BAPTISTS LEAVE STEPNEY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1079, 18 March 1911, Page 9

BAPTISTS LEAVE STEPNEY.

THE EAST-END GHETTO. Commercial "Road Chapel, Stepney, was closed on Sunday, January Tho church was founded in tlip time of the Commonwealth, and the present chapel was built ilr 1521. Itev. J. Fletcher has been pastor for thirty-seven years, having commenced in February, 1874. For the first eleven years of that time the congregation increased so as to mako necessary all increase of sittings. For twenty-five years the average additions to the church were H6 per annum. But for years past the tide of foreign immigration has converted the whole into a Ghetto. Tlio Jews have largely driven out the natives, and tho position has hail to be surrendered within tho nasf twenty years. Ono, with a congregation in .187*1 of 1500 people, has for some years been n Jewish synagogue, and its schoolroom has bccome a synagogue also. Others have shared tho same fate. One is becoming a polico station ; another is used for storing ice, and, strange to say, that belonged to tho Primitive Methodists, who boast of their evangelical fire. This does not mean in every case that the church is extinct. 'It'has in some cases moved away to seek more favourable conditions. This will be the easo in the present instance. The continuity of the church will bo maintained in L.C.C. school premises for a time at Dempsey Street, Stepney, and .at a convenient season another chapel will he built elsewhere. The final sermon, preached to a congregation which all but filled the chapel, was optimistic in spirit, and was based on the words in John xiv., "Let not your heart bo troubled. . . Arise, let us go hence."— "Christian World."