The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-07-06 00:00:00

HOSPITAL SUNDAY IN LONDON.

On Sunday last, in most of the churches and chapels
of the metropolis, the annual collections were made for
what is called the Hospital Sunday Fund. Printed
notices were circulated, explaining that these simul-
taneous collections enabled persons of all creeds to
contribute in aid of the sick and suffering poor of the
metropolis at their respective places of worship. It
was added, "The fund is intended to meet, as far as
possible, the annual deficiency of some £50,000, to
which extent the hospitals and dispensaries of London
have had to rely, prior to the establishment of this
fund, solely upon the voluntary contributions of the
benevolent. The fund is annually distributed to
those hospitals and dispensaries within the metro-
politan area which are insufficiently endowed. The
awards to each institution seeking to participate ara
determined separately by the Committee of Dis-
tribution specially appointed for the purpose, under
the presidency of the Right Hon, the Lord Mayor, at
the Mansion-house."

The morning service at St. Paul's Cathedral was at-
tended by the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs in state. The
sermon was preached by the Rev. Dr. Claughton,
from St. Luke xiv., 2,, Bring in hither the poor and
the maimed, and the halt and blind." The preacher
dwelt upon the influence which Christ exercised from
the popular belief in Him as a benefactor, and urged
that if we wanted to benefit men's souls, we ioust
make men believe that we cared for their bodies. He
spoke of Dives as tormented with the thought of lost
opportunities, the recurrence of one of which would
have been as cold as water to his parched tongue. For
some years, he said, the congregation had responded
nobly to the call made on Hospital Sunday, and that
day they were desired not only to do as they had done,
but to increase their help. There was no diminution
in the need for it. The condition of the poor when
struck down with sickness in their own homes was
often most distressing. He had seen husband and
wife lying helpless on the same bed utterly unable to
do more than weep for each other's suffering.
It was a blessed change for them to be placed in
a hospital, where they would have air aud light,
nursing and sustenance, and the benefit of skill
equal to that which wealth or even royalty
could command. But society had obtained a bles-
sing in return. The experiencs that was obtained by
the medical man was applied equally to the relief of
the rich and the poor. Truly there was benefit to our-
selves in all that we did for others. An urgent appeal
for special liberality concluded the discourse. In the
afternoon the Bishop of Hereford preached the sermon
from the passage in I. Corinthians xii. about the un-
profitableness of giving, &c., without real charity, in-
sisting that in all cases action and judgment should be
determined by principle and not by sensation. In the
evening the Rev. Canon Barry based a concluding
appeal on the latter part of the words (Romans xiii., 7
and 8), " Render to all their dues. Owe no man any-
thing but to love one anoth:r." The sermon was an
earnest protest against the divorce of Christianity from
commercial life, as exhibited in adulteration, short
weight, dishonest commis-dons, fraud, over speculation,
excessive competition, bad workmanship, aud the
eagerness to obtain and supply articles at prices below
a fair value. The heavy fall of rain thinned the con-
gregation in the afternnon and the evening, but still
the collections of last year were excePded. The collec-
tions were as follows :—Mornitig, £BO 16s. 5,1. ; after-
noon, £24 3s. 1( d. ; evening, £23 14.. 10d. Total,
£l2B 15s. id. ; and foreign coin, value ss.

A very large congregation attended Divine worship
at Westminster Abbey. After full choral service,
the sermon was preached by the Rev. I'. G. Medd,
who took for his text the 35th verse of the 9th chapter
of St Matthew—" And Jesus went abut all the cities
and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preach-
in; the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every
sickness and every disease among the peole." The
reverend preacher said that a large part of the holy
work of our Saviour consisted in ministering mercy to
suffering humanity. He went about healing sickness
and disease among the people, the lame, the dumb, the
blind, and the sick being brought and laid at His feet.
The Gospel also contained reference to special
instances of His relief of the bodily suffering of man.
Our hospitals and asylums were the outcome of
religion. Springing as these institutions did out of
Christianity, their maintenance had now come to be
regarded as a matter of common humanity. He
pleaded with the large congregation before him to help
liberally these valuable institutions, which did so much
to relieve the misery and suffering of this great city.
The collection at the morning pervice amounted to
£5B 10e. 8-id. The afternoon service was even more
largely attended than that of the morning. Dean
Stanley preached from the text, "Give us this day
our daily bread," remarking that this second division
of the Lord's Prayer related to our duties on earth,
and that the combination of its two parts represented
the mixed life of spiritual aspirations and earthly
duties that are characteristic of Christianity. The
language of the prayer included all modes of obtain-
ing the sustenance of man; and the efforts of a great
statesman whose statue stood in the Abbey—Sir R.
Peel—resulting as they did in giving abundant and
untaxed corn to the labouring population, was a fulfil-
ment of one portion of the prayer. The petition also
referred to the means for bringing back the flush of
health to the pallid cheek and strength to the frame
exhausted by pain. That part of human life which
related to suffering was peculiarly sacred. In this
sense. !very hospital was almost a church, every
physician was almost a preacher, and every nurse
however called or however dressed, was a sister of
charity. When the art of medicine succeeded we looked
upon it WI something supernatural and divine, and MA

when it was baffl,d and unsuccessful we did not cease
to regard it with the greatest respect. Referring to the
recent death of the Queen of Spain, the preacher said
that at this moment there was not a heart in Europe
which was not touched by sympathy with the young
King of Spain in his bereavement. It was but four
years since he had passed through that Abbey, with
the grace of youth and the curiosity of boyhood; and
it was only two years since he himself had heard him,
in his palace in Madrid, speaking seriously but man-
fully of the arduous task he had before him, to assist
him in accomplishing which he had but a few months
ago won for himself the best of all human supports in
the person of her who had now left him. Robert
Southey had put into the mouth of the father of the
first Alfonso, the founder of the Spanish monarchy,
when overwhelmed by a great calamity, the following
striking passage :

"Nature bath assigned
Two sovereign remedies for human grief:
Religion surest, firmest, first, and best,
And strenuous action next'
and he hoped that the truth of the spirit of the passage
would be brought home to the mind of the young
Prince in his bereavement. The amount of the after-
noon collection was £56 18s. 11?2d. At the special
evening service the sermbh was preached by Professor
Jowett, the Master of Balliol College, Oxford, and
the collection amounted to £29 18s.

The preacher at the Chapel Royal, gt. James's, was
the Rev. William Barker, honorary chaplain to the
Queen and vicar of West Cowes. He chose as his text
the passage of Matthew (chap. ix., 23-25) which relates
the raising of the ruler's daughter from the dead, and
took occasion to refer briefly to the hospitals which.
he said, had a claim upon the generosity of all
Christian people. The collection at the three services
held during the day amounted to 67 3s. 3d.

Collections were made at the morning and afternoon
services at the Chapel Royal, Whitehall. In the
morning, when the congregation was by no means
numerous, the Rev. M. Papillon based an appeal for
help to the fund upon the words of our Lord, addressed
to his disciples, " I have compassion on the multi-
tude," as recorded by St. Mark in his account of the
miraculous feeding of the people. The rev, gentle-
man said it might be thought other miracles more
appropriate to the present occasion might have been
selected, but his choice had been based upon two
grounds—first, that the miracle referred to in his text
showed pre-eminently the deep feeling of compassion
for human suffering which pervaded the whole earthly
career of Jesua Christ; and second, that the
miracle was one in which he called in the human
aid of his disciples in order to the execution of
his miraculous design. The distribution of the fund
now being collected was similarly in the hands of
fallible creatures, but they were actuated by high and
holy motives, and he had no doubt that the Divine
blessing would rest upon their efforts. The result of
the reverQud gentleman's appeal was a contribution of
£43 3s. 4il. In the afternoon the Rev. Canon Barry
delivered his eighth and concluding "Boyle lecture"
to a congregation which, owing probably to the fact
that for some time before the hour of Divine worship
rain was falling in torrents, did not number more than
some 50 worshippers. The collection amounted to
£1 14s. 7d., which, with the coaributions at the morn-
ing service, made a total of £45 Os. lid.

At the Chapel Royal, Savoy, in the morning, Her
Majesty's Chaplain, the Rev. Henry White, M.A., en-
forced on what he styled "the festival of the sad and
the sick," the duty of "having cinipassion one of
another" (I Pet. iii., 8). As a man's joy is doubled
when he has a partner to share it, so the sufferer's
smart was lessened by sympathy. By their showing
that sympathy there was answered in them the prayer
of an illustrious man of the last century " that he
might be baptized into the sense of all conditions, so
that he could enter into the sorrows of all." The Swiss
motto was that day inscribed on their banner, "One
for all, all for one.' As all who held the electric chain
felt the same shock, and as all the strings of a lute
vibrated when one was struck, so it was given to us to
sigh over each other's griefs and pains. That was no
day for reasoning about the problem of suffering, or
for asking, with Alfred de Musset,

"Oh ! wherefore, Master, Lord of all,
Hast Thou made evil grow so great?"
It was a day for giving supremacy to the reign of corn-
pa=sion, and to that be4t rationalism for the occa4ion,
that logic of the affections, of which Pascol spoke,
when he owned that " the heart had its reasons which
the reason could not understand." In the afternoon
the Rev. Geo. Body, M A., preached "the Apostolate
of Charity," from Matt. v., 9. In the evening the
Rev. Canon Duckworth, M. A., made, from Johu ix..
2, ' a third powerful appeal on behalf of Hospital
Sunday. The three offertories realized £3 es., which
sum, however, will be largely increased before reach-
ing the Mansion-house committee. Two-thirds of the
above amount resulted from the morning service, a
di,Troportion as compared with the other two for which
the pitiless downpour in the afternoon and evening
sufficiently accounts.

At the Temple Church the Rev. Dr. Vaughan,
Master of the Temple, took as his text the words,
"Desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from
the rich man's table," (St. Luke, xvi., part of v. 21).
Glancing at the occasion of the parable of Dives and
Lazarus, the preacher reminded his hearers that
Christ had declared, "Ye cannot serve God and
Mammon," and the Pharisees, who were covetous—
fond of money was an exact rendering—" heard all
these things, and they derided him." and then came
the parable concerning "a certain rich man who was
clothed in purple and fine linen and fared sump-
tuously every day." There was no grotesque
parody of riches, no crime was laid to his charge.
He was just a rich man. It was the description of ten
thousand persons in this London. The beggar, Lazarus,
t Ha, was such as we might find in tens of thousands in
this city of ours, but for those houses of mercy for which
help was asked that day. The ease and the desti-
tution pourtrayed were of the most common type, and
so was the easy indifference which let the crumbs fall
and asked not who was fed. It was average wealth
exercising average charity to little more than average
destitution. The rich man did not refuse the crumbs
to Lazarus; what he did refuse was sympathy. He
let the crumbs fall, but he left the dogs to lick the
sores of the beggar. One of the signs of reviving
Christianity was the prosecution of the blessed work
of teaching and healing among the heathen in
foreign lands. In conclusion, be referred to the
appalling sum of human suffering brought to light
by the applications made to the hospitals and
dispensaries of London. Nearly one million of
sufferers-70,000 inmates of these institutions and
900,000 out-patients—made 1.4 vast aggregate of afflicted
persons, and it could surprise no one to hear that the
cost of this ministration was large. It must be
remembered that every pound put into the plates
would provide for thrFt cases in the year ensuing.
Homes, nursing, medicines were the right of the rich;
they scarcely stayed to thank God for them. But it
was far different with the poor. It was hard to be
sick—in peril of life and limb, and dependent upon
charity for even the chance of life healing. Asking
his hearers to put themselves in imagination in the
place of those they were now asked to relieve, he
begged them to apply the rule of doing unto others as
they would that others should do unto them. At the
morning and afternoon collections £136 18s. were
received.

The Rev. Dr. Parker preached in the morning in
the City Temple, before a very large Congregation,
in aid of the Hospital Fund. His text was the por-
tion of Scripture which relates to the healing on the
Sabbath of a wan who had a withered hand. He
dwelt on the compassion which our Saviour manifested
for human suffering and pointed out that He sent
forth His Apostles not only to preach the Gospel but
also to heal the sick. Dr. Parker said there was no
doubt about the genuineness of this hospital charity;
the administration of it was entirely free from the
spirit of sectarianism. Dr. Parker preached again in
the evening. The collections at the services amounted
to 278.

Mr. C. H. Spurgeon preached at the Metropolitan
Tabernacle, Newington-butts, and a collection was
made in aid of the "Hospital Sunday" Fund. Inci-
dentally alluding to this object prior to the sermon,
Mr. Spurgeon said he feared the committee had fixed
those occasions for a period of the year when a very
large number of their friends had gone to the country
or to the sea-side. That, he thought, was a mistake,
but he earnestly hoped that the Hospital Fund would
not be allowed to suffer by reason of it. The
text selected was taken from St. Matthew, "Jesus
saith unto him I will come and heal him." "Go
thy way, and as thou hast believed, so be it
done unto thee." The Centurion whose servant lay
sick was, said the preacher, an example to them
in a way which had some bearing upon the collection
of the day., He cared for the sick; he cared for a
sick servant. He had known some professing Chris-
tians who neglected their servants when they were
sick, and were anxious to get rid of them; but this
man cared for his servant %%hen he was grievously
afflicted. His sympathy, too, was shown in a practical
way. He did not say he felt for him and then keep
clear of him, nor did he even stand by and watch him.
He roused himself. went abroad on his behalf, called
together his choicest friewls, and made all the circle
that revolved araund him be in sympathy with the
poor suffering youth. He tiid more, for he sent in his
behalf for the best of all physicians. This Centurion,
a Roman soldier, had been kind and considerate to-
ward the Jews, among whom he represented the
foreign ruling power. He had built them a Syna-
gogue; and here he showed them that he cared for
the sick. Mr. Spurgeon then proceeded to draw from
the sacred narrative the spiritual less ,ns it was meant
to convey. The collection amounted to £ll5 18s. A
collection in aid of the same object was also made after
the evening service.

At the Roman Catholic places of worship the collec-
tions were deferred for a week owing to the claims on
behalf of the Catholic Poor School Committee.

The first sermons that were preached in aid of the
Fund this year were those delivered in the Synapagues
on Saturday. The Chief Rabbi, Dr. N. M. Adler,
preached to a large congregation in the Great Syna-
gogue in Aldgate. The venerable Rabbi torik his text
from the portion of the law appointed to be read on
the aay, Numbers, xiv., part of the 18th verse."—
and
oftruegreat
digatteitrycyo.;
.I%"l'arnh,e he sradidi:s could only
yrinris e to th
his nature by seeking to imitate those attributes.
This endeavour had inspired the establishment of
hospitals. In the prayer after the sermon, the preacher
invoked the blessing of Heaven upon the representa-
tive of the Great European Powers in solemn Corurresa
assembled, and prayed that their counsels might lead
to the establishment of a solid and enduring peace.
The collection amounted to £240.
Dr. Artom, Chteham and Chief Rabbi of the
Sephardic congregations in England preached on
Sunday at the ancient Spanish and Portugese Syna-
gogue in Bevis Marks. The text of the discourse was
drawn from Proverbs x., 2—" Charity delivereth from
death." An earnest appeal on behalf of the metro-
politan hospitals, and dispensaries was made in the
name of the vital doctrine of Judiasm—" Charity is
equivalent to all the prescriptions of religion." The
sun sollegted Wag ROL

The Rev. Professor D. W. Marks preached on
Saturday at the Synnogue in Berkeley•street of the
West London Congregation of British Jews. The
collection amounted to about £l7O.

The Rev. A. Green preachei at the Central Syna-
gogue in Great Portland-street, and drew attention to
the kindness with which the Jewish poor are treated
at the London Hospital and other similar institutions.
Donations to the extent of £1.60 were made.

In his sermon at the Bayswater Synagogue, Dr.
Hermann Adler gave an interesting outline of the
history of medicine among the Hebrews, taking for
his text the words, "Thou shalt cause him to be
thoroughly healed." The collection reached nearly
2100.

Sermons were also preached at other Synagogues.

"MARSHALL V. THE GREAT EASTERN

RAILWAY COMPANY."

The above cause has been before the High Court of
Justice (Queen's Bench Division). The case raised a
question of importance to bank-holiday excursionists,
and they may be interested to know what is reasonable
accommodation for them as compared with third-
class passengers (remarks The Times). On the bank-
holiday in August last the defendants ran excursion
trains to Loughton. Holders of tickets by those trains
were entitled to come back by any excursion train.
The plaintiff had obtained one of those tickets, and he
got into a carriage at Longhton to return to London
at about a quarter to eleven p.m. There was no light
in the carriage, and it was soon filled with passengers
and so overcrowded that several had to stand. The
passengers became quarrelsome, and the plaintiff, who
had remained quiet, while raising his arm to protect a
young lady who was sitting next to him, received a
cut on the wrist. The case was tried by his lordship
without a jury. It was contended that the defendants
in allowing the carriage to be overcrowded and in
omitting to supply a light, had failed to provide
reasonable accommodation.

His Lordship, however, held that, considering all the
circumstances, the accommodation provided was reason-
able, and that an excursionist who travels on such days
as bank holidays is not entitled in such circumstances
to have a lighted carriage, or to the ordinary accommo-
dation of a third•class passenger. Even if the conduct
of the defendant had amounted to negligence, it was
not sufficiently connected with the accident to entitle
the plaintiff to recover judgment from the defendants.