One day finds him with the Bishop of London at the Mansion House meeting of the United Temperance Council. Another day he is speaking with the President of the Baptist Union, the Rev. John Wilson, one of his best supporters in Woolwich, at the Union's annual gathering. Another day he is congratulating Canon Hensley Henson, at the annual meeting of the London Wesleyan Mission, on having "six of his parishioners on the platform"—a reference to the presence of half a dozen members of Parliament, Canon Henson being rector of the House of Commons.
After addressing the Baptist Union on a second occasion, a letter came to him from the secretary, the Rev. J. H. Shakespeare:—
On behalf of the Council of the Baptist Union and on my own behalf I beg to thank you most warmly for the magnificent services you rendered to us last Tuesday night. It was delightful to hear you. I personally was very curious to see you managing a dense crowd of men. It does not seem to me that there is any reason why you should ever stop drawing from the rich and endless resources of your eloquence and wit and your wise sayings.
I feel very deeply indebted to you for having kept your engagement under such trying circumstances, and I hope you were not too fatigued afterwards.
A different letter was one from his old friend the Hon. and Rev. J. G. Adderley, announcing his call to Birmingham:—
Alas! I leave dear old London on November 2nd. Thank you for all you have been to me during my time here. I have known you now fifteen years.
The many occasions on which he addressed working men at adult Sunday schools in different parts of the country forced him to this conclusion, to which he gave public expression:—
The adult school movement has, I do sincerely believe, done more to make men understand that Brotherhood is not merely a word, but a real living thing, than any other movement of recent days. Men under the influence of adult schools now begin to see that their whole life on earth does not consist merely in eating, drinking, and working and going to a place of worship, but in taking a living part in God's work personally—in a word, in striving for some of Christ's ideals on earth as in Heaven.
He assisted at conducting something like an adult school in Poplar. Besides the Sunday morning meetings at the Dock Gates, the Labour League, in conjunction with the Rector of Poplar, carry on a winter series of addresses at the Town Hall on Sunday afternoons, to which Crooks and his friend, Mr. Fred Butler, give a good deal of their time. Of these Town Hall meetings he wrote in the article he contributed to the volume of essays on "Christianity and the Working Classes":—
The meetings are always crowded with working-men and their wives and working girls and lads. The rector or myself takes the chair—often we are both on the platform together. The gatherings are not religious in the orthodox sense, nor is any attempt made to teach religion, but I venture to say they have as much influence for good on the work-people of Poplar as many of the churches. We nearly always begin with music by singers or players who give their services, and then we have a "talk," generally by a public man, on social questions, on education, on books, and authors, and citizenship. Some of our speakers take Biblical subjects.
Thus every week we get together a good company of work-people who ordinarily attend no place of worship on Sunday; and if nothing more, we keep them out of the public-house, we make them think for themselves, we awaken some sense of citizenship. The presence of the rector has convinced many, who were formerly hostile to all parsons, Anglican and Nonconformist, that the Churches and Labour can work in harmony. Without pretending to be this, that, or the other, our gatherings have made for the love of one's neighbour, and therefore for the cause of Christ.