My mother did not go to the Established Church, to which her father belonged. She had natural piety of heart, and thought she found more personal religion among the Nonconformists than in the Church. She attended Carr's Lane Chapel, where the Rev. John Angell James preached—who had a great reputation in Birmingham for eloquence and for his evangelical writings. He was notorious in his day for denouncing players and ambitious preachers seeking to excel in the arts of this world; which caused the town people to say that he was dramatic against the drama and eloquent against eloquence. His name, "Angell" James, begat a belief that it was descriptive of himself, and that his doctrines were necessarily angelic. It seems absurd, but I shared this belief, and should not have been surprised to hear that he had some elementary development of wings out of sight At the same time, Mr. James gave me the impression of severity in piety, and my feeling towards him was one of awe, dreading a near approach.
Some years after, I held a discussion of several nights with the Rev. W. J. Winks, of Leicester, who wrote to Mr. James to make inquiries concerning me. In 1881, some thirty-five years after the discussion, Mr. Winks' son showed me a letter which Mr. James wrote in reply saying: "Holyoake was a boy in my Sunday School five years. He then went, through the persuasion of a companion, to Mr. Cheadle's for a short time, then to the Unitarian school (I believe entered a debating society), and became an unbeliever. He is a good son and kind to his mother, who is a member of one of our Baptist churches."
The Rev. Mr. Cheadle, of whom Mr. James speaks, was a Baptist minister. It is true I went to his church—my sister Matilda became a member of it—but I never joined it The ceremony of baptism there was by immersion. It seemed poetical to me when I read the account of baptism in the Jordan; but I could not make up my mind to be baptised in a tank. The reason, however, that I gave at the time was the stronger and the true one—that I did not feel good enough to make a solemn public profession of faith. Mr. James was misinformed; I never belonged to a debating society.
It was very good of him to write of me so, when he must have been very much pained at the opinions he believed me then to hold. A man may speak generously privately, but he means it when he says the same thing publicly; and Mr. James did this. He wrote to a similar effect in the British Banner at the time when the Rev. Brewin Grant was painting portraits of me in pandemonium colours.
A small Sunday School Magazine came into my hands when I was quite a youth. It was edited by the Rev. W. J. Winks. As communications were invited from readers, I sent some evangelical verses to him. The first time of my seeing my initials in print was in Mr. Winks's magazine.
After a time, partly because the place of worship was nearer home, my mother joined a little church in Thorpe Street, and later one in Inge Street. They were melancholy little meeting-houses, and, as I always accompanied my mother, I had time to acquire that impression of them. A love of art was in some measure natural to me, and I thought that the Temple of God should be bright, beautiful and costly. As I was taught to believe that He was always present there, it seemed to me that He should not be invited (and all our prayers did invite Him) into a mean-looking place. It was seeing how earnestly my mother prayed at home for the welfare of her family, how beautiful and patient was her trust in heaven, and how trouble and misery increased in the household notwithstanding, that unconsciously turned my heart to methods of secular deliverance. She had lost children. I remember the consternation with which she told us one Sunday night that her pastor, the Rev. Mr. James, had stated in his sermon his fearsome belief that there were "children in hell not a span long." That Mr. James believed it seemed to us the same as its being in the Bible. Another time he preached about the "sin against the Holy Ghost, which could never be forgiven, either in this world or the world to come." My mother's distress at the thought made a great impression upon me. A silent terror of Christianity crept into my mind. That one so pure and devout as my mother, who was incapable of committing sin knowingly, should be liable to commit this, and none of us know what it was, nor how or when consequences so awful were incurred, seemed to me very dreadful.
The first death at home of which I was conscious, occurred at a time when Church rates and Easter dues were enforced and augmented by a summons. None of us were old enough to take the money to the public office, and a little sister being ill, my mother, with reluctance, had to go. A small crowd of householders being there on the same errand, she was away some hours. When she returned, my sister was dead; and the thought that the money extorted by the Church might have succoured, if not saved the poor child, made the distress greater. My mother, always resigned, made no religious complaint, but I remember that, in our blind, helpless way, the Church became to us a thing of ill-omen. It was not disbelief, it was dislike, that was taking possession of our minds.
A man in my father's employ, who was superintendent of a Congregational Chapel School at Harborne, a village some three or four miles from Birmingham, asked me to assist as monitor in one of his classes. I was so young that John Collins, who preached at times in the chapel, took me by the hand, and I walked by his side. The distance was too far for my little feet, and in winter the snow found its way through my shoes. Collins afterwards became known as a Chartist advocate, and was imprisoned in Warwick Gaol with William Lovett, on the ground of political speeches. They jointly wrote the most intelligent scheme of Chartist advocacy made in their day. Elsewhere I have recounted incarcerations which befel many of my friends, proving that, within the memory of living men, the path of political and other pilgrims lay by the castles of giants who seized them by the way.
In the Carr's Lane Sunday School I was considered an attentive, devout-minded boy. All the hymns we sang I knew by heart, as well as most parts of the Bible. The only classic of a semi-secular nature my mother had in her house was Milton's "Paradise Lost"; we had besides a few works of ponderous Nonconformist divines, of which Boston's "Fourfold State" was one, to which I added Baxter's "Saints' Everlasting Rest." I devoured whatever came in my way that was religious. Being thought by this time capable of teaching the little that was deemed necessary in an Evangelical Sunday school, I came to act as a small teacher at the Inge Street Chapel. These people were known as Pædo-Baptists—what that meant not a single worshipper knew. The point of doctrine which they did understand was that children should not be baptised when their small souls were in the jelly-fish state and knew nothing. When their little minds had grown and had some backbone of sense in them, and some understanding of religious things, the congregation thought that sprinkling them into spiritual fellowship might do them good.
Though my mother admitted that adult baptism was more reasonable, she never listened to the doctrine of baptism by immersion. She disliked innovation in piety. She had great tenacity in quiet belief, and thought public immersion a demonstration—very bad bathing of its kind—and might give you a cold.