Visitors

There is a poem on "The Buried Life" of which I am often reminded. Your lives are busy, useful, honest; but your faces are anxious and you are not all you want to be. There is within you another life, a buried life, which does not get free. In old days it got free through old forms of religion, and then men had peace and were not afraid of anybody ot anything. We cannot go back to the old forms--they are gone with the old times and in the presence of the new learning of our days. Many therefore have given up religion altogether and carry about a buried life. It is buried but it is not dead. When it really hears God's voice it will rise. Men will live spiritual as well as honest lives. They will rest on Some One greather than themselves and have peace. I don't think this life will be stirred by excitement or irrational preaching--and not always by rational preaching; I believe that in the quiet of a place full of good memories, in the sond of fine music, in the sympathy of fellow seekers, we may better wait God's call. St. Jude's Church in Commercial Street will thus be open from 8:30 to 9:30 on Sunday evenings. Will you come and give yourself even ten minutes? It may be that as you listen to the silence, to the music, or to the worship of others, God will speak and that the buried life will arise and that you will have peace.

Posted on the billboards of East London by Canon Barnett, of Toynbee Hall, in the autumn of 1881.