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fcions of those spirits . Of all classes that , in existence , we know anything about , they seem to be the most ignorant and the most stupid . If such is the state of the soul , the Bishops are evidently right . It is a pity , however , that the ! Right Heverend Fathers should be found to harmonize so strictly with spirit-rappers , and to l ) e in such discord with the professional class ; because it appears to us highly improbable that _ _ ' ¦ * ^ . ^^ ** ^ ^ ' ^ " a ^ *'•
the spirit-rapping class will acquire any influence in the world ; and , upon the whole , the administrators of education are gaining ground . So , if the Bishop class identifies itself with ignorance , with , the religious Ideas as they are understood by the ignorant , and with inere place-hunting interests apart from the moral and spiritual developjnent of the world , we really cannot help feeling some anxiety for the future of the poor Bishops .
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" One evening , the end of December , 1855 , I was sitting at the late Rev . John Branch ' s fireside , with Mr . Clakk the bookseller , -whose knowledge of all kinds of books was extraordinary . lie ashed me to tell him what the passage was in the * Mission House Letter . ' I gave him some idea of it ; and he instantly said , I hnoio where you can find'the original !—it is either in : , or , in -. ' But how can I get it ? ' I said . « If you will go to Holywhi / l Street with my compliments to Mr . — — , he will get it for you . * I went , and found that Mr . - ——— , -was in prison for selling such publications ! I "went to his brother , but was repulsed . He evidently suspected I -wanted to entrap him . . ' - » " . * - ^ ___ , -
"At length I took the extract into a house ; and asked a man if he could inform me in what book I could find that passage ? He took me to another man , who distinctly remembered the passage , and promised me the book . I said , ' Do you think it possible ; that an educated married man , a minister of religion , would write such a passagk to his wife ? ' He replied , ' It's absurd , sir ! IT S ONE OF OUR PASSAGES , / knOW it well ; HE COULD wox doit !'
" At length , after great difficulty ( through fear of my informing ) I got the book ; not from this man , but from one he brought in , whom I had not seen before ; and who delivered it to me in the absence of the other man . " After satisfying myself that the extract from . ' the Mission House Letter' was the same as the letter in the book , I had to give two pounds for it . " After many years hnoioledge of London , and its iniquities ; and its immoralpublications—rthe latter often fcrought to me by the Missionaries of the Londox City Mission , 1 ' confess tJiat 1 'had wo idea that such a book
could have been in existence . The inconceivably obscene coloured prints , six in number ; and the filth contained in the twenty-fourLetters in the book , toould at once , if seen ly Mr . Davies' greatest enemies , compel them to say that the idea of his carrying such a hook about with him , going from house to house , and town to town , * you say , perfectly monstrous ! I discovered the book ¦ when Mr . Davies was apparently , in the opinion of his medical attendant , a dying man . And in these circumstances Mr . Davies signed the document which accompanies this letter . " This document contained 31 r . Davies ' s solemn declaration , made before the Rev . AV " . T , " Wild , Vicar of Westow , that he had never in his life seen that book , nor the passage extracted from it . In most cases this evidence would settle the matter , and it would be supposed that the Directors of the Missionary Society would at once meet Mr . Davioss ' s challenge , acknowledge that they had been misled , and manfully withdraw the charge . But it appears there is still some reason Avhy the
Directors of the Missionary Society do not avail themselves of their opportunity of doing justice . The rules of honour and of charity must be different in that society from the rules that prevail out of doors , and of course there must be a reason for the difference . What-was the charge against Mr . Davies ? It was that of having composed , in a letter to his wife , a passage of immoral tendency . They are so pure , these missionaries , that they will not tolerate a man among them who writes to his wife anything that is not " fit for publication . " "We can imagine letters written from husbauds to their wives , very
fit to be thus written , but not suitable for the public eye . The missionaries , however , insist that a husband shall write to his wife as he will to any other woman , otherwise he must 1 ) 0 subjected to censure , if not expelled from tlieir body . In order to ascertain that their colleagues arc in this moral framo of mind , they will encourage practices of espionage . Among gentlemen of this school , a letter from a man to his wife is with them not a " privileged communication , " but the opening a letter of a man to his wife by the clerk of the society is a privileged act , conducive to the moral tone of the association ! It came out that the dork professed to employ , for the purpose of attesting the copy which he made , n young lad who was made to compare the text and the copy of a letter , of which Mr . Ainslo says , " Nothing but thic impossibility of producing the book or the letter publicly prevents tlio universal conviction of Mr . Davies ' s innocence . " So that to exercise an inquisition in the correspondence of a man with his wife , to make 1
copies of private correspondence for the purposes of public accusation , and to employ lads into collation of the most immoral literature of Hplywell-street , are acts of which the society approves ; although it blushes at any epistolary ardour in its own members . Yet we have still not got to the worst . Mr . RoBEiiT AiNSLTE stood out manfully in defence of his friend , and it is a notorious fact that Mr . Aiitslie suffered in consequence of . that advocacy . The missionaries are sharp
fellows ; they are not to be caught with evidence that would convince most people ; and they do not yet acquit Mr . Davms . Some suspicion lurks amongst the reverend gentlemen , whom the discovery of the original does not satisfy ; for it . is logically possible that the copy may not have been made from the book by the accuser , "but by Davies himself ! It is , in fact , insinuated that Mr . Davies , iu order to throw some kind of force into his private correspondence , may have resorted to that kind of literary piracy " ' . Mr . Clabk ; , the bookseller , disbelieved Davies's capacity in that line . "It is absurd
sir , he could not do it . " But the Congregational Dissenters , or the reverend gentlemen who preside over the missionary business of Dissent , are not so incredulous . They think it more probable that a missionary should be guilty of literary piracy , for the purposes of correspondence with his own wife in that particular strain , than that : a . paid clerk in their employ should manufacture a charge against a minister ! Out of doors , the charge against Mr . Davies will be regarded as amply refuted , bat missionary gentlemen it appears find no difficulty in believing such stories of each other ; and at least missionary gentlemen ought to know themselves .
Alas ! nowhere amongst thewhole of the gentlemen concerned , with / the one exception of Mr . Amslie , can . we find a complete standard of Christianity or of gentlemanly feeling . The martyr himself does not come into court with clean hands . According to his own account , he began well . "T was the son of pious parents , who , amidst the mountains of Wales , "brought me up in the fear of God . ITrom my childhood I was a member of a Christian . Churcli , and at twelve years of age I became a Sabbath-school teacher . " This was beginning early ; and so strong wasfflr . Davies ' s desire to propagate the Christian spirit , that he more than once sought a deadly climate for the scene of his labours . lie found the Directors , however , very jealous of their authority . The suspicion that a clergyman settled in a distant station was becoming independent of them , induced them to interfere for Ins unsettlement . Thus , according to Mr . Davies , when the congregation of Mr . Ketley had erected for him a new chapel at the Eearn-station , in Berbice , the society ' s agent set up an opposition pli \ ce of worship within a few minutes' walk of the former ; and Mr . Davies gave great offence by expressing strong disapproval of the proceeding . Iteceiviug a ' rap ' - for his conduct in a similar case , he appealed to Mr . Tn )> man , the foreign secretary , with a protest against the conduct of the Board . " It is too li
bad , " he said , that in churches raised and supported by tho resources of Independents , the dearest and distinguishing j > rinciples of those Independents should be reviled and misrepresented as all that is ungrateful and hostile to the parent society . " And then , being threatened with the appointment of a successor , he speaks of that gentleman in these eloquent terms , the italics being his own : — " I hopo my successor , whether temporary or permanent , will ho an entire abstainer from all intoxicating drinks . If he takes his wine , tho people will take their rum , and then adieu to all piety and liberality . The town station , in that case , will soon sink down to the
DISSENTERS PAINTED BY THEMSELVES . ¥ e have in our hands a curious tale of congregational morality . Part of it has been told before , part of it comes out in a postscript to a pamphlet which recapitulates the whole . * Por some reason which we do not very clearly understand , the Rev . Ebettezer Davies , Minister of the Caledonian-road
Chapel , formerly missionary for the Congregational Dissenters in Demerara , had been subjected to a system of persecution at the hands of Messrs . Tidman and Pbotjt , two of his colleagues . It was in December , 1850 , Mr . Tidman first alluded to the subject of a letter which has since become famous , and which was said to have been written in 1845 : — ¦ ¦ ¦ . .: V : . ¦ : :. ¦ - :
" After you had beon preaching God ' s word , " said the reverend censor , " you -wrote to your -wife a letter—such a one as 1 should have thought you could not have written , nor she received ; she did receive it in this house [ tte Mission House ] , and afterward carelessly dropped it on the waiting-room floor . It was picked up by one of the subordinates , and restored to her , but not until it had been copied . " This " subordinate" aj > pears to have been a clerk , who subsequently produced the copy of the letter before the Committee of the Congregational Board , and who stated that he gave the original letter back to Mrs . DavIes . He had previously caused Hoeley , a lad then not out of his teens , to attest the copy . He kept that copy for five years ; during that time he frequently met Mr . and Mrs . Davies when they came to the Mission House , and made no allusion to the subject . There were minor charges against Mr . Davies , but this was the most important , and the most sustained by ' evidence . ' Some
of the committee appeared gladly to believe the accusation ; others resisted the belief , on the ground that the conduct ascribed to Mr . Davies was inconsistent with his character , and therefore not to be accepted on such evidence as had been adduced . The counterevidence was not unimportant . During the year in which this letter was said to be written , Mr . Davies was not absent from his wife for more than five days ; his residence
has been accounted for in a manner whioh renders the transmission of the letter exceedingly improbable . Moreover , the Rev . Bobekt AiNSLiB publicly states that he has read " every letter Mr . Davies had written to Mrs . Davies—about a hundred and tenand not any one of them contains a word or a hint but what is pure and might be printed . " But the original of tho peccant letter Las since been found ; Mr . Ainshe tells how : —
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October 18 , 1856 . ] T H E L E A 3 ) E It . 997 it ^\ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ BBBMB ^^ HB
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. * " TheMission House Letter ; or , A Brief RoviewVf < Recent Proceedings in Eolation to Myself and my Ac- 1 cusers . Second Thousand , with Numerous Additions . , " Ebcnezor Davies , Minister of tho Caledonian-road , L-hapol , London . With nn Introduction by tho Rev . Joseph Kotloy , Independent Minister , for twenty-eight 1 years a Missionary in Dotncrara . I
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Oct. 18, 1856, page 997, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse2.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2163/page/13/
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