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A CROYDON
EPISODE.
ROBERT RODOLPH SUFFIELD.
MAT BE HAD OF
Mr. WARREN, Bookseller, 131 High Street,
Croydon.
a.d. 1876.
�LONDON:
FEINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET,
BAYMARKET.
�A CROYDON EPISODE.
------ »—
T may be interesting to you if I recount the
origin of the Religious Society whose fifth
anniversary we celebrate to-day.
You will be surprised when I tell you that Croydon
occurred to me as the possible scene of my future
life whilst I was still a Roman Catholic ecclesiastic.
I did not know a single individual in this locality,
with the exception of the lately-deceased Congregationalist Minister, the Rev. Joseph Whiting. When
I was in office at Woodchester, in Gloucestershire,
he was Minister at Stroud. We became acquainted in
consequence of his expressing a desire to confer with
me on religious matters in presence of a young lady
who had some idea of embracing the Roman Catholic
faith. In 1862, in the guest-room of the Dominican
Priory at Woodchester, the conference took place, and
lasted three hours ; it was conducted on both sides
with the most perfect temper, fairness, and courtesy.
Those who remember Mr. Whiting will easily under
stand that the violation of such virtues will not
have disfigured his side of the controversy. At that
time the Roman Catholic doctrine of Infallibility was
the twofold Infallibility of the Bible and of the
Church. Papal Supremacy was held, but Papal
Infallibility was not an article of Faith, except so far
as it might be supposed to flow out of the two other
dogmas.
I
�6
A Croydon Episode,
We took Bible Infallibility as the basis of agree
ment and argument.
I thought, and still think, that I had the best of
the argument; anyhow, so thought the young lady,
for the conference decided her to embrace the Roman
Catholic faith.
Given Bible Infallibility, and take for granted that
Jesus Christ founded a dogmatic sect and that it
exists, it would be less difficult to prove the Papal
than the Anglican or the Evangelical to be that sect.
Seven years passed by. During that period eccle
siastical duties had removed me from Gloucestershire
and carried me over many parts of England. The
great controversy regarding Infallibility arose within
the Roman Catholic Church—the controversy which
has shaken the German Church to its centre and lost
to it its most illustrious defenders. Many minds
became anxious, some determined not to investigate
or think, others were by circumstances almost
reluctantly compelled to investigate and think. I
was amongst the latter class: doubts arose, these were
again earnestly banished amidst unceasing work
in missions, in preaching, and in the confessional.
The doubts kept forcing themselves before my mind.
In accordance with the sad teaching of ecclesiastical
theology, I regarded these doubts, not as the noble
utterances of the intelligence, but as temptations to
be suppressed. I tried to remove them by reading,
by occupation, by prayer.
A confessor told me that my position was too
prominent, that it fostered pride, and hence came
these temptations. It often happens that those
accused of pride, are in fact but the victims of dis
appointment. What so sad as to give your mind
and energy to a service, and to begin to suspect that
the service is an illusion.
However, I asked to withdraw from all public
�A Croydon Episode.
7
offices, and I withdrew to a country village, during
two years, only leaving it when the calls of duty or
of friendship rendered absence imperative. I was
sickened by the spectacle of religion deforming
itself into a scheming Papal faction, headed in
England by a diplomatic and ambitious convert,
in Rome by a Pope who knew nothing, and by a
Cardinal who believed nothing—if the testimony of
intimates can be trusted.
Amidst peasants, and country scenes, and village
children, I strove to forget the present, and to fortify
my faith by the theologies of the past.
Many a long evening have I sat in my garden at
Bosworth, when the nightingale’s song was the only
voice to be heard, and prayed that I might die ere
the illusion had utterly passed away.
During that time I happened to have been at
Arundel Castle. It was perhaps the autumn of 1868,
on my way home to Leicestershire, a gentleman
entered the carriage at Red Hill. I did not recognise
him at first, but he reminded me of our interview
at Woodchester—it was Mr. Whiting. We did not
discuss theology : theology had become my enemy.
It was a beautiful autumn eyening; the valley of
Caterham and the pleasant white houses about looked
beautiful and cheering. Mr Whiting got out at
Croydon, telling me he had come to live there. I
remember wishing that I had never been bound to
impossible creeds, but could be free from the galling
yoke of a human authoritative belief, and able to
mingle as a man amongst my fellow men and not as
a priest amongst subjects.
It is one of the singular coincidences of life, that
in the year 1870, when I distinctly apprehended that
as soon as the time of deliberation arranged with
my confessor had terminated, I should probably be
compelled to say to myself that the faith had no
�8
A Croydon Episode.
basis, I happened to see in a Unitarian paper a
notice that a Free Christian Church might be
desirable in Croydon. The thought flashed through
my mind how pleasant it would be if there happened
to be in such a place a few earnest unfettered minds,
who would like to combine for worship and edifica
tion, if it were only in the parlour of one’s house. That
same year Mr. Martineau came to Bosworth to confer
with me. On the 9th of August, 1870, I left my
quiet country home and went to Birmingham.
With the exception of superiors at a distance, no
one knew when I left, for I loved the villagers and
they loved me, and I did not wish to give or to
receive the pain of parting ; so I walked through the
quiet straggling village on foot, passed the old church
and the little Roman Catholic school, listened for a
moment to the children’s morning hymn to our Lady,
and left the past for ever behind—the stately, not
unpoetic past 1 and it ranged itself amidst the grand
mythologies of the days of old; like the statue of a
goddess on the niche of a colonnade, you admire it
and you leave it behind. The road leads through
the images of gods and of heroes to the temple of
the Universal.
When-Mr. Martineau came to visit me, I told him
that there could be to me no half-way house; that
either the Roman Catholic Church was a religion or
a mythology; if it were proved to me to be a mytho
logy, it was because the Bible was mythological and
all orthodox Christianity mythological. I saw only
two alternatives, the Religion of Rome; or the
Religion of Nature, of the Soul, of the Universe—
either a Religion denouncing all, or a Religion
embracing all. If the Roman Catholic Church is
not the special Church of God, then, the whole of
humanity, must be my Church; either does Revela
tion speak through the Roman Catholic Church,
�A Croydon Episode.
g
or it speaks through all Religions, all Souls, all
Nature.
At length I arose from the limited into the univer
sal. To a stranger, it might have seemed like passing
from a great Church into a very small Sect. A great
Church may hold what is narrow and transitory, a
mere handful of men may hold what is all-embracing.
In former times, all knowledge of external things
was based on theory or on magic. Lord Bacon
arose, and taught that it must be based solely on
experimental knowledge; he did not pretend to have
acquired the knowledge, but he affirmed the true
principle—the principle is a universal one—but it is
called the Baconian, and for long it was only held by
a few—by a small school of thought. Three hundred
years have past, and that school of thought has con
quered the whole domain of science; we apply
similar principles to religion. Like Jesus Christ, we
appeal to the soul and to nature; we are a small
school of thought, we bear the apparent limitation of
a name; of a name representing at once a history
and a principle, but that principle is a universal one,
and in three hundred years and less, will doubtless
have possessed the whole domain of religion. A
time will come—you help to prepare the time—when
men will say, not “ God is in the Church,” but “ all
nature is full of God.” A time dawns, you invoke
its horizon, when all dogmatic Churches will have
passed away, and ranged themselves in the stately
mausoleum of the past.
When there will be juster views of God, and of
man in relation to God; when society will feel the
change in all its departments from state government
to domestic service; when every wrong will be
righting, every mischief removing, every mistake
correcting, every sorrow alleviating. When there will
be the worship of the absolute perfection, allegiance
�IO
A Croydon Episode.
to eternal law, loving fidelity to all humanity, the
development of the power of mind; then, in the
human hierarchy, we shall behold the true ascension
—saint, lover, hero, thinker. Then the sense ofthe divine, the infinite, and the immortal, born of
reverence, trust, affection, deep in the ineradicable
qualities of our being, will create a faith and a feeling
of divine truth, not faint in its glow, not damped by
misgiving, not dimmed by doubt, or tainted by
selfishness.
Then the intuition of God will be natural; the
perception of His laws intellectually certain. Such a
religion will be “broad as humanity, frank as truth,
stern as justice, loving as Christ.” Only a few as yet
adopt openly and religiously the extreme of our pro
tests, but I venture to say that Croydon is nobler,
purer, braver, more loving, more Christian to-day;
because the glow of humanity’s glorious future is
shining on the brows of a few.
Through the friendly offices of Mr. Martineau I
was made personally known to a very small handful
of Liberal thinkers in this neighbourhood. Two
gentlemen came over to Manchester to invite me to
this place. They found me in the midst of a com
mittee of gentlemen offering to me the beautiful
Upper Brook-street Church. I felt myself not ready
for work in a great city, and accepted the invitation
to a very small beginning in a locality which seemed
to me more like retirement than publicity. The
foundation and outline of my religious position were
clear to me; the details were not filled in. Every
thing around me seemed strange and new. I felt
like a boy beginning amongst men. A few of us
met for our first religious service on October 2,1870,
in the Nonconformist Chapel, London-road, lent to
us for a couple of months. It was the day observed
by Roman Catholics as “ Rosary Sunday.” On Sun
�A Croydon Episode.
11
day, December 11, 1870, we assembled for the first
time in this building. The purchase of the ground
on which it stands was only completed on June 12 of
the present year, when we celebrated the occasion
by a numerous, distinguished, but private, social
gathering. We commenced with about eight adhe
rents—three or four soon seceded from our infant
cause, though continuing personal friends up to the
present moment; they would have continued with us
if we had adopted a line of action which never for a
moment approved itself to our intelligence or our
aspirations. Though we have lost nineteen by death,
we have gradually grown into a congregation, into a
testimony, into an influence, more than local.
As a congregation we are entirely independent, but
we find ourselves in sympathy of opinion and funda
mental principle with many congregations which, in
our own country and in various parts of Europe and
America, under the name of Unitarian, Free Chris
tian, Liberal Christian, Liberal Protestant, Theistic,
and other titles, proclaim the supremacy of reason and
conscience, and yet maintain themselves in the line of
historic religious development. We are in religious
sympathy with all who anywhere trust in God; we
are in moral sympathy with all who anywhere strive
to learn and to realise in act the moral laws existing
behind the visible; we are in human sympathy with
all men everywhere; we are in spiritual sympathy
with all Nature, for all Nature is full of God, though
Nature is not God, but the garment of God.
Although we possess our congregational govern
ment, committee, and officers, our classes for the
young, our library, our means for intelligent discus
sion and kindly intercourse, we, in accordance with
our principle of individualism in collective humanity,
throw ourselves into the general human and civic
life in matters charitable, political, recreative, literary,
�12
A Croydon Episode.
educational, local, national. In all these interests we
find ourselves continually meeting, not necessarily to
agree with one another as a clique having small
sectional sympathies, but cordially and heartily
entering as individuals into the general interests.
Humanity is our church, and wherever we find men
we find the members of our church. This religious
society is'like a spiritual sub-committee to help on
the general religious and moral interests of the great
fraternity of humanity.
As a religious society, in this town, we are only
five years old; but our sympathies have been sought
and imparted here and there widely over the
country in many places. We have been asked to
assist in the government of the associations which
concern themselves with the interests of all those
liberal churches which seek sympathy, help, or
encouragement. We have specially helped to found a
society in London, wherein all the sections of liberal
religious thought find a social bond. Such facts as
these prove that our religious position is not one of
isolation and eccentricity, but in harmony with the
higher religious thought of our country. I say “ we”
when I speak not merely of what you have directly
conducted and presided over, but as regarding what
has fallen to my lot to do; for such has been accom
plished in consequence of your co-operation and
sympathy. I am almost ashamed to own to the
extent of the injury received into the life of a sincere
and consistent Roman Catholic. Actual faults in the
ordinary sense of the word may be very few; he may
obtain any amount of patience, gentleness, purity, sub*mission, passive resistance, and power of endurance.
But the power of self-help out of prescribed limits
is perceptibly crippled. The Roman Catholic system
is unceasingly occupied with seeking consolation and
imparting it. Affectionate sympathy is encouraged
�A Croydon Episode.
I3
till it becomes at once a weakness and a necessity.
Jesus the Man of Sorrows, Christ the Consoler, the
Mater Dolorosa, and the Virgin Mother are fit symbols
of a system which promotes tenderness and depreciates
self-reliance. The more that a Roman Catholic
realises his religion, so much the more does the
conception of life become dreary; it is a vale of
tears; the sweet sunshine cannot be trusted; the
loveliness of the landscape is a delusion; the con
science has only two offices, i.e., to obey and to repress.
Thus I was almost of necessity compelled to supple
ment myself with your corporate action. As Froth
ingham in another place says, the Old Faith came as
a comforter, our New Faith comes as an inspirer, with
industry, philosophy, art, literature, with all the
regenerating thoughts of humanity, with all the
vigour and vitality of the creative ; the old songs of
Faith have to be sung with the accompaniment of all
human interests; our New Faith dreads inaction,
lassitude, melancholy; it brings a brighter view of life
and of man, a higher conception of God, a nobler ideal
of the future, as progress out of imperfectness. The
Roman Catholic Church presents to the votary Jesus
stripped and scourged, weeping, downcast, and con
templative ; our New Faith presents Jesus as the friend
and companion of men and of sinners, the manly, out
spoken reformer, the earnest enthusiast in the cause
of humanity, the foe of cant and of hypocrisy, the
unmasker of shams, the hero who could stand alone
and do battle for the true, the righteous, and the just.
The Old Faith wailed out its litanies of servile suppli
cation; the New Faith, brave, cheerful, thoughtful,
hopeful of the future because it remembers the past,
likes senfimeni in poetry, but in religion above all
things intelligence and reality. The Old Faith ap
pealed to prophecy, to miracles, to authoritative
books and authoritative churches; the New Faith.
�14
A Croydon Episode.
appeals to the prophetic instincts of the human soul,
to the miracle of the universe, to every noble and
righteous utterance which the human reason or
human conscience has ever recognised as religious,
inspiring, and good. The New Faith has not to
defend itself against history, science, and philosophy,
they are its natural allies. The New Faith has not
to condemn humanity, for it is the expression of
humanity in its highest, most thoughtful, and noblest
mood. The New Faith does not go about cautiously
and girt with a panoply of defence ; it can afford to
lay aside its armour, to throw its weapons down, to
go forth with upright confidence, and consort peace
fully with thoughtful people, feeling secure in the
honest sympathy of all intelligent, sincere, earnest,
and liberal men. The Old Faith had creeds received
upon authority; the New Faith goes forth with con
victions profound, because they have been forged in
the fiery furnace of the heart, and approved by the
science, by the reason, by the conscience, by the
intuitions of mankind.
Accustomed as I had been to the simple-hearted,
straightforward honesty of the Old English Roman
Catholics, accustomed as I had been to admire similar
characteristics amongst Unitarians, nothing shocked
me so much at the very beginning of my new life, and
since, as the discovery that such honesty was not
deemed by all a virtue, but rather a reproach. I found
in London and elsewhere fathers disbelieving the
popular mythology, and yet rearing their children to
its practice. I found here and there persons profes
sing our religious opinions, yet too indolent, or too
cowardly, or too inconstant to testify to them. I had
no sooner left the Roman Catholic Church because I
could not accept its creeds (they had disappeared in
the quicksands on which rested their foundations),
but I was solicited to embrace the very same creeds
�A Croydon Episode.
15
and liturgy in the Church of England; and, to my
amazement and indignation, the very persons who
urged upon me that unrighteous suggestion did not
accept those creeds and litanies in any ordinary use
of language, but only by ’some quibble of speech such
as I had always spurned when to a slighter degree
(according to popular rumour) permitted by the
Jesuits. I realised more than ever the necessity of
above all things, sincerity. If I reject hell as an
impiety, I cannot belong to a Church which declares
that persons who disbelieve the Trinity and the
Incarnation must go into hell’s everlasting fires.
Veracity is essential to true piety; veracity is founded
on faith in man. You tell a man the truth when yon
can trust him with it, and are not afraid. As Pro
fessor Clifford says, it is not English to tell a man
a lie, or to suggest a lie by your silence or by your
actions because you are afraid he is not prepared for
the truth, because you do not quite know what he
will do when he knows it, because perhaps after all
this lie is a better thing for him than the truth would
be. Surely this craven crookedness should be the
object of our detestation. Yet do I often hear it whis
pered that it would be dangerous to divulge certain
truths to the masses. I know the thing is untrue ;
but in a certain sense, after a fashion, it may be made
to be considered true; anyhow it is picturesque, con
soling, and useful for children, for women, for common
people. “ Crooked ways are none the less crooked
because they are meant to deceive a great many. If
a thing is true, let us all believe it: rich and poor—
men, women, and children. If a thing is untrue, let
us all disbelieve it: rich and poor—men, women, and
children. Truth is a thing to be shouted from the
house-tops, not to be whispered after dinner, over
rose-water, when the ladies are gone away.” Life
must first of all be made straight and true; falsehood
�16
A Croydon Episode.
can never be necessary to morality or to true piety. <l It
cannot be true of our neighbours, or of their children,
that to keep them from becoming scoundrels they
must believe a lie, or make, pretence to believe it.”
The sense of right and wrong—piety to God and
piety to man—such truths are too real to need the
doubtful help of insincerities and of mystification.
Thus, whatever errors we unhappily make, we will
at least be truthful, and not mystify away that human
trust without which society would be an impossibility,
business a fraud, the family a cabal—each individual
man, woman, and child a hypocrite or an imbecile.
EBINTED BY 0. W. BEYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STBEET, HAYMARKET.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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A Croydon episode
Creator
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Suffield, Robert Rodolph
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [Croydon?]
Collation: 16 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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Printed by C.W. Reynell
Date
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1876
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CT6
G4864
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Unitarianism
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (A Croydon episode), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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English
Conway Tracts
Unitarianism