Untitled - Electric Scotland

1856-60] MR. LOWDER S MISSION 229
that which was set on foot by Mr. Charles Lowder and
his colleagues in the great riverside parish of St. George s
in the East. How much of the success which attended
the efforts of these devoted men is to be attributed to the
personal power and magnetism of Mr. Lowder s presence,
and how much to the system he adopted, is a question on
which opinions will continue to differ. It may also be
fairly questioned whether Mr. Lowder s work, during its
earlier years, gained or lost by its association with the
scenes of excitement and controversy which, for some
months, were witnessed week by week in the great Parish
Church from which his mission was an offshoot. Painful
and mischievous as were the riots of St. George s in the
East, discreditable as their continuance undoubtedly was
both to the civil authorities and to the partisan wire-pullers
who instigated the controversialists on either side, the pro
minence which was thus given in the public mind to the
devoted work which was going on in St. George s mission
for the civilisation of one of the roughest neighbourhoods
in London, was not without its very practical advantages
both to the mission itself and to the Church at large. 1
Examples of such work were less common then than now,
and the enlistment of sympathy for the Church s self-
denying workers was a frequent, though unintentional,
result of the endeavours to put them down by force of law,
and even by personal violence.
The keepers of the dens of drink and infamy, who reap
their nightly harvest from the sailors and others in the
neighbourhood of London Docks, were doubtless ranged,
to a man, under the so-called Protestant banner during
the St. George s riots of 1859. But it would be a simple
error of fact to confound the mission work of Mr. Lowder
For emphatic testimony to this advantage, see Charles Lowder s Life,
pp. 150, etc.