THE CHURCH AND MEN.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume II, Issue 243, 17 September 1912, Page 3

THE CHURCH AND MEN.

A MAN WHO IS SOLVING THE

PROBLEM

To the question, “Why don’t mtn go to Church!” Rev. J. E. WattsDitehfield (who will give an address to men in St. Matthew’s Church, Hastings, on Sunday, September 22.) is able to return the answer, “They do.” In his own parish in London they go in crowds ; and Mr. IV.attsDitchfield is at present in Austialia with a view to giving those who care to know some little idea of how the thing is done. Yet that is hardly a fair putting in the case. No one can long be in the company of Mr. Watts-Ditchfield without coming to see that he is a man who could never waste breath or bandy words about how a thing is done. He just does it. His mission to Australia is in the interests of the Church cf England Men’s Society ; and it is 'men that he is a?ter all the time ; and most of the time to excellent purpose. THE MAN HIMSELF.

A study of the personality of the visitor yields some interesting results. ’Watching Mr. Watts-Dftch-field with a penetration that peers, so tes ay, into mental back rooms, one can discover .at last the relics of crudities of style and deportment that might, in theii- persistency, have seriously discounted his effectiveness. Perhaps it is not too much to say that he is a man who could easily enough have been a failure. Indeed, a certain divinity college professor is said to have thrown a most serious discouragement in the path-way of his earlier career. L was the mental back rooms only that were in evidence, no doubt, in that formative or pre-forinative stage. The inner sanctuary of splendid manly force had cvidfently not as yet evolved. In another man the crudities might have meant a career, at best, of mere mediocrity. But Mr. VVatts-Ditchfield was not that other man.

A BOOMING LONDON’ PARISH

But, however, it may have come about, the success—the outstanding phenomenal success —of our visiter’s clerical labours is beyond all question. For 15 years past he has had charge of what at the outset was written down as an impossible London parish. Everybody knows the difficulties that have beset city churches from the direction cf suburban migration, and the replacement of the vanished suburbanites by a residential human conglomerate presenting a front of blank indifference to a church’s most earn-

est and strenuous appeals. Well, in the parish of St. James-the-Less. in the very heart of London's East End district—which means the very heart of that city’s "lapsed” masses —Mr. Watts-Ditchfield found these difficulties in their most accentuated form. There to-day, by some compelling miracle of effort, he has all the appurtenances of a thoroughgoing, prosperous concern. In these days ; when many churches are feeling keenly the difficulties besetting the Sunday school problem, the picture of several large and prosperous Sunday schools—the central one of which has an enrolment of over 2O(>0 scholars—is a thing to make the average ecclesiastical mouth water. \et such are among the indications of success of this remarkable enterprise. In addition, a weekly Bib’o class is regularly attended by s<»<» men, and at least 29 meetings of one or another kind are held within the parish on every night of thp week. The locality has many historical associations, and some that border on the realm of the ironical. Mr. M atts-Ditchfield s rectory stand s on a site within what was once the garden of Bishop Bonner, and th-' goed "vicar ’ may sit—when time permits luxury -beneath the ventree nm.it r which the nnvenerable prelate sat. deciding, as someone has

put, “whom he would next burn.” But one of the palpable rover.ges of history is seen in the naming of the hostel to which Cambridge divinity students—Mr. Watts-Ditch-fiekl having been himself <a Cambridge man —come, at intervals ft <■ three weeks at a time to study the methods of the place. The name i f the hostel is “Ridley House.” K stands also in Bonner’s gaidei:. The Church of St. James-the-Less :s situated near the famous Bethn; 1 Green. The population cf the pnrA i runs into some 14,000 souls. THE - BUNG UP” CLUB. Such is the legend of a wholly unique institution set on foot by one of Mr. Watts-Ditchfield’s London curates. It takes a little explaining. The club was formed for the prospective benefit of the most lov. - down types of an admittedly lowdown locality. Drink and fo; 1 language rank among the more r.spectable of their vices. The less respectable had better not be named. Workers amid such an environment must find their clue where they may and Mr. Watts-Ditchfield and his workers find a good part < f their clue in the average East Londoner’s literally “saving” sense cf humor. The “bung up” idea is a playful attack on the bibulous pri - dilections of the male East Londoner, with a really serious design i . the background. The badge or insignia of the club is a tiny wooden barrel which each member carries in his waistcoat pocket. The special feature ci the miniature is that t'm. “bung” of the barrel is securely sealed. To carry the symbol o i one’s person means that the plug has been put in, and no more of the contents of the real barrel is to flow his way. One member on meeting another challenges him with the watchword, “Bung up”; when the miniature barrel must be produced under pain of a penny fine. Previous to Mr. Watts-Ditchfield’s departure on his Australasian tour the men of the club presented him with a silver immature barrel, accompanied by a parchment roll containing the names of the club members, numbering upwards of a hundred. EVERY INCH A MAN.

At first sight of Mt. M atts-D’tch-fie’d, one is at a loss to aecmiri. fc him. His secret--for a r.ec. . he most decidedly has---is by no mens -an open one. There are some tv. o or three clerics in the State whose combined facial effects might approximately present a replica of the face of Mr. Watts-Ditchfield ; but as he never wearies of his own standing joke against his personal appearance, it will be just as well to stay the sugestion at the point of a dignified indefinitencss. Nature has not lavished upon him the gift cf a commanding presence l . He 1 is just .a pleasant-cncugh-looking man. But for his clerical attire he might pass for an average doctor or lawyer ; but always a very busy one. So far from mere posing, he does not even make thee most of himself in the matter of physical deportment. His gesture is a mere fling—a rather ungainly one —of the arm or shoulder, suggestive only of earnestness cr emphasis. As to voice, after setting out in a tone of studied resonance suggestive* of cathedral difficulties, he settles presently to a note of conversational jerkiness. By dint of thrust upon thrust he compels, holds?- convinces. But :t is by no grace of oratory, by the use of no one cheap trick, that the thing is done. 1

Neither is approval sought at the expense of compromise. The refusal of compromise is perhaps never ffiore in evidence than when the niissicner is insisting on a strong Christianity that acts on the square in regard to every claim and relation of life. If he insists that workmen must have a just week’s pay, he insists none the less on the same workmen doing an honest week’s work. As one listens he feels that in their hearts men do not want in this realm, at any rate, small and faltering compromises. This man imbues you subtly with an involuntary scorn of such things. You wojf der how you ever entertained or tolerated them. You are just compelled along the opposite line of thought and motive.

A FORMIDABLE WORKER. A worker among working men, Mr. Watts-Ditchfield would be turned out of any trades union under Heaven on the score of his greed of work and his refusal to bo bound by union hours. In his own parish he is up every morning at 7 o’clock, and never in bed till 1 a.m. : he literally never sleeps at night. His "men’’ have been known to take hold of him bodily anil carry him bom from some late committee or other,'when they could see that his physical powers were nearing thiir human limit. Needless To say, in every such instance, the indefatigable niissioncr could have produced on demand, his little silver barrel, with its symbolical denotement still intact.

It is said that curates arc sent by their vicars from all over England to learn the ways of the parish of St. James-the-Less, and of its remarkable vicar and curates. If they can but appreciate but the hundredth part of their downright manly, Christian enthusiasm and translate it into their own personal service and influence, it will lie good for England. And if. during Mr. Watts-Ditchfield’s brief stay among us. New Zealanders may learn a like proportion of his secret, the visit of the missioner will have a result over which every church in N’cw Ze.aland may heartily rejoice.