife. I am afraid that the lamentable events of the last two or three days will not have made the settlement easier ; but I do most earnestly trust the representatives of the operatives will look matters fairly in the face, and see to what issues the conduct that is bein^ pursued is tending. Confidence is being destroyed, naturally bitter feelings are aroused, order has been rudely invaded, property violently attacked and wrecked, public sympathy is certain to be alienated, and, as a necessary consequence, a revival of better times rendered more remote and uncertain. Could not a proposition which is made in this morning's Manchester papers be adopted— viz., that the men should resume work for three months at least at the ten per cent, reduction, with confidence in the fair dealing of the employers that, if trade revives m that period, they should be entitled to the return of the old or any proportionate rate of the old wage ? At any rate, whether the suggestion— which seems to me in the face of the admitted depression of trade, to be a reasonable one— is entertained or not, I do hope that the most strenuous effort will be made to put an end to the present depressing state of things. I feel most deeply on this question, involving, as it does, not only the credit of Lancashire in the eyes of the nation, but the good name of the workmg classes, and the happiness of almost countless homes ; and I trust I shall be forgiven for interposing myself, even for a moment, in your delibera- tions. I remain, gentlemen, your faithful servant, J. Manchester. Messrs. Birtwistle and Whalley. In season and out of season, the Bishop, whose heart bled over the estrangement of masters and men, urged, with every G 2 84 BISHOP FEASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. plea he could devise, the cultivation of a spirit of mutual understanding and good-will. Preaching at St. Peter's Church, Eishton, he said : " My Fbiends, — I confess I do regret the present condition of things. When I was last inNorth-East Lancashire, the strike had just begun. No doubt the landscape looked bright. The brilliant rays of the sun were unspotted by clouds of smoke. I don't admire clouds of smoke coming from tall chimneys, and I think that factory owners might make less smoke if they would, but it indicates that work is going on, and that hundreds and thousands of families are enjoying contentment and competence. When no smoke comes from these tall chimneys, it means that there is a stoppage of work, and a stoppage of wages, that furniture will shortly have to be disposed of, that the clothes of , the children will not be quite so tidy as they once were, they will be pinched and their stomachs 'clemmed,' and at last the man who once held his freedom dear will have to go to the Guardians of the Poor and tell his tale, and ask for a loaf of bread or half-a-crown to keep himself and his family alive. That is what it comes to. It is a terrible prospect before you. I don't understand how anybody, having human sympathy in his heart, can do otherwise than almost weep for this state of things. Our blessed Lord once wept for Jerusalem, because it knew not the time of its visitation. I don't know a sadder state of things than a great industry or a great people going to ruin, just because certain relations between capital and labour, which, I should think, might be readjusted somehow or other, have been disturbed. I saw the other day that the operatives paid me the compliment — I regard it as a compliment and an honour, showing that they have at least some trust in my impartiality and sense of justice— to suggest that I should act as chairman of an arbitration committee, to which the masters were asked to submit the dispute. The proposal was never made to me, and I have never opened my lips on the subject before now. I should not like to undertake the task. I don't feel that I have the requisite knowledge; it requires a very intimate acquaintance with the details of a large and complicated industry, in order to determine on some equitable basis how these matters should be arranged. I was asked, some four years ago, to be arbitrator between the House-painters of Manchester and their employers ; but that was a simple matter. The great and complicated interests of the cotton trade are vast and important, and I am not sure that arbitration would succeed in dealing with the matter. Still, the principle of having a congress to settle differences is recognized by Scripture ; and, if a man has a quarrel with his brother, he is directed to go out with his brother and settle it with him alone. That wnich is the wisest policy between nations, the wisest course between man and man, might even prove to be the wisest course in this case. I don't think the workpeople of Lancashire have any reason to mistrust THE LANdASMlRE STRtKEJ. §5 tlieir employers, and I don't believe the emi^loyers have any desire to wrong their peo^Dle. There does seem to me to be a want of mutual confidence, and until that mutual confidence is restored I am afraid no compromise in the matter will be effected. I don't pretend to have followed the whole controversy and discussions through all their details, but, from what I have seen reported of the interviews between the operatives and the masters, I confess • it has seemed to me that the language which has been used on both sides has been rather too much of an ultimatum. If they would leave out such expressions as — 'This is the last thing we will offer;' 'This is the last thing we will accept ; ' there is room for an approach. If instead of saying, * This is the last thing,' they said, ' This is our ground,' ' This is what we propose for consideration ; ' they could look at it, and fairly deal with it, and it would show that both desired the common interests of both sides; then there might be a fair and reasonable, and impartial and equitable conference. I cannot help thinking that reasonable men ought to come to some conclusion which would be an escape from the present difficult state of things. The difficulty is frightful. Here you are in the third week of the strike. Probably the loss in wages will be £100,000 or £150,000. It was said that if the strike had been complete there would have l;»een 120,000 hands out of work, and this would have represented a loss of £120,000 per week. If this is the state of things, how long is it to go on ? What is to be the end of it ? What was the end of the Bolton strike ? Did any of you read the letter of Dr. Watts in the papers yesterday ? It seems to me, that unless you make up your minds somehow or other, and bring this question to a satisfactory, reasonable, early settlement, you are involving the country in terrible consequences. I cannot look with a calm eye on the prospect before us. If it had been the beginning of winter, instead of summer, I know not what would have been the consequences. Even as it is, distress has been caused ; and the distress that will yet be caused, I am sure, must be most serious. I have no right to interpose my- self, and don't wish to interpose in such a sense as to make a rule. I am not going to say whether the operatives or masters are right. You would not wish me to say anything of the kind from the imperfect knowledge I pos- sess. The question is far too serious to be trifled with. No false pride, no jaunty bounce, no saying, ' I will gasp and die in the street rather than give in,' ought to interpose to prevent a reasonable and just settlement of this grave question. With these remarks I will leave the question to your wise and sober judgment. I have spoken not as a Lancashire man, because 1 am not one, but as an Englishman who desires to see fair and just feeling prevail among all parties. I wish to lift up my voice against war, whether it is between nation and nation, or between employer and employed, and I believe this nation only can prosper by acting on the apostle's maxim — ' Esteem all men, fear God, love the brotherhood, honour the King.' " 86 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. Preaching at St. Peter's Churcli, Halliwell : "It is thought that if we can turn out the children of our schools so that they can read, write, and cipher, it is all that is required. But does that power make men intelligent ? It does not follow that because we have developed material resources during the past half century, with such wonderful scientific results, that the world is becoming more intelhgent. I do not call a strike or lock-out an act of intelligence. A strike is a civil war between capital and labour. It cannot be called an act of intelligence for the operatives of Lancashire to lose during their nine weeks' strike £700,000. Then, again, take the riots — another uncom- fortable feature. Were the riots likely to bring about a better feeling in the minds of the masters, and cause them to open their mills when their projDcrty was being destroyed ? Although no machinery was destroyed, yet let us suppose that all the mills in Blackburn and Accrington had been destroyed (and it is possible when the streets are in possession of beardless boys and reckless girls), would you say that such persons were acting under the influence of reason ? I think not. If England became a scene of anarchy and social chaos of that kind, all the joy that makes life worth living would be gone. Let me exhort all Lancashire people to read the Lord Chief Justice's remarks when fulfilling his painful duty of sentencing those foolish, misguided men who burnt Colonel Jackson's house. The Lord Chief Justice pointed out that workmen had no right or power to compel an employer to pay for their labour the price that they chose to set upon it. Labour has a right to make its own demand, and the capitalist has a right to consider how far he can meet that demand. This seems to me simple political economy and divested of jargon.'* A compromise of 7^ per cent, reduction was proposed, but came to nothing. The Bishop's pleadings, however, with the masters to manifest a spirit of kindliness and good-will, and with the men to publicly dissociate themselves from the brutalities of outrage and riot, were more effectual. The Masters' Association, on its part, adopted a resolution sug- gested by Mr. Alderman Pickop, that, " if the operatives resumed work at the 10 per cent, reduction, the masters would be prepared to meet them in three months' time for the purpose of considering whether the condition of trade justified a return to the old wages." The men, on their part, issued the following earnest appeal ; an appeal reflect- ing the highest credit upon their class : " ' Good name in man or woman is the jewel of their souls.' To the operatives of North and North-East Lancashire, — Brothers and THE LANCASHIEE STRIKE. 87 Sisters in distress, — ^We address you once more as men labouring under a sense of the deepest responsibility for every word now said by us in tbis grave crisis. We appeal to you to listen and reflect. We counsel you only for your good ; we have no other interest in this struggle. A great calamity has befallen our districts ; riots ending in crime of the blackest character have existed in our midst for days. This vagabondism we disclaim and condemn. We are compelled by every sense of self-respect and decency to deny the slightest impression that such lawless and brutal conduct serves in any degree the cause of labour. Security is the twin sister of industry. Without peace labour can never enjoy plenty. We could have continued the struggle against your employers with a fair chance of success, but we cannot and will not struggle against the forces of order and the well-being of society. There is not a man amongst you who would grant to a ruffian with a brickbat what he had previously denied to persuasion and reason. How many of us workmen would discuss and debate with our houses sacked and our wives and families in danger ? We know it is not the fair average Lancashire man or woman who has done this mischief. In all periods of agitation the dregs of society come from their dark recesses. Rapine commences with them, and fools follow. Fathers, with sons, remember in the midst of these new dangers your lads may be easily tempted. Mothers, with daughters, we ask your help to restore peace. In conclusion, we appeal to you, fellow- workmen, to assist by all the means in your power in restoring peace and order in the disturbed districts, and so contribute to win back the good name you have so long borne for patience under suffering and respect for the persons and property of your employers and neighbours. — (Signed,) Thos. Birtwistle, Secretary, East Lancashire Weavers' Association ; John Whalley, Secretary, Blackburn and District Weavers' Association ; E. Entwistle, Secretary, Darwen Weavers' Asso- ciation ; Luke Park, Secretary, Preston Weavers* Association. — ^Black- burn, May 20, 1878." But although a better spirit began to appear between masters and men, although outrages and riots were diminished, although conferences assumed a more conciliatory tone, yet the strike and lock-out continued with their attendant and rapidly increasing misery and distress. Good men on all sides exerted themselves to bring the unhappy, the disastrous contention to a close ; and the Bishop addressed to the editors of the Manchester and London press a sympathetic, fervid, yet well-reasoned letter ; a letter of a tone and quality such as too seldom falls from the pen of a clerical writer ; a letter illustrating the keen, instructed interest which the 88 BISHOP {ERASER'S I.ANCASttmE LiFE. Bishop took in large human questions, especially questions affecting the welfare of the industrial classes. Such letters as this both reveal the secret springs of that great hold which Bishop Eraser had had upon Lancashire, and also indicate one of the directions in which the Church, and pre- eminently the Bishops of the Church, must labour if, in the modern age, their influence, not only over the ecclesiastical few, but over the non-ecclesiastical many, is to be deepened and intensified. The Strike and Lock-out. Sir, — Is it beyond the bounds of hope that either or both of the parties to the present unhappy struggle in North and North-East Lancashire will listen to one more appeal, which, as a Bishop of the Church of England, bound by his office to promote peace and good-will among men; as a resident in Lancashire, having under his eyes the poverty and sufferings sustained for seven dreary weeks, and threatening to be indefinitely prolonged ; and as an Englishman, deeply interested in everything that concerns the well-being and prosperity of his country, I venture to make to them ? I do not come forward in the character of an arbitrator, or even of a mediator. I have felt and said from the first that no outsider can under- stand the complications of the cotton industry so well as those who are themselves engaged in them; and that the solution of the present difiiculty must be looked for, not from arbitration, but from conference, conciliation, perhaps from compromise. Even if I had been vain enough to suppose myself competent to play the part which in some of the earlier proposals of the operatives they were ready to assign to me, the determined resolution expressed by the Chairman of the Masters' Association, in his replies to Lord Bateman and the Mayor of Burnley, would be- quite sufiicient to tell me that arbitration is a method of settling differences which, on the side at least of one of the parties to the conflict, would not be entertained. But the strike has now lasted seven weeks. The delegates of the men, in their last manifesto, compute that by the operatives on strike, number- ing with their families 300,000 people, already £525,000 in wages — or £75,000 a week — has been neither earned nor enjoyed ; and, the funds at their disposal being exhausted, they are now making an appeal to the trades of Great Britain and Ireland and the public generally to support them in the struggle, which they represent as an effort of the federated employers to crush in detail the trade organizations established throughout the United Kingdom for the protection of labour against capital. In other words, 300,000 peojDle, who might be maintained by £75,000 honestly earned in wages week by week, are to be sustained on a niggard and THE LANCASHIRE STRIKE. 89 precarious charity, in order that this industrial war may be (as I have said) indefinitely prolonged. Meanwhile, the angry passions inseparable from such a state of things are making themselves felt on both sides. " It is sad to observe,'* writes tome an earnest clergyman from one of the towns where the struggle has been the severest — "it is sad to observe the bitter feelings that are gradually springing up ; and the hardest words do not come from the mouths of operatives only." A speaker at a meeting at Stockport is reported to have said, " If the operatives were compelled to succumb to-morrow and make peace, it would be-of only short duration. If they had no reason- able hope of su^ccess in the present struggle, they had at least shown their strength, and prevented the attempt in the future of a further reduction." Now this is a foolish way of talking, and a dangerous and mischievous condition of feeling. No display of strength can prevent a future further reduction, if such reduction is necessary as the only way in which trade can be carried on at a profit. If the operatives think that any man will either put or keep capital in a concern which yields him no profit, they are more ignorant than I can believe them to be of the first principles of politico-economical science, and of the common motives of human nature. And if peace, when made, is to be of no long duration, and further reductions, should they become necessary, are opposed with the same weapons and the same determination as the present one, it requires no prescience to foretell the future of the cotton industry of Lancashire. It will become as much a thing of the past as the manufacturing prosperity of Tyre. In the interest of labour as well as of capital, I would invite the attention of both parties to certain phenomena which have come within my own knowledge or observation, and which I regard as typical. The iron trade of South Wales has disappeared, and as Lord Aberdare told me, in his judgment, is not likely to revive. The look of the country is described to me by those who have seen it as being as desolate as if it had been overrun by a foreign foe. I was told two days ago by a man, himself once a miner and now the coachman of a Wiltshire friend of mine, who has friends in the smitten district, that the people are emigrating in all directions — as he expressed it, are being sent off by shiploads. " What is the cause of this ? " I asked, wishing to ascertain the man's views of the case. " Oh," he said, " the strike ; though I don't know what they struck for, for they were earning, many of them, £2 10s. a week ; and twenty years ago, when I worked in the pits from five o'clock in the morning to seven o'clock at night, it was only with a * scrabble ' that I could make my pound or five and twenty shillings." At any rate, whether my[informant's view of the case is correct or not, here is a district, once the home of a thriving and remunerative industry, now reduced to the condition of a wilderness. A month ago I travelled up to London with the managing director of one of the largest engineering works in Manchester, himself well known as a man of the highest inteUigence and capacity for business. " What are 90 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. you doing ? " I asked. " Not much," he answered. " We have reduced our number of hands ; and I don't know how much longer we may have anything to do for those who remain. We have just had to refuse an order that would have been worth £45,000." " Why ? " I asked, with some surprise. "A foreign railway company invited us to tender for twenty locomotives. We offered to build them for £2,200 each ; the company would only give £2,000. There was not much profit to be got out of the transaction, but to keep the men employed we were willing to have undertaken it if we could save ourselves from loss. So we called the heads of the departments together, who are all working by piecework, and asked them if they would help us to accept the order by reducing in fair proportion the wages that were being paid to them, so as to leave some small margin of profit to the shareholders. They to a man refused, and we had to decline to enter into a contract which would have been worth £45,000." I am not able to estimate how much of this sum represents the loss in wages to the men, whom it would probably have kept in constant employment for half a year. It may now have gone into the pockets of some foreign competitor whose existence the great body of the operatives seem utterly to forget or ignore. I was informed recently upon authority that seemed to me sufficient that Bolckow, Vaughan, & Co., are sending the pig iron which they have made into Belgium to be manufactured into girders, rails, &c., and to be re-imported into this country for use, simply because the work can be done quite as well and more cheaply there than here. Mr. R. W. Dale in his " Impressions of America," published in the Nineteenth Century for April (p. 769), asserts distinctly that "in Bir- mingham itself merchants are importing from the United States such articles as axes, hayforks, and agricultural implements of nearly every description, sash pulleys, and small castings of many kinds, although it is estimated that freight and other expenses add 17 or 18 per cent, to the cost of the goods," while " the Lowell manufacturers, who are aghast at the prospect of free trade, are actually sending cotton cloth to Manchester, and in American retail stores cotton goods are marked at a lower price than that at which goods of the same quality could be sold in Liverpool or London." He expresses a " doubt whether, if the protective duties were swept away to-morrow, our own manufacturing industry would receive at once the stimulus which some sanguine persons might anticipate. Leeds and Bradford might become more active, but that the Lancashire and Bir- mingham manufacturers would recover their old place in the American market seems extremely improbable." These instances and forebodings could easily be multiplied if it were necessary, but I think that what I have said is enough to show that the operatives' theory of the present depression of trade — that it is solely due to over-production — is not a complete account of the case; while, of course, if to any extent it is due to foreign competition, anything that THE LANCASHIRE STRIKE. 91 enhances the cost of production at home — as working short time must do — throws the advantage still more into the hands of our competitors abroad. Indeed, it is the one fact of this foreign competition so seriously im- perilhng our position as a manufacturing nation in the markets abroad, and even, if Mr. Dale's " impressions " are true, in the market at home, that presses itself home to my mind as the great motive that ought to stimulate both parties in the present strife to a speedy reconciliation of their differences. Whatever, in a moment of temper and resentment, either the masters on the one hand or the men on the other may say about their inability or their reluctance to enter into trade relations upon terms of mutual confidence, — the masters denouncing the tyranny of trade unionism, the men replying with an attack upon the "insatiable greed of the capitalists," — it cannot be to the permanent interests of either party that the trade of this country should pass into foreign hands. It seems a groundless and irrational fear in the mind of the operatives that the " federated employers are making" in this lock-out " the first of a series of attacks upon the different branches of trade organizations throughout the United Kingdom," with the object of breaking the whole system down. It would be an absurd idea to think that trade unionism, which is only a particular form of the principle of combination — the instinctive resource of the weak against the strong — could be put down by a policy of this kind. Even if temporarily defeated, it would be certain to rise again by its inherent vitality as a weapon of defence. But it is quite certain that of trade unionism, as of all weapons, both a good and a bad use can be made. If trade unionism is used to obtain by fair and equitable means fair and equitable terms from the employer for the employed, no just complaint can be made against it ; if it is used merely to raise wages, irrespectively of the quality and the cost of the work done, often to the deterioration of the one and the enhancement of the other, nothing can be more indefensible, and in the long run more mischievous to the true interests of those who resort to it. The joiners of Manchester would have a sad tale to tell, if they told it wholly and truly, of the results of their eleven months' strike. Mr. Lloyd Jones, an uncompromising advocate of the cause of the working man, said the other day at the annual demon- stration of the North Yorkshire and Cleveland Miners' Association : " During the many years he had advocated trade unionism he had always impressed upon working men that their first duty was union. He said that deliberately, not because he wished to see them banded together that they might oppress capital and injure the capitalist. If they made that a leading thought, or a thought even, in their union, their union would become an affliction to the nation, as it would be an injury to them- selves." While Mr. Samuel Morley — and no employer could show a more enlightened interest in the highest welfare of his workpeople than this gentleman — writing to the Bristol Trades Council, said, " I believe trade unions have done good service in bringing workpeople to act unitedly, and 92 BISHOP I^RASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. so in many districts tliey have ceased to be a ' rope of sand,' and have been able to ensure better and more just consideration from employers, but they have also, by transferring all negotiations as to wages and conditions of work to middlemen, who have often no connection with the work generally — none whatever almost always with the particular employer — altered materially the character of the relationship between the two classes. There is, I fear, ceasing to be the intimacy between masters and men which existed some years ago." And, referring to the number of hours now worked per week, he adds, " I am clearly of opinion that unless some different arrangements are made, involving some concessions, the demand for English manufactures will gradually diminish. Unhappily, we know to our cost that some markets for certain classes of goods are gradually closing to us ; and, while this is perhaps to be expected, I feel anxious before it is too late to try whether I can induce representatives of both sides, who have influence, to meet and consider whether some amendment in our methods of conducting these negotiations and other points seriously affecting the interests of the men could not be brought into action. English manufactures cannot be consumed in England alone, and I confess I tremble for the future of large numbers of English workmen unless some changes are made." These are wise and weighty words, and trade unions must take care that in their eagerness to get the golden eggs they do not kill the bird that lays them. . . . Twenty-seven shillings a week instead of thirty during a period of prices which are being reduced in nearly all articles of necessary consump- tion does not mean starvation, nor anything like starvation. It may mean a limitation of expenditure, but it need not mean much more. To the agricultural labourer in the south of England the wages at which the Lancashire operative has struck would mean wealth which he has hardly imagined in his dreams. The operatives' own remedy for the depression — viz., 10 per *cent. reduction in wages and working four days a week— shows that they do not consider the reduction itself unreasonable, though, as I have already endeavoured to show, the recommendation to work short time indicates that they will persistently recognize only one cause of such depression. Short time might stop the glut, but it would operate to our disadvantage rather than to our benefit in the conflict with the foreign competitor ; and I fail to see how a man and his family would be better off on 18s. a week for four days' labour than on 27s. a week for five days and a half. I do not think that a false pride or a dogged obstinacy ought to prevent the men from returning to work on the masters' terms if those terms can be proved to be necessitated by the present conditions of trade. The masters say that they are working at a loss. Is there any reason for doubting the assertion, except perhaps in a few special and favoured instances? Can the joint-stock mills, in which so many of the working class hold THE LANCASHIRE STRIKE. 93 shares, produce balance-sheets during the last two years exhibiting a profit ? How can capital be compelled, or why should it be compelled, to go on working till it is itself exhausted ? or on what principle can labour dictate to capital the terms on which it should employ itself? I ask the working men of Lancashire to debate these questions among themselves, free alike from passion -and from prejudice. There never, perhaps, was a greater crisis in the cotton industry — not the least import- ant of the three great staple trades — of this coimtry. The interests of the operatives are as vitally concerned in an equitable solution of the question as the interests of the masters. If we do not take care, Lanca- shire may become as forsaken of her greatest industry as South Wales is of hers. It is in the hope of contributing something to prevent a national calamity — as one desiring to see only what is fair and right maintained between man and man — that I liave ventured to write the foregoing pages, which I must trust to your kindness to enable me to set before the world. Liheravi animam meam. — I am, &c. June 8. # J. Manchester. The Bishop's private correspondence, at this period, is full of sympathetic allusions to the industrial crisis. This sad cotton strike is on my mind, night and day, and I don't think people half realize its issues, so I was moved to write the letter to the Manchester people of which I have told you, and to-day I send you a printed copy of it. I enclose some letters which have reached me this morning encouraging me to believe that it will do some good. Mr. W. Hoyle is a cotton manufacturer and a great advocate of Temperance, he is also a very thoughtful and right-judging man. Mr. Joseph Thompson is a Town Councillor (now an Alderman) of Manchester, a Congregationalist, but one of our most intelligent and highly educated citizens. It is satisfactory to me to find such men approving the course which I have pursued ; but their letters make the outlook, at any rate in the immediate future, even more gloomy than I had feared. It is a most critical moment in the industrial history of this country ; and the slightest inclination of the scale looks as though it would pour all our boasted wealth into the lap of the foreign competitors. And this sad weather damps all hopes of a plenteous harvest, which would have relieved some of the darkness of the future. We can but leave the issue, with patience and faith, in higher hands. To a Working Man. June 18, 1878. My Good Friend, — I am sorry you did not like my letter on the strike. I am sure I tried to be impartial. But I thought, and still think, that the operatives had not taken all the elements of the question into con- sideration — made no allowance for foreign competition — and that their 94 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. conduct was not only inflicting lamentable distress upon themselves, but was running the risk of permanently injuring the trade of the country. Unkindly feelings, too, were growing up between the two parties, which, if allowed to develop and intensify, would be the parent, not only of much discomfort, but of much mischief in the future. I therefore wrote in the interests of conciliation ; and, whether my letter has had any influence or not, I am glad to observe that the course I counselled is being followed. I did not attempt to discuss all the social questions of the day, and therefore made no reference to the land question, which was outside my argument. I am afraid it will be found that all classes have paid too selfish a regard to their own supposed interests, when they have had the chance. — ^Yours faithfully, J. Manchester. But, as the darkness is deepest just before the dawn, so the gloom of the industrial crisis was thickest just before its close, and on June 17, within ten days of the appearance of his appeal in the press, the Bishop's heart was gladdened by the termination of the strike. The Strike Committee found it impossible to procure funds for the maintenance of 70,000 unemployed work-people, who, eyen at Is. each, would require 3,500Z. a week ; and so, at a representative meeting held at Blackburn, it was resolved by 130 votes to 52 to discontinue the struggle and accept the employers' terms. " This morning's papers," writes the Bishop, " announce the ' Termination of the Strike ' — the most joyful announcement that has met my eyes for many a long week — and to-morrow, if not to-day, most of the mill chimneys will be sending out their puff's of smoke again, and something a good deal more than the crust of ' starvation ' will be found in 60,000 Lancashire homes." All good men had longed for, many had laboured to bring about, this happy result ; but none had either longed or laboured more earnestly than the Bishop. His heart was rent by the hunger, the misery, the desolation which the strike and lock-out had caused : he dreaded, in the interests of humanity and Christian brotherhood, the estrangement and bitterness which these industrial wars fomented between employers and employed. Eecognizing fully the right of combination both among masters and men for the promotion of common aims THE LANCASHIRE STRIKE. 95 and ends, he desired to see these combined associations animated not by a spirit of hostility, but of friendliness and good- will. His mission was to set men with, not against, one another. He was a fine illustration of the truth of the Duke of Albany's noble utterance at Liverpool in 1884 : — " A mutual understanding of class and class — that, surely, is what we need. There have been times and there have been countries when — ** ' Those behind cried, " Forward ! " And those before cried, " Back ! " * But in our age and in our country it is not so. Those whom Providence has placed in the front ranks of this great nation are desirous that those behind them should move onward as swiftly as they can, for we have learned that, along the ways of wisdom and virtue, we shall advance furthest if we all advance together." No man upon the episcopal bench has toiled harder, and more successfully, to promote " the mutual understanding of class and class," a most royal aim, than Bishop Eraser. Genius has seldom displayed the splendour of its originality more conspicuously in practical life. As the Prince Consort literally discovered a new career for a Prince, so Bishop Fraser literally discovered a new career for a Bishop. His was " an original thought and a new position." Deeply spiritual, he was also deeply human. An " Ireland " scholar, he was less interested in Greek particles than in the progress of mankind. A devoted student of the Bible, his religion was the religion of comprehensive sympathy and noble conduct, rather than a religion of scholastic niceties and the pronunciation of Shibboleth. He was more than a liberal Churchman ; he was a loving man. He pondered over the signs of the times, not as a dogmatical visionary, but as a rational,' responsible citizen, well instructed in the civic, the industrial, the social problems which no other philosophy or religion appears so well adapted to solve as the Gospel of Christ. Letters of grateful appreciation of the part he had played in bringing to a termination this industrial war poured in 96 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. upon the Bishop from all sorts and conditions of men. One only, from his highly valued friend, Dean Church, will suffice as a type :— The Deanery, St. Paul's, London, Whit Tuesday, 1878. My dear Fraser, — I must write a line to tell you how my heart goes out towards you at the noble and worthy line you are taking in this dreadful Lancashire civil war. It makes me proud to have had anything to do with a Christian Bishop who sees so clearly and does so bravely what his Master's servant ought to do in these dangerous and perplexed quarrels. It is in modern England an original thought and a new position ; and yet it is the true order of things. It is, of course, not every one who could venture thus to mediate and speak the truth. You have earned the right to do it ; and now you are able to set a true example. God grant that your words may be fruitful ! Ever yours, A. W. Church. CHAPTER yi. COMMERCIAL DEPRESSION. Commercial Distress— The Panic— The Bishop's Letter— The Relief Com- mittee — Indiscriminate Benevolence — Savings Banks — Social Chris- tianity — Improvidence — The Elberfeldt System — Organized Charity — The Organization of Relief— Thrift. The termination of the nine weeks' industrial war was not the termination of the distress and misery which that war had caused. In the course of the war the operatives had lost, in wages alone, nearly £700,000. In multitudes of instances, especially where families were large, this loss amounted to a reduction to beggary. Small shopkeepers were compelled to give large credit and were thus placed at the mercy of usurers ; clothes and furniture were pawned without hope of redemption ; enforced idleness increased opportunities for drinking ; the habits of extravagance, waste, and unthrift contracted in days of prosperity, found the bulk of the people unprepared for seasons of scarceness and adversity. Hundreds of families, which for years had been in receipt of COMMERCIAL DEPRESSION. 97 upwards of £3 a week, were found not only to have made no '* provision for a rainy day," but to be in debt on every side. Before the strike had lasted a fortnight, these families were thrown into the condition of paupers, soliciting relief from the Gruardians of the Poor. Moreover, the general outlook, instead of improving and brightening, grew darker and less hopeful. Every branch of industry, all ranks of tradespeople, seemed to be enveloped in the prevailing gloom. The case of the iron-masters and coal-masters became almost desperate. The Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway discharged a considerable number of servants, and lowered the wages of the rest. One of the largest brewers in Lancashire was compelled to put his men on half time. In Yorkshire and Warwickshire furnaces were blown out and forges stopped. In the great engine works at Crewe, the London and North- Western Railway put their men, numbering at least five thousand, upon short time. Markets and warehouses were glutted with manufac- tured goods. Persons, hitherto considered opulent, were reducing their establishments. Many sold their carriages. Where two gardeners had been kept, one was dismissed ; hospitality sensibly diminished; the proprietors of hotels found their accounts dwindling into comparative insignifi- cance. Panics were common, both at home and abroad. The failure of the City of Glasgow Bank had inflicted untold miseries upon thousands of persons in Scotland, and had penetrated England with a sense of insecurity. Failures grew common; each failure preparing the way for, and rendering unavoidable, other failures. The stoppage of the West of England Bank threw south-western England into a condition bordering upon consternation. A spirit of fear and trembling seized upon depositors. In Manchester the run upon building societies, notably the Queen's Building Society and the Victoria Building Society, was unprecedented. The amount withdrawn from the former society between Friday, October 11, 1878, and Wednesday, October 16, in sums under £50 was not less than £50,000. H 98 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. Under these circumstances the eyes of the community were turned to the Bishop, the friend of the people, the just and wise counsellor of all classes ; the man, who by his knowledge of economic affairs, and his absolute integrity in speaking of and dealing with them, had won the public confidence. In the height of the panic he addressed the following letter to the Manchester press : Bishop's Coubt, October 16, 1878. Sir, — On my return home last night — too late to get this letter inserted in your issue of to-morrow — I heard with regret that something Hke a commercial panic occurred in Manchester to-day, that a " run " was made by timid depositors upon one of our best-estabhshed building societies, while even more alarming rumours were being freely circulated. If 'un- reasoning and unreasonable apprehensions get possession of the public mind, they may easily become the parent of a great and fast-spreading disaster. The prosperity of the country rests upon credit — I mean upon mutual confidence between man and man ; and, if this foundation is rudely shaken, the building which rests upon it will certainly topple and fall. It does not follow that, because a Scotch bank appears to have been adminis- tered with culpable disregard of the ordinary principles of sound finance, that all banks and monetary institutions have been equally reckless in the use of their funds. The immediately available resources of no bank will bear up against unlimited pressure; and even the Bank of England would have to close its doors if all its depositors clamoured for a settle- ment of their accounts on the same day, or in the same week. And it must frequently happen that a bank's best securities are those which cannot be realized in a moment to meet the pressure of a panic. If a bank is believed to be unsafe or to conduct its business incautiously, we were foolish to entrust our money to it at all ; but, if we have confidence in its administration and its solvency, the bank has a right to look, in the moment of a strain, for the support, the co-operation, and, above all, the self-control of its depositors. That rotten businesses should go down under the present conditions of the money market is to be expected, and for the future healthiness of trade it is better that they should do so. But, if the popular mind is possessed by panic, even the most solvent concerns may share in the collapse ; and, though the ultimate realization of assets may be sufficient to meet all liabilities, the intermediate distress may be incal- culable, and the credit of the country may sustain a shock from which it would not recover for years. The sound counsel of the old Hebrew prophet recurs to my memory in this as in all great crises — " strength *' lies in " quietness and confidence." — I am, &c., J. Manchester. COMMERCIAL DEPRESSION. 99 With the approach of winter, the distress (in multitudes of instances so intense that, if unrelieved, it would have ended in starvation and death) deepened and spread. The weather was very severe ; and, as always happens in hard weather, when food is scanty, sickness and disease wrought sad havoc among the over-crowded masses. In Manchester a Eelief Fund was instituted to which most generous sub- scriptions were sent ; but a difficulty greater than that of obtaining money presented itself, viz., the difficulty of dis- covering the most needy cases; of preventing imposture; and of avoiding the common abuses of philanthropy which so frequently foster pauperism. Unfortunately, too, the labours and anxieties connected with the industrial war, combined with the severity of the weather, and a constitu- tional tendency towards bronchitis, had placed the Bishop on the sick list, and compelled him, under medical advice, to remain a prisoner within doors at Bishop's Court. But, although he could, to his great regret, not attend the meetings of the Eelief Committee, yet he watched, as his correspondence shows, all the proceedings with careful and sympathetic vigilance. December 24, 1878. The distress here, I fear, is increasing, and unless they extend their organizations — and I see they are beginning to do it — I fear it will become unmanageable. I deeply regret that this illness of mine quite prevents me from offering personal service. I wrote to Mr. Smith, the agent of the Provident Society, suggesting that the Committee should form a separate fund for the special relief of those who have been in better circumstances, but who now feel the pinch of poverty quite as keenly as the " poor." I have asked him to consult Mr. Oliver Hey wood and Mr. Herbert Philips — two of our best men, noUe fellows! — and, if such a fund is formed, have promised £50 to it. I shall be glad to add your cheque to this fund if I find it needed. I was led to make the suggestion by a letter which I received from a man who had been a commercial traveller, with a wife and five children, who had observed what I had said about the blankets, and who told me that they had been obliged to sell all their furniture, and had not one single blanket left, to buy food. Of course I can't tell whether the statement is true, or whether drink may not have had something to do with the result ; but I have asked Smith to inquire into the case, and if he finds it deserving to give the man £2 on my account. There are a H 2 100 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. number of such cases ; and therefore I suggested the formation of a Si^ecial fund to deal with them. I have not yet received a reply. The money subscribed to the Provident Society now amounts to about £8,000 ; and about 3,500 cases have been reUeved. But a much larger sum will be required if this weather lasts, and the distress continues spreading with its present rapidity. Most of the sums subscribed, I am sorry to see, are small — under £10. I am afraid this indicates that many who are sup- posed to be well off are feeling the pressure themselves ; though many, I fear, do not realize what the suffering actually is. December 26, 1878. I am glad to see the hope expressed in the Manchester Guardian this morning, that the organizations which are at work are " breaking the neck " of the distress, and that the whole thing is getting under command. I do so much regret that the weather absolutely prevents me from engaging in active co-operation with the earnest and noble men who are throwing themselves into the actual work (like Oliver Heywood) with as much discretion as enthusiasm. There is no immediate want of funds, for I see this morning that the subscriptions amount to £10,700, and up to Monday last they had only spent £3,000. But the organization is now covering nearly the whole of Manchester, and I expect they will soon be spending £3,000 a week. Happily the weather shows signs of breaking this morning ; a gentle thaw is setting in ; and with a milder temperature the distress will be considerably lessened. Januarys, 1879. I went to the relief depot to-day, and I must say that the people that I saw crowding round the doors were not at all the sort of people, judging by their looks, that I should care to relieve ; they seemed people whose distress was entirely due to improvidence and intemperance, and whom I should like to have seen sent to the tender mercies of the Guardians. I believe a change of administration is to be introduced to-moiTow, and I told the Committee I thought it was high time. According to the Mayor's estimate there are 45,000 people being relieved in this town ; at Glasgow, with a larger population, and I should tliink with an equal amount of distress, there are only 30,000. I don't complain of the numbers, but I fear that the improper people are getting the relief, and the worthier objects are unnoticed and unknown. I think they are working the thing much better in Salford, in connection with the same central organization and out of the same central fund, but with three independent local and one independent general committee ; and yet, even there last Tuesday, I heard accounts given of the tricks and malpractices both of relief-recipients and of tradespeople, which made me see what a careful eye and firm hand COMMERCIAL DET^RESSIOK. 101 \vere Heeded to help to keep all things straight. Only think of one woman getting from a shopkeeper a pot of potted salmon for her shilling relief ticket ! One of the most active members of the Manchester Com- mittee, Mr. T. H. Birley, told me that he never felt before so strongly as he feels now the absolute necessity of some such organization as I have all along been suggesting, on the model of Elberfeldt, to meet a crisis of thiskind. Events like the trade depression and the social distress of this period brought out, in singular prominence, the dis- tinguishing feature of Bishop Eraser's episcopate. By natural constitution, by his experiences as a commissioner, above all, by the power of his deepest spiritual convictions, he was intensely human ; a citizen of the Pauline type, a Bishop who was less an ecclesiastic than a man. At the annual meeting of the Manchester and. Salford Savings Bank in January, 1874, he said : " Social questions have always taken a rank in my sympathies and estimation, not only far above political questions, but even, I may venture to say, far above ecclesiastical questions. By this I mean — and I do not wish to be misunderstood — that, without in any way relaxing my hold on what I believe to be the great truths of Christianity, I still feel that the great function of Christianity is to elevate man in his social condition. Therefore, I think my business as a Bishcp is to do what I can, by example and precept, to diffuse everywhere the great principles of sobriety and thrift, and to take my chance as to whether my own particular com- munity of the Church of England gains or loses thereby. I care very little for the dominance of this or that ecclesiastical party ; my prayer for all who hold and propagate the Truth being that they may be blessed with the success they deserve. I do think that an institution like the Savings Bank is one animated by a Christian spirit, embodying a Christian prin- ciple, and such as should command the sympathy of every sympathetic Christian man." The might of the influence which Bishop Eraser exercised over Lancashire largely sprang from the fact that his interest " in social problems w^as far above his interest in ecclesiastical questions." He was never weary of re-echoing the counsel of the reformers, " to keep to the Bible and the Apostles' Creed, letting divines, if they like, dispute about the rest." As Bishop Latimer borrowed his illustrations of the principles of Christianity " from the plough," so Bishop 102 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. Eraser applied the principles of Christianity to the home, the factory, the exchange. He made Lancashire feel that Christianity was intended by Christ to leaven and en- noble all the relationships of life : to speak out the honest truth both to the improvident poor and the extravagant rich ; to stimulate, but at the same time to organize, the distribution of benevolence. In sermons and speeches. Bishop Fraser enforced and reiterated his convictions upon these great social. Christian, questions. St. Peter's Church, Ashton, November 3, 1878 : " We have all been living too fast — all spending too much money on things which do not profit — rich and poor alike. Perhaps extravagance strikes one more in the working classes than in any other class, because it is more manifest ; but all alike are spending too much money. In coming to Ashton this morning, I travelled with a lady who told me that she had visited a small village in the north of Lancashire which I know very well, and in which no rich people live ; and she said she visited the village draper's shop, and found it hung with sealskin jackets, the lowest price for which was twelve or fourteen guineas each. She asked what sale there was for jackets of that kind ; and the shop-keeper replied that the girls in the mills bought them and bought them freely. The girls could no doubt get as good a jacket as they required, neatly made, for two guineas, and there would be ten or twelve guineas for the Savings Bank, to be put by until a rainy day. These are things to be considered." The Savings Bank, Manchester, January 3, 1879 : " With regard to the present distress, upon which I should like to say a word or two, I am terribly afraid that, unless we have an almost immediate improvement in the state of things, the organization of the Provident Society will break down tinder the burden that has been put upon it. I was told only the other day by a friend of mine, who went to offer help, that one of the committee said, * We have gone on a week, but if this is going to last for a month I don't know how we shall continue.' And there were some unpleasant facts mentioned on Tuesday by the Salford Committee. It was said that, in many cases, relief tickets were very much abu.sed, that they were frequently honoured at public-houses, and that in shops articles were given in lieu of the food specified on the ticket. One ticket-holder, I am told, had taken potted salmon in lieu of the article specified on the ticket, and other cases of abuse were mentioned. A man who had been in receipt of 35s. a week at a dye works in Salford was thrown out of work in consequence of the temporary stoppage of the works COMMERCIAL DEPRESSION. 103 through the bursting of the pipes, and three days afterwards he went to apply for relief ! ! There are a number of such cases, and unless we have an organization established on something like the Elberfeldt system the ground will never be properly covered. The amount of imposition we are liable to, whenever a pressure comes, is more than any of us are aware of ; and, such being the case, more harm than good is being done by the money spent in charity. There are many, many cases of real distress which do not see the light; and if all who really wish to put their shoulder to the wheel to relieve the deserving distress, and to leave those wretched, reck- less cases who do not deserve charitable relief, and who really have no claim upon our sympathy, to the Poor Law Guardians, I think that some good will have been done ; whereas, at the present moment, I am in grave doubt as to whether, in the long run, we may not have been doing as much harm as good." The Chapel of the Blind Asylum, Old Trafford, January 5, 1879: " We see before us in Manchester at the present time, a sight which is enough to make one weep tears almost of despair. On Friday, from the Manchester and Salford Savings Bank meeting, I went to the temporary premises of the District Provident Society in "Windmill Street ; and in one of the upper rooms saw a contrast of modern nineteenth century civiliza- tion. On one side of the long distributing table were men — and I beUeve there are hundreds such — endeavouring by the exhibition of Christian sympathy and Christian action to show to the poor and needy, and even to the intemperate, the reckless, and the improvident, that there were those who cared for their bodies ; and there is, at any rate, a real work being done when peoples' bodies are being cared for. But as I stood for half-an- hour watching the distribution of relief, I realized the difficulty of the work. People come forward who, it is plain to be seen, are not proper objects for Christian charity ; having brought poverty upon themselves by drunkenness, improvidence, sloth, or something of that kind. I said some time ago that, if a crisis came upon Manchester, we should be quite unable to meet it ; because we had no organization except the poor law system, and I called attention to the Elberfeldt system, which is really what is wanted in our great and dense populations, in order to meet, with any effectiveness, the actual phenomena of poverty. I would be the very last person to repress for one moment the emotions of benevolence ; and yet I feel most acutely and clearly that there is no more difficult thing one has to do than to exercise a wise, salutary, and discriminating benevolence. A gushing benevolence I do not believe in. I trust nothing will be done out of mawkish and foolish charity. You may provide so many children with dinners every day, but are you certain that, by so doing, you are not relieving many intemperate parents from the responsibility which belongs to them of providing food for their children, and thus enabling 104 BISHOP P'RASIiR^S LANCASHIRE LtFI^. them to spend more money upon drink for themselves? I deprecate all that sensational and indiscriminate charity which is doing so much mischief everywhere, and only aggravating the pauperism which it so feebly and spasmodically attemi)ts to relieve. My first and last cry is, * Let us organize and consolidate our benevolence.' I say that I believe you will, if you are Christian men and women, copy the example and precepts of the Great Teacher of Galilee, by going about the world with tender hearts, glad to give, ready to distribute ; only making sure before- liand that your giving will help none but really deserving or really un- fortunate people." St. John's ChTirch, Hurst, May 29, 1880 : " There are poor in England tc-day just as wretched as Lazarus. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred 1 fancy it is from their own fault, though I know that in some cases inherent weakness of constitution, and other causes over which men have no control, bring them to the sad state in which they are found — that sudden misfortune overtakes l^eople, and that rich men become poor, and poor men poorer. It goes to my heart when I think of my own happy, sheltered, and prosperous lot, and when I read, as I do every day, some half-dozen appeals from every part of the country, not half of them true; yet not less saddening — telling of the sad lot of those who, if our conditions were measured by our deserts, deserve to be as comfortable as one's self. T quite admit there are great difficultif^s in the way of benevolence. What is called * indiscriminate charity ' does more harm than good, and is a foolish habit, which generates a great deal of hypocrisy and lying. Every one who tries to do good ought to take the further pains of seeing that he is doing good. It was said of Archbishop Whateley that he gave away in his life £40,000 in charit}^, and yet never gave sixpence to a man who accosted him in the street. That may seem rather hard, but it is my own rule pretty much. Deserving tramps are, I am afraid, very few and seldom to be met with ; and I say again that, if we wish to do good, it is our duty to see that we do it, and not be content with bestowing a shilling here and there to any one who may ask it." The organization of Christian _ benevolence is a problem which has exercised the thoughts of the Christian leaders of every age; and so far, especially in large towns, with only partial success. The larger the unit of the area " which takes charge of its own poor," the greater the opportunity ojDened to deceitful mendicants, because every increase of area means a lessening of personal acquaintance with the population; and the fundamental condition of the wise COMMERCIAL DEPRESSION?. 105 and beneficent distribution of benevolence is a personal knowledge of the circumstances of the recipients of that benevolence. To be a true helper to the needy, it is essential to search out *"the cause of those we do not know. It was this great law of Christian economics which turned Bishop Eraser's attention to the Elberfeldt system — a system which he frequently explained and commended. In a speech delivered at Old Trafford, January 5, 1879, he said : " The Elberfeldt system was adopted about twenty years ago, when the population of Elberfeldt was 50,000. The town was divided into manage- able blocks of houses, and 300 volunteers distributed themselves into working parties ; each party taking the oversight of one particular block, and making themselves acquainted with the condition of every family within that block. When the plan was begun, out of a population of 50,000 there were 4,220 paupers, and in 1876, up to which time the latest returns were made, the population had gTown to 90,000, but the pauper list had fallen to 1,200. Here is a machinery which supersedes the poor law, and which has reduced pauperism." In a former address, October 28, 1877, he had said : " With regard to Manchester, it seems to me that there is plenty of money and plenty of benevolence, but the benevolence wants organizing, and the money wants distributing. What we seem to require is some organization on a Christian basis. In such a work we could bury all sec- tarian animosities ; and I cannot but think it would do good if an English Churchman and a Roman Catholic, or a Wesleyan and a Unitarian, would go to two and two on errands of mercy. The organization I wish to see is of this kind. I assume the population of Manchester and Salford to be from 450,000 to 500,000. Of that number, perhaps, one half live in cir- cumstances under which supervision would be inexpressibly valuable. They would be living in 40,000 or 50,000 houses. That being so, I think an association of 500 members woidd be able to deal with them. Two members might take the oversight of 200 houses, or 1,000 people. The districts might vary in extent according to the character of their popu- lation. I would like to see each district visited once a week. E'o doubt there might be some risk, but can you tell me of any noble cause which can be maintained without risk ? If a man is afraid of infection, or slinks back from typhoid fever, do not let him go ; but, if willing to trust God with his life, or feeling that life is nobly laid down for the sake of his * Job xxiv. IG. 106 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE, brethren, let him trust God, as medical men have to do, and go forth, paying special attention to those localities where the spirit- vaults, and dram-shops, and brothels abound. Those are the parts that want super- vision, and, if the city were divided into manageable districts, two wise men might say of each : ' We will undertake to visit it once a week, we will soon find out the bad houses, and soon know the causes of distress and poverty ; and will report all cases where money will avail to remove them. I consider that a sum of £10,000 a year would suffice to meet the needs of such an organization, and I do not think that Manchester would refuse to find the necessary funds if the cost were even £50,000, if it could be shown that by it we could prevent those terrible instances of destitution, degradation, disease, sorrow, suffering, and shame which are a perfect reproach to what we call our nineteenth century civilization. "With refer- ence to the persons who are to perform the work, I do not anticipate any difficulty in getting the required number. I understand there are 2,000 young men wlio are members of the Young Men's Christian Association. What nobler work could they have ? Then there are about 3,000 young men members of the Manchester AthenjBum ; and, considering these things, I cannot but think that there is material enough which only wants to be enlisted in this great work of charity. I would like to stamp the Cross of Christ broad and deep on the work. There should be no sectarianism, no priestcraft, no ' canting,' as men went about their work, in the name of religion — there has been too much of that, and instead of doing good, it has done an enormous amount of harm — but there should be energetic action and wise and loving ministrations in the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ." The Bishop's private correspondence abounds in references to the same topic. December 24, 1878. " I never wished to make my * Elberfeldt ' organization denominational, or to connect it exclusively with the Church of England. The only feature, or at least the chief feature, that I wished to introduce from Elberfeldt, is the division of Manchester into districts under a body of volunteer super- visors, who should undertake to make themselves acquainted with the condition — moral, educational, industrial, social — of every family living in their district. Apparently the System has been introduced into Berlin, where they have 1,000 visitors for the poor ; and are establishing bonds of sympathy, based upon actual knowledge, and of help showing itself in wise and practical methods, between the classes now sundered by terrible chasms of mutual ignorance, and sometimes of mutual antipathy. I ask for 500 workers, and for a fund of £10,000 a-year. When we have raised in a few weeks £15,000 to meet the present distress, there ought to be no pecuniary difficulty ; and Herbert Philips' acknowledgment that now we are only making a ' scrambling attempt ' to deal with the evil, ought to COMMERCIAL DEPRESSION. 107 show people the need of organization. But I think the idea is taking pos- session of people's minds, and though the process is slow, one must not be too impatient." Januanj 21, 1879. " There is no craze so difficult to deal with as the craze of philanthropic enthusiasm, which can or will only see one side of a question, and sets you down as a Laodicean, or something worse, if you do not see things in exactly the same light." "I am afraid we are discovering now the mischief we did by the almost indiscriminate relief of last winter, when we spent that £26,000 on relieving 40,000 persons. The weather is scarcely so severe, trade is better, and work is much more plentiful, and yet the number both of indoor and outdoor paupers relieved by Boards of Guardians is very largely in excess of what it was this time twelvemonth. The Manchester Guardians adopted a very strong memorial to the Government on Wednesday, in which they traced the mass of pauperism that prevails to the excessive facilities for obtaining drink which are placed in the way of people ; and called upon the Government to take some eff'ective steps in providing a remedy. In default of a proper organization, such as I have kept suggesting for the last two years, I am at my wits' end what to do, and I relieve no case into which I have not previously inquired through the agency of the District Provident Society. Without that aid 1 should be imposed upon, and be doing mischief right and left." There were other lessons also which Bishop Eraser im- pressed upon Lancashire in connection with the commercial distress of 1878-9, besides the dangers of unenquiring benevolence and the need for the thorough organization of Christian charity. " I think," he said, " one of the great things we should strive to promote is the habit of frugality and of providence among all classes of our population." Over and over again he emphasized the need of this self- respecting thrift. " I certainly wish," he said, speaking at Blackburn in February, 1879, "that the great bodies of the working classes of this country had learnt more thoroughly than they seem to have learned as yet, the important lessons that are contained in the simple old English word — thrift. I do not mention it as a special fault of the working classes that they are unthrifty. I am afraid it is a general fault of Englishmen. Certainly, I believe that the late period of prosperity was a period which encouraged all people to become extravagant, and, I am sorry to say, selfishly extravagant. At the same time, I will say that the working 108 BISHOP LEASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. classes, who are by far the most numerous, certainly are those who, it seems to me, most imperatively need to learn the lessons of thrift. Let me illustrate what I mean by one or two very obvious examples. Take the case of early marriages. One of my clergy the other day told me that he married a lad of sixteen to a girl of fourteen years. What do you think of that ? I have also heard that it is a very common thing for young people in Blackburn to be married before they are twenty-one. A case was told me, about an hour ago, of a man who was going to be married, but he had not a very large stock of furniture or a large wardrobe, for he said he should have to borrow the coat he went to church in. Now, we will take an opposite case. I suppose I am not exaggerating when I say that in prosperous times there must be many a young man of twenty-one years of age, who, if industrious, could be earning 25s. a week. If he lived alone, and had nobody to keep but himself, I imagine that he could feed, dress, and lodge himself respectably for 15s. ; thus saving 10s. a week. That is £26 a year, and if he postponed his marriage until he was thirty (and I really think that is pretty nearly soon enough, seeing that I am consider- ably over thirty and not married yet) that young man, instead of having to go to a friend and say : ' Let me have a coat to be wed in,' would be able to go to the bank and draw out £300. This is a practical point,which I think young men, and young women too, might lay to heart. I will now take another case ; Professor Levi has calculated that the net annual sum earned as wages by the labouring classes of the country, is about £450,000,000 ; and the sum spent by them on tobacco and intoxicants in the year is about £200,000,000. Now, how much better it would be for them, and for their wives and children, if they smoked and drank less in proportion. The other day I was sitting on the Salford Kelief Committee, when there were 900 applicants for relief, and out of that number 460 were from the build- ing trade. Of that 460, 200 were skilled artisans, — masons, bricklayers, joiners, painters, and plasterers. It was only the third week of the distress, and in that short time skilled artisans, who had been earning 9d. an horn- as long as they had work, were asking for relief. Such things are terrible." Again, in speaking at the Manchester and Salford Savings Bank Association, January 26, 1881, the Bishop said : " Habits of thrift must be instilled early if they are to be effective, and I quite agree that real thriftiness is an important factor in all true edu- cation. Whilst I am glad to join in the direct and open crusades against the terrible evil of intemperance, I have always felt that indirect assaults upon that vice are perhaps more likely to be successful than the direct ones. It is because I feel that the habit of thrift is amongst the most powerful of weapons in this indirect assault, that I always feel so strongly about thrift. A thrifty man likes to have a comfortable home, which I COMMERCIAL DEPRESSION. 109 think is the most powerful counter-attraction to the public-house or the spirit-vault. Such a man, too, likes to wear decent clothes, and though I sometimes lament to see young people tricking themselves out in costly finer}', still that is better than spending the money in the public-house. There is, I believe, a growing desire among the people for decent clothes. It seems to me the people, as a people, are better and more comfortably dressed than they were forty years ago, and this I attribute to some extent, to increased habits of thrift. Thrifty habits, again, enable people to enjoy more health — full and more legitimate recreations. I wish we had more facilities for healthful recreation ; but we are moving in that direction." The following testimony, kindly supplied by Mr. James Smith, the Secretary of the Manchester and Salford District Provident Society, shows how thoroughly Bishop Eraser's personal practice was in accord with his public utterances in the matter of painstaking benevolence and well-considered charity. Up to the time of the Bishop's death, Mr. Smith was the almoner of the Bishop's private charity. He had a favourite way of going to Mr. Smith and saying : " Smith, I fancy So-and-So is in trouble (i.e. some poor clergyman or minister). I have not said a word to them about their circumstances ; but from the abject look of the wife, and the anxious, care-worn look of the husband, I fancy they must be in want; will you, by some means, get an interview, and if your ideas are at all confirmed in what I suspect, try to thrust this into their hands (a £10 or in many cases a £20 note), and under no circumstances let them have the slightest idea, directly or indirectly, who sent the money." Hardly a week passed over without the Bishop paying one of these visits to Mr. Smith. It was not, therefore, a matter of surprise to find, when his accounts were examined after his death (for he kept even his charitable accounts with scrupulous hdelity) that during the fifteen and half years of his episcopate Bishop Fraser had distributed £S 1,535, an average of £2,000 a year — i.e., nearly half his official income — upon various objects of Christian benevolence. 110 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. CHAPTER YII. CO-OPERATION — SOCIAL SCIENCE. The Co-operative Movement — Co-operative Congress — Co-operation and Agri- culliire — Co-operation and the Church — Social Science — Population of Cities— The Interment of the Dead — Recreation — Social Science and Religion. The Co-operative movement is one of the most remarkable industrial movements originated within the last fifty years. Its root-principle is to give the buyer a share in the profits of the -seller, and the seller a means of obtaining ready- money from the buyer, by an identification of the interests of both. In its further development it aims at identifying the interests of masters and servants, employers and employed, by the process of converting the working-classes into their own capitalists. Co-operation has hitherto accom- plished better results in its distributive province of a buying- and-selling movement than in its productive province as a manufacturing enterprise. The fundamental articles of the creed oi co-operation are few and plain. In an ideal co-operative store, the dealers at the store are also the owners of the store ; no credit is allowed, all purchasers are cash purchasers, those employed at the store have an interest in the profits of the store ; and the buyers divide amongst themselves any gains which accrue upon the business done. It seldom happens, however, that an actual co-operative store is conducted upon these ideal principles. In some stores the true co-operative creed is less fully practised than in others ; but, in all, the principle of allowing no credit is adhered to, cash payments being invariably the rule. This, of itself, is an enormous gain to all classes ; for the curse of the credit-system is among the worst curses of the people. It is hopeless to seek for either happiness or progress in any class which is unthrifty and in debt ; and CO-OPERATION. Ill the credit system is both an encouragement to improvidence and a fosterer of debts. Without committing himself to every point in the co-operative creed, Bishop Eraser — him- self among the most thriftful and provident of men, whose proud boast was that he never was in debt in his life, and had never known what it was to waste a shilling — fixed upon the thriftful and provident aspects of co-operation ; and, in the interests of social happiness and industrial progress, strongly enforced these aspects upon public attention. He was also stimulated to greater interest in the co-operative movement by the fact that two considerable towns in his diocese, Eochdale and Oldham, were the largest spheres of co- operative action in England : the former town claiming the proud distinction of being the birthplace of the co-operative idea. On April 23, 1878, the delegates of the Co-operative Congress assembled at the Co-operative Hall, Downing Street, Manchester, under the presidency of Bishop Eraser. It was a rare circumstance in the history of co-operation that a Bishop should preside over a co-operative congress, and that co-operative delegates should listen with eager minds to the economical counsels of a Bishop — a Bishop both glowing with sympathy and bold in criticism. " I have looked," said the Bishop in his Presidential address, " into this Co-operative movement, and have taken a considerable interest in it, and I also wish it every success. I am not a co-operator myself, and I don't think in the whole course of my life I ever spent a single sixpence at a co-operative store ; nor do I mean to desert my retail tradesmen as long as they serve me fairly. But other persons, who may be diiferently situated in external circumstances from myself, no doubt have thought, and naturally thought, that the principle of co-operation is one that would very largely help them in the conduct of the affairs of life ; and, therefore, they have gone into it with a vigour which seems characteristic of Englishmen when they thoroughly understand what they are doing, and are thoroughly determined to make what they are engaged in a success. You have been working the system, as I understand, for something hke twenty-six years, and in that time you must have found out its strong points and its weak points : and if you are not like — which I don't imagine you are — that foolish bird, which, when it is followed by enemies, has a habit of burying its head in 112 BISHOP FKASER'8 LANCASHIRE LIFE. the sand and thinking it has n.o enemies, because it does not see them — I hope you have more intelligence — and having found the weak points in your system, I hope you are endeavouring to correct them in the wisest and most practical way. I do think there is need for caution and prudence in developing this matter just now. You are perfectly aware that the conditions of our commercial industry are somewhat disturbed at the present moment; and that it is certainly a time when everybody should move forward with a certain amoimt of caution ; for I am afraid some disastrous consequences may yet be in store for some of those jmrticalar co-operative developments in consequence of the rashness with which, during a period of great prosperity in Lancashire, co-operative enterprises of the productive kind were started. I remember three or four years ago when the cotton industry was supposed to be enjoying a prosperity which people erroneously supposed would be chronic, and permanent, and almost normal, that there was an enormous develop- ment of what I cannot but call the speculative tendency in developing the I)rinciple of co-operation. In the neighbouring town of Oldham, I remember hearing with astonishment, that there were at that time in course of erection something like twenty-five co-operative mills, which, when filled and furnished with machinery, would each represent something like £60,000 of good hard money; the money being more or less easily procured on the principle of loans ; so that when you heard of a co-operative mill, as was the case some time ago, whose dividend was at the rate of 28 per cent, for the whole year, people thought that the whole of the capital invested in the co-operative mill was producing that amount of interest, and did not know that perhaps three-fourths of the capital was borrowed money which was only receiving 5 per cent, interest, and the other fourth receiving that very large and attractive interest. At the time when these co-operative mills were built, the enterprise I think took a very unhealthy and a very dangerous form — I mean the form of share- jobbing — which I venture to think is entirely distinct from the principle of co-operation. I heard of instances of young men who had not £10 in the world going in for shares in these mills to the extent of £200, and not knowing where they were to raise the money. I think that is a very dangerous instinct, for it seems to be an instinct in human nature which you cannot altogether efface, and one of the things which should be very carefully watched and very carefully restrained, and I hope that, whatever you do in the erection of co-operative mills, you will do nothing to encourage jobbing in shares. " In the course of my travels in the eastern counties, a gentleman one day said casually to me, ' Have you heard of the co-operative farm at Assington ? ' I had not heard of it then, and I don't think many others had at that time, so I said ' No.' He said ' Go and see it : ' so I went one day to see this enterprise which had been at work for thirty-seven years, and was the oldest co-operative institution in the country. Its history is very CO-OPERATIOH. 113 simple, tn the year 1830, Mr. Gurdon, the squire of the village, thought he would like to let some of his land to a body of working men, who would farm it on the principle of co-operation. In the year 1867 the population of Assington was 700, and the number of co-operators was fifty-six. There were two farms, one of 130 acres and the other of 112 acres. There were twenty co-operators on the smaller farm — they began with fifteen — and thirty-six on the larger farm. The smaller farm was commenced by- fifteen men of the agricultural labouring class — a class that you will allow me to say is, I think, very unjustly depreciated in this country ; a class by no means wanting in intelligence, a class by no means wanting in any of those qualities which go to make a man. The agricultural labourer is a man of few words, but^ of a great many thoughts. Well, fifteen of these men combined and undertook to take sixty acres of land at the usual rent. Wishing to give the experiment a fair chance the landlord trusted them with a loan of £400, for which they were to pay no interest for a certain time, and which they were to repay by instalments. When I saw them in 1867 they had paid off the whole loan of £400 ; they had increased their shareholders from fifteen to twenty ; had increased their land from 60 to 130 acres, and were then paying £200 a year for rent, with the rates and taxes. That rate of progress, I think, would satisfy any landlord. I don't profess to be a perfectly competent judge of agricultural matters, though I know something about them, having lived the best part of my life in agricultural parishes ; but all I can say is, that I went over the land, and it seemed to be perfectly clean, in perfectly good heart, and well farmed, the stock on the land being worth £1,200, so that I think you will see that the experiment has not been an unsuccessful one. If we could only put down war, if we could only sow the seed of goodwill and peace amongst men, if we could realize the great bonds of brotherhood that make us sons of one great Father and heirs of one great common hope — thafs the Christianity which interests me." One or two further illustrations of the Bishop's interest in the co-operative movement, and its kindred associations, may- be added. Speaking at the Co-operative Hall, Downing Street, Manchester, November 27, 1882, he said : "These co-operative institutions of yours are instances of the spirit which stimulates and penetrates a whole class or body of men. You first realize the wants of your class, and then, as those wants become more evident, you set about in a very sensible and practical way, to supply them. The great co-operative associations of Rochdale, Eossendale, and other places in Lancashire, have their science and art classes, their libraries, their news-rooms, tlieir schemes of lectures, their concerts, and I 114 BISHOP FKASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. other forms of pleasing and wholesome recreation. And, in attempting to do all this, you are pursuing the interests of the whole class to which you belong; and at the same time are fortifying and raising the moral qualities and social virtues of that class. The utter abolition of the credit system greatly fosters thrift ; the educational appliances develop intelligence ; the lawful gratification of a pure and modest taste by which you minister to healthful recreation are on the right side in the great battle between intemperance and sobriet3\ And all these happy and humanizing influences gather round the co-operative associations of the working man.'* At the Co-operative Union, Manchester, December 6, 1884, he said : "The gigantic enterprise in which the co-operative body is engaged, shows, at least, what the wants and aspirations of the people are. They wish of course, and very naturally and properly, to get the best article at a moderate and reasonable price — a price which will leave a fair profit to the producer, and which will not bear unreasonably on the pocket of the con- sumer. But with their distributive depots they associate various organiza- tions for education, and moral and intellectual improvement. I have myself been a visitor to many of these institutions — those at Eawtenstall, Bacup, and Rochdale — and it has rejoiced me to see that, Qoncuri-ently with the getting of the best goods at a moderate price, they aim at having libraries, reading rooms, science and art classes, and all the apparatus of education. It shows that as a body they appreciate the highest and best needs of the class to which they belong. I was present the other evening at a meeting in the ragged-school mission-room in Ancoats, where I had to address 800 men and women. The difference between the appearance of the body of people I saw at that meeting in Ancoats, and the appearance of such a body of people as I have seen at meetings in co-operative stores, is a living sermon on the difference that working men might make in their condition if they would only learn the lessons of thrift and temperance ; without which no man has a right to expect that he will succeed, or prosper, or be happy in life. It is of great importance to indoctrinate the great body of the people of England with the idea that it is the bounden duty, and one of the great principles, of co-operation specially to elevate their own class. There is a great mass of people in this country whom Mr. Bright on one occasion called * the residuum,' and who are the residuum just because they have not learned those lessons which co-opera- tive people have learned and are trying to teach. There is nothing of greater importance to the country, especially when the electoral power is being placed in the hands of a still larger number of people, than that the great body who are the pith and sinew of the land should learn the moral, economical, political, and religious lessons which are the elements of our happiness, our prosperity, and our national well-being." SOCIAL SCIENCE. 115 The co-operative movement is only one out of many- movements bearing upon the progress and contentment of the commonwealth in which Bishop Eraser took a deep and sympathetic interest. Every question which touched the welfare of the community touched also his warmly beating- human heart. His Christianity was not superior to consider- ations of drainage, of air and light, of architectural appliances. He preached the gospel of roomy houses, with an abundance of compartments and pleasant surroundings. He maintained that ignorance, and dirt, and disease were the foes of Christian progress ; that education, cleanliness, and health were co-operators with Christ. It was not unnatural, therefore, that when the Social Science Congress met in Manchester in October, 1879, Bishop Eraser should be its president. No doubt it was a singular, a unique position for a bishop to occupy. No other bishop has sat in the presidential chair of a Social Science Congress, as no other bishop has sat in the presidential chair of a Co-operative Congress. Most bishops would feel themselves, and would be felt by others, to be out of place in such a seat. But to Bishop Eraser the seat was natural. Every man has his proper gift. And it is no disparagement to other bishops that Bishop Eraser was unlike them ; and that his rare gifts fitted him for rare occasions. Had he been elected president of the British Association, on the ground of his religious sympathy with physical science, as he was elected president of the Social Science Congress, on the ground of his religious sympathy with social improvement, no one, except himself, would have been astonished. When Lord Norton handed over the baton of his presidential ofSce, at the Social Science Congress in 1879, to Bishop Eraser, he said that the Bishop wa^ " the very man of all others in the kingdom most fit to hold it. No man understands the subject more thoroughly, and no man can give his opinions in more eloquent or impressive language." A brief summary of his presidential address, at this Social Science Congress, will indicate some of the social I 2 116 BISHOP FRASEE'S LANCASHIRE LIl^E. topics which, almost daily, occupied the Bishop's eager attention. (1) Population of Great Cities. — "Within a radius of five miles from here, there is a population of probably 750,000, of whom 370,000 would be in Manchester, 170,000 or 180,000 in Salford, and the rest in suburban townships. For some of the necessities of social life, such as gas and water, these suburban districts are indebted to the great central i."micipalities, Manchester and Salford, with which they are locally connected; others, such as education and the relief of the poor, they provide for themselves ; but still, for practical purposes, the whole maybe regarded as one great, but imperfectly organized, community. It is already so large and so complex that I should regard with positive dismay the prospect of any considerable accession to its numbers and magnitude. The distribution of the population in these great industrial centres is peculiar and seems to follow a kind of law; and is an important element to be borne in mind when we are considering the social condition of the people. Things have undergone an almost entire change in the last half-centuvy. Fifty years ago the wealthiest merchants in Manchester lived in the heart of the town, in streets in which to-day there is not a single gentleman's residence. Tradesmen lived over their shops, manufacturers found existence tolerable under the smoke of their tall chimneys, surrounded by the cottages of their workpeople. The suburbs, which now stretch out their long lengths, or are dotted with handsome detached villas, on every side of Manchester, did not exist. Life perhaps was rougher and less refined ; but there was more contact of class with class, more intercourse and sympathy between masters and men, fewer of those chasms across which we make so many futile attempts to throw bridges, and which constitute sometimes such insuperable difficulties in the way of large and effective schemes of social improvement. Now all these conditions are changed. You will hardly find one of our wealthiest men within two miles of his place of business or of the Exchange. The shopkeepers have migrated into the suburban townships. The centre of the city at night is a mass of unoccupied tenements. The working class and the poor still cluster thickly together in the murkiest and dismalest quarters of the town, with nobody, perhaps, living among them above their own social level, except the doctor and the clergyman ; and though we are slowly trying, and to some extent successfully, to remedy the evil, in too many parishes, and those the very poorest, there is no" parsonage-house, and the clergyman not unnaturally prefers to locate himself and his family where he can see the sun a little oftener and breathe a purer air. A large proportion of the working class, however, under the pressure of recent street improvements, which have been going on so extensively among iis for the last ten years, have, like the rich and well-to-do, migrated to the suburbs, though not to the same SOCIAL SCIENCE. 117 suburbs ; and, if the houses provided for them by speculative builders at the high rent of 5s. or 6s. a week, were a little more roomy and of a more solid construction, and were erected under stricter sanitary regulations, the change, no doubt, would be beneficial to all concerned. But,, speaking generally, in these suburbs, the working class still dwell as a class apart, and are even further renioved in distance from their employers than before. The houses have seldom more than two bedrooms, so that it is almost impossible to bring up in them a large mixed family with due regard to health and decency, and are often so flimsy of construction, and put together with such unseasoned materials, and erected with such supreme contempt of the recognized conditions of a healthy life. A change, which might have been of great social benefit to the class concerned, has been a change of very questionable advantage indeed. Still, these are the facts of the case in most of our gi'eat centres of population ; and a most important body of facts, in their social consequences, they are. They are tiie conditions, partly physical, partly economical, partly moral, under which the problems of society are to be worked out, if possible, to their true solution. (2) Interment of the Dead.— "I will now say a few words upon the provision made in our cities for the interment of the dead. On Friday last, I consecrated a portion of a new cemetery, provided by the Corporation, on the south side of Manchester, fully five miles from the centre of the city, containing 97 acres, at a cost, including the land, the fencing, the laying out, and the inevitable three or four chapels, of £100,000. It is very beautiful ; but two thoughts occurred to me as I was consecrating the portion of it assigned to those Avho desire to he buried according to the rites of the Church of England. In the first place, this is a long distance for the poor to bring their dead; in the second place, here is another 100 acresof land withdrawn from the food-producing area of the country for ever. I feel convinced that before long we shall have to face the problem, ' How to bary our dead out of our sight,' more practically, and more seriously, than we have hitherto done. In the same sense in which the * Sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath,' I hold that the earth was made, not for the dead, but for the living. No intelligent faith can suppose that any Christian doctrine is affected by the manner in which, or the time in which, this mortal body of ours crumbles into dust and sees corruption. I admit that my instiucts and sentiments — the result, however, probably of association more than anything else — are somewhat revolted by the idea of cremation. But they are perhaps illogical and unreasonable senti- ments. One does not particularly care to read in the papers how men of science stood, watch in hand, by the side of one of Siemens's cremation furnaces, and watched the process of destruction, and counted the minutes and seconds which it took to calcine the difi"erent members and tissues of which the body is composed. But Sir Henry Thompson has stated the case in a calm and thoughtful paper, which shows how little ground there 118 BISHOP FKASEK'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. is for the somewhat morbid sentiments that, indeed, prevail in relation to the whole subject of the interment of the dead. There is another method which is popularly known as ' the earth to earth ' system, which may be as efficacious ; and, if so, would be preferred by myself and many more. All I call attention to is, that it is a subject that will have to be seriously considered before long. Cemeteries are becoming not only a difficulty, an expense, and an inconvenience, but an actual danger. (3) Reckeatiojst. — "In the great panegyrical oration which Pericles delivered, nominally over the graves of those who had fallen in the first year of the Peloponnesian War, but really on the greatness of Athens, he considers that the city had a great claim on the gratitude and patriotism of her sons on account of the abundant bodily and mental recreations she had provided for them. I wish it could be said with equal truth that in England our provision for the refreshment and recreation of the people was so complete, that anything like a sense of dreariness, or even ennui, was impossible. * I do not know any country in the world,' said a benevolent man to me, no longer ago than Sunday last — Mr. Clarke Aspinall, the Coroner for Liverpool — ' where the amusements of the people are so few and so unattractive as here in England.' No doubt, our unkindly climate is unfavourable to many forms of out-door recreation, which are at once the healthiest and the most accceptable to people living in a more genial clime. No doubt, also, we are making progress in the right direction, and the present generation enjoys much more leisure and many more opportu- nities for recreation than their forefathers did. One only wishes that their taste and appreciation of what is wholesome and beautiful enlarged with their opportunities. (4) Social Science and Religion. — " A final question remains. Can sound principles of social science — if such a science can be constructed — be impressed upon men's minds without an appeal to religious sanctions and religious motives ? I frankly confess I do not think it can. The utilitarian philosophy is notoriously deficient in motive power. 'The peril of democracy,' said De Tocqueville, ' is its tendency to individualism.' But the great social doctrines of Christianity are all based on the idea of brotherhood. 'Do to others what ye would they should do to you.' * Masters, render to your servants that which is just and fair.' ' Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.' ' We that are strong ought to support the weak, and not to please ourselves.' ' Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.' These are some of the great principles, which, when they were first published, were indeed a revelation, which are happily the common property of all the churches now; and by which those churches, if only they were true to them, might regenerate the world. It is only, in my judgment, by the steady application of those principles to the practical details of life that society can be saved. " The world is God's world, not the Devil's. Good is stronger than evil ; DIOCESAN SYNODS AND CONFERENCES. 119 truth than falsehood; right than wrong. There are remedies for each and all of these evils, if we know where to look for them, and if, when found, we have courage to apply for them. He, whose divine words have echoed from the Galilean mountains to the furthest limits of the civilized world, has taught us to *seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all other things' on which our hearts lawfully may he set, and which it is good for us to have, ' shall be added unto us.' " CHAPTEE VIII. DIOCESAN SYNODS AND CONFERENCES. Institution of Conferences — Constitution and Purpose of Diocesan Conference — Definite Belief — Church of Rome — Ceremonialism — Ceremonial Inno- vations — The Church and the Masses — Sermons — Bishop and Clergy. Among the notable events of Bishop Eraser's episcopate was the institution of the Diocesan Conference. During the term of Bishop Lee's episcopate no Diocesan Conferences were held ; nor did Bishop Eraser convene a Diocesan Con- ference immediately upon his accession to office ; and when, in the autumn of 1875, the first Manchester Diocesan Con- ference was held, the Bishop was neither wholly favourable to the project, nor greatly hopeful that any decisive practical results would be gained from it. Eor, by a remarkable con- tradictoriness of events, Bishop Eraser, who, during his Lanca- shire life, appeared to be speaking incessantly either in the pulpit or on the platform, and whose utterances filled so large a portion of the columns of the Manchester Daily Press, was not naturally fond of speaking, and debating, and discussing. Before his accession to the episcopate he seldom appeared upon platforms ; " I am not used to them, and I dislike them," he said. He always had refused to become a member of any clerical society, whose object was merely to debate and discuss. So far did his suspicion of the advantages of much speaking carry him, that during his life in Cholderton and XJfton he rarely consented to preach special sermons for charitable objects in other parishes than his own. His 120 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. conviction was that a clergyman's greatest strength lay in quiet, steady work ; in visiting from house to house ; in attending to his schools ; in penetrating his parish with the virtue of Christian example, rather than in the more showy, yet less abiding, work of speech-making and debate. In opening the first Diocesan Conference (which assem- bled in the Town Hall, King Street, Manchester, after a celebration of the Holy Communion in the Cathedral Church), on Thursday morning, November 4, 1875, and was attended by 143 clergy and 200 laymen, the Bishop said, after explaining the purpose of the Conference : The Value of Definite Belief. " With the vast conflux of opinion that circulates all round us, I think it is of extreme importance that Churchmen should recognize distinctly, and proclaim distinctly and firmly, though tolerantly and charitably, to others, what the ground on which we claim to be a National Church really is. As a National Church we stand, as it were, as the Church of England has always seemed to stand, at a middle point between two opposing currents of opinion. There is an opinion, that no man belonging to a Christian congregation ought to be called upon to say, ' I believe.' The very idea of creed, or of tests, is said to be alien from the spirit of Christianity, and that nothing more is required than that every man shall be fully persuaded in his own mind. I venture to say that is a foundation of sand — upon which it is perfectly impossible to build, and to organize, a religious community such as the Christian Church." The Church of England and the Church of Eome. " There, is an abiding protest, which, as a branch of the great Catholic Church of Christ, I conceive we English Churchmen are bound to maintain, and bound to maintain perhaps to-day with even more energy than has been necessary for any time during the last twenty-five years — the abiding and undying protest against the pretensions of the Church of Home. I cannot conceive any branch of the Catholic Church which has so widely de^mrted from Catholic practices and principles as the Church of Rome. Those who read ecclesiastical history — we who have in our hands the records of the ancient councils — know that in the great Council of Nicea there was not the slightest idea of any supremacy, still less any autocracy, in the Church of Rome, and, though in the later councils primacy among peers was granted the Church of Eome, on the ground that she was the Imperial City, in another Council the second place was given to the great ancient Church of Constantinople, ou the ground that she had the same DIOCESAN SYNODS AND CONFERENCES. 121 title to be reckoned the mother of churches as the Church of Rome. We feel that we in England have a right to maintain our ground as against the Church of Rome. We feel that the Bishop of Rome, when, twenty-five years ago, he took upon himself to divide this country into twelve dioceses, was guilty of an inexcusable act of schism, which the Council of Nicea would not have tolerated for a moment, for it was one of their canons that to avoid confusion there never should be two bishops in one city. I ask whether that council would have recognized a Bishop of Manchester, and across the water a Bishop of Salford. It is an intrusion of a proud, imperial, despotic Church into a proviace she had no right to claim. We are here occupying the ground of an apostolic organization. I believe even the Church of Rome will not dare to repeat the Nag's-Head story, and say that our bishops and priests have no legitimate succession. We are here with the Prayer Book, which certainly will stand comparison in respect of its antiquity and its piety with any manual the Church of Rome can put into the hands of its members. We are here taking our stand upon these great primitive creeds, maintaining the creed of the Apostles and the creed of the Councils of Nicea and Constantinople, consisting of the essential foundations of the Christian faith, and not those novelties and modernisms which have been added continually to the ancient creed of the Bishops of Rome. We have a right to take our stand upon these, as we consider them to be primitive and fundamental principles. We are, I hope, in charity with all men ; we don't grudge any increase which Almighty God may please to bestow upon other religious agencies, who work outside our pale, and who, so long as they can symbolize with us in doctrine and in feeling, we wish to work with us hand in hand. But we do feel that in the Church of England we have an abiding assurance against the flux of modern opinion on the one side, and against the arrogant pretensions of the Church of Rome on the other ; and I think the nation, before they commit themselves to any policy of denationalizing their church, should consider, solemnly and seriously, what tremendous issues in both these directions which I have indicated would be involved in that policy of denationalization. At any rate, let us who are Churchmen feel that there is one duty imposed upon us, I will not say higher than all others, but im- posed upon us as Churchmen, which we are bound to endeavour to discharge. We are bound to make this Church of ours sink deeper, even deeper than she has yet sunk, in the hearts and affections of this nation. We are bound to get rid of those selfish interests which have too often been allowed to creep in and to mar and spoil the beauty of our Church organizations ; we are bound to look at things from the point of view of men who feel that they have received a treasure handed down to them of which they are stewards for the national weal; and, using it in this sense, for the nation's good and not for our own, we will pray God Ecdesia Anglicana esto lyerpetua,^"* 122 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. The success of the first Diocesan Conference ; the oppor- tunity it had afforded, especially to laymen, for the full expression of opinion upon controverted points ; the evident interest taken in its proceedings by both clergy and laity ; the plank supplied by the Conference in the building of a bridge across the gulf which threatens to sunder the clergy from the laity — these, and similar causes, had removed any misgiving Bishop Fraser felt at first in reference to the wisdom and utility of Diocesan Conferences ; and it was with full sympathy that he convened the Second Conference on Wednesday and Thursday, November 21 and 22, 1877. In his opening address, the Bishop said : " I do not like the word * ritualism/ because it is vague ; and, of course, there is ritualism and ritualism. Every man who conducts divine service after a prescribed pattern is a ritualist as much as the man who conducts service after a pattern fashioned in his own mind. But, upon the prin- ciple that edification is the most important thing, and the thing with which we have most need to concern ourselves — I want to raise the question : *Does an excessive attention to ceremonial edify?' St. Paul distinctly recognizes the principle of edification. I want you to compare that with one or two things that seem to me to be creeping in amongst us, and which I, for one, very earnestly deprecate. I refer, for instance, to the recitation of the Communion Office in a tone that is not heard many yards from the Holy Table. I heard the other day of a case of that kind where a person sitting not many seats from the holy table said that the whole service was perfectly inaudible. Now, it is perfectly true that in another great branch of the Christian Church, where that office is conducted in a tongue ' not understanded of the people,' the people yet know the order of the service, and they are taught that all depends upon the intentions of the priest, and that if they only accompany his acts with their own books and devotions they may be thereby edified. I do not deny that principle. I only say that it is not the principle of the Church of England. The principle of the Church of England is not that the congregation are edified by the intentions of the priest. It is a service in which everybody is supposed to join, and it is their united sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. And I venture, therefore, to say that an inaudible performance of the Holy Communion Office is not a method conducive to the edification of the people. There is a remarkable utterance, the truth of which no one will gainsay, in the part of the Preface to our Prayer Book touching ceremonials. It is this sentence, which must be familiar, I should hope, to you all. After speak- ing of certain ceremonies which had been, by the wisdom of our reformers and revisers, swept away, the Preface says : * Christ's Gospel is not a cere- DIOCESAN SYNODS AND CONFERENCES. 123 monial law (as mucli as Moses's law was), but is a relip:ion to serve God, not in bondage of the figure or shadow, but in freedom of the spirit ; being content only with those ceremonies which do serve to decent order and godly discipline, and such as be apt to stir up the dull mind of man to the remembrance of his duty to God by some notable and special signification whereby he might be edified.* " There are certain things done amongst us to-day — I hope I shall give offence to no one by speaking my mind plainly — which I cannot conceive rational men doing, or rational men liking to see. At the same time we must make allowances for a change of tastes. No congregations are actually standing to-day where they stood twenty-five or even ten years ago. Only yesterday I heard of a congregation, generally reputed very stiff in what are called the old Protestant ways, where they had just begun to chant the Psalms at evensong. And I maintain that all that really conduces to edification is permissible and lawful within the broad limits so wisely allowed by the Church of England, and, where variations not con- trary to her mind are introduced for the purpose of edification, no one wishes to forbid or even to curtail them. But remember what I have said about edification. Edification does not mean the exaltation of the minister. It means the spiritual improvement of the people. I have drawn a distinction between innovations or variations which I have called contrary to the mind of the Church, and innovations or variations which commend themselves on the ground that they con- tribute to the greater edification of the people. It is, I suppose, an innovation that a hymn is commonly sung between, the Litany and the Communion Office. In our large and populous parishes it would be almost impossible to comply with the rubric of having the Sacrament of Public Baptism administered after the Second Lesson at morning or at evening service, and that would be a variation. But no one can say that these variations are contrary to the mind of the Church of England. They are really introduced either for the purpose of giving variety to the service,* or for meeting reasonable demands, without any derogation to* the sacra- ments, in the conduct of worship. And then there is the question of law- lessness. I am aware of the subtle arguments by which it is attempted to be proved that the new ecclesiastical courts are something different in kind from those by which the * due order of this realm,' in matters of this nature, used to be ascertained and enforced. But this distinction is inappreciable by ordinary minds, and was long ago denounced by Augustine. Augustine is commonly considered the great doctor of the Western Church, but I find that his authority goes for very little with those who claim primitive antiquity for their practices. There is a remarkable passage — I have quoted it more than once since I have been Bishop — in St. Augustine's letter to Januarius, in which he touches upon this question of ceremonies, and he says there can be no rule safer for a godly and a prudent man to follow than to adapt himself to the usage of 121 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. that Church to which God's Providence has made him belong. And he adds that these innovations — it is a remarkable passage, which leads one to think that Augustine might have been living in the middle of the nine- teenth century — are mostly introduced by young men — who go abroad and see fashions different from those they left behind them at home ; and the more different they are the better they like them. Augustine goes on to say that these young men come home and reckon nothing as binding upon them but what seems right and fitting to their own minds. I ask you if that is an altogether inapposite description of the temper very largely prevalent in England at the present day ? I need not tell you that an organized and orderly society becomes impracticable if such a principle is allowed." In summing up one of the discussions, the Bishop said : j " To say that the wearing of a black stole is the same thing as adorning yourself with all sorts of ornate vestments in embroidered patterns of silk and satin, never seen in the Church of England since the Reformation, is pushing the argument to an extreme. Then, again, it is said that the bishops are breakers of the law as much as the other clergy, and somebody has said that things will never be settled, or in a comfortable state, until a bishop has been brought into court and, perhaps, put into Horsemonger Lane Gaol in the same cell as that occupied by Mr. Tooth. The state- ment that bishojos on certain high days in cathedral churches, and in collegiate churches, should wear a cope was not a judgment nor part of a judgment. It was an obiter dictum in the course of a judgment, and, I think lawyers will bear me out in saying that obiter dicta in the course of a judgment do not carry the same weight as the judgment, and it was an obiter dictum which formed no part whatever of the ultimate decision which received the sanction of the Crown. If the law requires me to wear a cope — though I do not like the idea of making myself a guy — and although I do not think that the congregations who attend the parish church of Manchester would be in the least degree more edified in my ministrations because I put it on than if I wore the ordinary vestments, yet, if such is the decision of the Court of Appeal, if I am brought into court and com- pelled to do it, I will, though with a reluctant mind, but as wishing to obey the law, wear it." In a letter, dated November 19, 1877, the Bishop makes allusion to his having used the expression, in reference to wearing the cope, " I do not like the idea of making myself a guy." " By-the-by I am almost afraid that I exceeded the limits of episcopal propriety in U"^ing that word ' guy.' It is a sort of slang term, and I DIOCESAN SWODS AND COJ^FERENCES. 125 hate slang ; but it came into my mouth at the moment, it exactly expressed what I felt, and so out it came. But I regretted it the next moment ; and yesterday I got a severe anonymous letter from Hastings rebuking me for using it. Perhaps it was below the dignity of the occasion ; but yet, slang or not slang, it exactly expresses the fact." Three other Conferences were held during the episcopate of Bishop Fraser, yiz., in 1879, 1881, 1883 ; but as the dis- cussions at these Conferences travelled, for the most part, over the same grotind as that occupied by the Conferences of 1875 and 1877, it is unnecessary to reproduce at length the Bishop's utterances at the later Conferences. A brief abridgment will suffice : The Church and the Masses. "One of the difficulties that presses upon us all is how to make the Church, in the truest sense, national — how to get at the hearts of the masses of the people. A gentleman was speaking to me only the other day of a conversation he had had with a layman who is very probably among us now. The layman asked my friend this question : ' Do you really think that the Church of England has got the heart of the working classes of this country ? ' Some of you doubtless would say * Yes'; some would probably shake their heads and have a doubt about it ; some would say * No ' ; but I am quite sure we shall all agree that there is no more important work for the National Church to do than to gain a firm hold of the hearts and affections of the great masses of the people. If the Church of England does not do that, cannot do it, or will not try to do it, then, without aspiring to be a prophet, I will say that the knell of the Church's doom is very nearly on the point of sounding. I deprecate most earnestly, and I hope all present, whether clergy or laity, will deprecate most earnestly, the intrusion of the congregational principle to the subversion of the parochial. I am quite sure that, if the clergy take more pains with their congregations than they do with their parishes, they are not doing the work which was committed to them when they were instituted to their parishes. When I institute a clergyman to a new parish, I commit to ■ him *the cure and government of the souls' of the people of that parish. That is his obligation, and that is what he undertakes to do ; and if a man neglects his parishioners in quest of a congregation, whether rich or poor, I say he is doing all he can to prevent the Church of England ever becoming a National Church. " I am quite certain of this — that wherever there is an earnest minister, backed up by an earnest and loyal laity, there is a blessed work, owned by God, going on ; and there, I am sure, there is no hostility on the part of the people to tlie Church of England. I have now nearly completed the 126 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. tenth year of my episcopate, and I have consecrated about 90 churches, ordained about 300 clergymen, and confirmed more than 100,000 catechumens ! What is needed is that clergymen should be in more direct contact and sympathy with the people. Though I always endeavour to place myself en rapport with the laymen, and try to ascertain what their feelings and opinions are, yet it has been remarked to me that bishops are * up in a balloon,' and do not know what is going on in the lower earth. We, the clergy, ought not to live * up in a balloon,' away from the cares and interests of our fellow-men : but, by every legitimate means at our command, to cultivate sympathy and contact with the people amongst whom we live." Preparation of Sermons. *' Kow, with regard to the preparation of sermons. I am afraid you will think I am giving very bad advice to candidates for Holy Orders when I tell them not to spend too much time upon the preparation of individual sermons. When people tell me that they spend six hours one or two days a week in preparing their sermons, and that they have no time for reading, except by sacrificing the preparation of these sermons, I think that this is a bad way of ever becoming either pastors or divines. I say less prepara- tion and more fervour. I feel certain that the language of imagery, similes, metaphors, and quotations of texts, with which some sermons are stuffed to repletion, is really a hindrance to the effect of such sermons upon the congregation; and I am sure that those of you who are in any measure students, reading day by day and week by week some profitable course of theology, ought to be qualified to stand up almost at any moment, and, without any elaborate preparation, to speak words to your people which will profit and edify them." That the Conferences, under the wise, bold, and ingenuous presidency of Bishop Eraser, maintained their hold upon the interest of the diocese is clear from the following letter : October 17, 1879. The Conference has come and gone, and all passed off with an unusual amount of smoothness, considering we were not afraid to handle burning questions* Of the 446 members, about 320 attended, and, though the at- traction of Lord Salisbury's meeting drew away a good many of the more politically-minded laymen to-day, large numbers were present throughout both days. The debates were well sustained, and were, I thought, listened to with great interest. The afternoon was occupied with an animated debate on Sunday recreation. Opinions were very much divided, too much so to make it desirable to take a vote or pass any definite resolutions. DIOCESAN SYNODS AND CONFERENCES. 127 One observation remains to be added to the narrative of Bishop Eraser's Diocesan Conferences. By universal consent lie was not only an able, wise, and good-tempered president, but he had a remarkable facility for encouraging and eliciting the opinions of those who differed from him. He could give and take with absolute good temper and cordiality. Those who frequently attend clerical gatherings, especially clerical gatherings assembled under the presi- dency of a bishop, are familiar with the unduly subdued tone of one body of the speakers, and the unduly exagge- rated tone of the other body. At such gatherings the great majority of the clergy simply sit still, saying nothing. Of those who take part in the proceedings, there is often an air of unreal hostility among those who differ from the Bishop; and an air of unreal deference among those who agree with him. The speeches on both sides are pitched in a strained and too high key ; and the observant on- looker feels the absence of spontaneity, naturalness, fresh and open utterance. The peculiarity about Bishop Eraser was that, in his presence, all this unreality utterly vanished. The clergy felt at home. They knew they were risking nothing by opposing him ; and gaining nothing by agreeing with him. He spoke right out, and they also spoke right out. From the first, the Bishop established a perfectly candid system of give-and-take. Probably no body of clergy ever felt more happily and confidently free with their Bishop than the Manchester clergy felt with Bishop Eraser. They understood and respected each other in their widest differences ; and at the Diocesan Conferences the singular spectacle was not unfrequently witnessed of the Bishop's friends contending against the Bishop, and the Bishop's adversaries contending for him. Everybody felt absolutely easy and safe ; and, therefore, even when the discussion grew hottest, its tone was natural, unforced, without any strained exaggerations either of concord with the president or dis- agreement from him. "My clergy have just as much right to their opinions 128 BiSltOP t^RASER-S LAKCASHIRE LIFS. as I have to mine," was his frequent remark ; and few things wounded him more keenly than the supposition that he could show favour to those who agreed with him rather than to those who differed from him. One of his invari- able counsels to candidates for ordination was ; " Never make for yourself, or allow others to make for you, a party in your parish." And it would have grieved him to the heart if there had been a " Bishop's party " in his diocese ; or if he had felt that any of his clergy, whatever their opinions or views, could have imagined, with just cause, that they would not receive fair play and equal sym- pathy from their Bishop. Bishop Eraser loved " to think and let think." Within the limits of the Prayer Book he encouraged the utmost liberty of thought and independence of action. No clergyman who was earnest, hard-working, and loyal to his ordination vows, had any reason to fear speaking out his full mind in the presence of the Bishop, however divergent from the Bishop's views his own views might be. To all his clergy of every school, Bishop Fraser sought to be a just and loving Father in God. CHAPTEK IX. LAMBETH CONFERENCE— CONVOCATION — CHURCH CONGRESSES. The Lambeth Conference — Convocation— The Atlianasian Creed— Christi- anity and the Masses— Church Congresses— Sheffield Congress— The Church and the Stage— Brighton Congress— Impure Literatm-e— New- castle Congress. " We Bishops, taken individually," wrote Bishop Fraser to a correspondent on February 17, 1879, " are not exactly a stupid lot of men ; but when we meet as a body under the presidency of the Archbishop of Canterbury, it is surprising how small the practical outcome always appears to be." Similar sentiments, frequently occurring in the Bishop's LAMBETH CONFE^RENOE— CONVOCATION. 1^9 correspondence, reveal one of the most strongly marked characteristics of his nature. He was not at home in all places, equally and alike. In some spheres and atmospheres he felt himself a stranger, chilled and silent. He was at home in a working men's meeting at a Church Congress, but he was not at home in the Upper House of Convocation. He sat almost daily, for weeks at a time, upon committees for the relief of distressed operatives ; but he sat only for a few hours on committee in the Lambeth Conference of Bishops in 1878. He would probably have been a familiar figure in the House of Commons, if he could have entered there ; but he was very seldom seen in the House of Lords, where he possessed a seat ; and, in the course of his episcopate, he spoke in that august assembly only twice. These circum- stances are strongly characteristic of the man, they reveal both the limitation and the largeness of his nature. For Bishop Eraser's nature was quite large enough to be stirred to its depths by the world-embracing greatness o£. assemblages like the Lambeth Conference of 1878. July 19, 1878. " Stanley wished me to stay," he writes, "at the Deanery, to meet the * Black Bishop,' who (by the way) is a very bright-looking, intelligent man, realizing (as Stanley said) the description of the Song of Solomon, ' I am black but comely.' But I said I could not consent to tu'n his house into an hotel ; anl he himseK upon reflection added, ' Wtll, perhaps, it will be best if you are going to say anything at the (Lambeth) Conference that it should not be known that you come from here.'' Oh, he is a splendid fellow ! " July 26, 1878. " I can't tell you half I have got to tell you about the grand service we have just come from in St. Paul's — 90 bishops, 800 or 1000 communicants — the spirit admirable — the Archbishop's parting words like a blessing indeed. Everybody seemed spiritually refreshed, though the trial of the body was severe, for the service lasted three hours ! " July 27, 1878. " The Lambeth Conference has ended in a way and in a spirit, which has made the heart (I think) of every one of us full of joy. Last night, the discussion being on the question of Eitual and Confession, the clouds E 130 BISHOP FKASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. were dark indeed, and there was a very threatening ai^pearance of a storm ; but it seemed as though (iod had breathed a calmer spirit upon us all this morning, and, partly by moderate demands on one side and prudent con- cessions on the other, we at last agreed unanimously — or rather I should say with only two dissentients — to a conclusion quite strong on both these questions, for the purpose of bringing back, if they can be brought back by any influence, the extravagances of our younger men within the sober limits allowed by the Church of England." July 29, 1878. " I could only send you on Saturday a very hasty sketch of the service in St. Paul's, and since then you will have seen the accounts in the news- papers. Such a scene, I suppose, has never been seen in England since the Reformation. Upwards of 80 bishops, a congregation of 5000, and about 800 communicants. There was a Te Deum — though not a very effective one — after all. The service began with' it, and ended with the Old Hundredth Psalm. The sermon, by the Bishop of Pennsylvania, was very unequal ; parts of it were in the true American ' spread-eagle ' style ; parts were very eloquent, simple and pathetic. There was a considerable sprinkling of such phrases as ' blood-bought earnestness ' ; which to me are always offensive and nearly meaningless ; and what were meant to be, perhaps, the finest parts of the sermon were to my mind the weakest. {Still, on the whole, the effect was good ; and the manner was less strained than the manner of American preachers is apt to be. The bishops who were present were very good specimens of the American episcopacy, and have left a very good impression bt hind them. I think also they will carry pleasant impressions back with them, for they have received a good deal of attention, which they appeared warmly to appreciate. Some of them visited Lincoln, others Lichfield, others Peterborough, and others Farnham ; and they seem much struck with all they have seen. Some of them promised to take a look at me and Manchester, on their way home, but I can't answer for the promises being all kept. In the long procession which wound its way about St. Paul's on Saturday, my companion was * the Black Bishop,' who was quite as much master of himself in all the exciting surroundings as any of the rest of us. The partings when the service was over were very warm and affectionate. Everybody seemed to hope that there would be another conference a few years hence; though all felt it was uncertain whether they themselves would be permitted to take part in it. Of the seventy-six bishops present in 1867, thirty have now passed away ! But, althougli Bishop Fraser's spirit was large enough to be stirred, and his imagination fervent enough to be kindled, by the magnetic influence of a great assemblage of Bishops, gathered ftom all the continents of the earth, and united dONVOCATIO:N^ 131 togetlier m visible brotherhood in one solemn act of sacra- mental worship — yet he was far from being wholly carried away by the historic greatness and world-embracing fellow- ship of the assembly. In all things he desiderated " the practical outcome." In this quality, which led him to regard even great ecclesiastical events in their business aspect, lay one secret of his charm for Lancashire people. Their Bishop was practical and business-like ; they under- stood him. He was a layman's Bishop, looking at things from a layman's point of view. For lack of space, a brief summary of two only of the Bishop's speeches in Convocation must suffice : The Athakasian Creed. j^j^ 3^^ Ig^^^ " I conceive tliat questions as to the date, or authenticity, or genuineness of the Athanasian Creed ; or as to the accuracy or inaccuracy of its trans- lation ; or as to the desirability of a further search after manuscripts ; or as to the mode of dealing with one of the principal difficulties of the case, whether by the addition of an explanatory note, or by the excision of the so-called Damnatory Clauses ; or as to the increase, or reduction, of the number of times the Creed shall be recited in the course of the Christian year — do not really touch the issue, which is simply this — ' Is the Atha- nasian Creed suitable for recitation in Divine service at all ? ' " The Creed may be ancient — may be authentic — may be true — may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture, and yet may be un- suitable for use in the public service of the Church. " Take the single instance of the Monitory Clauses. The Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Tait) has said, that ' nobody in the Church of England takes them in their plain and literal sense,' and much excitement has been raised by this declaration of his Grace. But, if people do take these clauses in their plain and literal sense, what need is there for that explanatory note which we are recommended to adopt, and which states that these clauses, contrary to their * plain and literal sense,' are not to be understood as applying to those who ' from involuntary ignorance, or invincible pre- judice,' are hindered from receiving the Catholic truths which the Creed declares. The language of the Creed itself makes no such exceptions ; and I am, therefore, in common with the most highly educated theological minds, unable to accept or use its words in their plain and literal sense. " The clergy are supposed to be bound to maintain the use of this Creed, because they have subscribed to the eighth Article. I do not see the force of that inference; it neither presses upon my conscience, nor convinces K 2 132 BISHO? FRASEB'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. my understanding. Because I have declared my assent to the doctrines taught in the Creed, I have not committed myself to the further obligation of holding that the Creed is suitable for public recitations in the Church. There is sometimes an amount of quiet assumption in debating this and similar questions, against which I beg to enter an emphatic protest — I do not mean to use the word 'assumption* offensively, but simply in the sense of taking things for granted, which need to be proved. For instance, in a Memorial of the English Church Union to this House of Convocation, it is stated tliat 'any alteration or omission in, or any option for the nonuser of " the Athanasian Creed," or any portion tiiereof,' would give a shock to the confidence of many attached members of the Church of England ' in her claim to teach unfalteringly the whole truth once delivered to the saints.' Is it pretended, then, that the Athanasian Creed is ' that faith once delivered to the saints,' of which St. Jude speaks ? or that * Gospel ' which Paul preached to the Corinthians, which they had received and by which also they were saved, unless they had believed in vain ? — a Creed of uncertain date ; doubtful authorship ; precarious interpretation ; not publicly used, as we use it, in any other Church in Christendom ; which has never received the sanction of an CEcumenical Council? And with regard to that phrase of the eighth Article which asserts that this Creed, in common with the Apostles' and the Nicene, ' can be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture,' no doubt there are degrees of certainty, and degrees also of importance, in the inferences to be drawn from propositions which Holy Scripture certainly contains. " I do not think that the Church's witness against Socinian and other doctrinal errors would be rendered one whit the weaker by the omission of this 'Exposition of the Catholic Faith' from the public service of the congregation, nor even by its relegation to a place among the Articles — it need not be 'buried under them,' which the Rev. Francis Grey says would be the effect of such treatment. We might even leave it where it is, omitting the rubric which enjoins its use, and then we should be giving it the same place among our formularies that I believe the Greek Church gives it among theirs. The Apostles' Creed; the Nicene Creed; the Litany, supplicating God in the Triune name ; the Communion Office, implying or stating the doctrine of the Trinity on every page ; the glorious Doxology recited at the end of every psalm, which alone in some ages of the Church was considered sufficient to protect and hand on the primitive deposit, would surely be adequate to vindicate the Church of England's orthodoxy. I do not consider that the Church can fairly be charged with impairing or diluting Christian doctrine, or with making a feebler and more hesitating protest against error, because, governed by considerations of high expediency, she may think the Athanasian Creed unsuitable for public recitation, while still preserving it in its integrity among the muniments of the faith. < " I am told that this controversy about the Athanasian Creed is getting •^ CONVOCATION. 133* into the columns of the lowest class of newspaper, where it is being treated with far other than the reverence that the occasion demands. It is not likely, I fear, that the controversy will cease ; and the question arises whether more harm or good is being done to the cause by its continuance. It is the tendency of unsatisfied demands to increase in importunity ; and I can see nothing that can be gained by delay in this question but an increase of strife." ^ The relation of Christianity to the Masses was a topic of which Bishop Fraser's heart was full to overflowing. Christiakity and the Masses. " The means of bringing Christian truth before those who do not attend public worship is a subject which, I cannot but think, concerns us deeply as ministers of the Gospel. I quite recognize the fact that there are large masses of our people who do not attend any place of worship. I do not think, however, speaking broadly, that Nonconformist ministrations are one whit more attractive than those of the Church of England. I do not believe that Nonconformist chapels, taken generally, a.re better filled with the masses of the people than are the churches of the Church of England. I believe also that there is a considerable exaggeration upon this question, arising from the fact that, while notoriously many of our churches are very empty indeed, it is forgotten that a large number are full to overflowing at all the services that are really attractive. It has got to be thought, indeed it is received by some almost as an axiom, that the people cannot be induced to attend church, but that they can be got into the mission-rooms. I am very slow to believe that fact ; and, if I were com- pelled to believe it, I should do so with the greatest possible reluctance. I regard the mission-room as a poor and inadequate substitute for the church, and if it does not lead on to the church I consider it is rather a hindrance than a help. I am happy to say that I know a great many churches in my diocese which the people attend in large numbers. Any- thing more cheering and encouraging than the sight of the Sunday evening congregations in the Manchester Cathedral it is impossible to see ; and at many other churches there is the same spectacle, showing, fis I think, that when a suitable service is provided there is no indisposition on the part of the people to attend. With regard to the hindrances, I suppose we shall all admit that our services are very difiicult of comprehension to uneducated and untrained minds. The very fact of people having to find their way about the Prayer Booic to get at the Psalms, Collects, and any other Office which may be used, is a very serious impediment. I do not know how this is to be overcome ; but I cannot help thinking that, if a little more instruction in the way of using the Prayer Book were given in the Sunday Schools, it would be a step in the right direction. The services 134 BISHOP FRASER',S LANOABHIRE LIFE. are very often stiff by reason of our handling of them. There is no danger, I think, from the free use of the Prayer Book, I hope we all recognize that the soul of an artizan is quite as precious in the sight of God as the soul of a duke ; and that any arrangement which makes it appear that the better-born are of more value than the working classes is wrong. The free and open system in churches does not always succeed ; but I think, if it were worked with a real earnest spirit, it might be made to succeed. Another point is on a system that I cannot but feel is very mischievous, namely, the undue influence the wealthier classes possess in all parochial arrangements. There is, doubtless, an anxiety to get well-to-do church- wardens, and sidesmen, and other parish officers, all from the upper strata in the congregation. But the clergy do not go deep enough. Why not have the artizan or the agricultural labourer ? I know parishes where this has been done — I do not know about the agricultural labourer, but where artizans have interested themselves in the Church and its work, and have been admitted to the offices of the Church with the happiest results. People are afraid that they will lose the pecuniary support of the wealthier classes, but I myself have no fear of that. We have no reason to fear that the masses of the people will be deficient in liberality for the support of the Church, if they could only be got to feel an interest in her, which it is the duty of the clergy to get them to do. You must not suppose that I am endeavouring to alienate the wealthier classes because I am seeking to secure the poorer ones ; but I do say that the clergy have given them an undue influence in all their parochial arrangements. " I now come to what is the most delicate, and, I think, the most im- portant point of all. We are asked to consider how we can bring our people to receive Christian truth from those who preach. I candidly and frankly ask the clergy, whether the style of preaching too often practised in our churches has not been to a large extent an indisposing cause which has prevented many people from going to church. When the preaching is not attractive, the church is empty, and vice versa. The sermons are too often over the heads of most people. If all could preach, like Charles Kingsley, sermons suited to all classes of people ; or, like Mr. Spurgeon, who possesses those qualities which go to make a good preacher — wonder- ful power, style, language, illustration and fervour — the 20,000 clergy of the Church of England would soon become an enormous spiritual power in the land. The words of many sermons are too long, too learned ; and also beyond the hearers in thought and idea. Another is that sermons are very often not on subjects that interest the masses of the IDeople. They are upon some abstruse points of theology, or some defence of, or attack upon, ritual. These are things upon which the masses of the people do not think. Our sermons ought to touch the people on points of their daily lives. The people need to be taught and are willing to be taught. If preachers would select subjects which bear upon the duties of life, and which would interest the masses of the people, they would be CONVOCATION. 135 able to draw people into the churclies. The Bishop of Exeter said to me lately in London : * How many souls has not preaching old sermons lost us ? ' Anything more pitiable than the spectacle of a clergyman reading from his manuscript, without ever lifting his eyes to look at his con- gregation, it is impossible to conceive. Lancashire people are in great dread of what is popularly called ritualism ; but there is no body of people who more appreciate and enjoy a hearty, devout, and reverent service. I do not believe that what are called spectacular services are very attractive to them, or that they exercise any perceptible influence in the way of con- verting men's souls to God. It is not the thing, they want ; and they hold aloof from it. I believe that the power of preaching Christian truth in its grandeur, its simplicity, and with earnestness and sympathy to the masses of the people is, after all, the best means of bringing them, through Christ, to God." From Convocation our story passes to Church Congresses. At the working men's meeting of a Church Congress, Bishop Eraser was absolutely at ease and at home. He took working men straight to his heart. He understood them, they under- stood him. One very remarkable feature of his character, however, comes into clearest prominence at these workmen's meetings. Perha23S no Congress speaker has ever been more popular with working men than Bishop Eraser ; but his popularity was gained not by talking himself down to the level of the men, but by talking the men up to the level of himself. He spoke not as their patron, but as their brother. At Church Congresses he came to be called familiarly " the Working Man's Bishop ; " a title which he, for a very characteristic reason, strongly deprecated. "I don't like," he said, ""being trotted out, as I have been at four congresses, as 'the working man's bishop.' It is a rather invidious distinction which I do not affect." In a letter descriptive of the Sheffield CHurch Congress in 1878 he writes : " It was an astonishing sight, those 4,000 sons of toil gathered in the great Albert Hall at Sheffield. The Bishop of Ohio, to whom I sat next, at a later period of the evening, said, * he had never seen anything of the kind in America,' and seemed quite penetrated by emotion at the spectacle. The Archbishop sent him a message requesting him to speak, to which he replied (I was toldj by the Mayor^ who heard him) * I dare not do it.' Jt 136 BISHOP FEASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. was indeed a sight to raise conflicting thoughts ; but in my mind those of hope and encouragement largely predominated. I came a little late and was not in time to witness the Archbishop's reception, which I heard was grand ; nor was I permitted to stay long ; for I was hurried off at once to the schoolroom to address the 1,000 men who had overflowed there, and who were waxing impatient, thinking they were to be handed over only to those whom they did not much care to hear. The Archbishop (Dr. Thomson) is a massive man, and 1 rejoiced to see the hold he has got upon these Sheffield people. His whole conduct of the congress has been admirable, and it was easy enough to see the deep feeling which inspired him all through the proceedings, and especially at this great meeting of the working men. Well, you will see a summary of what I said at the schoolroom (where I spoke for about forty minutes), and a fuller report of what 1 said in the Albert Hall. I had only once been in Sheffield before, and so I was quite unprepared for, and for the moment almost unmanned by, the warmth of my reception. The speaker who preceded me, stupidly could not hit it off with his audience — was too solemn, preached a dreary sort of sermon, true enough, but not of the kind they wished to hear ; and the people became very impatient, though he was slow in perceiving that they were not caring to hear him, and exhausted nearly the whole twenty minutes allotted to him before he sat down. The Archbishop, with great judgment, then interposed a hymn, which was grandly sung, and restored the audience to good temper and attentiveness, and I must say I never, not even in my own Lancashire, spoke to people apparently more intel- ligent and more willing to hear. Consequently, I was tempted to wander into fields of thought which, otherwise, I should hardly have dared to enter, and which (as he said in his closing remarks) almost frightened the Archbishop, till he put his glasses on and was reassured by the intelligent and attentive faces of the men before him. [This part of my speech is not well reported. In one important sentence a ' not ' is omitted : ' I need not be called upon to deny any really ascertained truth of science : if it is really ascertained, and conflicts, or seems to conflict, with Scripture ; i1 cannot be that there is any conflict (I said) between God's Work and His Word ; it must be that I have put a mistaken interpretation on His Word.'] You will be amused at a little incident that happened in the course of my address in the school-room which came off first. I was reproving the spirit of envy of their betters which prevails to some extent among the working class, and showed itself very plainly in the Lancashire strike. And I said that a working man, if he has a tidy home, and a suitable wife, and children that are dear to him, need not envy a duke, and has all the elements of real happiness within command. When I spoke of * the suitable wife,' a loud and hearty and good-humoured laugh rang through the room. ' What are you laughing at ? ' I asked, ' is it because you think that I, a bachelor, can't possibly know anything about wedded life ? ' upon which the laugh was renewed, if possible, still more CHURCH CONGRESSES. 137 merrily than before. Well, some mischievous spirit put it in my head to say, when silence was partially restored, * perhaps it is not too late to acquire experience ;' at which I thought the roar of laughter would have brought the roof down. When I presently had to make my waj'- out through the dense crowd which packed the room, I felt the grip of a score or more of honest hands who would not part with me without this token of kindliness. So you may guess that I went back to my other speech, which was still to come, with a heart full of pleasant and encouraging thoughts. I have nothing more to say about the Church Congress ; but I have come back convinced that, when in wise hands, as it was in Sheffield, it can be an instrument of much good, in spite of the sneers of The Times, in diffusing sound views of what the Church of England really is, and really desires to do, among the masses of the people ; and I have come back also with the conviction that the heart of the Church is sound, and that it only needs that men should understand one another better, to love one another more." The limits of our space forbid that anything more than two brief extracts of Bishop Eraser's Church Congress utterances should be inserted. Sheffield Congress. Though no doubt there is danger to us all, of adopting and acting upon a low standard of life, particularly in our relations to society ; and though all of us are guilty of lamentable inconsistencies on this score, and are sometimes very different in the pulpit and platform from what we are in the drawing-room, the bilHard-roora, and other places of social resort; still, I could not quite endorse the sentiment, that the theatre must be abandoned or Christ be lost. Allusion has been made once or twice, and always kindly, to the part I took voluntarily, in connection with the theatre during the time of the Manchester Mission which was held in the beginning of 1877. That part was not of my own seeking ; but when the secretary of the Manchester Mission said, " We have been thinking there is a body of people in Manchester who ought not to be entirely left out of consideration, and those are the people engaged in our theatres. Will you come and address them ? " Well, I have a courage sometimes, the courage of my opinions, but more frequently I have the courage of my impulses, and when my impulses told me the thing was right to do, and that if I could bring, in any form, the message of the Gospel to these people who, perhaps, did not always hear it, or did not always have it presented to them in an attractive form, it was my duty, as Bishop of the diocese, to go. And I must say I never was more amply rewarded. Hanging on the walls of my drawing-room, I have a work of art of con- siderable merit. It was sent to me by the principal scene-painter of ofte 138 BISHOP FEASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. of our Mancliester theatres. It is a water-colour drawing of the Manchester Cathedral, and, as he said, was a humble mark of gratitude for my sym- pathy extended towards himself and his fellow workers. As I was leaving the stage — for I had to speak to them from the stage of the theatre— the stage-manager grasped mo by the hand and said, " Bishop ! I thank you for the words you have spoken. You have spoken to us kindly, and if more clergymen would speak to us poor players kindly, and think of us a little betier than they do, perhaps then we should do better than we do." A London clergyman working in a poor parish wrote to me a few days later to say that I had given some few grains of comfort to a " premiere danseuse" at the Theatre Royal, and how what I had said had helped her to struggle, at least, to do her duty as a true woman. He told me what the home life of this woman was ; how she supported an aged mother and crippled sister out of her earnings as a "premiere danseuse." There are still just one or two more points of a practical kind, upon which I should like to touch. With the Ober-Amergau passion-play, as the centre of attraction to tastes and natures jaded by the London season, and resorting thither in search of some new sensation, 1 have nothing to say. But, on the other hand, I want you to remember the simple habits of these Bavarian people ; and I believe it is to them — the simple peasants hving in the mountain valleys — helpful in forming true and worthy conceptions of the great spiritual mystery which it attempts to portray. Then, again, I would say that the stage with us is very much what we make it. I had a discussion not very long ago with one of the leading directors of the limited company that own two of our great Manchester theatres, andl^ was speaking to him, as I have spoken plainly in public, upon the grave responsibihties that the managers of the great theatres incurred in putting before the public pieces of the character of " Pink Dominoe? " ; which has, I believe, been denounced by every respectable journal in the kingdom as an outrage on morality ; but which is still represented, and is attended by thousands and hundreds of thousands in the land. What was his answer? He said "People will have it." And then there is another point of view. "It is," he said, ""so much cheaper to put on the stage. What will you put instead ? " " Give them a play of Shakespeare," I replied. " When Mr. Charles Calvert put ' Henry VIII.,' ' Richard HI.,' and * Henry V.' on the stage, crowds went to see them." " Yes," said this gentleman, " but it did not pay. It costs £3,000 to put a play of Shake- speare upon the stage ; and if it were not for the success of our Christmas Pantomime, we could not afford to treat the public to entertainments of that kind. The fact is, the public demands spectacles rather than Shakespeare, and it becomes an expensive thing to put one of the great dramas on the stage ; whereas out of the repertoire of our own theatre we can get up * Pink Dominoes ' for £40." It is simply a question of finance, and I do not think that fact is always borne in mind. But for the re- muneration of the pantomime they would not be able to put Shakespeare's (JHUBOH CONGRESSES. 139 plays upon the stage. I had once been speaking of the pantomime, and a lady wrote to me in consequence of what I said, and asked *' What am I to do? My children come home at Christmas, and they expect some entertainment. I take them to see the pantomime and they enjoy it ; but, for the last two or three years, stage managers have introduced into the pantomime the ballet, and I am ashamed to sit in my place and to allow my daughters to see the ballet." She then asked me " What would you have me to do ? " I am afraid I am not very good at giving advice, and some people would say that my advice was quite impracticable. So far as I remember the advice I gave was this ; " My good friend, if you would only influence your friends, and persuade them to mfluence all they can influence, just to stay away from the pantomime for one single week, until that objectionable ballet be withdrawn, I think the evil you complain of would be cured." It is simply this, — that we patronise the very things that in our more unctuous and professional moods we condemn. I am afraid that there is many a clergyman, who denounces the theatre loudly, who yet has not sufficient influence, in his own household, to prevent his wife and sons and daughters from going. Then what we have to deal with, first, is the hollowness of society in this matter. The heart of society is not sound on this matter. There are platform utterances which are very different from the practical maxims upon which we act. I remember well, in my old classical days, reading that the satirist Juvenal, who lived in the period of perhaps the greatest decadence of society at Home, describes, in a memorable line, the demoralising influence upon some poor provincials coming in from the distant provinces of the empire to Rome, in order to pass the season there. " Sic prsetextatos referunt Artaxata MoreSy' which, put into colloquial English, may mean " And thus they bring back to Shefiield the manners of Cremorne." And you, my friends, who represent what may be called perhaps the upper stratum of middle-class society in England, are to a great extent responsible for this. Many of you here, many in Shefiield, go to London for what is called the London season ; and you have not the slightest scruple to include as many nights at the theatre in the fortnight, or the month, which you allow yourselves as you possibly can. I say, then, that you have no right to declaim against the theatre till you have, by some definite act of your own, tried to amend it. I do not believe that actors or play-writers wish to corrupt the age, but they are obliged by their very position to conform, more or less, to the demands of the age. It is you who demand, and they who meet that demand with the supply. And, therefore, I would just say this : we have, perhaps, been treating this disease, if it be a disease, too much as if it were functional, whereas it is organic. It is not the disease of this or that particular temper, or a natural instinct of the human mind ; but it is that the whole fabric of society amongst us at the present moment has a leaven of evil working in it, of which some of us are not, perhaps, so much aware as we ought to be^ 140 BISHOP FRASEE'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. and some of us who are aware of it, do not always take the wisest steps to prevent it spreading its virus in our midst. It does seem to me, my friends, that to you, the womanhood amongst us, belongs this great task of puri- fying the stage. If you, who are mothers, will not allow into your homes men who are known, whom your sons and husbands know, to be men of corrupt lives ; if you young women will not allow fast and fashionable men to say to you things that they would hardly dare to say to a woman of the town ; if, I say, you would surround yourselves with that fence which, by the blessing and power of God's grace, modesty can always surround itself with, a power almost immeasurable in its consequences could be brought to bear on the elevation of society. But I don't believe that the theatres ever will be purified till society has been worthily elevated, and I do hope and trust that the appeal which Lord Mulgrave and others make — according to their opportunities — to the leaders in society to exert their influence on the side of purity and virtue, will not be an appeal in vain. No doubt about it, the tastes of the lower classes are a little coarser and less refined than the tastes of the upper ten thousand ; but I do not think, although it was a sentiment uttered by a great mind, ihere ever was a falser or more deceiving sentiment uttered, than that of Burke when he said — " that vice loses half its evil when it loses all its grossness." Vice sometimes, deprived of its grossness, becomes all the more mischievous, because it is all the more attractive. Brighton Congress. I have been asked to speak of certain dangers which beset working men — in common with all other classes on the intellectual and sensuous side of their nature — in connection with the more or less impure literature and degrading and degraded art, by which the moral tone of society is being greatly undermined. The evil grows, and is generated from many sources. One source is the Press, from which issues much wholesome food — and, I am thankful to believe, a large preponderance of wholesome food — but from which also issues much that can only be called poison. There is the studio of the painter aud even of the sculptor, and, I am told, of the photographic artist. There is the theatre, from Her Majesty's Opera House down to the lowest penny gaff. There is the music hall,"^ the casino, and the dancing saloon. All these are sources of the evil, and constitute elements in the danger of which I am speaking. It is the eye and ear, acting upon the bestial side of our nature, that are enslaved by the influence of which I speak. With many men and women the slavery is terrible. The whole man is held in bondage as by a legion of devils ; and even when the chains are lighter we are only too sadly conscious of their weight and degradation. There are theories of human nature which push the ideas of human depravity to what I cannot but consider a somewhat dangerous extren^e, All theories that finish at a (dangerous extreme are CHURCH CONGRESSES. 141 likely to result in a terrible reaction, and the theory of extreme depravity seems to have led to a terrible reaction. In spite of the bestial side of our nature, which we all feel and recognize most heartily and readily, there is in us — at any rate, in the innocence of our childhood, and until the conscience has become seared and hardened — an instinctive revulsion from moral evil, and, however degraded we may have become, there is generally a chord of good in our nature which he who has a skilful hand can touch and find a response. There is no truth that for our own encouragement we need to bear more constantly in mind than this : that all men and women, however much the image may have been broken and defaced, are yet made in the image of God. Impurity is a mental disease, and I urge you working men to seek out noble opportunities and noble spheres of mental activity if you are tempted by this evil of impurity. The best of the heathen writers put much of our so-called Christian literature to utter shame. It is sometimes said by taunting men that the Bible is a coarse book ; but the Bible deals with human nature as it exists, and human nature is too often a coarse thing. But I defy any man to say that any reading of the Bible leaves the impression that impurity is a matter of little account. If working men are looking out for authors in the various paths of literature with whom to wile away their leisure hours, there are in almost every kind of library writers who may be read without a single stain being left behind on the conscience or a single thought that might not be remembered even in the dying hour. Walter Scott's novels, and even the story-books of Charles Dickens, as far as I remember, are not tainted with one single passage that would minister to gross profligacy or impurity ; and there are ten thousand refined pursuits which men might follow, and keep themselves pure and unspotted. There is music with its most angelic power of purifying the soul, and there is the study of botany. In the town of Oldham the working men have established a naturalists' society ; and nothing pleases me more than to see working men cultivating round their cottages little cottage gardens and spending their leisure time in this way (even sometimes on Sunday) rather than in places ten thousand times worse. I remember that when the Bethnal Green Museum was opened, some people made a mockery of the attempts which those poor folk made to receive the distinguished persons who were present at the opening. Some weeks after I myself went to see this museum, and I was profoundly interested to see the number of working men who were wandering through the courts of the museum intelligently enjoying the treasures of art and objects of beauty spread out before them. I am sure that if we only look for them there can be found in thousands of ways objects of legitimate beauty which could satisfy every legitimate desire of our souls. Probably few scenes in the history of Church Congresses have equalled the great scene at the working men's meeting l42 BISHOP FRASER^S LANCASHIRE LIFI2. in the Circus, Percy Street, Newcastle, upon October 6, 1881. Every part of the vast building was packed to its utmost capacity. Thrilling addresses had been delivered by the Bishops of Durham and Carlisle ; when the Bishop of Manchester, amid vociferous acclamations, was summoned to address the meeting. After touching upon a variety of topics, he approached the central thesis of his speech : " Is Christianity a dead thing ? " he asked. A voice from the great assembly, exclaimed. " God forbid ! " "I thank the man who said that," answered the Bishop. " For I feared tliat some of you might have been carried away by secularism which, in its daring, says things about God and religion which it is awful to contemplate. The sacredness of the marriage tie, for instance, is sneered at. But, without fear of contradiction, I maintain that the greatness of England consists in its morality, and the morality of England has been built up upon the purity of its family life, and the man who breaks down that purity is an enemy to the human race. Will you, working men of Newcastle, pledge yourselves to resist this infidelity so destructive of domestic purity and domestic peace ? " The vast audience rose to a man with the response : — " We will ! We will ! " — and the Bishop fairly broke down under the majestic emotion of the scene. CHAPTER X. CONFIRMATIONS AND ORDINATIONS. Confirmations— Accringtou Confirmation, 1877 — Confirmation Addresses- Ordinations — Ordination Addresses — The AVork of the Ministry — Notes of Ordination Addresses — Standards for Examination — Ordination Service— Cardinal Newman's Letter. No department of Bishop Eraser's episcoiDal duties was, to himself, more interesting, and to others, more impressive, than his confirmations and ordinations. His whole strength of love went to this work. " It will be," lie said to a friend co^^tfibMations and ordinations. 143 upon accepting the bishopric, " at confirmations and ordina- tions chiefly that I think I shall be able to do good." Ever young himself, his heart ever yearned towards the young. As he stood to address a company of candidates for con- firmation or ordination, his face was illumined wdth a sweet trembling light. You could see his breast heave, not with a consciousness of himself, but with a consciousness of the solemn importance of the occasion to the lives of his listeners. Sometimes a quiet tear would fall down his cheeks, and always his words and voice were eloquent with fatherly affection. His letters contain frequent allusions to his confirmations. September 23, 1878, Confirmations, when tliey become a mechanical repetition of the same thing, may grow tedious ; but I do not find them to be so, and each occasion has some element of freshness in it which makes it different from others. The clergy also take great pains to have everything about the service lively and well-ordered, and the hymn-singing is always a great treat. In these districts, where the people are mainly employed in large bodies in mills, I am almost — or almost always — obliged to hold confirmations in the evening at 7.30 or 8 p.m. People generally have got to take a great interest in the ceremony, and I generally have the pleasure of finding quite a full church, which gives me the opportunity of speaking a w^ord that one hopes may be " in season," to many more than the actual candidates. Among the candidates yesterday was an old woman of eighty-six, who was determined to go through the whole preparation in X^roper manner, and insisted upon the vicar ascertaining that she knew her '* Catechiz " with the texts. Last week I confirmed about 1500 candidates, and am still going on night after night at nearly the same rate. A most touching incident came to my knowledge on Sunday night. I had held a confirmation for a single parish, where the mission had brought forth niuch fruit. After the service was over, the clergyman asked me, " Did you notice that man about fifty-five or sixty that you confirmed?" I said, *' l^es ; I was struck with his attentive and respect- able appearance." " Well," said the clergyman, " that man has been one of the worst livers in my parish. He is a foreman of one of the gangs on the London and North Western Railway, and he heard your address to the m§n at Longsight Tank. When it was over, he said to one of his mates, *' Some one has been telling the Bishop about me, for he has read my very thoughts." 144 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. I need not say that nobody had told me ; but the man took the words home, thought about them, offered himself to the clergyman for con- firmation, is now apparently quite another man, and the example of his conversion — in his case, so far, a very true and real one — the clergyman tells me is most valuable to others. I did not hear this story till the man had left the church, or I should have liked to have spoken to him a few encouraginsj words. November 18, 1878. My confirmation at Leesfield was especially interesting. There were 245 candidates ; and the church, which will hold 1100 people, was crowded in every part. Ten of the girls came from the parish of East Crompton, and it was touching to see them come up with their little knot of black crape on the top of their white confirmation caips in token of respect to their late pastor Mr. Meredith, who was justly and deeply esteemed by his people. I could not help noticing the fact, in my second address, as equally gratifying to me in respect both of him and themselves. These warm-hearted Lancashire people have such nice ways of showing affection where they really feel it. Poor Meredith's death — he was only thirty-four — was pui down by the doctor to typhoid fever, and that to a cold caught at Canon Raines' funeral when the weather was terrible. In connection with another confirmation, Canon Lloyd, the present Vicar of Leesfield, relates an incident, illustra- tive of the Bishop's observant interest in the candidates. It was the Bishop's general rule to confirm the candidates two at a time. A chair being placed for him on the chancel- steps, the candidates came up and knelt in pairs for the laying- on of the Bishop's hands. On one occasion two candidates who were coming together to the Bishop's chair, and who, by their mutual likeness, were obviously sisters, chanced to become separated. The Bishop, without any prompting, observed this ; and when the first sister reached him, he stopped, called up the other sister, and bidding them kneel down together, laid his hands on both at once, thus gratifying the deep desire of both the sisters' hearts. A trivial incident : but characteristic of Bishop Fraser, and making an enormous difference to those sisters in the retrospect of their con- firmation. Similar incidents, small, yet pathetic, abound in the CONFIRMATIONS AND ORDINATIONS. 145 Bishop's correspondence. On one occasion, having been invited by the Mayor of Manchester to meet General Grant at a banquet, and having a great desire to converse with the General, but being prevented from attending the banquet by a confirmation, the Bishop was greatly disappointed. The next day, however, he received from one of the con- firmees a grateful letter for the help conveyed in his address, and writes : " The letter quite consoled me for my dis- appointment. It is more part of my work as a bishop to help a struggling soul than to accept a mayor's hospitality, or to converse with a famous general." Upon another occasion, having held a large confirmation in Kochdale Parish Church, he discovered, on going to the Vicarage, that one of the servants had not been well enough to go to church, and at once said to Mrs. Maclure, the Vicar's wife, ^* I will confirm her in the drawing-room, if you will get the household together." Indeed, he was always willing to go any distance to confirm an invalid in a sick room, and always felt that such confirmations were peculiarly solemn. In one of his letters, he says : Mmj 8, 1877. I have had one or two very interesting cases for confirmation latelv. One of a young lady of nineteen, who has been laid on a bed of constant pain for three years, with disease of the hip-joint from which she is never likely to recover — a perfect miracle of patience and gentleness. Another an old woman — at least a woman of sixty — in humblest circumstances, who has been bed-ridden twenty years, and who wished " the Bishop would come and confirm her" — a pattern of humble and yet most true and intelligent faith. These things that come in one's way from time to time are my " Evidences of Christianity." What is there eh e that can give peace and patience and hope like this? In one of his addresses, the Bishop said : " There are people in the world, who, as they make themselves merry with the ordinances of the Christian religion, also make themselves merry with the ordinance of confirmation." But to the Bishop the ordinance of confirmation was among the most important, most fruitful, most solemn ordinances of his great ofiice. He took a personal interest in all the L 146 BLSHOP FFtASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. arrangements ; often himself making choice of the hymns, and publicly announcing his preference for small confirma- tions, that the confirmees might feel themselves individually observed, not lost in a crowd ; and that the service might be orderly, decent, quiet ; not bustling, noisy, ineffective. In his confirmation duties, as in all other things, the last person he thought of was himself. So entirely did he place himself at the disposal of the people that he not only instituted evening confirmations, and confirmations in small parishes, and special confirmations in his own private chapel, and in the homes of the sick, but often, in the manufacturing districts, he held tivo confirmations on one Saturday afternoon, going afterwards cheerfully home to his work for Sunday. Once, when Canon Maclure gently remonstrated with the Bishop that he was wearing himself out, the Bishop made the noble reply, "Maclure, these confirmations must be, not when I want them, but when the people can do with them." The effect of this readiness on the part of the Bishop to place himself at the disposal of the people, supported as that readiness was by the diligence of the clergy, was most noteworthy. In his last Charge, delivered in 1884, the Bishop says : " The number of candidates for confirmation has been steadily rising year after year, till in the year 1883 it culminated in the large number of 16,354, the largest number, I should imagine, wliicii has ever been confirmed, in these last days, in one year by a single bishop with his own hand. The figures of this year are not quite complete, as I have four or five smaller confirmations still to hold ; but they will probably amount to nearly 13,000. In the single rural Deanery of Bolton I have this year confirmed 3050 candidates, and from one parish in that deanery, St. Matthew's (Rev. 0. Cronsbaw, Vicar), I have received 302 candidates, 122 of wliom ivere males. These figures show what zeal and diligence will do." In a similar spirit of complete self-surrender, the Bishop never hurried over a confirmation, or went through the service as a perfunctory routine ; but gave much time to it, always allowing an interval in the service for silent prayer, CONFIRMATIONS AND ORDINATIONS, 147 and showed an interest often described as " intense." The addresses (of which he always gave two, one before and one after the rite) were plain and practical ; but never failing to unfold the meaning, and to emphasize the duties and the privileges of the ordinance. At a confirmation held at Accrington in 1877, the Bishop said : " It is one of the particular offices of a bishop to confirm. But when I say that, don't let me be supposed to mean that what is called the grace of confirmation — ^by which 1 mean its spiritual use to the soul — comes from the bishop. There is a grace in confirmation, when it is earnestly sought ; but it is quite easy for any one of you to empty confirmation of its grace and power, and to make it a most unprofitable and irreligious form. If you come here in a wrong state of mind, not haviDg thoroughly reahzed what you have come to promise, and having no intention of keeping what you promise, and no desire for the gift of the Holy Ghost, why, it is not at all likely that the gift you do not value will be given. But if, thinking and feeling it a very solemn thing to come here to-night and, in the presence of God — for though wo cannot see Him He is here — to say that you do now take upon yourself, and bind yourself with, that solemn promise which your god-parents undertook for you in baptism ; and if, feeling your own weakness, your own unstead fastness, and your own powerlessness to keep this promise in your own strength, you humbly, and believingly, and lovingly, and obediently, seek from God the grace which He alone can give, and in which, and by which, you can be enabled to stand true to this your promise — then, I say, that no one need suppose that confirmation is a mere empty, external superstitious form ; every one may readily believe that it is an ordinance of the Church which the apostles instituted, and which God has certainly blessed, and which He will bless to you as He has done to others, to the strengthening and refreshing of your souls. I merely wish you to lay to heart two things — first, that your confirmation is no mere idle, superstitions form. You know it would have been quite useless for the woman to have touched the hem of Christ's garment if she had not had faith. She believed that there was grace in Christ which could heal her body and soul ; but if she had gone in mere superstition, thinking that by the mere touch of the hem of His garment, and without faith and love, that a miracle would be wrought on her behalf, I'm afraid she would have been mistaken. As the apostles state, there were many crowded round our Lord, and they got no good by coming into contact with His garments. It was the woman's faith which made her whole. And sc there will be a blessing to those amongst you who have faith to believe that the gift of the Holy Spirit will be given you ; if you feel your own weakness and desire strength from God, and humbly seek it. It would L 2 148 BISHOP FKASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. be making Christ false to His word if we believed that at any time when we come to God and ask His Spirit He would send ns away with a refusal. The second thing I wish you to lay to heart is, that we don't come in any self-chosen, new-fangled way of our own, seeking this gift of the Holy Ghost; but only in the way in which Christ's apostles ordained that followers of the Master should come. We come to the same God — the God whom we trust will be present in our hearts is the same God whom the apostles worshipped, and why should we doubt for one moment that the same blessing as in the days of old was given to the children of Christ will now be given to us who are walking in the steps of the apostles themselves ? I would impress upon you, as my children, to have faith and to have love, to be sincere and earnest in your promise, and then to be sincere and earnest in j^our humble seekiug for God's most Blessed Spirit, which is the very choicest gift He can bestow on your Bouls." " The effect of his addresses to the candidates for confirmation," writes Archdeacon Anson, " could not be communicated by any written report. It was the feeling and manner with which they were spoken which made them so interesting and impressive. The one word to describe that manner is ^ fatherly.^ His advice was so simple and wise. His manner so touching. Very few of those who were confirmed by him will ever forget their confirmation." Bishop Eraser's Ordinations, like his Confirmations, were most solemn and impressive. None of those who (like the present writer) have been ordained by him can ever forget the intensity, the spirituality, the manliness of the Bishop's ordination addresses — their freshness, their affection, their force. At an ordination, Bishop Eraser's whole soul shone forth ; his robustness, his reality, his simplicity, his humour, his faith, his love, his zeal, his truth, his devoutness, his straightforwardness, all poured themselves forth in spon- taneous, irresistible flow. On one occasion, in bringing an address to its close, he paused and said, " I have but one word more, my young friends, to add, Be humble, he earnest, he reaiy In those three injunctions the whole man uncon- sciously described himself; and, having thus spoken, he bowed his head, subdued in silent prayer. To scores of men, now labouring in the vineyard of Christ, their ordination by Bishop Eraser has been a great conversion, or turning- point, in life. He seemed to possess, in a wonderful degree, CONFIRMATtOKS AND OfeDlKATlONS. l4D the strong and original power of opening men's eyes to see the true nature of their ministerial calling. Yet his ordinations were not of the nature of spiritual retreats. He lifted his candidates to mountain tops, but to mountain tops where breezes blow, not where silence reigns. His ordinations were very sturdy things ; w^anting, perhaps, in mellowness, but never in manliness. Archdeacon Norris, one of the Bishop's most loved anJ honoured chaplains, continually urged him to separate the examination from the ordination, and to make the days immediately preceding the ordination more spiritual. But the Bishop put the plan aside, contending that " examinations are not unhealthy for the soul," and that a " spiritual retreat was not in his line." " At his ordinations," writes one of his examining chaplains, " the Bishop showed his accustomed sense and vigour. There was no pretence of godliness, no unnatural strain ; he would talk with the candidates in a hearty and simple way, in language free from formality; yet none of them somehow could have taken a liberty with him. He would speak homely and wholesome truths to them, as ' Do not proselytize ; ' ' Do not throw bombs among your congregations ; ' * The New Testament is not a dull book ; ' ' Do not spend too much time over your sermons.' During an ordination it was wonderful to see what he would get through; all done too, as it seemed, with the greatest ease ; he never looked fagged or bored. Other business was not put aside at that time. Every evening almost he gave an address from the pulpit to the candidates, for which address he could hardly have found time to make a special preparation. He was the readiest of men ; he eschewed over-thought. All was as clear and transparent in his speech as in his character ; he never sought what was strained and forced. He spoke to them from the heart straight to their hearts. He told them things of every-day life, of what had happened to himself, not things removed from daily practice. Each address was lively and entertaining, nothing dull or heavy; it was no strain to attend. He did not say what was expected to be said by a bishop, but what he, James Eraser, really felt ; nothing was cut and dried ; all fresh and vigorous with youthful life. There have been many good bishops in the Church of Christ in all ages ; but he was a copier of none. Tliere was an individuality about him. When the day was over, he would talk to his mother, a sensible, vigorous and fine old lady, who, though she did not deny that she regretted the days of the Berkshire parsonage, yet evidently had the greatest pride in such a noble son, a pride which she was at no pains to conceal. She too, like that son, had her non-vuU and her vuU ; but the vult for her son's honour was far 150 BISHOP FEASER^S LANCASHIRE LIFE. stronger than the non-vuU for position. At times on those evenings his happiness would burst forth into an almost childish joy. And yet one day I remember his saying to me sadly, ' I am not fit for this bishopric ; lam not good man enough to he a lisliop.^ " Bishop Eraser never lost an opportunity of impressing upon men the true character of the ministry of Christ. " Ah, young men, do not seek to magnify your office by claiming for it prerogatives which it never was supposed to possess till primitive sim- plicity got to be overlaid by the accretions of a later age ! Come to men, if you would win them, as a prophet, an evangelist, a pastor, a teacher, rather than as a priest. Realize what are the spiritual needs of the age if you would minister to them. Not only the Church, but Christianity, not only Christianity, but the most elementary faith in God, is passing through a great crisis. Don't think you can satisfy men's perplexities, or restore their faith, by mumbling spells and charms like Scasva's seven sons at Ephesus. Address yourselves to their understandings, affections, con- scieuces. I cannot conceive anything more reasonable or more noble than Paul's idea of the Christian ministry — an instrument in bringing men to Christ, that His gracious Spirit may play, like the breath of Heaven, on their souls. This is surely the most glorious work in which a man can engage. It must be done in no Sardian or Laodicean spirit. * Stir up the gift that is in thee,' cries Paul to Timothy. ' Take heed to the ministry thou hast received that thou fulfil it.' So go forth, young man, clothed with a Divine office, strengthened by a Divine power. Go and try to preach to men of the unsearchable riches of Christ ; go and minister the Gospel of the grace of God, not in its letter, which killeth, but in its spirit, which givetli life. Go and be living epistles of your Master, known and read of all men — go and spend and be spent for the brethren — go and work while it is day, and trust to Him Whom you serve for your reward." These are burning words — words which sank deep into the young hearts that heard them, and which are still bringing forth fruit in the patient, manly, spiritual labours, both in town and country parishes, of many of those upon whom the earnest, inspiring. Bishop's hands were, in ordina- tion, laid. The Bishop held three ordinations in each year; upon the Second Sunday in Lent, Trinity Sunday, and at the autumnal Ember-tide. Most of the examining was under- taken by the Bishop's chaplains, though the Bishop himself COKFmMATlO:b^S AND OBDlNAtlONS. 15l not unfrequently set some of the papers. As many of the candidates as could be received were entertained at Bishop's Court ; the rest were lodged in houses hospitably set at the Bishop's disposal for this purpose by his neighbours. All the candidates had one or more meals with the Bishop each day during the examination, and attended service in the evening in the pretty little episcopal chapel erected by the Bishop within the grounds of Bishop's Court. At these services the Bishop usually delivered an address. These addresses were not written out in full, but were spoken, hot from the heart, with the aid of a few brief reminder-notes. The Bishop's Ordination Addresses were (as has been said) commonly delivered from brief notes hurriedly jotted down on scraps of paper. A few of these Brief Notes are here given ; not so much in the hope of exciting general interest in them ; but for the sake of awakening echoes of sweet, strong, holy memories in the hearts of those who first listened to the addresses of which these Brief Notes are the germ. To those who were ordained by Bishop Eraser these Brief Notes, consisting sometimes of little more than a word, will, it is hoped, be precious and sacred. " Don't establish an autocracy in your parish. Give to every one his due. Enlist as much co-operation as you can. Give all something to. do. Earnestness the great secret of success. Your influence will be in pro- portion as you are seen not to be seeking it — but seeking something higher, not your own glory but Christ's. Need of getting acquainted with your people personally. Paul preached not only publicly, but from house to house. In labouring for Christ you will bo best labouring for the Church. Don't be led away by the spirit of party. Don't excite mistrust by anything you do or say. If it be possible as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Importance of personal character and conduct. Familiarity with Divine things doe.s not necessarily develop an increase of spirituality. Above all, be real and true. Form a true conception of your office — not from medieval sources but from Paul, from Christ. You cannot help others unless you have a consciousness that your own inner life aims at a high standard. Carefully and regularly study Paul's pastoral epistles to Timothy and Titus. They contain the very essence of sober, earnest, spiritual counsel — not to make so much a priest or a priestling — performing certain ceremonies, or even administer- 152 BlSttOP FRASEK'S LANCASHIR12 LIFE. ing certain sacraments in which his own feehncis and character are not concerned — but the prophet, the teacher, the evangelist, and perhaps the highest title of all, the pastor, the shepherd of souls (Ephes. iv. 11). Young men, I pray you to lay to heart these things, I am sure they are true and profitable. You naturally desire to be ' able ministers of the New Testament.' If so, * make full proof of your ministry ' — take home the warning of Archippus to yourselves. Now, more than ever, the fortunes of the Church, which I cannot but regard as essentially governing the future of religion in this country, depend upon the faithfulness, diligence, and blamelessness, of her clergy. It is we, rather than any outward force, who will destroy or sustain her. Personal influence, as Dr. Newman taught, is the great instrument of maintaining and propagating the truth. What might be achieved, if all were earnest, sincere, consistent, sym- pathetiCi considerate, wise and true, is almost inconceivable. So far from the Church having put out and exhausted all her powers, in some directions they have hardly been tried. Go forth, young men, in the strength of your own good purposes, and with the power of the Holy Ghost, and let it be seen that you ' magnify your office,' by the way in which you discharge its duties. Fervour and earnestness. Danger of mechanicalism. Simu- lated fervour — an easy thing, but deeply perilous. Be the clergyman always, everywhere. Be loyal to your incumbent ; frank with him. If this cannot be rendered, separate. Never lend yourself to a party in your parish. Stand, I won't say aloof from, but above^ all party. Theo- logical subtleties, on which religious parties are mainly founded, not of the essence of Christianity. Personal religion all springs from, returns to, one central fact, the nearness of the soul through Christ to God. Your religious influence over others will entirely depend on this. Try to quicken a Christian spirit and temper in the young. I don't ask you to be ascetic. I want to see you, in the truest sense, manly ; but I beg you to be cir- cumspect. Give no occasion to scandal of any kind. Be a scholar, at least a Bible and a. Prayer Book scholar. See your people from ' house to house.' This is sadly too much neglected for the easier work of multiplied services or sensational missions. Bring your motives and your conduct often before the bar of conscience, honestly, not morbidly, and with the simple aim of doing your duty more perfectly. I do not wish to deny you jjroper healthy recreations — but, remember, these must be strictly sub- ordinated to duty. Give no scandal and be on your guard here. And so go forth in the strength of the Spirit of God to that noble work which you have chosen and to which you now seek to be called. " Now, when you go into your parishes, don't stand on your rights, but rather remember Paul's compassion for the weak brother. A thing may be perfectly right for you to do, and yet it had better not be done, for the sake of your people. When I went to Cholderton I took two horses with me, intending to hunt once a week or so. Having sent them to the village blacksmith to be shod, I strolled up after breakfast to see how he got on. CONt^IRMATIONS AND ORDINATIONS. 153 The smith remarked, * You've a nice bit of horseflesh here, sir.' ' Yes,' said I, ' I think they are not bad ones.' * I suppose you mean to go hunting.' ' Yes, I think a day a week would be good for my health, as there is not very much work in the parish.' ' Well,' said the man, * I'm very sorry to hear it.' ' Why ? ' * Because, if you go fox-hunting, I cannot go and hear you preach!' On hearing that I determined, sooner than that one man in my parish should have a stumbling-block placed before him, to give it up — and I have never ridden to hounds since.''^ " Before you can proclaim the love, joy, strength in Christ, you must know of it yourselves. I beseech you do not mistake anything else for it : no ritual ; no services ; no music." " Be sure upon thi^ one point — even if you should be doubtful on many others — that you are seeking to win souls — to bring lost or straying sheep back to the safety of the fold." " Avoid indolence and self-indulgence." " Pay some attention to your dress, that, without being at all fantastic, it may be becoming a clergyman." " It is useless, perhaps, to protest against smoking. Yet it is self- indulgent ; and needs to be practised with considerable self-restraint. It is inconsistent to visit a dying man reeking of tobacco. Glad to see so many are abstaining from alcohol." " Be sure you allow yourself sufficient time for prayer, and make your progress real." " Be very careful of your conduct towards females." " Avoid all appearance of evil." '* It would be well to have your time clearly marked out : so much for this duty, so much for that, and leave enough for study." " Without being ascetics, unless with a special purpose for a time, be on your guard against the moral enfeeblements of society; particularly its amusements." *' Bodily exercise profiteth little." " I won't lay down rules. I will simply say, * Always remember that you are a clergyman,' and don't foUoAv that new type which defies public opinion and preaches Paul's doctrine, ' All things are lawful,' without remembering the qualifying clause, ' all are not expedient.' In Church services I lay stress on one governing principle, be in earnest. You will then never be hurried, slovenly, irreverent. You will seek to edify. There will be an undefinable something which goes to the heart. F. Maurice * prayed the prayers/ not * said them.' Have a quiet, serious 154 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. earnestness, but not intensity, which is apt to overdo and become wearisome." " Sermons. — Don't be slaves of MS. Don't be ashamed to ask people * Was I heard ? Understood ? Did I help you ? ' Paul talks of * speaking into the air ' (1 Cor. xiv. 9)." The Bishop felt very strongly, and sadly, the lowness of the standard reached by many of his candidates in their knowledge, especially of the Bible and the Greek Testament. " The complaint," he writes, " that I have to make is that candidates do not know even the documents {i.e. the Bible and the Prayer Book) from which they have to teach. They know (many of them, but there are also not a few bright exceptions) neither their contents, nor their characteristics, nor their proportions. I most sincerely hope that I shall not be under the painful necessity of rejecting any. But it will not do, in this day, to commit the ministry of the Church to unlearned or incom- petent men. And, really, so little suffices, that I do not feel much compunction in ' plucking ' a man who will not take the pains to master that little." And again : " I am afraid I have not a very brilliant set of meq before me at this ordination. We are using the same examination papers that we used six years ago ; and I find that the scale of marks reached by the candidates was much higher then than it is now. I am at my wits' end for a plan to secure from candidates an adequate amount of preparation. At present, the professional training of no body of men is so meagre and unsatisfactory as that of the clergy. And yet we are supposed to deal with the mo,it momentous subjects." In similar language he spoke, in the presence of both incumbents and curates, of clergy and laity, in the Diocesan Conference held in October, 1883 : "I think there is a great deal to be said seriously about the sermons of the clergy. The young men who come before me for ordination are going forth very ill-equipped indeed to deal with the intellectual difiBculties of the day. " A clergyman who is in urgent want of a curate hears of a likel}^ young man, takes him up and sends him to the bishop, who finds he has only been considering the subject of Christianity from a teacher's point of view for three months perhaps, and is lamentably ignorant of his Bible ; he has read very little theology, but he passes the low standard with which we CONFIRMATIONS AND OEDINATIONS. 155 are obliged to content ourselves because of the urgency and pressure of the cleriiy, and he goes into the parish and begins to preach. Perhaps during his whole diaconate he has received no guidance, nothing to direct him in his studies, and 1 am told that sometimes he has not even a word of counsel given him as to the sermons he shall preach. This is a very serious matter. I had laid down a series of six books to be studied by candidates for priests' orders duiing their diaconate. These books include Butler's ' Analogy ' ; Davison's ' Lectures on Prophecy ' ; Professor Mozley's * Bampton Lectures on Miracles ' ; Bishop Pearson on the Creed, and Hooker. With great reluctance on the part of myself and my chaplains, I have been obliged to reduce that list of books, and I have struck off Mozley's * Lectures on Miracles,' but I have determined that those who come to me for priests' orders shall at least know their Bible and the Greek Testament. " We must make it a serious thing ; for at present the majority of our young clergy are very ill-equipped to go forth and preach at once to their people, and I am not at all sure that it might not be a desirable thing for the bishop to refuse the licence to preach, which is now given as a matter of course, to any deacon he sends out until he is satisfied that he can preach a sermon." But richer in results, than either Ordination Sermons or Addresses, were the Conversations which the Bishop held quietly and separately, with each of the candidates. Who that has been admitted to the tender, hallowed, sanctuary of one of those conversations can ever forget the event ? It* was an epoch in life ; a veritable conversion, and turning, of the young soul to God. The Bishop did not always kneel to pray with each candidate, but every word he spoke was an inspiration as holy as prayer. Kobust, manly, true, tremulous with sympathy, lofty-minded, intense with pur- pose, the words from his glowing heart have kindled a flame in the listening heart of scores of clergy upon whose brows his ordaining hands have been laid. And, when the day of Ordination came, with what pene- trating tones he read his portion of the service ! *' I would especially speak," writes Archdeacon Anson, " of the great charm of his 'reading' the Address in the Ordination Service to the candidates for priests' orders. Often as I used to hear it, each time it came with a freshness, a force, a tenderness which gave some new impres- sion deeper than before. The perfect naturalness of his manner, the quiet, varied, yet always solemn and sympathetic, torres, brought out to 156 BISHOP FRASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. the fullest extent every meaning of tlie searchiDg truths of the exhortation he was delivering." " The Bishop's power to sustain the attention of his hearers when he read an address to them was very lemarkable. An instance of this is seen in his first Charge. It was announced by the reporters, who had been allowed to see the manuscript, that the delivery of the Charge would take four hours. How I could possibly sit as I had to do in the face of all the clergy and keep my eyes open I could not conceive ! We heard the clock strike four times, the actual time occupied was three hours and twenty minutes, yet I felt no weariness. The interest was never allowed to fail. I would gladly have continued to listen." The Bishop felt intensely the importance of good and reverent reading in the services of the sanctuary, such as is commended in the Book of Nehemiah (viii. 8). " I deprecate," he said in his second Charge, " the practice, which I think is gaining ground, of appointing laymen — unless they are well-educated laymen — to read the Lessons in church. Nothing is more important than that the Scriptures should be read with clearness, taste, feeling, and intelligence. The substitution gives very httle relief to the clergyman ; if he will reduce the length of his sermon ten minutes, he will redress the balance of things; and to have the lessons badly read is a very great loss to the congregation. It is true that every one cannot read as John Henry Newman used to read the Scriptures in his church of St. Mary the Virgin, in Oxford, when every word, uttered in simplest fashion, but pregnant with scholarly feeling, fell like music on the listener's ear, kept the great church spell-bound, and touched the heart with a strange sense of spiritual power. I am thinking of forty years ago, but I re- member the effect as distinctly as if I had heard the voice yesterday. It is not every one who can achieve this ; but every one can say the prayers and read the lessons as if he felt them, and as if he wished that his hearers should feel them too. There is no part of our ministry which it is more worth while to do as well as it can possibly be done." This kindly allusion to old Oxford days was responded to by Cardinal Newman in a manner equally kindly. The Oratory, Birmingham, Becerriher 3, 187G. My DEAR Bishop of Manchester, — I write a line to thank you for the very kind words about me, which you have introduced into your recent Charge. It is a great pleasure to me thus to be remembered by you. It was not my good luck to see much of you when we were Fellows OBITER DICTA. 157 of one Society— but I have always held a hearty good-will and friendly feeling towards you, have followed your course in life with much interest, and was pleased some time ago to find that, in a photograph of you in some periodical, in spite of the signs of hard work, I more than recog- nized your Oriel features,— I am, my dear Bishop, your Lordship's sincere fiiend and well-wisher, John H. Newman. The Bishop of Mancheste:r, CHAPTEE XI. OBITER DICTA. Religion — Formalism — Dogmatism — Comprehension — Benefits of Discussion — Ecclesiastical Drugs — Family Religion — Education — Denominational Schools — Sunday Schools — Prize-giving — Desultory Education— Educa- tion and Youth — Self-made Men — Education of Women — Eloquence — Power of Plain Preaching— Curates and Clerical Incomes — Improvident Marriages — Heredity and Marriage— Cookery — Church Choirs — Hymns — Hymns and Music — Country Parsons — High Art — Sunday Opening of Museums — Funeral Reform — Cremation — The Volunteer Movement — Temptations of Youth — The Opium Trade — Fashionable Religion — Following Christ — Personal Salvation — The Prince Imperial — Dean Stanley — Dean Stanley and Lord Hatherley — Death of General Garfield — Dr. Pusey — Death of Dr. Tait, the Archbishop of Canterbury — Death of the Duke of Albany — General Gordon. A GfREAT man is not made in a single day. Bishop Fraser was really made in the quarter of a century diligently spent in the country parishes of Cholderton and Ufton. In the industrious tranquillity of those country parishes he had sedulously cultivated the arts of human fellowship ; he had stored his mind with information upon all sorts of subjects ; he had brooded reflectively upon the questions pressing for solution in Church and State ; and, when the hour of oppor- tunity struck, Mr. Fraser was ready and girded to use it. Manchester was his opportunity, and, directly upon his arrival there, he began to pour forth, in unexhausted and apparently inexhaustible freshness, his full streams of sym- pathy with every department of human enterprise. Bishops 158 BISHOP FEASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. (through no conscious fault, but through the tendency of their training, the limitation of their sympathies, and the environ- ment of their office) are often interesting only to a single class, or a limited selection of classes. They are interesting to 23ersons of an ecclesiastical temper, to newspapers with an ecclesiastical bias, to various branches of the religious com- munity. But they are not always interesting to outsiders — to the great secular, civic, commercial, literary, social world. It was otherwise with Bishop Eraser. Everybody was interested in him, because he was interested in everything, and everybody. He had something to say upon every subject ; not always something learned, nor, indeed, perhaps, always something discreet. But he was intensely human, intensely social, intensely civic. He Avas a Citizen and a Man — as well as a Christian and a Bishop ; and, by the very range of his information and sympathies, he was brought into contact with individuals and bodies of men whom bishops rarely touch ; and, in the end, came to occupy an almost unique position — the position of premier citizen and principal ecclesiastic — in the south-east of Lancashire. The purpose of the present chapter is to gather together some of the Bishop's incidental utterances; utterances which, dropped by the way, shed clear light upon certain phases of his character — particularly upon that largeness of sympathy, that directness of speech, and that all-enfolding catholicity of interest, which were among the secrets of his attractive spell. Religion. " Sensuous sentimentalism, a sad experience tells us^ gives no strength to * stand in the evil day.' " "A Church is strong and growing which is full of livhuj souls, not of squadrons of drilled machines." " The only instance in which the absolving power is exercised in the Apostolic age, it is exercised by the whole congregation of the faithful gathered together in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and not even by an Apostle alone." OBITER DICTA. 159 "A dogmatic system is a different thing from a spiritual power. We may lift up our hearts and thank God religion does not lie at the bottom of a very deep and unfathomable well, but upon the very surface of human life." " Philosophic Atheism only makes the cloud of life fen thousand times darker than it is ; for, although they say every cloud has a silver lining, there is no lining to that cloud. If the Gospel of Christ is not given to the world for the purpose of teaching us our duty towards our fellow-men, and setting us an example which we ought to follow, then I do not under- stand what the Gospel means. Common trials ought to bring hearts together with a stronger sense of common interest." " Religion, not as a phrase, not as a sentiment, but as a temper of the soul and a habit of life, becomes, when it is most needed, a pre-eminent source of peace and ' assurance for ever.' " " That life is the most Christlike which is spent in the most constant exercise of such simple, natural, and, I believe I may dare to say, easy virtues as tenderness, compassion, considerateness, equity, reasonableness, and beneficence." " The real thing is the life of the Spirit in the soul. He is a Christian who is living like Christ, loving Christ, and trying to do what he can in the world as Christ did. I do not deny that it is well to have our outward bonds of union, our one baptism, our one creed, our common worship, but all these things are useless unless there is the Spirit of Christ." " It is indeed true in a multitude oi cases — * Tout comprendre, c'esttout pardonner.' How many hasty uncharitable judgments would be suspended, if we only duly remembered this. I am one of those who believe * there is a soul of goodness in ' many ' things apparently evil ' ; and, unless we know all, it is safer not to judge at all. I do delight to think well of human nature." " Religion consists less in solemn phrases than in right doings. Our religious opinions are to a great extent conventional. The religion which has been preached from many a pulpit in this land is a religion which, as it were, goes in mid-air; never touches the solid earth, never deals with any practical problem of life, never aspires to give a man direction in the way in which he ought to walk." "Religion is a much deeper thing than mere impressions upon the tympanum of the ear, or passing impressions upon the emotional element in our soul. Religion goes deeper down into the roots of our lives ; and if it does not make us better and purer, more unselfish, gentler, more for- bearing, more patient and humbler, though we may have a most exquisitely trained ear, and most exquisitely trained voice, and though we may take pleasure in listening to the sermons or anthems, still it is as the prophet 160 BISHOP FKASER'S LANCASHIRE LIFE. complained when he said, * I am to these people nothing more than the voice of a trained singer, for they hear my words, but they heed them not.' " " One has need to be constantly on the watch, to be struggling against the devils of hypocrisy and formalism, lest one's life should be a great organized lie. Let me warn you against the ' dead level ' of formalism, of self-satisfaction, of Pharisaism, and of mechanical worship. In speaking of a certain district, a Bishop once said to me, ' There is a deal of religion there, but not very much morality.' " " As soon as men begin to multiply dogmas, they begin to fulminate anathemas." " There are four things we must cling to : belief in God, belief in Christ, belief in a Holy Sanctifying Spirit, and belief in a world to come. These are enough to elevate humanity, and to make it, in some poor sense at least, worthy of its high destinies." " Let me ask you not to multiply dogmas. It has been an unhappy thing for the Church that she has felt herself compelled to multiply dogmas in order to meet the assaults of heresy. One of the greatest theologians in the English Church, Bishop Jeremy Taylor, in his treatise on * The Liberty of Prophesying,' said it was an evil day for the Church of Christ, when she felt herself compelled to add to the simplicity of the Apostles' Creed * curious reticulations of faith.' The Church of Rome fortifies her strange modern dogmas with * If any man believe not, let him be anathema,' and even the Church of England in one of her Creeds, has said of certain persons holding certain views that they were to be accursed. Men of narrow minds, and limited conception of truth, are always for anathematizing those who differ from them." " St. Paul did not care much about men being like-minded in matters of opinion. It has been made a reproach to the Church of England that she includes men of such different opinions within her pale. It must be (men say) an organised hypocrisy — that Church of England — when we find High Church, Low Church, Broad Church and No Church, all claim- ing to be included in the National Church. Well, in the political world we find different parties, but they are all recognized as belonging to one great nation. We as Churchmen differ where we may lawfully differ, and where differences may be lawfully tolerated ; but how grand are the fundamental verities of the Christian faith compared with the wretched jangle of words, and the miserable theological squabbles which divide the Church almost into hostile camps." "The truth comes out all the purer and clearer from having passed through a little public discussion, when conducted in fair temper, and with a desire on each side to make the best of its case, without dealing in an unfair way with the case of its opponents. England has become what it is, because people have differed so long that they have agreed to differ. OBITER DICTA. 161 So long as they remain differing, yet still willing to credit each other with an equal amount of public spirit, still desiring to promote the common weal — so long as this spirit pervades the community, we may have our ecclesiastical differences, our political differences, and our municipal differences, without generating — what is always a great calamity in any society — social and personal animosities." " The Christian life is a growth. * Be ye perfect ' said Christ, * as your Father in heaven is perfect.' lie spoke, as Jeremy Taylor tells us, not of perfection in degree, but in part or in kind, just as a babe has the rudimental perfection of a man. The growth must be perfectly natural. In the present day they are trying to make men grow by means of drugs. Some are trying to do it by a sort of belief in magic. People are being taught that they can only get to heaven through the priest, and absolution of the priest. This is the use of drugs instead of food. Drugs may be necessary here and there, in cases of severe or inveterate disease, but men of ordinary constitution do not want drugs, but the healthful exercise and wholesome diet of sound Christian doctrine." " I attach great importance to Family Religion. I fear the sense of responsibility on the part of the heads of families has decreased. I am afraid there is a very large number of families in England, particularly in the working classes, who never have family prayer. We make a great profession of our Christianity, of our Protestantism, of our * gospel light,' but we might sometimes spend a week in a man's house and not know he was a Christian at all." " I have noticed the little children here in Church this morning, and listened to their singing, and observed that they sung their hymns with feeling, softening their voices at the proper time, au'l also raising them at the proper time. I also noticed their reverence. When they came to the name of Jesus they slowly and reverently bowed their heads. I like all these sort of things. I like to see children trained in habits of obedience and reverence." Education. *'The qualitative ought to prevail over the quantitative principle in education." " There is nothing so important as the imbuing of our young people with good principles ; it is not so much mere knowledge they want, as the inward working of their consciences, in order that they may see things as they are, and realize the manifold dangers by which they are beset by reason of this evil world. Sometimes the very mention of evil suggests thoughts of evil, and that is a most perilous thing to do. If we imbue our young with Christian principles, with a love of that which is pure, lovely, and of good report, and a hatred of that which is wrong, we may trust them with much more confidence than now to withstand the seductions of M 162 BISHOP FRASER'S LANOASHIEE LIFE. the world. It would indeed be contrary to all we should expect from the harmony of the human organism, if an attempt to interest the affections, discipline the will, enlighten the conscience, should be proved to hinder, instead of helping, the development of the intellect." ** I am afraid, that we, in England, in our zeal for * denominational education,' lay too much stress \i\