in any way as an indulgence or a luxury
on the part of a clergyman, who be it remembered, is, during a portion
of the Sunday, engaged in ministering to Christian people, that he
should devote another portion of that day to hearing Christ vilified,
and having his own creed torn to pieces. I myself feel that my own
belief is not shaken, but in a tenfold degree confirmed by all I have
heard and seen and written of infidelity; and therefore I cannot concede
the principle that to convey my experiences to others is in any way
dangerous. Take away the halo of mystery that surrounds this subject,
and it would possess very slender attractions indeed.

It was, for instance, on what has always appeared to me among the most
affecting epochs of our Christian year, the Fifth Sunday after
Easter--Christ's last Sunday upon earth--that, by one of those violent
antitheses, I went to Gibraltar Walk, Bethnal Green Road, to hear Mr.
Ramsey there demolish the very system which, for many years, it has
been my mission to preach. I did not find, and I hope my congregation
did not find, that I faltered in my message that evening. I even venture
to think that Mr. Ramsey's statements, which I shall repeat as
faithfully as possible, will scarcely seem as convincing here as they
did when he poured them forth so fluently to the costermongers and
navvies of the Bethnal Green Road; and if this be true of Mr. Ramsey it
is certainly so of the smaller men; for he is a master in his craft, and
certainly a creditable antagonist for a Christian to meet with the mild
defensive weapons we have elected to use.

When the weather proves fine, as it ought to have done in May, 1874,
infidelity adjourns from its generally slummy halls to the street
corners, and to fields which are often the reverse of green; thus
adopting, let me remark in passing, one of the oldest instrumentalities
of Christianity itself, one, too, in which we shall do well to follow
its example. Fas est ab hoste doceri--I cannot repeat too often.
Scorning the attractions of the railway arches in the St. Pancras Road,
where I hope soon to be a listener, I sped via the Metropolitan Railway
and tram to Shoreditch Church, not far from which, past the Columbia
Market and palatial Model Lodging Houses, is the unpicturesque corner
called Gibraltar Walk, debouching from the main road, with a triangular
scrap of very scrubby ground, flanked by a low wall, which young
Bethnal Green is rapidly erasing fro