This edited article about County Durham originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 705 published on 19 July 1975.

At Jarrow Bede taught children the message of the Gospel, by Peter Jackson

On September 27, 1825, a steam engine was standing on a newly-built railway line near the little Durham village of Shildon. It would have looked ridiculous to us today, for it was very small, and had a tall funnel that was quite out of proportion to the rest of its size. It looked rather like a present-day tar-boiler, and was coupled up to a string of trucks and improvised carriages.

“This is a fine engine,” said a man with a tall, shiny stovepipe hat and a green brocade waistcoat.

“Aye,” replied the friend who stood beside him. “Our Mr. Stephenson’s done a right good job!”

Suddenly a man appeared, struggling through the crowd towards the engine.

“There he is!” called the man in the stovepipe hat. “Mr. Stephenson!”

George Stephenson smiled at the excited crowd, then climbed on to the engine tender. The man in the stovepipe hat, his friend, and the rest of the assembled crowd, climbed aboard. Although tickets had only been issued to 300 people, nearly 200 more scrambled on to the train!

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This edited article about John Wesley originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 698 published on 31 May 1975.

John Wesley by Peter Jackson

John Wesley lived to be nearly ninety, but his life nearly came to a much earlier end when at the age of only six, he was rescued from a fire on the night of 9th February, 1709.

The house in which he lay sleeping caught fire and within a matter of minutes, its thatched roof collapsed in a cascade of sparks upon the very place where the boy had been lying asleep in his bed. But for the courage and promptness of a neighbour, who saw the child standing at the bedroom window in his nightshirt, he would never have come out of the house alive. As it was, a shout for help and some willing arms had “little Jacky” as they all knew him then, out of the raging inferno just in time. Standing in the garden of Epworth Rectory, he clung to his mother, and watched the family home collapse in smoking ruins.

John Wesley’s father, Samuel Wesley, was Rector of Epworth at the time, a village set deep in the Lincolnshire fens. In addition to being a clergyman, he was a scholar, and something of a poet, though not a very successful one. The villagers certainly thought him odd, and he was often involved in quarrels with local farmers about what they owed him or he owed them. And not only with farmers: he was heavily in debt to tradesmen in Lincoln, and as far away as London. Also his income as the local Rector was so small that his family had to live for years in grinding poverty, handing down carefully patched clothes from one to another, and eating mainly what could be grown in the garden.

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This edited article about the Turin Shroud originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 686 published on 8 March 1975.

Christ on the Cross by J James Tissot

Chevalier Pia could hardly believe his eyes as he watched the photographic plate slowly develop. He pinched himself to make sure that he was not dreaming but the pain proved that he was very much awake and he removed the picture from the developer to examine it more closely. “This must be the most remarkable photograph ever taken!” he gasped, as the full significance of his discovery dawned upon him. The portrait in his hands showed a good-looking, bearded man with closed eyes. There was no doubt about it. He was looking at the face of Jesus Christ exactly as he had appeared at the time of his execution almost nineteen hundred years before.

The object that Pia had photographed was a fragment of linen 4 and a half metres long by a little over one metre wide which had been preserved as a holy relic in Turin Cathedral. It was widely believed that this cloth was the shroud in which the body of Jesus had been wrapped after his death. Carefully protected by early Christians in Jerusalem, the bloodstained cloth was taken to Byzantium after the fall of the Roman Empire. In 1204, Otto de la Roche, a French crusader, removed it to France and for the next three hundred years, the Holy Shroud remained hidden in a specially-built chapel at Chamberg. When fire damaged the cloth in 1532, it was repaired by nuns before being taken to Turin Cathedral for safety and there it stayed, carefully guarded, for the next three hundred years.

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This edited article about Egypt originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 671 published on 23 November 1974.

Building the Pyramids by Neville Dear

Armies have fought across its deserts – men in tanks and bomb-laden aeroplanes in recent years, and the conquerors on camels in its distant past. And yet this land in the desert beside the Nile is a place with a strange tranquility, which the hot haze rising in the streets of its sun-bleached towns cannot dispel. It seems strange and yet Egypt, (for this is the country otherwise known as the United Arab Republic) will always remain an enigma from its inscrutable Sphinx staring across the desert to its political disturbances of modern time.

Egypt is a leading nation in the Arab world, and the Egyptians are descended from one of the oldest civilisations known. Their written records go back over 6,000 years. But for century after century, this nation has been dominated by its various conquerors. Ethiopians, Persians, Greeks, Romans and others have all left their footprints in the sands of Egypt. From 525 BC, the date of the Persian invasion, until 1922, when a British protectorate ended, it has been virtually ruled by foreigners. Although a king was proclaimed in 1922, the military occupation by British troops did not end until 1936.

Later, it saw the rise to power of Colonel Gamal Nasser, first president of the Egyptian republic, who nationalised the Suez canal, and sparked off retaliatory action by British and French armies. He also built the enormous Aswan High Dam to irrigate vast areas of desert and turn it into fertile land. Nasser carried out many reforms to bring his people out of their feudal backwardness and, since his death in 1970, his work has been continued by his successors.

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This edited article about the Salvation Army originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 658 published on 24 August 1974.

An American First World War poster featuring a Salvation Army girl by George M Richar

“How wide is the girth of the world?” roared General Booth. The crowd of Salvationists that milled around him cried back, “Twenty-five thousand miles.” “Then,” bellowed Booth, triumphantly, “We must grow till our arms get right round about it!”

Within months, Booth had mobilised his Army, and the troops were setting off to war across the seas, ready to take the nations of the world by storm.

On March 10th, 1880, Commissioner Scott Railton and his soldiers landed in the United States of America. The siege of New York had begun. Two months after his first service, which was held in what one appalled minister had called “The most disreputable den in the United States,” Railton was able to report back to headquarters in London the figures for his American recruits: 16 officers, 40 cadets, 412 privates. One year later the number of converts topped 1,500. Railton travelled across the sprawling land mass of America, setting up headquarters north, south, east and west of the great continent.

Meanwhile, 23-year-old Kate, Booth’s eldest daughter, had opened fire in France. In Australia, two men from England had set out by themselves to take up the Salvationist cause.

In the summer of 1882, the man who was to become part-creator of Salvationist strategy for conquest abroad, had set out for India. Frederick St. George Lautour Tucker was a Greek scholar, and knew Hindustani, Urdu and Sanskrit.

When he arrived in Bombay, a huge police force came to meet him. The authorities in India, hearing that the Salvation Army was about to ‘capture’ India, believed that this meant invasion by thousands of troops. They were relieved to find that the thousand strong army they had expected was only made up of three men and a girl but they could not have known then that Tucker and his three assistants were to create more havoc than an army of one thousand could have done.

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This edited article about the Salvation Army originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 656 published on 10 August 1974.

A sea captain sings a hymn to the tune of “Champagne Charlie is My Name”, by Pat Nicolle

“Come drunk or sober,” urged the handbill, and among those who accepted the invitation that night to attend a Salvation Army meeting in Bradford, Yorkshire, was a man who promptly went home to roll a barrel of beer from his house and empty its contents into the gutter.

In the Rhondda Valley 2,000 men and women were converted within six weeks, and one public house in the area which had once housed the most drunken and degraded people in South Wales, sold only three pints of beer in a whole week.

When urged to make an immediate decision to renounce sin and evil, one man in Chatham insisted on giving the Devil two weeks’ notice. After all, he told the Salvationist, he would expect the same consideration if he were an employer.

William Booth and his soldiers knew, that to the men and women they were trying to save, the Devil was a very real and formidable being. A huge poster in a small Yorkshire fishing town announced ominously WAR! IN WHITBY! THE SALVATION ARMY FIGHTING FOR GOD! The Salvationists used military tactics, military titles, and military terms. Always the enemy was the Devil, and always the Devil proved to be the hardest enemy for them to conquer.

Booth’s unorthodox techniques shocked and horrified many Victorians, who felt that he was giving Christianity a brash, vulgar image. When Salvationists began to use brass instruments to accompany their songs, the words of hymns were put to the day’s pop songs. When a converted sea captain began to sing Bless His Name to the melody of one of the day’s popular tunes, William Booth was delighted with its catchy, rhythmical tune and asked its title. “Champagne Charlie Is My Name,” was the reply. At this, Booth stood thinking for a few minutes, then turned to his eldest son, Bramwell, and said: “That has settled it. Why should the Devil have all the best tunes?”

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This edited article about the Salvation Army originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 655 published on 3 August 1974.

Booth’s People’s Mission Hall at 272 Whitechapel Road (top) was a refuge for those trying to escape from poor society’s rampant alchohlism which Booth rightly recognised as a disease. Pictures by Pat Nicolle

Twelve hard, gruelling months had passed since that hot summer’s day in 1865 when William Booth had taken charge of the Christian Tent Mission in the East End of London.

Night after night he had staggered home, often with his clothes torn and nursing a cut in the head where mud, stones or a firework had struck, hurled by a jeering mob.

With a wife and six children to support, Booth was himself facing poverty. Only his passionate desire to help the destitute and degraded, and the loyal, encouraging support of his wife, Catherine, had kept him going during these months of hardship. Sometimes, even Booth found his ardent faith flagging under such burdensome struggles. With only sixty supporters standing beside him after one year of work at the Tent Mission, his moments of near-despair were understandable. A few men and women had left him to follow their destinies. One of these was a young medical student called Thomas Barnado who had helped Booth at many of his meetings. He left the mission to concentrate on the rescue of London’s orphan boys, and to found an organisation which was to become famous throughout the world. Booth had seen an inspired faith and determination in this young man, and when he wished his friend goodbye, he added, with great foresight: “You look after the children, and I will look after the adults. Then, together, we will convert the world.”

But many of those who left Booth during that year were men and women who had found the dangerous atmosphere of the East End intolerable. Their attitude was forgivable. At almost every meeting, a violent incident would take place, and Booth himself needed a private bodyguard to protect him from aggressive roughs and urchins.

Soon, however, Booth’s movement, which became known as the Christian Mission, began to spread beyond the East End to the suburbs of Bromley and Croydon.

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This edited article about fruits originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 654 published on 27 July 1974.

Cleopatra teasing Mark Antony with a bunch of grapes by Don Lawrence

If you ever have an opportunity to visit Hampton Court Palace, in Middlesex, take a look in the vinery. There, you can see a gigantic grape vine, which has a girth of six-feet two-inches, and a main branch measuring a hundred-and-twenty feet long. It was planted in 1769, but still yields three hundred pounds of fruit each year, which is sold to the public.

Grapes have been popular in Britain since the 1st century A.D. when our ancestors called them winberige, meaning berry of the vine. After the Norman Conquest, winberige was replaced by the French word, grappe, which really referred to the hook used to gather the fruit.

When the Domesday Book, William the Conqueror’s survey of England, was prepared between 1085 and 1086, there were thirty-eight vineyards in the south of the country. Gloucester, in particular, was famous for the quality of its grapes.

Although this fruit was grown as a luxury in this country, it has been a source of food and wine in the hot regions of the world for thousands of years. Its importance is shown in the Biblical story of Noah which tells how, immediately the flood subsided, he planted a vineyard. Grape seeds have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs and instructions for its cultivation and wine production have been deciphered from hieroglyphics written about 2,400 B.C.

Over the centuries, as grape culture spread westward, through Asia Minor, Greece, Sicily and was carried by Phoenician traders to France, it also travelled into the Orient by way of India. So, today there are more than 8,000 known varieties of the fruit. Some are grown purely for the table. Others are cultivated for wine-making, because they contain more glucose and are more easily fermented.

During the process of fermentation, a deposit of acid potassium salt crystals is formed. The crystals are grey or red in colour and called argol. When this is refined, it becomes the cream of tartar used in baking powder.

A small, seedless variety of grape is grown to make currants, the dried fruits which take their name from Corinth, in Greece, from where the first currants came. Sultanas are obtained from another seedless variety, the Smyrna, from Izmir in Turkey, and raisins are produced from muscatel grapes grown in the Mediterranean countries, California and Australia.

This edited article about religious fanaticism originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 654 published on 27 July 1974.

Rev Edward Irving the charismatic Presbyterian preacher

The gaunt preacher with the mane of black hair leant out from his pulpit and blessed the vast congregation which stared up at him in admiration. He had been preaching for three hours and, as he stepped back, he mopped at the sweat that streamed from his brow. The silence that followed was broken by a piercing shriek: “The Lord is in the midst of you!” It came from a figure writhing in a corner of the chapel. Nervous ladies scurried for the doors. The writhing ceased and the figure revealed itself as a respectable-looking young man. He advanced into the middle of the aisle and addressed them: “Why will ye flee from the Voice of God?” he demanded. “Ye cannot flee from it on the Day of Judgment.” Up in the pulpit Edward Irving, no longer the subject of attention, groaned inaudibly. Mr Taplin was prophesying again and had upstaged him for the third week in succession.

It was 1832 and religious fervour was sweeping the country. It had been sparked off by the French Revolution which had seemed to bring to an end the world as most people knew it. No sooner had the spectre of the guillotine ceased to haunt the middle-classes than Bonaparte threatened death and destruction. The relief brought by his defeat at Waterloo had lasted barely 20 years before agitation for the emancipation of Roman Catholics and for the Reform Bill seemed to presage fresh changes in the world order. To crown it all, in 1831 an epidemic of cholera had brought death to many homes. Some fearful climax to these terrors must be imminent. And a number of prophets suddenly appeared to reveal just what the climax was to be.

Many of them were associated with the Irvingites, followers of Edward Irving, a Scottish Presbyterian minister at Regent Square Chapel in London. He was a brilliant orator and regularly drew congregations of over a thousand. The tense atmosphere created by his marathon sermons seems to have encouraged members of his audience, like Mr Taplin, to “prophesy” – to babble incoherently in strange tongues, or to utter mysterious warnings. When Irving and others examined their utterances, striking similarities appeared. Their words corresponded with the writings of several mystics which had been published in Britain and the Continent. Together they indicated that the world in its present form was drawing to a close and that the Second Coming of Christ was at hand.

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This edited article about the Salvation Army originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 654 published on 27 July 1974.

William Booth saw the poor on the streets of London’s East End every day and it appalled and moved him, by Pat Nicolle

A hideous stench of muck and filth clung to the hot, stifling air. It hung, thick and threatening, among the huddle of hovels that housed half a million victims of poverty.

From grime-stained doorways appeared haggard, frightened faces, with hunger reflected in their eyes. Tiny, dirt-caked children walked barefoot through the streets, tottering and swaying from the effects of beer. Women, weary with work, staggered homeward, looking old beyond their years.

A nightmare of noises filled the dark alleys where East London’s poor continued their hourly struggle against starvation and disease.

Through this jungle of human misery on that fateful night in 1865, walked William Booth. It was a night he would never forget.

On and on he walked, a tall, black-coated, black-bearded figure, who was appalled at the sights which met his eyes everywhere he looked. What he saw were the pitiful remnants of human beings; men and women who had been so long subjected to degradation that nothing could shock or humiliate them any more. They were sick, they were dirty, they were hungry, and William Booth was determined to try to save them all.

The preacher who walked through the streets of London’s East End that night knew a lot about the suffering of the poor. He had been born in Nottingham in 1829, the son of an impecunious nail maker and builder and, as an apprentice to a pawnbroker in the city’s slums, young William Booth had seen, with painful clarity, what poverty did to people. He had seen men and women cling helplessly to the last vestiges of self-respect. He had seen how years of bad harvests, crippling taxes, and exorbitant bread prices brought peace-loving people to violent rioting.

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