Guy Thorne

“ Charrington has told me—the most appalling and awful language it is possible to conceive.
They told the young men from the West End that they would tear them to pieces rather than that they should touch a single hair of Mr. Charrington's head.
It all occurred out in the public street, and only a Zola could describe the occurrence as it really happened. What I myself have heard from Mr. Charrington is horrible enough. These poor women must indeed at that moment have been inspired by something beyond their knowledge or understanding.
There is good in all of us. ”

“ Charrington & Head.
It stands up in the middle of the wide thoroughfare like some Gibraltar rising from the human tide at its feet. It is a huge pile of almost goblin masonry, with its colossal ladders, towers, and vast receptacles for malt. It is surrounded by a high wall, and covers an enormous expanse of ground. It hits the eye like a blow with its vastness, its suggestion of mighty, vested interests, solidity, and wealth. It dwarfs everything else in the neighbourhood. ”

“ You have wealth snugly invested in the Funds; you are strong and healthy; you are at liberty to live where you like, and occupy yourself as you like. While vast continents are shrouded in almost utter darkness, and hundreds of millions suffer the horrors of heathenism of Islam, the burden of proof lies upon you to show that the circumstances in which God has placed you were meant by Him to keep you out of the mission field.' What force, what irresistible urgency, does his death give to this solemn appeal for dedication to the service of the kingdom of Christ! ”

“ I feel now that the old enemy has been finally conquered, and that all that is left for me to do to work out my own salvation, is to obey the sacred injunction to 'watch and pray.' Out of the last thirteen months I have been preaching for five months at the Great Assembly Hall, and although it has cost me something to open my old wounds, I have been able to do it for the sake of other victims of strong drink, and I have been privileged to see hundreds of men sign the pledge of total abstinence and yield themselves to God. ”

“ It is the fashion to believe they are all paupers, which is a foolish and mischievous belief, as we shall presently see. Probably there is no such spectacle in the whole world as that of this immense, neglected, forgotten great city of East London. It is even neglected by its own citizens, who have never yet perceived their abandoned condition. They are Londoners, it is true, but they have no part or share in London; its wealth, its splendours, its honours, exist not for them. They see nothing of any splendours ”

“ On almost every public-house that one meets one reads in huge gilt letters the words, "Charrington & Co.'s Entire." If you go off the main roads it is the same thing—every little public-house flaunts the same legend. From the mighty portals of the brewery, day by day throughout the year, a never-ending flood of alcohol is pouring, and in those enormous vats who shall say how many souls have been dissolved?
I quoted above from Sir Walter Besant's All Sorts and Conditions of Men. ”

“ Charrington gave up, for the sake of conscience, the enormous sum of a million and a quarter. It is very difficult for ordinary people to realise what this sum means. In the first instance, it means about fifty thousand pounds a year—roughly a thousand pounds a week, or about a hundred and forty pounds a day. And yet the figures quite fail to convey the reality. For those who set store by honours and high places, a million and a quarter means a peerage, a singling out and setting above the vast majority of one's fellow-men. It ensures the adulation of almost every one. ”

“ I suppose few eminent men of our time have been more blessed with friends than Frederick Charrington.
From the highest to the lowest he has had, and has, troops of devoted men and women who reverence and love him.
But there has been one friendship in his life which deserves to rank with the great friendships of the world, so uninterrupted, so firm and beautiful, was it. No life of the great evangelist would be complete without an account of his friendship with the late Hon. Ion Keith-Falconer, third son of the late Earl of Kintore. ”

“ There was a pleasing though pathetic scene witnessed last night in the Great Assembly Hall, Mile End Road, when a large number of London's destitute poor were entertained to supper. As the people of all ages trooped in to take their seats at the long benches laden with good things, many a wan face brightened, as it had probably never brightened before, at the prospect of a good and nourishing meal. ”

“ A world of physical and material beauty has its way in inducing high and beautiful thoughts in [270] the human mind. Charrington and I have sat in the garden of the Manor House when a great round, red moon has hung in a sky of black velvet, and the kissing night-breezes have filled us with health and thrilled the blood. ”

“ The whole gamut of life in its most revolting, and yet, sometimes, its sweetest and noblest aspect, has been put before me through the quiet hours of night in a series of flashing vivid pictures, which have raised the soul to higher hope, have filled the heart and eyes with tears, and have made one even more conscious of the certain presence of God in the world than the summer night could show. ”

“ Born in London, bred, and brought up in the midst of that kingdom—for such London is—I have arrived at a conclusion that makes me anxious to co-operate with those who are seeking to lift up the masses of the people from the degraded condition in which they are now living. I fear that more than one million of the population of London never enter a place of worship, and if on the morning of any Lord's day there was a desire to attend a place of worship on the part of those who could go on the Sabbath, there would be needed 800,000 more sittings than are at present provided. ”

“ Blessed is he that considereth the poor. (Applause.) What the late Earl of Shaftesbury said at the laying of the foundation stone fully expresses my feeling.
"Take, then, for your motto, 'Forward, in the name of the Lord,' and with energy, perseverance, and unflinching reliance on the promise, 'I am with you,' go and seek each one in his own place, each one in his own sphere, and also by united action, to win sinners for Jesus. Remember that in the East End of London, with its million of inhabitants, there is room—not only for this large hall, but for many more. ”

“ But, like all leaders, Frederick Charrington is adored by his subordinates. He must lead, but he cannot be tyrannical. A kinder and more considerate man never breathed. All sorts of little details in my own pleasant friendship with him, not less than those things which men who have known him for thirty and forty years have told me, go to prove the indubitable fact.
As a novelist one is, first and foremost, intensely interested in temperament and the psychology of the mind. I came to Osea Island to study this man of whom I have been writing. ”

“ From what was said, I suspected that a strange personality, and one offering considerable interest to a novelist, was hidden away—at least, as far as I was concerned—in the East End of London.
It came to pass that from other sources I heard more of Mr. Charrington, almost immediately afterwards.
I suppose every one knows how, when they have met with some new word, some quotation, or name of a place, entirely fresh to them, they find it cropping up on every possible occasion. Now, this, of course, is not coincidence. It is merely that one's eyes have been opened. ”

“ Man has to preach the Gospel to man; and it is a sense of this duty that is occupying such men as Mr. Charrington and others in their endeavours to communicate to you the blessing God has so abundantly imparted to them. I am delighted to see such a meeting as this, because I see the enthusiasm with which you come: and when you joined in those hymns, I saw that you sang them from your hearts, that you knew what you were singing, and that the hymns were not merely exercises of music, but the expressions of true devotion. ”

“ The eyes are of a deep steadfast blue, and have an extraordinary power of penetration. I have met few people who look you so firmly and directly in the face as Frederick Charrington. It is a steady, kindly, unwavering regard, from the eyes of a man who has nothing to conceal, and everything to [260] give. The nose is straight and Grecian, the lips tender and humorous—a singularly handsome man, in short. But the fact that he has been blessed with good looks rather above the average contributes only slightly to the sum of his extraordinary personality. ”

“ I will say something of my stay on Osea Island, because it will complete the picture of Mr. Charrington in his kingdom, and will also give me the opportunity of completing my sketch.
[265] I have hinted before of pleasant companionship, and the visits of well-known people. But there is another side. The peace and calm which falls upon the soul in this remote place, which, at the same time, is so astonishingly near to London, is a thing incommunicable by words. The only sounds I hear from my study window are the calls of the birds, and the lap, lap of the tide. The air is extraordinary. ”

“ I have never been much of a believer in photographs as being able to convey any real idea of personality. Lots of people will differ from me, but that is my own opinion. The portraits I have chosen to illustrate this book are all excellent ones, as far as portraits go. But to me, at any rate, they are only sketches and shadows of the real Charrington. There is a painting of him when he was a very young man, which hangs in his dining-room, and that does indeed catch something of his spirit, and must represent him with considerable fidelity as he was many years ago. ”

“ At the time I was living a very moral life, and not without some interest in eternal things, but my only belief and trust was in the Book of Common Prayer, and especially the statement, 'Wherein I was made a member of Christ, the Child of God, and an inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven.' When we got to my father's home, to my great astonishment Rainsford suddenly said, 'I feel very guilty, we have travelled together all the way over the Continent, and enjoyed ourselves very much, but I have never spoken to you about your soul. ”

“ There was no namby-pamby Christian about this young scion of a great house. Everything he undertook he did well, and he became a leading bicycle racer in England, scoring innumerable successes at Cambridge, in the Inter-University meeting with Oxford, and defeating the professional champion of England by five yards. All this time, and I cannot give more than a mere outline of Keith-Falconer's career, inasmuch as it is unconnected with the Tower Hamlets Mission and Mr. Charrington, he was sitting for innumerable examinations, and building up a record of scholarship which still survives. ”