SPEECH

Delivered at a Meeting of the Brighton District Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes, held at the Pavilion, Brighton, November 25th, 1852.

THE

HE Rev. F. W. Robertson moved,-" That this meeting hears with satisfaction the success which has attended the establishment of the Brighton Branch of the Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes, and is of opinion that the extension of the undertaking will be the means of conferring more extensively essential benefit on the social and moral condition of the working classes of the town of Brighton: and that such extension will be more effectually promoted by obtaining an increase in the number of shares, which it pledges itself to use its best exertions to effect."

It is to one sentence, alone, of this resolution that I shall direct a few observations: that in which we say that "this will be the means of conferring more extensively essential benefit on the social and moral condition of the working classes of the town of Brighton." The great object for which institutions, such as this, are established is to procure

for the working classes a "Home." To explain the meaning of this word is unnecessary; before an English audience it is superfluous. There is not one present to-day who has not been, even from childhood, familiar with all those sacred associations which God has thrown in such profusion around the precincts of Home; but to the great majority of the poor in this country, there is no such thing as Home. We dare not, cannot say, that those two small rooms in which a whole family are huddled up together, those two rooms which serve for kitchen, sleeping-room, parlour, and for everything, in which there are no conveniences and no comforts, and in which, when a man or a child may be dying, he would be disturbed by the necessary noise and bustle of the family-we dare not, except in mockery, call that, in a Christian land, a "Home."

Yet we too often ignore this condition of the poor man's dwelling, and hence arise many practical fallacies. I will mention but one: the mistake with respect to the possibility of the poor man spending the Lord's-day as he should. This subject has occupied much attention in this country. There has been a project recently set on foot by a large number of philanthropists, and a large number of speculators, in different parts of the country, to establish edifices or buildings in which the poor shall have recreation, pleasure, and instruction; and some of these, one especially, the importance of which overrides all the others, it has been proposed to open on the Lord's-day, and that too with the sanction of the Government. This has been met by a very large proportion of the religious inhabitants of this country with great dismay and indignation. It has appeared to them that this is a desecration of the Lord's-day, a breaking of the covenant between God and His people. They have drawn most

touching pictures of the poor man spending his Sabbath evenings surrounded by his family, and with the Bible open before him. I am not about to pronounce any opinion with respect to the view entertained among religious people on this subject. There are two views entertained on this question, and both these ought, in all Christian consistency, to be allowed to those who hold them. Some believe that the Sabbath, the Jewish Sabbath, if not in its integrity and strictness, at all events with a certain degree of modified strictness, accordant with the superior genius of Christianity, should be observed. Some, on the other hand, believe that the Jewish Sabbath is altogether abrogated; that the Lord'sday is not the same thing; that it did not arise out of it, nor was it a transfer of one day to another, but that what has succeeded the Jewish Sabbath is not what we call the Lord's-day; that it is not one day alone that the Christian is to observe, but a grander, larger, more spiritual day, the day of the whole life, the sanctification of the whole life of man, to be yielded to God, as purchased by Christ. With respect to the truth of these two conflicting opinions, we have nothing, at present, to do. All we have to consider is, how far we can with any consistency agree upon this point. We are all agreed on this, that the most blessed institution which has descended to us from our forefathers is the Christian Lord's-day. All, I believe, are agreed in this: that it is deeply-rooted as an institution in the necessities of our human nature: and that to give up the Lord's-day merely to the physical or intellectual needs of man will be utterly insufficient, and that the higher and truer half of man, that which makes him a spiritual creature, being uncared for, the Sabbath will be but a very imperfect day of rest. We are all agreed also in an earnest resolve to set our faces

against those views, now so common, which identify the Christianising of the population with the humanising of the population. We believe that to humanise is one thing; that to Christianise is another thing. We believe that pictures, statues, music, æsthetics, tropical plants, and all the other contents and adjuncts of these places, valuable as they are in humanising, are utterly insufficient to produce the Christianity of the Cross. We are all agreed in believing that there is a distinction between æsthetics and religious worship, between the worship of the Beautiful and the worship of Holiness. We are, therefore, all agreed in an earnest desire that, among all classes of the country, there should be a more religious, pure, and holy observance of the Lord'sday. But now, let me ask the question, With what consistency can we demand of the poor man that he shall have no recreation of an out-doors kind, if we have done nothing to provide for him a home within doors, wherein to spend the Christian Sabbath?

It was only yesterday that I conversed with an intelligent working man in this town, and the man expressed in very striking language the bitter indignation which was felt by his class towards those who were, as he said, in a bigoted way endeavouring to rob them of their Sabbath. I trust that I convinced him, I tried at all events with all my heart to convince him, that it was not bigotry in those who tried to take from the working men their Sabbath; but I am not sure that I convinced the man that there was not great ignorance on the part of those persons with regard to the necessities of the poor. It seems, therefore, that the only true and proper answer we can make to the poor man when he expresses indignation at being robbed of his out-door Sabbath is by an institution such as this, which would give

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him a home wherein to spend an in-door Sabbath. Every institution of this kind seems to tell of a new era in the Human Race and of the progress of civilization. What is the true characteristic of the present age? It is a disposition to acknowledge the importance and the value of that which appears to be small and insignificant. When Mr. Wordsworth announced this as the great truth and the great principle of all the poetry of life, he was met with a universal shout of laughter; but the spirit of the remark has since permeated all society, and all our literature. It is the characteristic of the age-it is the characteristic of its literature. The most popular and the most vigorous of the writers of this day arose first to eminence by drawing the attention of the country to the modes of thinking, the feeling, the living, and even the slang of the lower classes: and that book which has occupied and is still occupying the attention both of Europe and America,*—to what is owing its singular power, but to the thrilling interest it has thrown around the thought, that in the negro himself there is a common humanity with our own-in the lowest of the species something that agrees even with the highest! It must be an era marking a changed state of things, when princes and nobles, instead of occupying their time with battles and tournaments, are occupied with subjects such as Improving the Dwellings of the Poor, and the construction of Baths and Washhouses. This, I think, must prove that we have arrived at a state of things in which the smallest, the minutest atoms of the species become of importance: when members of the Government are absolutely not ashamed to give lectures, and to enlighten the people on the necessity of drainage and

*Uncle Tom's Cabin."