THE ESSAYIST.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLVI, Issue XLVI, 14 March 1914, Page 9

THE ESSAYIST.

THE WISE MAN OF THE EAST

"Men hope, And see their hopa frustrate, and grieve awhile, And hope anew."

Browning's words can hardly fail- to , occur to the thoughtful reader as he turns over the pages of Canon Barnett's posthumous book, "Worship and Work." It consists of a series of short quotations from his unpublished writings, "selected and edited by his wife." Surely it may be said of Canon Barnett that to him fell the honor of introducing the West End to the East End of London. He made the two ends of the town acquainted, and if ever they become friends they will owe a very great deal to his memory. The book is not only worth reading, it is worth study, and that in spite of the fact that it deals to a large extent with frustrated hopes. Canon Barnett, as it well known, was the first Warden of Toynbee Hall, and spent the best part of his life in Whitechapel. The discoverers of the East End believed some thirty or forty years ago that what the poor needed to make them better and happier was the companionship of the rich. "The one object of the Universities Settlement I ] Association is to bring about a greater union between classes by making it possible for members of the Universities to live as neighbors to the poor.'! Canon Barnett hoped to make the EastEnders over again after the pattern'•] of the Mid-Victorian cultivated middle clasa; to give them the pleasures of art, the support of a rational religion, and a new devotion to duty, by mean 6 of the object-lesson of a gentle life lived in their midst. It was a very fine attempt. Its critics can but "grieve awhile, and hope anew." And whatever he did not do, Canon Barnett did effect the great introduction of which we spoke above. The spirit in which our author met difficulties and failures is admirable in the extreme. He disguised nothing^! he misstated nothing, he faced thf facts unflinchingly, and yet he never lost hope. His experience wiil always be invaluable to those who take up the same work, on lines however different. His parishioners would not go to chareh. Without success, he tried to make the : ervioe such as would attract them. "Our forms of service havo ceased to express the religious wants of «he people," he declares ; and he admits that he does not know what better form to try. All that could be done was to prepare the way for something better. "If by music we enable the people to find expression for their aspirations, and if by lectures we are able to show them how true human greatness depends on reasonable religion, though w« ourselveß are unable—to—provide these means of worship which will give strength to their longings for fuller life, and satisfaction to their wants to know the unknown God, we may yet feel that we are doing something in our day to prepare the way for such worship of th 9 future," The lectures and the music, however, did not bear much fruit, and further on we read: "In this parish, strive as we may, by special forms, by lectures, and by preaching, we are fain to confess that the Church services exercise no influence comparable to the work they involve." Our author draws a fearful picture of the locality in which he began his work —i.e., of "this policecontrolled district of uninhabitable habitations." The prospect was dark indeed. "It is hard enough," we read, "to know'what to do quietly 'as one chat believeth.' When vitality has be3n enfeebled by the close air which, even in a good house, kills a flower in a week, and which in iil-built arid over-crowded rooms must be doubly close—when education by mother and by schoolmaster, by policeman and by opinion, is education by repression— when gettnig on means success over others, and pleasure means excess, it is no wonder that men and women are dwarfed, ugly, and worn, intelligent only with the cunning of greed, and delighting only in which is sensual." But vivid as was Canon Barnett's sense of the repulsion of the slums, he was by nature a townsman, and this fact kept up his courage: "The man of the future will be a city man. By a law inevitable in it's operations the cities will crowd on 'the banks of the river of time, in a blacker, inces- | santer line.' It is good that it should j be so; the society of men is better, than the society of the sheep and the cows. Life with man, the noblest work of God, ought to be the beet life." But the citizen shoxild belong to no mean city. Here is the city of which the reformer dreamed: "Its streets will be broad and lighted with electric light. Its houses will be good, fitted with water and warmth for the comfort and the health of its inhabitants. Its spaces will be many; great open spaces for games; small open spaces, within the reach of every house, for the rest of the weak. Its public buildings will be of many styles, expressive of the character of their uses. There will be the Cathedral brooding over the city, gathering together, as it were, its various interests, its . manifold activities, to lift them up to higher issues, to God's uses. There will be the churches and the chapels, with open doors, offering the chance of quiet, and provoking thought by pictures and music. There will be the schools, with classrooms and playgrounds: technical schools, commercial schools, high schools. There will be the University College, with its laboratories,, its great hall, and

its classrooms. There will be the Municipal Offices, with the Town Hall, on the walls of which an artist will have painted scenes from the city's history, and where the citizens will throng in their thousands to heai great speeches or to listen to great music." No one in the city should be very rich or very poor. The ideal of moderation is to be embodied in it. Two good things Canon Earnett l claimed boldly as among the first essentials of reform—leisure and pleasure. He dreaded the evil influence of drink, but he declared it to bs the poor man's pleasure, the pleasure he must inevitably take if no other were provided for him. "Drink," he quoted, "is. the cheapest way out of Manchester." "Poverty cannot pay for the pleasure which satisfies, and yet, without that pleasure, the people perish." He begged for a longer period of education and shorter hours of labor. "For a season bad use may be mi^de of more leisure, but without more leisure there can be no satisfactory pleasure." Through the operation of leisure and of education the poor will learn, he thinks, to enjoy the pleasures that are worth having— i.e., social life, art, literature, and perhaps travel; in fact, the pleasures of the intellectual man of education. But if the refjmers of thirty years ago looked, and looked in vain, to the example of the tulti/ahed to reform the poor, they did not flatter the rich —as a class. :'The rich,-as a class, offer an example of living which is contrary to the Christian, profession," we •; read," and that though they "go to church arid are supposed to be typical Christians." The advice which he gives to the rich is rtern indeed. Few men of the comfortable class dare say they would folio y it-. Take this passage, which he sets forth as a suggestion: "Every member of a society ought to fit himself to be of use to the society, and with this view should (a) accept no luxury which does not fit him to be more interesting or .more serviceable to His neighbors: (jj) enjoy no luxury unless it can be shared; (c). seek to possess nothing which he could not desire that everyone should possess in a perfect state of society." This is Christian Socialism indeed! One' more long quotation is necessary, we think, if we are to give' an adequate notion of the ideal which this little book embodies: "The rich, be they landlords or employers, must regulate their occupations and concern themselves in their tenants and work-people. The rich must change their habits; they must give up their self-indulgence, j before the poor give up their ways ! of riot and drunke mess. They must cease to worship sport, before the plague of gambling can be stayed j in the homes of the people. They j must regard marriage differently, if j working women are to ] c mothers of i pure men. The rich must change their habits; they must make . friends among the •>oo- —sharing and not only giving 'hem their good things—then the poor, too, will : change their habits, and feel dirt to be intolerable, brutality to be degrading." We could not help wondering as we closed this little book what would be the. impression made by its perusal upon the mind of a proud poor man. If he were a just man at all, he could but foel gratitade to Ca ion Barnett and i sympathy with many of its pages. On the other hand, a certain feeling of anger would, we think, color his ', reflections. Must the rich really sar-ii- j fica all their sins and moEt of their j follies before the poor can improve? When the poor man hears this he must sometimes feel inclined to tell them to go their own way and be hanged to them. Must we always, he will surely say to himself, bs aping their virtues and their vices, blaming them for our j defects and thanking them for their god example? Do they think it impossible that we should become godly or refined on our own initiative? It is by determination to set examples, ! not to follow them, that classes are saved. As he turns his eyes towards his would-be models the poor man must often be tempted to say to himself, in Canon Barnett's own words: " 'The rich are anxious. The learned are unhappy. The pleasure-seekers are contemptible.' We want to be none of these things."