These incidents are all trivial enough, but I give them as illustrating the happy and boyish natures of the young men who found themselves together under the leadership of Mr. Charrington. When the bathroom tap was left on, and the whole house was flooded, their equanimity was not disturbed. When there was no proper dinner, they ate bread and cheese. The vagaries of the housekeeper, the odd behaviour of the monkey, were all subjects for mirth. The moral of this sort of life is obvious enough. These men cared nothing for personal comfort or pleasure. Their life was lived in an unceasing warfare with the powers of evil. Their swords were always girded on – the rest was as nothing.
The late Earl of Kintore stayed for some little time at the East End house, and, as it unhappily turned out, just before his death. As he was leaving after his visit he shook his host's old housekeeper – whose name was Mrs. Pilgrim – by the hand and said, "Well, good-bye. You're a pilgrim and I'm a stranger, and we shall soon be at home." As a matter of fact the earl died suddenly only a fortnight afterwards.
I continue the record of the early beginnings of the great work that was to come, for it was now that the East End Conference Hall first came into being.
"About this time Mr. Charrington received a letter from the late Mr. Pemberton Barnes, who was said to own the largest number of houses of any one in the world (then nearly a stranger to him), stating that he held a site known as Carlton Square, which he was anxious to devote to a Christian work. He had originally intended it for the erection of a church, but being deterred by the rapid advances of Ritualism, of which he was an opponent, he resolved to build a mission hall instead. The result was the erection of the present building, which seated 600 persons, and was opened on Friday, November 1, 1872.
"The following extract is from The Christian of that day.
"'Another very interesting movement has been inaugurated in the East End. On the 1st of this month a new and very elegant iron structure, capable of accommodating 600 people, was opened for public worship and evangelistic effort of various kinds. T. B. Smithies, Esq., editor of the British Workman, presided, and addresses were given by Revs. Jack Kennedy, H. Barton, Dr. Sharpe, Dr. Barnardo, and other friends. A statement of the circumstances which led to the erection was made by Mr. F. N. Charrington, the honorary superintendent, who said, some time ago, being anxious to establish a boy's lodging house, he asked Mr. Pemberton Barnes to devote an old house (situated in the East End, and belonging to him) to that purpose; but Mr. Barnes said he had, unfortunately, given it into the hands of the builders a week previously, and so the matter dropped. A short time ago, however, he had received a letter from that gentleman saying he was desirous of doing something for the Lord; he owned a square on which he proposed building a house with a small hall attached. Mr. Charrington visited him the next day, and Mr. Barnes agreed to build a hall in which the Gospel might be preached, and in which the work would be thoroughly unsectarian. The meetings held on the four Sunday evenings since the opening have been numerously attended, and not one has passed without distinct testimony of blessing received by some of those present. With much regret we add that Mr. Pemberton Barnes, the kind friend to whom the East End of London is indebted for this addition to its means of evangelisation, died within a fortnight of its opening.'"
At this East End Conference Hall Mr. Charrington took up the question of adult baptism. His work there was in no sense at all sectarian, nor has it ever been so from those early days until the present moment – a point which I shall enlarge upon at some length when I come to the story of the Great Assembly Hall itself and my own experiences there.
At the same time, Mr. Charrington's own personal conviction was that a form of baptism by immersion was warranted by his interpretation of Scripture, and was a means for good. Mr. Richardson, in one of our conferences, has told me the following curious anecdote. There was a baptistry built in the new hall at Carlton Square, but there was no water laid on. Accordingly, Mr. Charrington sent to the great brewery in the Mile End Road and asked for a supply of wagons containing hogsheads of water to be sent to the hall. The request was immediately complied with, but there was considerable consternation among the neighbours of the new mission when they saw great brewery wagons delivering barrels at the hall – barrels which it certainly never occurred to them, contained nothing but harmless water.
In addition to this central hall, interesting work was also being done in Bethnal Green, where there was a building attached to the now rapidly growing mission in Bonner's Lane. The neighbourhood, in 1875, was a singularly interesting one. It took its name from the fact that Bishop Bonner, of infamous memory, in the days of "Bloody Mary," had his palace in the immediate vicinity, and additional antiquarian interest was that the faith the then Bishop of London sought to extinguish was afterwards propagated in that very neighbourhood by the French Protestants, who settled there in 1572. The descendants of these people occupied the neighbourhood at the time Mr. Charrington started work there, and extremely picturesque their lives and habits were. A record has been placed in my hands, and it tells of a day when green fields and trees made pleasant a quarter now a wilderness of bricks.
I read —
"I know an old inhabitant who has seen the changes of the last fifty years, and he told me that a man he knew kept a farm a few hundred yards from Bonner Lane. This man's great desire was to possess a hundred black cows. For years he tried to collect them, but never managed to collect more than ninety-nine. As soon as he made the number up to a hundred, one always died, or was lost; and the old man said to him, 'It always reminds me of the lost sheep in Scripture.' The neighbourhood is well known by the name of Twig Folly, and there is an inscription placed upon some houses built by a man who obtained his property in the following way. There was living there a man who made twig baskets. He was greatly troubled by the boys robbing him of his fruit. One day, seeing a boy in one of his fruit trees, he shouldered his gun and shot him. Fearing the consequences, he made over all his property to a friend, on condition that he himself should have it back at the expiration of whatever punishment he might get. But when he came to claim his property, he found his friend not so faithful as he had anticipated; for, instead of delivering it up, he kept it. In building these houses with the proceeds of the property, the friend asked a neighbour what he should name them, and received the following reply: 'What could be better than to name them after the old twig basket maker, for his folly?' So it was named Twig Folly.
"The place is now inhabited by the working-classes. A few of the old silk weavers are still left, who carry on a small trade which cannot be very remunerative. In our hall for the last three months some happy hours have been spent by many who formerly could never be induced to enter any place of worship.
"The plan of the services has been as follows: Meeting on Sunday evenings at six o'clock, and going out with a band of good singers, we invite the people in; then small handbills are distributed, setting forth the order of the services, which consist of singing by a good choir formed for the purpose, and a short address; sometimes a few will tell their experiences. We have by this means been able to fill the hall. This has greatly encouraged us, for if we can obtain such a good congregation in the summer months, we may expect nothing less in the winter. But we are thankful that we can go further and say, that many who have lived without God, and been careless as to their future state, have been awakened and converted. A man came in one Sunday, and stayed after the service to be spoken to. He said he was a prize-fighter, and on the Wednesday following he was to fight. But before he left that night, he delivered his will over to God, and determined by His grace to lead a new life and to keep away from the fight. He has been seen since, and we are thankful to say that he kept his word."
The work in Bonner Lane went on for some three years. After that the activities at the Central Hall demanded so much of the Evangelist's time that it was felt impossible to give the necessary supervision to the offshoot of the mission.
Mr. Charrington was therefore glad to leave this field of labour in the hands of the Rev. T. Bowman Stephenson, who purchased the Hall from the chief organisation and carried on