Reriew of Reviews, 119/06. 



Leading Articles. 



285 



MILLIONS WASTED IN CITY CHURCHES. 



Such is the title of a most interesting article in 

 the Sunday Strand. Mr. W. Gordon and Mr. Neil 

 Lynch call attention to tihe fact that the City of 

 London, though more richly endowed with churches 

 tlian any other equal area in the world, has the least 

 use for them, and even, this diminished use is 

 growing steadily less year by year. The population 

 of the city was 37,702 in 1891 ; in 1901 it had sunk 

 to 26,923. 



MANY REDUCTION'S. 

 A century or so ago there were 100 of these city 

 churches. Now, however, there are only 54, the 

 sites having been sold, and the incomes having gone 

 to increase poor livings. For instance. All Hallows, 

 Staining, was demolished, and from the proceeds of 

 the sale of its site three new churches, in Bromley, 

 Stepney, and Homerton, have been built, each en- 

 dowed with ;£i5oo from its income. Instead of 121 

 people, about 25,000 are now ministered to. 



MUCH SCOPE FOE MORE. 



The writers then proceed to show that there is 

 plenty of scope still for reduction of city churches. 

 The cost per head per parishioner in the Rural 

 Deanery of the East City is £s i6s., and it pro- 

 vides 2750 seats for 1473 parishioners. In the 

 West City Deanery things seem even worse. Where- 

 as in the Rural Deanery of Bethnal Green there is 

 one church with 12,000 parishioners and only 500 

 seats. Its incumbent gets ;£20o a year, while the 

 incumbents of the seventeen city churches get 

 _;£i2,777 a year. A dozen churches would meet all 

 requirements of the city at present. 



Some time ago the writers visited halt-a-dozcn of these 

 churches on successive Sundays and the exiierience was as 

 depressing as it was instructive. In one ctiurch, the rector 

 ol which has twenty-nine parishionei-s. and draws nearly 

 £1000 a year, the congregation numbered seven persons, 

 of whom the majority were members of the clergyman's 

 own family; in a second church an excellent sermon was 

 delivered to ten listeners, scattered over a dreary desert 

 of pews in which 400 people might have found ample elbow- 

 room; while in the four other churches the congregations 

 ranged from twelve to Iwenty-ftve. On a recent Sunday 

 morning the aggregate congregation of ten City churches, 

 the rectors of which receive £5700 a year, numbered 213 

 worshippers — an average of a little over twent.v-ooe wor- 

 shippers in each church. 



THE VALUE OF THE CITY CHURCH SITES. 



The ground about Lombard-street is valued now 

 at about _£2, 000,000 an acre, and the site of All 

 Hallows in that street is said to be worth jQSoo,ooq, 

 " a sum sufficient to build and endow forty churches," 

 and yet the entire population of the parish is not 

 nearly 300, and average congregation of the church 

 but 26. The site of St. Michael ?, Cornhill, is said 

 to be worth ^750,000, with a parish of 162 souls 

 and an average congregation of 71. St. Michael's 

 and St. Peter's, Cornhill, together stand on sites 

 worth nearly a million and a-half. Other city 

 churches are little less valuable. For scanty attend- 

 ance, St. Mildred. Bread-street, is first, with a parish 

 of 71 souls and an average congregation of two. 

 It has been seriously proposed to demolish 32 city 

 churches and sell their sites, of an estimated value 



of ^3,500,000, which would be used in building 

 churches in the East End and the suburbs. The 

 writers even suggest that the sum might be used in 

 propagating the Gospel by means of Church Army 

 Van Missions, so strongly commended by the late 

 Archbishop Benson. 



FROM THE OCCULT REVIEWS. 



In the Annals of Psychical Science for June Pro- 

 fessor Carl Lombroso describes his experience in 

 the investigation of haunted houses. 



PHOTOGRA-PHING THE SOUL. 



Professor Elmer Gates explains what he is trying 

 to do in investigating the possibiUty of photograph- 

 ing the soul. He says: — 



Vast new fields of research are being opened up relating 

 to radiant emanations or streams of ions and other kinds 

 of particles, travelling at a speed of light, and capable of 

 making shadow pictures or skiuL'raphs of bodies composed 

 of atomic matter— such as X-ray pictures. It may be that 

 radiant matter may l>e found capable of making a skia- 

 grapli of the soul, if there is one, as I hope. 



He adds that " Clear proof that we live again 

 would more profoundly impress and influence the 

 world than any other thing whatsoever." 



THE IRRESPONSIBILITY OF MEDIUMS. 



Madame Ellen Letort, who does not hesitate to 

 say that Eldred and Craddock are most powerful 

 materialising mediums, discusses the question how 

 it is that men possessing such unmistakably genuine 

 powers should yet be detected in clumsy and vulgar 

 fraud. She attributes it to their incapacity to resist 

 suggestions. They are like persons under hypno- 

 tism : — 



The greater their mediumship, the greater the dangers 

 to which they are exposed. The most powerful ■■ediums 

 are those who are the most impressionable. But as ediiims 

 thus become simply instruments for the use of oth, r wills, 

 terrestrial or estrarterrestrial. they can evidently be used 

 for evil as well as for good, and they receive impressions 

 and suggestions which, according to Dr. du Prel. it is 

 sometimes impossible for them to resist. Is it not also 

 probable that a very sensitive medium may. in a seance 

 during which he evidently passes through different states 

 of impressionability, receive suggestions which he will act 

 upon outside of the seances, even when he appears to be 

 in his normal state? 



RETRIBUTION AFTER DEATH. 



An anonymous writer in the Hindoo Spiritual 

 Magazine for May, writing on Vasco da Gama, de- 

 clares that when any man in this life causes serious 

 mischief to others, his victims in the other world 

 mete out to him the same injuries he has done to 

 them. In support of this he quotes from Mr. Buel's 

 ■' Discoveries in Strange Lands " as to the fate of 

 Vasco da Gama. The famous Portuguese discoverer 

 treated the Indians of the Malabar Coast with 

 .savage ferocity : — 



One of his favourite pastimes was to maim his victims. 

 Mr Buel states (and he makes the story clear by a verj- 

 impressive illustration) that, now and then, fishermen of 

 the Malabar Coa.?t see a stranee sight at the dead of night. 

 Thev see a bearded Feringee lEuropean) flying, with shriek 

 after shriek—all of them piercing and unearthly and heart- 

 rending—to escape from his numerous pursuers. These are 

 the shades of the Indians he had maimed. The shade of 

 Da Gama shows that he too has lieen maimed by his 

 victims. The picture shows as if Da Gama is trying to 

 elude bis pursuers, but he is eventually caught and cut to 

 pieces, and then the vision vanishes. But yet the same 

 scene is enacted again and again, even now. His sin has 

 not yet been expiated. The story is told not by the In- 

 dians, but by EuroiJean eye-witnesses. 



