/,/V- ^^ ' ^^^^^ ^t line ®It«o%iai ^ %/i PRINCETON, N. J. ** % Presented bpr?(S\5'. 'Sr&d C7v . Cr(7\nc:>\i7\\\ BV 4207 .H66 1888 Hood, Edwin Paxton, 1820- 1885. ''■',. - ' The vocation of the preach IP 14^ / / THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. Fijfes THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. E. PAXTON HOOD, AUTHOR OF "THK THRONS OF ELOQUENCE," " THK WORLD OF FBOVBRB AND PARABLE,' " ROBERT HALL," ETC New York: FUNK & WAGNALLS, Publishers, 1 8 and 20 Astor Place. 1888. PRESS OP FUNK & WAGNALLS, 18 and 20 Astor Place, NEW YOEK PREFACE. TO those of the Author's friends who have read his late volume, " The Throne of Eloquence," the ap- pearance of the present work will be rather the fulfilment of an expectation than a surprise; they will recognise in it the second of what was intended to have been a series of volumes on pulpit work and workers, partly consist- ing of chapters from previous works, long out of print, and partly the result of a more recent course of lectures, delivered in Boston, U.S. But our readers know how, suddenly, before these hopes could be fulfilled, or ven the present volume completed, that " evening " came which was to our writer " his Sabbath morning of eternal rest." Such a possibility had often been anticipated by him ; and frequently, as suggestive thoughts and feelings thronged brain and heart, he would say, " Ah, I have so many books I want to write, so many sermons I want to preach, but I shall die, and not do half I want to do ! " It was on Thursday, June the 4th, 1885, whilst he was preparing the chapter on " Puritan Adams," that he suddenly expressed his inability to complete it. " I can- not finish this now," he said ; " I feel I am working at too great a strain, and can do justice neither to my publishers nor myself. I must ask them to give me a little longer time ; I shall work better after my holiday." Needless to say, his kind publishers at once, and with much sympathy, granted the desired reprieve. But for him the vesper bell had chimed, and his work was over. ^^ After my holiday I *" He was looking forward to the rest and re- vi PREFACE. freshment of Alpine heights, to the sunshine of Italian cities, to a return with renewed vigour to the work he loved ; but God had " prepared some better thing " for him, — the "everlasting hills," " the Golden City," the "rest which shall be glorious," and " life, even life for ever- more ! " Early in the morning of Friday, June the 12th, " God's beautiful angel " came, and, with a touch, unlocked for him the gates of immortality. It is most exquisitely pathetic to her, who was honoured to relieve him in some slight way in the more mechanical part of his work, to remember how, as she read to him some of the passages quoted from James Parsons, espe- cially those on "Heaven," and "Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God," he leaned eagerly forward as he listened, and with clasped hands, and eyes radiant through rapturous tears, exclaimed, " Isn't it beautiful ? Is it not beautiful ?" as though already he enjoyed a foretaste of that better country, which was for him not " very far off." The chapters subsequent to that on "Adams" were found laid aside together with the earlier portions of the manuscript, and were evidently designed by him to be used in completing the volume, so that there has been no difficulty in carrying out his intention in this particular, although, possibl)', his arrangement of these later papers might have been different ; but surely his readers will all feel that in the beautiful closing pages of this volume its Author's sacrament of work found its fitting benediction. And so this last book goes forth upon its way, unfathered, and without the advantage of its Author's supervision or correction ; but she, who thus mothers it, feels that she may claim for it the affectionate indulgence which, in spite of fault or defect, ever surrounds with a sacred and pathetic tenderness the little child who is born into this world after its father has passed away. Brixton Rise, April 22nd, 1886. CONTENTS. CHAP. FAGB L THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS . • i i i > I II. THE preacher's VOCATION. — THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS 29 III. FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER, THE PREACHER OF THE ORATORY AND THE CLOISTER . . , , .72 IV. MEDIAEVAL AND POST-MEDIEVAL PREACHERS . . 93 V. THE GREAT ENGLISH CARDINAL: JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 122 VI. CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION 162 VII. DR. EDWARD ANDREWS, OF WALWORTH . . . 2o6 VIII. THE PAPER IN THE PULPIT 232 IX. JAMES PARSONS . . , . . . . . 261 X. BILLINGSGATE IN THE PULPIT 309 XI. JAMES WELLS 335 XII. THE PULPIT OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 352 XIII. PURITAN ADAMS , ' ' . , , . . . 386 CONTENTS. CHAP, PAGE XIV, THE PREACHERS OF WILD WALES .... 413 XV. THE PLACE OF THE PULPIT IN POETRY AND FICTION . 44I XVI. SOME VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE FROM A PREACHER'S POINT OF VIEW ....... 460 CHAPTER I. THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. BEFORE we draw up the curtain we will relate an anecdote, which may be also a parable, he good St. Francis of Assisi once stepped down ^nto the cloisters of his monastery, and laying his hand on the shoulder of a young monk, " Brother," said he, " let us go down into the town and preach." So they went forth, the venerable father and the young man. And they walked along upon their way, conversing as they went. They wound their way down the principal streets, round the lowly alleys and lanes, and even to the outskirts of the town, and to the village beyond, till they found themselves back at the monastery again. Then said the young monk, " Father, when shall we begin to preach .-' " And the father looked kindly down upon his son and said, "My child, we have been preaching; we were preaching while we were walking. We have been seen — looked at ; our behaviour has been remarked ; and so we have delivered a morning's sermon. Ah ! my son, it is of no use that we walk anywhere to preach unless we preach as we walk." Perhaps this story is not so well known that its I 2 THE VOCA TION OF THE PRE A CHER. introduction " almost as the preface of the following pages, may seem impertinent ; the cynic, ill disposed to the race of preachers, may see in it only the sanction of seeming without reality ; but the wiser mind may take it not only as a little glimpse of an ancient Father, who surely was amongst the oddest, if most wonderful of all mediaeval preachers, but also, further, as an exposition of that apostolic maxim, "See that ye walk circumspectly, giving none offence in anything, that the ministry be not blamed," or that injunction of the preacher's Master and Model, "As you go, preach !" But the vocation of the preacher ! Ought we in one word, at the outset, to define what that vocation is ? And what should it be but — to say it in a sentence — the instinct for sonls ? Surely it is true, " He that winneth souls is wise ; " and said the apostle, " We persuade men." That winning of souls has very often been interpreted in a very low, narrow, frequently bigoted, and sectarian sense ; but what a noble ambition it is, to obtain a purchase over men's minds and affections, for the purpose of elevating their character, of enlarging their under- standing, and of soothing their griefs and irritations; of making things temporal the way and path to things eternal, and things seen the glasses and windows through which they obtain a vision of things unseen ; to carry tiiem out and forth from a life of sense to a life of faith ; to win them from the love of the world to the love of Christ ; — surely this is the vocation of the Preacher, and this may not inaptly be described as the instiitct for sonls ; an instinct perhaps not very prevalent just now, perhaps THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. only faintly realised by the writer, or the reader, but an instinct which has wrought in some men, and in some ages, Hke a passion, which was the passion of Jesus, the passion of Paul, and which has been the passion of many of the more wonderful of the humbly obscure men, who lived, and died, and made no sign which the great world regarded ; but who, never- theless, felt that wonderful instinct, the instinct for souls. Would that we had some Vasari, or Lanzi, some Sterling, or Jameson, to tell the tale of the pulpit, as those delightful writers have told the tale of the art of painting, and its triumphs and glories. Surely, it is worthy ! — surely, the story of the vocation of the preacher, which is also that of the lamp, pitcher, and trumpet, is equal in interest and in value to that of the crayon, the palette, or the pencil ! How can the story of painting be expected to compare with the story of preaching ?— the story of the way in which souls in the new creation were quickened and kept alive ? Looking among the marvels of the microscope, bending the eye through the lens, the reader has, perhaps, watched the crystallisation of some acid. A marvellous sight ! — gorgeous spears, and prismatic pillars of crystal shooting over the disc ! A moment since it was all opaque, and now it is all aglow, aflame with lightnings ; a field with arms flashing in the sun ; a theatre resplendent with diamonds : but the birth of souls — the awakening of souls ! — new affections shooting forth, new developments, — consciousness, holiness, and power; the minister has believed that he beheld all this! The artist believes in beauty, , in the ideal ; the 4 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. preacher in holiness, in life. Therefore, what stories of martyrdoms ! what enthusiasm ! sometimes, it may be, what fanaticism ! Some artists have been fanatics too — Blake, Haydon, Ribera ; but they neither interfere with our admiration of the art nor our appreciation of the men. In chapters in the Romance of the Pulpit must be mentioned Dr. Abel Stevens's " History of Method- ism," * and Dr. Sprague's " Annals of the American Methodist Pulpit." f Here is a succession of tales of extraordinary power and wonder ; here are the stories of heroes, stories of marvellous adventure, and triumph, and spiritual conquest. It is a pleasant conviction with us, that no human chapter is more full of wonder and delight than the history of the pulpit in all ages. It has always been wonderful where it has been real, from that day when Peter's sermons pierced the hearts of his hearers, down through the times of the Dark and the Middle Ages, in every country, where it has tried and tested its power — in France, in Geneva, in Scotland, England, Wales, and America. Dr. Stevens tells one part of the story, and tells it well — recites the rise and progress of Methodism, with its mighty array of marvellous men. Heroism and adventure meet us everywhere, as in those days when stalwart old * "The History of the Religious Movement of the Eighteenth Century, called Methodism." By Abel Stevens, LL.D., New York. A most entertaining repertory of pulpit anecdote of the period to which it refers ; an eloquent story, told by a sympathetic and hearty Methodist, only too little disposed to see the presence of the Divine life in others than that Church whose history he recites. t "Annals of the American Methodist Pulpit." By William B. Sprague, New York. This bulky work is overflowingly full of the delightful garrulousness of many men. THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. woodland shepherds carried the jfirst preachers on their backs through the snowdrifts, which choked the old English roads in the winter ; or the days when a preacher was seen with a spade strapped on his saddle behind, taking his departure from Macclesfield for the bleak portion of his circuit — the spade being deemed needful to cut a way through the snow. " I am but a brown-bread preacher," said one of them, " I have nothing of politeness in my language or address ; but I seek to help all to Heaven in the best way I can. I have been in dangers by snowdrifts and land floods, by falls from my horse, by persecution, sickness, cold, pain, weak- ness, and weariness ; trials of heart, and understand- ing, and judgment, and various reasonings with friends and foes, men and devils, and most with myself." He goes on to say how " through all he has been kept," and modestly ventures to believe he has not been useless, while assuredly he has been happy. Such were the men whose stories the goodly volumes of Sprague and Stevens tell. They remind us of Gideon dividing his three hundred men into three companies, putting a trumpet into every man's hand, a pitcher into the other hand, and a lamp in the pitcher. Truly, a strange and wonderful sight to see an army of thousands flying, cutting each other in pieces, while the Israelites only stood by with the sounding trumpet, and the gleaming lamp ! The story of the great Methodist movement is very much like this miraculous, historic, and dramatic scene. But on all hands we hear that the pulpit is worthless now ; there are not wanting proposals to 6 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. abolish it. We receive lectures in homiletics from those remarkable preachers, TJie Saturday Review, The Times, and The Daily Telegraph. " Why," says one in a letter, we believe to The Times, or to one of the High Church organs, " Why this preach- ing ? why does this man talk to us ? who is he, that he should talk ? why not be content to worship only, when we go to church ? Besides, ministers are simply nuisances ; " and it must be said, so far, in apology for this, that if the pulpit cannot prove itself, it had better go down. But most of the sharp, shrill querulousnesses against the pulpit have come from Church organs ; and, certainly, of nearly the twenty thousand clergymen in the English Church, few enough give full proof of their ministry. Do not most of these fastidious critics demand, as the great essentials for pulpit eminence, that the ear should be tickled, and the soul put to sleep ? We have sometimes thought of proposing the other thing : — " Instead of, or, as well as, putting down the pulpit, why not put an end to sculpture, or to painting ? Cutting out bits of things in marble, smearing colours over canvas ! Why not put down all poetry .'' Are not poets pro- verbially nuisances, with their skreeds of bathos ? Let us put down all art ; why not .-• for, compared with the pulpit, what pictures or sculptures excite so much, what music, or poetry awakens more emotion ? " What is this sublime, impelling instinct for souls — for the salvation of souls — which these preachers have known i* — this Divine and hallowed fanaticism of love for souls and for God i* — What but the reali- THE INiiTINCJ FOR SOt/LS. sation of those fervid words written by that saintly woman, the Countess of Huntingdon ? — " My whole heart has not a single grain this moment of thirst after approbation. I feel alone with God. He fills the whole void. I see all mortals under my feet. I have not one wish, one will, one desire, but in Him ; He hath set my feet in a large room. All but God's children seem but so many machines appointed for uses I have nothing to do with. I have wondered and stood amazed that God should make a conquest of all within me by love. I am brought to less than nothing — b'jken in pieces like a potter's vessel. I long to leap into the flames to get rid of my sinful flesh, and that every atom of these ashes might be separate, and that neither time, place, nor person should stay God's Spirit." And this sublime affection led her to forget and almost renounce her rank, and leave her fortune of ;^ 1 00,000 upon the altar of God her Saviour. The same Divine passion impelled that very different character, but equally eminently holy person, John Nelson, through his adventurous and holy career ; when in country cages, and through howling crowds, and guarded through streets by armed troops, and multitudes huzzaing round him, as if he had been one who had laid waste the nation, he says : — " The Lord made my brow like brass, so that I could look upon them all as grasshoppers, and pass through the city as if there had been none in it but God and me." Insulted, and scoffed, and persecuted — a giant in strength, a gentleman in nature and cha- racter, but a child of God, he says : — " I was able to tie the head and the heels of the wicked, ignorant 8 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. man, who could thus torment me, together. I found an old man's bone in me ; but the Lord lifted up a standard when anger was coming in like a flood, lest I should have wrung his neck to the ground, and set my foot upon him." Such stories as the history of the pulpit has to tell are surely not un- interesting to any who love to mark the conquests of holy power and holy speech. The vocation of the Preacher we have said — that is, the instinct for souls. And shall we here, in these earliest pages, remark that a great deal of nonsense has been written and spoken lately about the theatre as in contrast to the temple, and the play-actor as in comparison with the preacher ? We are not about to enter into any argument as to the Christian lawfulness, or unlawfulness, of the stage ; good, great, and very venerable men have taken very opposite views upon that matter; but when we see our streets placarded, as London has been recently placarded, with bills claiming for the stage superiority in moral influence over the pulpit, when, on so many hands, we find it asserted that the stage has become the most eminent moral teacher of our times, — we may, at any rate in such a chapter as this, point out the utter difference of the vocation of the two. Without depreciating discourteously or dis- respectfully the actor, it must be maintained that the instinct for pleasure is widely different from the instinct for souls ; the actor's art may receive here no reprehension, but the actor and the preacher meet men in two quite different moods and moments of their lives ; and the pertinency of such obser- vations as we are makingr arises from the fact that THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. the theatre has taken a remarkable start in the social life of these days. The man of the pulpit and th*^ man of the stage are now the two most prominent and conspicuous members of society ; they address themselves, if not to the most important, certainly to the largest, very often to the most imposing audiences. From those remote and ancient ages when, in the polite and polished civilisations of the past, the theatre was a kind of temple, and the actor almost revered as a priest, — so copiously illustrated in the wise words in the laws of Plato, — we have seen the time when the theatre was regarded as forbidden ground, and the actor almost banished from serious society ; but we have lived to see, in these times, an alteration of those manners ; without immediately affirming that the pulpit and the preacher, or parson, have gone down, or diminished in social influence, the theatre and the actor are certainly in the ascen- dant. Theatres are everywhere, in England or in the States, crowded ; this is true, but we need not misunderstand nor mistake the cause ; the services of the theatre and those of the temple are essentially different, as are the supposed functions of the actor and the preacher ; and yet the success of the actor, and popularity of the theatre, may convey to the pulpit, if it will only listen to them, some useful lessons. Grave and serious society has, usually, been ungrateful to the actor ; he has often cheated life of its care, and, amidst the stress and toil ot existence, he has charmed away the burden of the weary hour ; he has taken captive the man, the victim of too anxious thought, and refreshed and io THE VOCATION OF THk PREACHER. recreated him for to-morrow's labours ; it is really necessary, in such a state of society as that we have reached, to secrete a certain amount of healthful and recreative excitement and amusement ; and the actor, like the preacher, usually but poorly paid, is thus one of the benefactors of society. He refreshes, for the actor does not argue ; the drama does not deal in the meshes of abstract thought, or in pro- cessions of logical sequences ; the actor appeals to the great sympathies, he makes even bad men better for a brief moinent or two, while they are carried along on the passion of the moment, and compelled to applaud some heroic virtue altogether alien from their daily nature, or to join in triumph over some disappointed, foiled, or defeated vice or villainy; and many of our great comedies are great social sermons; it is a great thing to write a great comedy, it is not less than a great thing to set it forth well, and to act it well. Thus it has happened that the pulpit has lost where the stage has gained. The pulpit has not kept sufficiently near to the great sympathies ; Christianity was defined by an old Church Father as " the creed which has been held always, everywhere, by all." Assuredly, it is a great thing to move in those large chambers of emotion which are the heritage of all the heirs of humanity ; hence great music is so catholic and comprehensive ; emotions transcend definitions, which are very ne- cessary sometimes, when the soul needs a mooring, and an anchorage, but from which it is sometimes necessary to fly as from a cage into a firmament. In our day the pulpit has sought, in some famous instances, to emulate the stage ; but, usually, it has The instinct for souls. n not emulated the best part of it, but the more coarse, not the more elevated and pathetic utterances ; some great, or say rather, notorious preachers have succeeded in adopting the actor's art, but usually that very abuse of it against which Shakespeare utters his wise warnings in Hamlet, in words equally instructive to preachers and to actors. The success of the man, the speaker on the stage, ought to be very instructive to the preacher. The actor leaves little to the moment ; he does not trust to the happy inspiration of the occasion ; the eloquence or the wit he carries on the stage with him ; and it is not thought disgraceful that he should do so ; it would seem foolish, and would, in no sense, conduce to his fortune, or his fame, to trust to the felicities of a flippant or impromptu style ; the wise player not only studies his words and his part, but the laws of his art also ; and so it comes about that he achieves a success not the less noticeable ; although, no doubt, attention to the parson is regarded, on the whole, as a duty, even though he be very dull, while attention to the actor is regarded as a pleasure. Of course, many of our readers will inquire if we intend by such remarks as these to recommend the pulpit to outbid the theatre. Again we repeat, the functions and voca- tion of the two are different ; the theatre is the very temple of the senses ; to every sense is appeal made for sympathy ; the glow of a w^arm and delicious light, the intoxication of every order of delirious or subduing music, the deceptive charm of painting and of scenery, everything in the house arranged so that the auditor shall have no difficulty in his audience. 12 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. On the contrary, the church is most likely constructed on principle, so that " he that hath ears to hear " shall not hear ; the acoustic properties of the temple are usually just as bad as those of the theatre are excellent ; but all these are only aids and accessories to help the actor ; and then, when the moment comes, how wonderful that ease with which the emotions of the vast concourse of people are held as the mighty locks of a great canal, and turned as rivers of water beneath the spell of some great speech, and fitting action. Mighty actors are apparitions as rare as great preachers, — Ganicks, Keans, Talmas, Salvinis, Ris- toris, and Siddonses; but it is probable, remember- ing what the theatre has become in our day, how marvellously it is cleansed from its ancient impuri- ties , how, beyond most of the artist faculties appre- hensible by the multitude, it is calculated to elevate, to soften, to refine, to teach, and to inspire; it is probable that the best days of the stage are yet to come ; and when, as in the days of Plato, as he discourses, and shows, the great actor shall be the mighty preacher too. But, according to some, the great end of all preaching and acting should be to make the audi- tors, beneath either exercise, comfortable. Young preachers, especially, should look to it, and cultivate the happy art which, in so eminent a degree, makes what is called a comfortable preacher ; our friend the Rev. Dr. Nobissimus Peachblossom, we do not doubt, owes his great success as a divine very largely to his adroit cultivation of the art of making his hearers comfortable ; indeed, he has often said to us THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. 13 ** The world is an uncomfortable place, people do not go to church to be made uncomfortable ; why should I try to preach so that people shall fancy they hear the wind whistling through a keyhole ? Why should I plague them with thoughts until they become so uncomfortable in their pews that they almost fancy they have an attack of Asiatic cholera? So I cultivate a melodious style, and I use words upon the principle of charming the people, not frightening them. I never speak too plainly. I know they call me a delightful man, a charming preacher. What is more to the point, my church is always crowded, and I have an average of two hundred persons always waiting to obtain sittings. This is a much more satisfactory state of things to the interests of Divine truth and public worship, than the condition of the church of my good neighbour. Raven Rightwell. His place is never one-third full. I suppose his income is really distressing ; and why .'' Because he sets truth in such sharp lines, says such disagreeable things, talks about sin and sorrow. Dear me, people know all about that ! Then the very lines of his face ! When I go up into the pulpit, I always smile upon the people ; they like to see it. One of them called me a white-necked dove the other day ; it will be a long while before stern-faced Rightwell has such a compliment. And yet — would you believe it } — I heard of some one, not long since, who described me as a peach, all lusciousness without, and a hard uncrackable stone within ; and they spoke of Raven Rightwell as a rugged cocoa- nut full of the milk of human kindness. People 14 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. are so unreasonable, and it is such a wickedly mis- judging world ! " Which remarks of my good friend, the doctor, lead me to this further observa- tion, how great the necessity for preachers, not less than actors, to mind zvhat they say, and how they say it. We trust that none of our readers will misappre- hend this juxtaposition in our pages of the preacher and the actor ; it may be feared that the increasing popularity of the latter arises from the fact that the voice of religion sounds fainter and fainter in our day, fainter and fainter year by year ; but it certainly is not the theatre, nor the actor, who will renew its clear and authoritative tone. Let it be said, if people will have it so, that the theatre is all very well in its way ; but even morality must find a deeper foundation than the actor will present : and, most of all, it is to be remembered that his vocation does not deal with broken hearts, fractured faiths, and disappointed lives ; the plain- ness of the temple, even the humble dissenting conventicle contrasts well from this point of view with the gorgeous splendours of the theatre. We actually heard a clergyman, and a canon of one of our most illustrious English cathedrals, the other day delivering a discourse, which we need not say brought down the house with shouts of applause, in which, if he did not elevate the stage above the pulpit, he at any rate showed that it was quite its equal, and that there were no objections which could be urged against the stage which might not be urged with equal force against the pulpit. We had just been reading Lady Bloomfield's Reminis- THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. 15 cences, and thought of an anecdote of Story, the great American sculptor. He commenced life as a lawyer, and was the son of an eminent judge. When his father died, he was in good practice. He had a passion for art, he threw up his practice, went to Rome, and became distinguished. One day an American called upon him, and, after sitting for some time in his studio, looking at him without speaking, at last he said, " Story, I wish to ask you a question. In heaven's name, tell me what induced you to give up the glorious profession of the bar, and come to Rome to pinch up mud } " That was the impression produced on our mind by the nevertheless excellent clerical canon — the glorious profession of the mimic art contrasted with the mean and poor profession of the parson, if we are to be recommended to adopt means by which the pulpit shall outbid the stage. The functions of the two are just entirely different ; we have said the theatre is the very temple of the senses, and every sense is called upon to yield its sympathy. Shocked at the idea of sitting at the feet of play- actors as professors and instructors in the art of preaching ! and to find a congregation of melting hearts, previously borrowed from the circulating library, in tears ! No ! Lift up your hand and take down that fifth volume of Carlyle's Essays, and you may read a pretty strong and grotesque enunciation. What does he say i* — " Behind the glitter " (of the stage) " stalks the shadow of eternal death ; through it, too, I look not up into the Divine eye, as Richter has it, but down into the 1 6 2 HE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. bottomless eye-socket ; not up towards God, Heaven, and the Throne of Truth, but too truly down towards falsity, vacuity, and the dwelling-place of everlasting despair." That is a tolerably stiff and strong enunciation. Some readers here may say, " Grim old boy ! Puritanical old patriarch ! You righteous folks were once perpetually affecting horror at Carlyle, and now that the world has pretty generally given him up, you are just as unreasonably bringing his fierce, rhadamanthine eloquence forward to trounce all pleasant ideas." Well, if he be too stern a prophet, take up another testimony from the wise and gentle spirit of Arthur Helps. Readers will remember, in the second series of the " Friends in Council," Ellesmere's description of his grandmother at the opera. The old lady sat patiently through the opera until the ballet ; she looked at it for a few minutes, then plucked her daughter, who was with her, by the arm, and passionately exclaimed, " Anne, how can you look at these goings-on ? I am ashamed of you." Anne, who, it seems, was a young bride, was terrified, and tried to pacify the old lady ; moreover, they could not get away, for their carriage was not ordered until the end of the performance. So the old lady, after looking a moment or two longer at the dancing houris, de- liberately turned her back on the audience, and, withdrawing some paces, really sat down with her back to the stage in such an attitude that, as she said, " she could not see that wicked performance ! " Heie again some readers may say, '* Prudish old THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. 17 woman ! " to which we reply, " Beautiful old lady ! type of the old school ! " respecting herself too much to look with pleasure upon what seemed to her to be absence of self-respect in the members of her own sex ; for say what some may in defence of the theatre and the actor, the ballet is an abomi- nation, a disgrace, and an insult to our civilisa- tion. Again, if it be necessary to apologise for the in- terpolation of these remarks upon the theatre in this chapter on the vocation of the preacher, we may say, they are not uncalled for, in the memory of the imperial triumphs of the stage in our day con- trasted with the comparative decadence of the pulpit ; and we repeat incisively, again, their functions and vocations are different, and for ever, and for ever, the pulpit should remain the pulpit, and the stage the stage. We have always said that the history of the Christian Church is the history of the achievements of the pulpit. If our readers are desirous of going through a popular compendium of illustrations of the character of the pulpit in the early ages, we may refer them to Mr. Horace Moule's "Inquiry into the History of Christian Oratory, during the First Five Centuries" As Church history enters into our studies, we shall not be able to review the history of the Church without noticing the immense power of speech. As in Scripture the Ear stood so distinctly for the whole man — " Mine ears hast Thou opened," " He that hath ears to hear, let him hear " — of course it was to this very work that the first Church directed itself. It was a message, not 2 i8 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. to be delivered in the porch, the academy, the garden, the grove, or even the synagogue or the Sanhedrim ; but, taking captive the people by the omnipotence of irrepressible convictions, it was to the multitude, to the poor. The first method was eminently a method with the conscience. The historian tells us when the learning of the mere dialectician appeared, or the mere cunning of the rhetorician ; that those ages, even the earliest ages, were remarkable for their spiritual weakness, not for their spiritual strength. In the very earliest Christian ages oratory was kept back, and was but a secondary agency to those without ; and the success of Chris- tianity has been attributed to the three extraordinary manifestations of its power: (i) the singularity of conduct on the part of believers ; (2) their blameless and virtuous lives ; and (3) their heroic constancy and bold confession under the pains of persecution. Neander says, " As to the relation of the sermon to the whole office of worship, this is a point on which we must write with the most opposite errors of judgment." If, however, when churches rose, and some of them very large, in the Eastern and Western divisions, we had stepped in, we should perhaps have found many points of resemblance to our own, and some startling dissimilarities ; — the ambo, or desk, often in the centre, tlie preache) sitting — most natural, and effective, and happy of postures for preaching ; preaching was usually ex- temporaneous, with very rare exceptions ; under- standing, by that general term, all kinds of delivery, short of reading from a complete manuscript, or very full notes ; and it was thought very desirable THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. 19 that a preacher should be able to discourse to the congregation on a part of Scripture from the inspiration of the moment. In the Church were those nuisances of our time, short-hand writers, too. Usually, in length, the sermons were far shorter than ours. The Greek Fathers were always the longer ; the Latins did not usually occupy more than half an hour, often not more than ten minutes. Very often the preacher was interrupted by bursts of applause, and the holy seriousness of Chrysostom was often shocked by this supererogatory appro- bation ; while Gregory Nazianzen seems to have been, on the other hand, pleased by this contribution to vanity. Our readers must remember how broken these hints are which we are attempting to give of those times. The pulpit — the ambo — was power ; doubtless it had its faults, but they do not seem to have been of the order we should most condemn. Critics find in Clemens declamation and diffuseness ; but even in the page, as we read it, there is a warmth of piety and depth of fervour ; he belongs to the philosophical period of that age, and thus he speaks : — " Though the artisan can make an idol, he has never made a breathing image, or formed soft flesh oiit of earth. Who liquified the mairow ? Who hardened the bones ? Who extended the nerves? Who inflated the veins? Who infused the blood into them ? Who stretched the skin around them? Who made the eye to see? Who breathed the soul into the body ? Who freely gave righteousness ? Who has promised immortality ? The Creator of all things alone, the Supreme Artisan, made man a living image ; but 20 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. your Olympian Jove, the image of an image far differing from the truth, is the dumb work of Attic hands. The image of God is His Word : the legitimate Son of Intelli- gence ; the Divine V/ord ; the original Light of light ; and the image of the Word is the true man, the mind which is in man, who, on this account, is said to be in the image and likeness of God, being assimilated to the Divine Word, or Reason, by the understanding in his heart, and, there- fore, rational. But the earthly image of the visible man, the man sprung from the earth, the resemblance of man, appears, as it were, a momentary impression, eK/xayetW, far removed from the truth." * To the same period belong Origen and Ter- tuUian. Their sins as preachers were on the side of mysticism ; and, perhaps, there were moments when they seem to have permitted themselves to be too much perverted and turned aside by their contact with the tropical exuberances of Oriental imagination ; but that which strikes us is the intense reality with which the Christian life was described by them. Comparing the Christian life with the spectacles and the shows of Rome, Ter- tullian, whose style has been compared with that of our Edward Irving, exclaims : — " And then, if you do but reflect that even this life, too, is to be spent in delights, how can you be so ungrateful as not to be content with, and not to acknowledge, the many and the great pleasures that God bestows on you ? For what is more dtlightful than reconciliation with God, our Father and Lord ? — than the revelation of truth ? — than the discovery of errors ? — than the pardon of so grievous offences past ? What greater pleasure than a distaste for * Moule, p. "j}^. THE INSTINCT FOR SOUIS. 2X pleasure itself? — than a contempt for the whole world? — than true liberty?— than a pure conscience ?— than a blame- less life ? — than no fear of death ? — than to tread under foot the gods of the Gentiles? — to cast out demons? — to perform cures ? — to seek for revelations ?— to live unto God ? These are the pleasures, these the shows of Christians, holy, everlasting, gratuitous. If knowledge, if literature delight a man's mind, we have enough of books, enough of verses, enough of maxims, enough also of song, enough of music ; no stage plots, but verities ; no cunningly wrought stanzas, but simple strains. Wouldest thou have fightings and wrestlings? Behold immodesty cast down by chastity, perfidy slain by fidelity, cruelty crushed by compassion, arrogance eclipsed by modesty. Such are our contests in which we gain the crown. Wouldest thou have also some- what of blood ? Thou hast Christ's." * The same motives which impel the feet of the artist to Rome, that he may study the ancient masters and know the principles of their art, will lead us, as we possess the opportunity, to make ourselves acquainted, if not in their original, then in their English dress, with the life of Athanasius, the tenderness of Basil, and the magnificence of Chrysostom. The preaching of Athanasius was the informing, practical mind of the first half of the fourth century, and of him we think as of a severe, patristic Calvin. He was the head of the long illustrious line of conservative theologians. We cannot commend his spirit so warmly as his faith ; even Dr. Newman has gathered together some illustrative epithets strewn along his pages — the flowers of his rhetoric — against the Arians. * Moule, p. 84. 22 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHEA. Those favourite epithets were, — "Devils," " Anti- christs," "Maniacs," "Jews," " Polytheists," "Atheists," "Dogs," "Wolves," "Lions," "Hares," "Chame- leons," " Hydras," " Eels," " Cuttle-fish," " Gnats," " Beetles," " Leeches."* Yet we ought to know the life of this great preacher, and we should remember the horrible inveteracy of his foes. His life reads as one long and most glowing romance ; its incidents are most startling and kindling. The pulpit, occupied by him in those exciting scenes and times, becomes not merely the great breakwater of faith, but not less, if we may say so, its dramatic theatre. There seems to have been much of Calvin in him, or much of him in Calvin ; his style was barren of all splendours or tenderness ; he failed to touch the heart, or disdained to attempt it ; but there was in him an amazing and most vital love to the Saviour. He, perhaps, did not understand so clearly as we do, or as we might wish we under- stood, the rights of other individual souls, but he did understand the right of private judgment ; and his passion for the truth has passed into a proverb, most sublime in its expressiveness, of the claims of individual solitary judgment against the claims of general authority — " Athanasius contra mundum " ■ — Athanasius against the world. Amongst the most illustrious names of the early Christian Church stands forth Basil ; in him the Orator of the Church begins, and in all his writings the orator burns. An intellectual, but still imagi- * Athanasius. — " Historical Treatises," vol. ii. p. 34. Stanley's "History of the Eastern Church," p. 292. THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. 2% native Orientalism pervades all. Basil and his pupil, Gregory Nazianzen, were fellow-students of the Emperor Julian. Basil led a less stirring life than Athanasius, and his sermons are characterised by a devotional calm. He preached ostensibly to the poor ; but crowds flocked to hear him. Ac- complished master of the science of Athenian rhetoric as he was, he concealed his art beneath a persuasive and popular style. He gathered round him the poor indeed, the mechanics of Caesarea, but by his rare influence compelled the multitudes of the celebrated also ; and, when he died, his funeral, followed by the whole province, excited envy for those who were crushed to death in the crowd. Let us read what he says on psalmody : — " Psalmody is the calm of the soul, the repose of the spirit, the arbiter of peace. It silences the wave, and conciliates the whirlwind of our passions, soothing the impetuous, tempering the unchaste. It is an engenderer of friendship, a healer of dissension, a reconciler of enemies. For who can longer count him his enemy with whom to the throne of God he hath raised the strain? Psalmody repels the demons : it lures the ministry of angels ; a weapon of defence in nightly terrors, — a respite from daily toil. To the infant it is a presiding genius ; to manhood a crown of glory ; a balm of comfort to the aged ; a congenial ornament to women." The following passage, enforcing, or rather illus- trating, the duty of praise, is elaborate, but very beautiful : — "What reward shall we give unto the Lord for all the benefits He hath bestowed ? From the cheerless gloom of 24 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. non-existence He waked us into being ; He ennobled us with understanding ; He taught us arts to promote the means of Hfe ; He commanded the prohfic earth to yield its nurture ; He bade the animals to own us as their lords. For us the rains descend ; for us the sun sheddeth abroad its creative beams ; the mountains rise, the valleys bloom, affording us grateful habitation and a sheltering retreat. For us the rivers flow ; for us the fountains murmur ; the sea opens its bosom to admit our commerce ; the earth exhausts its stores ; each new object presents a new enjoy- ment ; all nature pouring her treasures at our feet, through the bounteous grace of Him who wills that all be ours."* But what shall we say of Chrysostom ? He is said to be the study of a life-tinae in himself. His works are voluminous. Bishop of Antioch in its wealthiest day, his conduct there commands our highest reverence. He passed his life amidst the most virulent energies of persecution. But we must refer our readers to Gibbon for the best, most popular and comprehensive account of the Golden Mouth, and how he was despatched secretly in a post-chariot from Antioch, to take the archbishopric of Constan- tinople ; it being feared that the people would not resign their favourite preacher ; an ordeal through which very few preachers since have had to pass in their ascent to the episcopal chair. But immeasurably the greatest of all the preachers of the early Church was the Bishop of Hippo, the stupendous, the enormous Augustine. We believe if we were to commend to our readers the preacher of all others most likely to help them in the pulpit, we would say Chrysostom in his expositions. And his * Moule, pp. ii8, 119. THE INSTINC7 FOR SOULS. 25 style was very expository — there is great wisdom and clearness ; it was eminently practical too ; also, it was not wanting in a fine declamatory fervour (some would say he possessed this too abundantly), which must be possessed by the useful preacher. But the mental struggles of the age and of the human mind do not appear to have affected him ; there were no remarkable epochs in his religious history, and his nature had not the roominess which is shown in every page of the writings of Augustine. The life of Augustine made him the teacher he became ; we do not here touch upon it : the tender story of his mother Monica, — of his life of careless- ness and sin, — of his studies, so vast and various, in all the arts, rhetoric, and poetry of the ancients, and the pagans. He was intoxicated with sensual beauty ; in Carthage, where he fixed his home, thoughtful but sensuous, rather than sensual, he luxuriated beneath the rich bright heavens, by the beautiful waters of the Mediterranean, and amidst all the variegated glories of art, in a city then one of the chief seats of civilisation. In his sublime work, his affecting " Confessions," he exclaims : " What wert Thou then to me, and how far from me } Far verily was I straying from Thee, carried from the very husks of the swine whom with husks I fed ; I sought for pleasures, sublimities, truths, and so fell headlong into sorrows, confusions, errors." But his mind was of the order which must find a reason for everything. And by-and-by came the highest reason. What a story it is, his struggles to become free, and how he became free ! Our position to the mind of Augustine must be relative. We commend Chrysostom to 25 2 HE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. all, but few can be able to plough with the heifers of the Bishop of Hippo. Yet, unless we enter with him into his wondrous art, as of logic, abstraction, and thought, no preacher can be more homely ; he is always more illustrative than declamatory, and the racy, spiritualising Puritans derived much of their flavour, pith, and unction from him. We must think that the pleasant ingeniousness of Matthew Henry, not only found its ancestor, but much of its inspiration in Augustine. The " instrument of ten strings'' upon which the Psalmist would praise God, becomes in one place the Ten Commandments, made delightful and easy to keep by Divine grace, or the ten fingers which perform the mission of the will in Divine service. On the text, " Whereof every one beareth twi7is," " What twins V says he. " The Law and the Prophets — the two commandments whereon hang all in the life of every believer! * The bread, and fish, and egg' the child asks of his father in the parable are explained — the bread as soul, fish as faith which lives amidst the billows of temptation, and the egg as hope, a something, but not the chicken." But if we do not admire these things, let us not smile at them, they are only motes in the sunbeam, and if we are able to follow him, there is no writer in the long procession of preachers who will so minister to the minister as Augustine. Mr. Moule says ; — " Of Augustine, it may most truly be said, that he, if any man had, had experience of those phases in the soul's history when ' the tongue cleaves even to the roof of the mouth, and when silence is kept, even from good words.' THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. 27 It was not only his being Prelate of the West, instead of a prelate of the East, that occasioned the wide difference between himself and Basil, Gregory, or even Chrysostom. The intense passion of his temperament, which imparted so much energy to his intellectual operations, and which is often the cause of the rich and vigorous flow of his language, produces also that quiet rejection of rhetorical ornament which we find so prevalent throughout his un- pretending sermons. The ' City of God ' has, as might be expected, a good store of florid language, some specimens exhibiting the very highest style of beauty. But his subject in that case, not only was suited to elaborate ornament, it sometimes imperatively demanded the very grandest utterance. The general tone of Augustine was, however, that of a man who, while he was too sensible to despise the aids of artistic eloquence, was himself, for the most part, far above them. His words bearing directly upon the subject are tinged with a speaking sadness. ' Eloquence is another stream of Babylon ; it is one of the many objects qucB amantur et transeunt;' 'it is a mere frigus et Aquilo compared with the genial breezes of God, the Auster iranslatus de ccelo.^ " He rose to the clear empyrean of faith himself ; and grad'ially, through every school of illusion, scepticism, and heresy, he qualified himself to reveal to the believers of every subsequent age the solidity of the rock on which they build, and the precious vintage of consolation growing upon it. On the contrary, he sounded the depths of Pelagianism or, as we call it, Arminianism — Naturalism. He saw, what we must distinctly see as the basis of all theological differences, that they are in fact a different view of the relation of the Infinite to the finite, of God to the universe, summed up in the 28 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. two distinctions of Rationalism, — Arminianism, or every man his own saviour; and, on the other hand, the doctrine of Supernaturalism and grace, or God in Christ the only Saviour. Our readers should familiarise themselves, if they be old enough, with the mind and method of Augustine, and they will find the cuirass which gleams beneath his bishop's vest, or sword which peeps from his side, at the most unlikely places. He seems ready to strike a blow on Donatist, or Manichaean, or Pelagian, and furnishes a suggestive method of dealing with heresies, perpetually renewed, because indigenous to the depraved soil on which they spring. In him, and in all these men, there was the true instinct for souls, and they finely illustrate to us the vocation of the preacher. CHAPTER II. THE PREACHER'S VOCATION,— THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. THE reader will remember a singularly impress- ive and eloquent passage in John Foster's Essay on Popular Ignorance, in which that usually broad and suggestive writer imagines himself, in some solitary hour, in one of the great cathedrals, one of those magnificent structures which have passed down to our times from those remote periods preced- ing the Middle, which we are wont to call the Dark Ages. The passage illustrates its writer's strong and graphic power of painting ; but we have always missed in it that breadth of charity and hope which was so distinguishing a feature of Foster's mind. As he paced the vast and solemn aisles, he appears to have been only reminded of the power of darkness over the souls of the worshippers in the ancient fane ; its lofty arches, columns, and superb vault only called to his imagination the errors which darkened the, spirits of the people ; he says, " The stone cried out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber answered it," to reprove the long succession of blasphemous iniquities promulgated there in the name of the Almighty ; the whole building seemed a triumphal 30 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. arch erected in memorial of the extermination of that truth which was given to be the Hfe of men. These are scarcely the meditations which have crowded upon our mind as we have visited such shrines and buildings ; as we looked through the rolling centuries, while we paced the solitary aisles, we rather thought of the countless thousands of hearts, grief-stricken by the sorrows of nature or the remorse of sin, which found shelter and soothing amidst the awe-inspiring forest of piljars. All the errors incident to the Dark Ages could not conceal from us that the building was reared to remind worshippers of the mighty sacrifice of the Cross, — its very shape cruciform ; and the vast cross rising like the hull of an almost wrecked vessel, but the sign of safety ; and the ever-burning lamps trembling and flickering like inextinguishable flames amidst the gusts of a great tempest. Nor, as we looked at the pulpit, did we think of it merely as the retreat either of ignorance or casuistry, remembering the piles of rich mediaeval sermons which it had been our happi- ness to read ; and altogether the whole building seemed like the solemn expression of the instinct of souls through dark times, feeling about if, haply, they might find some rest in eternity from the storms of time. The very tombs and sculptures of old bishops and others, lying there, with folded and uplifted hands, over the ashes and dust below, seemed to speak of the peace attained after the life of strife and pain. So various are men's ways of looking at the same thing : Foster's way was real to him ; ours was real to us ; but to us ours seemed more human. THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. 31 But we have been into other churches beside cathedrals where we have found ourselves solitary ; we have really been in a great church, all alone, at night ; and indeed a church, any church, never seems to us so full as when it is quite emptied of its congregation, and we are able to sit in it still and alone, no voice from the pulpit, no voice from the choir nor the old organ. In such a scene we have sat down to soliloquise a little, the place wrapped in dim mysterious shadow, only a little trembling light flickering through the windows ; there the pulpit stood in the distance, but now its bright velvet covered up, and its glittering gold and morocco Bible unseen ; and as we sat there in the dim and hazy spectral light, the place thronged with shadows ; we trembled to see the phantoms of congregations of departed hearers who, at that hour, haunted the spot ; yes, there they were ; we were flesh and blood, sitting in the very midst and presence of a Hebrew Sheol, and the pulpit, and the pulpit stairs, all the way back to the vestry door, crowded with the preachers of many generations ; there they were, such a group ! — some, meek modest creatures, too mild and characterless to have left much impress behind them, to have ever shaken a soul by a terror, or to have drawn a tear from the eye by pity ; some, noble, manly, bold, the very spectre retaining the old earnest face, the lip of the ghost even yet alive, and the eye of the spectre still full of life and fire; some, impudent-looking brothers, spectres who seemed even to say, " Here we are again ! " who, in their preaching day, had made some sensa- tion by their coarseness, although little by their 32 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. wisdom or conviction ; there, too, they were, another cluster of ghosts, apparently trying hard to push their way through the intangible into the pulpit, with their pleasing and well-written manuscript in their hand. These were all there, as we said, throng- ing the stairs as well as the pulpit ; and there we clearly comprehended that in every pulpit and in every pew a real spiritual life and destiny goes on, and is wrought out, and that, even if the building crumble to dust, through all the after-ages, the spot must be haunted by the ghosts of the great actors in the tragedy performed there. Does not the reader know how, while looking intently in silence, solitude, and night, mists become figures, and clouds take human shape ? So, more than half frightened, as we looked round, we found the pews, the galleries, the whole church filled with spectres — an amazing congregation ! We even knew many of them ; some we had seen in life, some we knew by the pew in which they sat ; there was old Bigsby, the brewer, who was very sedulous in his attendance for nearly half a century at this place, but whose wont it was, pretty invariably, so soon as the text was announced, to settle himself in the corner of the pew, with his handkerchief over his head, and so to sleep or doze out the sermon ; there he was, at it still ; but the gruff voice which had terrified so many a young minister was hushed. There was Mrs. Simper, the lady who kept the Circulating Library, and who could be always calculated upon for having the young students to stay at her house, seizing upon that as a golden opportunity for talking sentiment with a dish of THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. ii scandal ; and there was Glibwell Blunt, Esquire, J. P., who rented the ten-guinea pew, curtained round with its crimson damask on its brass hangings. Nobody suspected Blunt of any piety, but he managed to hold the Church and congregation beneath the spell of his authority, for the deacons were terrified lest he should go to church, and he held a sort of political whip over the vicar of the parish by his importance in Egerton Chapel. We saw some other spectres. Modest, but radiantly dignified, with the mingled lights of shrewdness, piety, and self-respect, even upon the phantom face which looked pale through the mist, sat old Radley Rightside, who had that curious popular weakness for doing good in a sly, underhand sort of fashion, so that scarce any soul knew anything about it ; it was quite wonderful that after his death, all the collections dropped about two-thirds, and then it was found that, in his mean and underhand sort of way, not letting his left hand know what his right hand did, he had for years been in the habit of contributing to the boxes about two-thirds of the collection in his cunningly disposed Bank of England notes. Ah ! there they all were ; but we must not pursue the inventory, and, indeed, we could not ourselves, for, while we were attempting to decipher the individualities of each pew, we heard a low, muttered undertone, a conversation going on, and we began to realise that, while all the spectres in the pulpit and the pews were phantoms of the past, and, in fact, had departed, — excepting so far as departed spirits will tenaciously hold on to the places on the earth where their clay tabernacles had 3 34 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. held their being, — the very pulpit and the pew were still alive. Yes, the wood seemed alive, and the two were holding colloquy with each other. It was the pew who began it. Perhaps we missed the first sentences, but it seemed to be saying, — " No, Pulpit, you want life, vivacity ; in a word, what you want is instinct^ And said the pulpit, " I am surprised to hear a wooden thing like you begin to talk to me." Pew : " Wooden ! well, then, there's a pair of us, wood up there, wood down here. But, Mr. Pulpit, I don't know Vv'hether it is the natural peevishness of old age, but it seems to me, you are strangely behind the old voices that I have often heard sounding from you in other days." Pulpit : " My dear Pew, you should remember the times are not now what they were when you were a young pew ; consider the absolutely indispensable, and that the requirements of the age and the scho- lastic refinements of the times to which I have come suggest the propriety of adopting a tone of discourse more exalted than that of these old spectres whom I perceive to be thronging my boards and stairs." Pezv : "What big talk! what Gog- and- Magog words you use ! but ah, Mr. Pulpit, don't you per- ceive, don't you know that the pew is always the pew — I mean that souls are always souls — the same in all times and ages? If you can believe it, — and if you cannot believe it, I don't see what business you have up there at all, — sorrows and sufferings, doubts and sins, family grief and heart remorse, are always the same, and your business is to deal with us pews as men and women, and you should have the THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. 35 instinct to search out our weak place, our vain place, our suffering place ; find the joints in the armour, and, if you have the true instinct, you will soon lodge your arrow there," Pulpit : " I am not so sure about all that you are saying ; it is my belief that I have fallen upon a time, unfortunately for me, when pews are not so pervious to whacks from the pulpit as they were once : now, I daresay you, individually, are a very good sort of pew, but, on the whole, 1 have come to think that the pew in these days is the master of the pulpit, and is only where it is to permit the pulpit to say what the pew already believes it knows." Pew : " Ah ! and therefore it is that I often fancy I see you cast trembling eyes to the pews which are the habitations of your rich constituents. My dear Pulpit, I am a very faithful old pew. I am very glad to think that possibly your worldly status is something better than it was in the olden time, but what I fear is, that the instinct for souls has been very much fattened out of you lately. Now I don't want you to be a Salvation Armyite, nor a fanatic ; but, rely upon it, you will be a very useless old pulpit unless you love and feel an interest in the souls of men and women. Look beneath, or look above their miserable worldly station, however they may visit you with their patronage or their peevish- ness ; help us to feel that you are independent, and cannot be bought, and that you seek not ours, but us." Pulpit : " Oh, Heavenly Providence ! I beseech Thee then to take care of me, for, in that case, I know that I shall find the pews all empty, and my 36 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. church only filled by a veritable congregation of ghosts." Pew : "Still you should remember that a lawyer's, a soldier's, a physician's calling is a profession ; merchandise is a trade : yours is neither a profession nor a trade ; if it be anything, it is an instinct — ■ what it used to be described as, * a call' — an instinct • — an irrepressible something, which compels you to tell men and women that, ' through the tender mercy of God, the Dayspring from on high has visited them, to give light to them that sit in dark- ness and in the shadow of death, and to guide their steps into a way of peace.' " We thought we heard tones seeming to indicate that Pulpit was about to give some indignant reply, and to what height the controversy might have risen we do not know, for we were aroused from our half- slumberous listenings to the strange colloquies by the streaming of lights down the aisles of the chapel; our friends came hurrying to look after us, surprised at our absence, and little suspecting the companion- ship we had kept and the conversation to which we had listened, the principal effect of which had pro- duced upon our mind a sense that the strong desire in the honest old pew was to be assured, that in the pulpit there was the realisation of its great design — the instinct for souls. The eminent and excellent late Dr. Robert Vaughan took a view of the modern pulpit quite as disconsolate as that taken above by the plain old pew. We quite agree with him, that, for the most part, *•' the pulpit, instead of being in advance of the times, THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. ^7 is a pitiable loiterer in the rear of them." We quite agree with him, that " if we would see Christianity advance amidst its new struggles in this world of ours, our Christian literature must not be second in our thoughts to our pulpit, and our pulpit must become treble-fold the object of our cost and care." What, then, is the work of the pulpit — the work of public ministration — done.? Assuredly, assuredly, no ! Did the men of the modern pulpit but feel it and see it, there lies before it a more glorious land of thought and imagination than any over which it has hitherto swa3'ed ; the sceptre of its genius and its power is much nobler ; as it must ever be for a monarch to rule an enlightened than an unen- lightened people, so much nobler must it be for the public teacher to acquire an influence over an educated than an uneducated audience. But, for the most part, it may be said that the modern ministry has given up all competition with the in- tellectualising agencies of the press ; and yet, let it be rightly thought on, the mission of the pulpit is ever in its degree inferior as an intellectual process, and it is so because it appeals to so much larger an audience than can possibly be brought at once and immediately within the range of a great book. But the preacher should absorb all the light which genius, or discovery, or science, will pour upon him ; he should be a channel for the communication, to inferior minds, of instruction ; he should fit himself to be the exponent, the earnest and enlightened exponent, of truth to the world ; he should be a lighthouse — a witness for God. Do our readers think that, on the whole, he is so ? 38 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. But if he were so, his power would be as mighty as the power of the press. To a very great degree, the inefficiency of the pulpit arises from its non- chalance and carelessness — as we have said before its deficiency of feeling. Would you, my friend retain your place in the pulpit ? Would you com- pete successfully with the press ? Well, it is easy to do so, only this is necessary, — take care that your hearers, take care that the public in general, have not a more perfect sympathiser in the book than in the preacher. Yes, take care of that — take care that there is not more real life in dead paper and printed letters than in real flesh and blood ! For look ! a man goes to the preacher ; he finds him passionless and cold, idealess and dull, unread and uninstructive ; he turns hastily away. He goes to a book ; he finds it full of passion and warmth, full of ideas and excitement, full of knowledge and instruction ; he finds the book to be a sympathising friend. He finds the preacher to be a tedious, tire- some talker. Is it wonderful that he should turn with interest again and again to the one, and turn with some indignation from the other .-* Now that system of pulpit ministration is quite defective which does not compete successfully with the book. In the management of an efficient man, every sermon might be made, certainly not as great as the greatest books, but as interesting as the most interesting. Oh, consider the teeming masses of the growing populations ! Oh, consider how, with their growing education, there is a growing thirst for knowledge, for ideas, for instruction, for systematic information ! Oh, consider, after all, notwithstanding the power of THE INS17NCT FOR SOULS. 39 the press, how Httle they can read, and how much less they can think ! Oh, consider how a man brimful of knowledge and power may arrest them ! Consider, that through him may be poured every variety of popular learning, the condensations of every kind of knowledge, till the Christian temple should again be a Pantheon of all things bearing witness for God, Consider, that after all, the tongue does write far more impressively than the pen ; that the memory takes far firmer hold of the oral than of any kind of pictorial communication. Consider how inconclusive, how inconsecutive, almost all reading is, how slightly it impresses the character and the understanding. Consider the magnificent surface over which a well- charged voice can travel, that a sermon or speech may be made to enter the ears of from five hundred to two thousand persons, claiming, compelling their attention ; and then, in the presence of such con- siderations as these, who will venture to say that the pulpit may not compete, in the potentiality of its influence, with the press ? Consider, again, the peculiarity of the mission of the human voice. Books seldom give first im- pulses ; books have not yet touched some classes of mind at all. No, but the human voice is powerfully arrestive, nor, so far as the dominion goes, can the pen boast of a kingdom so imperial. Books are not so much the missionaries as legislators of thought. The pulpit ought never to cease to regard itself as the missionary ; its office is to dig in the garden of the soul ; its lofty office is to excavate a road for moral manhood, to indicate a pathway to spiritual attainments ; and no book can perform 40 THE VOCATION OF TBE PREACHER. the peculiar office of the pulpit. Books that attempt that office cannot so well be read. No books can so well rouse flagging and exhausted powers, no books can so well grapple with wandering convictions, no books can so well quicken generous and active impulses ; the human voice dares to linger longer in draping out an idea, dares to dilate longer, to decorate more than the pen — dares a more Corinthian and ornate discourse — a larger field of illustration, a greater variety of figures, — when all this is con- sidered, it does appear that the pulpit may success- fully compete with the press. " Why," says Sydney Smith, in the preface to the volume of his sermons, which we believe has never been reprinted, " Why are we natural everywhere but in the pulpit } No man expresses warm and animated feelings anywhere else with his mouth alone, but with his whole body ; he articulates with every limb, and talks from head to foot with a thousand voices. Why this hyloplexia on sacred occasions alone ? why call in the aid of paralysis to piety ? Is it a rule of oratory to balance the style against the subject, and to handle the most sublime truths in the dullest language and the driest manner .'' Is sin to be taken from men as Eve was taken from Adam, by casting them into a deep slumber } Or from what possible perversion of common-sense are we all to look like field-preachers in Zembla, holy lumps of ice numbed into quiescence, and stagna- tion, and mumbling } " * "In short," remarks Dr. Vaughan, "the style we * See "Life of Sydney Smith," vol. i. p. 46. THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. 41 want for the pulpit is that of Foster, broken up for the greater part into briefer apportionments, and impregnated throughout with something of the vivacity and fire of Hale. We covet the simplicity and directness of the great essayist, but we would fain see those qualities allied with the ease, and animation, and onward speed of the great preacher."* And, yet again, let it be thought how much we need a legitimate censorship over the press, a censorship over the newspaper press ; and most of the newspapers of the kingdom are merely venal, the bought, the hired advocates of classes, and of opinions. A few noble and independent instances we know, but how few ! A censorship over the impurity of the press — the flagrant outrages upon every virtuous idea and life ; over the panderers for impurity — the vile and reckless children of genius and of hell — whose office it is to fan the flames of every unhallowed lust A censorship over the false doctrines and errors of the press ; over its false philosophies and perverted facts ; over its " Vestiges of Creation " and its " Constitutions of Man ; " over its G. Newmans and Strausses, its La Marcks and Combes ; justly treating their virtues and their truths, and clearly exposing their sophisms and their mistakes. A censorship over the politics of the press, holding up to the ineffable light the rnyrmidons of tyranny and oppression ; holding up to scorn the daring traducers of truth and freedom ; holding up to the blaze of Christian light those who revile its own pure beauties and gloriously liberal tenets. Where shall we look for a censorship like * " Essays." 42 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. this but to the pulpit ? Why should not the minister devote one evening in the week, or even the Sabbath evening occasionally, to a censorship like this ? Devoting the morning to the more especial services of worship and experimental and spiritual instruction, standing there within the full shadow of the Cross, the evening might well be devoted to the exhibition of the catholic genius of Christianity, and its identity with every truly human thought. To object to this course (and the writer is quite aware how bitter, and cruel, and scornful will be the objections in some quarters, how wilful will be the misconception of his intention) is of a piece with the conduct of those Pharisees who quarrelled with Jesus because He restored the blind man's vision on the Sabbath-day. Would the pulpit compete with the press, let it be ubiquitous, like the press, searching everywhere for intelligence, for in- struction, for illustration — as ubiquitous as evil ; let the voice of the pulpit follow the writing of the evil pen like a shadow. Away with the fastidiousness, the etiquette of the pulpit ! We arrange our pulpit topics so nicely, and treat them so gingerly, that we act like the servants of the king of Spain who allowed their master to perish in the fire because the valet could not be found whose duty it was to ex- tinguish it. Let the pulpit do its work boldly, fearlessly, vigilantly, and the press will be no farther ahead of it than it is natural for a fountain to be ahead of a river. Will this ideal be the pulpit of the future t and if the pulpit lag behind this now, who is responsible, the pulpit or the pew .-' THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. 43 It may be admitted that, with ail their l Why, it is in the- memory ot men living now, and here, how Napoleon the First spread his mighty camp along the heights ot Boulogne, where a hundred thousand men waited for the moment when, beneath the leadership of the 54 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. First Consul, they were to spring on England ; those preparations were vast, and fifty thousand men were spread along the coast from Brest to Antwerp. " Let us be masters of the Channel," said Napoleon, " for six hours, and we are masters of the world ! " Also the master of the French Mint received orders to strike a medal commemorating the conquest — and although the die had to be broken, there were three copies taken ; two are in France and one in England — the Emperor crowned with laurel, and the inscription in French, " London taken, 1804." But there was One sitting in the heavens who laughed : the Lord had them in derision. ** He spoke unto them in His wrath, and vexed them in His sore displeasure ; " for, alas, alas ! Admiral Latouche Treville, having received orders to put to sea, he alone knowing the destiny of the fleet, fell sick, poor man, and died just then ; and there was no head to direct, and no hand to strike, and the thing had to be postponed. But Napoleon, Emperor Napoleon, did not give up ; in 1805 he was waiting still in Boulogne ! London was not taken, to be sure, in 1804, but it might be in 1805. He climbed the heights, again and again, and waited for the junction of the fleets ; but he strained his eyes in vain ; his admirals blundered, and so that fleet which was to have taken London, while Napoleon supposed it hastening to Brest, was flying to Cadiz, there to meet with Nelson at Trafalgar ! and so, — in fact, Loudoti zvas not taken ! But what would an ancient Hebrew have said .'' He would have said, " As we have heard, so have we seen ! " " God is known in her palaces for a refuge. For, lo, the THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. 55 kings were assembled, they passed by together. They saw it, and so they marvelled ; they were troubled, and hasted away ! " " We have thought of Thy loving- kindness, O God, in the midst of Thy temple ! " He would have sung as Deborah sang, " So let all Thine enemies perish, O Lord : but let them that love Thee be as the sun when he goeth forth in the greatness of his strength ! " But perhaps we seem in the preceding parentheses to be forgetting that the text of the present chapter is, the instinct for souls as the vocation of the preacher ; but it is yet true that he may avail him- self of every means which may arouse and quicken a soul into life. The pulpit of our age and times must minister to the thoughtful. This can only be by the preacher becoming a man of thought and prayer — " There is a kind that goeth not forth but by prayer and fasting." We can only answer the problems of the soul by experience. Experience is the truest and best exposition ; this will give the readings of many a text, and often many a difficulty, and only so will our auditors feel that we are their teachers, while feeling that we have been into the furnace and the difficulty before them. But science has displaced wonder ; there is no strange place, there is no strange thing, everything and every spot is now made familiar to the mind ; hence the preacher's difficulty has greatly increased. Yet he still has to meet both natures in man, his understanding and his faith. We notice how many preachers permit the subtle to predominate over the practical ; they fancy that in this they satisfy by entering into the essential reason of things ; on the 56 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. contrary, in others, the merely practical becomes turgid. We should rise to ideal views of all truth. Is it not true, that that which satisfies the under- standing, leaves, in fact, the whole nature unsatisfied ; leaves the infinite heights and breadths in which the soul may sublimely exercise herself.'* Let us rise to the ideal, the wing in the cloud, but drop in harmony and happiness, refreshed, to earth again. We would secure belief ; all preaching, to be successful, must always be based in common-sense, but especially 710W ; let us begin first to secure belief by laying down her principles, and defining and showing the reasonableness of her grounds, and then that which we call rhetoric, eloquence, sets the logical framework in a blaze. This is just the image; let us look at all the arrangements for an immense magnificence of fireworks ; all those sticks are arranged, and, most necessarily, they contain all the combustibles for the display, but unignited ; but the fire kindles, and there, and then, rush forth all the splendours of the many-coloured flames. A rocket-stick is a poor substitute for fireworks ; true, but we cannot do without the stick ; it is a pity that in the matter of preaching many persons mistake the stick for the rocket. And this leads to another remark : we must, in this day, relate together the theology of the intellect and the theology of the feelings.* We must do homage to both ; all things demand that we do homage to both ; it has been well said that * See, upon this topic, an invaluable essay or discourse by Dr. Edwards Park " On the Theology of the Intellect and the Feelings," reprinted in the Eclectic Review for 1865 (January — February). THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. 57 the sensitive part of our nature quickens the percep- tive, the theology of the intellect enlarges and improves that of the feelings, and is also enlarged and improved by it. We are happy to think that we may find no difficulty in using as ours, language which the Holy Book and the holiest hymnologists have used : intensely sensuous ; but if we see the law it represents, if we recognise and understand such expressions in the spirit that prompted them, even in the spirit of the schools, we shall make our meaning felt, John Foster has well said that "when a man prays aright, he forgets the philosophy of prayer," and so when men are deeply affected in preaching, they very likely disturb the logical pro- portions of their subject ; but it is in such moments they give the truest impressions of it. We have little hesitation in saying that the finest illustration of this inflamed logic is Vinet. That the ministry is often unsuccessful is to be deplored, and it should be remembered that many neighbourhoods need the evangelist, and this is a character of ministry which may need some special remark. While letters and papers have been teem- ing from all denominational organs on the evangeli- sation of our rural or neglected population, we have ourselves become aware of a little circumstance which has put the method of doing the desirable work in altogether a new and affecting light. In a watering-place — ^^the best known, most frequented, and most densely populated, near London — in an outlying district, a chapel, a mission chapel, was opened by the united services of Thomas Binney and Samuel Morley, the ministrations conducted 58 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. since by the ministers of the town, and, especially, by the earnest, indefatigable work of a local lay labourer ; but, unhappily, on one Sabbath the place needed a supply, and there was a necessity for falling back upon one, and that one of the very best known, of our colleges. Our friend, the local lay labourer, himself a man of very clear and well-informed intelli- gence among books as well as men, penetrated into the vestry, and behold ! the young neophyte, to his undisguised commingled horror and amazement, draped, and swathed, and wrapped, and flowered in all the adornment of gown, cassock, bands, etc., etc. It was all in vain that our friend remonstrated that a gown had never been seen in the building — that the ministers of the town, who wore the cloak in their own temples, left " their cloak at Troas " when they came there ; the young brother was obstinate — it was vain to remind him that the people might laugh at it, that they were a poor plain race of artisan folk. The gown was an essential part of his individuality. On that very spot, in the streets round about, something more than mere Ritualism was seeking to pervade and leaven all things ; it was argued that it was necessary to keep perfect the simplicity of the service ; it was all vain, — the service was in the gown. The young preacher even became affecting as he declared that he could not preach without the gown, the whole virtue of the business would be lost without the gown, and in that pulpit, before the astonished audience, he really disported himself in that fashion. The incident is, we are half afraid, characteristic. This little notice of it has been pressed upon us by THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. 59 the numerous efforts now made to reach the ear and the heart of the people. We are afraid that this little circumstance indicates often the principal barrier in the way of success, in the evangelisation and conversion of the people. The inst'nict for gowns is greater than the instinct for souls ; perfunctoriness is death to vitality ; and what can touch so living a thing as a soul, save life — a living soul .<* And how is England to be evangelised .-* Has anybody much hope of it } It seems all our work goes to holding fast the ground we say we have. We seem really to break into very little new ground. The saints have to be fed ; and that feeding-time absorbs all the labour and thought of many of our Churches and ministers. The feeding-time is really like that in the Zoological Gardens ; it is the chief thought and object of attraction ; and the catching of animals from the desert, and training " lions and beasts of savage name," enters as little really into the thought of nearly all the Christians we know, ourselves included, as the catching an African lion or a Bengal tiger enters into the thought of the visitors standing before the cage in the menagerie. This being " fed " and being " built" is often death to all true progress and life amongst us ; and we greatly fear that whatever plans may be devised and adopted, they are likely to fail, because they do not spring from, and find their satisfaction in that instinct for souls. For instance, of what avail is it to lay down rules and programmes to guide a man or men in the achievements of great ministerial work } Churches have a favourite theory that ministers possess an order of piety beyond the lay 6o THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. members of the Church, and they test their theory by trying the faith, patience, piety, and self-denial of their ministers ; while their own little slips of those " plants of renown " are left, for the most part, uncultivated. We believe, if most ministers spoke honestly, they would say, " That which we preach is a faith with us. We believe it really, but we don't believe it more than you. You call for extra- ordinary work from us ; we really have it not to give. We mete out our labours as best we may ; we are not pressed upon by burning desires and affections ; nor are you. A decent, orderly, well-conditioned, decorous faith is all that either of us have. It is all to which we can minister, all that you can appreciate." Hence, when, to a temper like this, mighty propositions are presented about the worth of souls and the salvation of souls, etc., the lan- guage rises altogether above the knowledge, or the conception. It certainly would not do to say, " This is all nonsense ; souls are of no value ; we see them plunging out into the great night that lies round this world — by millions, everyday — we don't believe in their value — God does not seem to care about them!" It would not do to say that bold audacious thing, and hence men, unable to perceive, and not in earnest themselves, create perfunctory instrumen- talities, and they say to ministers, "We will collect a certain quantity of money — you go and do the feeling, the believing, the loving, and the praying." In fact, it will not be wrought that way. Religious passion must bear up like the waters of the great Geyser, mountains high, boiling from the deep central spring; and woe betide the pots, pans. THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. 6i kettles, or beefsteaks {vide " Travels in Iceland ") that stand in the way of it ! Yet, sometimes, the Geyser has seemed to be a well-conducted, well- behaved little thing, and travellers have boiled and washed over its bubblings ! This is even that which many of us, in this way, have done by our com- mitteedoms, etc. We have used that great Geyser, the religious instinct in man, as a means for keeping our pot boiling, and almost all our modern designs about religion look in that direction. " Oh, Clarkson," said William Wilberforce to his great collaborateur, when he called upon him one Sabbath morning, and found him sitting before his table, which was covered with papers about eman- cipation and slave-trade — " Oh, Clarkson, do you ever think about your soul ? " and Clarkson replied, "Wilberforce, I have time to think about nothing now but these poor negroes." The irrepressible instinct of the man, the Divinely self-absorbed un- selfishness of the man, something like this is the only power which will tell in evangelistic movements. We do not know how to do that which we desire to do. Protestantism in England has lost the art of converting souls. Our readers and friends will not suspect us of Papal bearings and tendencies ; but it is in that Church, — which numbers, assuredly, holy, blessed, and devoted men among its members, — we must look for illustrations of the iiistinct for souls. Catholic Home Missions are very successful. It behoves us to inquire, — Why, and how } What are their ways and means ? So many requirements go to success in such labour ; it would represent a power for hard work, and that is a rare faculty ; an apti- 62 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. tude and felicity of speech ; a command over sharp, pointed words of wisdom ; fertility of illustration, to take the stand on the village green, or in the market- place ; to talk like a gentleman, so that the man should feel the presence of one well instructed, and able to guide ; and to talk like a brother, so that the hearer should not imagine the speaker as living in one room, or belonging to one family, while he belonged to another ; and what would be the use of all this without the button-hole power ? It is the coming to close quarters that tries the stuff in a man — the ability to be insulted meekly, and to get the best of it, that is a rare faculty — the ability to let disputatious and grumbling stupidity, ignorance, and infidelity growl or talk themselves out, and then to slip a word boggling them, putting things in a new light, so that they feel that the man knows more, and has thought more than they ; and then what is the use of all this, unless it be picked up, followed up, drawn and coalesced into communities ? All success must depend upon fitness and adaptation, and the chief thing of all needed would be, not an instinct for thoughts, nor an instinct for books, nor an instinct for aesthetics — all these would hurt and hinder the work ; there must be chief, and before all else, an instinct for souls. And what would that represent ? The preacher or the converser would feel he had a piece of knowledge real to himself to give to the people before him — the people would become individualised to him in one soul, and he would feel that as the adding of one chemical to another entirely alters the quality of that to which it is added, so that piece of knowledge created within the person THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. 63 to whom he spoke a new consciousness, an entirely different perception of himself, life, and all his, and its relations. Could a man, feeling this, be finick- ing about his instinct for gowns, or modes of speech? Would not the thought give to him a Divine abandonment ? Would he not be, as Paul said, beside himself? But without something of this kind it is vain to think that people, rural, artisan, labour- ing, plain, poor cottage people, who have not been baked into ecclesiastical shape and order, are to be met. We have a morbid horror of eccentricity, and we will be bound to pay that any one of our brethren, going down to evangelise a rural district, would either in the village chapel, or on the village green, give out a well-approved hymn, sonorous, long measure, and make a prayer, — a kind of creed or confession of faith of a quarter of an hour's length, — and then deliver a sermon, from which should studiously be eliminated anything that could create a smile, — not to say so altogether horrid a thing as a laugh, — every touch of humanity or of humour, almost everything that could convey the idea that the man was at freedom and ease in his work. Alas, what would the brothers of the Oratory say to an attempt to win over England to Popery and Rome conducted after this fashion ? Truly we wish they would try this fashion, instead of which they try the method of the Pauline madness — " beside themselves." Snatches of profane song made sacred ; walking to and fro in courts and alleys, and out-of-the-way nooks ; winning by a strong word, accompanied with a kind smile ; by a piercing, lightning-like truth conveyed at the end of an almost 64 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. entertaining anecdote; and so, in the course of a year or two, behold a church, a cathedral, — and Rome flourishing in that neighbourhood ! This goes on while we twaddle upon committees, and read minutes of the last meeting, and get out our reports, and wonder who will subscribe. And where are the reports of all the Roman Catholic affiliations ? What printer prints them ? Where are the maga- zines that glorify them ? The thing rises as silently as a fog, creeps up like an autumn mist over the whole landscape, never says, "I'm coming," only says, "I'm here!" Gentlemen who are interested in these matters, — as who with a Christian heart is not inter- ested ? — would do very well to read the late Father Faber's "Essay on Catholic Home Missions." It would seem that Romanism, too, has its members to whom these things would be simply disgusting ; to whom graceful cowls, and matin bells, and vesper chimes, and swelling chants, and swinging lamps, and stern old crusaders' tombs, and all the poetry of reli- gion, are most attractive. There are members of that Church, as of our own, who would look with contempt if they met the Church upon the road, out of breath, pursuing souls, with bleeding feet, hands rough and chapped, and perspiration streaming from her brow. In all bodies there are those who prefer the elegant to the prophetic in religious matters, but these have not the instinct for souls. Father Faber carries our principle to an extreme; in this he illustrates Rome. Wisdom should be justified of her children, and wisdom may be. We are not fastidious ourselves, and we are persuaded, that those in whom is unfolding the instinct for THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. 65 souls will not be fastidious. We must recollect that we approach sinners, all of whom are about an equal mixture of savage and child. How ridicu- lous the method which should deal with them as scholars, or, in the highest sense, as men. It was Saint Carlo Borromeo — a great example for us all — every way a Cardinal, but also a great Sunday-school teacher, — perhaps the first of Sunday- school teachers — a beautiful and blessed labourer among the poor, — who said : — " A parish priest should be like a French milliner, always bringing out new modes, in order to keep up the interest, and stimulate a languishing taste." Why not } This is the use of excitement. The Roman Catholic Church acts upon the principle of periodical missions and excitements ; feels that every Church needs an occasional visit from a mission to reawaken its energies. We want new modes for ourselves now, and without them, and a fresh and free soul able to use them, it will be quite vain to think of being useful in visits of evangelisation. One thing must pre-eminently be borne in mind, as that which alone will make us successful, that we follow the instinct for souls. Ecclesiastical polities, and the like, will come after, if they come at all. It is neither an instinct for a creed, nor an instinct for an ecclesiasticism, which we must follow to be successful in this work. It really seems to us that we have done our best to kill the religious instinct ; a fervent conviction dare scarcely show itself; it is instantly called to order ; our feelings are made to order too, our eloquence cut out after a pattern. We are 5 66 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER afraid of individualism. We must label ourselves sect fashion. We have innumerable little crotchets, and if the working of these be interfered with, we walk off, talk nonsense about our religious liberty, which,-for the most part, means determination at all hazards to have our own way. We shelve our responsibilities in the cupboards and desks of committee rooms ; an awkward, plain-spoken infidel tells us we don't love souls, etc., and we point him to our .lame down for a guinea in the report of the Circumlocution Society. We estimate all Divine things after a money standard — not that we contribute so much as sects, after all — even here we do not test our own resou^-ces ; and meantime, in the depths, and on the fiinges of the forest land of our country, on the wastes of moors, in out-of-the-way hamlets, in villages, there are men and women, it is well known, growing up who know no more of Christ and His salvation than their cows and pigs do. To meet this, it will be of no use thinking of any usefulness without such a baptism in the worker as shall really be equivalent to the creation, and calling into existence, of a new instinct. Our readers are doubtless acquainted with a little volume called " Strange Tales," by John Ashworth.* It is a marvellous little book. It is a wonderful home missionary report. It is the recitation of the work which we believe has to be done, and the way in which it ought to be done. John Ashworth realised what we have meant all along by this instinct for souls — * " Strange Tales from Humble Life." By John Ashworth. THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. 67 that love for immortal mankind, and belief that we have the power to reach it, and to do it good, which overwhelms all obstacles, and bears down all before it. It is really the story of the life, walk, and triumph of faith. Thus, a simple man set to work, — a plain, working-day sort of man ; — met with laughter and contempt from the people who do salvation by committees, and so, after waiting a while, set to work himself, opened his chapel for the destitute, following meantime his own trade, expecting to make no worldly gain out of his labour of love ; and continued to hold and to fulfil all his offices and duties, as a layman, in the Church to which he belonged. We depreciate no means for effecting an entrance into souls. The man bathed in power, all his faculties alive, and on the stretch with the intensest ardours of poetry and argument, — the massive man, using his words like projectiles, or weapons derived from some great arsenal, for assaulting the inmost recesses and sophistries of the intelligence ; even the neat and fastidiously careful man, who wraps up his feelings in small sentences, and polishes away all the angles of expression ; — the hesitating, clumsy, but scholarly man, who feels that he only fulfils himself as he enters the neighbourhood of scholars ; — for all these men, in the degree in which the instinct for souls is stirred within them, we have veneration and affection. But John Ash- worth will be the best type of man for the evan- gelist ; especially there is a great deal of work best done as the " saints " and " serious " people keep out of the way. Their criticisms, and remarks, 68 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. and physiognomies are very often not a help to a man, but a great hindrance. We would have all these things pondered, in efforts made at teaching either artisans in towns, or labourers in villages. The principal interest of Congregationalism in this matter is, that Congregationalism alone, for the most part, can effect it. We want a band of men, gifted with a free spirit, able to preach with a gown, or without a gown — able to use a liturgy, or to let it alone, without detriment to their devotion — able to pitch a tune themselves, and carry a con- gregation aloft upon the wings of it, or to yield themselves, with as much pleasure, to the subduing powers of an organ or a choir. The Church of England mode of conversion, as we very well know, proceeds upon the assumption of the young brother who happily furnished us with our text — it must be done in chasuble or gown and bands ; — the prin- cipal feature of Congregationalism, to our mind, is, that it is versus sacerdotalism. There are two chief foes to the religious life in England everywhere, — indifference is one ; sacer- dotalism, which is an easy lapse from indifferentism, is the other. Congregationalism is the corrective for both ; it is the corrective for indifference, for it strikes at the individual conscience ; it is a corrective for sacerdotalism, for it places man above all dependence upon sacraments and forms ; but then it is necessary that the spirit of the instructor shall be itself charged with the life he aims to convey. Where the ministry of the word is not an instinct, it will be, as it was promised Jerusalem should be, "a burdensome stone." Even at the IHE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. 69 best, how difficult it is to bear up the spirit in the midst of bodily depression, and weariness, the captiousness of a diseased thirst, and morbid curiosity, the fainting of the spirit before the un- faithfulness, and sometimes the treachery of friends ; all these difficulties have to be thought of, for they have to be encountered ; but these trials will be greater still when there is a demand for large resources of bodily strength, the call upon nervous energy for repeated visitation, and constant conversa- tion, where conversation is to be a reality. Most persons hope to get through life with ease some day. This the true-hearted minister can never hope to do ; to him his work must always be toilsome and anxious, for ever haunted by the instinct for souls ; his very ground of anxiety not comprehended, perhaps, by even his friends around him ; — regarded as a mystical vagary, a half-diseased dream ; fearful of himself, fearful for others, impelled and moved by a restlessness caused by that brooding Spirit which of old hovered over the face of the deep. When we think of all these things, v/e confess we do not hope great things from any mere new effort ; rather must we use, as best we can, the very poor, inadequate, and incompetent machinery we can command. Perhaps God may have some resources of great men, — strong instinctive souls, — yet ; who knows ? But, certainly, in the light of our modern poverty in all the great things of soul, we may express our hopelessness " till the Spirit be poured out from on high, and the wilder- ness be a fruitful field, and the fruitful field be counted for a forest. Then judgment shall dwell 70 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. in the wilderness, and righteousness remain in the fruitful field." But, if Christ be the great power of God, it is clear that preaching will be power as He is in it. Hence we shall have to notice how different, how infinitely different, the influence and the effect of controversy in the pulpit from that of conscience. Polemics have, we believe, never, or but seldom, been power. We have heard how, once upon a time, the Christian faith heard of the threatening and for- m.idable incursions of her foes ; so she determined to muster her preachers and teachers to review their weapons, and she found, beyond all her expectations, everything prepared. There was, namely, a vast host of armed men ; strong, threatening forms, weapons, which they exercised admirably, brightly flashing from afar. But as she came nearer she sank almost into a swoon ; what she had thought iron and steel were toys ; the swords were made of the mere lead of words ; the breastplate, of the soft linen of pleasure ; the helmet, of the wax of plumed vanity ; the shields, of papyrus scrolled over with opinions ; the spears, thin reeds of weak conjecture ; the colours, spiders' webs of philosophical systems ; the cannon, Indian reed ; the powder, poppy-seeds ; the balls, of glass ! Through the indolent neglect of their leaders, they had sold her true weapons, and had introduced these ; nay, they even made her former warriors, — whose armour, faithfulness, and strength, were proved, — contemptible; bitterly did Religion weep, but the whole assembly bid her be of good cheer ; they would show their THE INSTINCT FOR SOULS. 71 faith to the last breath, " What avails me," she cried, " your faith, since your actions are worthless ? Of old, when I led naked, unarmed combatants to the field, one martyr, one warrior, faithful to death, was worth more to me than a hundred of you in your gilded and silvered panoplies." * * Quoted from " Historical Inquiry into the Theology of Germany." By E. B. Pusey, M.A., 1830. Note. — This chapter is, for the most part, reprinted from ' ' Lamps, Pitchers, and Trumpets," published 1868. Since then, in many movements, the enthusiasm called for in the chapter has manifested itself in many varied missions ; but the prin- ciples it maintains are demanded as imperatively as ever. CHAPTER III. FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER, THE PREACHER OF THE ORATORY AND THE CLOISTER. VERY great is the distance we seem to have to overleap between the strict and unadorned Nonconformist preacher, in his own simple place of worship, leading on a service without organ, or choir, or vestments of any kind, and the subject of our present sketch, sometime a minister of the Church of England, rector of Elton, in Huntingdon- shire, but far better known, after his conversion to Romanism, as priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. With his conversion we have nothing here to do ; we may express our regret that he found his resting-place in Rome, but in these pages we shall only concern ourselves with his method as a teacher and preacher, an aspect of his character, we believe, very slightly known beyond his own Church; although some of his hymns, such as " Dear Saviour, bless us ere we go," " Angels of Jesus," etc., etc , have found acceptance with most Churches. As a Christian poet he stands among the most eminent of our times, but we shall remark upon him only as a Christian preacher. The notes of his sermons, FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. y^ published since his death, in two volumes,* abun- dantly show that the long succession of devotional volumes which, year by year, proceeded from his pen, were the expansion of his exercises in the pulpit. Of course, they are not only full of the tenets of Romanism, but they are, as we regard them, tainted with the most objectionable peculiarities of extremest ultramontanism, — immaculate conception, papal in- fallibility, and so on ; yet if freshness be beautiful, if the most glowing and ardent devotion be beautiful, if it be delightful to find the most fervid imagination adorning Divinest truth, and the human reason reverently piercing into the subtlest principles of nature and revelation, and a mystical halo shedding its transcendental lights over all, we suppose our readers will be pleased to have their attention directed to these volumes, which have been for many years very precious to us. We have, of course, often in reading been compelled to separate the precious from the vile, what we have regarded as the narrow, the little, and the low, from the broad, the exalted, and the noble ; but still, among the religious books of our time, — what we may call the sermon literature, — we know of few from which we have derived more edification and delight than from these volumes of Frederick Faber's. We give a list at the foot of the page.*!* * " Notes on Doctrinal and Spiritual Subjects." By the late Frederick W. Faber, D.D., etc., etc. Vol. I. Mysteries and Festivals; Vol. II. The Faith and the Spiritual Life. Thomas Richardson and Son. t I. " All for Jesus ; or, The Easy Ways of Divine Love." By F. W. Faber, D.D., etc., etc. 74 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. It may almost seem that we are scarcely in a position to speak of this manifold teacher, for we have never either heard him preach or even seen him ; our ideas of him therefore must be gathered from his works and his life ; * and certainly his labours, even through the press, not only seem most manifold and various, but they present such a vitality and vigour that teachers of any denomination may read them with edification, and use them with amazing advantage. Perhaps the conscientious Romish priest has an unfair advantage over other teachers. It seems as if he is " not in trouble as other men ; " he has quite renounced the anxieties and the cares of the citizen, the husband, and the father ; it almost seems as if he can never know the burden of a broken heart, the agony of frustrated affections ; thus possibly it is, and the life of pleasant unbroken loneliness has always apparently made it more easy to the Catholic priest to preach. There are those who find it a difficult thing to preach one or two sermons a week ; very often the Romish priest, or father, preaches day by day, his sermons 2. " Growth in Holiness ; or, The Progress of the Spiritual Life." By F. W. Faber, D.D. 3. "Spiritual Conferences." By F. W. Faber, D.D, 4. " Bethlehem." By F. W. Faber, D.D. 5. "The Creature and the Creator; or, The Wonders of Divine Love." By F. W. Faber, D.D. 6. "The Precious Blood; or, The Price of our Salvation." By F. W. Faber, D.D. 7. "The Blessed Sacrament; or. The Works and Ways of God." By F. W. Faber, D.D. 8. " The Foot of the Cross ; or, The Sorrows of Mary." By F. W. Faber, D.D. * " The Life and Letters of Frederick William Faber." By John Edward Bowden. Thomas Richardson and Son. FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 75 not so studious, so lengthy, so elaborate, but the outflashings, or the outbreathings of the mind, or heart, always at home in itself, haunted by heaven, by Christ, and the ordinances of the Church, in its isolation and loneliness. The Romish Church makes far less of preaching than the Protestant Church ; as, hitherto, the Protestant Church has far too much made preaching first, so with the Romish Church it has been quite the last, least, and lowest of its exercises, scarcely an ordinance of the Church at all ; yet it is very singular and noticeable how a man, living quite by himself, and in himself, will become an acute observer, and when such a man preaches, these observations shoot off in sharp angles of quaint and striking expression. Such was the life, and such the mind of Frederick Faber. It rejoiced in the richest, the most delightful fancies : his pages frequently glow and overflow, and are quite suffused with fanciful and imaginative lights ; and then we are presently struck by some most real and prosaic expression, as if the monk lived ever among men, and watched, with a keen, but always kindly eye, their walkings and their ways. In the modern pulpit, what may be called the merely practical has slain the preacher and chilled his audience. Range over the multitudes of sermons which teem from the press ; are we not amazed at the absence of great, vast, infinite views of things ? An attempt seems often to be made to keep what may be called the infinite out of sight ; the things of religion are shrivelled and pared down to the commonplace. Now this has often been a very conscientious procedure on the part of preachers ; 76 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. but it has mistaken its end : men should be trained to take great and lofty views of truth, — to enlarge the dimensions of their understanding. Fabcr dealt with the most awful and infinite subjects, but so popularly and simply that all his sermons seem to unite the most mystical views of eternal things with the sharpest and the most intense appeals to the conscience. He does not parley with the conscience, his words most frequently beat right on it ; he does not stay to reason, he takes very much for granted ; he supposes his hearers either to be professing Chris- tians, or to be favourably inclined to Divine truth, and he sets to work immediately to invade and take possession of the citadel of the soul. The entire teaching of the Roman Catholic Church is more mystical than ours ; it is natural that it should be so, from its whole train of faith and service. Frederick Faber, however, belongs to the more eminently mystical order ; a wide distance separates between him and such preachers as Lacordaire, or Newman, or Manning; he selects topics for discourse infinitely awful and interesting, subjects which invite a close survey, a deep and searching analysis. But this cannot be said of the method he adopts ; had it been so, we should not have found his works passing through innumerable editions, and incessantly selling, as they do. No, from some seminal principle, he strikes up rather than down, and wraps round his subject the beautiful vesture of flower and fruit, the fanciful and splendid imagery of colour and form. He expatiates ; he diffuses himself over his idea rather than examines the roots ; in a word, highly cultivated, observant, thoughtful, with an eye for the FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 77 things of his time, and a knowledge of the results of books, he is an eminently popular preacher, a preacher before whom we feel sure we could do nothing else than listen. But he is mystical, we said, that is, in him feeling is the guiding light. No word is more unsatisfactory than this same word, "mystical;" it is by no means easy to define its limits ; every man who, in the slightest degree, believes in, and apprehends the supernatural is, to that measure, a mystic ; and if we define the mystic to be the man who apprehends the supernatural through the medium of the imagination and the emotions, rather than through the intellect, this again very inadequately defines the character. It must be sufficient for us, however, at present. This constitutes the mystical in Frederick Faber. Give him some faint filament of an idea, some fibreless gossamer, and it is astonish- ing what he will do with it ; the projecting and creative power Avithin pierces far, and calls up obedient hosts of ideas to illustrate his thought. The preacher often seems to diffuse too much, probably from a cause he has himself mentioned, when he says : ** We cannot describe such things ; there is always something of a literary weariness in writing of these things of God ; epithet must be piled on epithet, like Pelion on Ossa ; adverb must qualify adjective, or intensify substantive, to distin- guish between the manner in which what is said of creatures may also be said of God ; reiterated super- latives annoy the taste and tease the attention, and yet how dare we write otherwise than superlatively of God ? " Effect in the pulpit is a very loose and varied 78 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. thing, and many speak of it scarcely knowing what they mean by it ; we have seen that effect, very frequently, results from admirable symmetry, from art, and arrangement ; nothing of this is visible in anything we have from the tongue, or pen of Frederick Faber, nothing of what we should call the logician, the artist, or the rhetorician ; his mind is full of thoughts, his heart of feelings and impulses, " his tongue is as the pen of a ready writer ; " but the thoughts flow forth with little plan, and the reader — and we apprehend the hearer — would be sometimes in danger of almost missing the chief intention in some charming allusion. An extract or two may show at once the beauty and the danger to which we allude. ALL SOULS HAVE A CALL OF GOD. — LISTEN I " All spiritual souls are thus haunted souls. They see sights which others do not see, and hear sounds which Others do not hear. This haunting is to them their own secret prophecy of heaven. It would be sad to miss so choice a grace by inattention, sadder still to follow a fantastic delusion of earth instead of the heavenly reality. The soul cannot hear God unless it listens for Him, and listening is the devoutest attitude of a wise and loving soul. Yet they who listen hear many sounds which others do not hear, many sounds for which they themselves are never listening. There are false sounds on earth, which have a trick of heaven in them. They are Hke the phantom bells which ring for vespers, as from viewless convents, in the wilderness of Zin. Yet the Bedouin deems that, with his practised ear, he can discern their thin tolling from the real sounds of the sandy solitude. The avoiding of delusion is not the whole of safety in the spiritual life. When a man FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 79 turns his entire life into a cautious self-defence against imposture, he is leading, perhaps, the falsest life a man can lead. There is more danger in missing a grace from God, than in mistaking an earthly beckoning for a Divine. For, in the last case, purity of intention soon rectifies the error, while, in the other, the loss is for the most part irretrievable. Even in the natural life, and in the spiritual life much more, they are the most unfortunate of men who linger behind their lot. They are hke those who linger behind the desert caravan. Straightway, as Marco Polo tells us, a shadowy voice calls them by their name, and allures them to one side of their route. They follow, and still it calls ; and, when they have wandered from the path, a mocking silence follows, more terrible than the deceiving voice. The wind of evening has lifted the light sands, and quietly effaced the marks of feet and camel hoofs upon the wilderness, as the breeze ruffles out the v,rakes of ships on the yielding deep, and smoothes the waters by its ruffling. They have missed their vocation. It is no use their living now. They might as well lie down and die. Such are they vvho, in the spiritual life, linger behind their grace. They of all men are the most haunted by delusions, and have the least discernment by which to tell them from realities. A soul, that has let grace outstrip it, will never see its caravan again. It may die with God ; for God is in the wilderness ; but faint indeed is the chance of its not dying in the wilderness. Let each man look well to see if he has not within himself a leading from God ; and if he has, let him know that it is his one saving thing to follow it." This is a tremendous and terrible piece of writing, but we are afraid to say in how many instances we have remarked its truth. We spoke of the sharp sentences and aphorisms which abound in these works and sermons, words So THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. pithy and pleasant to remember ; we should like to present our readers with a few. '* Silence makes us great-hearted, and judging makes us little-minded." " Life is broader than any science of life." " Christ is living endlessly over again ; there are a thousand Bethlehems, a thousand Nazareths, and a thousand Calvaries scattered through the Church. Pales- tine has swelled out into a world ; all shrines of human sorrow are Gethsemanes." The Thought of God. "There is more light in the indis- tinctness of that, than in the clearest demonstrations of human science." The Value of Logic in Religion. "The definitions of the faith only catch us as we fall." Sorrow. " Sorrow is the substance of man's natural life, and it might almost be defined to be his natural capability of the supernatural ; nothing has a lasting interest for man which is not in some way connected with sorrow j sorrow is the poetry of a creation which is fallen, of a race which is in exile in a vale of tears." The Incarnation. " It was as if nature stood on one side and let God pass." Silence. " Silence has ever been the luxury of great holiness." " Sorrow widens great hearts just as it contracts little ones." , " Hence it is, because God alone is our last end, He never fails us." The Life and Argument of the Monk. " Why should we ever stir from where we are ? To look on the sea seems better than to learn the science of its storms, the grandeur of its steadfastness, or the many moods of its beautiful mutabiUties. FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 8i Knowledge and Love. " We ask questions, not because we doubt, but because, when love is not all in all to us, we must have knowledge, or we chafe and pine. We cannot go far with God at once ; the thought of God is rest, but the company of God is labour and fatigue.'' " Number and Music are depths I dare not explore ; but surely what the most popular writers say of them shows how they represent the mysterious harmony of God." " Utifinished Saints lie all around us, like the broken models of a sculptor's studio." " The Bible is a system of hieroglyphics, and Jesus is the key to them all." " Fastidious7iess is a stronghold of Satan." "A Downcast Matt is raw material which can only be manufactured into a very ordinary Christian." '■^Sensitiveness without tenderness is a very terrible thing." Uves. " Almost all lives have got a lame limb." Service. " To have no master is to be a slave." *^ There are unhealthy Christians: temptations are their task ; imaginary cases of conscience are their romps and games ; predestination is to them like the top of a tree, on which a bird sits and mocks us on a Sunday, when it knows that we have no gun to shoot it with." " We strain at gnats and sivallow camels; if we have got wrong by indiscretion in austerities, now we are more wrong by being head over ears in comforts." But we must stop. These slight Faberana will, however, show to our readers what a variety of spiritual material may be found in these volumes ; pithy, homely common-sense and wisdom, far-reach- ing imaginative utterance, and musical expression ; the near and the far often meet on the same page ; a rich sentence shines out like a poem, or like the far-off splendours of a starry night ; and next to it 6 82 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. a very different kind of sentence meets us, luminous too, but like the gaslight lightening the street, from which also we looked up and saw the star. The citations we have given will perhaps sufficiently in- form our readers that Faber's mind was eminently and especially discursive : some of his sermons, especially in the " Spiritual Conferences," are admir- able pieces of close spiritual counsel and advice ; whilst the sermons more especially on " Weariness in Well-doing," on " Taking Scandal Aright," on " The Danger and the Difficulty of Dealing with Wounded Feelings," are very concentrated, close, and intense pieces of talk. The same remark applies to the chapters on the " Growth in Holiness," and " All for Jesus ; " but, usually, in those of his works which seem more devoted to some especial subject, the reader, like the hearer, will find how the author, or the preacher, as the case may be, diverges hither and thither, and, in the true fashion of the mystic, drives along a sort of fiery chariot through the air, striking from the wheels rayonant sparks of infinite and kindling suggestion, but not, in any logical sense, related to the subject. Indeed, this preaching of Frederick Faber seems, in the best part of it, to be preaching within the monastery, or the convent. Our readers must not smile at this ; we have too little of it ; our preach- ing is for the most part miscellaneous ; our sermons are constructed for great and various congregations ; they are arguments, criticisms, impassioned appeals to awaken consciences thoroughly benumbed and asleep. Church talk is rare with us. Would Christ have stood by the seaside, or in the public places of FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 83 resort, and have preached the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth chapters of John ? Would He have prayed the intercessory prayer in such scenes and circumstances ? We read of occasions when He " turned to His disciples and spoke to them privately." It is mere foolishness to talk to a vast multitude, a great, restless, heaving people, crowds of whom go to church or chapel simply because they have nowhere else to go, in the same tone and strain as would be adopted in speaking to those who are leading, -or desirous of leading, really consecrated lives ; who feel the power and terrors of nature, and the beautiful amiabilities of grace. The preaching of a monk like Faber in the church before the miscellaneous congregation, is very different from his preaching in the little chapel, or the common hall, with only the cluster of brother monks around him. Faber, as we read in his life, laid great stress upon the custom of daily sermons. This was the practice of St. Bernard, and has been the usage of many monastic societies. Perhaps many ministers would be frightened at the thought ; but a man ever intended by nature or grace to preach, with mind and heart full, would probably find that the more he preached the more easy and happy he would be himself in the exercise, and the more pleasure would his auditors feel in listening to him« It is the highly artificial preaching which is dreadful, dreadful to the preacher, and tedious to the hearer. We have often talked, and heard talk of the enjoy- ment of preaching to a vast congregation, a crowd of many hundreds or thousands ; but so much has not been said of the enjoyment, which we take to be 84 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. far deeper, of preaching to a very small congregation of twenty or fifty, but where all hearts are beating " as the heart of one man," where all are walking in the same light, where all are able to " eat of the same spiritual meat, and to drink of the same spiritual drink," and where a power and presence of the eternal Saviour and His eternal rest seem to fold all in and make "all of one heart and one mind." There has not been enough of thought given to the subject of preaching for this order. Preaching to the world, to please the world, to charm the ears of the curious and the critical, why, what can come of it but spiritual depravity .-' Such preaching admits of but few depths, and few heights. It may be admirable and necessary in its way ; but, surely, a congregation of believers, to whom the truth is " settled in their hearts," would excite a very different topic, and train of illustration and feeling. Most congregations now greatly re- semble that of Mars Hill, " Epicureans and Stoics," some listening, and " some mocking, and some saying. We will hear thee again on this matter." It may be supposed that week evening services, which are now very considerably falling into disuse and dis- repute, were intended to minister to this more earnest and sequestered Church life. Thingc ought to be said again and again which are even as foolishness to the greater number in a large con- gregation. What can it profit to set before those whose minds and hearts have not apprehended the " first principles " those deep and high things of the Divine life by which the spiritual nature is sus- tained and fed ? Now, there is much in this order I'REDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 85 of preaching, of Faber's especially under review, fitted to minister to this more spiritual life. Spiritual facts are taken for granted ; they are not so much reasoned about as dilated upon. The preacher does not prove that it is a well, and show when, and how it was dug, and by what processes the stream percolated until it reached that spot ; he does not spend time in assuring you that it is trustworthy food ; he exclaims to an eager, if a small, company, " Eat abundantly, O friends, yea drink abundantly, O beloved." There is danger of such preaching becoming shallow and common- place, but so of the other order too. And is not this necessary } should we not seek to minister to this Church appetite, as well as to the more worldly appetite in the congregation .-* But we must not convey the impression that the preaching of Faber was solely and only of this order. Many of the notes of his discourses are of a very popular character, and are fitted, when the outlines are filled up, to have an influence over the largest and most miscellaneous congregations. We shall select some which may stand as types pro- bably of his pulpit method. " ' HE SAVED OTHERS : HIMSELF HE CANNOT SAVE.* " Is it not strange that such wicked words can be so beautiful ? Yet are they not beautiful ? Oh, beautiful as some fragment of an angel's song ! ' He saved others : Himself He cannot save.' "I. What He looked like to those who saw Him on the cross. ** I. Description of Him all disfigured. " 2. So changed from what they had seen Him in the 86 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. temple, or on Palm Sunday. He was not an object of horror. Suffering can beautify with a pitiable beauty. It can make reverend. Even death can beautify. Its rigid repose can even be a more graceful thing than the supple grace of life. "3. At least He was an object of pity : horror of gibing the pitiable, and in the hearing of His mother! What a dreadful thing hatred is ! and such a hatred! "II. What He looks like to us. " I. The Godhead shining through the disfigurement. " 2. His love of men beautifying the very disfigurement itself. " 3. Oh, to us such an object of love, of pity also, yet much more of love and of adoration. ** III. He saved others. " I. What ! did they hate Him for savirig men? *' 2. But the fact, how true it is ! He did indeed save others ; He saved us, perhaps them ; some who jeered, e.g. the penitent thief, are now with Him in heaven. " 3. He did not care to save Himself, so long as He saved us. He never thought of Himself; this was His human character, He pleased not Himself; it was this which so touched St. Paul. "IV. Himself He cannot save. " I. Can this be true? He is the omnipotent God; angels are waiting His sign. " 2. Yet it is true. He is helpless ; He cannot save Himself; He cannot come down from the cross. "3. But what hinders? Oh, such a might of love, of love only, of love for us. "V. We. " I. Did we then seem so beautiful? Oh no ! how far from that ! *' 2. But we did seem so pitiable ! He lost all pity for Himself and for His mother, because we did look so infinitely pitiable. FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 87 "3. And yet, even after it all, we can scarcely force ourselves to pity Him ; we can hardly strain a tear, or force a sigh, because of the pains of our dear crucified Love ! "How much the Passion has saved us from ! Out of what a depth it has rescued us ! Truly we can now use those merciless words of the Jews in quite another sense. Looking at our Saviour's face, we can say, * Yes, my Jesus, my Lord and my God ; Thou savest others, Thyself Thou canst not save 1 ' " The follow^ing strikes us as a truly masterly and comprehensive outline for the most useful and popular preaching. "*GOD WHO IS RICH IN MERCY.' ** We want many things, many things, of God ; we shall never cease to want many things of Him. When we possess Him in the incredible happiness of our grand eternity, though we shall possess Him, we shall still want Him. If He were to speak to me now, and I had to say the one thing, only one, which I most wanted of Him, could I hesitate in my answer one moment ? Father ! I want mercy. If I think of the past, I want mercy ; of the present, mercy ; of the future, mercy ; of eternity, 7nercy. St Paul, prisoner at Rome, writes to theEphesians, and calls God, God who is rich in mercy. This name of God is exceedingly sweet ; it sings in my ear like an angel's song : beautiful things came out of that marvellous mind of St. Paul's, none ever more beautiful than this — God who is rich in mercy. ** I. What it is for God to be rich. To be rich is to have superfluity, more than we want. God more than He wants ! What a thought ! " I. The immensity of His treasures. ** 2. The variety of them. 88 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. " 3 Their delightfulness to creatures. Can God possibly create two things more insatiable than the spirit of an angel and the soul of a man ? " 4. His liberality. " 5. But in ffiercy, St. Paul hints, eminently, unspeakably, unimaginably rich. ** II. The inside of the treasury of God. " I. Creation, — what a vastness it is, what an outpouring it was I " 2. Grace, its beauty and abundance. " 3. Jesus, with His immensities of Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Calvary. "4. The unsearchable magnificence of His own ever- blessed self. " III. Mercy sweetening life. "i. Are we in trouble about our past life? Hark, how sweet that apostolic voice ! Listen ; it is an angel singing, Rich in mercy I " 2. Trouble about past vileness ? The very vile flowers from the earth breathe forth the words, the silence tingles into a sound, and articulates. Rich in mercy I It is like one of those beams of God which sometimes fall athwart the darkness of our prayer. " 3. Trouble about those we love, whom we have long prayed for, who seem past prayer ? Rich in mercy J Blessed be St. Paul for that happy word ; or rather. Blessed be the Holy Ghost for that tender inspiration. "4. Trouble about our dead, whose faults come perti- naciously to mind ? Rich in mercy ! " 5. A death to die, and a judgment to go through ? These are panics such as to be almost unbelievable ; yet they are infallible. Rich in mercy I Yes ! in a torture of believing love, we cry — it is the utterance of our human faith — Rich in mercy ! " IV. We often talk of a thing we know till it strikes us that we do not know it. Familiarity has a way of making FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 89 things strange to us. \^\\2X'v~, mercy f What an unanswerable question ! but let us try to answer it. " I. It is all the wants of the creature satisfied in one. ** 2. It is all his difficulties answered, and turned into revelations. " 3. It is all the sweetness of God put into one. "4. It is the beautifulness of God to us: — (i) Power become gentle. (2) Wisdom dissolved into kindness. (3) Magnificence made tender. (4) Justice grown indulgent. (5) Love's delight in us, fidelity to us, inability to do with- out us. " 5. Oh no ! mercy is far more than all this ; look up into God ; wait a while, till your eyes get accustomed to the blaze; look up to His highest heights, gaze into His deepest depths ; there now, you see mercy. Oh, how unutterably beautiful ! and you may read the new name God gave to mercy; and when He gave it, the songs of the angels thundered round the throne as they had never done before — ' Thou shalt call His name Jesus; for He shall save His people from their sins.' " All this is incredible : it is incredible ; but faith manages to believe many incredible things. If all this be true, what becomes of the justice and sanctity of God ? I do not know I cannot think, I must not question. Sin is encouraged ? I hope not ; but if men take scandal with the justice of God, no wonder they take scandal with the mercy of God ; for it is more excessive, more unexpected, more out of place, more unaccountable. God must see to it. God must provide. I grant it is a difficulty, a miracle, a secret, a mystery ; but to faith one phrase, which St. Peter invented, and which I will put alongside of that of St. Paul's on which I have been commenting, one phrase unlocks the whole, answers the whole, illuminates the whole, — the whole Church is sound- ing it to-day, as through a silver trumpet : — The precious BLOOD 1 " 90 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. The following outline has a ringing intensity of feeling, and illustrates Faber's peculiar textual preaching, effective no doubt, but very free from elaboration and art. " * OUR LAMPS ARE GONE OUT.' " Whatever it costs, we must be saved. CertaJWy ; but from the lives we lead it does not seem as if salvation was costing much. Is it ? If it is, then to you I do not speak. If it is not, then one of two things : either it is a mistake that salvation costs much, or else we are not in the right way to be saved. Of the two alternatives, the last, in my judgment, is most likely to be true. Is a careless, inatten- tive, easy-going, good person better off in his chances of salvation than a downright sinner ? Let us see if we can get an answer from our blessed Lord Himself. " Read the history of the foolish virgins. " I. * Our lamps are gone out /' The horror of this cry : all that is compressed in it : what secrets of slovenly lives which only half suspected their own slovenliness : numbers of dying people are uttering it daily : if it could be heard and understood, it would surely hush all creatures into sil-iice, it is so thrilling, so significant, a whole boundless eternity echoing it so wildly. " II. You see, they had got lamps: they had been at the pains to buy oil : o?ice their lamps were not out. "III. They had been watching and wakeful nearly all their lives : it had been the object of their lives to wait for the Bridegroom. You do not look to me as if you were doing even so much as that. " IV. And now they did not go away, go after the world ; they only slept; i.e., they took things easily : it was trouble- some to be always on their guard : they relaxed the wake- fulness of prayer ; they let their consciences get indistinct. But the good slept also : yes ! and even they ran a hideous FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER. 91 risk : but before that they had repented, they had done much ; there had been mortifications ; they had not merely trusted to faith, to feelings, and to outward devotions. The midnight cry takes all by surprise ! " V. Haste to buy oil : the Bridegroom comes : the doors are shut : '•Lord, Lord, open to us I' He can but just have gone in ! He will hear 1 " VI. The voice from ivithin I yes ! He has heard : the voice ! such fearful words in so sweet a voice : * I know you not!' Not even knowz/i-/ why, we believed in Him, wc prayed to Him, we waited for Him : yet He is truth and cannot lie. Oh ! it is only to try us, to reprove us : it can be nothing more. " Vn. * Lord, Lord, open to us /' Oh the agonizing cry ! for what is it to be left outside? it is misery, despair, madness, hell ! * Lord, Lord, open to us ! ' All is still : no voice comes again. He spake once, and He confirmed it with His amen, the gentle positiveness of which had been heard by the lake side, and on the green hill, and in the cornfield, and in the temple court. Oh those shut doors ! how fair, how beautiful is all within those doors, — a land of golden light, of purest happiness, of everlasting life ! * Lord, Lord, open to us T O foolish, foolish virgins, those doors will never open more ! " This is a very feeble little sketch of a man w^hose preaching and devotional works have been likened, by the ablest men of his own Church, to the words of St Bernard, and St. Bernardine of Sienna ; nor do we think the eulogy too high. There was a singular mingling in him ; his life reveals, to our sorrow, traces of singular bigotry ; but that was to be expected — alas that it should be so ! — from his Church : and we leave it Nor is this the .place to open those volumes which reveal him as a sacred 92 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. poet. Many of his hymns are wonderful.* Faber shows to us one thing — that a man may preach well and work hard, in many ways. Beside the works we have enumerated, he was the author of many others, and edited as well the Oratorian Lives of the Saints, in forty-two volumes. He went Home in 1863, — after achieving so much, — at the early age of forty- nine. * " Hymns by Frederick William Faber, D.D." " Poems by Frederick William Faber, D.D." " Sir Lancelot : a Legend of the Middle Ages." By Frede- rick W. Faber, D.D. CHAPTER IV. MEDIEVAL AND POST-MEDIEVAL PRE A CHERS. WITH the preaching and the preachers of the Middle Ages most readers have but a very- slight acquaintance ; and many, indeed, fancy that the pulpit and its powers were the birth of the Reformation, but this is far from true ; no doubt, the stories of the pulpit of those darker times are mostly inaccessible ; they are in other languages, and buried in the libraries of colleges and monas- teries, or they are scattered through the huge masses and incidental references of miscellaneous Church literature ; but could they be rescued from their obscurity, they would tell a very wonderful tale of the power of speech in those rude times. The accomplished and lamented Dr. Neale has done this work in a slight, interesting, popular, and not the less valuable book ; * and with this may be men- tioned another even more interesting work, dealing with less known names, j" by a scholar whose taste * "Mediaeval Preachers and Mediaeval Preaching. A Series of Extracts, translated from the Sermons of the Middle Ages, with Notes and an Introduction." By the Rev. J. M. Neale, M.A., Warden of Sackville College. t" Post-Mediaeval Preachers : Some Account of the most Celebrated Preachers of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seven- 94 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. leads him into the study of all strange folk-lore — and truly these anecdotes of preachers belong to a kind and branch of folk-lore — Mr. Baring-Gould. Anecdotes of the pulpit, of the monastery, and the Catholic Church are found strewn along the pages of those immense and insane piles of manifold read- ing and learning " The Mores Catholici " and the " Compitum " of Mr. Kenelm Digby, but there is no well-wrought history of the pulpit of those times ; and he who would write it must spend his days and nights for a long time among dusty piles of Church antiquities, and be a very BoUandist in industry and patience. As this volume is not a Church history, so neither is it intended to be a complete review of the history of pulpit eloquence ; in leaving, therefore, the earlier ages for the mediaeval, we do not feel called upon to trace the distinct links of instruction which held together the doctrines and teachings of those times, especially when barbarian hordes were ploughing up all the ancient landmarks of civilisa- tion in Europe. In many lonely cloistered places the truth of form and the truth of feeling survived. The sermons of the Venerable Bede are known to us; they are short and popular. We must also, in any measure of prejudice we may feel against the follies, falsehoods, and tyrannous cruelties of the Papacy, be wise to distinguish between the men and the ages. Dr. Neander's invaluable " Memorials of the Christian Life," and his " Light Shining in Dark Places," will show that in rude times the "fire the Redeemer teenth Centuries; with Outlines of their Sermons and Speci- mens of their Style." By S. Barings-Gould, M.A. MEDIEVAL PREACHERS. 95 came to kindle on the earth, among the human race, never ceased to burn, either with a clearer or a duller flame ; that rude stock of humanity commu- nicated its rudeness to the chosen to be trained by it, and in virtue of human freedom, it could be trained in no other way. Christianity was propa- gated in a few intelligible do'-trines which verified t lie in selves as the power of God in the souls of men ; for the true dignity of man does not consist in the harmonious cultivation of all the moral and spiritual tendencies of his nature, but in the Divine received into the interior of tJie soiiiy* There was darkness enough ; we do know they were dark ages ; we especially allude to the period from the sixth to the twelfth centuries ; but we suppose that the pulpit had its place in those times, and from the twelfth century the light began to stream with a steady clearness, and even to blaze. That attention was given to the art of reading in public, and preaching, even in the earliest times, is evident from the book "De Institutione Clericorum," by Rabanus Maurus, afterwards Archbishop of Mentz ; this work was written in 819, but Dr. Maitland, in his work on the " Dark Ages," in quoting it, shows that for much of it Maurus was indebted to Isidor of Seville, who wrote more than two hundred years before ; but volumes might easily be filled with extracts illustrating the faith, and the mental and spiritual power of those, and the subsequent times, evidenced in the words and the works of the pulpit ; referring more generally to the method of the pulpit * Neander's "Memorials of the Christian Life," etc., p. 415. 96 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. of those times, ought we to say that from all that we know of it, we are sorry to agree with Dr. Neale when he affirms that there was an immense and intuitive knowledge of Scripture possessed by those preachers, setting them, in these particulars, above the preachers of our own, or of any times since the Reformation? There was a perfect affluence of Scripture reference in them, — very instructive ; as Mr. Gould has said, " they did not make long extracts, but with one light sweep brushed up a whole bright string of sparkling Scripture instances," and he gives the following extract ; we know not from whom it is taken : — '•'many are called, but few are chosen.' "Noah preached to the old world for a hundred years the coming in of the flood, and how many were saved when the world was destroyed ? Eight souls, and among them was the reprobate Ham. Many were called, but only eight were chosen. " When God would rain fire and brimstone on the cities of the plain, were ten saved ? No ! only four, and of these four one looked back. Many were called, but three were chosen. "Six hundred thousand men, besides women and children, went through the Red Sea, the like figure whereunto Baptism doth even now save us. The host of Pharaoh and the Egyptians went in after them, and of them not one reached the further shore. And of these Israelites, who passed through the sea out of Egypt, how many entered the promised land, the land flowing with milk and honey? Two only — Caleb and Joshua. Many — six hundred thousand — were called ; few, even two, were chosen. All the host of Pharaoh, a shadow of those who despise MEDIEVAL PREACHERS. q; and set at nought the Red Sea of Christ's blood, perish without exception ; of God's chosen people, image of His Church, only few indeed are saved. " How many multitudes teemed in Jericho, and of them how many escaped when Joshua encamped against the city ? The walls fell ; men and women perished. One house alone escaped, known by the scarlet thread, type of the blood of Jesus, and that was the house of a harlot. "Gideon went against the Midianites with thirty-two thousand men. The host of Midian was without number, as the sand of the sea-side for multitude. How many of these thirty-two thousand men did God suffer Gideon to lead into victory? Three hundred only. Many, even thirty-two thousand men, were called, three hundred chosen. " Type and figure this of the many enrolled into the Church's army, of whom so it'f^ go on to * fight the good fight of faith ! ' " Of the tribes of Israel twelve men only were chosen to be apostles ; and of those twelve, one was a traitor, one doubtful, one denied his Master, all forsook Him, " How many rulers were there among the Jews when Christ came ; but one only went to Him, and he by night ! *' How many rich men were there when our blessed Lord walked this earth ; but one only ministered unto Him, and he only in His burial ! " How many peasants were there in the country when Christ went to die ; but one only was deemed worthy to bear His cross, and he bore it by constraint. " How many thieves were there m Judcea when Christ was there ; but one only entered Paradise, and he was converted in his last hour ! '* How many centurions were there scattered over the province ; but one only saw and believed, and he by cruelly piercing the Saviour's side 1 " How many harlots were there in that wicked and 7 98 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. adulterous generation ; but one only washed His feet wit tears and wiped them with the hair of her head ! Truly ' many are called, but few are chosen.^ " There can be no doubt that this is earnest Scriptural preaching, and if the Bible be the power of God, it may surely be expected that such preaching would be with power. We are not concerned to recite all the madness of the preaching friars, the races of men who wandered over Europe with the rosary of St. Dominic or the cord of St. Francis, nor do we desire in these pages to narrate their achievements, but without doubt they do sufficiently affirm the pov\^er of speech and of preaching. Dr. Milman has shown how their popular eloquence became a new power, reviving the languid faith, and rekindling the dying ardour or superstition of the Church of the Middle Ages. Wondrously, from burning lips, the enthusiasm spread ; the story of the preaching orders is a wonderful chapter in the romance of the pulpit, and if we smile at, and even scorn the fanaticism of some, it is impossible to for- bear interest in the magical effects of the harangues of St. Anthony of Padua, and the spell of holiness, which even now seems to attract, in the life and words of St. Bonaventura ;^^e may laugh, indeed, when the first preaches in sober seriousness — and not, like his namesake St. Antonio of Vieyra, in satire, to " the fishes who approached the shore, and listened to him, devoutly bowing down their heads, and moving very gently."* But it is impossible, we think, to misunderstand what Bonaventura in- • See " The Life of St. Anthony of Padua." Paris, 1660. MEDIEVAL PREACHERS. 99 tended when Thomas Aquinas asked him whence he received the force and unction he displayed in all his works, and he, pointing to a crucifix hanging on the wall of his cell, exclaimed, ''It is that image ivhicJi dictates all my ivords to me ; " he felt the presence of Christ in his lonely cell, it wrought in him, it wrought through him, it was the passion of his Redeemer which moved his soul, his life, his pen. Christ, His name, His works, did give unquestion- ably a deep and constant pathos to the words of many of these preachers ; many of them seem to say, with the great Bernard, ''Jesus ; all the food of the soul is dry if it be not mingled with this oil, is insipid if it be not preserved with this salt ; if you write, I have no relish unless I there read of Jesus ; if you dispute or confer, I have no relish unless in them I hear the name of Jesus." Thus came their discourses to be so eminently Scriptural ; thus every text, every incident became hallowed and perfum-^d with the name of Jesus. There is a fragment of a sermon by Guarric of Igniac, a friend of St. Bernard, showing how we ought to see Christ in all the histories of the Old Testament, and the very text strikes the note of the whole : — " * THEY TOLD JACOB, SAYING, JOSEPH IS YET ALIVE.' " ^ Arid they told Jacob, saying, Joseph is yet alive' You will perhaps say to me, It is very well ; but what is it to the point? What has Joseph to do with the joy of this day, — with the glory of the resurrection of Christ? It is Easter ; and are you still setting before us Lent fare ? Our soul is an hungered for the Paschal Lamb, for which it has been preparing itself by so long a fast. Our heart 100 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. burns within us for Jesus ; we desire Jesus ; if we do not as yet merit to see Him, at least we would hear of Him. We hunger for Jesus, not for Joseph ; for the Saviour, not for the dreamer ; for the Lord of heaven, not of Egypt ; not for him who fed the body, but for Him who feeds the soul that is hungry. In this, at least, your discourse may help us, by causing that for Him after whom we already hunger we should hunger still more. For we read, ' Blessed are they that hunger, for they shall be filled.^ When we hear we hunger the more ; for he who commends a feast irritates hunger. If we were to hear of Jesus, we should be ' viade to hear of joy and gladness, that the bones which were broken may rejoice.^ Broken they were with our Lent affliction and grief, yet still more with the sorrow of His passion ; but they shall rejoice at the tidings of His resurrection. Why, then, are you setting before us your Joseph when we have no relish for anything of which you speak except Jesus, especially to-day, when the Paschal Lamb is eaten, when Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us ? My brethren, I have given you an egg, or a nut ; break the shell, and you will find the meat. Let Joseph be in- vestigated, and Jesus will be discovered — the Paschal Lamb after whom ye hunger ; who has so much the more sweet- ness in the eating by how much there is more abstruseness in the hiding, and diligence in the seeking, and difficulty in the finding. You say to me, What has Joseph to do with Christ; what has the history which I proposed to do with this day ? Much in every way ;— call to mind the story, and the loving-kindness of the Mystery will reveal itself of its own accord, if only ye have Jesus as the In- terpreter, who to-day, rising from the letter that killeth, speaks to His own in the way, and opens to them the Scriptures J^ Surely such passages show how sweet were the meditations of many of these men amidst their MEDI.^VAL PREACHERS. cloisters. They desired to speak plainly ; it was only in the latter part of that long and, to us, dark age, that the reproofs of Anthony of Vieyra became necessary ; that great preacher says — and surely his language may stand as a rebuke to many of our modern follies in this way — " Let us learn from the heaven the way in which we are to arrange our matter and our words. How ought our words to be ? Like the stars. The stars are very distinct and very clear. So should be the style of sermons, very clear and very distinct. And have no fear lest on this account it should appear low and vulgar ; the stars, clear and distinct as they are, are most lofty. Style may be very clear and very lofty, so clear that those who are ignorant may understand it, and so lofty that those who are wise may have much to find out in it. The country- man finds in the stars rules for his husbandry, the mariner for his navigation, and the mathematician for his observa- tions and judgments. So that the countryman and the sailor, who can neither read nor write, understand the stars ; and the mathematician, who has read every book that was ever written, does not obtain to the complete understanding of the constellations. So a sermon might be : stars that all can see and very few can measure. " Yes, Father ; but this way of preaching is not ' the cultivated style.' I wish it were. This unfortunate style which is nowadays the fashion is called cultivated by those who wish to honour it, and obscure by those who condemn it. But even the latter do it too much honour."* The spirit of clearness and familiarity in these preachers led them to illustrate their discourse by * We quote no further from this sermon, as it has already been referred to in the " Throne of Eloquence," p. 113. 102 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. • stories, homely proverbs, and similes ; their business was to win their way to the hearts of the poor ; this is best illustrated by Mr. Gould ; some of the preachers from whom he cites, and whose names were quite unknown to us, had in the pulpit the fancy of Hans Andersen ; it is impossible to divest the mind of the feeling of an affectionate spirit pervading all they said ; they desired to rouse, inform, and comfort, and they succeeded. In our day genius has been too proud to condescend to the pulpit, or, even there, to the poor ; or if the poor are con- descended to, it is in mistaken language, as if they lacked the power of appreciating the beautiful, the tender, and the true. Some, it is true, stooped to buffoonery; they loved to reproduce, in coarse and homely guise, the manner of /Esop ; like John Rau- lin for instance. Francis Cosier followed in quite another style, and while we will not commend, nor give our sanction to it, any more than we would to the deliverance of one of Mrs. Gatty's parables from the pulpit, we think, in a day when the pulpit was everything in the way of teaching, when there were no press, no books, there must have been those to whom such lessons must have been very charming, touching as they did the superstitious fancies of the time. Francis Coster was born in 1 531, and died in 1 61 9, aged eighty-eight years. Mr. Gould says, in introducing the story : — " The stories Coster tells are very unequal. There is one delightful mediaeval tale reproduced by him which I shall venture to relate, as it is full of beauty, and inculcates a wholesome lesson. There is a ballad in German on the subject, to be found in Pocci and Gores' ' Fest Kalender,' MEDIEVAL PREACHERS. 103 which has been translated into English and published in some Roman children's books. "The story was, I believe, originated by Anthony of Sienna, who relates it in his Chronicle of the Dominican Order ; and it was from him that the preachers and writers of the Middle Ages drew the incident. With the reader's permission, I will tell the story in my own words, instead of giving the stiff and dry record found in Coster. " There was once a good priest who served a Church in Lusitania ; and he had two pupils, little boys, who came to him daily to learn their letters, and to be instructed in the Latin tongue. " Now these children were wont to come early from home, and to assist at mass, before ever they ate their breakfast or said their lessons. And thus was each day sanctified to them, and each day saw them grow in grace and in favour with God and man. "These little ones were taught to serve at the Holy Sacrifice, and they performed their parts with care and reverence. They knelt and responded, they raised the priest's chasuble and kissed its hem, they rang the bell at the sanctus and the elevation; and all they did they did right well. " And when mass was over they extinguished the altar lights ; and then, taking their little loaf and can of milk, retired to a side chapel for their breakfast. " One day the elder lad said to his master — " ' Good Father, who is the strange child who visits us every morning when we break our fast ? ' " ' I know not,' answered the priest. And when the children asked the same question day by day, the old man wondered, and said, ' Of what sort is he ? ' " ' He is dressed in a white robe without seam, and it reacheth from his neck to his feet.' " ' Whence cometh he ? ' " ' He steppeth down to us suddenly, as it were, from the 104 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. altar. And we asked him to share our food with us, and that he doth right wiUingly every morning.' " Then the priest wondered yet more, and he asked, * Are there marks by which I should know him, were I to see him?' " ' Yes, Father ; he hath wounds in his hands and feet ; and as we give him of our food the blood flows forth and moistens the bread in his hands, till it blushes like a rose.' " And when the master heard this, a great awe fell upon him, and he was silent a while. But at last he said gravely, ' O my sons, know that the Holy Child, Jesus, hath been with you. Now when He cometh again, say to Him, " Thou, O Lord, hast breakfasted with us full often ; grant that we brothers and our dear master may sup with Thee."' " And the children did as the priest bade them. The Child Jesus smiled sweetly as they made the request, and replied, ' Be it so ; on Thursday next, the day of My ascension, ye shall sup with Me.' "So when Ascension Day arrived, the little ones came very early as usual, but they brought not their loaf, nor the tin of milk. And they assisted at mass as usual ; they vested the priest, they lighted the tapers, they chanted the responds, they rang the bell. But when the Pax Vobiscum had been said they remained on their knees, kneeling behind the priest. And so they gently fell asleep in Christ, and they, with their dear master, sat down at the marriage supper of the Lamb." Without some such illustrations we could not give an adequate idea of the pulpit of the Middle Ages, for the preachers recited to the people stories, and traditions recalled from refectory lectures, and by kitchen fires of monasteries, many, probably, the mere invention of the cloisters, but we hope not always the inventions of designing men, merely to MEDIAEVAL PREACHERS. 105 delude and to hold in the snares of designing priest- craft. They all seemed, priests and laity, to live on such free-and-easy terms with the world of souls, and nervous, spiritual, and uninformed natures, wholly innocent of all scientific principles, having no proclivities towards inductive reasoning, that we cannot undertake to say to what extent they did or did not believe in their own tales. Those tales varied like national myths ; they seem to have been not so much transmitted from monas- tery to monastery, as to have been indigenous to many. Some of them very likely were always intended to be a kind of scarcely veiled parable ; one of the best known is that which passed into the "Magnum Speculum " from the pages of St. Antoninus of Florence. It is the story of a great preacher, the fame he acquired, and whom, at last, he turned out to be — and the most cautious and cultivated minds need not disdain the evident lesson the story tells. A great preacher was expected at a certain priory church, but at the very hour when the people expected his discourse he fell sick — preachers were not more ready on the spur of the moment then, than now ; — the prior was distressed, and knew not what to do, when at that very moment there came to the door of the priory a strange brother in the garb of the order. He saw the distress of the prior and inquired into its cause. " Ah ! " said he very piously, " you must trust in the Lord ; I hope that God by me will supply this want of yours. Let me enter into your library for a {&\^ moments. You need not toll the bell longer than usual ; I shall be ready." " Thanks ! thanks ! " said the prior, as io6 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. he led the strange brother into the hbrary. Arrived there, he turned over the "Summa" of St. Thomas, and the works of Albert the Great ; and in a few moments he was ready ; the strange Frater entered the pulpit ; it was indeed the Frater Diabolus. He talked wondrously on the joys of paradise, and the pains of hell, and the sin and the misery of the world ; and he moved all present to tears and com- punction by his eloquence ; but there was a holy man present who knew him, and while he wondered, he waited to mark the result. After the sermon he approached the Frater Diabolus. " Oh ! thou accursed one," said he, " vile deceiver, how couldst thou take this office upon thee?" And, adjured so, Frater Diabolus replied, " Think you my discourse would prevent a single soul from seeking eternal damnation ? Not so ; the most finished eloquence and profoundest learning are worthless beside one drop of unction ; there was no unction in my sermon. You see how I have moved the people, but they will forget all, they will practise nothing, and hence all the words they have heard will serve to their greater judgment," with which words Frater Diabolus vanished.* As much as we insist, it was also insisted in those days, that the preacher should be a builder, not of words, but of life, and of character ; nor did he dis- dain to talk with peasants by the wayside, with children on the grassy knoll, or rustic labourers following the plough. One of them said, "A spiritual pastor, like a real shepherd, should carry * We have recited another, but similar story of this distin- guished preacher in the " Throne of Eloquence," p. 2>1- MEDIJEVAL PREACHERS. 107 bread and salt in a bag, that is, the bread of good hfe and discretion ; he should use water for drink, that is, living water ; he should eat green herbs, that is, have provision of good examples ; he should keep a dog to guard the sheep, that is, a learned tongue ; he should wear coarse raiment, and a leathern girdle, indicating that he despises earthly pleasures and subdues the flesh ; he should sleep under a low roof, implying that he has no remaining city, but sighs after heaven ; he should have straw for his bed, as significative of living an austere life, and trees and leaves for sheets in heat, representing the words of Scripture which are his covering and defence ; he should have a crook for a staff, as implying his dependence on the cross ; a pipe to play on to collect the flock, denoting the voice of praise and prayer ; and a sling for the wolf, to signify the justice with which he may put to flight the devil."* We know of no work which does any justice to the pulpit of the mediaeval times, nor, indeed, to the history of the pulpit of any age ; the best is that by Dr. Lenz.f but it is brief and quite insufficient ; and innumerable names find no mention at all, although occupying a large share of the attention of their times. What do we now know of Berthold of Ratisbon — of the age of Frederick II. of Germany, whose tomb is still, we believe, to be seen at Ratisbon, with its inscription, " Bertholdus Magnus Predicator " ? We only know that sixty, and some- * " Bucchius — The Book of Golden Conformity." quoted in " Compitum." t " Geschichte der Christlichen Homiletik, etc.," von C. H. G. Lenz. ic8 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. times a hundred thousand persons assembled, hoping to see him, or to hear his voice ; and that still, in Bohemia, a field near Glatz, where he used to preach, is called the field of Berthold to this day. Great preachers in those ages were regarded with the enthusiasm which waits on great conquerors — they received the highest honours, and wealthy cities con- tended for the honour of hearing them. They were often great and marvellous missionaries too, and a halo of splendour and holy mysticism surrounds the memory of such men as St. Adalbert, the Apostle of Prussia, or John Corvino, the missionary to the Tartars, or St. Gall ; the words of such men were so persuasive and eloquent, that voices, it is said, were heard over the tops of the tall mountains, and mournful elegies through the woods and forests in the silence of the night, as if the broken idols were wailing amidst the acclamations of the people who had cast them into the fire, and into the water, at the call of the preachers. Such also were the effects which in later years followed the words of the great preachers of the Middle Ages, as they appeared in the rude, or rich cathedrals, or the market-places, and great broadways of French, Italian, or German cities. It was so with Bernardine of Sienna. At Bologna, it is said, all the dice tables were brought out and thrown into a vast fire in the centre of the square ; and after his preaching in Florence, in the great square of Santa Croce, the listeners erected a monument on the spot, on which was inscribed only the name of Jesus ; and it was so with Anthony of Padua, a name associated in our memory with much superstition, but who, after preaching in Pavia, MEDIEVAL PREACHERS. 109 burnt, in one fire, objects of licentiousness to the value of two thousand pieces of gold, and, after his sermons in Sienna, Modena, and Perugia, committed to the flames immense piles of what were termed the Castles of Satan ; books — "Ovid," " Martial," " Boc- caccio,"— and cards, ornaments and treatises of magic and necromancy. It is marvellous to hear of twenty tliousand persons assembling to hear him ; rising by night, and hastening, by the light of lanterns, to secure good places in the field in which he was to preach ; while the shops of the cities were closed and all business suspended. We smile at it, and perhaps do not regret that we have nothing like it now, or only by very remote resemblance ; but surely it illustrates the wonderful power of the preacher. These preachers attacked and reformed the vices of the ages. Their sermons, like those of Savonarola, combated the vices and the follies of the times — indecent ceremonies, ridiculous dresses, the painting of the face, the decorating of the hair ; — in many ways they had a faithfulness which would finish the popularity of a great preacher now. It will be very possible, in referring to the history of the pulpit of the Middle Ages, to find much to condemn or to which to take exception ; but the pulpit was a great power, and it was a power because it aimed at the consciences of men Thomas a Kempis was surnamed the " Hammer," from the force with which he struck the hearts of sinners. Philip Neri preached a sermon on " non-residence " before Pope Gregory, and thirty bishops, it is said, started to their episcopates the next day ; they were strange men, no doubt, often carried out of them- no THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. selves, even unto very questionable speeches, as St. Francis, who commenced a sermon at Spoletto, " Angels, men, devils ; " bad taste, and we wonder at it, but the effect produced by the sermon was not less marvellous ; the preacher, we are told, found the whole city rent and confused, torn with dissensions and enmities, and all parties by this sermon were reunited in love, and a band of sangui- nary robbers transformed into pacific and blessed men. Time would quite fail to tell of these preachers ; — of Fra Rocco, a celebrated Dominican preacher, a sort of spiritual Joe Miller ; he preached a cele- brated penitential sermon on one occasion ; all the audience were in terror and fell on their knees ; while they were showing every sign of contrition, he cried, "All who are truly penitent, hold up your hands." Every man in the vast multitude held up his hand ; then he said, " Holy Archangel Michael, thou who with adamantine sword standest at the judgment seat of God, cut me off every hand which has been held up hypocritically." Every hand dropped ! Nor can we omit to mention the name of St. Bernardine of Sienna, who imagined himself only fit to preach in small rustic towns in the height of his celebrity ; of Bernardine of Monte Feltro, who traversed Italy in all directions, and travelled on foot, through snow and rain, over rock and marsh ; of Jerome of St. Saviour, also one of those marvellous mystic men : then there was another preacher, his contemporary, Aretinus, to whom one said, " Those who hear Jerome are changed into other men ; they become devout in manner, and contrite in spirit ; those who hear you MEDIEVAL PREACHERS. Ill depart joyous and talkative, but they do not correct their ways." And Aretinus replied, " I will not deny my poverty and his virtues : what I find in books I bring forth with no fervour, nor do I kindle those flames in myself which I ought to excite in others. I am a coal, but almost extinct. How should I kindle my wood 1 But that poor and simple man is all burning, and all the sparks of his love kindle to a flame the cold fuel." This was that Jerome of whom it was said, " Go and hear the preacher of the best sentences, but the worst rhetoric ; gather the fruit and neglect the leaves , ' and even dukes and senates followed him when his sermons were ended. We wish that we had a more comprehensive account than has yet been published of these great preachers of the Middle Ages. Amidst all the abuses we are compelled to see, more than sacred eloquence, reli- gious power : it is a study in itself to contemplate the studies of these men. Meditation, long medita- tion, and painful searching of Scripture marked them all, or almost all* In many other instances, however, we shall find that the ministry has been power in proportion as it has been the work of the conscience upon the con- science. This is the truth of all true preaching ; it is a strange instrument for the Divine Spirit to play on, " the foolishness of preaching," but God does use it as a Divine instrument. Like the harp, or the organ, preachers are only the subjects of the fingers • The long and curious account of many of these forgotten men in the " Mores Catholici, or Ages of Faith," is, of course, by a most intolerant Papist ; but it is very interesting. See Vol. ii., Book vi.. Chap. v. 112 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. invisible to themselves. When Jerome asked Gre- gory of Nazianzen the meaning of a passage in Luke, he referred him to the exposition he would give of it in the church ; and there is, no doubt, as much difference between the private exhortation and the public preaching, as between private and public prayer ; the sense climbs higher and sinks deeper. One of these preachers of the post-mediseval times, most remarkable and most worthy of imitation, and now, by an admirable translation, most accessible, is the Father Segneri ; he did not indeed appear until the seventeenth century ; his sermons are per- vaded by intense earnestness, and justify the tradi- tion that he was inflamed, when young, by a holy missionary ardour to follow in the steps and career of Francis Xavier.* He was a Jesuit, and after he was ordained a priest, while he spent the half of every year in the meditative life of a recluse, he gave the other half to the task of traversing the towns, cities, and villages of Italy as a home missionary. He died in 1694. He has been called "the restorer of Italian eloquence." He certainly was a great pulpit reformer. He set Chrysostom before himself as his model, but he studied so closely as to become, while dignified and serious, colloquial and easy in his style ; in an age of great licentiousness, he re- buked with most remarkable vigour, strength, and boldness, the sins of the age. Of course, being a Romanist, the Protestant will find many things in these sermons, — stories, traditions, references to the ♦ See the edition in English, " The Quaresimale of P. Paolo Segneri," translated from the original Italian, by James Ford^ A .M., Prebendary of Exeter Cathedral. Three Vols. MEDIEVAL PREACHERS. 113 lives of the saints, — which will not only be displeasing, but even false from our point of view ; but they are remarkable pieces of faithful and firm handling of the consciences of hearers ; they may even be com- mended as especially suitable as models for our own times ; there is a very striking, happy, and impressive dealing with Scripture ; as with all the great mediaeval preachers, there is remarkable freedom too in the handling of Scripture ; and in the whole conduct of the discourse, whatever the topic or text, these men wandered with great ease through innumerable ways branching out from it. We admire Segneri ; it is impossible — even reading, and reading through a translation — not to be carried away irresistibly by his earnestness ; he allows no time for thought, he permits to his hearers no self-complacent survey of their own position, possessions, or attainments ; firm himself, and self-assured in every word, he uses all his words with the power of a master ; they are like lightning in the severity with which they search out the subterfuges of the soul, and set its sins before it; there is tenderness and love too, but the precious cup of consolation is only offered after the hearer is made to drink of the wine of astonishment. Hell was a great reality to him ; his pictures and per- sonifications of hell were very daring — as in the following passage, in which he deals with a well-known passage in Isaiah, often, both by Pro- testant and Papist preachers, misquoted and in- verted : — " What then, after all, have I this morning to do but pour forth two copious streams of inconsolable grief for the many 114 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. souls who see hell open before them, and yet do not draw back, but boldly press on to launch themselves into its flames ? Ah, no : stop, ye wretched beings, for a moment ; stop ! — and, before plunging with a headlong leap into that abyss, let me demand of you in the words of the same Isaiah — Which of you can dwell with the devouring fire ? Which of you can dwell with everlasting burnings 1 (xxxiii. 14, Vulg.). Excuse me, my people; for this once you are not to leave the church unless you have first made a satisfactory reply to my demand — Which of you can dwell with everlasting burnings 7 What sayest thou, O lady, who art so tender in cherishing thy flesh ? — Canst thou dwell with everlasting burnings ? Now thou canst not bear it should the point of a needle at thy work lightly stain thy delicate skin. How thinkest thou, then ? Wilt thou be able to endure those terrific engines by which thou must feel thyself dismembered, disjointed, and with an ever- lasting butchery crushed into powder? Wliat sayest thou, O man, who art so intent on providing for thy personal comforts ? — Canst thou dzvell with everlasting burnings? Now thou canst not tolerate the breath of a poor man who by coming near thee in the least offends thy organs of smell. Wilt thou be able to stand those foul stenches by which thou must feel thyself poisoned, stifled, and with an everlasting suffocation pressed down to the ground ? And thou, what sayest thou for thyself, O priest, who art so negligent in the discharge of thy duties ? — Canst thou dwell with everlasting burnings 1 Now thou art not able to remain in the choir of thy church a single hour without looking indecently about thee, without being restless, with- out indulging thy tongue in every kind of gossip. How then does it strike thee? Wilt thou be able to remain through all the ages of eternity, I say not, reclining on thy elegantly carved stall, but rather sti etched out on an iron frame-work, on a bed of flames, there to be Ustening to the demon's howls ringing in thy ears? What sayest MEDIEVAL PREACHERS. 115 thou, O glutton? What sayest thou, O slanderer? What sayest thou, O Ubertine? — thou young man, luxuriating so wantonly in all thy heart's desires ? — Canst thou dwell with everlasting burnings ? Alas ! who, who among us can ? And yet why do I thus enlarge on the case of other people ? Excuse me : of myself, of myself I ought to speak ; of myself, an ecclesiastic it is true, as cannot be denied from my dress, and yet a wretched creature, so unmortified, so headstrong, so vain, so averse to that true penitence which my sins demand of me ! If I am not able to remain for a short time before the presence of my Lord in tears for my sins, if I am so fond of my own ease, if I am so studious of my own reputation, how can I hereafter, wretch that I am, stand fixed for ever and ever at the feet of Lucifer, the place assigned to such as myself, to such as, having undertaken to confer benefits on other men and been gifted accordingly for that purpose with so much light and knowledge, and so many endowments, have betrayed my vow by my actions? Ah, Lord, have pity, have pity ! We have sinned ; we know it ; we confess it. ' We have done ungodly, we have dealt unrighteously in all Thy ordinances' (Baruch ii. 12). And therefore we cannot make bold to ask Thee not to punish us. Punish us, then, since we well deserve it. Reward the proud after their desei-ving (Ps. xciv. 2). Only, in Thine infinite mercy, may it please Thee not to sentence our souls to hell. O hell, O hell, the mere mention of thee is enough to over- whelm us with horror ! This is the punishment from which, not for our merit's sake, but for the sake of Thy agony, for the sake of Thy bloody sweat, we entreat Thee to deliver us. O Lord, correct me, but with judgment ; not in Thine anger, lest Thou bring me to nothing (Jer. x. 24). Behold us willing to suffer in this life the worst it may please Thee to bring upon us. Here, put us to pain ; here, chastise us \ here, lay 'I'hy rod upon us : ' Consume us here ; cut us to pieces here ; only spare us in Eternity I ii6 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. (St. Augustine). Send us poverty now, that we may be spared in Eternity. Send us reproach now, that we may be spared in Eternity. Send us sickness now, that we may be spared in Eternity. Send us just as many evils as may please Thee, in this world, provided we be spared for ever in the world to come — that we may be spared in Eternity ! that we may be spared in Eternity ! " This preacher had a very impressive and, usually, a very real and natural way of turning the incidents of the Old Testament to account for the purpose of alarming the conscience. " THE FALL OF JERICHO. " No one can know for a certainty when that time will be which God has appointed for the exercise of a vengeance terrible in proportion as it is delayed. This must depend upon the secret disposal of those judgments which the Father hath placed in His oivn power (Acts i. 7). For even the very heathen could say, ' The gods have feet of wool.' Hence they step so softly over thy head, that, with thy utmost attention, thou art not aware of their approach. Notwithstanding, if with any probability we may infer the future from the past, according to the famous saying of St. Jerome, 'Things future are known by things past,' I think we may designate the very hour with some probabiUty at least, if not with certainty. Attend, that you may know when that hour will be. All among you must well re- member the wonderful manner in which the city of Jericho was assaulted by the soldiers of Joshua. He had given orders that, during the space of seven mornings, they should carry the ark in circuit round the walls, that the armed troops should go before, that the unarmed people should follow after, and that the priests, every time of their going the round, should cause the trumpets to sound. This was MEDIEVAL PREACHERS. 117 accordingly done ! and precisely on the seventh day, at the sound of those trumpets, the walls fell down and the city was taken. Permit me now, in my own way, to offer a few weighty observations upon this victory, generally so well known. The first morning, when the besieged people of Jericho beheld from the top of their walls that imposing array and heard those trumpets, what a terrible panic must the poor souls have suffered ! They must have fancied that the soldiers were even already deploying for the attack, even already leaping on the ramparts, even already scaling the very battlements. But, when they soon afterwards perceiyed that all this noise was followed by no practical effect, they must have begun to breathe a little more freely. The second morning, when they witnessed a like repetition of the same performances, their fears must have assumed the form of surprise ; not one among them being able to comprehend what was the meaning of this clamorous demon- stration that all ended in nothing. The third morning their surprise must have degenerated into a disposition to smile, as was natural to people who now knew by repeated proof that the whole assault vented itself in empty sound. But then the fourth morning, and the fifth, and the sixth, when the besieged had more thoroughly recovered their spirits ; only conceive what must have been the laughter, the ridicule, the hisses, and the shoutings, with which they saluted the enemy from their heights. I can quite realise the scene to my mind. ' Yes,' they in all likelihood exclaimed, ' these fine trumpets of theirs sound beautifully. Take notice of their new invention for taking cities, not by the force of battering trains, but by the effect of sound ! Blow on merrily by all means ; for while you are blowing, we can be dancing. Why, what, in all seriousness, do you mean by this ? To frighten us out of our wits by your noise, when you are unable to subdue us by your valour ? We are none of those big, stupid birds who are brought down from their nests by mere dint of clattering noises. n8 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. If you have the hearts of men, take the trumpet out of your mouth ; come on, sword in hand ; and then we'll believe you.' Thus with every possible insult they may have cried aloud from their walls during those days. But, if at any time their fear must have been at the lowest point and their raillery at the highest, it was, if I mistake not, on the morning of the seventh day, preceded, as that day had been, by so many circumstances calculated to embolden their minds under a feeling of their security. And, behold, it was on that very morning that the entire overthrow of their city took place. At the seventh time, when the priests blew with the trumpets the wall fell down flat (Josh. vi. i6 — 20). Now you will conceive whether this overthrow was not all the more terrible from its being the less expected. The wretched inhabitants find themselves with a smile on their lips, when, on a sudden, behold their bastion walls tumbling down, their towers falling headlong, and themselves, too, involved in the dreadful crash. And then — what with the groans of some, who were wounded, of others, who were mangled to pieces, of others, who were smashed under the ruins — one simultaneous universal outcry of distress must have deafened the air and affrighted the very stars. The Israelites, in the meantime, each soldier at his proper post, pushed forward intrepidly over the gaping breach, and making their way over the bodies of the enemy, buried before they were dead, advanced with their pikes lowered, and their swords drawn. Taking different directions, they penetrated into the private dwellings, and scattered on every side blood, on every side havoc, on every side death; they quickly reduced the city to complete desola- tion. . . . " What was it you wished to learn from me, my dear sirs? — the time when destruction shall overtake the wicked? Do you know when it will be ? Why, when it overtook the people of Jericho, which is tantamount to saying with the prophet Isaiah, at the time when they were least MEDIJEVAL PREACHERS. 119 thinking about it, whose breaking cometh suddenly at an instant (Isa. xxx. 13). ... In the midst of your merriment the wrath of Heaven shall fall on you ; and, when you perceive how, all of a sudden, such irrecoverable ruin has overtaken you, 'Alas! alas!' you will exclaim, 'we are lost and undone 1 See the blood, see the slaughter, see the havoc, see the desolation, see the flames, see the plagues, see the death ! ' And amid such outcries as these, stunned and stupefied, you will terminate your lives, condemned, so to speak, even before you die. . . . When they shall say, Peace and safety {peace now, safety hereafter), then sudden destruction cometh ufon them . . . and they shall not escape (i Thess. v. 3). These are very fair illustrations of the method of this great Whitefield of the Italian pulpit ; here he is but little known, and anywhere, now, probably but little read : an ascetic philosophy does, no doubt, pervade much of his discourse ; but his sermons bear the marks of that spiritual retreat in which he passed so many months of every year, that life of meditation without which the life of the preacher becomes forced, wearied, unnatural, and jaded, from the incessant necessity laid upon him. In his cloister, too, he probably plumed his wings for those high and sweet meditative flights in which, again and again, he indulges, and as when he exclaims, at the close of the strange rapture entitled TJie Soul's Flight from Earth to Heaven, — " Let all here present determine to decline accepting whatsoever the earth has to offer us; and, Ufting up at last our eyes to heaven, let us say, Glorious thijigs, yes assuredly, glorious things are written of t/iee, thou City of God I" (Ps. Ixxxvii. 3). 120 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. Slight indeed, and quite inadequate to the wealth of the subject, are these few recollections of the pulpit in some of the more obscure centuries of the history of the Church ; but we have been desirous to lift it from that contempt with which a too severe Protestantism has been disposed to regard it, and it is indeed to be regretted that, instead of a few pages, we are not rather devoting a volume to disentombing from the old cloister libraries many of the words of these old Fathers. Let us be just to them. It was from no poverty of his own genius that Dr. Neale, at Sackville College, frequently preached some of these ancient sermons ; and he reprints some, giving all due acknowledgment to the authorship. Mr. Ashley has published three volumes of very interest- ing resuscitations and resurrections, * and has pre- faced each volume with some slight account of the preachers whose sermons he has reproduced. As our readers come to know these men they will find how remarkable they were for wise simplicity, and for a rememberable brevity. Old Dr. Burgess used to say that sermons of thorough-paced doctrine were those which went in at one ear and out at the other ; this was not a characteristic, certainly, of a great many of those preachers ; their words were uttered to be remem- bered, and contain a great many of those attributes which we have fondly imagined to be the marks of a later time. And, indeed, while we have *"The Festival Year with Great Preachers." By J. M. Ashley, B.C.L., Incumbent of St. Peter's, Vere Street. "A Year with Great Preachers." By J. M. Ashley, B.C.L., etc., etc. MEDI^.VAL PREACHERS. xzi attempted to do a little justice to these preachers of the foreign cloister, monastery, and church, we must not forget that we have had also in our own country, and especially in post-mediaeval times, those who in the same way illustrated the vocation of the preacher. CHAPTER V,. THE GREAT ENGLISH CARDINAL:* JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. \ WE may fairly presume that no name we could select could be better known to every circle of religious life in England, than that of Cardinal New- man. He has lived now fully in the eye of public opinion for many j^ears, and has been a very distin- guished leader in some schools of thought. His works are manifold, and spread over a large variety of fields and subjects. Reviewer and essayist, poet, hymn- writer, and novelist, historian, translator, and philo- sopher— no name in the religious life of our country in our times is more remarkable. His autobiography * The writer may be permitted to refer to a much more ex- tended attempt at an appreciation from his pen in the Eclectic Review, vol. vii., new series, which also received a most hearty and gracious acknowledgment from the Cardinal himself. t I. "Newman's Parochial Sermons," 6 vols. (1835, 1836, 1843, 1845, 1857). 2. "Sermons, chiefly on the Theory of Religious Behef," preached before the University of Oxford. By J. H. Newman. 1844. 3. "Sermons Bearing on Subjects of the Day." By J. H. Newman. 1844. 4. " Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations." By J. H. Newman, Priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. 1862. 5. "Sermons Preached on Various Occasions." ByJ.H. Newman, D.D., of the Oratory of St. Philip of Neri. 1870. yOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 123 of his mind and religious life and opinions is a most singular and instructive piece of religious work. Dating his conversion, and his experimental know- ledge of the truth as it is in Jesus, to Thomas Scott, of Aston Sandford, a teacher of the lowest of the Low Church school, John Henry Newman has passed through a succession of the phases and spheres of thought, until for many years he has been, we suppose, the most distinguished father of the Church of Rome in our country in our times. No name we could mention belonging to that Church is such a talisman of strength ; no name, we suppose, of that Church is more honoured and respected among Protestants, for largeness and width of attainment, — for manifest magnanimity and honesty of purpose, associated with such remarkable and invincible powers of casuistry, — for singular tenacity of logical coherence, allied to marvellous adroitness and subtlety of mind, related also to keenness of spiritual and mystical insight. Most of our great names dwarf themselves and become pale and shadowy by any attempt at com- parison with him ; whatever he does has such a power in it that it thrills through all the nerves and fields of thought like the shock from a battery of Leyden jars. So it has been with his work on " Justification," his " Essay on Development," and his " Grammar of Assent ; " while every essay he has written contains, at least, some nervous words which set the minds of thoughtful readers upon a pathway of new and exciting inquiry. But with all this we have nothing to do in our present chapter ; from the crowd of volumes he has given to the press, we select his several volumes of sermons. In the Church of 124 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. Rome he has, we suppose, never attained the emi- nence which he held as a preacher when Provost of Oriel, professor at Oxford, and Vicar of Littlemore ; nay, the Church of Rome, in her treatment of Dr. Newman, her most illustrious accession from the ranks of " heresy," seems to show how little she cares for such prizes, and how much more to her is bitter Ultramontanism, with its ambitious writhing and contortion, than the mediaeval grandeur, the large universal affluence of genius, of a man like the self- renouncing father of the Oratory of Birmingham. We have presented many models to our readers ; Father Newman is unlike them all ; he is eminently a preacher for preachers, a minister to ministers. It may be supposed that such preaching as his is good enough to empty most chapels and churches in two or three months. In his calm and most quiet mode of delivery, there is nothing to give impetuosity and force to thoughts which it takes a very thought- ful mind to find to be in any relation to the subject announced as the text. Transparently beautiful as is the style of composition — prose hovering on the border-land of music — it is a beauty which demands cultivation of mind for its appreciation. The very texts of Scripture quoted in illustration shine often as in new settings, and, while yielding rich instruction, do not the less surprise in their application. Then the imagination of Dr. Newman is singular ; it can scarcely be said to be the imagination of either the poet or the orator ; it is, more frequently than not, imagination without imagery. He is of imagination, we believe, all compact, but it is the imagination of the philosopher — imagination which shines without the JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 125 help of analogy ; it is an imagination of pure insight, and of a perception which lives in abstract relations. None of these characteristics are very favourable to the creation of what we call a popular preacher. He talks in another way sometimes ; but we speak of the ordinary style of his discourse. And then, in addition to these characteristics, his sermons are steeped in an intensely devotional spirit ; and, probably, those which may strike either hearer or reader most are those which seem so simple that it is as if there was nothing in them. But altogether we should not expect that the multitude would ever be carried away by such pulpit performances as these. A sacred reserve hangs a curtain round the "treatment of every topic. Here, in these discourses, there is no nimble rushing at it, no audacity of self- assertion, no intolerant arrogance of self-will ; the auditors are not charmed by being informed that all the ages have been upon a wrong scent, and that the right view has just been discovered by the present preacher, who announces it here and now. It is perhaps the vice of Dr. Newman's nature, that he defers so anxiously and reverently to authority and antiquity. The lovers of the noisy, and the new, certainly find little aliment from such sermons as his ; from first to last, a tingling solemnity of purpose pervades them, and they read and sound like the utterances of a man who has realised all speaking and preaching to be an infinitely solemn and grave affair. Now, with all these drawbacks, may we conceive such a man to be a great preacher ? That must depend very much upon the character of the mind 126 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. receiving the ministration ; for, indeed, it is a dread- fully solemn and serious thing to think of innumerable characters who are what we call popular preachers. Suppose we were to attempt to sketch a gallery of paintings of those whom we should not like to regard as model preachers, — most of whom would look upon Newman as beneath the condescension of their con- sideration— who insult God, first, by a form of speech which would be intolerable, and disgraceful, if its tone were adopted to any human being, and then, with magisterial airs, proceed to lay down truths never felt, but which nobody denies, with abundant sharpness of definition, the force of which they never knew nor perceived ; big, burly, and bumptious, sounding and hollow as a drum, " moods imperative in breeches," as we have just seen them called, set apart to expound and sustain a truth of which they have perhaps no living apprehension — a word which, perhaps, they even seek to bring into contempt, as if they had taken a retainer for that very purpose. Are there not many of these about — noisy elocutionists, who fancy that souls are to be fed on wind .-* And are there not many people who love to have it so, and who would fancy that in the wonderful sermons of John Henry Newman they were indeed threshing chaff, ignorant all the time that they themselves are filling themselves with husks and draff, the appropriate food of swine ?* Our readers do not need to be informed that, as a * We some time since heard of one of these worthies who actually commenced his prayer in a distinguished London pulpit by addressing God as " O Ihou who alone hast power to say to us, Absolvo te / " yOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 127 preacher, it was at Oxford, and, especially in the University Church, Dr. Newman was first known as a remarkable power. The church, when he preached, was usually thronged by not less than five or six hundred graduates, besides the other members of the congregation. He preached, usually, in the after- noon ; the church was suffused, as those who know it will remember, in the dim sepulchral light ; the preacher stood himself in the shadow, like a being who had stepped forth from another world, a thin, feeble, spectral-looking form ; his voice melodious and yet powerful from its depths, as one has said, like the flow of liquid silver, — no earthquake, wind, nor fire, — but in truth, a " still small voice." His manner was as silent ; no movement of the body, scarcely a movement of the hand ; the eye quiet, but full of life ; nothing that looked like attempting to preach, nothing that seemed attempting to be fine ; yet every tone, and every word full of conviction, piercing to the convictions of every hearer, and fold- ing the whole audience within its compass of power. Such was the preaching of John Henry Newman. The audience was extraordinary ; it was composed, for the most part, of the members of the most dis- tinguished English University ; of men who, of all ranks, whatever they might be themselves, demanded thoroughness, and who would listen to nothing for any length of time, or for any number of times, which had not the stamp of thoroughness. No mere voice would tell there, no attempt at display, only invincible convictions ; and these the whole Univer- sity life of the preacher eminently displayed. His transparent clearness of style, his elevated blameless 128 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. life assisted each other. His imagination, as we have said, reveals and revels in no rhapsodical or highly- coloured utterance ; he seems to fulfil, — and he especially did so in the great position he occupied in those days, — a canon which he has himself laid down in his " Grammar of Assent," " It is the least par- donable fault in an orator to fail in clearness of style, and it is the most pardonable fault of a poet." Let us take as illustrations of the style of speech in those days the following ; and the circumstances of the place and audience surely must have ministered greatly to the power and impressiveness of the words : — " THE INDIVIDUALITY OF EVERY HUMAN SOUL. " I say immortal souls. Each of those multitudes not only had while he was upon earth, but has a soul, which did in its own time but return to God who gave it, and not perish, and which now lives unto Him. All those millions upon millions of human beings who ever trod the earth, and saw the sun successively, are at this very moment in exist- ence all together. This, I think, you will grant, we do not duly realise. All those Canaanites whom the children of Israel slew, every one of them is somewhere in the universe now at this moment, where God has assigned him a place. We read, ' They utterly destroyed all that was in Jericho, young and old.' Agiin, as to Ai : ' So it was, that all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thou- sand.' Again, 'Joshua took Makkedah, Libnah, Lakish, Eglon, Hebron, Debir, and smote them with the edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed all the souls that were therein.' Every one of those souls still lives. They had their separate thoughts and feelings when on earth ; they have them now. They had their likings and pursuits ; they gained what they thought good, and enjoyed it ; and they JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 129 still somewhere or other live, and what they then did in the flesh surely has its influence upon their present destiny. They live, reserved for a day which is to come, when all nations shall stand before God. " But why should I speak of the devoted nations of Canaan, when Scripture speaks of a wider, more compre- hensive juds;ment, and in one place appears to hint at the present state of awful waiting in which they are who were involved in it? What an overwhelming judgment was the flood ! All human beings on the earth but eight were cut off" by it. That the old world of souls still lives, though ts material tabernacle was drowned, Scripture, I say, signi- fies— obscurely, indeed, yet still, as it appears, certainly. St. Peter speaks of the 'spirits in prison,' that is then in prison, who had been ' disobedient,' * when once the long- suffering of God waited in the days of Noah.' Those many, many souls, who were violently expelled from their bodies by the waters of the deluge, were alive two thousand years afterwards, when St. Peter wrote. Surely they are alive still. " And so of all the other multitudes we anywhere read of. All the Jews who perished in the siege of Jerusalem still live ; Sennacherib's army still lives ; Sennacherib himself still lives ; all the persecutors of the Church that ever were are still alive. The kings of Babylon are still alive ; they are still, as they were described by the prophet, weak indeed now, and in ' hell beneath,' but having an account to give, and waiting for the day of summons. All who have ever gained a name in the world, all the mighty men of war that ever were, all the great statesmen, all the crafty counsellors, all the scheming aspirants, all the reckless "adventurers, all the covetous traders, all the proud voluptu- aries, are still in being, though helpless and unprofitable. Balaam, Saul, Joab, Ahithophel, good and bad, wise and ignorant, rich and poor, each has his separate place, each dwells by himself in that sphere of light or darkness which 9 130 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. he has provided for himself here. What a view this sheds upon history ! We are accustomed to read it as a tale or a fiction, and we forget that it concerns immortal beings, who cannot be swept away, who are what they were, however this earth may change. " And so, again, all the names we see written on monu- ments in churches and churchyards, all the writers whose names and works we see in libraries, all the workmen who raised the great buildings, far and near, which are the wonder of the world — they are all in God's remembrance, they all live. " It is the same with those whom we ourselves have seen, who now are departed. I do not now speak of those whom we have known and loved. These we cannot forget ; we cannot rid our memory of them ; but I speak of all whom we have ever seen : it is also true that they live — where, we know not, but live they do. We may recollect when children, perhaps, once seeing a person, and it is almost like a dream to us now that we did. It seems like an accident which goes, and is all over, like some creature of the moment, which has no existence beyond it. The rain falls, and the wind blows ; and showers and storms have no existence beyond the time when we felt them : they are nothing in themselves. But if we have but once seen any child of Adam, we have seen an immortal soul. It has not passed away as a breeze or sunshine, but it lives ; it lives at this moment in one of those many places, whether of bliss or misery, in which all souls are reserved until the end. " Or again, let us call to mind those whom we knew a little better, though not intimately : — all who died suddenly, or before their time, all whom we have seen in high health and spirits, all whom we have seen in circumstances which in any way brought out their characters, and gave them some place in our memories. They are gone from our sight, but they all live still, each with his own thoughts ; they are waiting for judgment." JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 131 We have referred to Dr. Newman's usual method of selecting his subject from some suggestion in the service of the day ; as an illustration we may take a passage from one of the Advent Sermons, on the preparation for Christ's coming. The whole sermon is alive, but we may take this passage. "worship in winter. " Year after year, as it passes, brings us the same warn- ings again and again, and none perhaps more impressive than those with which it comes to us at this season. The very frost and cold, rain and gloom, which now befall us, forebode the last dreary days of the world, and in religious hearts raise the thought of them. The year is worn out ; spring, summer, autumn, each in turn have brought their gifts and done their utmost ; but they are over, and the end is come. All is past and gone, all has failed, all has sated : we are tired of the past ; we would not have the seasons longer; and the austere weather which succeeds, though ungrateful to the body, is in tone with our feelings, and acceptable. Such is the frame of mind which befits the end of the year, and such the frame of mind which comes alike on good and bad at the end of life. The days have come in which they have no pleasure ; yet they would hardly be young again, could they be so by wishing it Life is well enough in its way, but it does not satisfy. Thus the soul is cast forward upon the future ; and in proportion as its conscience is clear, and its perception keen and true, does it rejoice solemnly that ' the night is far spent, the day is at hand,' that there are ' new heavens and a new earth ' to come, though the former are failing ; it will * soon see the King in His beauty,' and ' behold the land which is very far off.' These are feelings for holy men in winter and in age, waiting, in some dejection perhaps, but with comfort on the whole, and calmly, though earnestly, for the advent of Christ. 132 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. "And such too are the feelings with which we now come before Him in prayer day by day. The season is chill and dark, and the breath of the morning is damp, and worship- pers are few ; but all this befits those who are by profession penitents and mourners, watchers and pilgrims. More dear to them that loneliness, more cheerful that severity, and more bright that gloom, than all those aids and appli- ances of luxury by which men nowadays attempt to make prayer less disagreeable to them. True faith does not covet comforts. It only complains when it is forbidden to kneel, when it reclines upon cushions, is protected by curtains, and encompassed by warmth. Its only hardship is to be hindered, or to be ridiculed, when it would place itself as a sinner before its Judge. They who realise that awful day when they shall see Him face to face, whose eyes are as a flame of fire, will as little bargain to pray pleasantly now, as they will think of doing so then. "One year goes, and then another, but the same warnings recur. The fro^t or the rain comes again ; the earth is stripped of its brightness ; there is nothing to rejoice in. And then, amid this unprofitableness of earth and sky, the well-known words return ; the prophet Isaiah is read ; the same Epistle and Gospel, bidding us 'awake out of our sleep,' and welcome Him 'that cometh in the name of the Lord ; ' the same collects, beseeching Him to prepare us for judgment. Oh, blessed they who obey these warning voices, and look out for Him, whom they have not seen, because they ' love His appearing ! ' " When the question is put. Who may be regarded as the greatest preacher of our age } the answ^er will probably depend, in no inconsiderable degree, upon the mental or moral character of the respondent. To many, the name of Robertson of Brighton would instantly occur ; but the field he filled while living JOHN HENRY NEIVAIAN. 133 was a mole-hill to the Alps compared with that filled by Newman ; nor was it as the mere utterer that either the first or second of these eminent persons chiefly attained or held his influence. Robertson indeed had more, we suppose, of that flow and passion which makes the popular speaker ; but in him this perhaps never became oratory. New- man, on the other hand, is calm and passionless as marble, at any rate as an ascetic. The admiration of Robertson, we fancy, must be not a little dependent upon a certain sceptical and rationalistic taste in the experience of the reader ; and admiration for New- man must be all but utterly dependent upon a dis- position of the mind and heart towards the certainties of faith. When Robertson was at Oxford he heard Newman preach ; and it is not possible to read his sermons and fail to see that, in many instances, Robertson's mode of treatment, — mode of looking at a character or an event, — is greatly anticipated in Newman's method and style, so much so that we feel assured it was Newman's nature which set Robertson's on fire. Still, the orders of mind and heart touched will be very different. We suppose the fame of New- man's sermons can never be so extensive as that of Robertson's, for they demand more. They are sus- tained ; they are profoundly, and beyond ordinary experience, experimental ; they are large in their knowledge of Scripture ; they are uncaptious and unquestioning; they are quiet even to a fault; at the same time they abound in those sudden turns of expression which are insight and intuition ; but com- paratively few of them are very popular. They are beautiful often with a beauty that absolutely over- 134 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. whelms ; but it is a beauty still only perceptible to tired and much-tried natures, to minds which have ached beneath the burden of the long and weary way of knowledge-seeking and rest-finding. Yet his sermons appeal to the fine intelligence of the times in which we live; all of them do this, and do it in a very eminent manner. From the pulpit of our times we have no speci- mens of higher culture than in the sermons of Dr. Newman. We feel, while we read or hear, that we are in contact with a mind familiar with everything — familiar with the whole scope of Divine truth, whether as taught in the Book or illustrated by the various ChurcheS; — familiar, too, with all that large classical knowledge and an amazingly inquisi- tive mind bestow. Protestants, perhaps, might be surprised to find, amongst his very latest sermons, one entitled, " Intellect, the Instrument of Religious Training." And it, as so many of his sermons, shows distinctly how he, who has lived all his life like a monk, knows and reads the tendencies, difficulties, and characteristics of the mind of the age. How truly he says, in the course of a para- graph too lengthy to quote entire, *' If a man have more talent, there is the chance that he will have less goodness ; if he be careful about his religious duties, there is the chance he is behindhand in general knowledge ; and, in matter of fact, in particular cases, persons may be found correct and virtuous who are heavy, narrow-minded, and unin- tellectual, and, again, unprincipled men who are brilliant and amusing ; and thus you see how that particular temptation comes about, when boyhood is yOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 135 past and youth is opening, not only that the soul is plagued and tormented by the thousand tempta- tions which rise up within it, but it is exposed, more- over, to this sophistry of the evil one, whispering that duty and religion are very right, indeed admirable, supernatural, — who doubts it ? — but that somehow or other religious people are very dull or very tiresome ; nay, that religion itself, after all, is more suitable to women and children than to men. Is it not so that when your mind began to open, in proportion as it opened, it was by that very opening made rebellious against what you knew to be duty ? In matter of fact, was not your intellect in league with disobedience ? Instead of uniting knowledge and religion as you might have done, did you not set one against the other ? " etc., etc. This is a strain of remark with which Dr. Newman's sermons abound ; and all of them do very much address the intellect on behalf of religion — the reason, the understanding of the hearer. All the sermons read and ring with an accent which seems addressed to men, — reading, thinking, it may be suffering, it may be sinning men, — but still their searching voice seems to address itself eminently to men. At the same time, a spirit of earnest expos- tulation, as from one who has the right and authority to expostulate, glows along many words. What would our Protestant congregations in general think of a preacher who should indulge in such a tone of affectionate entreaty as that in the following words } — " You have not come near the courts or the mansions of 136 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. the great ; yet you ape the sins of Dives, while you are strangers to his refinement. You think it the sign of a gentleman to set yourselves above religion, to criticise the religious, and professors of religion, to look at Catholic and Methodist with impartial contempt, to gain a smattering of knowledge on a number of subjects, to dip into a number of frivolous publications if they are popular, to have read the latest novel, to have heard the singer, and seen the actor of the day, to be up to the news, to know the names, and, if so be, the persons of public men, to be able to bow to them, to walk up and down the streets with your heads on high, and to stare at whatever meets you ; — and to say and do worse things, of which these outward extravagances are but the symbol. And this is what you conceive you have come upon earth for ! The Creator made you, it seems, O my children, for this work and office, to be a bad imitation of polished ungodliness, to be a piece of tawdry and faded finery, or a scent which has lost its freshness, and does but offend the sense ! Oh that you could see how absurd and base are such pretences in the eyes of any but yourselves ! No calling of life but is honourable ; no one is ridiculous who acts suitably to his calling and estate ; no one who has good sense and humility but may, in any station of life, be truly well-bred and refined; but ostenta- tion, affectation, and ambitious efforts are, in every station of life, high or low, nothing but vulgarities. Put them aside, despise them yourselves, O my very dear sons, whom I love, and whom I would fain serve ! Oh that you could feel that you have souls ! Oh that you would have mercy on your souls ! Oh that, before it is too late, you would betake yourselves to Him who is the Source of all that is truly high and magnificent and beautiful, all that is bright and pleasant, and secure, what you ignorantly seek, in Him whom you so wilfully, so awfully despise ! " We have referred before to the peculiarity of Dr. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN, 137 Newman's dealing with texts and topics, usually, apparently, finding the subject of his discourse sug- gested either from one of the Lessons, the Gospel, or the Epistle for the day. He usually extracts an unexpected lesson from it ; thus the text John i. 40, " One of the two which heard John speak and followed Him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother." Such is the foundation upon which we have a sermon, natural, simple, and eminently beautiful, on " The World's Benefactors." The subject comes about in this way : Very little indeed is known of Andrew ; yet he is represented as closely in the con- fidence of Christ, and as the means of the first con- versions to Christ — among others, Peter. Andrew is scarcely known except by name, while Peter has held the place of honour all over the Church ; yet Andrew brought Peter to Christ. Then comes the doctrine from the text, that those men are not necessarily the most useful men in their generation, nor the most favoured by God, who make the most noise in the world, and who seem to be principals in the great changes and events recorded in history. The subject is carried through a series of ingenious illustrations. This is the operation in the law of God's government in the introduction of temporal blessings. Who was the first cultivator of corn } Who first discovered the medicinal herbs .'' Those who first suggest the most happy inventions are commonly supplanted ; so Providence acts. A large portion of the Old Testament is written by authors unknown ; so with the liturgies of the Church. Who found out the first musical tunes in which we offer praise ? Who raised the great old fabrics all over the country 138 THE VOCATION OT THE PREACHER. in which we worship ? Then follows the great lesson. These things are not to sadden nor vex us ; they are to reconcile us to the faith that the triumph of the truth in all its forms is postponed for the next world : hidden are the saints of God ; if they are known to men, it is accidentally, etc. Or take his sermon on St. Luke's Day, and there, singularly enough, we have a discourse on the danger of accomplishments, from Exodus xxxi. 6, " In the hearts of all that are wise-hearted I have put wisdom," because St. Luke differed from his fellow- Evangelists and disciples in having received the advantages of what is called a liberal education ; this is manifest in his writings, which are superior in composition to any part of the New Testament, excepting the Epistles of St. Paul. And then follows a most searching sermon to the age : " Accom- plishments, the elegant arts and studies, such as poetry, literary composition, painting, music, and the like, have a tendency to make a man trifling. Of this opinion, and how far it is true, and how far not true," he says, " I am going to speak, being led to the consideration of it by the known fact that St. Luke was a polished writer, and yet an Evangelist." " The danger of an elegant and polite education is, that it separates feeling and acting ; it teaches us to think, speak, and be affected aright, without forc- ing us to practise what is right." This is illustrated from the danger of a large acquaintance with works of fiction. " We have nothing to do, we read, are affected, softened or roused, and that is all ; we cool again, nothing comes of it." " We must not allow refinement to stand in the place of hardy, rough- JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 139 handed obedience." " And here I might speak of that entire reh'gious system, miscalled religious, which makes Christian faith consist, not in the honest and plain practice of what is right, but in the luxury of excited religious feeling, in a mere medi- tating on our blessed Lord, and dwelling, as in a reverie, on what He has done for us ; for such indo- lent contemplation will no more sanctify a man, in fact, than reading a poem or listening to a psalm tune." Then follow remarks on the dangers lying in the art of literary composition, which has a tendency to make us artificial and insincere. " To be always attending to the fitness and propriety of our words is a kind of acting ; and knowing what can be said on both sides of a subject is a main step towards thinking one side as good as another." Then follows a discussion of this principle carried into religious conversation — " talking on the appropriate subjects of religious meditation, trying to show piety ; this many persons consider the highest part of religion, and call it spiritual conversation, the test of a spiritual mind. I call," he continues, " all formal and intentional expression of religious emo- tions, all studied passionate discourse, dissipation, a drain and waste of our religious and moral strength for the pleasure of immediate excitement." Such is his method of seizing a text and revolving it. A fine instance we have in the sermon called, "The Religious Use of Excited Feelings," from the instance of " The man out of whom the devils were departed ; he besought Him that he might be with Him ; but Jesus sent him away, saying, Return to thine own house, and show how great things God 140 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. has done unto thee." It is a most pathetic and beautiful sermon, showing how first earnest, ardent feelings, which wait on the early exercises of con- science and reason, take away from the beginnings of obedience its grievances ; and the Christian life will be in " following on to know the Lord," when the first feelings have died away, " labouring in darkness, apparently out of the Saviour's sight, in the home of your own thoughts, surrounded by sights of this world, and showing forth His praise among those who are cold-hearted." We believe it will be impossible carefully to set before the mind any of these sermons without feel- ing with what subtlety and power the preacher has touched, and touches the springs of life, and what may be called the philosophy of action. Many have been the able sermons from the story of Balaam ; none, we suppose, more remarkable than that in these volumes entitled, "Obedience without Love." Balaam's history, the preacher says, reveals " a man Divinely favoured, visited, influenced, guided, protected, emi- nently honoured, illuminated ; a man possessed of an enlightened sense of duty, and of moral and religious acquirements, educated, high-minded, con- scientious, honourable, firm ; and yet on the side of God's enemies, personally under God's displeasure, and in the end, if we go on to that, the direct in- strument of Satan, and having his portion with the unbelievers. I do not think I have materially over- stated any part of this description." " The solution is, that Balaam obeyed God from a sense of its being right to do so, but not from a desire to please Him from fear and love. He had other ends, aims, wishes JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 141 of his own, distinct from God's will and purpose ; and he would have effected these if he could. His endeavour was, not to please God, but to please self without displeasing God, and to pursue his own ends as far as was consistent with his duty. You will observe he wished to go with Balak's messengers, only he felt he ought not to go ; and the problem which he attempted to solve was, how to go, and yet not offend God." Like so many of the sermons, this is full of an instructive, subtle, and searching series of distinctions. But vain is the work of illustration. It appears to us that every sermon is nearly equally rich in some suggestive side-light thrown upon the text, which is made to illuminate, from that point of view, the whole of the discourse. Charles Kingsley, in his ungenerous attack on Dr. Newman some years since, was tolerably right in one expression. It is not likely, we suppose, he ever heard Dr. Newman preach, otherwise he could never have stumbled upon so utterly unlike a description of him ; but when he says that each sermon was studiously pre- pared for the expression of one word or sentence, which was intended to tell and carry the mind of the audience, he seems to us to have been more nearly right than he himself knew. The text preached from has conveyed to the mind of the preacher one im- pression ; usually it is a fresh, new, unexpected one ; and that, just as in the instances we have cited, is insisted upon throughout the discourse ; the hearer is in no danger of forgetting it. Dr. Newman's sermons belong to that order which teaches, not the diffusion of thought and illustration over many topics, 142 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. but the gathering up all for the purpose of elucidating and enforcing one. We are not aware that our age furnishes us, and especially in our own country, with any other instance of a preacher who has so thoroughly pos- sessed himself of all the knowledge of the schools. It is as if we had an ancient schoolman of the times of Abelard, Anselm, William of Ockham, or Albert the Great, in the pulpit. Not that the casuistry of the preacher at all interferes with the simplicity of his discourse. As we have said, there is a masterly clearness of style, also in most instances a masterly brevity. It is astonishing that so much can be said, and said to such purpose, in so short a space. New- man presents a very fair and fine illustration to those who demand short sermons as most effective for pulpit ministration ; and great and powerful as his sermons are, if they do not attain to, they certainly approach the ideal of the Abbe Mullois, to which we have already made considerable reference.* There is no needless accumulation of words ; diffuseness in a sermon may result from this, which is a mere and unpardonable vice; or it may result from copious- ness of description, what is called word-painting ; and in this Dr. Newman never indulges. His illus- tration, when he uses it, shines with a sudden stroke, as when he says — " This is conscience ; and from the nature of the case its very existence carries on our mind to a Being exterior to ourselves, for else whence did it come ? and to a Being superior to ourselves, else whence its strange troublesome peremptoriness ? " Throne of Eloquence," p. 357. JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 143 As the sunshine implies the sun is in the heavens, though we see it not ; as a knocking at our door at night implies the presence of one outside in the dark, who asks for admittance, so this word within us, not only instructs us up to a certain point, but necessarily raises our mind to the idea of a teacher, — an unseen teacher." This is the way in which he uses his illustrations ; they are numerous, rapid, and sufficient. Great as might be the preacher's power of imagination, we have said it is the imagination of a philosopher rather than that of a poet ; his most eminent mastership is in the domain of logic. It is curious to know that he used to say of the work of his intimate friend. Archbishop Whately, that "his ' Logic ' was a most interesting book ; but there was one thing not to be found in it, and that was logic!'* His sermons are far from being illustrations of formal logic, yet in every one, we believe, may be traced a subtle, coherent, logical unity and harmony ; they are all processes of proof. Whatever idea seizes him must give to him an account of itself It seems as if not a word is put down, or uttered which has not been weighed. We know of no preacher so interesting and at the same time so argumenta- tively coherent. Hence, a Catholic, and with all his love of symbolism, and the large natural poetic furniture of his mind, we cannot speak of Dr. New- man as among mystics — those to whom their own simple consciousness, and mere unreason and un- reasoning intuition is sufficient ; we have often had * "Mozley's Reminiscences, chiefly of Oriel College," vol. i. p. 29. 144 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. occasion to say how charming are the rays of light from such minds. In a very real manner he lives, moves, and has his being in a spiritual world ; but he seems to have made a perfect stairway to it through the processes of the understanding. He talks of the most mystical and tingling truths like one to whom they have becothe accessible through deep and thorough culture ; or rather — shall we say? — the faith which he found without demonstration was by him taken as a light, and followed back, through demon- stration after demonstration, until all its parts were found consistent, essential, and coherent in the nature of things ; so that his whole works, certainly all his sermons, constitute a kind of " Grammar of Assent," a dealing with the elements of the syntax of truth, a conducting of the mind from its own nature into the principles of revelation. Perfectly invaluable in this way are his sermons on the " Theory of Religious Belief," in which he teaches how all men reason ; for to reason is nothing more than to gain truth from former truth without the intervention of sense, to which brutes are limited ; and he exemplifies this in the following ingenious passage, illustrating what he has well discriminated as implicit and explicit reasoning ; he says — " In the Epistle for this day we have an account of St. Peter, when awakened by the angel, obeying him implicitly, yet not understanding while he obeyed. He girt himself, and bound on his sandals, and cast his garment about him, and went out and followed him, yet wist not it was true which was done by the angel, but thought he saw a vision. Afterwards, when he was come to himself, he said, ' Now I know of a surety that the Lord hath sent His angel and y OHN HENR Y NE WMA N. 145 hath deUvered me.' First he acted spontaneously; then he contemplated his own acts. This may be taken as an illustration of the difference between the more simple faculties and operations of the mind and that process of analysing and describing them which takes place upon reflection. We not only feel and think and reason, but we know that we feel and think and, reason ; not only know, but can inspect and ascertain our thoughts, feelings, and reasonings ; not only ascertain, but describe. Children, for a time, do not realise even their material frames, or, as I may say, count their limbs ; but as the mind opens, and is cultivated, the.y turn their attention to soul as well as body, they contemplate all they are, and all they do, they are no longer beings of impulse, instinct, conscience, imagination, habit, or reason merely, but they are able to reflect upon their own mind, as if it were some external object j they reason upon their reasonings." This beautiful and cogent passage seems to be a very fair illustration of that which the mind of this great preacher is in a very eminent degree. It illus- trates his structure and very much of the method and style of his preaching and teaching. And there is nothing more remarkable and worthy of notice in the sermons of Newman than their sustained tone of solemn, serious purpose ; we make this remark because in his numerous other works he often ex- hibits liveliness of wit, pungency of repartee, and a very evident competency to use those more carnal and purely literary weapons, which, in the sermons, are entirely laid aside. No one at all acquainted with his various lectures and reviews, extending over many volumes, can doubt that it must be by the exercise of a very sacred conscientiousness that he abstains 10 146 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. from all these, which may be regarded as belonging to a lower region ; and all the sermons breathe lofty, meditative, untroubled repose. It compels our very great respect, that one, evidently so ready with a trenchant blade, so fond of indulging even in the very jocularity of lively humour, should with such severity discriminate between things that differ. Perhaps our readers will remember his imaginary lecture on John Bullism, in which he shows, certainly by a most justifiable and not altogether unastonishing ad hominem, in reply to those who are so ready to prove that Rome has the number of the beast in Revelation, that, in reality, Queen Victoria has that number. Of course the whole thing is a joke. He says, " Gentlemen, can it surprise you to be told, after such an exposition of the blasphemies of England, that, astonishing to say, Queen Victoria is distinctly pointed out, in the Book of the Revelation, as having the number of the beast .'' You will recollect that that number is 666. Now she came to the throne in the year '37, at which date she was eighteen years old ; multiply, then, thirty-seven by eighteen, and you have the very number, 666, which is the mystical emblem of the lawless king." A volume might be compiled upon the almost innumerable persons to whom has been attached the theory of the mystic number, 666. Edward Elliott, with cogent learning, fitted it on to the Papacy in his " Horas Apocalypticae." Lord Macaulay, when in India, was suddenly attacked by an Englishman, to whom he had never spoken, and whom he did not know, exclaiming, * Pray, Mr. Macaulay, do you not JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 147 think that Buonaparte was the beast ? " " No, sir, I cannot say that I do." " Sir, he was the beast; I can prove it ; I have found the number 666 in his name: why, sir, if he was not the beast, who was?" " This was a puzzHng question," says Macaulay, "and I am not a httle vain of my answer. 'Sir,' said I, ' the House of Commons is the beast. There are six hundred and fifty-eight members of the House ; and these, with their chief officers — the three clerks, the Serjeant and his deputy, the chaplain, the door- keeper, and the librarian — make six hundred and sixty-six ! ' " His interlocutor, however, would pursue his demonstration, and Macaulay thought he regarded him as a very wicked fellow, and believed that he went away determined to write Macaulay 's name in Tamul, leaving out T. in Thomas, B. in Babington, and M. in Macaulay, which he says would give to himself the number of this unfortunate beast, and which was exactly the process by which he had fixed the number on Napoleon, spelling the name in Arabic, and leav- ing out two letters. The happiest illustrations of this dancing kind of humour may be found in Newman's " Lectures on University Subjects ;" especially we might refer to the Lecture on Elementary Studies, and the imagin- ary examination of Mr. Brown, with the illustration of the poetry of Mr. Brown, a candidate for Univer- sity examination ; also to Mr. Black's confession of his search after a Latin style. The same power of satire and humour is abundantly evident in his " Loss and Gain," the picture of the young clergyman, amidst all his spiritual difficulties, exclaiming, " I wish I knew what Christianity was. I'm ready to be 148 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. at pains to seek it ; but, at present, God can bless my reading to my spiritual illumination as well as any- thing else. Saul sought his father's asses, and found a kingdom. All in good time ; when I've taken my degree the subject will properly come on me." But inasmuch as the humorist and satirist are not present in Dr, Newman's sermons, we need not do more here than admire the restraint which is evident from the presence of these attributes in his other works. This is the more remarkable because, for so large a portion of his life, and especially during the period when the published sermons were in the course of preaching, his time has been passed in even severe polemical conflict, amidst misapprehensions and misunderstandings. His books ring with the clash of conflict ; they have all the power and conscious- ness of a trained athlete ; or they are like the thoroughly girt and well- determined arrangements of the knight in perfect panoply, armed for battle ; they are all, more or less, intensely polemical, and they lack none of those literary weapons which genius, talent, and learning usually feel it to be a pleasure to employ. Throughout the sermons the difference is instinctively perceptible. It is like step- ping from the library, the lecture-room, or the senate house, into the church : every element of character seems to be at once and instantly consecrated, elevated, and bowed ; a purifying breath seems to pervade every word ; the holy mountains are climbed, and the sacred Church is reached far up, amidst serener heights and airs ; the fine Damascus blade of wit, the polished mail of worldly lore, are left behind at the foot of the hill, and everything in the preacher JOHN HENR Y NE WMA N. i/] 9 seems to say to those other manifold powers and pur- suits in the which he is so accomplished a master, " Tarry ye here, while I go to pray yonder." We cannot remember another instance of a remarkable man leading two lives so absolutely separate and apart. Most men's labours permeate, interpenetrate, and almost fill, every other depart- ment of labour. It is almost inevitable that it should be so. The preacher who spends his week in avocations literary or political is in danger of making the sermon of the Sabbath bear a part of the toil ; in the sermon and the service we miss repose. And this is a very chief characteristic of these sermons — repose. As we read, we seem to be borne through serene airs ; and in the clearness of the air, the forms and thoughts which had seemed obscure take palpability and shape, — an element this which also is so wanting to many of the sermons and preachers of our time. Dr. Newman says — " From the age of fifteen, dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion. I know no other religion ; I cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion ; religion as a mere sentiment is to me a dream and a mockery." Certainly, if the mind can repose on dogma, it must impart a wonderful calm to character ; and Newman's nature must assuredly be one of the most restless and inquisitive, — one of the farthest removed, we should say, from constitutional satisfaction, the Church has ever known. The difficulty with such natures is to discover, or apprehend, the dogma which satisfies. Of this, however, we may be certain, that the pulpit, — that place which is set apart for the residence of a 150 THu^: VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. mind and heart prepared to assist the devout aspira- tions of souls desirous of rising to reHgious truth, both of hfe and form, — this certainly is not the place for men to indulge themselves in such specu- lations as are, perhaps, even to themselves unsolved, or such literary vanities as may be either the amusements, or the necessary occupations of other times and places. To help hearts to rest, to con- duct pilgrim feet to refreshing Pisgah-views from mountains of promise, to make clear and authentic the voices which roll from the Horebs and Sinais of revelation and the soul — these are surely the purposes for which such a building as the pulpit was originally designed. The extent to which a preacher is likely to fulfil this claim upon his character must depend upon the repose he has in his own views, and their essential elevation. Dr. Newman assures us how, from a very early period of his life, the magnificent philosophy of the earliest ages of the Church came like music to his inward ear ; how, early, he learnt that the whole exterior world, physical and historical, was but the outward manifestation of realities greater than itself, and how all nature was a parable. We have said that, in the true sense of the word, Dr. Newman is not a mystic, because mysticism implies a sense of light — luminousness without distinctness, shape, or har- monious coherence, as he has himself discriminated between mystery and revelation. A revelation is religious doctrine viewed on its illuminated side ; a mystery is the self-same doctrine viewed on the side unilluminated. So, if we may distinguish between the luminous and the illuminated (and great yOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 151 is the distinction surely between luminous ether and an illuminated room), then the mind of the mystic may be spoken of as a luminous mind ; his apprehensions have not related themselves to any method in the understanding. In this sense Newman is certainly not a mystic ; yet many of his views, through long years, are of that lofty, even mystical order, in which the soul seems to sweep through worlds of certain existence, yet stretching so far beyond the ordinary range of ordinary apprehension. What must Tyndall, Huxley, Grove, and such other savants, think of a man like this ? Most of us, we know, they dismiss, with a breath, to the limbo of vanity, and purgatory of fools ; but here is a man not inferior to any of them (how far superior to any in logical grasp !), who has been quite accustomed to discriminate amidst the worlds of phenomena, who tells us of the doctrines he definitely holds about angels, considering them as the real causes of motion, light, and life, and those elementary principles of the physical universe which suggest to us the notion of cause and effect, and what are called the laws of nature. Of the angels he says, " ANGELS. " Every breath of air and ray of light and heat, every beautiful prospect, is, as it were, the skirts of their garments, the waving of the robes of those whose faces see God." And he goes on, " And I put it to any one whether it is not as philosophical and as full of intellectual enjoyment to refer the move- ments of the natural world to them, as to attempt to explain them by certain theories of science } I 152 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. do not pretend to say," he continues, " that we are told in Scripture what matter is, but I affirm that as our souls move our bodies, be our bodies what they may, so there are spiritual intelligences which move those wonderful and vast portions of the natural world which seem to be inanimate ; and as the gestures, speech, and expressive countenance of our friends around us enable us to hold intercourse with them, so in the motions of universal nature, in the interchange of day and night, summer and winter, wind and storm, fulfilling His word, we are reminded of the blessed and beautiful angels." These remarks, and others of a like kind, are from a glowing discourse on the " Powers of Nature." It shines with that rich and unadorned magnificence of language and illustration so common in these volumes. In his " Apologia," he distinctly intimates how, for holding such views, he has apparently been charged with fanaticism. " I am aware," he says, " that what I have been saying will with many men be doing credit to my imagination at the expense of my judgment. Hippoclydes does not care. I am not setting myself up as a pattern of good sense, or anything else." But we have dwelt thus at length only for the purpose of pointing to that assured scenery of sus- taining power and repose into which such a nature and faith as that we are considering can instantly transfer itself, and in such a transference find, not only its own tranquillity, but the means of pene- trating all its influences with a like tranquil power. After all, we suppose it is simply the difference be- tween rationalism and faith — faith which reaches JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 153 forth after, and embraces what is beyond the mind. As he well says, " Rationalism takes the words of Scripture as signs of ideas; faith, of things or realities." And it is manifest how different must be the effect upon the mind, heart, and character as influenced by one or the other of these persuasions, as different as are the impressions when we lift a telescope, or take the hand of a friend, when we converse with a man, or examine a steam engine. The way of rationalism is to conduct us into a universe of ideas, or powers; the way of faith is to conduct us into a kingdom of persons. This constitutes, to those who can admire them, one of the great charms of Newman's dis- courses ; and this . arises from the fact that it is in the tendency of such a scheme of preaching as we find in his volumes, to rest upon, and to unfold the principles of dogma ; and dogma itself is not only repose to the spirit able to apprehend it, but is, we shall maintain, the fitting instrument and word for pulpit ministration. The church is not the place for inquiry, but for rest. In our sketches of the men of the pulpit, it has been often our way to select as illustrations those compact words and sentences which serve as indica- tions of the preacher's mode of looking at truth, at the same time that they illustrate his own mental peculiarity and structure. Aphorism is not the method of this preacher's mind. Epigram in the pulpit he seems carefully to avoid ; it would be, perhaps, regarded by him as partaking too much of flippancy ; he avoids any approach to a style calcu- lated to "haunt, to startle, and waylay." Yet, from such a mind as his, it is impossible but that we 154 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER, should receive many concentrated and suggestive words, like texts which serve to exhibit the nature of the writer's faith and creed. Let us select a few — NEWMANANA. Prayer. — "As speech is the organ of human society, and the means of human civilisation, so is prayer the instrument of Divine fellowship and Divine training." A Sceptical Believer. — " The next world is not a reality to him ; it only exists in his mind in the form of certain conclusions from certain reasonings ; it is but an inference, and never can be more ; never can be present to his mind, until he acts instead of arguing." A Word to our Age. — " Pride in things visible leads to pride in things unseen." The Ve?itures of Faith. — " Man has confidence in man ; he trusts to the credit of his neighbour ; but Christians do not risk largely upon their Saviour's word, and this is the one thing they have to do." Fatth and Love. — " Faith at most but makes a hero, but love makes a saint. Faith can but put us above the world, but love brings us beneath God's throne. Faith can but make us sober, but love makes us happy. By faith we give up this world, but by love we reach into the next world, and distaste for the world is quite a distinct thing from the spirit of love." Ifork. — " No man is given to see his work through. 'Man goeth forth unto his work, and to his labour until the evening,' but the evening falls before it is done. There was One alone who began, and finished, and died." Moral Certainty. — " We do not dispense with clocks because from time to time they go wrong, and tell untruly. A clock, organically considered, may be perfect, yet it may require regulating. Till that needful work is done, the moment hand may mark the half-minute when the minute yOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 155 hand is at the quarter-past, and the hour hand at noon, and the quarter bell strikes the three-quarters, and the hour bell strikes four, while the sun-dial again tells two o'clock. The sense of certitude may be called the bell of the intellect ; and that it strikes when it should not is a proof that the clock is out of order, no proof that the bell will be un- trustworthy and useless when it comes to us adjusted and regulated from the hands of the clockmaker." The Sufferitigs of Christ. — " I say, it was not the body that suffered, but the soul in the body. It was the soul, and not the body, which was the seat of the sufferings of the literal Word. Consider, there is no pain, and there is no kind of inward sensibility. A tree, for instance, etc. But wherever this gift of an immaterial principle is found, there pain is possible, and greater pain according to the quality of the gift. This it is that makes pain so trying ; that is, that we cannot help thinking of it while we suffer it, and pain is to be measured by the power of realising it. But Christ's mind was its own centre, and was never in the slightest degree thrown off its heavenly and most perfect balance." Flausibility. — "Balaam is a most conspicuous instance of a double mind ; he has a plausible reason for whatever he does. But it is one thing to have good excuses, and another to have good motives." Jacob and Abraham. — " What then was Jacob's distin- guishing grace, as faith was Abraham's ? I suppose thank- fulness. Abraham appears ever to have been looking forward in hope, Jacob looking back in memory." " Sinful Feelings and passions generally take upon them- selves the semblance of reason, and affect to argue." Saints and Martyrs. — " Every age is not the age of saints, but no age is not the age of martyrs." The Church Militant in the Church Triumphant. — " Though thou art in a body of flesh, a member of this world, thou hast but to kneel down reverently in prayer, and thou art at once in the society of saints and angels. Wherever 156 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. thou art, thou canst, through God's incomprehensible mercy, in a moment bring thyself into the midst of God's holy Church invisible, and receive secretly that aid the very thought of which is a present sensible blessing. Art thou afiflicted? thou canst pray. Art thou merry? thou canst sing psalms. Art thou lonely? does the day run heavily? fall on thy knees, and thy thoughts are at once relieved by the idea and by the reality of thy unseen companions. Art thou tempted to sin ? think steadily of those who perchance witness thy doings from God's secret dwelling-place. Hast thou lost friends ? reaUse them by faith. Art thou slandered ? thou hast the praise of angels. Art thou under trial ? thou hast their sympathy." What do you mean by the Church ? — " The Church is a collection of souls brought together in one by God's secret grace, though that grace comes to them through visible in- struments, and unites them to a visible hierarchy ; what is seen is not the whole of the Church, but the visible part of it. When we say that Christ loves His Church, we mean that He loves nothing of earthly nature, but the fruits of His own grace." We have alluded to the know^ledge of Scripture displayed in these discourses ; sometimes this is illustrated in the text chosen, although, as w^e said above, it does not follow always that the text, even when most happy, is to be especially discussed and elucidated. Thus the sermon to which we referred at the commencement of this chapter, on " Intellect the Instrument of Religious Training," is a sermon preached on St. Augustine's Day — of course a very great day in the Romish Calendar, — considering who St. Augustine was, and his immense influence, dis- tancing, perhaps, every other uninspired name in the history of the Christian Church, and that this JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 157 great luminary of all ages was really saved instru- mentally by the prayers of his beautiful and wonder- ful mother Monica. There was great pathos in that text, as the indication of the topic, " And when He came nigh to the gate of the city, behold a dead man was carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow." Then Augustine becomes the type of noble, intellectual, but unconverted youfh of all time, generation after generation, age after age ; and still Augustine rushes forth again and again, with his young ambition, and his intellectual energy, and his turbulent appetites, educated, yet untaught ; and still again and again the Church weeps like Monica. From this hint the preacher passes on through a succession of magnificent ex- postulations with the proud young intelligence averse to a religious life. But we should have to travel too long for our present chapter were we, at any length, to dwell upon the happiness we have merely indicated, the textual fitness and relation between text and topic of discourse. The style of treatment is much in harmony with the old Church usage ; and, perhaps it must be admitted, there is something quite false in the way in which texts have often been treated by teachers ; words, single words, beaten, hammered out, stretched, made to bear the burden of innumerable divisions, branching out through interminable roots or boughs. By Dr. Newman all division is disdained, excepting the natural divisions of the particular thought, for it is a subject which the text reveals. " Thou, God, seest me," is the text for a sermon on a particular pro- vidence, as revealed in the gospel. " They say unto 158 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. Him, We are able," furnishes forth the subject of the " Ventures of Faith." " Hath raised us up to- gether, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus," gives the beautiful text for the sermon entitled " The Church a Home for the Lonely." " And He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them," gives to us " Omnipotence in Bonds." And so we might go on. It would be no easy matter to generalise the work of Dr. Newman. The apprehension of his greatness must depend very much upon the mental and moral structure of the reader's mind. Some eminent preachers will very naturally commend themselvi to any order of intelligence ; we cannot read witt out saying. This is clever, this is brilliant, this is ver^ happy, this is instructive. On the contrary, we have known some who have read the sermons of Newman, unable to discover any marks of pre-eminent ex- cellence ; they are so quiet, their beauty is so orderly, they are so unconscious ; it is like finding out the wonders of a heath or lane. They are laden with beauties, but they require a reverent and cultivated sympathy for their apprehension ; then they will be seen to abound with strokes of pathos, fine delinea- tions of character, clear and most penetrating analyses, bold, far-reaching, and most magnificent views, and an astonishingly ample knowledge of Scripture. With this, however, it must be confessed, there is little of what may be called the age-spirit, not a word which approaches the confines of rationalism, — all that unconquered Canaan is sur- veyed only for the purpose of conquest. On the JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. 159 other hand, throughout the sermons, we do not remember a syllable expressing contempt for any really serious thought, person, or thing ; and this Ascetic — for as such we suppose we must regard the preacher — is full of human life ; there is no humour, no dancing play of words, not a line which looks like word-painting ; the most unsensational of all preachers, we should think, that ever set a mark upon an age or language. We can believe in his consecration. We hope wisdom is justified in many of her children. It is no part of our education or purpose to confine our homage to one order ; but a soul wrapped up in its purposes, and those Divine ones, untouched by that vanity, that fussiness, which we so often notice appertaining to men, and to some eminent preachers, who seem to be saying wherever they may be, " Do, for goodness' sake, look at me " — a mind happy and luminous in its own repose, erring, as, no doubt, all minds are born to err, — but still preserving its purity of purpose and high rectitude of conscious intention, and using its words not wantonly, nor wastefully, but as a gift of God — such a mind must always be attractive and beautiful, and very satisfying to look at ; and such we believe Dr. Newman to be. Perhaps it is not too much to speak of him as the second most remarkable intelli- gence of the country and the times in which we live ; and this is far more than as if we spoke of him as the first preacher. In this slight digest of the pulpit power of this distinguished man and eminent preacher, we have taken no exception to his peculiarities as a Romish priest and father. In some of his later sermons, i6o THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. those for " Mixed Congregations," and on " Various Occasions," there are many modes of speech with which of course we can have no sympathy, because they are innate and essential to the Romish system ; but it would be idle work to remark upon these ; they are obvious to every Protestant mind, and we take our farewell with one more illustration — it seems to us one of great beauty : — THE GREATNESS AND LITTLENESS OF HUMAN LIFE. " I say the word ' disappointing ' is the only word to express our feelings on the death of God's saints. Unless our faith be very active, so as to pierce beyond the grave and realise the future, we feel depressed at what seems like a failure of great things. And from this very feeling surely, by a sort of contradiction, we may fairly take hope ; for if this life be so disappointing, so unfinished, surely it is not the whole. This feeling of disappointment will often come upon us in an especial way, on happening to hear of, or to witness, the death-beds of holy men. The hour of death seems to be a season of which, in the hands of Providence, much might be made, if I may use the term ; much might be done for the glory of God, the good of man, and the manifestation of the person dying And beforehand friends will perhaps look forward, and expect that great things are then to take place, which they shall never forget. Yet • how dieth the wise man ? as the fool.' Such is the preacher's experience, and our own bears witness to it. King Josiah, the zealous servant of the living God, died the death of wicked Ahab, the worshipper of Baal. True Christians die as other men. One dies by sudden accident, another in battle, another without friends to see how he dies, a fourth is insensible, or not himself Thus the oppor- tunity seems thrown away, and we are forcibly reminded that * the manifestation of the sons of God ' is hereafter ; JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. i6i that 'the earnest expectation of the creature ' is but waiting for it ; that this Hfe is unequal to the burden of so great an office as the due exhibition of those secret ones who shall one day ' shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father.' "But further (if it be allowable to speculate), one can con- ceive even the same kind of feeling, and a most transporting one, to come over the soul of the faithful Christian when just separated from the body, and conscious that his trial is once for all over. Though his life has been a long and painful discipline, yet when it is over, we may suppose him to feel at the moment the same sort of surprise at its being ended as generally follows any exertion in this life when the object is gained, and the anticipation is over. When we have wound up our minds for any point of time, any great event, an interview with strangers, or the sight of some wonder, or the occasion of some unusual trial, when it comes and is gone, we have a strange reverse of feeling from our changed circumstances. Such, but without any mixture of pain, without any lassitude, dulness, or disap- pointment, may be the happy contemplation of the disem- bodied spirit ; as if it said to itself, ' So all is now over ; this is what I have so long waited for ; for which I have nerved myself; against which I have prepared, fasted, prayed, and wrought righteousness. Death is come and gone, — it is over. Ah ! is it possible ? What an easy trial, what a cheap price for eternal glory ! A few sharp sicknesses, or some acute pain a while, or some few and evil years, or some struggles of mind, dreary desolateness for a season, fightings and fears, afflicting bereavements, or the scorn and ill-usage of the world, — how they fretted me, how much I thought of them, yet how little they really are ! How con- temptible a thing is human life, — contemptible in itself, yet in its effects invaluable ! for it has been to me like a small seed of easy purchase, germinating and ripening into bliss everlasiing."* II CHAPTER VI. CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION. ^"'HE title of this chapter implies a very large text, upon which it is quite impossible in the space of a few pages to be exhaustive ; imagination is a diamond of so many facets. We have just been speaking at length of Cardinal Newman, but we commenced our remarks upon him by saying that he was eminently a minister for, and to ministers ; vain and useless would it be to expect that such sermons as his could find a very large audience with the mere commercial, or uneducated, or hurrying multitudes. Imagination is, or should be emi- nently the preacher's prerogative ; he ought to be able to use it in some way or other ; it constitutes very much of what we call eloquence, words effective in their graphic precision, or harmonious flow ; it gives the power of analogy ; it suggests, and paints the parable ; it uses, whether slightly touching it, or amply dilating upon it, the figure, or image of speech. No faculty in the pulpit has been much more abused, but no faculty, when wisely used, can, perhaps, be more useful ; it gives the power of entertaining, and interesting ; thus, it is the power of the philosophic, or thoughtful, the rhetorical, or captivating, and the poetical, or sentimental preacher. Its use has been seriously argued against, especially CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION. 163 by those who have none of it ; its exercise has even been thought to be sinful, and we perfectly remem- ber, when we were very young, reading some papers in an exceedingly ancient number of the Evangelical Magazine, in which some writer mildly and modestly attempted to insinuate that eloquence was not always unpardonable. In our previous volume* we dwelt at length upon the principle that imagination seizes upon the innermost truth, grasps it firmly, and holds it up, embodied to the mind ; perhaps its first functional relation to the vocation of the pulpit is in the exercise of analogy, by which it becomes one of the most essential and successful elucidators of Divine truth ; it does this sometimes by a close com- parison or resemblance, and sometimes by what may be regarded as more than this — even an entrance into the very innermost heart of the subject, and extraction of the mystery of resemblance ; hence, mystical views of Divine truth have very often been very helpful ; and, hence, even some pretty, and not unforced resemblance has not been without its value as a taper, if not as a torch. A beautiful little book, now almost forgotten, is " Barton's Analogy of Divine Wisdom, in the Material, Sensitive, Moral, Civil, and Spiritual System of Things " (1750). It is not like Butler's work, a firmly plaited argument ; but the learning is very interesting and entertaining, and especially where he uses the difficulties of mathe- matics for the purpose of unfolding the difficulties of revelation. Many matters of science, also, are * "The Throne of Eloquence," in which, indeed, we have already written at some length upon the subject of this chapter. i64 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. handled most interestingly. Certainly, many readers, who find Butler difficult, will find Dr. Barton's work most illuminating and entertaining. This work of Divine analogy is one of the most helpful torches of the Christian minister, and its literature is of rare and great interest. The fame of the work of Butler has too much put out of sight what had been done before ; we have the " Divine Analogy " of Bishop Brown (1733), and the remarks upon the same subject in the"MinutePhilosopher"of Bishop Berkeley. While Butler was maturing his own views, these works and others were emanating from the minds of authors whose words and thoughts are still worthy of pondering, although the more famous work has so suggested, we dare not say exhausted, the depths of the subject. But does the well-known argument of Butler satisfy .-' James Martineau has, we know, ventured to express himself thus : — " You have led me in your quest after analogies through the great infirmary of God's creation, and so haunted am I by the sights and sounds of the lazar house, that scarce can I believe in anything but pestilence ; so sick of soul have I become, that the mountain breeze has lost its scent ot health ; and you say, it is all the same in the other world, and wherever the same rule extends ; then I know my fate, that in this world justice has no throne. And thus, my friends, it comes to pass, that these reasoners often gain indeed their victory ; but it is known only to the Searcher of hearts whether it is a victory against natural religion or in favour of revealed. For this reason I co7isider the Ana- logy of Bishop Butler {one of the profoundest of thinkers, and on purely moral subjects, one of the jusiest too) as containing^ CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION. 165 with a design directly contrary, the most terrible persuasives to Atheism that have ever been produced. The essential error consists in selecting the difficulties — which are the rare excep- tional pheno7nena of nature — as the basis of analogy a?id argu- jnent." There is a remarkable conversation recorded by Wilberforce witii William Pitt, in which Pitt declared to Wilberforce " that Butler's work raised more doubts in his mind than it answered." And Sir James Macintosh is reported to have said of the Analogy, " This can only be an answer to Deists ; Atheists might make use of his objections, and have done so." By another writer, Dr. Schedel, the argument of Butler has been characterised as " the analogy of uncertainty," and " the analogy of mystery." While Miss Hennell, a well-known extreme sceptical writer, has claimed the Analogy as an ally to scepticism. Yet this is not the impression Butler produced upon the sceptics of his own day. David Hume, the greatest king of sceptics of almost any age or nation, but especially of the later days, looked upon him with something of awe ; he mentions how anxious he was to have the Bishop's opinion upon some points in his treatise on " Human Nature," before its publication, and says, in one of his letters, " I am at present cutting off its nobler parts — i.e., endeavouring it shall give as little offence as possible, before which I could not pretend to put it into the Doctor's hands. This is a piece of coivcirdice for wJdcJi I blame myself^ though I believe none of my friends will blame me." Hume called on Butler, but did not see him ; and some persons have speculated on what might have been had Butler been i66 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. within when Hume called — the sceptic might have become a believer ! Miss Hennell has attempted to invalidate the argument of Butler also on personal grounds ; but the character of Butler every way- shines forth as the clearest ; and this profoundest of theologians was also the simplest of believers. The great sentiment of the Analogy seems to have been ever present with him, giving animation to all its thought. " He looked to Christ," he said, " as a poor sinner, for salvation," and one of the most interest- ing anecdotes is of his, when walking in the garden with his chaplain, Dr. Forster, stopping short and turning round — a way he appears to have had — and with great earnestness saying, " I was thinking, Doctor, what an awful thing it is for a human being to stand before the great Moral Governor of the world, and to give an account of all his actions in this life." We may well, however, as this is the state of the argument, desire to see the argument of analogy fairly expounded, and its extent and limitations defined ; for there is a tendency to undue extension of analogy, as when Hegel affirms " that as in the doctrine of the Trinity, the Father and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, represent the infinite and the finite, and the union of the two, their identity first, then their distinction, and their return to identity, so the doctrine of the Incarnation has a meaning no less philosophical," etc., etc., etc. We may well be jealous of any attempts to establish the doctrine of the Trinity upon a rational basis, chiefly by means of certain natural analogies supplied by the conscious- ness of the human mind ; there are casuistical, CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION. 167 Jesuitical, and refining sceptics, as well as such among believers and theologists, and we believe it is from such hands, perhaps on both sides, the argument of analogy, and Butler's argument in particular, has suffered wrong ; the application of the argument needs a broad and honest mind, a mind not so much allured by certain prettinesses and fanciful resemblances, as able to group and to grasp its comparisons, and so rise from them to independent judgment and generalisation. Thus it is that analogy has been in so many and quite countless instances, the prompter and the guide of life ; this is the translation of Butler's very modest and most pregnant starting-point in reasoning, this is his point of view of the likelihood of the truth of the Christian system. He started from this singularly modest beginning — " It is not so clear that there is nothing in it." The character of modern infidelity has quite changed since Butler's day. His book was written in reply to the elegant Deism of his times. A course of nature was granted, an author of nature was admitted ; the form of modern sophistry has changed, — a course of nature is admitted, but not an author. How is the modern dream of Pantheism to be broken ? Will analogy serve for the waking ? If we think, then, we should think in order ; the greatest danger in modern thought is its inconsecutive, scattered, and informative character ; but, alas ! that which is inconsecutive in thought is not therefore inconsequential. Thus, analogy itself may be, like any other law of thought, a dangerous guide ; the use of analogy is not to be denied ; it is invaluable — invaluable as i68 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. speech, it is the inner speech of the soul, it is the power by which the soul realises and expresses itself. All the discoveries in the world, — in me- chanics, in science, — seem to have been happy- guesses, reasonings from analogy : Harvey, in the circulation of the blood; Columbus, in the discovery of America ; Newton, in his system of the universe ; Stephenson, in the principle of the locomotives. Biography is full of such instances. " It may be almost said, without qualification," says Archbishop Whately, " that wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies ; " and Archbishop Thomson says, " This power of divination, this sagacity which is the mother of all science, we may call anticipation. The intellect, with a dog-like instinct, will not hunt until it has found the scent ; it must have some presage of the result before it will turn its energies to its attainment." Thus analogy is an instinct of thought ; the poet and the meta- physician— Tennyson and Bishop Berkeley — meet together in their statement of this, when the one says, — ** Thought leapt out to wed with thought, Ere thought leapt out to wed with speech ; " and the other says, " An idea which, considered in itself, is particular, becomes general by being made to represent or stand for all other particular ideas of the same sort." This is, in fact, analogy and the statement of the law of analogy. Now, how is this power in man to be used by the religious teacher, man being unable to think or act intelligently with- out the use of analogy ? Does it aid the entrance into, and the dealuig with, the higher facts of the CONCEHNIA^G THE IMAGINATION. 169 universe — the universe and its Author ? is it a light ? — may it be made yet more a light for the explor- ing of the kingdom of moral relations ? It has been finely said by Robert Boyle " that revelation may be to reason what the telescope is to the eye ; " but the telescope needs fixing, needs some skill in using. God gives nothing — neither hand, foot, nor spade — that does not need education for useful exercise. The very charm of analogy may lead to its being misused. Experience is a powerful teacher, because experience is only another name for induc- tion, or moral analogy ; hence man should be taught to construct his moral science for himself upon the basis of Scripture and experience ; and Dr. Buchanan well says, " One or two instances clearly discerned and intelligently applied, by the exercise of a man's own mind, will be of more practical avail than a hundred examples presented on paper, and read, but not followed up by reflection."* It is very clear that Scripture, in the appeal it makes to the understanding of man, rests strongly on this instinct of analogy — " the invisible things of Him are clearly seen, even His eternal power and Godhead." Thus the sin of idolatry is condemned. Forasmuch then as " we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold or silver, or stone graven by art and man's device." Dr. Whately has very directly traced our knowledge of the properties of man to our know- ledge of the perfections of God — the showing that the proof of a Being possessed of these is, in fact, the ♦"Analogy, considered as a Guide to Truth," etc., etc. By James Buchanan, D.D., LL.D. 170 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. very same evidence on which we believe in the exist- ence of one another. How do we know that men exist, that is, not as beings having a certain visible bodily form, — for that is not what we chiefly imply by the word man, — but as rational agents such as we call men ? Surely not by the immediate evidence of our senses, since mind is not an object of sight, but by observing the things performed — the mani- fest result of rational contrivance. If we land in a strange country doubting whether it be inhabited, as soon as we find, for instance, a boat or a house we are as perfectly certain that a man has been there as if he appeared before our eyes. Now we are surrounded with similar proofs that there is a God. In the same manner of argument from analogy, we have recently read a paper by Professor Hitchcock, in the "Bibliotheca Sacra," " On the Law of Nature's Constancy as Subordinate to the Higher Law of Change," — truly a most pregnant subject of thought — for if natural changes be consistent with fixed laws, they are no less consistent with perturbations which seem to shock and threaten the stability of the whole system. From the time of Paley to our day, frequent references have been made to the ceaseless disturbances upon the regularity and permanency of the celestial motions ; but so far from disturbing, they secure the permanence perhaps of a whole zodiac — the fallibility of a system secures eternal stability. What an endless lesson this reads us ! The analogy of nature leads us through all her works to believe that the principle of change — which has been hitherto mightier than any other in the government and preservation of the universe, and in CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION. 171 promoting its happiness — has its moral analogies, and that it may furnish some light as to the dealing of God, not only with the kingdoms of matter, but also with the kingdom of souls. It is the modern fashion to declare that this poor sort of argument is overlooked, that the apparent manifestation of design is no proof of " the manifold wisdom of God ; " that living infinite Consciousness, which we call God, has been dethroned by the mighty modern thinkers. Perhaps the great power of God will never nerve with supreme and almighty force the arm wielding the brightest sword from the armoury of the human understanding ; but if the constitution of nature be argued from as a Divine intention, as well as existence, it will be by illustrations from the wide field of analogy ; indeed, this form of argument might, we believe, be most successfully and triumph- antly applied to those which are regarded as the wild, and most baseless " absolutisms " of Hegel and Comte ; and it would be very interesting to ask those gentlemen who look shudderingly and disdain- fully on the doctrine of analogy what they think of that lawless departure from it, — that cheerless voyag- ing in the phantom ship of abstract timbers, that (good ?) ship No-Thing, to the continent of No- Where. No doubt, the nature within the man determines the character of his moral analogies, as it has been well said, "The wolf, when he was learning to read, could make nothing out of the letters but lamb, whatever other words they might form," and the clearest and purest light will burn but in certain atmospheres. The Scripture theory presumes an 172 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. understanding purified and prepared for a clear, holy, and correct judgment. The exercise of analogy is indeed to be prized as an inestimable weapon ; it is valuable and available not only for the almost negative purposes we have indicated — important as these are — it is valuable in all the parts of the building of the Christian system and the Christian life. " Our Lord regarded all nature as a symbol, whose more liter'al meaning had a spiritual applica- tion. Hence, He spoke of knowledge under the name of light ; of spiritual renovation, as birth ; of faith, as mental eyesight ; the Spirit's agency, as similar to the influence of the unseen wind."* Visions and symbols, types and parables, symbolical objects and symbolical actions abound in the Scrip- tures of truth — a great scheme of representationalism opens to the eye. "These things were our examples." Hence, if Lord Bacon could say, " We must observe resemblances and analogies : they unite nature, and lay the foundation of the sciences," we may say, we must observe resemblances and analogies : they unite nature and Scripture, and lay the foundation, broad and immovable, of rational and faithful religion ; and, in a higher sense than that which Newton wrought, the physics of the earth become the means of exploring and understanding the mysteries of the heavens. We should be glad therefore of any help towards trimming this lamp, and making more bright, pure, and clear the teachings of analogy. It will do very much, and be very useful to enlighten intelligences, * Buchanan. CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION. 173 and to make more vivid the perceptions for the noting of the system, natural and moral, beneath which we live, as also, we may naturally hope, for the awakening of minds to the study of the highest order of the Christian evidences, and for the satis- factory persuasion of the human understanding that there is not only no discrepancy, but wondrous harmony between the works and the Word of God. Imagination is not always, however, so ambitious, A stroke of illustrative analogy sometimes answers the end of the speaker. When preaching from the words of our Lord, — " If I have told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things ? " — we found it impos- sible to forbear commencing by a reference to the great legal contest for the purpose of throwing out the Bill for the line of rail between Liverpool and Manchester. Chat Moss, over which it now passes, had been for ages a vast mysterious bog — men, travellers, and soldiers had often been buried in its weltering slough. When George Stephenson's plan was proposed, engineers showed that it would be impossible to start a train in a gale of wind, and then Mr. Alderson, afterwards Baron Alderson, summed up in a speech which extended over two days ; he declared Mr. Stephenson's plan to be the most absurd scheme that ever entered into the head of man to conceive. Said he : — "*My learned friends almost endeavoured to stop my examination ; they wished me to put in the plan, but I had rather have the exhibition of Mr. Stephenson in that box. I say he never had a plan. I beUeve he never had one. 174 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER, I do not believe he is capable of making one. His is a mind perpetually fluctuating between opposite difficulties ; he neither knows whether he is to make bridges over roads or rivers, of one size or of another, or to make embank- ments, or cuttings, or inclined planes, or in what way the thing is to be carried into effect. Whenever a difficulty is pressed, as in the case of a tunnel, he gets out of it at one end, and when you try to catch him at that, he gets out at the other.' Mr. Alderson proceeded to declaim against the gross ignorance of this so-called engineer, who proposed to make ' impossible ditches by the side of an impossible railway ' upon Chat Moss. * I care not,' he said, ' whe- ther Mr. Giles is right or wrong in his estimate ; for whether it be effected by means of piers raised up all the way for four miles through Chat Moss, whether they are to support it on beams of wood, or by erecting masonry, or whether Mr. Giles shall put a solid bank of earth through it, in all these schemes there is not one found like that of Mr. Stephenson's, namely, to cut impossible drains on the side of this road ; and it is sufficient for me to suggest and to show that this scheme of Mr. Stephenson's is impossible or impracticable, and that no other scheme, if they proceed upon this line, can be suggested which will not produce enormous expense. I think that has been irrefragably made out. Every one knows Chat Moss ; every one knows that the iron sinks immediately on its being put upon the surface. I have heard of culverts, which have been put upon the Moss, which, after having been surveyed the day before, have the next morning disappeared ; and that a house (a poet's house, who may be supposed in the habit of building castles even in the air) story after story, as fast as one is added, the lower one sinks ! There is nothing, it appears, except long sedgy grass, and a little soil, to prevent its sinking into the shades of eternal night. I have now done, sir, with Chat Moss, and there I leave this rail- road.'" CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION. 175 Remembering how often we have travelled over Chat Moss in the rushing train, whose rails were laid by the man so scoffed and scorned, what an illustration it gives of that mysterious truth and kingdom of which our Lord said, " If I have told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly ? " And surely we may remark here that as an age and nation of shepherds derived its imagery from pastoral occupations, and an age and nation of merchants, from commerce, so the age of science should derive its images from the world of science, as in such an illustration from Dr. James Hamil- ton : — " It is of vast moment to be ' just right ' when starting. At Preston, at Malines, at many such places, the lines go gently asunder ; so fine is the angle that at first the paths are almost parallel, and it seems of small moment which you select. But a little further on one of them turns a corner, or dives into a tunnel, and now that the speed is full, the angle opens up, and at the rate of a mile a minute the divided convoy flies asunder ; one passenger is on the way to Italy, another to the swamps of Holland ; one will step out in London, the other in the Irish Channel. It is not enough that you book for the Better Country ; you must keep the way, and a small deviation may send you entirely wrong. A slight deflection from honesty, a slight divergence from perfect truthfulness, from perfect sobriety, may throw you on a \vTong track altogether, and make a failure of that life which should have proved a comfort to your family, a credit to your country, a blessing to mankind. Beware of the bad habit," etc., etc. It w^ a good saying of an ancient bishop, " Lord, 176 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. send me learning enough, that I may preach plain enough." It is indeed the end of every instruction the preacher can receive, and it has been often remarked that prophets and preachers in the Old Testament ever accommodated themselves to the capacities of those to whom they spoke. They talked of fishes to the Egyptians, and droves of cattle to the Arabians, and trade and traffic to the Syrians ; and our Lord tells His fishermen they shall be fishers of men. Hence, for this very reason, not only the Evangelists, but the great preachers like Augustine and Ambrose, spoke viilgarly ; they used a popular idiom and dialect in their determination to be understood ; they stood not always upon pureness of style, being more solicitous about the matter than the words. Men and children use things in very different ways : a child uses money, but with different ideas from a man ; and bees and butterflies extract different things from the same flowers. Thus, while some ministers only desire to tip their tongues, or to store their heads, the true minister's idea is to save himself and those who hear him. He must there- fore stoop to their apprehensions, condescend to their capacities, that he may save some, becoming all things to all men ; Paul said he would even become " a fool for Christ's sake." Hence, as we have already said,* there can be no doubt, that for the purpose of teaching, one illustration is worth a thousand abstractions;! illustrations are the windows * " Throne of Eloquence," p. 433. t How affluently this is illustrated in Spencer's Eatva /cat rraXata — "Things New and Old," 1658, p. 281. • CONCERNING THE UIAGINATION. 177 of speech, through them truths shine, and ordinary minds fail to perceive truth clearly unless it be presented to them through their medium. This, then, we believe to be the law of the parable ; thought is unhappy until it finds a body for itself ; it wearies of wandering to and fro among words which, at the best, can only convey half a meaning ; it tires of a vain flitting through the chambers of ghosts and disembodied thought, forms which, if they are really there, and perceived, are only like phantoms dancing on the wall. Hence, the parabolic form of thought is not peculiar to any people ; all nations have their legends, and, perhaps, the unity of the popular legend is one of the most interesting illustrations of the unity of the race. Legends are not so much derived from each other ; they are rather the spontaneous language of the wondering and the realising soul of man. This is a topic that merits much more than a passing remark ; but it is beyond the natural range of these pages. Meantime, it is not to be supposed that the imagery and parabolic power of the mind is confined to the Eastern and Scriptural illustrations. Iceland has its Edda, and the Sagas of Snorro Sturleston."^'' There is a singular disposition of the mind to regard all things as human, and even inanimate things as really alive. From before the days even of .^sop until now, beasts and birds, and creeping things, have been made to speak, not only as in the possession of consciousness, but of reason and sensibility. Imagination plays with these things * See our Introductory Essay, " World of Proverb and Parable," on the Unity of the Popular Tale. 12 178 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. and creatures ; and the happy power of the good- humoured caricaturist, who would cure the vices or foibles of mankind without the severity of the satirist, is never more admirably displayed than when indulging these innocent licences of fancy and speech. It is most quaint and ludicrous to notice what human likenesses and resemblances peep out from the meanest things. The echo of a human heart seems to sound from all things above man, and every little creature, and everything man has made, from beneath him seems to look up and to claim a relationship. Thus, in a little illustration of Andersen's way of using things : — "There was once a Darnjng-needle so fine that she fancied herself a Sewing-needle. " ' Now, take care, and hold me fast ! ' said the Darning- needle to the Fingers that took her up. ' Don't lose me, pray ! If I were to fall down on the floor, you would never be able to find me again, I am so fine ! ' " * That's more than you can tell ! ' said the Fingers, as they took hold of her. " ' See, I come with a train ! ' said the Darning-needle, drawing a long thread, without a single knot in it, after her. "The Fingers guided the Needle to the cook-maid's slippers; the upper leather was torn, and had to be sewn together. "'This is vulgar work !' said the Darning-needle; *I shall never get through ; I break, I am breaking ! ' And break she did. 'Did I not say so?' continued she; 'I am too fine ! ' " * Now she is good for nothing,' thought the Fingers ; however, they must still keep their hold ; the cook-maid dropped sealing-wax upon the Darning-needle and then stuck her into her neckerchief. CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION. 179 " 'See, now I am a Breast-pin ! ' said the Darning-needle; " ' I knew well that I should come to honour ; when one is something, one always becomes something.' And at this she laughed, only inwardly, of course, for nobody has ever seen or heard a Darning-needle laugh ; there sat she now at her ease, as proud as if she were driving in her carriage, and looking about her on all sides." It was somewhat in this parabolic manner Latimer was in the habit of speaking, as when he says : — " We read a pretty story of St. Anthony, who, being in the wilderness, led there a very hard and strict life, inso- much as none at that time did the like, to whom came a voice saying, ' Anthony, thou art not so perfect as is a cobbler that dwelleth at Alexandria.' Anthony, hearing this, rose up forthwith, and took his staff and travelled till he came to Alexandria, where he found the cobbler. The cobbler was astonished to see so reverend a father come to his house. Then Anthony said unto him, ' Come and tell me thy whole conversation, and how thou spendest thy time.' 'Sir,' said the cobbler, ' as for me, good works have I none, for my life is but simple and slender; I am but a poor cobbler ; in the morning when I rise, I pray for the whole city wherein I dwell, especially for all such neighbours and poor friends as I have ; after, I set me at my labour, where I spend the whole day in getting my living ; and 1 keep me from all falsehood, for I hate nothing so much as I do deceiifulness ; wherefore, when I make any man a promise I keep it and perform it truly ; and thus I spend my time poorly, with my wife and children, whom I teach and instruct, as far as my wit will serve me, to fear and dread God. And this is the sum of my simple life.'"* * "Sermons," vol. ii. p. 'j^'j. Ed. 1758. i8o THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. And, after the same fashion of illustration, Jeremy Taylor's well-known appropriation of a Jewish legend : — " When Abraham sat at his tent door, according to his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied an old man, stooping and leaning on his staff, weary with age and .travel, coming towards him, who was a hundred years of age. He received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, caused him to sit down ; but observing that the old man ate, and prayed not, nor begged for a blessing on his meat, he asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven. The old man told him that he worshipped the fire only, and acknowledged no other God. At which answer Abraham grew so zealously angry, that he thrust the old man out of his tent, "and exposed him to all the evils of the night and an unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham and asked him where the stranger was ? He replied, * I thrust him away because he did not worship Thee.' God answered him, * I have suffered him these hundred years, although he dis- honoured Me; and couldst not thou endure him one night?'" A sweet little fancy in this way is in John Pulsford's beautiful and helpful " Quiet Hours," a work which will probably outlive on the waves of time many a more ambitious-looking vessel. A LITTLE bird's SERMON TO A SERMON-MAKER. " I was in the act of kneeling down before the Lord, my God, when a little bird, in the lightest, freest humour, came and perched near my window, and thus preached to me, all the while hopping about from spray to spray. * O thou grave man, look on me and learn something, if not the deepest lesson, then a true one. Thy God made me ; and, if thou canst conceive it, loves me and cares for me. CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION, i8i Thou studiest Him in great problems, which oppress and confound thee ; thou losest sight of one half of His ways. Learn to see thy God not in great mysteries only, but in me also. His burden on me is light, His yoke on me is easy ; but thou makest burdens and yokes for thyself which are very grievous to be borne. I advise thee not' only to see God in little things, but to see little, cheerful, sportive things in God, as well as great, solemn, awful things. Things deep as hell and high as heaven thou considerest overmuch ; but thou dost not " consider the lilies " suffi- ciently. Every priest should put by his awful robes, etc., etc., sometimes, and go free. If thou couldst be as a lily before God for at least one hour in the twenty-four, it would do thee good ; I mean, if thou couldst cease to will and to think, and be only. Consider, the lily is as really from God as thou art, and is a figure of something in Him, the like of which should also be in thee. " ' Thou longest to grow, but the lily grows without longing ; yes, without either thinking or willing, grows, and is beautiful both to God and man. Think of that. " ' In conclusion I remind thee, that God has many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without significa- tion. But I perceive that thine ear is open only to voices of one kind. Thy danger is, under the conceit of being the more godly, of becoming monstrous, and not quite Godlike. Excuse a little bird. I am but one of the "many kinds of voices " which God has " in the world." ' " Such are pleasing illustrations of the use of the imagination ; but there is a kind of illustration which is no illustration ; fancy and imagination all run wild, all separated alike from good sense and good taste, which are indeed the same. Some- times things have been said merely to produce effect, sometimes from mere ignorance or execrable taste in the speaker, and this may be without the 1 82 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. preacher being so bad as he was who likened " the angel, having the everlasting Gospel to preach, to an angel running on a rainbow with a basket of stars in each hand ; " or as that Annerican divine who, describing the flight from time to eternity, said, " It would be as if astride a flash of lightning — putting spurs into it to dash off to glory." Worse, if possible, than this it is when words are used only because they are fine and flourishing, while they serve no purpose in the work of the exposition. In a review of the vocation of the preacher, we have been impressed by the idea formed of it by the Rev. J. C. M. Bellew.* The evidence is contained in his sermons. We have one on Paul preaching at Athens ; the course of description is, indeed, not new ; we remember to have met with other preachers who have indulged in a similar vein of fancy. A wise preacher will turn to admirable account his wanderings through apostolic scenes, but Mr. Bellew shows us how 7iot to use such travels ; page on page is occupied by needless and impertinent description. As in the following, which may surely be called, for a sermon, a ridiculous description of — "PAUL PREACHING AT ATHENS. "From the port of the Piraeus, at the distance of five miles, the Acropolis of Athens, crowned with its ruins, rises. It is visible to the traveller above the surrounding plain. When St. Paul reached the port, on his voyage from Thessalonica and Ber^ea, that rock would meet his eye, crowded with chaste and noble edifices which the hands * "When this was first published Mr. Bellew was living and in the full exercise of his ministry in Bloomsbury. CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION. 183 of Pericles and others left as the choicest gems of architec- tural taste to the world. Towering above them all, the Apostle would first behold an evidence of Greek idolatry, in the gigantic figure of Minerva (cast out of the brazen trophies of war taken at Marathon), which, grasping its shield and spear, overlooked the city beneath, as the angel with outstretched wings at present overlooks Rome from the castle of St. Angelo. From the spot where the Apostle landed, up to the city, there had formerly been one con- tinuous street, defended by the so-called ' Long Walls,' which memorable fortifications united Athens with its port of the Piraeus. These had been destroyed. Crossing the plain amidst their ruins, the Aposde would enter the city where the evidences of idolatry, and yet of the taste and splendour of the Athenians, lay scattered thickly around him. " He would at once be surrounded by altars, and temples, and statues dedicated to Apollo, Jupiter, Mercury, and others, skirting on every side the edges of the street which led directly from the Pirasan gateway to the foot of the Acropolis. Approaching this termination, on his left rose the hill called the Pnyx, where the Athenians held their political meetings. Beyond it again stood the hill of the Areopagus, crowned with the* temple of Mars. To that hill we must presently proceed. Before him, an immense quadrangular building intercepted his approach to the Acropolis. This was the Agora, or market-place of Athens, and it was entered on every side by porticoes, surmounted by statues, on one of which as Paul passed along he may have looked upon the 'God of Day.' We read (ver. 17) that Paul was daily ' in the market with them that met with him.' This Agora or market-place was the spot where (ver. 21) the Athenians and strangers spent their time in nothing else ' but either to tell or to hear some new thing.' It was in reality a beautiful square, whose centre was planted with trees, interspersed with statues. It was sur- rounded by cloisters, probably resembling the Campo 184 2 HE VOCATION OF IHE PREACHER. Santo at Pisa, and its walls and roofs were covered with paintings representing the most memorable incidents in Athenian history. There the Grecian artist had depicted the glorious achievement at Marathon. This colonnade received the name of the Stoa Poecile, or Painted Cloister, and it became the favourite resort of Zeno and his disciples, whereby they received the name of Stoics, or the philo- sophers who frequented the painted Stoa. In the gardens within the court were the statues of the great men of Greece, Demosthenes, Solon, and others. Here, again, the evidences of idolatry met the Apostle's view I Mercury, and Hercules, and Apollo received the popular reverence in the midst of this market-place. The spirit of Paul was stirred within him when he saw the city wholly given to idolatry (ver. 16). The porticoes of the Agora within which he stood were surmounted with idols. Statues of gods were erected in every direction within its cloisters — even in a favoured retreat both of poets and philosophers, of which Dr. Doddridge has well remarked, ' The prevalence of such a variety of senseless superstitions in this most learned and polite city, which all its neighbours beheld with so much veneration, gives a lively and affecting idea of the need we have in the most improved state of human reason of being taught by a Divine revelation.^ "As Paul looked beyond, where the rock of the Acropolis rose above the city, he would behold it crowded with the temples and idols of a corrupt religion. When the Apostle ' saw the city,' as he passed along, he would no doubt ascend the Acropolis by its sole entrance, the Propylasa, erected by Pericles. There would stand the temple of Victory, and within, or about its vestibule, the figures of Mercury, Minerva, and Venus; there he would see the statues of Pericles, and also of the Roman Agrippa and Augustus. Upon the levelled platform of the Acropolis he would behold everywhere the most choice specimens of Grecian statuary, commemorating the mythological histories CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION. 185 of the gods. But superior to all, he would stand beneath that colossal figure of Minerva holding her brazen shield above the head of Athens : and he would look on that superb triumph of art, that epic of poetry done in stone, the temple of Minerva, the Parthenon ! — the glorious effort of the proudest days of Athens ; and even to this hour in its ruins, the lasting monument which tells the grandeur of that Greece which is no more !'' A witty writer, upon all this, has conceived of one preaching in Westminster in some future age, and beginning his sermon with a brief account of the Reform Club ; then quitting that building, the Duke of York's Column and Waterloo Place claim a moment's notice. Proceeding along Pall Mall, the eye rests upon the equestrian statue of George III. The University Club suggests a digression to the Isis and the Cam. Presently, on the left, the Royal Academy rises above Trafalgar Square, and the pictures which are now exhibiting there will claim a hasty criticism. The statue of Lord Nelson, at Charing Cross, is to an Englishman what the brazen Pallas of the Acropolis was to an Athenian, and therefore it must not be forgotten ; that statue looks down upon the speaker. Nor must it be forgotten that Sir Charles Napier stood erect and stiff, and Dr. Jenner reclined meditatively, and the fountains played feebly, and the little boys vigor- ously, in the square. The hoary piles and the ancient memories of the Abbey and the Hall will next demand attention, and so on ; but what a remarkable thing if the preacher should imagine that he is piercing the conscience or preachmg the Gospel all this time ! Most of Mr. Bellew's sermons dis- play this mere artistic faculty, this gathering and 186 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. disposing of mental stuff and wares which have been in some sense apprehended by the intellect, but which have never approached, and still less been absorbed into, the consciousness of spiritual truths and things. We think the question in every instance should be, — Does it help? Does that mode of putting it help ? Would it help me ? and a canon of our speech for all times should be the canon of the old poet — not too much of anything; — to overcolour is to destroy all effect ; — not too much detail — to know when to stop ; — not too many words — to overlay the ornament is to destroy all the beauty, the harmony, the impressiveness, by destroying proportion. Per- haps in the preacher's order of teaching, we must often use more words than strict good taste allows, because we have to stimulate spiritual, and even intellectual appetites ; the severe style tells on educated and refined minds in a state of preparation but just as pictures are for children, so also pictorial words and emotions, which embody, and even startle, must be used in dealing with the multitudes. Still the mind, as it prepares itself, should come back to the question, Will that help ? Is that too much ? This will compel the speaker to feel his own images — his own language ; that which is real to him will usually be felt to be real to the audience he addresses ; not in mere copiousness, but in select- ness is power ; not in the crowd of illustrations, but in the distinctness of one is power. Even as we are lost in a gallery of paintings, until we take refuge in one, and permit it to exercise its impression. But we have to manage our text by illustration, CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION. 187 and on this we must dwell a little longer. We need skill here : good taste is only the unison of sound knowledge and correct feeling ; but we greatly need good taste here, as a rule. If an illustration add at all to the light in our own mind, it will probably add to the light upon the text in the minds of our audience ; and here let us be careful of the improper use of allegory. It needs superlative genius to be tolerable — a bold, strong, Bunyan-like, Christmas Evans- like mind, may recite an allegory like some lofty poem ; but should be very cautious how it yields to the seduction. Ordinary preachers should be cautious, not only how they invent the allegory for the pulpit them- selves, but how they allegorise Divine Truth. No doubt we do find many instances of such a use in Scripture, but when Origen spiritualises the account of Abraham's denying his wife, the polygamy, the patriarchy, and Noah's drunkenness, we must feel how dangerous is the whole ground, and especially as many minds will not fail to make this their very method of interpretation. When men use the language of the Bible as the mere instrument of a cultivated fancy, to make their style attractive or impressive, it is needless to say they are guilty of a great irreverence towards its Divine Author ; but there is a danger lest we also err in making the story the vehicle for our fancy. How eminently this was the case with the Church of Alexandria.* Some writers, whom we greatly respect, have made sad nonsense even of some portions of the Book of * See Cardinal Newman's "History of Arians," etc., heap. i. p. 7. i88 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. God. Let us remember that while we must not shut our eyes to the indirect and instructive applications of which a text is capable, we must never so reason as to forget that there is a sense peculiarly its own ; it is this meaning which we are especially to unfold. What do our readers think of this method of handling a text ? We are sorry to say we extract it from the sermon of a French refugee, Father Gousset, — from Proverbs xxx. i8, 19: — "There are three things which are too wonderful for me ; yea, four, which I know not : the way of an eagle in the air ; the way of a serpent upon a rock ; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea ; and the way of a man with a maid." Gousset says, " The way of an eagle in the air is the way of Jesus Christ ascending to heaven. The way of a serpent upon a rock is the way of Jesus Christ in that rock in a cavern of which He was buried ; there remained no scent by which the place of His sepulture could be known. The way of a ship in the sea denotes the way of Jesus Christ^ among His countrymen in the course of His ministry, which left no more traces among them than a ship leaves in the ocean. The way of a man with a maid signifies the miraculous birth of Christ of a virgin." And the reason assigned for this exposi- tion is " that the wise man speaks of wonderful things ; now, there is nothing wonderful in these things taken literally, but taken allegorically^ they are wonderful events indeed ! " This is extorting a sense by bombarding a text. The good man, also, must have had a vast conception of his own know- ledge not to have perceived that the wise man did in the text really express some of the greatest CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION. 189 mysteries of things, — in the motion of birds, the sleep of reptiles, the marvels of navigation, and the ways of human hearts. All this is nonsense, but, on the contrary, it is impossible to read the Scriptures much, and to meditate upon their histories, without frequently feeling a class of emotions which should naturally lead us to carry them into the pulpit, and, usually, such meditations, when they come to a thoughtful, prayerful, and pious mind, will supply material very fitting for discourse. We consider there is a law of Scripture — symbolism. There is a great prejudice, we believe, in what is called the educated ministry, against the method of taking as a text some Scrip- tural illustration, and tracing it through a series of analogies and resemblances. Surely this is not the only method in the pulpit ; but just as surely it is a method — a method not necessarily out of keeping with good taste ; a method admirably calculated for discursive instruction, level to the majority of hearers. If it were not beneath the dignity of the mind of the Spirit to suggest to the holy men of God, moved by the Holy Ghost, such an image, surely it is not beneath the dignity of the modern ministry to seek out such unstrained, modern signifi- cations as may tend to edification. May we, without apparent conceit, introduce a sketch of our own, as illustrative of this dealing with sacred images ? It is from the text referred to above : — "l. THE WAY OF AN EAGLE IN THE AIR (PrOV. XXX. l8, I9). ** The works of creation are, when they are considered, ways to the Creator. Wherever the soul turns itself, it I go THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER, finds God in the very same objects through which it forsook Him. Thus, in all ages, if the things and objects of nature have been mysterious, the mind, fruitful in contemplation has turned those objects into reflections of Divine wisdom ; and in the Book of God we find them turned into the deepest and highest wisdom. Thus, in these words of Agur, many things became to him the inlets of wise reflection. Especially he said, 'I stQ four wonderful things: i. An eagle in the air ; that sublime thing, overcoiiiiag, walking on the wings of the wind, sailing through the thunderstorm. How wonderful ! living where lightnings play, able to gaze at the sun ; ' this, he said, is wonderful — ' the way of an eagle in the air.' 2. A serpent, that long, cruel creature, its coils, its rapid spring, its strange interlocking of rings, its marvellous vertebrae, this is wonderful — * the way of a serpent upon a rock.' 3. Man imitating nature — ' the way of a ship in the sea ' — that dead, yet living bird of art and science ; and still, after all these years have passed, art has nothing more graceful, more amazingly buoyant and natural, than ' the way of a ship in the sea.' 4. And, more wonder- ful than all, the relations of hearts. How two people, who never saw each other before, meet, and how a life-long re- lationship rises, so that if one heart is torn from the other, the survivor pines and almost dies, — ' The way of a man with a maid.' " I touch one of these wonders — ' the way of an eagle in the air.' And yet, we say, the eagle is one of the highest and most famous images of the Book of God. When Ezekiel beheld his first great vision, he saw God's government carried on by four agencies, of which * the fourth had the face of an eagle ' (Ezek. x. 14), and like this was the vision of John in Revelation iv. 7 — ' the fourth creature was like a flying eagle.' Not very difficult is the interpretation here; so God carries on His government ; there is that in its mode of procedure which answers to such a sublime analogy. The eagle is evidently the figure for Diviner things through CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION. 191 all the Fathers, and in most ages ; while St. Matthew's has been the Gospel to which has been assigned the Lion — the Gospel of the tribe of Judah, the Gospel of the Kingdom of God ; and to St. Mark, the Man — the more human aspects ; and to the more sacrificial Gospel of St. Luke, the Ox ; — to St. John has been assigned the Eagle. His is the Gospel of the heights of Divine contemplation and Divine love. He sets forth our Lord's Godhead in the higher sense. Every- thing earthly with him only introduces things heavenly ; the Divine attributes break always through the veil of words. As St. Augustine says, ' How sublime ought those things to be of which he treats who is compared to the eagle.' Thus the very ways of God Himself, in His government and administration, are as ' the way of an eagle in the air,' But we purpose here to look for hints of the Divine life in man from following the way of the eagle in the air, and we shall enlarge a little on four remarks : — I. It is heavy, and yet it flies. IL The air resists its flight, and yet it flies. III. The resistance helps it, and therefore it flies. IV. There are extraordinary and Divine contrivances to aid it, and therefore it flies. "I. It is heavy, and yet it flies. — It weighs ten, fourteen, we believe, twenty pounds. How remarkable that it should overcome its gravitation, that its weight should even be a momentum to it ; not like a balloon, a part of the air, as it were, carried to and fro of the air, borne hither and thither, but always a weight, yet ever able to fly ; is not this wonder- ful ? This is the way of the eagle in the air. This also should be the way of the human soul ; the soul has its gra- vitation to overcome — is there not a weight? What is the first thing in the Christian course ? Is it not the * laying aside of every weight ' ? Does not every one feel this ? To be a man, to be a woman, is to have the weight that fastens to the earth, and would keen us here for ever • it is in 192 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. matter, which hangs upon us heavy, like lead ; it is in the blood, it is in the passions, it forms temperament. Chris- tian ! you must fly. The flesh is weak in that it is heavy. Can weighty things ascend ? think of the way of the eagle in the air, and overcome. Then, make the sublime descrip- tion of Elihu in Job yours (Job xxxix. 27-29), 'Mount up, and make thy nest on high, dwell and abide on the rock, upon the crag of the rock, and the strong place.' " II. Remark, of the way of the eagle in the air, the air resists it, and yet it flies. The air which around you pre- vents, by its weight, your falling, resists the eagle also in advancing. It is gross and heavy in itself, and there is a pressure upon it from without, yet wonderful is the way of the eagle in the air. So you must fly, and let us say that one thing by which we know we fly is resistance ; a feather does not fly, a balloon does not fly, a kite does not fly, — these float, there is no resistance. There is resistance in ourselves ; at first we do not desire to rise, we find the earth tempting and pleasant to our selfishness, and, as Charles Wesley says, — ' Angels your march oppose. Who still in strength excel ; Your secret, sworn eternal foes, Countless, invisible ; * With rage that never ends, Their hellish arts they try ; Legions of dire malicious fiends, And spirits throned on high.' "Thus it is a wrestling ; ' the prince of power in the air works in the children of disobedience.' Thus we have * spiritual wickedness in high places.' Yet you must make your way like that of the eagle in the air. And how hard — who overcomes? how hardly shall they, for whom the world has done its best, 'mount up with wings,' their way as that of an eagle in the air! CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION 193 "III. This is a negative side; there is a positive— the way of the eagle in the air — it is when the resistance helps it, and therefore it flies. There is vital force within, and not only so, the air is elastic. As it flies it beats on the wing, but, as it beats, by its own hard blows on the air, every blow lifts the wing up again, and there is a wonderful arrangement in those wings to air ; and so the air gives way, and the tri- umphant bird passes through. This is the action of a wing, one hundred and fifty strokes in a minute, I understand. So swift, so rapid ; seemingly so slow, and yet so really swift. Hence the Apostle's jubilant shout, * We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed, cast down, not destroyed.' So we are helped ; * When my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the rock that is higher than I.' * Because Thou hast been my help,' etc. God knows this. Do you remember an admirable paper by the Country Parson, on ' Men who have Carried Weight in Life ' ? Some men's progress seems so small compared with that of others' — slow, ah, but although to you they seem to make no»progress, the angels see that they do. Theirs is the way of the eagle in the air. " IV. There are extraordinary and Divine contrivances to help, and tlierefore it flies. It is a wonderful picture of the univer- sality of the arrangement, — the Divine pliability and adjust- ment of the laws of nature ; that upper convex surface of the wing ; that lower concavity of each wing, a kind of umbrella, turned inside out, to catch the wind, and so becoming a valve, so that the force may be gained below, and be harmless and helpful above; every feather is a valve. This is the way of the eagle in the air. And now, canit be thought that God has designed such uwiderful con- trivances for a poor bird's tving, and none for souls ? nay, what contrivances and helps has God given ! they are in our spirits themselves, in their mould and make. There is concealed strength in souls for dark hours ; powers, abor- tive and unknown, waiting to be employed ; these faculties 13 194 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. were not made for night and for sin, they were for the soul. Thus come the special provisions of grace, grace is spiritual co?iirivance, and in every experience 'He giveth more grace.^ And so the way of the eagle in the air. " What an eagle was Paul, who saw afar off, entered into, and saw unspeakable things ! Behold him there gazing on the sun from his rock, — ' None of these things move me,' ' I am persuaded,' etc. What an eagle was John, who saw a door opened in heaven, the Lord in the midst of the golden candle- sticks, and left his testimony, ' That which we have seen and heard,' etc., ' declare we ' ! What an eagle was Isaiah, the o'd man who said, ' They that wait on the Lord,' etc ! '■'■Now apply. Are you conscious of the weight? Do you resist? Do you feel obstacles falling, giving way? Do you feel and find Divine help ? Have you glimpses ? and do you find affections rising ? " Hereafter, you shall have exceeding great and eternal weight of glory. Look on the low scenes of the earth, on the sun, moon, and battle-plains beneath ; you shall enter into the secret place of the Most High, the chambers of everlasting rest." We dare, at the risk of seeming conceited, to say our plan suggests a more judicious use of the text than the suggestion of Father Gousset. May we give a second illustration from our own notes of sermons } "ii. — god's righteousness like the great mountains (Ps. XXX. 6). " Great mountains ! few of us have seen them, but there are those who, having seen them, find their hearts almost aching to behold them again. How is it they are so awfully, yet so venerably and beautifully dear to us? They are CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION. 195 only dead masses of unfeeling rock, yet they possess the power to awaken in us all feelings ; they are always differing, and changing, and yet they are always the same ; nights and storms roll down upon them, and clothe and conceal them; and then mornings come, and sunsets and sunrisings behold those mists wrought into rose-hues by rays that sleep there lovingly. They hold the thunders — often when it is clear below, storms seem to live and contend like spirits there, and long, low, protracted thunders mutter, as if spirits talked in their recesses, from peak to peak, from crag to crag. Snows and ice clothe their summits perpetually. The traveller, among their lower passes, hears the boom and toll, and says, 'That is an avalanche falling.' Out of their heart, as he passes along, the wanderer beholds the vast glacier — the stiffened ice-torrents that ' stopped amidst their maddest plunge;' ice falls now, that down enormous ravines sweep amain ; but there they stand, pillars of creation, monumental piles of past existences, tombs of old creations, mausoleums, cenotaphs of ancient worlds, wonders and mysteries. All things are mysteries ; but mountains — so human, yet so cold ; so mighty and massive, and yet so silent and so unmoving — the heart must be cold indeed that does not feel the power of the great mountains. " David looked up at them, and he said, They are like the rectitude — the holiness, the righteousness of God. He had not seen the greatest, Mont Blanc, the Himalajas, the Andes ; but he saw Horeb, and Sinai, and Lebanon ; and there is that, I suppose, about all these which makes them seem more than they are, even as the small hills of Cumberland and Scotland do for us almost as much as Switzerland, the Alps and Apennines. You and I also can step out this evening, and talk with God among the moun- tains. Let us talk of God — how high, how vast ! That word God! — what mysteries does it hold, does it represent ! * The thought,' said Job, ' of God was a terror to me, and by reason of His highness I could not endure.' We saw 196 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. how Job found all the suggestions of the great mountains bringing the mind to reflect upon the inscrutableness of God, but all as hints and suggestions. What a slight thing is man traversing the shoulder of some steep and awful mountain ! What an insect ! Yet he lives and it is dead and cold. To him it may, with its labyrinths of peaks, and passes, and glaciers, be called incomprehensible : its cold, its glaring heat, its regions, and platforms of storm, aspects which make it like an abstraction ; again, which make it like some dread personification and embodiment of power. David looked at it, and thought : * Hoar and solemn peak, thou art like the righteousness of God, manifold in aspect, but always one, and in thyself always still.' " I. I suppose, what David first meant to imply by this righteousness of God like the great mountains was, — that it 7vas everywhere to be seen. A mountain is lofty, prominent, can be seen at a great distance ; why, the Himalayas can be seen nearly two hundred and fifty miles away. Grandly it rises out of the vale beneath, like a monarch over the scene. Scripture, you note — you ought to notice it — involves itself in the righteousness of God, not even in His goodness so much as in His righteousness, not in His love so much as in His holiness. I do not wonder at this ; the most anxious question a man can put is this, ' Will the Judge of all the earth do right?' No question is so immense, so vital; that question settled well^ all must be well. It therefore opens grand views of the righteousness of God, involves itself in this, stakes itself on this. This is what short- sighted and selfish man thinks he cannot always see. But mountains are distinctly seen, so the righteousness of God is distinctly seen. His rectitude, infinitely right ; the Bible is the revelation of righteousness ; and the long ages as they roll, to those able to read, tell the tale of righteousness. Read it in law, that groove and line of rail laid down by God; read it in nations, their rise, decline, and fall ; read it CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION. 197 in conscience, that pulse of a moral nature throbbing after right in man; immortal and immovable principles in nature, in the history of men, in the human soul. But what is it in God ! What know we of righteousness ? Oh, we must not look in ourselves to see it ; we must look out and look t4p. It is there — vast, immutable, eternal, it is like the great mountains. Elevate the tone of your thought ; do not indulge in the cynic's sneers, those 'arrows which fly by day.' Believe — and see it in God's right ; our sense of self belies us. Suppose we died now, and had no immortality, still could we not look up with tearful eyes and bless Him for all, incomparably beyond ourselves and our desert ? Where is this righteousness — where is it .? All this agony, misery, ruin ! well, it is working through all that. ' I will,' said David, ' remember the years of the right hand of the Most High.' I will remember His eternity, and my brief time. " n. But although so prominent, its foundations are out of sight. — ' Who sunk thy sunless pillars deep in earth ?' The highest mountain's peak, it is said, is not more than five miles ; the depth of the sea has been, I believe, ascertained to be eleven, and here are the roots, nay, rather, the body, and the portions of the everlasting hills, like the great mountains. And all these weighed ! * The mountains in scales, the hills in a balance!' Exact their proportion, literally, to their dynamic intensity or force, regulated for many purposes, so living, yet out of sight. And, yet, how often the roots of God's righteousness, though concealed, are revealed to great experiences, as when Jonah says in his grief, ' he went down to the bottom of the mountains,' or David sings that (2 Sam. xxii. 16) 'the foundations of the world were discovered.' " HI. Like the great mountains, the righteousness may be ascertained, although not comprehended. — Mountains — the 198 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. highest — may be measured ; men have measured mountains. Very wonderful are the achievements of trigonometry ; and many have no hesitation in pronouncing all about God, His righteousness, and the Trinity, who would be quite at a loss here. You see the men with their posts and chains, carefully taking the base line for their calculations, then they will reduce that base line by multiples and fractions, and then by their theodolites they will carry on the process of what they call tria?igulation, and so measure without foot, or rule, or step, heights of buildings, mountains, and distances of worlds. Now, God's righteousness is like the great mountains, God Himself gives to us a base of calcula- tion, and it is ' the righteousness of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord ; ' and then, as the surveyor goes on from point to point, calculation to calculation, so ' the righteous- ness of God is revealed,' as Paul declares, * from faith to faith.* Christ makes Himself finite that I may ascend to infinite conclusions, but there must be the base line for commencement ; then all follows. How wonderfully Paul went on from this. How Divine and how sublime. * Oh the depths ! oh the heights I * " Hence, IV. Like the great mountains, God's righteous- ness is rich and precious. Mountains are rich : — " I. In minerals, their caves, their recesses, gold, coal, silver ; there the gem, the ruby lurks ; there the opal, with its soft edges ; there the basilisk glare of the emerald ; the sheen of the ruby. What streams in God's righteousness, unknown, unseen, unresolved, infinite plan, power — all righteous in infinite purpose and in promise ! " 2. In pastures. — Mountains furnish the way for the nations ; there they spread along the hill-sides. Nations have sought them. And nomadic and agricultural people have followed their chain along the hill-side. "3. In refreshments. — Illustration — Rivers gushing from mountains, as in Phnlimmon. CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION. 199 " 4. In fortifications. — What, then, is His glorious position of whom it is said, '^ His foundation is in the holy mountains ' ? " We spoke of the evil method of allegory, or the continued figure. We could give you many illustra- tions of this from the old writers ; they are often like the old pageantry which met Elizabeth in her royal progress. They attempt to embody abstract qualities, and they often fail in their attempt. We remember one, in which we are told how Truth lived in great honour ; but through the envy of her enemies, she was disgraced, banished out of the city, sitting on a dunghill, sad and discontented; a chariot comes by, attended with a great troop, towards her. Soon Truth perceived who it was — her greatest enemy, the Lady Lie, clad in a changeable coloured taffeta, her coach covered with clouds of all the colours of the rainbow, Impudence and Hypocrisy attending on one side, Slander and Deiractiofi on the other, and Perjury ushering along many more — more than a good many in the train. When the Lady Lie came up to Trutli^ she com- manded her to be carried captive for the greater triumph; at night she fared well, and would want for nothing ; only when morning came the Lady Lie said she had to pay ; and TrutJi had to pay for all, and the next night was like the last. But when the Lady Lie was brought before the judge, Ivipudoice and Hypocrisy justified their lady. Perjtiry cleared her, and Slander and Detraction laid all the blame with Truth, who, in her turn, was called upon to plead, and when she could only say, " Not guilty," and was 200 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. about to be condemned, Time, an eloquent, gra\e, experienced counsellor, stepped up, and begged to unravel the matter, lest the innocent should suffer for the guilty. Then Time began to dispel the clouds from the Lady Lies chariot, unmasked her ugliness, and unveiled her followers, and Truth by Time was cleared and set at large. And all this is to illustrate the Scripture doctrine of truth ! Another like allegory, often used in the pulpit, our readers will know; of the master of an orchard who committed it to the keeping of two servants, and went on his journey ; but one was blind, and one was lame ; the lame one saw the beauty of the fruit and told it to the blind fellow, and he said : " Had I the use of my limbs, I would soon be master of those apples ; " and the blind man said, " Had I but my eyes, my will is good if the fruit be good ; " so they united their strength, and joined their forces together. The whole-blind man took the well-sighted lame man, and so they reached their master's apples, and took them away. When, therefore, the master re- turned, they each framed his own excuse ; the blind man said he could not so much as see the tree whereon they grew ; and the lame man said he ought not to be suspected, for he had no limbs to climb. But the wise master perceived the ignoble craft of his two servants, he put them, as they were, the one upon the other's shoulders, and punished them both together. And all this is to show that sin is neither of the body nor the soul, but it is the common act of the body and of the soul. They are Simeon and Levi, brothers and partners in mischieft CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION. 201 and therefore God, in His just judgment, will punish both body and soul together if not repaired and redeemed by Christ. And this allegory, first derived from the Rabbins, has been used through long generations of writers.* Imagination, we have said, seizes the innermost. And this is the definition which has been given of it by Ruskin ; because it does this, it realises vividly, and hence, again, it represents distinctly. This is not the time nor place to stay to analyse the faculty ; but these are its functions and its manifestation. In its exercise, genius is in its highest fulness. It is the sum of all highest powers in man. It is, in its highest exercise, the focus and complement of all human power. " The men of imagination," said Napoleon, " rule the world." It is, in highest men, " the retina of the universe." j" It is the power of heart and mind made intense by their marriage. It is the faculty of attention, or intensity ; it is not the less the faculty of strong affections. It may be possible to have the imagination of fire and the heart of ice, but not upon the objects interesting to it ; towards these, it is at once affectionate as well as clear ; truths, either of Scripture or of life, read without it, are like truths read by the light of funeral torches ; but, read by it, they are read by daylight and the sun. Thus, in descriptive preaching, while * These, and many more such, will be found in Spencer's " Storehouse of Similes " (1658), already referred to; the last in Hyman Hurwitz's charming and delightful book of "Hebrew Tales," an invaluable little compendium of the ancient and uninspired literature of the Hebrews, and also in Coleridge's "Friend." t Richter ("Titan"). 202 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. tame, feeble, and learned critical correctness paints with painful weariness, a something, which is all prepared as carefully as colours are ground down for the canvas, and foolishly imagines that colour and form alone are necessary, imagination, with one or two crayon strokes, realises the whole picture to the eye. Word-painting is often the subject of a sneer, yet it is the power of the poet, that truthful rendering of scenery and character, which, from Homer to Shakespeare, and from Shakespeare to Wordsworth, or Tennyson, brings the object described vividly before the eye, and affects the sense vividly to realise. If this be the poet's purpose, it is also the preacher's. Descriptive sermons, indeed, seldom read well ; audiences are usually coarse and sensational ; the colours, therefore, are too often glaring and sensa- tional, too. Most of this descriptive work is like the stained glass in cathedrals and churches, very rich and showy and perhaps glorious, but not perspicuous. Such sermons, like such windows, need the stately roof and embowering arch ; they do not read well in the study or the household room. The prismatic splendours of the great Chalmers, or Henry Melvill, will not bear the quiet of the student's lonely house. This order of imagination charms and delights, but it belongs especially to the speech of the pleasant concert-like sound ; it flows over the soul a wilder- ness of delicious melody in which no idea is received, usually no permanent impression made. The writings of Dr. Guthrie are fertile as fields in their suggestive images — images which, on right lips, instantly flash out meanings. This was Dr. Guthrie's characteristic, as thus : — CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION. 203 "who hath delivered us from the power of darkness. " Sailing once along a coast where a friend had suffered shipwreck, the scene which recalled his danger filled us with no fear. Because, while his ship, on the night she ran ashore, was cutting her way through the densest fog, we were ploughing the waters of a silver sea, where noble head- lands, and pillared cliffs, and scattered islands, and surf- beaten reefs, stood bathed in the brightest moonshine. There was no danger, just because there was no darkness. The thick and heavy haze is, of all hazards, that which the wary seaman holds in greatest dread." " UPON his head were many crowns. "Inside those iron gratings that protect the ancient regalia of our kingdom, vulgar curiosity sees nothing but a display of jewels. Its stupid eyes are dazzled by the gems that stud the crown and sceptre. The unreflecting multitude fix their thoughts and waste their admiration on these. They go away to talk of their beauty, perhaps to covet their possession ; nor do they estimate the value of the crown but by the price which its pearls, and rubies, and diamonds, might fetch in the market. "The eye of a patriot, gazing thoughtfully in on these relics of former days, is all but blind to what attracts the gaping group. The admiration is reserved for other and nobler objects. He looks with deep and meditative interest on that rim of gold, not for its intrinsic value, but because it once encircled the brow of Scotland's greatest king, the hero of her independence — Robert Bruce. Regarded in some such light, estimated by the sufferings endured for it, how great the value of that crown which Jesus wears ! What a kingdom that which cost God His Son, and «-ost that Son His life 1 " But these things are not, as we have said elsewhere, 204 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. to be stuck into sermons meretriciously, like wax or paper flowers.* We almost feel as if we cannot too often repeat, as a law, to prevent its abuse, and wisely to conduct to its use, that imagination seizes the innermost ; shall we, then, take a distinct illustration of what we mean ? It is from a sermon of our Lord, on that memorable occasion when a lawyer stood up tempt- ing Him, and began to question the great Teacher as to the law and limitation of benevolence — what is its nature ? — what is its extent ? " Who," for instance, " is my neighbour ? " Suppose we were simply de- scribing the occasion, and we said to a circle of persons round us, who had never heard the incident, — cultivated persons, perhaps, — "Well, how do you think that Jesus answered that lawyer ? " " Oh," perhaps one would say, " He defined benevolence as the unselfish love of being in general ; " or another would say, " He would, most likely, show how benevolence seeks the ultimate happiness of its object ; " or, perhaps, another would say, " No doubt such a great Teacher would enter nicely into moral distinctions, — would show the origin of the social affections, and clearly and logically state, on metaphysical principles, the claims which man has from and upon his fellow-man." Jesus gave not one of these definitions, entered into no analyses. * There are, indeed, collections of them, such as Spenser's, already referred to, and the similar bulky but less valuable predecessor, "A Treasury or Storehouse of Similes, both Pleasant, Delightful, and Profi able, for all Estates of Men in general. Newly collected into Heads and Commonplaces." By Robert Cardway. Printed in Old Change, Sign of Eagle and Child. 1600. CONCERNING THE IMAGINATION. 205 indulged in no argument. He seized the innermost ; He drew a picture ; He told a story, which has affected all generations ever since, of a certain man who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves ; and our readers know the rest. It is a fine subject, the province of imagination in sacred speech and oratory : we venture to think, with much respect for a great deal of student culture in our day, that this is sadly missed ; little exegeses and — may we dare to say } — even trifling criticisms are too much prized, and this grand power is too much forgotten. Much of our preparation for the pulpit reminds us of the great Napoleon, who placed the leading mathematician of France at the head of an important Bureau, but declared himself disappointed in the result, because, as he said, he always found him occupied with the infinitely little; hence it is that a glance upon a text from the eye, or pen, of a Goethe, or Ruskin, or Walter Scott, or other such minds, leaves a satisfaction which a Delitzsch, or a De Wette, or a Kurtz fail to convey. Some person has said that Raskin's "Modern Painters" is the best of all the commentaries on the Bible, and the saying will only seem dark to those dry minds, unpoetic, and merely pragmatic, and therefore unable to enter into the magnificent symbolism of the sacred book; and let the reader but fancy that, an unimaginative mind attempting to read or to expound the lore of that sacred repository of all Oriental illustration and imagery ! CHAPTER VII. DR. EDWARD ANDREWS, OF WALWORTH. "Well, it puts me in mind of a conversation between a complarent poplar and a grim old oak which I overheard the other day. The poplar said that it grew up quite straight, heavenwards ; that all its branches pointed the same way, and always had done so. Turning to the oak, which it had been talking at before for some time, the poplar went on to remark that it did not wish to say anything unfriendly to a brother of the forest, but that warped and twisted branches seemed to show strange struggles. The tall thing concluded its oration by saying that it grew up very fast ; and tliat, when it had done growing, it did not suffer itself to be made into huge floating engines of destruction. But different trees had different tastes. There was then a sound from the old oak like an * Ah 1 ' or a ' Whew ! ' or perhaps it was only the wind amongst its resisting branches ; and the gaunt creature said that it had had ugly winds from without, and cross-grained impulses from within ; that it knew it had thrown out awkwardly a branch here and a branch there, which would never come qi ite right again, it feared ; that men worked it up, sometimes for good, and sometimes for evil — but that at any rate it had not lived for nothing. The poplar began again immediately (for this kind of tree can talk for ever) ; but I patted the old oak approvingly, and went on." — Friends in Council, Despair. " A ND let me beg you to be quick about it, sir, ■aV for ministers are soon forgotten ! " said Dr. Winter Hamilton to the printer in his study, as he handed him the last sheets of the " Life of Ely." Ah I it seems strange — and let us hope that to DR, EDWARD ANDREWS. 207 some amongst us, at any rate, it seems painful — that talent and genius drop from their stations in the pulpit, and elsewhere, and that so few remember to regret how soon our most eminent teachers are forgotten ; for, indeed, eloquence of an unusual character has been heard in our own day. Genius has flashed, and lightened over entranced and enrap- tured audiences ; there have been learning, piety, and diction, rousing and subduing : and now all so hushed and forgotten — forgotten, save by the select and loving few. It is but recently, or it appears but recently, that we heard the voice of Howell, of Long Acre, vehement, earnest, and impetuous ; and Fletcher, of Stepney, so thoughtful, so dignified, and instructive ; and Hyatt, of the Tabernacle, so impassioned, earnest, and impressive, fervid as the voice of that John who cried in the wilderness — " Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make His paths straight." A day or two since, and we listened to the humour of Hill ; to Wilkes, so symmetrical, yet so rustic ; to the pious breathings of Harrington Evans, and Watts Wilkinson ; to the homely, and tender, and beautiful genius of VVaugh, to his latest day fresh as a moun- tain daisy ; to the impetuous and gorgeous Chalmers ; the princely, the illustrious Hall ; the erring and yearning Irving, brilliant and mystic, like the belt of a theological Orion, — all gone ! Belfrage and Huegh, so hearty and loving ; and Christmas Evans, and John Elias, and Williams, of Wern, — all gone ! And poor Edward Parsons, well worthy of some pitying tears, and compelling, from his unhonoured grave, our mourning admiration for the classic fulness and elegance of his genius. And Benjamin Parsons, •2o8 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. broad, strong, rugged, and sound as an English oak ; and Collyer, graceful and pliant as a mountain ash. And Robert McAll, the Cicero of Nonconformity, as Hall was the Demosthenes. And Thorp the elder ; and, alas for him ! Thorp the younger, too. And Jay, one of the old Puritans risen from the dead ; and Thomas Roberts, — all gone ! And Stratten, the grand theologian ; and James Parsons, an impersonal electrical flash ; and Andrew Reed, the Father of Charities ; and Thomas Binney, — head and shoulders above all comparison and competition, — all gone ! " Gone ! Are they gone, who brightly shone ? Oh gloomy, chilly night ! Now left alone, we deeply moau Their much-lamented light. The Prophets, too ! — the Prophets, too 1 Why do they cease to cry ? Will not kind Heaven the lamp renew ? Must, too, the Prophets die ? " Long is the list, and interesting to revert to it : all these men had their faults, their eccentricities ; most of them, too, possessed a broad individuality of character, from which the more modern ministry shrinks terrified ; they represented a state of society — or most did — more free and unfettered than ours ; they had not trimmed themselves down to a " pale unanimity." But whatever the breadth of their mental proportions, whatever the measure of their love or their labour, they have left us ; and we only revert to their names as illustrations of the rapidity with which our eminent men depart, not only from the world, but from the memory of DR. EDWARD ANDREWS. 209 survivors too. How sweet it is to walk in the bye- lanes of biography and memory, and ahght on forgotten names, still smiling, still fragrant, like a violet, or forget-me-not, although lost to sight. Did our readers know Dr. Edward Andrews, of Walworth ? Our boyhood's enthusiasm was often kindled in his costly temple. Magnificent man ! Endowed with all the most eminent attractions of genius, in an affluent degree ; yet who now pro nounces his name ? or who ever culled the flowers to bind a garland round his headstone ? At one period he was one of the most popular preachers of the metropolis; his chapel, although perhaps it would not strike the eye as so splendid now, appeared, in its munificence of fancies, extraordinary then ; — the stained glass, and the Aaronic and Mosaic figures, the Baptist and St. Paul in carving — the rich, loud organ, and the altar-piece - all this, and the geometrical pulpit, gave you certainly no idea of the dissenting conventicle ; and once, when indeed we were little better than a boy, we ventured to doubt the propriety of all this, lor our ideas were cast in a mould of the most simple Puritanism — • blessings upon our dear and long since sainted in- structor ! — " God," said the Doctor, " should be worshipped with the best of everything, my boy — ■ best architecture, best painting, best music, best sculpture, best poetry, and best genius." Our readers may depend upon it, this was a settler ; and, now that we see the sophistry more, we are yet more disposed to admit the argument. And Edward Andrews was endowed with genius. Like most men of genius, like all men of lofty genius, 14 210 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. he held his worth too cheaply ; he never could appraise himself at his proper value. There were few things, by all account, which he could not do ; yet, perhaps, there was scarce anything he attempted to do ; musician, painter, linguist, philosopher, poet, he was a wonderfully many-sided man ; a wit and humorist, he yet illustrated the strange perversity of humanity by yielding his faith to the narrow dogmas of the most cold and frigid hyperism ; but the people would crowd to listen to the outshinings of his genius. His was the power that could seize the abstract fact of science and hold it up, replete with the beauties of poetry, as an illustration for the pulpit. His fancy was daringly imitable ; humour he could not altogether restrain, although he reined it and made it most subservient to the purposes of instruction. He blurted his sentences forth after a similar fashion to the late lamented George Dawson; but then as they came they gleamed radiant from the mint of genius and deep-heartedness, which is — may we not say .-' — ever the companion of genius. Alas ! for the quick-glancing glory of that grey eye ; tongue, must we hear it — eye, must we see it no more ? Their like we have never found since, and never shall. All London, at one time, heard of the eccentrici- ties of Dr. Andrews. He was so perfectly free from conventionalism — so wholly a child — he did not know that what he did and said was strange. It lay upon his mind — what could he do but utter it? We very well remember one Sabbath morning, after pursuing his way through his discourse, happily and beautifully, noticing all the particulars beneath DR. EDWARD ANDREWS. 21 1 the two first heads, he came to a dead stand. "Now, look," said he, " as I came up those pulpit stairs, I had all the parts of this sermon well written on my mind ; and now I cannot call to mind this third head. Organist ! strike up a symphony, or a doxology ; — it will come — it will come, presently ! " And then, while the organ played, simply as a child he leaned over the pulpit, and when the tones ceased, " Yes," said he, " yes, I have it ; how remarkable ! " and, instead of giving us the lost head of discourse, he branched out into a dissertation upon the laws of relative suggestion and association ; he returned to the " head," however, afterwards. So the crying of a child never produced in him any irritability ; he would sometimes look at the mother and say, " Poor thing ! poor thing ! Better take it out — won't be good ! — won't be good ! " And it was as easy for the Doctor to say sweet, good, bright things, as for a child to pick up shells upon a sea-beach ; his mind and heart were full of them. To any one familiar with both men he suggests immediately a resemblance to Hartley Coleridge. Exceedingly alike in their personal appearance, the likeness was yet more striking in mind ; their foreheads so similar, and both covered, in just the same way, with the black hair, grizzling into grey ; their half- buried, half-lazy, shambling, shuffling, down-looking walk ; the slovenly appearance of their dress; their half-wild, yet wholly gentle manner, when addressed. Then their sins were very much alike, alas ! as were also their virtues ; both led a lazy life, and both had offers from Frazer, and other eminent publishers, by which they might have obtained a competence in a 212 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. year or two. Andrews enjoyed the writing of loose fragments, like Coleridge's " Marginalia," in any sort of books, and Coleridge might have written the glorious drama of Andrews, called Sampson. Both of them loved the fine arts in their own way ; both were fountains of awful tenderness ; both entranced all companies they entered ; both would stay to kiss a child in the street, or take it from its mother's arms, and carry it some distance, from pure love to it ; and both died at the same age, and neither left behind any adequate recollection of genius or power. Andrews has gone to forgetfulness, and Hartley Coleridge is fast hastening on his way thither. Another name with which we often associate that of Andrews was Hamilton, of Leeds ; but here we give the palm to our friend of London. He was more truly free, although the disciple of so much sterner a creed, or rather the same creed, held in so much sterner relations. Like Hamilton, he has been accused of a barbarous dissonance. Like Hamilton, he could not curb in the pinions of his luxuriant fancy. Like Hamilton, his soul was larger than any sect ; but he did not, like Hamilton, perpetually attempt to trim down his soul to the dominions of his sect. Like Hamilton, he bound up his beauties within small sententious circles. Thus, in a funeral oration for a member of his Church, he closed by saying, " What can I say to describe to you a passage to heaven so beautiful and gentle as this ? What shall I ' say but that the spirit passed from the body as music flits from the string ? " And sometimes those sentences were laden with DR. EDWARD ANDREWS. 213 gold, and oppressive in their sublimity. In a sermon from the text, " The King's daughter is all-glorious within," he described a recent visit to the House of Lords, and strikingly told how his eye had been fasci- nated by an illustrious personage, who had borne up the heaving continent upon his shoulders. " He looked again," said he, " and the silvery grey of his hair was flecked with the blood- dust of the battle shower — he was not all-glorious within." And how striking sometimes was his accompanying action ! Once, we remember, the close of a funeral sermon, after a series of remarks of uncommon force and brilliancy, was electrical. The finger was turned to the vacant seat in the pew, and he uttered the word '^Absent ! " A second or two only elapsed, and the finger was pointed upwards, and the word " Present I " thrilled like a hymn of consolation through the chapel. And the glory of all these things was only the more perceptible because apparently so unpremeditated. All things said and done were said and done off- hand, and in a tone that might surely appear gruff but for the music of sensibility, which turned its otherwise harsh cadences to the Divinest harmony — - so bluntly he shook out upon his auditors words and allusions which each was a poem. The mention of some topics seemed instantly to transport him. He could describe with enrapturing fervour the progress of a spirit, through future ages, in knowledge and wisdom ; he could describe a cherub winged upon his mission through the infinite spheres. The most entrancing figures of earthly association appeared to crowd upon him ; he felt the difficulty of selection. No man ever revealed more plainly than he how 214 I'HE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. much more he felt and saw than he was able to utter ; his eye revealed it. The figure and the phrase were beautiful, but from that rough and care- less tongue, yet quivering with sensibility, they became overpowering and sublime. The sermons of Dr. Andrews are published, but out of print, and now, doubtless, quite unknown. We shall scarcely apologise for presenting to our readers several extracts from the volume ; but they give no idea of the hurrying brilliancy which glanced perpetually over these compositions in the course of their enunciation. Then, again, these sermons were wonderfully illuminated by their delivery ; not that the Doctor was an orator. He spoke wholly without art ; he never sought to inflame, nor to enrapture : in speaking, in fact, he sought to do nothing, "but just talked on ; and while talking, it seemed to us as if words and ideas happened to fall in that strange beauty of combination, almost without volition on the part of the preacher. He was fond of pictorial words, but in the spoken style of his discourse, the image was frequently far more continuous and prolonged. The written sermon has sometimes the appearance of additional finery, which, of course, deducts from real worth. Without any separate introduction, we will take, at random, a few of the illustrations of the Doctor's thought and eloquence : — "charging god foolishly. " Let us beware of charging God foolishly. The insect that flutters on the surface of a stupendous pile is ill- qualified to survey its proportions, and to offer criticisms upon the wisdom of the architect." DR. EDWARD ANDREWS. 215 "we are not saved. " Awful — the idea of a world ceasing ! Even when a moth expires on the microscope of the naturalist, the mind becomes pathetically affected : a living being has made its exit from our world — its little heart has ceased to beat — its wings will no longer shine in the sun ! But how is this thought aggrandised when we rise to a city deserted, and sit with Marius on the ruins of Carthage, or with Jeremiah on the wasted plains of Judea, when the elders have ceased from the gate, and the young men and the virgins from their music. But, oh ! think of a world perishing ! — the music of the spheres — the moon's voluptuous lamp — the sun's golden flambeaux — all the decorations of heaven rent, and the mighty business of the world at an end ! Then, how dreadful to have to say — 'The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved;' suns have risen and set ; prophets have harangued ; miracles have blazed ; the Saviour has died ! the Holy Spirit has descended ; conscience has thundered ; the world is burnt up ; and — we are not saved 1 " " WHAT A HALLELUJAH ! " And what a hallelujah will that be ! — what a meeting on the banks of the river, when our bliss is secure ! How delightful our first walk in the garden, after the day of judgment is over, and we are safely received into the paradise of light ! What recollections ! what anticipations ! — glittering angels and lofty cherubim gUding by upon fanning wings, making heaven's odours more delightful, and flinging everlasting fragrance through all the air — flowers, bright as stars, and tremulous as a tear — trees, whose shadow is illumined with golden fruit — fresh swelling cadences from distant harps, — and sudden bursts of chorus from different companies, lost in the whirlpool of praise. 2i6 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. Oh, my soul ! sit down and ponder these things, and then tell the dull earth it is unworthy of thy love ! Let Dagon already feel the shaking, and fall — immense and heavy — from his pedestal, nevermore to be reared ! Now let the strain begin, and night, dark night, cover all the gemmed vanities that rise between us and the mount of God ! Strike up, seraphs ! our hearts beat in unison, and Thy Sacred Name, oh Jesus, be my song ! " The cold in temperament — the unideal — cannot tolerate this profuse outpouring of language and fancy. The preacher was essentially a poet, and he could only express himself as a poet. Look at the following : — "the testimony of JESUS IS THE SPIRIT OF PROPHECY. "The Old Testament saints saw His glory in the beaming altar — in the glittering targets that were hung round the temple — in the drop of Hght that marked the priest's up- ward eye, when he devotionally looked to heaven and blessed the people — in the many-sounding silver cornets which, with one accord, were uplifted in the sunbeam, and inflated by pious breath. It was the trumpet-march of the Redeemer ! Already — already they beheld the blood- stained Conqueror from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah. Embodied in the field of distant vision they beheld the Man of sorrows — the Man of war. His adored name was written on their hearts, and they rehearsed it from the shields of their immortality." Unquestionably much of this appears to be in very redundant, in very bad taste ; and the mind of Dr. Andrews was truly an undisciplined mind ; it was crowded with every sort of learning ; and his speech in public and in private abounded with every DR. EDWARD ANDREWS. . 217 sort of allusion. Peace to his memory ! Looked at now, at some distance of time, it appears to us the most extraordinary preaching of this sort we ever heard. The thought was not profound, nor, perhaps, very original ; but the analogies were so numerous and so perfect, and the information was so various and extensive ; the eloquence was not of a continued and artificial character, but it was so sharp and sententious, yet so dazzlingly pictorial; and it was the word of so hearty a man — so free — so unaffected, in the pulpit ministration ! That kindly, genial, sunshiny face smiles on us still ; and those words, withal so humoursome, too ! — Dear spirit — kind teacher — hail ! — and farewell ! And even yet we cannot let him go ; the diffi- culty in parting from an old friend is increased by the knowledge that few remember him beside our- selves ; and we are quite aware that many will question our own taste as we recall splendours which, perhaps, in their perusal may seem to many readers garish, possibly meretricious. To us he seems, we suppose, very much such a person as Hugh Miller's Stewart of Cromarty. Thus the name of Dr. Andrews is one which we do not like to allow to pass from the memory of others ; there is no fear of its passing from our own. He was our boyhood's pulpit idol. Collyer was more mellifluous, James Parsons more electrical, Hyatt was loud and vehement, Melvill rolling, rhetorical, grand ; but Andrews was beyond all preachers we knew then, beyond all we have known since — the real poet of the pulpit. It is possible that some will say, as they read his sermons, — if they should 2i8 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. ever succeed in getting a copy to read, — that he ought rather to serve as an illustration of how not to preach — his style was so broken, so abrupt ; he threw things about so entirely at random ; his mind was so desultory, and so dreamy. He was away to the uttermost and outermost verge of the universe in a second, by the merest glance of a simple sugges- tion. A professor of rhetoric would have said he could not make a sermon ; a professor of logic would have said he could not reason. Well, he seemed to know everything ; and he poured into his rich dis- courses allusions from every variety of subject and every variety of book. He was a child of genius. Music of many instruments, " from a Jew's-harp to an organ," he was said to have at his fingers' ends. Something of many languages he was supposed to know. In Greek he was a giant, not like Porson nor Parr ; yet his knowledge, we believe, even they would have respected. Then, not only Hebrew, but more out-of-the-way and tributary stores of language he had at command. He was also something of a painter. He was a large-hearted, loving child, perhaps, too, with something of the vanity and the petulance of a child. We were wondrously well pleased to visit his church ; for, although a Congre- gational minister in a day when Congregationalism was very plain and unadorned, his church, which is now no doubt ordinary enough, was rich and beauti- ful. He would employ the service of the Church of England ; would have an organ and stained glass, had it been possible the fluted column, as well as the pealing anthem. And so it was that we were often drawn to Beresford Chapel, Walworth, to listen DR. EDWARD ANDREWS. 219 to a man whose church was always crowded, even when that corner of London contained such a cluster of preachers as England could scarcely produce now — Dr. Collyer, Henry Melvill, Thomas Dale, William Irons, John Burnet, and Edward Andrews — all within a mile of each other. Andrews was one of those men who did little else beside preach, or prepare to preach ; it was the habit of that time. Through the week, thought and feeling went wandering up and down in search of expression ; and it was a fine time when those old preachers lived, and lived to study, to feel, to think, and to find the fitting mould of expression into which to pour the red-hot metal of feeling and of thought. In the case of Dr. Andrews, he certainly lived for this purpose — much-tried, much-suffering, painfully-experienced man. Heart and mind went wandering about during the week for those settings of jewelled expression which he drew forth with every Sabbath. Who does not know it ^ there are words which make thoughts and emotions shine, like opals or rubies, like any precious stone. Cer- tain words have an amazing power of delighting from the way in which they occur. No one hearing Andrews, we suppose, would have charged him altogether with bad taste, even when he .said the quaintest, queerest things ; but perhaps most persons reading his sermons now would speak of them as monuments of bad taste, in just the same way, and for just the same reason, as the charge has been preferred against the " Theron and Aspasia," the " Contemplations and Meditations" of James Hervey, Pollock's "Course of Time," and, perhaps, Young's 220 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. " Night Thoughts." They are so highly coloured — colour predominates ; sometimes it even seems, no doubt, to glare. We believe, it should be remem- bered, that an amount of colour may be permitted in speech which becomes dazzling and intolerable to the eye when read. It was the case with Chalmers, with Melvill ; in many very great instances the revising and fastidious eye of the critic has had to reject what seemed most delightful as it fell from the lip of the speaker. If the speaker hold up a succession of brilliant kaleidoscopic words, and speak like an Ephrem Syrus, it is scarcely possible for the mind to ask, " What is he giving us t What is the good of it all ? " As well ask, in the presence of the rosy glow of the morning spread upon the moun- tains, " What is the good of it all } " There is a pleasing emotion, although no defined shape. The mystical heat and reality of his own nature carries the hearer along into the same path of vision and emotion. It is wonderful how, for a time, a speaker compels an audience to feel things from his point, or standard of emotion. But we live in the day of very correct taste, and " the elegant Jeremiahs," the prophets of " light and sweetness," would themselves, we must confess it, be plunged into a passion, or excited to a nervous tremulousness at such things as fell readily in every sermon from the lips of Andrews. It must be admitted, he was no pre-Raffaelite, and this is the pre-Raffaelite age in the pulpit as well as on the canvas. Such pre-RaffaeHtism takes pride very much in renouncing charming and attractive adjectives ; and yet an adjective, even a succession of artistic adjectives, will do the work of a picture — DR. EDWARD ANDREWS. 221 nay, an adjective is a stroke of colour — but only in the hand, and from the pencil of the artist. Far be it from us to imply that the ignorant lavishmcnt of fine words upon any subject either decorates and adorns or adds anything to the weight of impression in the hearer's mind ; and yet something has to be said ; the mere cold, hard outline of a thought is not sufficient for the ordinary and average mind. An accomplished master of music, the other day, told us that he had not so much sympathy with Beethoven in his deafness as he had heard many express, because to himself to read the mere score of some grand work of a musical artist was intense enjoyment, although unaccompanied by any vocal or instrumental melody. What then, he said, must have been the pleasure of Beethoven } Far greater, probably, than if the notes and bars had been trans- lated into sound. Yes ; but very vain would be the expectation of much enjoyment in the multitude without such translation ; and great must be the endowment of music in the soul thus to apprehend in itself the life of harmony and melody, its soprano and bass, its contralto or tenor, without a note upon the ear. Now, when men speak in hard thought, — • and poets do this sometimes, — they expect their readers or hearers to be as wise as themselves, our great master, Robert Browning, for instance. Ad- jectives translate, when wisely used, scenes and impressions to the popular mind. No one under- stands this better than Tennyson ; he is a master of adjective ; and this is one great element in his popularity, as perhaps it is a considerable element in every great poet's popularity. 222 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. Dr. Andrews seemed almost to disdain to speak except in a picture. Take two or three ANDREWSANA. " Man alone Conscious of God. — Of all the lower universe, man only can desire the Deity. The eagle soars towards the sun, without mentally drinking its light; the sturdy ox triumphantly tramples the meadow, without knowing Him who covers it with green ; the majestic river flows on, ignorant of its source and of the blessings which teem from its waters ; and even the starry train of midnight, as they roll along nearer the throne, can only utter in the ear of Reason and Rehgion their harmonious chime, themselves utterly unconscious as the melancholy bell in some solitary tower." '■'^ Hatred and Enmity to Christ. — Bat all attempts to destroy His greatness shall, in the end, only manifest more fully His eternal excellency, as clouds and vapours, which threaten to obscure the horizontal sun, are soon converted into fleeces of gold and silver, or are made, when stretched into curtain-work of fire and tresses of flame, to embody the very radiance they would conceal, and to extend a royal drapery around the rising king of day." " Time and Rivers. — And the very flight of time should excite our pious attention even to temporal duties. Time gradually slides away in small quantities, like the smooth and liquid lapse of rivers ; we are amused by flowers on the brink, or by clouds and trees reflected on the surface, while the irrevocable flood rolls on." " God Inexplicable. — He has dashed the insolence of those who would anatomise Him, by a flood of wonders in the material world, each of them, taken separately, enough to confound the wisdom of the wisest — ^the curiously feathered moth, the buoyant cloud, the fiery gem, and the flashing meteor, the wilderness in its magnificence, and the ocean DR. EDWARD ANDREWS. 223 in its expanse, all give back the honours of the invisible God, and every particular of their formation utters a por- tentous sarcasm on the man who w^ould stagger into the palace of Deity, and command the Judge of quick and dead to explain His most hidden properties to sceptics who but half believe His being." " Metnory and Immortality. — What an abyss to look back upon is the retrospect of our boyish years ! We remember the blue skies, and the gardens, and the rose-walks, and the river, and the childish ramble amidst the hawthorn and cowslips, and the red dragon-fly that skimmed the stream, and the charms of the wood and copse, the sudden pheasant gleaming in the sun, and the blackbird of mellifluous note ; yes, and at winter, too, the pert little robin looking sidelong and sprightly upon the snow into the lattice. They are all gone ! Where are the years of our infancy ; and what have we learned since ? Are we better acquainted with heaven and with ourselves ? Are we pressing forward to win Christ and to be found in Him ? Then we shall overtake time, our lost years will be replaced, and before the pendulum has ceased to vibrate, we shall be safe beyond the flight of years." " The Rationalism of Strauss. — We have lived to see the fuller organisation of a system which tells us that He " (Christ) " is only a spectre — a gliding image along the arcades of the temple, less real than the phantoms of a winter's eve, and to be classed only with the fables of the village beldame, who terrifies her youthful audience with scenes from the graveyard, when the stroke of midnight mourns over the dead, or strange sights announce to distant friends the last change of departed men. Christ now becomes the mere coruscation of fancy, and His personal existence a something which, in pity to human weakness, had better be forgotten." But we must cease from this citation of images. 224 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. abundantly strewn, however, throughout these sermons, and many of them showing a habit of sublime fancy and expression. It seemed with Dr. Andrews that, whatever had to be expressed, some corresponding picture rose to the mind. Thus, " He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty " calls up these images : — "Some have said that a shelter becomes doubly calm and pleasing when surrounding tempests beat its sides harmless ; that the domestic hearth is more cheerful when flakes of snow gather on the windows, and when little children, looking out into the darkling storm, return from the lattice with additional pleasure to a parent's embrace, while cheerful embers gild by reflected fires their still more cheerful faces, and parental piety descants on the goodness of God and the claims of the poor. All such ideas find their substantiation in the highest sense in his experience who, amidst the wildest commotions of earth, takes refuge in a promising covenant-keeping God, like the alarmed bird, whose grasp of the bending bough becomes only the stronger for the very winds by which the tree is shaken." Concerning the style of Dr. Andrews, it is, we believe, very generally denounced by severer critics ; it is also pretty popularly admired, and by some preachers and speakers very generally followed. Dr. Punshon laboured his periods much more arduously, but seldom expressed himself in those colours of poetry which we have admitted may be regarded as a grave defect in these sermons. It is certain that the whole spirit of an age changes. How few now feel pleasure in reading DR. EDWARD ANDREWS. 225 either Thomson's " Seasons," or Young's " Night Thoughts " ! It is in an age when such poetry is popular that the decorative and adorned style is followed in the pulpit. The great defect, however, of Dr. Andrews was, that his mind seemed ever unsustained through a subject. All his words flashed about like coruscations ; his discourses on texts were broken into fragments ; fancy fairly got the better of him. He even had a very singular way of divid- ing his texts, almost invariably expressing the division in a single word. Thus, from the text, '^ An old disciple" (Acts xxi. 16), we have, in the delineation of the character — i. Wonder. — It is wondrous that any should live to extreme age, when we consider the variety of movements upon which our life depends ! what passions, etc., innumerable calamities, etc., grim diseases, etc. ; what battles, if not in the field, with man's unkindness, etc. If the old disciple appear stern, it is perhaps because the world has made him so. O ye young and mistrust- less, deal gently with the acrimonies of the aged. Amazing sight ! a human being, fearfully and wonderfully made, and whose life has extended through nearly a century. 2. Distinction. — The term, " an old disciple," reminds us of the compara- tive singularity of advanced age. Impious Absalom and pious Josiah alike die young. Death loves to decorate his scythe with the earliest garlands, and to employ the old man in building the tombs of his children. What an alarming ascendency of death over infants, and generally over the young ! He who has lived to threescore years and ten has out- lived his friends, and stands like a tree on the IS 226 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. mountain, alone, with its withered leaves dropping all around it, etc. 3. Perseverance. — To have be- come an " old disciple," supposes the man to have steadily persevered, while many professed followers of Christ went back and walked no more with Him ; he is like the oldest inhabitant of the village, who has seen all the other houses change their tenants. The decided preference for the gospel in very aged saints confirms others, etc. Error can never be venerable merely because it is old ; but a statue that remains unbroken amidst many ruins acquires new majesty from the shading of time, as from the mosses which have grown at its pedestal, and from the scars war and tempest have made upon its base- — its very existence is its own inscription, among wrecks which nothing but super-excellence could outlive. 4. Willingness. — ^-Disciple means a learner ; the saints are ever learning, etc. 5- Advantage. — Some cir- cumstances in old age render it highly favourable to devotion and to general spirituality of mind. The fervour of the passions has much subsided ; an old man takes a calmer view of human life than others do: he is a library of experience. All nature be- comes dull, and it is well if then the world be only a shaded arch through which the weary traveller looks into a brighter sky. The "old disciple" seeks a country traversing a world of change. 6. Necessity. — The natural desolation of such an age, abandoned by nature and slipping off the world's surface ; con- solations of religion especially needed then. The subject naturally closed with remarks — i. To tlie Careless Old. What ! an old man careless for eternity ! In proportion as life recedes, the human DR. EDWARD ANDREWS. 227 being ought to be thoughtful. 2. To the Sceptical. 3. To the Gay. Multitude of years should teach wisdom ; an animated skeleton dressed up for the saloon of pleasure and courting the smiles of the youthful fair — how forbidding ! 4. To the Covetous. What an absurdity that the decay of faculties should be the signal for new labours, that the incapacity for enjoyment should heighten our zeal to furnish its materials ! ^. To the Unstable. 6. To the Pharisaical. 7. To the Spiritual. The sermons of Dr. Andrews present a very fair average, but in the way we have indicated, too broken, too unsustained for modern taste, or for the consecutive thinker, in this, however, by no means behind the greater number of his contemporaries in the pulpit. The more serious objection to his style is, that it seems to labour too much with the deter- mination to say what may be called fine or showy things ; yet they were not unnatural things, and we have one or two living men, exceedingly popular in our pulpit, who sin in this way far more than did Dr. Andrews, but who never, or seldom, redeem their style by such splendid images. In closing our sketch, our readers will perhaps expect one or two other illustrations, "resurrection unto life. '* Resurrection I Wonderful scene ! Then the green field will be cloven ; every turf will heave ; vaults, cemeteries, mausoleums, and cathedrals will give out their dead. And of the saints, what glorious bodies shall arise ! like birds of splendid plumage, emerging from the grove, or rockets ot flame shot up from burning cities, or brilliant suns in the 228 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER, fourth day of creation starting out from dark nature's chaotic wilderness ! Now shall the body be rejoined to the happy spirit and share her immortality ; now appear the glittering crown, the golden throne, the eloquent harp, awaiting only the close of nature's commotion, and ready, when the last thunder dies, to pour from immortal strings the only harmonies that could worthily mingle with the soul's ecstacy. And what a heaven shall open to the soul, either in life's exit now, or its consummation then ! Shall we speak of it as a city, a labyrinth of architecture, vanishing in columns and arches into the blue distance ? or as a boundless waste of forests, lakes, and gardens? or, rather, as a bright horizon, which dissolves its entire compass into light, where the soul is lost in mingling glories — every portion of the scene an item of felicity— the whole an orb of completed adoration? ' I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it, for the glory of God did hghten it, and the Lamb is the Light thereof What beams! 'And the redeemed shall walk in itl' We might almost exclaim. Tell us, ye departed spirits of the sainted dead ! tell us what heaven is ! Tell us, Abel, thou first of mortals, escaping from thy brother's murderous arm — tell us with what joys thou didst languish into life ; and how, smoothly pillowed on the breast of angels, or wrapped in their glow ing wings, thy soul did enter, the first visitor from earth, and thou didst press with hallowed knees, the first redeemed, the flowery coasts ! Or shall Elijah tell us, descending in his chariot of flame, what was the glory of that heaven whose brightness, when he arrived, extmguished the fiery beamings of his tempestuous coursers? Or shall he of Tarsus tell us, who was snatched into the third heaven ? Or shall Moses, the man of God, reveal what he has since seen, not in the rock's cleft, nor even on Sinai's burning summit ? Oh ! they cannot tell ; they have heard, but the words were unspeakable ; they have seen, but the vision was unutterable ; yet we may gaze, like some early traveller, DR. EDWARD ANDREWS. 229 who, on the mountain's side, pauses to admire the rising sun, till his features and vestments borrow the crimson glow; so would we look, till changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord." It was hardly possible for a man like Andrews to speak, — far away as his general exercises were froni logic, or that which bears the vaunted name of philosophy, — without often, in many a happy stroke, revealing his knowledge of the dimensions and locality of great truths, even as a lightning stroke often reveals an immense region unexpected before, as when he says, " The altar of God, burning in the midst of a gospel land, illustrates and renders more splendid the whole scenery of the surrounding universe." But even his philosophy was always com- pacted of poetry, as he portrayed " the universe resolved into its first elements," or saw the " seraphs circle out with a pointing hand the orbits in which the worlds moved." But, as we have said, he spoke in the way of a poet, and delighted to loiter over the " bee's scientific toil," "the foresight and political economy of the sagacious ant," to question " Who shall explain a drop of dew, or the cheerfulness of the little grasshopper who sips it on the point of the leaf.?" or to inquire " Who shall unbar the castle where the thunders dwell.''" to converse "with the rude unruffled eye of the mountain eagle," the " red and rapid lightnings glaring up the solitary glen, or fringing the hitherto unseen forest." Speaking of the first missionaries of the cross, he delighted to describe them as going forward with a " standard which, taken from Calvary, unfurled and dishevelled in the hurricane, and darting mysterious influence wherever 230 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. it came, proclaimed the march of some mighty conqueror whose character had been mistaken." He delighted to speak of God " in His amazing extension visiting the heath-flower and the bluebell, and depositing a dew-drop on the bosom of a rose," to visit the " hoary mountain, the solitary lake, the sombre, wild, and unexplored shores whose echoes have slept since the departure of the deluge." If he described Socinianism or Pantheism, he would speak of them as " a spiritual chemistry which dissolves the hardest substances into thin air, very captivating to the unwary." But with a piece of what some would perhaps call his more sustained extravagance we will close our citations. " THE DEATH OF STEPHEN. " Stephen was right : he commended his spirit to Him who is the First and the Last and the Living One ; and in this hope he fell asleep to awake in a brighter day, and to enter on a more peaceful world. Illustrious sufferer ! He was the first of the noble army of martyrs who ascended after the death of Jesus ; he hastened to join the number of those who had suffered since the death of righteous Abel to the blood of Zacharias the son of Barachias, whom they slew between the temple and the altar. He was eager to fall down before the throne of Jesus ; a shower of stones and a tempest of execrations could not affright away his steady soul ; he was favoured with a view of Christ at the right hand of power ; he overheard the accents of a prevailing intercession ; he could not desist ; his dying countenance shone like the face of an angel, and he poured himself out in an act of devotion : ' Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. I cannot endure Thine absence. I long to join the company of Thy ransomed ones.' Go, noble martyr, enter into the DR. EDWARD ANDREWS. 231 joy of thy Lord. The early sun sets in blood ; but it shall glow in a brighter hemisphere, unclouded and uneclipsed, to go no more down for ever. Thou hast bequeathed to us a precious lesson ; thy last effort was an act of worship to Jesus; on the confines of heaven, and taught by the unerring Spirit, thou hast left us an example, and art now perpetuating the same principle, though prayer is turned into praise." With this quotation we will close our sketch of an almost forgotten, but in his day a not unremarkable man ; his desultory mind prevented him from achieving anything in authorship beyond the volumes of Sermons from which we have quoted, a volume of Discourses on the Trinity, a few occasional Sermons, a little collection of Orations, very brief, spoken mostly at graves or in occasional circumstances, and a sacred drama, entitled, NabotJis Vineyard^ which received some warm commendations upon its appearance. At the bar of good taste and correct fancy, the sermons of Dr. Andrews would certainly receive some severe condemnation ; but probably they might be taken as very happily furnishing to students excellent lessons, not merely upon the abuse of the imagination in the pulpit, but upon its use, for they exhibit not only a dangerous and undisciplined wildness, but a too glaring colour in the representation of sacred things ; they represent also a power of living imagery, a vivid appropriation of fancy, although reminding us too much of the style of Salvator Rosa, or the yet more questionable colouring of John Martin. CHAPTER VIII. THE PAPER IN THE PULPIT. FEW things in the history of the pulpit seem to us to have a more ironical aspect than the interest manifested by Charles the Second in its spiritual welfare and efficiency. His Majesty was pleased to deplore a general declension in reference to morals and religion, and, after great searchings of heart, he arrived at the conclusion that the general depravity of the times resulted from the reading ot their sermons by preachers. He was, therefore, pleased to issue a prohibition of this deleterious practice. It is said to be on record in the statute book ot the university of Cambridge, and is as follows. " To the Vice-Chancellor and Gentlemsn : — Whereas his Majesty is informed that the practice of reading sermons is generally taken up by the preachers before the University, and therefore some- times continued before himself, his Majesty has com- manded me to signify to you his pleasure that the said practice, which took its beginning from the dis- orders of the late times, be wholly laid aside, and that the said preachers deliver their sermons, both in Latin and in English, by memory, without •icok, as being a way of preaching which his Majesty judges THE PAPER IN THE PULPIT. 233 most agreeable to the use of all foreign Churches, to the customs of the University heretofore, and to the nature and intention of that holy exercise ; and that his Majesty's commands in these premises may be duly regarded and observed, his further pleasure is that the names of all such ecclesiastical persons, as shall continue the present supine and slothful way of preaching, be from time to time signified to me by the Vice-Chancellor for the time, on pain of his Majesty's displeasure. "(Signed) MONMOUTH.'* When we consider the kind of person his Majesty was, this tender interest in the efficiency of the pulpit must certainly seem remarkable ; when we consider that he sold a portion of his country to the King of France, and that probably this very statute was drawn up with Nell Gwynn or the Duchess of Portsmouth on his knee, he might have looked a little nearer home for the causes of the decay of public morals. It is, however, remarkable to find this son of Kish among our kings introducing the topic of the Paper in the Pulpit. How strange to find this interesting person, in addition to the very many amiable actions of his memorable reign, taking upon himself the delivery of a lecture on Homiletics ! Truly, a many-sided, and most religious king ! He was, however, far from solitary in his antipathy to read sermons, although, we confess, to us there seems very little difference, on the purely moral side of the argument, between the sermon read and the sermon recited ; indeed, the sermon read has certainly the advantage in point of honesty. 234 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. We do not know what effect the mandate of Charles had upon his own immediate neighbourhood and times, but certainly we suppose that, throughout the two centuries since, — especially in the English pulpit, — may we not say more especially in the pulpit of the Church of England ? — the black sermon case has been for the most part an indispensable piece of pulpit furniture. As the well-known old couplets have it, *' In point of sermons, 'tis confessed, Our English clergy make the best ; And, what seems paradox at first, They make the best and preach the worst." And the making of a sermon has usually been considered too lengthy and fearful an undertaking to add or superadd to it the more fearful task of committing to memory. Dr. Beattie, who certainly was possessed of far more than the average amount of genius — a poet of a respectable order, a philo- sopher of some rank, and, every way, a useful man, — supposes that a minister would ordinarily spend two days in committing a discourse to memory. If the time spent in learning should bear any propor- tion to the time spent in preparing, what a fearful* thing the preparation for the pulpit must be ! We should say that such iron necessities proclaim the utter unfitness of such labourers for the work of the pulpit at all. It might be supposed that there cannot be much interest of a general character in the topic of this chapter, — the general discussion of the question of the Paper in the Pulpit, the question of written or THE PAPER IN THE PULPIT. 235 unwritten sermons ; the matter, however, is to many preachers one of very great moment. A writer, a clergyman of the Church of England, in a very amusing volume of clerical anecdote, called a " Voice from a Mask," sets forth the impoverished state of the pulpit of his own church in very affecting terms. He says, " It is no wonder, considering how- much labour the composition of a sermon costs most of us, that we are weary of them. Some of my friends entertain an affection quite parental for these offsprings of their brain. A parson of this character, who kept his manuscripts in a box in his library, was roused from his slumbers early one morning by his servant, who informed him that his house had been broken into, and the lower rooms ransacked ; 'John,' cried the startled divine, jumping up in the bed, 'John, have they, Jiave they stolen my sermon box V ' No, it is only broken open.' ' Then, John, I shall take another turn, but bring up my shaving water at the usual time ; '" which also reminds us of a little clerical tragedy of which our readers may have heard, and which took place some years since in the neighbourhood of London. The story is so good, it ought to be true. Two pulpits in the small suburban, village-like town were filled by two pastors of the same name, — John Davis was the incumbent of the Episcopal Church ; John Davis was the pastor of the Congregational. To the first, the Episcopalian, on one occasion came a parcel to the Rev. John Davis ; he opened it. It contained books evidently intended for the Nonconformist brother ; the Episcopalian was full of the sense of high Church dignity, and he claimed the right of 236 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. his Church to arrogate the exclusive possession of clerical titles. He forwarded the parcel to its proper destination, with the curt note, " Sir, — Had you not assumed a title to which you have no right, conferred upon you neither by the Church nor the State, this mistake would not have happened. I am. Sir, yours, John Davis." But, shortly after, came another parcel to the village, addressed to the Rev. John Davis ; but, this time, it found its way, by ill luck, to the Congregationalist ; it was opened, and alas ! alas ! it also had missed its destiny. It was a parcel of manuscript sermons from one of the innumerable dealers in that kind of ware, and thus it was discovered that the poor Cleric was depen- dent on that method of supplying his own pulpit ! This parcel, also repacked, was forwarded to the surpliced actor with the appropriate note, " Sir, — Had you not assumed an office for which you have no capacity, and to which you have no right con- ferred upon you either by nature or by grace, this mistake could not have happened. I am, Sir, yours, John Davis." Such stories are very droll, but to our mind it is not less than shocking — a man professing to be a minister of God and His truth, and having nothing to say ! No doubt vanity often rushes out into speech when it had better hold its tongue, but we have thought that even this is belter than the sermon case, the black book, if it become a barrier between the preacher and the mind and heart, the intelli- gence and affections of his audience ; and with this goes another thing, it is usually supposed to be dishonest. A man who gives forth, evidently with THE PAPER 7A THE PULPIT. 237 no feeling at all, words from a paper for twenty minutes, or half an hour, why, we feel the multitude may be pardoned for thinking that very likely the words are not his own, and, indeed, many are the sermons over which that prophetic exclamation may be raised, "Alas, master, for it was borrowed ! " We may have some odd stories to tell in the following pages about borrowed or stolen sermons. But it is wonderful to think of the things which have been done without the paper in the pulpit ; we will not refer to the mighty instances of the great world preachers, the Wesleys and Whitefields, and their attendant army of compeers or predecessors ; but let us look at more ordinary men. Is it not animating to read such an account, for instance, as we have of the good and venerable Thomas Scott, the commentator ? Being the preacher at the Lock Hospital, then one of the most distinguished spheres in the Church of England, in London, he was, at the same time, lecturer at St. Mildred's, Bread Street, about four miles' distance, also at Lothbury, about a mile distant. He conducted all these services in the following manner. At four o'clock in the morning of every alternate Sunday, winter as well as summer, the watchman gave one hearty knock at the door, and Mr. Scott and an old man-servant arose, for he could not go out without breakfast ; he then set forth to meet a congregation in Lothbury, about three miles and a half from his own residence. It was the only church then at which there was service so early as six o'clock in the morning ; and the number has not increased since, we believe. He had from two to three hundred auditors, and 238 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. administered the ordinance of the Lord's Supper each time. He used to say that, if at any time in his early walk through the streets, in the depth of winter, he were tempted to complain, the view of the newsmen equally alert, and for a very different object, changed his repinings into thanksgivings. From the city he returned home, and, at about ten o'clock, assembled his family to prayers, immedi- ately after which he proceeded to the chapel, where he performed the whole service, with the administra- tion of the ordinance on the alternate Sundays when he did not go to Lothbury. His sermons were ingeniously brought into an exact hour, just about the same time being spent, he said, in composing them. His biographer mentions his once accompanying him to the afternoon service in his church in Bread Street, nearly as far as Lothbury, after his having taken his dinner without sitting down. On this occasion they hired a hackney coach in order to rest his biographer, but Mr, Scott desired that he might not be spoken to, as he needed the time to prepare his sermon. It is calculated that he could not go less than fourteen miles every Sunday, frequently the whole on foot ; and, beside the three services, he had often a service at Long Acre Chapel, or elsewhere, on his way home in the evening, when he concluded the whole with family prayer, and that not a very short one. Considering his bilious and asthmatic habit, this was immense labour ; and all this he did even on the very next Sunday after he had broken a rib by falling down the cabin stairs of a Margate packet. But Thomas Scott was a man all in earnest. Some may perhaps say those sermons of his must THE PAPER IN THE PULPIT. 239 have been very loose stuff, untempered mortar ; no, his week-day life, although not spent in preparing sermons, was passed in accumulating material which all turned to use in the pulpit. His mind was full ; true, he did not care about pulpit style, and he had, no doubt, great facility for the conveyance of religious and scriptural instruction. His mind was full of native energy too. When nearly sixty years of age, he gave himself up with assiduity to the mastery of the Hebrew language, and at sixty he devoted himself, to a diligent conquest of the dififi- culties of Arabic. This is necessary to say, because to determine constantly to speak in public, without writing, or preparation, must usually be almost worth- less and inconsecutive mental dissipation, Thomas Scott was writing his large commentary, and other works of a similar character, during the week, so that, during the hour or two before preaching, and the hour in the pulpit, his ideas naturally marshalled themselves into order ; and he was very likely one of those preachers who preach best when, having furnished themselves with ideas, they leave the words to take care of themselves ; he certainly does present a striking contrast to the frightened parson who trembled lest his box of sermons should have fallen among thieves.* We suppose that the men whose words have been like a fire in the bones, or like a hammer to break the rocks in pieces, have been fearful of the written * We must not allow this notice of Thomas Scott to pass without commending his life, as one of the most complete portraits of an earnest and faithful ministry (" Life of Rev. Thomas Scott," By John Scott, A.M. 1822). 240 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. sermon, or the paper in the pulpit ; they have pre- pared for the pulpit with great and conscientious care, but not verbally ; they saw their ideas clearly, and revolved them over and over, until, like fuel in the furnace, they flamed, A very eminent Welsh minister was invited to London to preach what used to be considered the great annual sermon of the London Missionary Society ; in his own country he always preached extempore, but, being in company with Matthew Wilks and the mighty John Elias, he inquired of old Matthew whether, for such an occa- sion, he did not think that he had better write his sermon. "Well, for such an occasion," said Matthew, "perhaps it would be better to write your discourse, but, at any rate, let us have plenty of fire in it." "But," said John Elias, "he cannot carry fire in paper." "Never mind," said Matthew; " paper will do very well to light the fire with." This is the only value of paper, or notes, in the pulpit, to kindle the fuel already there, to light the fire with ! So that it seems a not unnatural, but, indeed, a very safe and manly thing, at any rate, to take the notes of a sermon into the pulpit, as, we read, was the habit of Mr. Albert Barnes, the well-known author of the Notes. When called upon to preach on important and distinguished occasions, he took his manuscript with him into the pulpit, spread his notes before him on the Bible, and preached from memory. " Now," said he, " I'm safe ! " But slavish reading can never be true preaching. A man can scarcely be entitled to take rank as a real preacher who cannot, whatever he may have prepared, freely and wisely extemporise. We are THE PAPER IN THE PULPIT. 241 favourable to the idea that, so far as possible, a preacher should aim to carry many styles into the pulpit, that he should even, if possible, aim to have a variety in one sermon ; at any rate, one may be logical, but not always formally logical, and one rhetorical, but not always rhetorical : true, he may appeal to any measure, to the judgment, to the pure reason, to facts, and he may often, and safely, address himself to the imagination, by analogy ; the appeal to the affections should be more sparing, but most tenderly of all should the conscience be touched — seldom, but firmly as a surgeon holds his knife ; only, in the surgery of the conscience, do not use chloroform, and let the operation be brief An ingenious analogy has been drawn by Pro- fessor Edwards Park, who has, we suppose, written more, and more wisely, than any man living, on the subject of preaching. He has pictured a stranger standing before the cylinder machine, in one of the great print works in or near Manchester ; he is bewildered by its complicated processes; the yellow, or the purple cloth is applied to one part of the machine ; it is drawn between the main cylinder and the rollers, and, in a few minutes, it comes forth from another part of the machine ; — it comes forth, not the plain yellow, nor purple fabric, but variegated with eighteen or twenty different colours, arranged in festoons of leaves and flowers, in crimson arches, or scarlet curves. One is so ornamented as to gratify the taste of a European princess ; another, to captivate an Asiatic king ; — one is modestly adorned for a Fellow at the University ; another, 16 242 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. highly coloured for a half-civilised African. How- magical all these emanations must appear to the stranger who, uninitiated in the mystery of the machinery, walks round, and surveys its various complications ; the mordant, the colour boxes, the engraven rollers, with their deep intaglios ; and then all the wheels, and the bands drawing along the fabric when saturated, and giving the result in the curious or splendid pieces of variegated work. And such is the power of the real speaker, producing varied results, like this printing machine. Surely he is not addressing himself merely to one order of mind, and, therefore, in a large congregation, we see the unwisdom of travelling along in such a line that the mind is not left free to speak to different frames of character, feeling, and experience, and to different attitudes of thought. A purely extemporary speaker, — even the most accomplished, — will, perhaps, sometimes find him- self caught in what may seem to him, much more than to the people who are listening to him, a difficult and complicated involvement of words, reminding us of what Samuel Rogers mentioned, in a conversation he had with that great scholar, Professor Porson, in which Porson contrasted those two great orators, William Pitt and Charles James Fox. " Mr. Pitt," said he, " conceives his sentences, as he utters them, — Mr. Fox throws himself into the middle of his, and leaves it to Almighty God to get him out again ; " this was somewhat irreverently expressed by the Professor, but it is the true idea of extemporaneous speech. Extem- porising will often be exposed to difficulties which THE PAPER IN THE PULPIT. 243 only a very honest mind can overcome and make the best of. When Father Taylor, of Boston, once lost himself, and became bewildered in the course of his sermon, he extricated himself by the exclamation, " I have lost the track of the nominative case, my brethren, but one thing I know, — I am bound for the kingdom ! " and the frankness of such a confession would be sure to save him from suffering in the esteem of his audience. But the more stately and dignified masters, it is very obvious, cannot deliver themselves in that way. An anecdote is told of the late Thomas Binney ; Dr. Harris, the author of " Mammon," had begged his services for some anni- versary occasion, and Binney declared his utter inability to prepare an adequate sermon ; in those days he was a strictly extemporary speaker, although a very fastidious one. It was urged, " Oh, come, come, and preach such and such a sermon ; it is ready to your mind." And so Mr. Binney promised that he would take the service ; but he, having got through two heads of the discourse, became bewildered. " Thirdly — thirdly — I have forgotten what thirdly was ! " he said, and he looked over the pulpit to where Dr. Harris was sitting. " Brother Harris, what was thirdly 1 " Harris looked up, and said, " So-and-so." " Exactly," said the discomfited preacher, who then pursued his way with ease and happiness to the end. Perhaps the drollest instance of which we were ever personally aware was when listening — about fifty years since — to dear old William Jay, at Surrey Chapel ; he was closing a paragraph with a verse of a hymn, and, strange to say, although a well-known verse, he 244 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. forgot a line ; he began, and kept up the first three lines vigorously enough : ** Then shall I see, and hear, and know All I desired or wished below, And all my powers find sweet employ ■'* And suddenly the memory was at fault ; but the preacher was not ; he turned, he looked over the pulpit to the desk, where the well-known ancient clerk was sitting, and he said, " Mr. Benn, what's the next line ? " But it was a droll effect when an altogether different voice — rather shrill in comparison with Mr. Jay's rolling tones — rose from the up- turned face — " In that eternal world of joy ! ** ** And all my powers find sweet employ '*— came forth the rolling tones — " In that eternal world of joy ! " Such are, or have been, the dilemmas of the pulpit, to which we have somewhat wandered from the remarks of Porson on the difficulties and dilemmas of Charles James Fox. He was an orator always prepared, because he could speak without preparation, mighty in argument. If we speak of his grand and uncombed slovenliness of style, that must always be in the remembrance of what a perfect scholar he was, and how impossible it was for his slovenliness to be anything other than the shaking of a lion's mane, as he rose, and rushed on in his fine and forcible vehemence of style, while his words, as it has been truly said, jostled, struggled, THE PAPER IN THE PULPIT. 245 crowded, and seemed almost to quarrel with each other in the earnest desire to get forth. But the paper in the pulpit ! We suppose, as we have already implied, it is usually nervousness, nervous fear, which carries the paper there. But, then, the man who parts with his nervousness there, often parts with an element of power. Ah ! it is only the extempore speaker who can experience that fine nervousness which such a de- scription as this of Charles James Fox implies, and which, not satisfied with a flow of words, hesitates, and pants, until the tongue catches the one word which shall be the true key to the whole argument. Nervousness ! well, no doubt shyness, — nervous sus- ceptibility,— is common enough, especially in young speakers, but we believe few persons have noticed the power of nervousness as an element of successful oratory ; that throbbing, thrilling nervousness of emotion united to the perfect command over the sub- ject, and interest in it ; these, again, united to perfect self-possession ; these, in the degree in which they rule in the hand of an orator, constitute a sceptre of success and power. Nervousness ! does the reader suppose we mean the fear of an audience } Oh no ! it is not there the man trembles ; he trembles in the presence of the truth he is to unveil ; a responsibility devolves upon him ; to the measure to which he feels the living heat of the truth he announces, he will tremble ; there is the solution of the surprise so often expressed, that the timid, apparently shrinking, and nervous speaker, seems to be the very man who most subdues in the pulpit, where, especially, the emotions have to be aroused ; he is the man who 246 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. uses words as if brandishing a sword of flame, or rolls them like retiring, and scarcely audible thunders, but is, even therefore, more impressive ; and it is re- markable that the excitement seems to increase in proportion to the preparation bestowed. Many of the most eminent of modern preachers have met their audiences with most fear. Afraid of yoic do you think they were ? Men have heard such preach, and, enraged beneath words of fire, they have called the pulpit " Coward's Castle." Do you think it was so ? The epithet and the allegation are not more ungenerous than they are unjust. What are the prerogatives assumed by the pulpit in com- parison with the frequent audacities assumed by the bar .? No, it was neither cowardice nor physical nervousness ; it was the breathless awe inspired by the awful invisible world to which the things " seen and temporal " interposed so faint and frail a screen. And a man may expound, or talk untremulously with a certain felicity of words and thoughts, but inspi- ration gives palpitation and trepidation. No doubt there are those whose idea of the pulpit is widely different from ours; men who, as they enter, gaze with an impudent self-sufficiency round their congregation. Oh ! we know such men ; these are they who regard a pulpit service as a dramatic entertainment, an amusement, a recitation ; such men never knew a godly fear, and are altogether unsusceptible to a nervous trembling lest the ark be taken ; they would smile at the timidity of Uzzah, who only steadied the ark ; they would take the tabernacle and all its furniture and exhibit it all " for the glory of God " for a cent a head. To these men a church chalice THE PAPER IN THE PULPIT. 247 is as good as any other cup for a drinking vessel ; a font is a wash-hand basin, and a baptistery a capital place for a bath ; knowing nothing of nervousness themselves, they misunderstand it, and look on it with contempt. We know these buffoons in the pulpit. We have them in England, and so also have they in America.* But as to the paper in tne pulpit, the question may be proposed, What does the preacher intend to be } Does he intend to be an orator or a teacher } if an orator, then he must rise above the paper, or only use it, as we have already said, to carry the fire in it. Does he intend to inflame, or to inform } — if to inflame, then he must rise above the paper ; the colloquial, the Socratic, must live above the paper, and so must the forensic. Paper is certainly a non- conductor in the pulpit, and interferes with the dynamic pQ,wer of the word. For indeed, in real earnest, we must say human speech is not a power to be despised, and if our age have no power to produce earnest tones of deep and mighty bass pealing through the great nave of ages, like those voices of old, and if our age despise that power of eloquent speech, why, so much the worse for it ; eloquence is one of the dynamic forces of the moral world. It is one of the great levers wherewith God lifts human souls. And as all art, * The writer was in an omnibus in Broadway, New York. A gentleman recognised him and said, ' ' Have you heard ? ' ' (mentioning a popular preacher). " No," we replied. " Oh, but you must hear him ; everybody going to London hears the Christy Minstrels, and everybody coming to New York hears ! " Did not this give a fine idea of the vocation of the preacher ? 248 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. and all aesthetic taste are ennobled as they become sanctified by religion ; as the mightiest architecture is Gothic ; the mightiest poets, Milton, Shakespeare, and Dante ; the mightiest musicians, Handel and Mozart; the mightiest painter, Raphael ; the mightiest sculptors, Michael Angelo and Thorwaldsen ; as all art heaves with the inspiration of greatest ideas as it approaches the Holy of holies, and especially as it approaches Calvary and the Cross, so eloquence is no exception to what, indeed, is the very law of art. The grandest eloquence of all ages is that of the pulpit ; the eloquence of the senate and the bar is quite empirical and ephemeral. A Christian minister! Well, the work, and the task are as glorious as they are wonderful, the unveiling to the world the most sublime and affecting picture which can possibly engage human attention ; when the Bible is fairly looked at, with all its subjects, and it is recollected that the Christian minister is to be the exponent of the idea of the Book, and all its wonderful epics of moral sublimity, the coldness, the tameness, and insipidity of pulpit exposition are only less marvellous than the subjects the teachers are called to discuss. But surely warm love and earnest faith would create a high order of eloquence anywhere, and on any tongue ; eloquence, moulded by the character of the possessor of it, in some deep and penetrative, in others sounding and soaring, in any case, eloquence. If we could speak to ministers and teachers, we would say, Have faith in human speech. Human speech, we have said, when it flows from an earnest and harmonious spiritual life, is one of the most powerful agents God has sent into the world. We THE PAPER IN THE PULPIT. 249 have said it is inferior to no art, for it may embody and comprehend every art ; it is statuary in the body, it is painting on the tongue ; epic or dramatic, it may hold and embody both, and enchant the passions of entranced auditors equally with music and song. Men possess this august and magnetic power, and affect to despise it, and use it without responsibility and preparation, when this power would transfix human hearts like a target, and make human ears tingle, and human hearts tremble. It is amazing, amazing how men will underrate the value of oral instruction, amazing how they will hit on the wrong method, and argue all time and all eternity out of countenance that it is the right plan ; once for all, it ought to be understood that the man who is a teacher is expected to do something with the truth, and for the truth, that cannot be done by any other mode and method. Perhaps in some previous pages, and another work we may have said that the preacher should be neither a professor of logic, nor a professor of belles lettres. He is to temper, in his teaching, light and fire. He is to recollect, as Demosthenes recollected, that the audience is impatient of chains of reasoning. He must show the result at the end of the links without exhibiting the chain, and only allow his audience rest or repose in order to rouse sympathy, sensibility, conscience, and admiration more fully, and to show himself a workman needing not to be ashamed. Plausibility is the curse of the pulpit as it is of everything it touches ; it is the shibboleth of mean- ness ; it is the everlasting hymn in the mouth of the moral huckster, and Cheap John of the platform ; it 250 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. is the last outcome of the twopenny-halfpenny faculty. Plausibility is always a sweet refreshing ice to impatient and passionate souls ; it is the logic of rationalism, and of claptrap ; it always brushes the bloom from the peach, and holds up a prism to the rainbow ; it will never accept beauty without dissect- ing it ; it is ever engaged in giving its bald, shallow, reasonless reasons for things ; it has no mystery, no ideal ; it will account for love and faith by the motions of the blood, while it finds the Divine wonders of heaven and hell to be only the dizziness of the soul. This plausibility is the miserable ghost that has haunted and terrified so many of our modern preachers ; this plausibility, this pleasing everybody, and satisfying everybody, or nobody, which is the same thing, is, we repeat, the curse of the pulpit. And it is this insatiable sacrifice to plausibility which constitutes very much of the slavery to the paper in the pulpit ; but, again, let us remember that, with the paper in the pulpit, a style may be too good for usefulness, too fastidious, too much of a " linked sweetness long drawn out," too analytic, too cour- teous to the fashions of the age in thought and style, and have too much of the drawing or reception room, too little of the street. Again, we say, everything depends upon what the preacher intends to do. There are words which will not bear reading ; there are others which will not bear speaking. And, then, let us remark, in paren- thesis, that the pulpit of any denomination has very few good readers. We know one of the most lofty intelligences who always reads ; it is manifest he does not feel much interest in what he reads. The THE PAPER IN THE PULPIT. 251 interest he feels in his opinions is not that interest which would lead him to feel the necessity either of their publication or reception. He is so thoroughly eclectic, he preaches as a professor might be sup- posed to speak from a professor's chair to students. It does not follow because a man reads that he should not be an orator, that he should not feel, and feel deeply himself, and also take captive the feelings of his audience. The reader usually deals more with the realm of mental than moral convic- tion ; often he deals rather with metaphysical dis- quisition, or conducts his hearers to the heavens of a rapt and starry fancy ; but those mighty and over- powering passions of the soul, which sweep in their circles language, feeling, thought, and compel their utterance in tones which startle, and which awe, to these he seems to be a stranger ; we feel that the human is not near enough to us ; it may be the humanity of the intellect, but it is not humanity in its wholeness ; there is no indication of the mind that reflects Elijah, Isaiah, Paul, or Peter, and, perhaps, not even John. He would not waylay Ahab ; nor dash his harp in frenzy, or fire, till the chords shook with the thunder of the words, " Ho, every one that thirsteth, come to the waters 1 " " Prepare ye the way of the Lord ! " " Arise, shine, for thy light is come ! " He would not admire the passion of the man who could gird himself for the tempest of speech, and say, " Woe is me if I preach not the gospel ! " He lives in a realm of abstractions, all of them glittering like stars on a frosty night, most of them as remote and cold ; to such a man preaching is an easy intellectual gladiatorship with 252 THE VOCATION OF 2 HE PREACHER. mental shadows and phantoms, in which the chil- dren of fancy are set to disperse the children of thought. Such a man cannot speak ; he must read — such a man cannot be spoken of as an orator ; he has scarcely any words for the multitude ; his thoughts, his tones, his sentences can only be the property of men of taste, and reading men endowed with more than an ordinary share of intelligence ; the imagery is exceedingly select, and every performance may bespeak the most polished individuality, and may be the real life lava of the soul of the man. And there may be fire in the words, but the fire rather of Hecla than Vesuvius or Etna ; it comes to us through the ice, and the snow ; there is a cold iron-grey sky overhead, and a wintry snowy waste around ; and yet this read discourse may abound in most beautiful and affecting words, but reminding us of cameos carved in pumice stone, or lava. We are attempting to set before our readers the man who reads habitually. His pulpit is lit by the lamps of poetry and philosophy, and both are trimmed by the oil of nature. We read, or we hear, and we say. Revelation has done little here ; we say it, and we say it respectfully, the good man might as well take texts from the Greek tragedians, or from the "Republic," the " Phaedon," or the "Phaedrus" of Plato. We may offend some prejudices when we say that the men who preach from experience, usually, are unequal to notes, or written sermons ; the power of the personal pronoun will not be confined within a cage of written words ; men who have felt sin, and fled from the wrath to come, have learned this, that nature will give to us a lamp 2 HE PAPER IN THE PULPIT. 253 sufficiently bright to show the gloom, but she has no lamp to show the pathway from it. She can show to us sin, but she cannot show to us the means of escape. The reader knows Schiller's Diver ; has he descended with him for the lost vase, the cup, into the boiling, seething, howling abyss } Did he go down into the pathless obscure, into the silent horror of the unfathomed and unfathomable deep } among the dreadful beings of the water, the sala- mander, the snake, the dragon .'' the dreadful rep- tiles that glided through the dark } the terrible hammer fish, the shark, the hyena of the ocean ? And is it not a picture of the vision that opens to a man when for the first time he knows sin, not perhaps by committing it, but by perceiving its infinite relations and its horror ? What intensity it gives to the moral vision, the sense of sin I The per- ception of the Saviour deepens even that sense. Now if the Diver can come back, and sing, — " Methought, as I gazed through the darkness, that now It saw the dread hundred-limbed creature — its prey ! And darted — O God — from the far-flaming bough Of the coral ; I swept o'er the horrible way, And it seized me, the wave with its wrath and its roar, It seized me to save ; King, the danger is o'er ! " * The man who has dived down into the terrible sea, and has returned with the cup, who has learned the secret of " the deep that coucheth beneath," who has learned how " to play upon the hole of the asp," and, returning thence, has heard " the precious things * We believe we are indebted for the appropriation of this image from Schiller to Professor Tholuck's beautiful little work " Guido and Julius." 254 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. of the everlasting hills," has something to say which will not go on paper. Here is a simple illustration we heard once, in Manchester, from a preacher, some- times rough, but always strong, and deeply versed in the ways of human experience. Gadsby was his name ; " Billy Gadsby," the people delighted to call him. A woman who always attended his ministry was accosted by a friend, one of the Cavendish people, accustomed to the fine, orderly, and wise preaching of Dr. H alley, who expressed surprise that her friend could be satisfied with the rougher ministrations of Gadsby ; her friend replied, and said, " When I was a girl among the hills, I often had to pass at night through a long wild tunnel among the hills, and there was an echo, and it often frightened me ; I was only a girl ; I seemed to hear, as my feet went on, the clatter of feet behind me. I remember once in my fright, I said, 'Betty!'" (that was her name), "and a voice directly said, ' Betty!' Now that is why I go to hear that man, — whenever he speaks, I hear something within me saying, ' Betty ! * That is the perfection of preaching when something within says, 'Betty!'" We will say another thing : the preachers of the paper have done most in our age to aid its negations. The preacher should be, whoever he may be, affirma- tive ; the preacher is not to use the pulpit to air his doubts, and to show, and set forth the disease which has found him unless he have also found its cure. Some preachers remind us as they set forth their crude surmisings, suggestive unbeli^is, and in- competent attempts to grapple with their own doubts, of a physician who wrote to Sir Henry THE PAPER IN THE PULPI2. 255 Halford, boastfully setting forth his own claims to consideration : " Sir, I was not only the first to discover Asiatic cholera, but I was the first to communicate it to the British Empire;" and that preacher whose boast it is that he first presented to a mind thoughts, and ideas, evil and dangerous in themselves, but which had not found a lodging there before, may claim an equal rank in benevo- lence with this discoverer and propagator of Asiatic cholera. Did our readers ever, in their hearing, hear of the angel Uriel ? — how, in the far-off ages, spaces, and splendours of eternity, he became afflicted in his own soul with the idea of night ? How the idea of night could enter the mind of an archangel, we know not, but it did ! it haunted him with the thought that somewhere, in the deeps and the limbos of the universe, there was a realm of night, and, in quest of it, the foolish archangel started from heaven, from its golden pavements, and its clear skies, and its rivers, and fountains of living water, bright ever in the splendour of a world lit up without a sun. He left all ; he wended his way through the universe, groping amidst the glory of things for the realm of night ; he wandered, and roamed, but he could not find it. Every kingdom had its gates of pearl, and its turrets of diamond ; everywhere the doors of the worlds rolled on hinges of light ; and the pathways of the planets in that old time were paved with sunshine ; and Uriel, as he passed along, sped through files and ranks of radiant pinions ; but within him, within him, lay the dark idea. Yet the most ancient archangel with whom he conversed could not direct 256 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER, him to the kingdom of night. It was an unhappiness in an angel, and beyond our comprehension. At last he reached one of the firmaments in space, whence, looking down, he beheld the shape of a world with a shadow on it. And the heart of the angel knew its world ; he hastened down, and entered the terri- tories of the empire of night. It was but the realisa- tion of himself; but what was his horror and dismay, what spasms shot through his spirit, as the lonely archangel found himself in that lonel)'- and awful world ! he looked up, and saw only a canopy of blackness above him, save for one bright point in space ; he knew that to be the Infinite Eye, then, for the first time, burning on him, for the angels who have the light of God within them do not see the dreadful presence of His robe of lightning. In those worlds it holds that the angels who see most of God with- out, feel and see least of Him within. So all round the angel spread night, dark night ; and the worst of all was that he had lost all clue to the pathway by which he came. How vainly Uriel mourned over the past ; how vainly he attempted to return. He sighed for the light and the sunshine ; in vain : he cannot return; he belongs now to the empire of night ! Did our reader ever meet the angel who has lost his way, on the darkness fringing our planet ? We think we have sometimes seen him, trailing his dark garments, and heard him uttering his wail of despair over a lost heaven. In closing this chapter, we more than a little demur to the verdict of the good and great Andrew Fuller when he heard Dr. Chalmers preach. " If that man," he said, " would but throw away his THE PAPER IN THE PULPIT. 257 papers in the pulpit, he might be King of Scotland." The truth was that Chalmers, in his own region, was King of Scotland, in spite of his papers in the pulpit, for his soul was full of movement ; but the criticism of Fuller produced a great effect on the mind of Chalmers, for, when he heard it, we find that he wrote in his journal : " Let me henceforth attempt to extemporise from the pulpit ; let me decline all extra engagements ; let me redeem time, and give a steady and systematic direction to my efforts." It is clear that, if he carried his manu- script with him into the pulpit, it was that it might operate on his character there, perhaps to restrain something of that overwhelming vehemence which was always quite sufficiently in play, as all must re- member who listened to the astonishing power with which he bore down all before him from the first moment when he began to speak. Such written words remind us of the famous dart of Alceste, the Sicilian, of whom Virgil sings, and of which we read that he hurled it with such force that it took fire from the friction as it passed through the air. The written words of such men become, when spoken, to quote the language of Lord Brougham, *' like sparks thrown from off the motion of an engine, they are not fireworks to amaze by their singularity, or to please by their beauty : it is all for use, not orna- ment ; all for work, nothing for display." So ought true speaking to be ever to a soul, taking fire from its own motion ; as our beloved Longfellow sings, — ** Like Alceste's dart of old, The swift thought kindling as it flies." On the whole, it is not to be supposed that the 17 258 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. mere fact of a man having his paper with him in the pulpit is necessarily a serious hindrance to his great usefulness and success ; it seems certain that the greatest orators of the ancient Church, such as Chrysostom, Augustine, and Gregory the Great, did not disdain such assistance. Coming down to later times, our dear Richard Baxter says very signifi- cantly, " I use notes as much as any man when I take pains, and as little as any man when I am lazy, or busy, and have no time to prepare." As to Whitefield and Wesley, if they did not read their sermons, we know that they wrote them, and that they were repeated, again and again, as they moved rapidly from place to place. In our own day, reading did not interfere with the great success of Payson, with the passion of Dr. Guthrie, or the tender accentuation and pathos of John Harris ; but what shall we say of Jonathan Edwards, whose fame as a pulpit orator we would far rather covet than that which surrounds with a false splendour the memory of Bossuet .'' Why, Edwards was an orator perhaps beyond any whom we have known, or heard speak ; but, while he stood motionless in the pulpit, one hand resting on it, and the other holding up his little closely written manuscript to his eyes, the history of the pulpit has few more extraordinary instances than those which are related of his power : cold indifferentism was roused from its careless apathy when he preached ; his beautiful spirit — for exceed- ingly beautiful the spirit of this terrible man was — used to startle men until, before he had proceeded far, they began to wail and weep Once, while proceeding calmly along, with one of those quiet THE PAPER IN THE PULPIT. J59 utterances in which the whole soul of the man was kindling dread and fear in the minds of the people, the aged minister of the place in which he was speaking rose, and standing at the foot of the pulpit stairs, said, " Oh, Mr. Edwards ! sir, spare the people ; sir, spare the people ! " On another occasion, when preaching on the certainty of death, and the assurance of a coming judgment, the people, with pallor in their faces, started from their seats, all looking up, expecting to see the parting of the heavens, and the Son of man coming to the judg- ment. But Edwards' soul was in his papers, and Rufus Griswold, one of his American critics, says, " His triumphs of eloquence were such as are not dreamed of by those who deem themselves masters of the art from reading the foolish receipt ascribed to Demosthenes."* But let no one think of attain- ing to the power of Edwards unless they are pre- pared to live like Edwards ; he lived, an absorbed spirit, in the study. In the middle of the day his wife took him up his dinner of bread and milk, and sat conversing with him ; then it was his frequent wont to start off for his walk of pastoral visitations during the afternoon, and we may be very sure they were not ministerial calls of the popular and profitless kind. Then he came back again to his study. He was a man of faith and prayer, a man who handled the things which are unseen as things really felt and seen ; a mind shining through a * Admiration does not always imply discipleship, and Jonathan Edwards we are much in the habit of regarding as a Herbert Spencer among theologians, whose inexorable logic is one of the fearful stories of the Nemeses of Thought. 26o THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. beautiful face, not uncheerful — giving no idea indeed of that — but terribly in earnest, with a dreadful sense that sin was sin, — Satan, Satan, — and Christ, Christ. A man of this order may do as he likes about the minor matter of paper in the pulpit : should he take it with him, it will most likely be because he desires to guard reverently, and to utter with a tender accent the words which have been given to him ; but the pathos, dread, and reality of his own nature will create an earnestness, an alarm, and sense of reality when he comes to talk with other men. CHAPTER IX. JAMES PARSONS. " Then said Evangelist, pointing with his finger over a very wide field, Do you see yonder wicket-gate? The man said, No. Then said the other. Do you see yonder shining light ? He said, I think I do. Then said Evangelist, Keep that light in your eye, and go up directly thereto ; so shalt thou see the gate, at which, when thou knockest, it shall be told thee what thou shalt do. So I saw in my dream that the man began to run." JAMES PARSONS, the man of York, is already a tradition. Great preachers soon become mere traditions, but we suppose the preacher of all preachers in England who would once have met the most universal award of pre-eminence in the pulpit was James Parsons, of York. Wonderful was the excitement in the religious world of London when the youthful Massillon of York was wont to make his appearance there. The most spacious temples of Independency were thronged hours before the service. We have heard — though what degree of truth may attach to the legends we know not — innumerable stories of persons continuing in the chapel the whole of the intermediate time between the morning and the evening services so as to secure sittings ; around all the portals thronging crowds gathered ; the staircases and the chapel- yards filled 262 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. with people, straining the eye to catch a glimpse, or the ear to catch an intonation, from the extraordinary and inspired young man ; or going away in despair of sufficiently gratifying ear or eye ; and all within, a dense and compacted sea of heads, — aisles, galleries, window-ledges, pulpit-balustrades, — the mighty masses forgetting all discomfort, and hushed and breathless beneath the spell of a voice low as a whisper, yet capable of shaking the stoutest spirit, — like an echo through a sepulchre. And in his young days he was as potential in York as in London- ; Lendal Chapel was crowded, while every Sabbath evening the young preacher poured along a rapid torrent of imagery, descrip- tion, invective, declamation, and appeal. There, not infrequently, the loftiest peers of the realm — such as Radnor, Roden, or Carlisle — were seen rapt in attention in the plain and humble conventicle ; there the most famous barristers, intending to snatch a lesson in oratory, found their spirits caught by the strong winds of a mighty impulsive eloquence, in the burning genius of which all the petty orators of the senate, the hustings, or the bar, quenched their glimmering tapers — the preacher himself had been intended and trained for the bar, and his style in the pulpit was eminently forensic ; — there the loftiest and the lowliest felt the power of that thin slim figure, the Christian witchery of that vivid blue eye, and the momentum of the slightly raised hand. " I never did hear anything like it before, and never expect to hear anything like it again," said a no-con- temptible critic to us once when talking of those old days of Lendal. The preacher was imperial over JAMES PARSONS. 263 his audience ; and the spare frame, — slight, weak, and, as most then thought, soon to exchange the robes of the ministry for the shroud of death, — all added to the impression, as the orator at last sank exhausted on the pulpit seat, or was borne, as, we understand, was not unfrequently the case, nearly fainting from the pulpit. Does the reader, who only knows Mr. Parsons by a more modern reputation, and in his last days, find it difficult to realise all this } The writer never witnessed the first spells of the magician, but he is intimately acquainted with his pulpit performances when in the zenith of his fame. Often had the name of James Parsons been pronounced with wonder and rapture by those who had heard him, but it had never come within the reach of our opportunity to hear. We had seen a likeness, too, and a very good one, of all places, upon a snuff-box ; but we were not exactly our own master ; boys were not so lawless then as now ; we were expected to be very attentive on " the means " in our own local chapel, in the neighbourhood of London ; then, the preaching of the man of York had a smack of Arminianism in it, or Baxterianism at least, quite as bad, which the Independents who received their educations and impressions two or three generations since could scarce tolerate ; nor did they altogether relish the impetuosity of manner, and the rush of the excitement attending on the ministry of this young man ; so it happened that we never heard James Parsons, we shame to say, till we were fifteen years of age, though living at no great distance from the scenery of his frequent enchantments in London. 264 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. But one Tuesday, in a winter many years since, we found ourselves thronging with a vast multi- tude into what was then known as the Poultry Chapel, where the usual dense aggregate of people gathered together. We took possession of a seat ; and, after the service of song, prayer, and reading, a man, of all men apparently remarkable for a timid hesitancy of manner — a bashful fear to en- counter the eyes of the people — stood before us : but, eh ! and alas ! no, sirs ! not a word ! — the text was utterly unintelligible till some dear, kind, nice, old lady, into whose pew we — an impudent boy — had thrust ourselves, — an old lady, with a quiet, kind precision of manner — every chapel has such old ladies ; how often were we indebted to them in those days for the comforts of books, and pews, and cushions — placed before us the text — a terrible text, surely — capable of extraordinary suggestion and amplification : — " Thou hast restrained prayer before God." Meantime not a word was heard ; we stretched our neck, we strained our ear— not a word : the babbling of a far-off brook among the moun- tains, the drowsy hum of a hive of bees at evening time, so it seemed to us ; and, like other drowsy sounds, it had the effect of putting us to sleep. We had been up, hard at work writing, the greater part of the previous evenings and but for this, had now perhaps been wending our way home ; and now this, — a crowded place, a comfortable cushion, a nice corner, — a distant part of the chapel, out of sight, — an exhausted frame, — oh, demure brother, could even thy superior genius have withstood the influence of such poppies .-• J^AMES PARSONS. 265 Not long — surely not more than a nap — but what a change ! We woke as the whole of the vast con- gregation, stirred by the power of the orator, hung dread and breathless upon one of the most effective, touching, and forcible passages within the compass even of his oratory — " The curtains of hell had been drawn aside by the hand, not of prophet, nor apostle, nor seer, but by the Master Himself." The preacher was describing the unanswered prayer offered in hell. We can never forget the gaze of his eye. Even at that distance it kindled over us ; there was mes- merism in it. No longer hesitating and trembling, but fixed ; and the words, the intonation, strange, like no earthly tone we had ever heard ; low, yet most audible, not so much from any exertion of force, as from the deep stillness. Every cough sub- dued, every sob suspended, until at last the climax was reached, and the preacher relieved at once him- self and the people by a pause ; but the voice itself — a most unnatural voice, — the cadences of wailing winds were scarce more mournful ; the words sighed themselves forth ; the tone was one pre-eminently of subdued emotion ; it was as if the spirit over- flowed with pathos and with pity, as if every chord of the heart were capable of deep response and pas- sionate entreaty, but all reined in and controlled by a commanding resolution. Meantime our absorption and self-abandonment were complete. During the time we listened, oblivion of all beside the tremendous words seized the hearer ; it was a suspension of the functions of thought, a captivity the most perfect to the enchainment of rapid and forcible words and images. 266 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER James Parsons must be judged by those days. Like most men and minds, he travelled through three eras. There was the day of young conviction, when his heart palpitated with passionate earnestness, when he leaped into the arena full of energy and zeal, the child of belief; the belief giving fire and fervour to heart, brain, and tongue. In those days his style was characterised by a tropical luxuri- ance of discourse, not so much of imagery as of utterance. Language did not so much flow as flash along. The climacteric word — of this we shall give illustrations presently — like a rock or break, gave a force to the rapid water which it could not otherwise have attained. With years came a more subdued style. Reading gave a more finished polish to the diction ; the imagery hung more chastely over the language, yet still ample, still affluent, and men of a more precise tone of mind would say and still too luxuriant ; and it was the period of transition. Life had deepened, as it does with all of us, into a more really serious and tremendous thing than even in former da}S. This was the least hysterical period of Mr. Parsons's fame — it was the most legitimate. In his earlier and later years there seemed something too much of the paroxysmatic style of discourse : in the first instance arising from overbalanced convic- tion ; in the latter days, dare we say most respect- fully, from inadequate conviction } In the middle period to which we refer, we recognise nothing strained to an unnatural degree ; the thought and the language, as they ever do in all true eloquence, balanced harmoniously together. Referring to those times, we fi,nd trophies of eloquence of signal beauty JAMES PARSONS. 267 and force. We have seen them invested in their delivery with a tragic grandeur — the impersonation — the apostrophe — the prosopopeia — complete. The soul held mysterious intercourse with the voice; and the mastery of the voice was wonderful. We cannot well suppose that our preacher selected Massillon for his model — the plan of the two men, in their treatment of subjects, is so essentially dif- ferent ; yet it is not too much to say that Parsons might have been called the English Massillon ; and in the volume of Sermons published beneath his own sanction, and with all the advantages of his criticism, there are many passages, and some sermons, which may safely be compared with the best per- formances of the French bishop. The structure of the minds of the two men was in some points alike : great was the similarity in the selection of their themes ; great was their faith in terror as the instru- ment of conviction and conversion : in other points their pulpit methods materially differ. The French- man selected a text having reference to a previously determined subject ; the Englishman selected the subject from the text, and his preaching was always textual ; and the preacher of York ought to have developed over the whole of his oratory a breadth of judgment and compass of character no whit inferior to the preacher of Clermont. We do not object to the preacher that his power or flexibility were inferior, but we find obviously inferior culture and inferior independence of speech, and especially of thought. As orators, had Massillon and Parsons preached at Versailles or York together, we scarcely can believe that any hearers could have given the preference to 268 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. the accomplished Frenchman ; for, obviously enough, differences are not preferences. The spell of Mas- sillon over the hearts of his hearers, royal or provin- cial, was indeed mighty, with something, indeed much, of the same appearance in the pulpit as that of Parsons — a modest, downcast, furtive glancing manner, not quite free from the affectation which invariably attends diffident and bashful men, alto- gether relieved from violence of gesture or vehemence of delivery, quiet, and, presently, perfectly collected. Thus we see immediately the faults and excellences of our preacher ; and we see, too, how greatly he is indebted to his voice for his power, aye, as much as mountains are indebted to the music of their echoes, and the melody and the enchantment of their mountain-streams. His preaching is eminently objec- tive— it deals with things of the eyesight. The comparison with Massillon suggests immediately one great difference. The mental and moral dignity of the Frenchman gave his whole bearing dignity. Dignity Mr. Parsons pre-eminently lacked, and those who have studied his style, or even glanced at it, will immediately perceive the reason — it is because there had been in his instance no introvisionary life. Mr. Parsons had not thought his sermons ; he only thought out a text ; he appeared to dread thought ; he did not lead a life of mental communion ; he knew nothing of the sophistries of the understanding, and therefore he knew nothing of the higher moods of faith ; he shunned all modern questions ; he did not attempt to understand the modern form of infidelity — its subjective or experimental form ; he lacked the dignity of Massillon, because he did not JAMES PARSONS. 269 preach from the text, "We speak that we do know ;" he did not verify the appeal which Christianity makes to the human soul. It is thought which invests the preacher with real dignity ; it is the knowledge of human nature which pre-eminently crowns with success. Humanly speaking, no preacher can, in the long run, be greatly successful or greatly useful who does not know well the human heart. This know- ledge can only be obtained from the study of our- selves. Massillon spent many years in study and retirement, yet he knew the world well. He was able, in a wonderful manner, to thread his way through the passions of men. His pictures of mental life are striking, from their dramatic reality. When asked how he should know the world so wejl, who had lived so far from it, he replied, " I have learned to draw them by studying myself." Yes, this descent into self is the source of all power. Our knowledge of ourselves is the gauge of our dominion permanently over our fellow-men. It gives vigour, reality, and originality to thought, and pun- gency and potency to utterance. The life of the modern popular preacher is quite inimical to this. If he be a star, he must, perforce, be a wandering star. It is a most unnatural thing to suppose that people would give, in support of any cause, unless served beforehand with a dish of eloquence. Thus, for the popular man, there is an unending life of excitement, of ///^/«^, and dinnering, and cold-collationing, and dejtihier-d-la-foicrcheiteing, and of suppering. Contrary to the instincts of his better nature, he is compelled to live for effect. In his preaching there is eminent danger of the sacrifice 270 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. of usefulness to effect. It is a bad thing to be treated with too much kindness by the world. We sink from manly teachers into petted and spoiled children ; we forget our mission. Instead of vigorous counsellors, we sink into lackadaisical ladies' men. Instead of the life within being all in all, all in all is in the life without. The fold of the robe upon the shoulder, the speck of dust upon the coat, is of more importance than the influence of a thought upon the spirit, or the weight of a custom upon the life. All this is the result of the eloquent sermon system, the pedestrianising eloquence with which, amongst its other gifts and graces, our age also is favoured. And a life passed thus — and this, again we say, is the life of the popular preacher — must prevent the exercise of the inner faculties, must remove also from the possibility of sympathising with the doubters, who are struggling through roaring seas, if haply they may find the sure haven of a faith. But we will confess it at once, there is a genius, a style of preaching, which we conceive to be of a dan- gerous kind. Forcible preaching is most dangerous if the force be expended upon one theme — one topic. As the finger that sweeps the harp, and evokes music from the chords, is itself most callous, notwith- standing the impressions it produces, as it is seared and hardened by the efforts it has made to attain excellence, so frequently, it must happen that the heart of the preacher is untouched amidst all the affecting descriptions and appeals which shake the souls of his auditors. To others they are fresh and new, to him they are common-place ; and to him they become common-place in proportion to the JAMES PARSONS, zji frequency of their repetition ; for advancing souls do not repeat themselves — and this constitutes the great danger of the utterance of any moral senti- ment, or Christian sentiment, which either has not been, or is not immediately practised. And the same thing must be said, not only of the ' utterance of such sentiments, but the hearing of them — even this, that our faith becomes proportionably faint as we listen to the repetition of what we do not believe ; and our moral character becomes dead as we utter the moral precepts we do not practise. The mis- chief of this style of preaching, as of all styles purely rhetorical, or oratorical, is, that it always walks on stilts. If the preacher would be a teacher ; if he would enlarge the mind, communicate instruc- tion, infuse new ideas ; — if, like Socrates among the Athenians, and our Divine Lord among the Jews, he would walk among the people, and show how much the public instructor is of the people; if he would be, and do these things, then the modern style — the stilted style — the rhetorical style, has signally, remarkably, failed. Beyond all things this great lesson should be taught the young preacher, — " Clothe thyself with earnestness as with a garment ! " — earnestness developing itself by its strong sym- pathy, by its entire individuality. Beware, we might well say, of inculcating a piety from the pulpit you do not intend to realise in the parlour! Better that the piety of your pulpit be of a lozu order, than that it be higher than the piety of your every-day life. Scepticism will be saved the oppor- tunity of many a sneer so long as the teachers of Christianity are whole-hearted, whole-bodied men. 272 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. Now, our objection to the pulpit method of Mr. Parsons is, that it was — and we say it with the sincerest deference and respect for his memory — one-sided. It was not equable in its flow ; it was segmental Christianity ; it was not circumferential. In Massillori, whom we have mentioned so often, the same tremendous characterisation obtains. In the sermons of Jesus the terrors of the Lord are sparingly introduced. In Massillon and Parsons they form the staple topic of discourse. The sermons of our Lord produced ineffable love and peace in believing. These sermons produce appal- ling terror and alarm. Convictions are brief in proportion as they proceed from the operation of physical causes of terror. In all instances vehemence of manner produces very short-lived influences. Truth, to be effective, must appeal to the whole soul. The stature of Christian manhood is only attained that way. The blow is felt, but it pro- duces insensibility. The exercise of all the organs only results in the health of all. And now we have said this much upon this style, not only of one of the most popular of recent preachers, but the most popular style of discourse also. Certainly most people seem strangely ena- moured with it ; strangely indisposed to preach that " God is love," and to believe and to hear that God is love ; and so we have hysterics, and agonies, and thronging multitudes watching for the advent of fire, and feeling considerably satisfied with themselves, because well frightened. Oh, if we might whisper in the ear something that we have felt, then we might say, " Good Christian people ! your large congrega- JAMES PARSONS. 273 tions and rapt attention, your ecstatic agony and hysteric terror, are not very complimentary to your- selves, your preachers, or your faith ! Oh ! have you not learned, then, that the powers of the ' world to come ' are very calm, and mi^^hty, and still, within the soul ? Do you not know that terror is the first and lowest round in the ladder by which we ascend to God ? And yet you like to lie and live ever there. It is not highly complimentary to your Christian taste, one should think." But it yet remains to say something upon the more distinctive peculiarities of Parsons's style as a mental exercise. The most prominent feature is the climax, and here he stood confessed as a master. Not that his climax was always honest. We were forced, sometimes, to see the trick of art. The climaxes of Cicero and Burke lie concealed ; we feel them, we do not see them. It is true that, with Mr. Parsons, we frequently saw them, but did not always feel them. The climax was frequently merely verbal — a word selected for stronger inflection — and in this the name of his imitators is Legion. When merely verbal, there is danger lest the climax degenerate to mere claptrap. In its noblest form it is like the succession of the tides, when every tide is mightier and more impulsive than the last, each argument more conclusive, each expression more muscular, each image more radiant. The power over the climax develops more tact than genius, yet it is frequently the most efficient portion of a dis- course ; and when it is judiciously used, it is far more potent over an audience than the most subtle eff"usions of genius. It is artificial, but the true 18 274 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. artist conceals his art — the bungler displays it. We will cite an illustration of the concealed climax, from Massillon, by the side of one more fully displayed, from Parsons: — " I figure to myself that our last hour is come ! The heavens are opening over our heads ! Time is no more, and eternity is begun. Jesus Christ, in His glory, is about to appear in His temple, to judge us according to our deserts ; and, as trembling criminals, we are here, waiting at His hands the sentence of everlasting life or everlasting death. I ask you now, stricken with terror, and in no wise separating my lot from yours, but placing myself in the situation in which we must all one day appear before God in judgment — if Christ, I ask, were at this moment to appear in this temple, to make the awful partition between the just and the unjust, think you that the greater number would stand at His right hand? Do you believe that numbers even would be equal? Would ten righteous persons — such as were not in the doomed Cities of the Plain — be found amongst us? Nay, should we find a single one ? I know not ; you know not ! Oh ! my God ! Thou alone canst tell who are Thine and who are not ! Divide this assembly as it shall be divided at the last day ! Stand forth now, ye righteous ! — where are you ? Chosen of God, separate yourselves from the multitude doomed to destruc- tion. Oh, God ! where are Thine elect ? what remains as Thy portion ? " The good bishop suffers from translation ; who does not ? The following is a perfect specimen of Mr. Parsons's method in dealing with the climax. The reader will note the relative vehemence of the defiances ; he will not fail to conceive the brilliancy of the eye, alternately raised and depressed, the hand JAAIES PARSONS. zjs gently raised and clenched, and the voice trembling beneath the weight of subdued passion and emotion. " One thing alone is required, — that you should ascertain your interest in Christ, and have the witness of the Spirit with your spirits that you are the children of God; and when that is done, all is done, and Death is to be feared no more. No, my brethren ; then shall you look him in the face as he comes with the heavy tramp of malignant fury to strike you down, and, as the dart gleams in his uplifted hand, bare your bosom for the blow, and exclaim, * Strike ! I fear thee not ; — strike ! thou art conquered ; — strike ! thou art but the last commissioned messenger of mercy to herald me to my Lord ; — strike ! ' — and as the framework of clay falls beneath the blow which you invite, your last song of tremulous triumph shall be, ' Fall ! fall ! fall ! frail mansion ! for I know that when the earthly house of this tabernacle shall be dissolved, I have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.' " This climax rings upon the ear like an echo; like a refrain in a song, we know that it will come but we listen for it, and hope to hear it fall of our charmed senses. Do our readers know that sweet melody of Arthur Cleveland Coxe, the Ameri- can poet, which in its structure is so like to one on our preacher's sermons .'* It is called " THE heart's song. ** In the silent midnight watches, List — thy bosom-door ! How it knocketh, — knocketh, — KNOCKETH^ Knocketh evermore ! Say not 'tis thy pulse's beating; *Tis thy heart of sin : *Tis thy Saviour knocks, and crieth, ' Rise, and let Me in ! 276 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. ** Death comes down with reckless footstep To the hall and hut : Think you Death will stand a-knocking Where the door is shut ? Jesus waiteth, — waiteth, — WAITETH ; But thy door is fast ! Grieved, away thy Saviour goeth : Death breaks in at last ! ** Then 'tis thine to stand, entreating Christ to let thee in, At the gate of heaven beating, Wailing for thy sin. Nay, alas ! thou foolish virgin, Hast thou then forgot ? Jesus waited long to know thee. Now He knows thee not ! " True pulpit eloquence — nay, all true eloquence — should possess a large portion of the lyrical element ; it should combine drama, anthem, and song. But we must present our readers with one or two specimens of Mr. Parsons's more continuous manner. Take, for instance, the following citation : — " HEAVEN. "And truly there is nothing which should keep your desires from heaven. No ! not that delightful circle of home, where the parent's eye may glisten as he looks upon his child, and the child may smile with joy because it gazes on its father, or, more loving still, when it looks upon its mother; there is nought even there which can abstract the desires from heaven, and the only modification of that desire should be that children and parents, and brethren and sisters, should all meet in heaven. No — there is nothing ; when here we meet round the Table of the Lord, and Christian comes by Christian to taste the bread and wine, which ' show forth the Lord's death till He come ' — JAMES PARSONS. a;; till we all meet as by one electric imoulse upon the spirit; till we all blend together in one, ' being members of His body, and His flesh, and His bone,' there is nothing here that can abstract the desires from heaven ; the only modifi- cation of that desire must be that those that break the bread and drink the wine may have fulfilled at last the glorious promise — ' Verily, I will no more taste of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father's kingdom.' Onward and onward still, from year to year, and from day to day, must the Christian spirit press in its desire towards heaven. It will be, my brethren, but a little longer, and then that desire shall be fulfilled, and mortality will be swallowed up in life. The portal shall be entered, and the spirit shall gaze round on the wonders of its completed salvation. What pearly gates are these ? What jasper walls are these? . What golden streets are these? What splendid palaces zxt these? What immortal trees are these? What crystal streams are these? What amaranthine bowers are these? These are the spirits of the just ; and I see' my parents, my partner, and my children, and they beckon to the entrance. There is Jesus, whom my soul hath loved, and now I behold Him with the glory of His Godhead. And there is the overshadowing splendour of everlasting happiness, which breathes blessings on all beneath it. And this, this is heaven ! Earth, I have nothing to do with thee — with thy dull days and thy nights of darkness ! I have left thee, with thy storms and tempests ; I have left thee, with thy distressing temptations and thy polluting scenes ; I have left thee, with thy sorrows, thy bereavements, thy diseases, and thy destinies. This, this is heaven ! Am I come there ? Then redemption and immortality are mine. Oh, brethren, in the body or out of the body, can we tell? Have not your desires expanded and extended till even now you listen to the song, and inhale the atmospheres of heaven ? We must come back again to earth, till the will of God remove us ; but as we 278 THE VOCATION OF 'I HE PREACHER. descend to the world of morta'ity, and of sorrow, and of sin, in which we must breathe a little longer, we cannot but seiirl our desires to Him who has gone before us, ' When shall I come and appear before God?' 'Oh th^it I had the wings ot a dove ! then would I flee away, and be at rest ! ' " The sermons of Mr, Parsons did not display the imaginative faculty, which is the concentrating, or, as Coleridge finely calls it, the esemplastic power, but they display fancy, which is the grouping power. He did not select one image, and let it do its work. He did not embody and clothe a colossal idea, draping it round with appropriate language, or leaving it undressed, to win and awe the hearts of the people. Like all men of mere talent, he walked not unfrequently a circuitous path to convey his fancy to the mind. He gave you his gold in the form of leaf, not ore. The one bold image did not blaze over the mind ; and the redundancy, in reading the sermon, not unfrequently palled upon you ; but this was not the case in hearing it. An affluent stream of images, uttered in quick succession, attaches the mind so much more forcibly when uttered than when read. The mind must be steeped in bewilderment, dazzled by rapidly glancing beams. It is only the higher order of oratory that will bear the microscope of meditation. Oratory like that of Jeremy Taylor or Edmund Burke is at once lofty poetry and pro- found philosophy. The following may serve as illustrating Mr. Parsons's power in binding figures together : — " DEATH. "We cannot form any idea of that state of existence in which the process and power of death shall be unknown. JAMES PARSONS. 279 When we look around us now, we cannot perceive an object in which death is not to be found. Every inspiration of every breath tells of death; every throbbing of every heart tells of death ; every beating of every pulse tells of death; every period of life tells of death. Death not only appears in the snows that have been scattered upon the head of age, but it appears in the brightness that flashes in the eye of infancy, and in the tinge that lights up with beauty the cheek of youth. Death is in all the seasons — in the showers of spring, in the sunbeams of summer, in the ripeness of the autumn, in the storms and blasts of winter. He is in the cloud, and in the sky, and he is in the mountain, and in the valley. He is in the grass that clothes the fields with verdure, and in the lovely flowers that seem the very elements and emblems of beauty and perfection. There is not a motion, there is not an object, there is not a sphere, there is not an event which does not tell of Death. He comes forth from behind the veil, where he perhaps may have enshrined himself in a mask, and while we are gazing around us, he stamps his foot upon the territory of the material universe, and, waving all around it his dread ebon sceptre, proclaims in a voice of thunder : — ' All this is MINE ! ' and none can gainsay nor deny." And yet another extract, in his best and most sustained manner, on the same fruitful theme of Death, — a favourite one with Mr. Parsons. ** All the demands and characteristics which are applied to the Christian in the present state of existence are those of toil and labour. For example, we are to walk, we are to run, we are to plant, we are to reap, we are to watch, we are to wrestle, we are to fly, we are to press forward. Whether we occupy the more public and honoured stations which belong to the Church of Christ, or whether we exist in more ordinary and less responsible stations, we all know that ours 28o THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. is a hard and toilsome course. The task of resisting the propensity of indwelling sin ; the task of enduring the various afflictive dispensations which are imposed upon us by Divine Providence ; the task of bearing the obloquy, the scorn and derision, in various forms, of ungodly men ; the task of contending against the powers of darkness ; the task of acquiring the high and ultimate attainments of Christian knowledge and Christian holiness ; and the task of attempt- ing to diffuse, against the prejudices and depravity of men, the kingdom of the Redeemer even unto the ends of the earth : these constitute our work, a work which we are to do with all our might, and except we do it, we cannot work out our own salvation, nor rightly honour that Redeemer whom we profess to serve. Now, when we have finished, as hire- lings, our day, when we die, or when we sleep in Jesus, it is like going to rest ; the body rests in its grave, the soul rests in the paradise of the Lord, surrounded by the elements of a sweet and balmy tranquillity that cannot be ruffled nor disturbed. Are we labourers ? Then we leave the field and lay down the implements of our husbandry. Are we travellers! Then we terminate our long and wearisome journey, and cross the threshold of our Father's mansion. Are we soldiers ? Then we take off the helmet, and the corslet, and the entire panoply of war, and lay down the weapons of defence or of assault — the spear, the shield, and the sword. Are we manners? Then we heave over the last ocean-billow, and enter into the desired haven. The sleep of the labouring man is sweet ; and oh ! how sweet is the slumber and Lst repose of those who have believed in Jesus, and who have wrought for God I No suffering, no cares, no uneasy recollection nor .foreboding anticipations to disturb thtre ; no appalling dreams there, no irksome and unhealthy nightmare to spoil or mar ///a/ placid rest. Every jarring noise is hushed ; — the winds are still ; — no heavy tread, — no loud tramp, — no awakening roar, — no trumpet- sound startles : — all nature pays the deference and tribute of yAMES PARSONS. 281 silence whilst the Christian sleeps. ' They enter into peace, and they rest in their beds, each one who has walked in his uprightness.' ' There remaineth, therefore, a rest for the people of God.' * I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me. Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours, and their works do follow them.' How happy, my brethren, for you and for me, if as Christians we labour, that as Christians we shall rest when we shall have fallen asleep ! " We may present one other illustration taken from Mr. Parsons' celebrated sermon before the London Missionary Society, in the year 1827, when he was but in the first prime of his manhood, or youth. The extract betrays all the faults of his style, all its rapidity, its excellence, vehemence, declamation appeal, and apostrophe. INVOCATION TO MISSIONARY ARDOUR. " Yet, especially, refer to the examples furnished within the Church of the Saviour, by the contemplation of which we best can ascertain the character of our own day, and the station after which we ought to strive. And oh ! how far are we beneath them ! Will you think of Him— the great Example — the appointed Pattern, whose steps it is our duty to follow — who came down from heaven, the Messenger of mercy — who placed before Him one grand object from which He never swerved — whose meat and whose drink was to do the will of Him that sent Him, and who gave Himself in entire and perfect devotion to the business of His Father, and for the redemption of mankind ? li'ill you think of those honoured heralds who first went forth at the command of their Lord— men who, for Jehovah's honour and the Saviour's cross, sacrificed all their earthly good, and were content to be esteemed 'the filth and oftscouring of all 282 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. things ' — men who laboured with unruffled patience — men who reared the monuments of their diUgence, and the trophies of their success, in many cUmes and empires — men who met the King of Terrors, as he came to end their career, amidst torture, and racks, and flames, having the sacred name of their Redeemer as a charm to cheer them, when they died, with the certainty of an immortal triumph? Will you thhik of those who issued forth in the high spirit of reformation to awaken a slumbering world, and braved the angry tempest that burst upon them, amidst the thunders of Antichrist, though they themselves should be crushed beneath its bolts ? Will you think of such a one as White- field, the fervour of whose spirit, and the extent of whose labours, ha^'e enshrined his memory in a radiance almost peculiar and alone in the annals of the faithful ; and of others in modern times, some of whom have fallen asleep, and some of whom yet live to work for Him ' who shall build the temple of the Lord and bear the glory ' ? Oh, yes ! there are those before us, passing as in a procession of splendid array, in whose presence we may well sink, confessing our insignificance — ashamed of our misapplication and indolence ! And shall we not arise to emulate their virtues, and to catch a portion of their fire ? And shall we not arise to seek the power that shall lift us above the elements that oppress and clog our progress, and strive, in holy ambition, for the renown of sacrifice and ambition ? And shall we not arise and follow on, in noble, chivalrous exertion, which shall fight for the cause of God and man, caring nothing for the monsters of the moral desert, there breaking the fatal spells and overturning the dark enchant- ments of hell, and giving to groaning captives the emancipa- tion and privilege of immortality ? Shades of the departed, give to us your mantle I Spirit of the living God, descend thus upon Thy people ! and then shall the Church go forth, 'fair as the moon, and clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners 1 ' " JAMES PARSONS. 283 The structure of Mr. Parsons' sermons was, how- ever, admirably fitted for effective preaching ; yet they were built upon a plan which has now been very much laid aside, for we seem to have outlived the age of rhetoric, but for one or two not very notible exceptions amongst us ; in the sermons of Mr. Parsons there was nothing epigrammatic, nothing terse ; very frequently, along the line of discourse, hints occurred showing him to be unacquainted neither with books nor thoughts. But the object of rhetoric is to keep the mind asleep, the feeling, intensely, nervously awake ; it compels all its powers to charging upon the conscience : rhetoric has especially taken out a retainer, and constitutes itself a special pleader for the cause it espouses. Trained and educated, as we have already said, for the law, no preacher whom we have heard spoke more like a special pleader than Mr. Parsons ; all his sermons are eminently forensic ; he talked to a congregation as a barrister addresses a jury ; he only knew the case in hand, he never allowed himself to be diverted for a moment from his topic ; he always spoke as a man • might who was determined to obtain by that speech a condemnation or an acquittal. The method of the sermon, its arguments and illustrations, all bore on in a straight line ; there was no circular sweep, no glancing hither or thither, to this or that thought more or less remote from the matter in hand ; the chief impression was not permitted to be weakened by any occasional or incidental suggestions ; and the most perfect affluence of poetical or fanciful illustra- tions, or the heaping together of texts, was all cumulative, all distinct and defined ; there was no 284 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. wild talk, nor wild fire. Abounding himself, personally, in humour and anecdote, we suppose no one ever heard him use an anecdote in the pulpit, and we are quite certain no one ever heard him indulge in the remotest or most transient touch of humour. All was stately and sustained, we had almost said to an overstrained pitch of intensity ; all bearing the mark of perfect and entire consecration in that service, but all characterised by such harmony with the laws of rhetoric as to compel the feeling that the preacher was a perfect artist, — we of course use the term only with the profoundest respect, — in the use of all the material at his command. We intend no disrespect when we suppose him to have been a disciple, and student of the school of Blair ; and, for our part, we will be bold to say, we think it would be well for students for public speech if they took up, and studied now Blair's almost forgotten volumes. The mind of our age travels in a dif- ferent line, the race of preachers now is compelled to altogether a different method ; the pulpit, to be successful, must be the whispering gallery for all the varied thoughts and tribulations of our day, our troubled and multiform age ; audiences would, we fancy, become impatient of long, protracted, stately discourses ; and, in the memory of what Mr. Parsons was in his highest fame, we are almost disposed to speak of him as the last of the pulpit rhetoricians ; but we must remember what we have said above ; the voice, the earnest pathetic voice, full of intensity and accent, this, we suppose, makes every method power- ful in our own, or in any age. The tendency, and perhaps more than the tendency, JAMES PARSONS. 285 the practice, in our times is to the disdainful disregard of all rhetoric as mere artifice ; it is plausibly said, Throw out the words ; let them take their own course, and go their own way. It is admitted that there may be too great an attention to the mere artifices of speech ; but, on the other hand, there may be a most foolish forgetfulness of the laws of speech, of thought, and of the human mind ; great singers and great actors are what they are as the result, not merely of genius, but of genius methodised and cultivated ; great poets have usually been great artists ; nay, the more cultivated the age the greater the necessity for the cultivation of art both in writing and in speaking ; " moreover, the preacher sought out acceptable words," and this constitutes the difference between mere talk and sustained oratorical power. Are poets, painters, musicians permitted to be artists } why should not the orator be so also "i Should the artist power be entirely renounced by the preacher .-* Preachers now often deliver from the pulpit what might pass for a review, for a leading article in a newspaper, for an epigrammatic suggestive essay ; but all these are as utterly different, in their idea and structure, from the sermon, as they are different from a piece of music or a poem. It is no doubt true that very few of all the men who preach are pre-eminently fitted, either by nature or by grace, to preach ; but the man born to be a preacher, like the man born to be a singer, or poet, or painter, will be the man of all others most likely to deal with his work as a passion, to enjoy himself in it, to prepare himself for it, and to be wholly dissatisfied upless he shall see certain effects 286 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. flowing from it. The man who does not studi- ously and carefully prepare for his public ministra- tions, shows by his negligence he was not intended for a preacher. But neither voice, nor rhetoric, are matter ; and we believe still the sermons of Mr. Parsons are among the very finest models upon which a successful ministry may frame itself Dean Kirwan was one of the most effective preachers of his time ; his audiences were immense, his pathos overwhelming ; but no one can take down his sermons now with any expectation of gaining anything from them ; the man is gone, and all is gone ; this is far different, however, from the subject of our present sketch. It was a curious thing, if the hearer could be amused by the mere curiosity, to notice the strange rapidity with which Mr. Parsons was wont, in search of references, to turn over the leaves of the pulpit Bible. An element of his power assuredly was that he was " mighty in the Scriptures ; " Scriptural reference always formed no inconsiderable portion in the composition of the sermon, and every general leading statement was enforced by copious Scrip- ture quotations ; very frequently these were wrought with great skill into the structure of speech, and made very effective by their impassioned connection. The sermons of Mr. Parsons are models for orderly thought in the pulpit; he evidently always be- lieved, and acted upon the belief, that method and arrangement are essential to true effect in public speaking ; indeed, rhetoric implies this. The more recent method in the pulpit has disdained the use of divisions, or the more obvious use of them ; Mr. JAMES PARSONS. 287 Parsons tenaciously held to the plan for a sermon, and it unquestionably greatly assists both preacher and hearer; nor does it follow, if the plan be adhered to, that it should be commonplace or jejune ; it is the so-called "natural," in reality the almost thought- less, division of a text, which has created a prejudice against the method ; this must greatly assist where the preacher preaches, as Mr. Parsons, we believe, always did, entirely from the memory ; — who ever saw a scrap of paper on his Bible? — And, we suppose, whatever instances might be cited to the contrary that this must be the true method of all hortatory speech. There is something ludicrous in written declamation, and declamation must be considered as Mr. Parsons' especial forte and power. Even the very best reading cannot atone for that perfect freedom, that entire self-possession, especially for the power to fix the eye at will, and deal as if in earnest and passionate conversation with any portion of an audience. This then it is which implies close preparation for the pulpit ; not merely writing out a sufficient quantity of matter to occupy the forty minutes, but such an arrangement of the matter as shall be calculated to arrest and sustain the attention, such a disposition of words, thoughts, and illustra- tions, as shall carry the mind forward. There is an art in preaching ; it depends certainly upon endow- ment, and upon the influence of the Holy Spirit upon the character ; but it would indeed be absurd to suppose that preaching should be almost the only occupation of the mind of man which does not im- pose the tax of extraordinary labour for its adequate success ; only, as we have already intimated, the 288 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. labour in which any mind indulges illustrates the passion of the nature; and where there is no disposi- tion to labour, we may be sure neither nature nor grace ever intended a dedication to that work. These remarks illustrate what Mr. Parsons was as to the order, method, and arrangement of his sermons : they never appeared without a plan. The frequent brilliancy of his sermons was admirably calculated for public impression. Brilliancy is surely permissible in the pulpit ; it is sinful, indeed, to enter the pulpit with the intention of saying fine things ; but a mind delighting in the imaginative, or even the fanciful aspects of things, can only express itself after its own nature. The style of Mr. Parsons in the pulpit always appeared to be eminently chaste. In reading it may seem sometimes as if the orna- ment were too diffuse ; but that which is intolerable in an essay becomes very necessary in a sermon, where it is almost by diffuseness and amplification that the preacher wins his way to the interests and intentions of the people ; and, as a rule, that which is most effective in delivery will be most unfitted for printing. Again, the perfect stillness of Mr. Parsons' manner destroyed all possible suspicion of exaggeration ; a calm subdued intensity pervaded the whole discourse, from the commencement to the close ; a nervous, even hesitating, shrinking modesty was the vehicle through which the most rapt utterances, the most tremendous denunciations, and the most vivid decla- mation were poured ; the whole manner was one of serious absorption in the subject, and it became infectious, and the people caught intensity from the JAMES PARSONS. 289 nervous, tremulous, and conscious speaker. Few preachers have cultivated that subdued and pro- foundly conscious tone of conviction ; yet perhaps it is the only tone which strikes deeply down to the profoundest roots of the soul. Hence, amidst the torrents and whirlwinds which sometimes seemed let loose in some of the higher moods of the preacher, and amidst all his most splendid coruscations, there seemed a mild soft light, like the gentle splendour along the horizon as the storm marches, over the traveller's head, upon its way. The brilliancy of our modern days is spar-like, angular ; it flashes, for the most part, in sharp suggestiveness, or in distinctly wrought painting ; it is the result of intense and sleepless activity of thought ; it is thought/?^/. We suppose in all ages the poet and the preacher are the brethren, the twins, the counterparts of the time. Apply the test for three hundred years past, it will be found to be so: the age of Milton was the age of Taylor, of Barrow ; the age of Pope was the age of Sterne ; the age of Thomson was that of James Hervey. In the earlier period of Mr. Parsons' career it is impossible not to trace a strong sympathy with the vehement and passionate expressions of Byron ; the structure of his appeals, the agonistic intensity of the strained expression, often remind us of Pollok ; while the thick-crowding fancies, which are frequently heaped together with no unchaste, although with so affluent a hand, remind us of Mrs. Hemans, in her power of amplifying, and spreading out suggestions over a subject. The modern method is the reverse of all this : compact, compressed, sharp, and forcible. It must 19 290 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. be, we think, admitted that, even with adequate powers of mind, this latter method is not the most calculated for public impression and usefulness. Audiences usually consist of a very average order of mind, and assuredly there is danger in over-estimating rather than in underrating their mental powers. It has been truly said, " There are hearers among all communions who love the twilight order of instruc- tion, and who, having no great regard to knowledge for its own sake, appear half indignant at being told anything they did not know before, and would have a universe of minds reduced as nearly as possible to their own level ; these men, stationary as bulrushes on the borders of a stagnant pool, which is all the world to them, would not have the waveless calm disturbed by a single breath."* A mild, diffused luminousness, therefore, rather expresses the true idea of pulpit splendour ; the people will not bear too much thought ; " the line must be upon line, and the precept upon precept, here a little and there a little ; " and he will, in general, be the most suc- cessful preacher who lulls and soothes rather than astonishes, and who adroitly uses that which the people already know, rather than carry them for- ward to unexplored mines, or mountain passes, or untrodden fields of thought. He who adopts a reverse course to this may serve his Master, and receive his crown, and gather the gratitude of the select and affectionate few ; but he will pay the penalty in a small audience and a very limited range * This quotation is from a very able review of Mr. Parsons' published volume of sermons, in the Congregational Magazitie for 1831. JAMES PARSONS. 291 of usefulness. How can it be otherwise ? the thou- sands, or the mihions, are neither largely read, nor highly cultured ; at the best, they are serious people, with minds well disposed towards religious truth ; the preacher must make his most of this ; that he does not make the most of this is perhaps the serious fault of the modern pulpit ; that he has made the most of this is the honour of Mr. Parsons. But hence it is that where thought and scholarship fail, feeling, emotion, are triumphant and successful ; these are the strings upon which so iis^w play, or can play ; the brilliant thought, the felicitous ex- pression, the happy allusion, all admirable in them- selves, miss the audience ; the affecting incident, the impassioned appeal, the natural description, these, all are able to appreciate, and these, not only usually tell, but they affect and influence character. So far as the drapery of the sermon is the subject of remark, it is in these we are to notice at once a chief excellency of Mr. Parsons and a very cha- racteristic illustration of his genius. For the most part his sermons comprise generali- sations, grand views of truth ; his fame was achieved in a day when the preacher was permitted, by almost all hearers, to take much for granted ; the subtle refinements of modern casuistry were not generally operating ; unbelief, where it existed, was a bold habit of indifference ; it had not employed itself upon the millionfold nice scepticisms and critical questions which now are the exercises of all orders of minds ; perhaps feeling was more easily roused, and topics of thought, which now produce only a cold and callous look or sneer, were not then 292 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. devoid of power to awaken emotion. Hence such appeals as the following would not be inadequate to awaken impression. "SATAN AND THE SAVIOUR IN CONFLICT FOR MAN's SOUL. " Some of you may perhaps have seen a work of art in which, almost as with a magic pencil, the painter has por- trayed a scene — Satan playing with a man for his soul. What a scene for the limner is before us now ! And had we the strength of Angelo, or the genius of Raffaelle, where still is the hand that dare dip the colour, or spread and fill the canvas ? Christ and Satan in conflict for the soul of man ! — and for yours ! It is not drama ; it is truth : it is not pictorial ; it is real : and the conflict is acting now. Here stands the spirit of evil ; on his brow the thunder scar is graven ; his eyes blaze with the immortahty of hell ; and he seeks to retain the tenacity of his grasp on the spirit he would destroy. There stands the Prince of peace, in gar- ments of light and majesty, a crown upon His head, but tenderness and love in His eye ; and He pleads and stretches out His hand ; and as it is held out before you in the attitude of entreaty, you see the print of the nails which passed through Him in agony when He hung upon the cross, that by His blood you might be redeemed. While one asks for your ruin, the Other weeps as He tenderly pleads for your redemption. And which will you accept ? Christ has come to your heart, and He is knocking at the door of the palace ; and you hear His voice — ' Behold, I stand at the door, and knock ; if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.' 'I stand at the door and knock!' And now hearken ! In this silence is the Saviour pleading again ; and if there be a throbbing, palpitating heart, it is the vibration of that heart before the Saviour's knock, when He asks you to open." JAMES PARSONS. 293 Or the reader may take the following as well calculated to arouse and arrest the mind of a hearer, especially when delivered with all the preacher's inimitable emphasis. "think how noble is your existence. " Think how noble is your existence; think how solemn is your existence. Think how noble is your existence. You are not the mean and paltry thing which vulgar infidelity would have you regard yourself: the companion of the worm, and destined, after the brief space of ' the life that now is,' to sink into annihilation. No ; you are to exist when the whole majestic universe around you shall be no more. Cathedral and temple, mansions and palaces are to crumble ; lofty mountain and retired valley, wide spread- ing plains and umbrageous forests are to perish ; rivers are to cease to flow, oceans will soon no longer heave their rolling billows ; the stars will merge in darkness, the moon * shall be turned into blood ; ' ' The sun is but a spark of fire, A transient meteor in the sky ; ' while YOU, on this spot of earth, bear upon you the mark of immortality, are to live — for ever. How solemn is your existence ! It is to be an existence in heaven or in hell : an existence where, before the blaze of the beatific glory, you shall hym.n the hallelujahs of everlasting gratitude and joy ; or an existence where, in the shadows of a more than mid- night darkness, you shall be heard wailing and cursing, be found agonised, ' tormented day and night,' among the lost for ever and for ever. How solemn your existence, as well as how noble ! This constitutes the series of facts which you are to contemplate. My hearers, think of them. In the morning light and evening shade, think of them. At home and abroad, travelling and at rest, think of them. In 294 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. the silence of the secret chamber, think of them ; in the society of the domestic hearth, think of them ; in the assembly of the great congregation, thitik of them ; in sick- ness and in health, think of them ; in youth, in maturity, in age, think of them. ' The life that is to come ' — a life so noble, a Hfe so solemn — .it is mine ! " We have been desirous, in these remarks, by fitting quotation to do justice to the peculiar eloquence of this great preacher. Our space is very- inadequate to the many memories which crowd upon us, and to the multitudes of well-known sermons which are before us ; perplexed, however, we will yet select two passages. "the church in danger. " The security of the Church, my brethren, rests upon the purpose of the Father, the mediation of the Son, and the power of the Spirit ; and the perfections of the triune Jehovah are solemnly and irrevocably pledged to its continuance. That security has been already manifested in past ages, in circumstances which only could have been met by the actual power and wisdom of Omnipotence ; and we believe that by the same energy it will be kept invulnerable even unto the end. Fears, we are perfectly aware, are often enter- tained as to its stability and as to its powers of continued existence ; and the alarm has not unfrequently been reiterated (as perchance also in our own times) that ' the Church is in danger.^ The Church in danger ! False systems, which have usurped the station and the name, may be in danger ; but the true Church, never / The Chu?-ch in danger ? What ! that Church whose banners have streamed, like the thunder cloud against the wifid, and pointed steadily towards the very centre of the elementary war ? That Church whose genius has stood unmoved alike before the northern JAMES PARSONS. 295 tempest and the sunbeam, and thrown off its defence for neither ? That Church which has been uninjured ahke by Jewish bigotry, and by Grecian subtlety, and by Roman empire, and by barbaric brutaUty, and by antichristian bloodshed, and by infidel blasphemy ? That Church which now bears around it the recorded triumphs of centuries, and which stands without a bridge, circumvallated by the immortal fire of heaven ? The Church in danger ? Is the energy of the Holy Spirit in danger? Is the mediatorial exaltation of the Lord Jesus Christ in danger? Is the throne of the Eternal Father in dafiger ? Oh ! talk not and dream not of danger while He Hves, who amid the chafing and the tumult of the people has said He ' laughs,' and that He * has them in derision ; ' and amid all change, and all convulsion, repose upon the promise of Him who bought it by His blood. ' Upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.' It was the vain panegyric of the eulogist of ancient Rome — ' While Rome stands, the world shall stand ; and when Rome falls, the world shall fall.' But Zion shall never fall — changeless amid the world's mutation, and indestructible amid its ruins ' Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God.^ " In the same sermon occurs our next quotation : " 'glorious things are spoken of thee, o city of god.' "And what, my brethren, was the end for which the Saviour died but that He should be the propitiation ' for the sins of the whole world ' ? And what was the purpose of the Saviour's exaltation but that, presiding at the right hand of the Majesty on high, He should put down all enemies under His feet? — in the poetry of the great apostle, repre- sented as intently watching the revolutions of the earth for which He bled, as it rolls round on its axis amid the mighty realms of space, ' expecting ' ( ' expecting,' and whaf an expectation in such a bosom !), ' expecting till His enemies be 296 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. made His footstool.' And He must, we are told therefore, ' receive dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all people, and nations, and languages should serve Him.' Already, my brethren, the march to the spiritual Zion which He has constituted has begun ; and the representatives of various climes and kindreds are ever and anon passing her portals, that they may go and present before the sacred shrine the tribute of their adoration and their praise. Here science shall present the homage of her discoveries ; philosophy, of her wisdom ; commerce, of her enterprise ; art, of her labours ; here warriors shall dedicate their weapons, nobles their dignities, and monarchs their crowns. Here civilisation shall pay the tribute of her soft refinement, and barbarism of her untutored idleness. Here shall be poured forth European power, here Indian pearl, here Peruvian gold. Here the free man shall present his charter ; and here the slave, now a slave no longer, shall bring the last broken links of the fetters from which the gospel shall have disen- thralled him. Man shall be bound in one brotherhood of love, all harmonious, all pure, all happy. ' There shall be neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free;' but Christ shall be 'all and in all.' ' Paradise ' will be ' regained.' • For He, whose car the winds are, and the clouds The dust that waits upon His sultry march. When sin hath moved Him and His wrath is hot, Shall visit earth in mercy ; shall descend Propitious, in His chariot paved with love, And what His storms have blasted and defaced, For man's revolt, shall with a smile repair.' " ' Glori ous things are spoken of thee, O city of God ! ' " Mr. Parsons has been spoken of as a master of climax ; this method of speech eminently supposes what indeed abounds in all our preacher's discourses, yAMES PARSONS. 297 — method, order, arrangement. We could have gladly presented several illustrations of this, and of the gradual march of sentences of what may be called the lighter infantry, or the rapid, yet heavy cavalry of speech ; everywhere it is significant that method rules ; even in the peroration nothing is left to the impulse or passion of the moment ; from many illustrations let the following suffice. " THE LAST JUDGMENT. " What discoveries will be made then I What development of hidden virtue and of secret vice ! How that which is covered now will be revealed ! and how that which is hidden now will be displayed, as upon the housetop ! How those who, in the present world, have been despised and rejected on account of the character of their external employment, will be found exalted to the high places of honour ! while those who have here held high station in the world, and it may be in the professing Church, will be found in a station of shame and everlasting contempt. What discoveries will be made then I " And what unions will occur then / The saints of God, from various climes, and in various ages, reciprocally un- known to each other but by distant report, or probably unknown to each other at all, will mingle together; while those who have trodden the same path of pilgrimage will rush to each other's arms, under the sanction of the great President, acknowledging themselves to be to each other a glory, a crown of rejoicing, and a joy, in the day of His coming. What unions will be then ! "And what separations will be then / Besides the grand separation of the classes — the righteous and the wicked — what separations will there be of those who formerly were joined in social habitudes and relations of life — pastors from people, teachers from scholars, husbands from wives, parents 298 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. from children, friends from friends ! And the separations irreversible ! and known by those who undergo them to be irreversible. It will be — my heart trembles as I utter the expression — it will be the scene and the season of everlasting faretvell. How overpowering then is to be that great event, when the assembly shall separate, never to approach and never to commingle more ! " We have already remarked that the sermons of Mr. Parsons are always characterised by very obvious and distinct arrangement : this arrangement is per- ceptible not merely in the leading ideas, but pervades every part of the sermon ; and the divisions are generally characterised by great perspicuity and neatness. We may take an illustration or two, which we may call THE METHOD OF JAMES PARSONS EXHIBITED IN OUTLINES. " * BeJwId the place where they laid Him.'' — Mark xvi. 6. '* Introductory observations on the touching and sublime interest attaching to the grave of our Lord Jesus Christ, but especially as involved in the thought that it is an empty grave. There, even now, we feel as though we heard the voice of the angel spirit, whose bright presence seems yet to illumine those shadows, saying, ' Behold the place where they laid Him.' Then — " I. Consider the manner in which He was committed there. " I. He was committed there by persons of remarkably interesting character, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. " 2. He was committed there with many tokens of regard and affection. " 3. He was committed there with unostentatious quiet- ness and privacy. *' II. Again, * Behold the place where they laid Him.* JAMES PARSONS. 299 Consider the ends which by His committal to it were accomphshed there. " I. His committal to that place confirmed the reality of His death. " 2. His committal to that place fulfilled the declarations of ancient prophecies and types. " 3. His committal there completed the abasement of His humiliation. "4. His committal there has delightfully softened and mitigated the terrors of the grave for His people. "5. By His committal there He immediately introduced His own mediatorial exaltation and empire. "HI. 'Behold the place where they laid Him.' And learn the lessons which are inculcated there. " I. Learn the tenderness and devotedness of His love: that He should be found in that dark and narrow house, etc., etc. " 2. Learn the duty of unreserved devotedness to His will. He was buried for you ; must we not be buried with Him! " 3. Learn the abounding consolations we possess in reflecting on the departure of our Christian friends, and in anticipating our own. " Closing remarks on the grave of the Christian and the ungodly man. Reference to the text in Ecclesiastes viii. 10: 'I saw the wicked buried,' etc." This is a very fair illustration of the order pursued by the preacher throughout his discourses ; and if simplicity and perspicuity be the objects at which a preacher should aim, such outlines are admirable models. Another illustration may be taken in the outline of the sermon on the thief converted on the cross ; and as the last outline exhibits Mr. Parsons in his mood of most chaste and quiet beauty, this 300 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. exhibits him in his more exalted reach of pathos and tender sublimity. " The Thief on the Cross : Luke xxiii. 39-43. " Introduction. The various persons passing before the cross while Christ was crucified. The two thieves reviling. The remarkable change in the behaviour of one. " I. We propose, with regard to the case before us, to notice the expressions of mental emotion he uttered. " I. Observe the agency by which those expressions were excited. — By his side a dying Saviour, etc. There must have been an entire transformation of feelings — conversion. ** 2. Consider the import which those expressions involved, as deduced from the story. " (i) Here is sympathy with the Lord Jesus as an innocent sufferer : ' This man hath done nothing amiss,' etc. "(2) Here is also penitence: 'We indeed justly, for we receive the reward of our deeds,' etc. *' 3. Here is prayer — ' Remember me.' What humility ! He only aspired to be remembered. What faith ! He felt that to be remembered was enough. What love ! He desired to be remembered by no other friend. What hope ! He had an ardent anticipation that even amidst the gorgeous splendours of the kingdom in the world to come, he, the poor expiring malefactor, would be remembered there, etc. "II. We proceed now to notice the promise of exalted happiness which he received. Introduction : the suspense of the malefactor. The gladness of the Redeemer, even then seeing of the travail of His soul. " I. Observe the scene of this promised happiness. *Thou shalt be with Me \n paradise.' " 2. Observe the nature of this promised happiness. 'Thou shalt be with Ale in paradise.' " 3. Observe the period of entering on the enjoyment of this promised happiness. * To-day thou shalt be with Me in JAMES PARSONS. 301 paradise.' He lived to hear, amid the mysterious darkness of the * ninth hour,' his Master utter the shout of triumph, ' It is finished ! ' and ' He bowed His head and gave up the ghost ; ' and then he died too, and the Master and the servant, the Saviour and the saved, met together in their empyreal home. How rapid was the process, and how swift the consummation of redemption to the dying thief ! In one day he was enlightened, he was pardoned, he was sanctified, he was saved. The morning saw him a hardened malefactor ; the evening, a disembodied spirit in glory. The morning, in chains ; the evening, disenthralled for ever. The morning, crucified ; the evening, crowned. The morn- ing, weeping the first tear of penitence ; the evening, chant- ing the first anthem of praise. He seems to stand before you now in the visions of eternity, and his Master above him, holding him forth as a model to the universe, and proclaim- ing, in His own ecstacy — I am He * that speak in righteous- ness,' YET ' MIGHTY TO SAVE ! ' " III. We are led, by an easy and natural transition, to notice the general lessons which the whole case is adapted and designed to inculcate. " I . The case exhibits the sovereignty of Divine grace. " Take the being to whom grace was given. A male- factor, stained by ignorance and crime. " Take the season. The last moment of the eleventh hour. " 2. This case teaches the reasonableness of hope with regard to the most endangered condition of man. "3. This case presents to us the absolute necessity of repose upon the Lord Jesus for the attainment of final happiness." We v/ill yet present our readers with one other of these masterly outlines. "* Ibeheldthe transgressors, and was grieved.' — Ps. cxix. 158. " Introduction. One of the influences and results of true 302 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. piety on the heart is to move its sensibilities on behalf of the interests and welfare of others. This illustrated in the text, in which we observe — *' I. A contemplation of the prevalent habits and charac- ter of mankind : ' I beheld the transgressors,' etc. " Transgressors are those who violate the law which they ought to obey. " I. God has actually estabHshed a law for the government of mankind. *' 2, There is amongst mankind a prevalent, and fearfully extended, rebellion against this law. Think of foreign and of remote countries, country in which you yourself dwell, etc. " 3. The case of those who are in the attitude of rebellion against the Divine law should by pious minds be made the matter of frequent and serious contemplation. " Let us now proceed to notice these words — " II. As they present a record of the emotion which this contemplation properly, and specially, produces upon the pious mind. Illustrated in the instance of Ezra, the pos- sible author of Psalm cxix. (Ezra ix. 5). This suggests two inquiries. " I. For what reasons this emotion must be excited. " (i) Because transgression is so insulting to God. " (2) Because transgression is so fatal to the happiness of mankind. " 2. Inquire to what conduct this emotion should prompt. "(i) To personal nonconformity to, and separation from the transgressions which we witness and over which we mourn. " (2) To personal exertion in the diffusion of that truth which God has appointed as the instrument to reconcile and save. " (3) To personal prayer for the outpouring of the renovat- ing influences of the Holy Spirit." 'TAMES PARSONS. 303 These are average illustrations of the symmetry of Mr, Parsons' sermons. It will be seen that their architecture is usually, we believe we might say invariably, textual. Such sermons very naturally lead to the discussion of the question in what pulpit usefulness especially consists. It must be admitted, as we have already said, that our preacher did not deal, in the pulpit, with the world of thought ; he did not set himself face to face with any of the great questions either of thought or criticism in our day ; he took the word of God, as it stands in our English version, as the great text-book for his magnificent and rousing homilies. The readers of Mr. Parsons' sermons will notice another peculiarity, not very observable in the pulpit of our times, namely, the element of denunciation, the very fearful announce- ment of the punishments of hell ; these were preached with immense and terrible effect, and the preacher no doubt received his pulpit training in that school which had felt the influence of such fearful eloquence as that of Jonathan Edwards, whose sermons we are perfectly sure Mr. Parsons regarded with great admira- tion, and elements from which we have often noticed in the texture of sermons we have heard. He ought to be a very good, and pure, and holy man, who can indulge in the dreadful portrayals of eternal terrors ; it is exceedingly dangerous ground, and when its descriptions are uttered carelessly, flippantly, or even mechanically, as the mere expression of technical theology, it can only produce a benumbing effect upon the spiritual sensibilities of the preacher, while the hearers awake by-and-bye from the terror, altogether uninfluenced. An amazing change has 304 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. passed over the preaching mind within the last thirty years, and multitudes of preachers, who have not relaxed their faith in, nor reverence for the word of God, and who have no doubt of the tremendous issues of eternity, and the fearful consequences of sin, still shudder as they attempt to preach words such as those with which the sermons of Jonathan Edwards abound. Such was Mr. Parsons : we have presented a very brief and inadequate view of his pulpit method. To preachers desirous of holding and instructing an audience, a closer study of his style would be very valuable. He was the son of a highly venerated father, the Rev. Edward Parsons, of Leeds, and the brother of a preacher whose flow of eloquence was of a most transcendent character. To the last Mr. Parsons held a considerable sway over the affections of the people, and even in his oldest age his name was a talisman, as it seemed to suggest the memory of ancient days of almost necromantic power : but his appearance changed greatly from that thin frame which, in earlier days, seemed struggling with death ; the larger and heavier body, however, in the pulpit was still instinct with life, or, rather, exercising, against all calculation and expectation, a spell most powerful over the vast audience ; but what must it have been to have seen it in the day when it, too, was a light thin framework of a body, so frail that one almost expected the soul to rend it in its efforts of eloquence and power .'' We did not then know Goethe's celebrated image by which he describes Hamlet as an oak planted in a glass jar, or vase ; but it surely typified the body JAMES PARSONS. 305 of this orator. We could have wept for the apparent pain with which he spoke — the apparent bronchial affection of the throat. At that time it seemed to us the indication of weakness, suffering, and prema- true death. How often have we walked six weary- miles, and returned as many, standing the whole period of the service, watching with a kind of rever- ence the downcast head, and eye furtively glancing, — to us the symbols of so much power ! How often have we strained the ear to catch, — if possible to travel over the multitudes of heads — the first tones of the voice, the rapid muttering ; and, then, that cough in the gallery, and the quick, sharp eye of the preacher, darting round, determined, apparently, to have no coughing there during Jiis speech ! And then the first hurried climax. Words Hke the gently- unloosened winds ; — another period of comparative silence, — a hush, as of death, a waiting, and a long- ing, an undefined desire, a quickening of the pulse, — while the preacher turned rapidly the leaves of his Bible, and always seemed to us, as if by magic, to light upon the right quotation ; — and the winds again, — the winds, wailing louder, louder, from their caves, even as when we hear them among the high tree tops, presaging and prophesying a storm. The second climax was reached, and we felt our own eyes starting, half with terror, half with wonder, so rapid the flight up, so rapid also the descent.* But now the matter was more continuous and * When James Parsons preached first in Leicester, Robert Hall heard him. Next day a friend of ours said to Mr. Hall. "What did you think of him, sir? " " Think of him, sir! — think of him, sir ! What could I think of him, sir ? Glorious 20 3o6 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. sustained, the quotations were not so numerous from Scripture. The first half of the discourse usually- consisted mainly of quotations and simple statements, but now the sentences began to fall like flakes of fire about us — it scarcely took at all a stretch of the imagination to believe that the being before us held lightnings in his hands and eyes, and darted their forked arrowy fires over the assembly. Strange, indeed, no simple monosyllable affected us so before. We did in those times believe the preacher clad with supernatural power. He electrified his pro- nunciation ; he placed his words as we place wires ; he made them the channels of a current of fire. As we now read of mesmerists, who communicate their power to objects, and thus make mute and dead things alive with a magnetic force, so did he with the words he used. We pronounced them, they were powerless ; he pronounced them, and they clove the soul in twain. We suppose few recent preachers have, so much as Mr. Parsons, had the honour of having their sermons feloniously preached and purloined ; it is very piti- able, but many of the stories told in illustration of this are very humorous. Some time since we were conversing with a minister on the subject of this sketch, enumerating the texts from which we had heard him preach, and recalling some of the impres- sions ; among others, we referred to the sermon we heard in the Poultry Chapel several years since, from Gospel of the blessed God!" "Yes, but the climax, Mr. Hall ! What did you think of the climax ? " *' Oh ! London lamplighter, sir ! London lamplighter 1 No sooner up than down — no sooner down than up ! " JAMES PARSONS. 307 the text, " Thou hast restrained prayer before God." " Ah," said our friend, " I have heard that sermon twice." " Indeed," we said, " that is singular ; for we have heard James Parsons preach hundreds of times, but never heard the same sermon twice." "I did not say," said our friend, " that I had heard him preach it twice ; but I heard it first when you heard it ; and the Rev. came down to preach for us our anniversary sermon, and he preached it again : so I heard it twice." Again, we know of a remark- able circumstance in the town of , when two very celebrated pulpit orators were engaged for two different services, in connection with the opening of a place of worship. The first went off very well, from the text, " Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God." Down came the other brother from London — a still more popular and stately personage — for the evening service ; he not only announced precisely the same text, but preached precisely the same sermon ; and it was quite a matter of debate whether P had stolen from L , or L from P ; but, by-andbye, it was discovered they were a pair of thieves, and that the sermon was the one from which we have quoted ; it had been published years before, as preached by Mr. Parsons, in an old volume of the Pulpit. But a still more astonishing revelation the curious reader may discover for himself, if he will, by pur- chasing No. 2,373 of the Pulpit, for March 26, 1869, where, beneath the text " There shall be no night there," he will find precisely the same sermon preached by Mr. Parsons from the same text, and published in the same periodical, in the year 1837 3o8 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER, and vol. xxx. ; we forbear to mention the name of the clergyman guilty of this disgraceful literary felony. That a man should preach another man's thoughts and words may perhaps be forgiven ; the man who would do it would probably give to his hearers something far better than he could produce himself ; but that he should publish as his own such a literary larceny is wonderful. CHAPTER X. BILLINGSGATE IN THE PULPIT. THERE is a character who, we suppose, stands high in the history of the English pulpit; certain excellencies cannot be denied him, and yet, although his works are reproduced from generation to generation, he is our own special abhorrence ; we cannot derive instruction from him ; we can scarcely permit ourselves to laugh even at his drollery or his wit. We are fairly familiar with his works, yet the most disgraceful pulpit clowns, whose words we have read or heard, have never stirred our disgust so deeply as this man. We perfectly well know how many readers may judge our estimate dispropor- tionately severe when we say that the most perfect embodiment to us of BiUingsgate in the pulpit, of a Christless teacher, of a hollow, or rotten-hearted man, seems to be Robert South. It has been well, and truly said, even by one of his eulogists, that no one could now attempt in the pulpit the wit of South without making a fool of himself; and yet his style is held up to admiration ; it is said his English is astonishing for its maturity and perfection — " pure, strong, pointed, unembarrassed English," says one of his critics ; the same generous reviewer says that " he speaks right out, rough and heavy as it may be ; 310 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. he 'kicks,' and 'cuffs/ and 'mauls,' and 'stabs,' and ' butchers ' ! " A nice character for a preacher of the Gospel ! a fine illustration of the mind of Christ ! Take a sentence or two from this Tom Sayers of the pulpit, who seems to us to have converted West- minster Abbey and Christ Church, Oxford, into a kind of prize-ring. Speaking of rich and wealthy sinners, he says they are " hell and damnation-proof; they are fattening for the slaughter of eternity, damned in state, and go to hell with more ease, more flourish and magnificence than others." He speaks of such persons, if they find their way to the Communion, as " wretches at the Holy Sacrament;" he says, " When I consider the pure and blessed body of our Saviour, passing through the open sepulchre of such throats into the noisome receptacles of their boiling fermenting breasts, it seems to me a lively but sad representation of Christ being first buried, and then descending into hell." Speaking of original sin in infants, he says, " Might we see into the heart of the least infant, we should behold a nest of impurities like a knot of little snakes wrapped up in a dunghill." Such flowers of rhetoric strew the pathway of the speech of this High Church dignitary. When Crom- well was in power, South poured out a splendid poetical eulogy on the great Protector ; but he made amends for this : preaching before Charles the Second, he poured out a tirade upon " that beggarly bankrupt fellow, Cromwell, who murdered one king, and kept another out of his inheritance," and it is said that the king, Charles the Second, who heard this sweet discourse, nudged Rochester, and said, BILLINGSGATE IN THE PULPIT. 311 " We must make this fellow a bishop ! " Probably this was what he was aiming at when he indulged again in the most fulsome eulogy upon the licentious and scoffing king ; but the full affluence of his abuse was reserved for his old friends, the Puritans and Presbyterians ; then his opprobrium became club- like, and his wit not so keen as it was coarse, as when he says, " Many of them thought themselves sure of heaven, but it was equally sure that they would take Tyburn on the way there." Some of his expressions about them were very droll ; their ministers were " men of a screwed face, and doleful whine, speaking bad sense with worse looks ;" again, " They were men of a large and sanctified swallow, with capacious consciences that stuck neither at robbery nor murder." This was the style in which this rabid recreant could talk of the Howes, the Flavels, the Baxters and Bunyans ; and after this we think we must modify much of the indignation we have felt as we have seen the pulpit turned into a kind of Richardson's booth, and occupied by the coarse and heartless clown. This state of things, we might hope, has, with us, long gone by, and yet we have here, circulating widely, the life of Peter Cartwright, a gentle-minded, lamb-like Christian, to whom it was about a matter of equal indifference whether he should fight or preach, and whose discourses, not unfrequently, had all the most offensive vulgarity of the quotations we have given from South, although set to the tune of a widely different theology. Now, it is with us a pretty definite conviction, although we are aware how fearful the hazard is that we may be contra- 312 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. dieted, that Christianity does not smile upon, and approve bullying and pugilism. Certainly, if circum- stances arise to develop the spirit of the prize-ring in the Christian preacher, this does not seem to be the thing to exalt to the ideal of Christian biography. The age of the early Christians was very favourable to the inculcation of these pugilistic lessons, but, singular to say, the New Testament contains none. He was a strange fellow, this Peter Cartwright — no doubt much about him that was manly, and noble, and truthful ; but the young men who read it to their great edification may remember that, even admitting some virtue in the book, it belongs to an order of society we hope entirely unlike ours ; a society of rowdies and filibusterers, of scoundrels and slave-holders. Well, we do not desire to see this spirit return into the midst of our pulpit life. We have passed through it. And perhaps the coarse arid vulgar pugilist, Peter Cartwright, was inherently a finer character than the scholarly South. Meanness is never so detestable as when it condescends to be- smirch itself with grossness. What could be expected from a man who could say, ^^ Gratitude among friends is like credit among tradesmen : it keeps business up, and maintains the correspondence ; and we pay not so much out of a principle that we ought to dis- charge our debts, as to secure ourselves a place to be trusted another time " ? A nice clean sentiment for a Christian teacher ! But it takes away all surprise at the following passage, from a sermon preached before the king, of virtuous memory, and to which we have already referred. BILLINGSGATE IN THE PULPIT. 313 '* * Who that looked upon Agathocles first handhng the clay, and making pots under his father, and afterwards turning robber, could have thought that from such a con- dition, he should have come to be King of Sicily ? " ' Who that had seen Massaniello, a poor fisherman with his red cap and his angle, would have reckoned it possible to see such a pitiful thing, within a week after, shining in his cloth of gold, and with a word or nod absolutely com- manding the whole city of Naples ? " ' And who that beheld such a bankrupt, beggarly fellow as Cromwell, first entering the Parliament house with a threadbare torn cloak, greasy hat (perhaps neither of them paid for), could have suspected that in the space of so few years, he should, by the murder of one king, and the banishment of another, ascend the throne ? ' At which the king fell into a fit of laughter, and turning to the Lord Rochester, said, * Ods fish, Lory, your chaplain must be a bishop ; therefore put me in mind of him at the next death.' " It is impossible to read South with pleasure : in the most unlikely places the abusive spirit of the foul-mouthed old renegade, — for, as we have said, he had been of the Puritan party, — offends any reader who regards decency and decorum of language. We feel that he who could write thus had attained to no knowledge of the text and purity of the Chris- tian life. To this he also owes much of his popu- larity; yet his style is certainly robust and masculine, but it is heavy, the sentences are long, and some- times drag wearily. It is strange to say it reads like a very honest style : there are no glowing words, no fancies, there is nothing imaginative nor ideal. He never rises beyond common sense. He is 314 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. impatient of all those topics which belong either to the symbolism of the Church or to the spiritual aspects of its faith, and his wit is not profuse, and when it comes, it is either in low vulgar coarseness, or it is merely a remark with some point in its analogy. When those who are not acquainted with his writings read of the wit of South, they must not expect the affluence and redundancy of Swift, nor the smartness of Sydney Smith ; and some acquaintance with his works will reduce his proportions to those of a by no means extraordinary writer, as he was in no sense an admirable man. His excellency is to be traced to the fact that he stated, with great clearness and precision, truths quite level to the ordinary mind. His cube was a very contracted one, and he had neither the intelligence, genius, nor taste to look beyond, nor to attempt to gauge wide relations ; this is evident in his sermon on Conthi- gencies, which at once illustrates his shallowness in philosophy, and abusiveness in spirit. Perhaps his supposed wit and real coarseness have obscured his more solid excellences, for these are to be traced ; but among those who have sinned by the introduc- tion of drollery into the pulpit we know of none so disgusting as he. He had not the shelter of a harassed and persecuted party, nor the motives of an impulsive nature. He was simply a spiteful, malevolent time-server ; there was nothing kind nor genial in the humour of the man, and his satire was only able to take aim at Puritanism or at piety. But there are fine passages in South. " A blind man sitting in the chimney corner is pardonable enough, but sitting at the helm, he is intolerable." "Solomon BILLINGSGATE IN THE PULPIT. 315 built his temple with the tallest cedars ; and surely when God refused the defective and the maimed for sacrifice, we cannot think He requires them for the priesthood." When we find him discoursing to us as follows we listen impressed and thoughtful. *' Every judgment of God has a force more or less de- structive, according to the quality and reception of the thing that it falls upon. If it seizes the body, which is but of a mortal and frail make, and so, as it were, crumbles away under the pressure, why, then the judgment itself expires through the failure of a sufficient subject or recipient, and ceases to be predatory, as having nothing to prey upon. But that which comes out of its Creator's hands immaterial and immortal endures and continues under the heaviest stroke of His wrath ; and so is able to keep pace with the infliction (as I may so express it) both by the largeness of its perception and the measure of its duration. He who has a soul to suffer in has something by which God may take full hold of him, and upon which He may exert His anger to the utmost. Whereas, if He levels the blow at that which is weak and mortal, the very weakness of the thing stricken at will elude the violence of the stroke, as when a sharp, corroding rheum falls upon the lungs, that part being but of a spongy nature, and of no hard substance, little or no pain is caused by the distillation ; but the same falling upon a nerve fastened to the jaw, or to a joint (the consistency and firmness of which shall give force to the impression), it presently causes the quickest pain and anguish, and becomes intolerable. A cannon bullet will do terrible execution upon a castle-wall or a rampart, but none at all upon a wool-pack." But he will not allow us to enjoy in quiet long. To come to later times, and less illustrious 3i6 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. spheres, some sermons are much more coarse in seeming than in reality. We have lying before us now on the table the old sermon, well known and often quoted, Beelzebub Driving and Drozvning his HogSf by J. Burgess, with its three queer divisions : — "In these words, the devil verified three old English proverbs, which, as they contain the general drift of my text, shall also contain the substance of this ensuing dis- course. ** I. The devil will play at small game, rather than none at all. " 'All the devils besought Him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them.' " 2. They run fast whom the devil drives. " ' When the unclean spirits entered into the swine,' 'tis said, * The whole herd ran violently.' " And 3. The devil brings his hogs to a pretty market. " ' Behold, the whole herd ran down a steep place into the sea, and were choked.' " But in the sermon itself there is nothing charac- terised by especial bad taste, while we should suppose it would, to a plain people, not be delivered without useful hint and suggestion. There is much more real coarseness in the following quotation, given by Robinson from a sermon by Edward Willans, Vicar of Hoxne, Suffolk.* " He that hath no charity in his cribhage must needs be bilkt at his last account, for all that faith which he turneth tip in his profession. — Let us frog less for gifts, a?id pray more for gj-ace. — The fairest 7vay into the city of the text is through the suburbs of the verse before it. — It is a bargain * Robinson, "Claude." BILLINGSGATE IN 2 HE PULPIT. 317 of God's own makbig, to honour them that honour Him. — As soon as we are loosed from our mother's womb, we are all bound towards the womb of our great-grandmother, the earth. — The most emphatical words in the text " (Matt. xiii. 45, 46) "are borrowed either from that richer way of mer- chandising by wholesale, or from that poorer way oi peddling by retail. — All usury cannot draw all the gttts and garbage of the earth into one man's coffers ; no, nor so much as the white and yellow entrails of the Indian earth." Robinson says : — "Some comparisons are odious. The filthiest sermon that ever I read was preached by the glorious author of * Icon Basilike,' Dr. Gauden, before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, in St. Paul's, 1659. The text is Jeremiah viii. 11, 'They have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly.' The Doctor says, ' The prophet's bowels were pained by that coarctation which fear makes upon the lactes and smaller bowels near the heart.' There is hardly a species of hospital nastiness which is not intro- duced here. ' The text has six parts : a patient, the sick Church of England ; her Jmrt ; her present healing ; the cheat oi\\.) those magniloquent mountebanks, fanaticks; and, lastly, the true way of healing by that catholicon E^piscopacy.' . . . Ah, Doctor ! . . . The Doctor's patient is 'his daughter, his sister, his mother, a forsaken virgin, a rich married wife, and a poor desolate widow.' This good lady has got ' flesh-wounds, ulcers, gangrenes, pustules, angry biles, running issues, and fistulas ; she is plethorick and consump- tive, her spirits are flat, and her head is cracked ; she has got the itch and the scratch, and her inward wounds are bleeding;' and in this miserable plight 'some violent sons of Belial commit a horrible rape upon her.' Presently they bring 'salves, elixirs, and diurnal doses, and sing lullaby.^ At last comes Dr. Gauden, and applies ' lenitives, 3i8 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. unguents, and poultices ; he purges humours, removes proud flesh, probes and cleanses festered places, cures pantings and fainting fits, and all the other fedity which that un- mannerly medicaster, the devil, had caused by his infernal eructations.' . . . All this — and ten times worse — at St. Paul's Cathedral, before the Lord Mayor and all the city magistrates, the several livery companies, the Lord General Monk, the clergy, gentry, ladies, and populace, by their 'humble servant in Christ, John Gauden, D.D.,' after- wards the Right Rev. Father in God, John, Lord Bishop of Exeter." In reviewing the history of pulpit eloquence, we are often reminded of the old fable of the cuckoo and the nightingale. Both contended who should sing the sweetest ; and the ass, because of his long ears, was made the judge. The nightingale sang first, the cuckoo next. The ass's determination was that truly the nightingale sang pretty well ; but that for a good, sweet, plain, taking song, and a fine, clear note, the cuckoo sang far better. Well, we too have our own regards for the cuckoo, but we must remind that bird that, in fact, it is not a nightingale. We see some dispositions nowadays to elevate the cuckoo to an unseemly dignity. But coarseness is, indeed, neither cuckoo nor nightingale. Yet, in many ages of the Church, has not this been the most pleasant and engrafted word ? There is an order of preaching and of prayer which shakes hands and says " Hail, fellow, well met " to blas- phemy. An old volume before us — " Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed "* — abounds in illustrations of * It may most truly be said of this selection, An enemy hath done this ; but they enter into the history of the pulpit, BILLINGSGATE IN THE PULPIT. 319 this shocking mood of mind. We select a few illus- trations, far from the worst : — " One John Simple, a very zealous preacher among them, used to personate and act sermons in the old monkish style. At a certain time he preached upon that debate, Whether a man be justified by faith or by works, and acted it after this manner : * Sirs, this is a very great debate ; but who is that looking in at the door, with his red cap ? Follow your look, sir; it is very ill manners to be looking in: But what's your name ? Robert Bellarmine. Bellarmine, saith he, whether is a man justified, by faith or by works? He is justified by works. Stand thou there, man. But what is he, that honest-like man standing in the floor with a long beard, and Geneva cowl \Jiood\ ? A very honest-like man ! draw near ; what's your name. Sir ? My name is John Calvin. Calvin, honest Calvin, whether is a man justified, by faith or by works ? He is justified by faith. Very well, John, thy leg to my leg, and we shall hough \trip\ down Bellarmine even now.' " Another time, preaching on the day of judgment, he told them, * Sirs, this will be a terrible day ; we'll all be there, and in the throng I, John Simple, will be, and all of you will stand at my back. Christ will look to me, and He will and are not altogether unfair illustrations of its character in the times to which they refer. We have in our possession a curious collection of tracts to the same purpose, exhibiting the defects of several sides and parties, such as " Pulpit Sayings ; or, The Characters of the Pulpit-Papist, examined in answer to the 'Apology for the Pulpits.'" Sold at the Print- ing House on the Ditch Side, Blackfriars, 1688. "A Century of Eminent Presbyterian Preachers." By a Lover of Episco- pacy, 1723. " An Apology for the Pulpits ; being an Answer to the Book intituled 'Good Advice to the Pulpits,' " 1638. "Seventeen Arguments proving the Unlawfulness, Sinfulness, and Danger of suffering Private Persons to take upon them Public Preaching," 1651. " The Preacher, a Poem, " 1700, etc., etc. 320 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. say, Who is that standing there ? I'll say again, Yea even as ye ken'd not \knew not] Lord. He'll say, I know thou's honest, John Simple ; draw near, John ; now, John, what good service have you done to Me on earth ? I have brought hither a company of blue bonnets for you, Lord. Blue bonnets, John 1 What is become of the brave hats, the silks, and the sattins, John ? I'll tell, I know not. Lord; they went a gait [a road] of their own. Well, honest John, thou and thy blue bonnets are welcome to Me; come to My right hand, and let the devil take the hats, the silks, and the satins.' ** Mr. Simple (whom I named before) told, ' That Sampson was the greatest fool that ever was born ; for he reveal'd his secrets to a daft hussy \foolish wench], Sampson ! you may well call him fool Thomson; for of all the John Thomson's men \/ien-peckt men] that ever was, he was the foolest' *' We have a sermon written from the preacher's mouth by one of their own zealots, whereof this is one passage: ' Jacob began to wrestle with God, an able hand, forsooth ! Ay, Sirs, but he had a good second, that was Faith : Faith and God gave two or three tousles together ; at last God dings \peats] down faith on its bottom ; Faith gets up to his heels, and says, Well, God, is this your promise to me ? I trow, I have a ticket in my pocket here : Faith brings out the ticket, and stops it in God's hand, and said, Now, God ! Is not this your own write ? deny your own hand-write if you dare ! Are these the promises you gave me ? Look how you guide me when I come to you. God reads the ticket, and said, Well, well, Faith ! I remember I gave you such a promise ; good sooth, Faith, if you had been another, thou should have got all the bones in thy skin broken.' " Mr. John Welsh, a man of great esteem, once preaching on these words of Joshua, As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, etc., had this preface ; — BILLINGSGATE IN THE PULPIT. 321 " * You think, Sirs, that I am come here to preach the old jog-trot, faith and repentance, to you ; not I, indeed ; What think you then I am come to preach? I came to preach a broken covenant. Who brake it ? even the devil's lairds, his bishops, and his curates ; and the de'il, de'il, will get them all at last. I know some of you are come out of curiosity to hear what the Whigs will say. Who is a Whig, Sirs ? One that will not swear, nor curse, nor ban ; there is a Whig for you : But you are welcome, Sirs, that come out of curiosity ; you may get good ere ye go back again. I'll give you an instance of it : There was Zaccheus, a man of low stature, that is, a little droichy \_dwarf\ body, and a publican, that is, he was one of the excisemen ; he went out of curiosity to see Christ, and, because he was little, he went up a tree : do you think. Sirs, he went to harry a pyot's nest? [rifle a magpie's nest]. No, he went to see Christ; Christ looks up, and says, Zaccheus, thou art always proving pratticks, thou'rt no bairn now; go home, go home, and make ready My dinner ; I'll be with you this day at noon. After that, Sirs, this little Zaccheus began to say his prayers, evening and morning, as honest old Joshua did in my text • As for me and my house, etc., as if he had said. Go you to the devil and you will, and I and my house will say our prayers. Sirs, as Zaccheus and the rest of the apostles did.' " Poor Laurence Sterne ! We have never been able to regard his sermons in a much higher light than as exhibitions of pulpit drollery. It has often been the case that preachers have adopted a quite hysterical style in the commence- ment of their sermons — a sort of attention-at-any- price kind of style — well illustrated in the sermons of Laurence Sterne ; a strange man to find in the pulpit at all ; but his sermons, principally from the wide fame of the wit, attained to a large 21 322 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. celebrity, nor are they without some excellences, but chiefly of the sentimental and satiric kind ; jerks and artifices abound through them all, but especially in the commencements. Thus from Ecclesiastes vii. 2, 3 : — "*IT IS BETTER TO GO TO THE HOUSE OF MOURNING THAN TO THE HOUSE OF FEASTING.' " That T deny ; — but let us hear the wise man's reasoning upon it, — 'for that is the end of all men, and the Hving will lay it to his heart ; sorrow is better than laughter j ' — for a crack-brain' d order of Carthusian monks, I grant, but not for men of the woi'ld ! For what purpose, do you imagine, has God made us ? for the social sweets of the well-watered valleys, where He has planted us, or for the dry and dismal desert of a Sierra Morena? Are the sad accidents of life, and the uncheery hours which perpetually overtake us, are they not enough but we must sally forth in quest of them, — belie our own hearts, and say, as your text would have us, that they are better than those of joy ? Did the Best of Beings send us into the world for this end, — to go weeping through it, — to vex and shorten a life short and vexatious enough already? Do you think, my good preacher, that He who is infinitely happy can envy us our enjoyments ? or that a Being so infinitely kind would grudge a mournful traveller the short rest and refreshments necessary to support his spirits through the stages of a weary pilgrimage ? or that He would call him to a severe reckoning because in his way he had hastily snatched at some little fugacious pleasures, merely to sweeten this uneasy journey of fife, and reconcile him to the ruggedness of the road, and the many hard jostlings he is sure to meet with ?" Surely a most unwise and irreverent mode of opening up a subject. Again, in his sermon on the BILLINGSGATE IN THE PULPIT. 323 character of Shimei — one of the best illustrations of Sterne's style — in which he shows how Shimei reflects all the features of David, according to the true temper of the world — as David is prospered, he honours him ; as he is unlucky, he reviles him. " * But Abishai said, Shall not Shimei be put to death for this 1 ' *' — It has not a good aspect. — This is the second time Abishai has proposed Shimei's destruction." The following passage illustrates Sterne's better, but wholly ethical and unevangelical, style : — " In all David's prosperity, there is no mention made of him; " — (Shimei) "he thrust himself forward into the circle, and, possibly, was numbered amongst friends and well-wishers. " When the scene changes, and David's troubles force him to leave his house in despair, — Shimei is the first man we hear of who comes out against him. " The wheel turns round once more ; Absalom is cast down, and David returns in peace : — Shimei suits his be- haviour to the occasion, and is the first man also who hastes to greet him ; — and, had the wheel turn'd round a hundred times, Shimei, I dare say, in every period of its rotation, would have been uppermost. "O Shimei! would to Heaven, when thou wast slain, that all thy family had been slain with thee, and not one of thy resemblance left ! but ye have multiplied exceedingly, and replenished the earth ; and, if I prophesy rightly, ye will in the end subdue it ! " There is not a character in the world which has so had an influence upon the affairs of it, as this of Shimei. Whilst power meets with honest checks, and the evils of life with honest refuge, the world will never be undone : but thou, Shimei, hast sapp'd it at both extremes ; for thou corruptest 324 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER, prosperity, — and 'tis thou who hast broken the heart of poverty; and, so long as worthless spirits can be ambitious ones, 'tis a character we shall never want. O ! it infects the court, — the camp, the cabinet ! — it infects the church ! — go where you will, — in every quarter, in every profession, you see a Shimei following the wheels of the fortunate through thick mire and clay ! — " — Haste, Shimei ! — haste, or thou wilt be undone for ever. — Shimei girdeth up his loins and speedeth after him. — Behold the hand, which governs everything, takes the wheels from off his chariot, so that he who driveth, driveth on heavily. — Shimei doubles his speed, — but 'tis the con- trary way ; he flies like the wind over a sandy desert, and the place thereof shall know it no more : — stay, Shimei ! 'tis your patron, — your friend, — your benefactor ; 'tis the man who has raised you from the dunghill ! — 'Tis all one to Shimei : Shimei is a barometer of every man's fortune ; marks the rise and fall of it, with all the variations from scorching hot to freezing cold upon his countenance that the smile will admit of. — Is a cloud upon thy affairs ? — see, — it hangs over Shimei's brow. — Hast thou been spoken for to the king or the captain of the host without success ? — Look not into the court-calendar ; — the vacancy is filled up in Shimei's face. — Art thou in debt? — though not to Shimei, — no matter; — the worst officer of the law shall not be more insolent." But we speak of Sterne's exordiums ; thus, in the case of Hezekiah and the messengers : — " * And he said, What have they seen in thine house ? and Hezekiah answered. All the things that are in my house have they seen ; there is nothing amongst all my treasures that I have not shown them.' " — And where was the harm, you'll say, in all this ? " BILLINGSGATE IN THE PULPIT. 325 Again : — ** * For we trust we have a good conscience.^ — '* Trust ! — Trust we have a good conscience ! — Surely, you will say, if there is anything in this life which a man may depend upon, and to the knowledge of which he is capable of arriving upon the most indisputable evidence, it must be this very thing, — Whether he has a good conscience, or no. " If a man thinks at all, he cannot well be a stranger to the true state of this account : — He must be privy to his own thoughts and desires ; — he must remember his past pursuits, and know certainly the true springs and motives which, in general, have governed the actions of his life." Again '.—^ '■^'' Despisest thou the riches of His goodness, and forbearance, and long-suffering, — not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance ? ' "So says St. Paul. And (Eccles. viii. 11) — " ' Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.' " Take either as you like it, you will get nothing by the bargain." The man had little regard for the delicacy of anything he chose to say in the pulpit or elsewhere; he had a courageous familiarity, which must have been confounding to rustic hearers — and such for the most part his hearers always were. Mr. Glad- stone has attempted to do a kindly justice to Laurence Sterne ; but read a sermon on the Levite and his Concubine, and notice what sad rubbish the 326 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. Rabelais of the English pulpit could not only talk, but print : — " ' And it came to pass in those days, when there was no king in Israel, that there was a certain Levite sojourning 07i the side of Mount Ephraim, who took unto him a concubine.^ " — A coticubine ! — but the text accounts for it : ' for in those days there was no king in Israel,' and the Levite, you will say, like every other man in it, did what was right in his own eyes ; — and so, you may add, did his concubine too, — ' for she played the whore against him, and went away.' *' — Then shame and grief go with her; and wherever she seeks a shelter, may the hand of justice shut the door against her. "Not so ; for she went unto her father's house in Bethlehem- judah, and was with him four whole months. — Blessed interval for meditation upon the fickleness and vanity of this world and its pleasures ! I see the holy man upon his knees, — with hands compressed to his bosom, and with up- lifted eyes, thanking Heaven that the object which had so long shared his affections was fled ! " The text gives a different picture of his situation : * for he arose and went after her, to speak friendly to her, and to bring her back again, having his servant with him, and a couple of asses : and she brought him unto her father's house ; and when the father of the damsel saw him, he rejoiced to meet him.' " — A most sentimental group ! you'll say ; and so it is, my good commentator, but the world talks of everything. Give but the outlines of a story, — let Spleen or Prudery snatch the pencil, and they will finish it with so many hard strokes, and with so dirty a colouring, that Candour and Courtesy will sit in torture as they look at it. — Gentle and virtuous spirits ! ye who know not what it is to be rigid interpreters, but of your own failings, — to you I address BILLINGSGATE IN THE PULPIT. 327 myself, the unhired advocates for the conduct of the mis- guided,— Whence is it that the world is more jealous of your office? How often must ye repeat it, 'That such a one's doing so or so,' is not sufficient evidence by itself to overthrow the accused ! — that our actions stand surrounded with a thousand circumstances which do not present them- selves at first sight ! — that the first springs and motives which impell'd the unfortunate lie deeper still ! — and that of the millions which every hour are arraign'd, thousands of them may have err'd merely from the head, and been actually outwitted into evil ! and, when from the heart, — that the difficulties and temptations under which they acted, — the force of the passions, — the suitableness of the object, and the many struggles of Virtue before she fell, — may be so many appeals from Justice to the judgment-seat of Pity ! " Here then let us stop a moment, and give the story of the Levite and his concubine a second hearing." How different is all this levity from a singular exordium we remember of Bishop Andrews, to a sermon on the text. Remember Lot's wife (Luke xvii. 32) :— " The words are few, and the sentence short ; no one in Scripture so short. But it fareth with sentences as with coins : in coins, they that are in smallest compass contain greatest value, are best esteemed ; and in sentences, those that in fewest words comprise most matters are most praised. Which as, of all sentences, it is true, so especially with those that are marked with memento. In them the shorter the better ; the better, and the better carried away ; and the better kept ; and the better called for when we need it. And such is this here of rich contents, and withal exceeding compendious. So that we must needs be without all excuse (it being but three words and five syllables) if we do not remember it." 328 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHED. But this chapter would be quite incomplete if it did not refer to that amazing piece of spiritual ribaldry William Huntingdon, " S.S.," " Sinner Saved" In a droll passage in one of his writings he tells how he desired to attach a degree to his name ; he says he had not scholarship enough for M.A., and that he was too poor to purchase a D.D., so he mounted the " S.S." An astonishing man was William Huntingdon. Robert Southey did not disdain to write a fairly copious life of him in an ancient number of the Quarterly Review : the reader may be sure that Southey did not dip his pen in the ink of human kindness; but it is a thoroughly interesting resum^ of the coal-heaver's life ; and that life was a queer one, a curious compound of romance and ribaldry. Southey charitably says, " On the whole, he must have produced some good amongst the sheep, whom he folded chiefly for the sake of their wool." As in the case of South, Southey — almost our most perfect master of pure English — gives to Huntingdon the honour of writing and speaking " in a plain, straightforward, idiomatic style, with a vigour and manliness which can never be attained by any artifices of composition." Huntingdon's " Bank of Faith " is a marvellous production ; there is nothing like it in the whole Bibliotheca of knavery and fana- ticism. It is rather difficult to realise that a cha- racter like Huntingdon had any moral sense at all. A religious man, or one who regarded himself as such, without any moral sense ! is that a human impossibility "i Well, certainly, in reading the life of Huntingdon, we are compelled to look this most odd problem in the face. But, indeed, in his case Billingsgate in the pulpit. 329 the problem is perhaps not very difficult ; he was absolutely an Antinomian ; he seems to us a most impudent quack, and trader in faith ; yet we possess all his works, spread over more than twenty volumes, and many pages of them have we read, and those of his later years with a considerable amount of enjoyment ; it must be said that many are toned in a high key of nerv^ous eloquence, and human nature is so strange a morsel that there are passages of experience which surely must be regarded not only as graphic, but instructive. The " Bank of Faith," which many regard as his chief performance, is to us — we confess it — as detestable as it is queer and curious ; we pretty much think with Southey that the "Bank of Faith" illustrates how the perfect enthusiast may imperceptibly ripen into the perfect rogue. It is something awful to think of what he calls his " precious answers to prayer." *' I found God's promises," he says, " to be the Christian's bank-note." He asked God for a guinea, and it came ; for a great-coat, and it came ; for a horse, and it came ; sometimes game and fish came, and it is quite clear that Southey thought — what we think — that the game and fish came rather in the way of poaching, or what looks, in the story which he tells, very much like it. Worst of all, a malignant delight in the evils which followed those who opposed him seems everywhere to trail after his pen. The people at Thames Ditton did not receive his word ; and " I much question," says this paragon of effron- tery, " if God ever sends His word there again ; they are left almost as inexcusable as Chorazin and Capernaum." Dr. Ryland, " that highly respectable 330 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. Baptist minister," as Southey calls him, said some rather depreciating words, declining to lend him his pulpit ; Huntingdon threatened him with Divine judgment, and bade him beware lest God should take away his speech, or his breath, as He had done in other instances. The funniest passage in his life of faith occurs after he had besought the Lord to give him a horse ; he says, — " Having had the horse for some time, and riding a great deal every week, I soon wore my breeches out^ as they were not fit to ride in ; I hope the reader will excuse my mention- ing the word breeches, which I should have avoided had not this passage of Scripture obtruded into my mind just as I had resolved in my own thoughts not to mention this kind providence of God : ' And thou shalt make them linen breeches to cover their nakedness ; from the loins even unto the thighs shall they reach. And they shall be upon Aaron and upon his sons when they come into the tabernacle of the congregation, or when they come near unto the altar to minister in the holy place ; that they bear not iniquity and die. It shall be a statute for ever unto him and his seed after him ' (Exod. xxviii. 42, 43). By which, and three others (namely, Ezek. xliv. 18, Lev. vi. 10, and Lev. xvi. 4), I saw that it was no crime to mention the word breeches, nor the way in which God sent them to me ; Aaron and his sons being clothed entirely by Providence, and as God Himself condescended to give orders what they should be made of, and how they should be cut. And I believe the same God ordered mine, as I trust it will appear in the following history, "The Scripture tells us to call no man master, for one is our Master, even Christ. I therefore told my most bountiful and ever-adored Master what I wanted ; and He, BILLINGSGATE IN THE PULPIT. 331 who stripped Adam and Eve of their fig-leaved aprons,* and made coats of skins and clothed them; and who clothes the grass of the field, which to-day is and to-morrow is cast into the oven ; must clothe us, or we shall soon go naked ; and so Israel found it, when God took away his wool and his flax, which He gave to cover their nakedness, and which they prepared for Baal, for which iniquity were their skirts discovered, and their heels made bare (Jer.xiii. 22). " I often made very free in my prayers with my invaluable Master for this favour ; but He still kept me so amazingly poor that I could not get them at any rate. At last I was determined to go to a friend of mine at Kingston, who is of that branch of business, to bespeak a pair, and to get him to trust me until my Master sent me money to pay him. I was that day going to London, fully determined to bespeak them, as I rode through the town. However, when I passed the shop I forgot it ; but when I came to London I called on Mr. Croucher, a shoemaker in Shepherd's Market, who told me a parcel was left there for me, but what it was he knew not. I opened it, and, behold, there was a pair of leather breeches, with a note in them ! the substance of which was, to the best of my remembrance, as follows : — " * Sir, — I have sent you a pair of breeches, and hope they will fit. I beg your acceptance of them ; and, if they want any alteration, leave in a note what the alteration is, and I will call in a few days and alter them. "•J- S.' " I tried them on, and they fitted as well as if I had been measured for them, at which I was amazed, having never been measured by any leather breeches-maker in London. I wrote an answer to the note to this effect : " * Sir, — I received your present, and thank you for it. * Probably Huntingdon did not know the "Breeches Bible," which for aprons translates the word breeches. Si2 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. I was going to order a pair of leather breeches to be made, because I did not know till now that my Master had bespoke them of you. They fit very well, which fully convinces me that the same God, who moved thy heart to give, guided thy hand to cut, because He perfectly knows my size, having clothed me in a miraculous manner for near five years. When you are in trouble, Sir, I hope you will tell my Master of this, and what you have done for me, and He will repay you with honour.' " This is as near as I am able to relate it, and I added, " * I cannot make out I. S. unless I put I. for Israelite indeed, and S. for Sincerity, because you did not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do.'" Well, in the same manner he purveyed by prayer, that is, he gave hints of what he vi^anted at proper times, seasons, and places, and so he got rugs and blankets, and doeskin gloves, and a horseman's coat ; and so, at last, rose the great Providence Chapel, in Gray's Inn Road, in London, and William Hunting- don became the great pulpit marvel, and celebrity of his age ; and, by-and-bye, he married Lady Saunder- son towards the close of his career ; and he kept his chariot, but still mounted upon the carriage panels W. H., " S.S." One of the famous episodes of his life was his grand quarrel with Rowland Hill. Rowland Hill had said that, if he preached such doctrines as Huntingdon, he should expect horns to grow out from his head, and his feet to become cloven ; — dear old Rowley ! he got an Oliver for his Rowland ! Hun- tingdon wrote to him, " Friend Rowland, I pray that you may discover less pepper, and more purity ; less heat, and more holiness ; that you may perform BILLINGSGATE IN THE PULPIT. 333 more good works, and say less about them, and part with your tea-table stories for heavenly tidings, and your old wives' fables for Gospel doctrines ; sound the Gospel trumpet more, and your own trumpet less. This is the prayer of him who frankly forgives you all that is past, and hopes to take patiently all that is to come." Rowland was in a rage, and he went to talk with his old chum, Matthew Wilkes, about the dire revenge with which he would visit the coal-heaver. " Rowley," said the saintly old cynic, " you leave him alone, or else he will belabour you so with that coal-heaver's sack of his that he will not leave a single part of your vene- rable old body without beating it black and blue ! " So Rowland contented himself with going home, taking up Huntingdon's pamphlet with a pair of tongs, ringing for his servant, and teUing her that he did not dare to touch the thing, but that she was to take it downstairs, tongs and all, to light the kitchen fire. Huntingdon died, in 1 8 1 3, at Tunbridge Wells, and was buried at Lewes, where his grave is still visited by many who profess to hold his memory in honour. We, with no particular feelings beyond those of curiosity, have read the epitaph indited by himself for his tomb : " Here lies the Coal-heaver, Beloved of his God, but abhorred of men. The omniscient Judge At the Grand Assize shall ratify and Confirm this to the Confusion of many thousands ; For England and its Metropolis shall know That there hath been a prophet Among them." 334 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. The reader must not regard these pages as giving a sufficient account of this Evangelical Cobbett, a cheap-John in the pulpit, as Cobbett was something of that character in politics, a pulpit charlatan from some points of view, but something more, and better. His works are voluminous, scarce, and still fetch a high price, and their vigorous and frequently racy- English will repay perusal, and might even become a model of idiomatic strength. CHAPTER XL JAMES WELLS, WE suppose that the strongest illustration, in our own day, of that character which the pre- ceding pages have immediately attempted to delineate, would be found in the subject of the following sketch. Probably a large number of our readers will wonder who the bearer of the name we have placed at the head of this chapter may be, and what may be his claims to such an acknowledgment ; it is equally probable that many others of our readers may have quite a sufficient acquaintance with the gentleman, and may altogether condemn our sense and taste in making him the subject of any criticisms. Enough, in justification, to say that James Wells did nothing during the greater part of a long life but preach, and that his funeral, a few years since, was such as scarcely ever attends the remains of the most eminent and illustrious men. " Never," wrote the Daily Nezvs, " was there on the Surrey side of the water such a scene as that which was witnessed yes- terday afternoon. ' This is worse than Thanksgiving Day ! ' said a policeman." In Mr.' Wells's chapel, when the coffin was brought in, there were nearly three thousand persons present, all in mourning, the greater number in tears ; and then, for the further service at 336 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. the cemetery, some miles distant, while a special train was engaged to convey numbers, every kind of vehicle was in request, and the roads and pavements to Peckham were thronged by the crowds walking. So was James Wells ushered along to his last rest- ing-place. Most manifest it was, and is, that during his life and course of ministration he was the model preacher of some, and not an inconsiderable number of persons; so in this chapter he shall be ours. If his spirit have any consciousness of such transactions, a gracious change must have passed over it, or it will be very cross to find itself in such companionship. James Wells for considerably more than forty years was the chosen and designated prophet of the highest of all high-Calvinists. During the greater part of those years he ministered in the Surrey Tabernacle, itself a large commodious building, and always crowded to hear the prophet's voice ; but some years since a much more splendid edifice was erected. The denomination of the order of opinion represented by Mr. Wells boasts very few generous hearts, and only a scantling of very capable pockets ; but, reared at a large cost, the building was out of debt as soon as opened, and some of our own friends have described to us how every little seamstress's fingers, and every hyper-Calvinist washerwoman's brawny arms were actively employed to furnish the bricks for the new Tabernacle. There Mr. Wells con- tinued his ministrations until about eighteen months before his death, when the painful, lingering disease set in which has borne his body to the grave, and his spirit, we have no doubt, — though he JAMES WELLS. 337 would have no such charitable hopes for us, — to some wider heaven than it was ever able to com- prehend on earth. Many, many years have passed away since we had much acquaintance with the voice and word of James Wells. When we were quite young we were some- times in the habit of looking in to listen, either at his own chapel, or, when he was engaged in preach- ing occasional anniversary sermons, in other places. Since then our experience of preachers has been tolerably extensive, but James Wells stands at the head of all whom we can call to mind for drollery, vulgarity, and a certain coarse shrewdness, which was wont to keep his congregation chuckling and shaking their heads with remarkable self-satisfied unction, realising in the grim old Rehoboth, or Tabernacle, the Northern Farmer's self-gratulatory sentiment, "What a man he be, surely ! " And this, with many, is a sufficient account of James Wells ; but it is by no means a sufficient account. Mere rubbish will not hold together ; mere coarseness and drollery could never have sustained the preacher in his place so long, or have given to him such a funeral, such a genuine, hearty outbreak of grief as that in which at least thirty thousand persons expressed their sorrow because their master was taken from their head that day. He was a strange creature, surely not without certain qualities not altogether inimitable. As to his manner, nothing can be said for it ; it was rugged and jerky, unrelieved by a single grace of contour. He was rather tall and thin, and his face and appearance were not unimpressive ; but the face had a grim biliousness, a sort of glowering blackness of darkness, which, is 22 338 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. our younger years, was quite as effective as the severest logic, or the most affecting instincts, in driving us away from the dreary creed of hyper- Calvinism. His language, like his manner, was jerky. It would never appear that he had the remotest care for any graces or grandeur of ex- pression, was probably quite insensible to them. Sentiment never approached near to him, and to all matters of imagination and fancy he gave a wide berth ; and yet his language, in a sense, was good ; it was hard, vigorous, every sentence perfectly un- mistakable, and all alive with reality and conviction. We should think, probably a worse-tempered mortal never found his way into a pulpit. He pleasantly testifies of himself, " I am sometimes as ill-tempered as a witch ; but even then I am just as righteous in Christ as I am when I am on the mount of trans- figuration, wrapt in the revelations of an eternal world." It was in truth a hard, gnarled set of features, a very Peter Bell kind of countenance, as the poet says, — ** As if the man had leant his face. In many a solitary place, Between the wind and open sky," which was also very likely to be true ; for, like Peter Bell, James Wells had been, as our readers may be aware, a carrier, or the driver of a carrier's waggon, on one of the great London roads. To him, in this sphere of life, came, all those years ago, his prophet's call. It is to be thought he did not enter on the work of the ministry without some furniture of knowledge. The accomplished Edward Andrews took him in JAMES WELLS. 339 hand a little, and he was probably familiar with his Greek and Hebrew Bible ; and we are quite aware, from our own knowledge of him, that if he did not read extensively, he read, and sought after a certain rare kind of old books, which perhaps had not much relation to the formation of a higher judgment, but which aided in ripening those spiritual fancies which he loved to see depending from his vinery, and to carry in for the gratification of the luscious taste of the frequenters of his Tabernacle, It is very noteworthy how deep, — even how broad and widely spread, — is the stratum of hard high-Calvinism in English society. Let a com- petent, strong, clear voice utter forth its doctrines, it is quite amazing how numerous are the followers, how glad the listeners. Is it not to be confessed, is not the reason to be found in the fact that Calvinism is the theology of satisfactions — in truth, the only conservative theology ? Not much of this probably entered into the minds of Mr. Wells's innumerable hearers ; but, in some way thus, we, who seek for the rationale of things, are to account for the large following such leaders have. The creed and its believers have, to most who are out- side of the charmed circle, a grimly forbidding aspect. " Grace be with all them who love our Lord Jesus Christ," forms no part of the confession of these saints ; the audacity with which multitudes are dismissed is amusing. We have before us a singularly illustrative passage from one of Mr. Wells's sermons : — " Well, I can tell you this upon this matter, that I never 340 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER, did receive a person yet as belonging to God only just as they are made manifest to my conscience (!). They must give me some reason for the hope that is in them ; they must tell me something about the way in which they found out that they were sinners, and something about the way in which the Lord was pleased to manifest His mercy to them. If they can give me no account of this humbling work, this breaking-down, this pulling-to-pieces work, and this scatter- ing work, this soul-trouble work, and can give me no account of how the first ray of hope came into their souls, can give me no account of how the first manifestation of mercy to their souls raised them up — then how am I to have a union of soul with them ? There is a man who is a child of God, and he stands manifested to my conscience as such. Well, that man has an old man as well as a new, and circum- stances may be so, that he may treat me most barbarously, most shamefully, most unchristianly, most unjustifiably, and most unscripturally. I have seen this among the people of God, treating each other in this way. There comes another man, who is not manifest to my conscience as a good man. That man treats me kindly ; that man treats me more like a Christian than the real Christian does ; that man does everything he can for my comfort, and shows every possible feeling of friendship to me ; but notwith- standing all this, I cannot put one in the place of the other. Now, which is the good man of these two ? Which is the real Christian of these two? I must still say, though it may seem paradoxical to some, that that man, notwithstand- ing all his inconsistent conduct towards me, is a good man ; and the other, notwithstanding all his kindness to me, I cannot see in him the grace of God. I can see in him a noble spirit ; I can see in him a great deal that I admire \ and what the one has done is almost enough to make me reject him, and what the other has done seems almost enough to make me try and flatter myself into the notion that he is a Christian. Ah, this is a very awkward position JAMES WELLS. 341 to be put in ; but I have been in it, and no doubt some of you have as well." « Probably most of our readers have felt that there is a side of truth to this sufficiently broad and sweeping kind of talk, to the extent, at any rate, of admitting that a life of natural amiability may be very pleasant, and yet very unreal ; and a life of intense conviction may have many very unamiable, and even undesirable, not to say dishonourable character- istics. But it is assuredly remarkable to find men of Mr. Wells's school utterly reversing the Apostle's rule ; he modestly spoke of " commending himself to every man's conscience ; " Mr. Wells very remark- ably makes his conscience the limitation of all spiritual commendation. Surely the arrogance would be very dreadful if it were not so very droll and amusing. Of course such a cast of sentiment produces a narrow, selfish, coarse, and exclusive character ; another type of character would be inconsistent with such a cast of opinion ; hence the preaching of the doctrine of election, sometimes in a broader, higher, better, purer, and more evangelical sense, but more frequently in a narrow, ignorant, perverted, and, we will venture to say, impious sense, constituted a large staple of Mr. Wells's ministra- tions. With this, also, heavy denunciations of what he called the " Dutj-Faith Doctrine," as in the following delicious piece of ignorance. "Had the register of heaven ever been shown to Ishmael? And did the great Creator say to him, ' Well, Ishmael, will you have your name there or not?' And because he would not be a free son, was he cast out ? No, you say, I can't 342 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. admit that ; that is just Duty-Faith. I am just now strip- ping Duty-Faith naked, and that's just what it is. If an angel from heaven came and preached Duty- Faith, let him be accursed." This is tolerably strong and tall talk. Elsewhere he says, — "We see that there is no authority for the doctrine that it is the duty of all men, indeed, it is not the duty of any man, savingly to believe in Christ." Such words as these show plainly enough what a sad hash ignorance can make when by its crotchets it perverts even the truth itself. Such extracts as these show with what justice it has been said, "An ignorant Arminian preacher blunders through his system in a tolerable manner, but a Calvinist makes dreadful work." Such extracts also show how, theoretically, such teaching as Mr. Wells's seems to release him from any responsibility as before God. No doubt these aspects of doctrine gave to Mr. Wells a large measure of his popularity, this, con- joined to a rugged vernacular speech very well fitted to meet the ears and the tastes of those who would be likely to find such doctrine to be refreshing. It is a marked peculiarity of this school of preachers that it indulges in warm and hearty vituperation of all other ministers; it delights in some coarse, rude, ignorant pun, even upon the personal name. William Irons, a minister of this order, of great celebrity, some years since, at Camberwell, took posses- sion of his pulpit after the chapel had been closed for repairs; and, referring to the ministers of other JAMES WELLS. 343 churches in his immediate neighbourhood, he said to his people, " Well, you have had a famous time for running about, and where have you been to ? I don't know, but if you have been to Dr. Steane " (an eminent Baptist), " I suppose he's washed you ; and if you have been to John Burnet's, he has dried you ; and if you have been to George Clayton's, he starched you. But now you have come to me, and I'll mangle you, and then I'll iron you." Well do we remember, when not much more than a child, — a mere young boy, — looking in, one Thursday evening, in our neighbourhood, to hear one of these celebrated fathers of the faithful. Our young sensibilities were utterly shocked to find, in a certain portion of the discourse, every venerable name in the town punned upon, and pelted by abuse, and made to contribute its quota of mirth and jocularity to the discourse. James Wells played his part in this pleasant game, in which the Gospel was made to grin through a horse collar. James Sher- man was the greatly beloved and very tender-hearted minister of Surrey Chapel, which, as most of our readers know, was a large circular building. Mr. Wells reckoned him up in a well-known epigram ; " Jimmy of the Round House never preached a gospel sermon in all his life." Nor was he much more courteous to Mr. Sherman's predecessor ; when his funeral sermon was preached by William Jay, he spoke of the service from the pulpit as " a big Jay chattering upon a little Hill." It does not take any special state of grace to enjoy this kind of joking, and there are people who like it. Our preacher says, 344 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER, *' There are half-way ministers : they will sometimes preach for a quarter of an hour a good bit of truth ; and some of their hearers, in that part of the sermon, get such a peep at the truth that they can't make the other part of the sermon go down, and they are obliged to leave that sandy fuUer's- earth concern, and go where they can meet with pure bread." Again he says, "I don't care what people call me, so long as I am enjoying the truth. As good Romaine says : 'While other people are grumbling about it, I am enjoying it.' This manna is white in colour; ah, there is no adulteration here; what there is in the bread we eat nowadays, mercy knows, — I don't, — I know they make some of the loaves very hard to squeeze the water of the potatoes and rice out of them. And what we eat, mercy knows, — I don't, — they call it bread ; but here in this bread of life there is no adulteration : it is pure free-giace bread, never hurt any one yet, and never will, depend upon it." If our readers were not aware of it before, such illustrations we suppose to be sufficient, as setting forth the coarse and vulgar wit of the man. Very much of the objection to humour as a teacher results from its being very frequently con- founded with vulgarity : but vulgarity is coarse and sensual, humour is refined and spiritual ; vulgarity is animal, humour is human. We listened to a man like James Wells, who had a congregation of from twelve to sixteen hundred persons constantly listen- ing to him; we heard him Spiritualising a Wheel- barrow ! — describing his own power in analysing the subterfuges of sin, " because he was like the old woman who, having been in the coal-hole, knew JAMES WELLS. 345 where to look for her daughter ! " — likening " the Arminian theology to milk and water, and the Gospel dispensation to fine old crusted port." Here is a choice specimen of vulgarity. " The other day, brethren," said Mr. Wells, " I met the Devil. * Good-morning, Wells,' said he. * Good-morning, Devil,' said I, a little bit suspicious. ' Are you getting on pretty well yonder at the Tabernacle ? ' said he. * Well,' said I, 'ye-es, pretty well; but what's that to you, Devil?' * I should think now,' said he, ' that really you are getting on very well. You've got a good congregation.' 'Well,' said I, *yes, I have, Devil.' 'A good number of carriage- people, eh, Wells ? ' ' There are carriage-people. What of that. Devil ? ' ' Ah ! ' said he, * all the pews let, eh. Wells ? ' * Yes, Devil,' said I, * all the pews are let ; not a sitting to be had.' ' Then,' said the Devil, ' I should say, Wells, you're making a thorough good thing of it.' Ah ! brethren, I told the Devil I had a large congregation ; that many of you were rich ; that all the sittings were let ; but I took care not to let him know how many of you hadn't paid up your pew-rents." Rubbish like this is composed of mingled blasphemy, vulgarity, and absurdity. We say, the man who can be guilty of this is not enough in earnest to be humorous ; that is, to have a real perception of the nicer and finer shades which we denominate humour. Such a man would do to make a mob of bumpkins laugh at a village fair — may be a sort of " cheap-John " among preachers ; but we call him a humorist who, like Cervantes, can shatter to pieces an already diseased and dying error ; like Richter, distil from laughter the wisdom of the 346 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. universe ; or, like Chaucer, paint life-portraits of such true beauty as to last through all time. We dare not mean to imply, however, that this was all. With such things as we have quoted every sermon abounded, but every sermon abounded also, or most did so, with better things ; and, evil as was the spirit of exclusiveness, coarse egotism, and abuse, we may hope that to the better things the preacher was indebted for that large following which for about forty-five years he maintained. Dogmatic certainty, absolute, audacious self-assurance and self-assertion go very far ; the average mind, more especially the lower and most uncultivated order of mind, cares little or nothing for processes of reasoning in the pulpit. It is eminently pleasant at all times to see a mind made up, a mind which can distinctly see the roots of its own convictions. The pleasure and happiness arising from the spectacle of such a preacher must de- pend, of course, upon the measure to which the hearer is able to see a whole and entire man in the convic- tions ; a man, heart, mind, and life, all so involved that his dogmatism is not merely a conceited self- assurance to himself, but an object of rest to others. In many particulars, Mr. Wells might be instructive, but, we have certainly thought, especially as showing how not to preach. He was a ragged talker ; his sermons constitute a kind of spiritual patchwork, queer and curious. It is singular to notice how seldom, if ever, he collects a whole healthy mind in a discourse. His sermons were always sufficiently long, but he scarcely ever finished one ; he was con- stantly in the habit of running a very simple and lucid text through a succession of discourses, ragged yAMES WELLS, 347 talk being the characteristic of all. And in all he seemed to fit the clumsy shoes of the old Adam upon the feet of the young Gospel, and so sent it awkwardly speeding on its way. Sometimes a more fine human ring marked his words, as when, in his own manner, he speaks of — "the blessedness of work. "And after all, I make no hesitation in saying that as far as natural happiness is concerned — I say that that man that rises and goes to his work every morning as his amuse- ment, his pleasure, and his delight — I say that that man has more real happiness than any other man can have. I do hold with one of our old writers that ' hard work is the best fun in the world ; ' I really think it is. And I say that the best scholar under the sun is that man that thoroughly understands his own business ; or, if he does not understand it, he is determined to work at it, A B C- like, to begin at the very beginning, and go on stitch by stitch, and bit by bit, and step by step, until he does thoroughly understand ; and then he will go on with it with ease. And if that man cannot read any language but his own, nor even speak his own language grammatically, yet, if he understands his business well, that man is a thorough scholar, let that business be whatever it may. I declare that if I had to get my living by sweeping a crossing, if I would not sweep it as tastily as I could, make it look as nice as I could, keep my broom as nice and myself as respectable as I could; so that I do believe that people, when they saw me in the distance, would come to my crossing for the sake of giving me something. There are some good people get into a lazy, dawdling, mumping sort of spirit, as though they could not move ; they are like stagnant pools ; they want some one to rout them up well. I wish I had such persons where I could keep them under 348 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. my eye for a week or two, or a month or two : I'd give them no peace until they found out that what they want is just to have plenty to do. I speak from experience ; I have worked hard myself; I was but seven years old when I was turned out into the world ; and I never wanted a bit of bread from that day to this ; anything I could get to do, I did it ; and the consequence was I got on pretty well, at least as well as it was good for me to get on ; and here I am now, above fifty years old, and a better man than some of you that are hardly thirty, because you have been afraid of work, and I have not. It will make you healthy and strong and spirity ; and when you get seventy or eighty years old, you will be a lively, muscular, mental old gentle- man. I recollect Dr. Franklin says, ' Here am I, eighty- two years old, and the. twelve last years have been the most active and happy years of my life. I have crossed the Atlantic four times, and consulted the English Parliament upon that great question of American Independence.' People now at four, or five-and-thirty begin to hang down their heads, and look almost as if they were old ; it is all from want of action ; less night work, and more morning work, that is what we want, depend upon it. So, then, it is a fact that we need the bread that perisheth, and we must labour for it. I remember a minister once wrote to me, and asked me if I would be his doctor ; he had a certain disease, he said ; and I read the letter, and came to this : he says, ' Really, I don't feel that I can work ; I am got so lazy ; can you prescribe a remedy ? ' And I wrote to him that I could not ; there was no necessity for it, for there was one already prescribed ; had he never read the receipt in the good old Book of records ? — ' If any man will not ' (not cannot) * wcrk, neither shall he eat.' ' If that doesn't cure you,' I said, ' I don't know what will.' I don't know any remedy more powerful than that; I think it is infallible; you may depend upon it, that will move men when nothing else will ; for such persons generally think a pretty good JAMES WELLS, 349 deal about number one ; so that when you touch them pretty close there, that will do what nothing else can. For- give these remarks. I love the promises of Providence ; I love a spirit of industry. Never mind what your diffi- culties are, you will in the end overcome them and sur- mount them." In reviewing what we have said concerning the ministrations of James Wells, we are quite sure that many of his hearers, even of those able to form calm and reasonable judgment, may suppose our sketch has been far from just ; indeed, there were many more things in the man than we have with any dis- tinctness brought out. We have said already, it would not be possible that he should have had so large a number of followers had his material been principally composed of mere coarseness. In fact, James Wells was a very extraordinary man. W^ith- out knowing it, he was a keen logician, and he illustrates very singularly the doctrine of a remark- able paper, — well worthy of a very close study by any of our readers, — by the late Isaac Taylor, entitled " Logic in Theology," in which he especially exhibits the consequences of mere logic in theology as applied to the doctrines of Jonathan Edwards. If we merely follow a logical pathway, whither does it lead ? David Hume followed consistently his logical course ; as consistently did Bishop Berke- ley ; as consistently did Jonathan Edwards ; as consistently did James Wells. May we not say that with all of them, from the greatest to James Wells, who was certainly the least, — although none of them had such a funeral, — they believed in, and followed consistently a set of wordy demonstrations? 350 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. And the narrower the mind, the more it is in danger from such a mode of settling truth, and Hke OHver Holmes' " Deacon's Masterpiece ; or, Wonderful One-horse Shay," the whole system is in danger, although — "The deacon's art Had made it so like in every part That there wasn't a chance for one to start. For the wheels were just as strong as the thills. And the floor was just as strong as the sills, And the panels just as strong as the floor, And the whipple-tree neither less nor more, And the back cross-bar as strong as the fore. And spring, and axle, and hub encore. And yet as a whole it is past a doubt In another hour it will be worn out 1 First a shiver, and then a thrill. Then something decidedly like a spill,— You see, of course, if you're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once, — End of the wonderful one-horse shay. Logic is logic. That's all I say." Thus it is apparently with all mere systems of logical theology. Mr. Wells adopted certain words, putting of course certain constructions upon them, following them out to legitimate conclusions. Hear him speak away from those words, of the love of Christ, of the sovereignty of God, of the intimate knowledge God has of the affairs of the world and souls, we would listen often with delight ; but he adopted a rigidly narrow interpretation of the Gospel faith, and by so much as his own mind was narrow, he followed his idea on persistently to its close. He often appeared in his sermons to give intimations of deep knowledge of real human experience, but by JAMES WELLS. 351 his system of thought he was compelled perpetually to, run up every idea into some verbal shadow of Arminianism or Calvinism, and the words haunted him until they became powers over him ; as he looked at them, indeed they were and are powers, but he had no capacity for calculating for the resist- ing medium in things. He was like a philosopher who should discourse concerning the laws of simple radiation without taking into account the elements of the atmosphere through which it has to pass. CHAPTER XII. THE PULPIT OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. THE rise of Protestantism was the birth also of Puritanism, and in their ministry we trace the origin of a pulpit power which is very distinctly separated from that of the Romish Church. We have never enough cultivated that which the Popish pulpit cultivated exclusively ; we confine the inten- tion of our pulpit to those twofold energies per- suasion and conviction, but these are simply mental ; or, if emotional, they are so entirely through the operation of thought, so that they very partially, we think, represent the work of our pulpit ; and they do not represent the work of the Romish preacher at all ; his aim has been to subdue, to overwhelm, as he overwhelms, by the power of music, and the efficacy of sensuous representations. It is possible for such preaching to affect one very powerfully, but to leave the conscience quite unimpressed and untouched ; such preaching is akin to the power of music, and such preachers preach with the same effects and results as those with which the master and prophet of song might sing ; the very thing is described to the life in the prophet Ezekiel — " Lo, THE PULPIT OF ijTH AND i%th CENTURIES. 353 thou art unto them as a very lovely song, of one that hath a pleasant voice and can play, well on an instrument, for they hear thy words, but they do them not." Let us spend a moment in saying how many venerable names there are all unknown. We have not taken the reader to St. Paul's Cross, that famous place where Latimer, Hooker, Hooper, Ridley, and many another eloquent tongue spoke. We do not know the wealth of the old shelves where still are to be found their remains. Here we have one, Thomas Playfere, belonging rather to the sixteenth than the seventeenth century ; he was professor of divinity in the University of Cambridge ; a Calvinist, we may say almost, of course : and he, further, was a fine type of the direct method with which Puri- tanism fastened on men's consciences. Dr. Playfere has been called a trifler, unrivalled in an ornate and flowery style ; but he is lively, and life-giving, and resembles, in many particulars, his predecessor, Henry Smith ; he stood in the pulpit of the great unchancelled church of St. Paul's Cross — no rood- loft, no richly carved nor gilded wood-work, nor screen, no paraphernalia of Popish idolatry, or corruption met the eye ; it realised the often-acted scene of the churchyard cross, in which the old friar was wont to deliver his single sermon, when, perchance, denied the pulpit of the church, but it was the whispering- gallery of the nation. Playfere was a favourite there. We think, however he may be charged with trifling, his style was one to be eminently attractive to the multitude ; for such an audience, he had what would be a very striking way of repeating, reiterat- 354 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. ing, as it were reverberating his thoughts, images, and words ; we notice this in the following : — "that the preacher must say well and doe WELL. " Both pastor and people must doe that themselves which they teach others to doe. That must be. First for the pastor he hath two kind of garments, — a breastplate, and an Ephod : the breastplate shewes that he must have science to teach : the Ephod shews that he must have conscience to doe that which he teach eth. And in the very breast-plate itself is written, not onely Urim, but also Thummim. Urim signifies light. Thummim signifies per- fection. To proove that the pastor must not onely be the light of the world, but also the salt of the earth : not onely a light of direction in his teaching, but also a patterne of per- fection in his doing. For even as the snuffers of the taber- nacle were made of pure golde : so preachers, which should purge and dresse, and cleare others that they may burne- out brightly, must be made of pure gold, that by doing well they may also shine themselves. Hence it is that the Priest hath out of the sacrifices for his share, the shake- breast and the right shoulder. The shake-breast puts him in minde of teaching well : the right shoulder puts him in minde of doing well. That great Prophet Elias is called, the horseman and the Chariot of Israel. A horse- man directs the chariot, and keeps it in the right way : a chariot goes in the right way it selfe. And so a minister must not onely as a horseman direct others, and set them in the right way, but also as a chariot, he must followe a good course, and walke in the right way himself. He must be both the horseman that teacheth, and the chariot that doth, both the horseman and the chariot of Israel Therefore he hath upon the fringes of his vesture pomgra- iiats and bells. Many preachers are full of bells which THE FULPIT OF i-jTH AND iSr// CENTURIES. 355 make a great ringing and gingling, but because they have not pomgranats as well as bells, therefore all the noise that they make is but as sounding brass, or as a tinckling cymball. For the godly pastor must not only say well, and sound out the word of the Lord to others clearly as a bell, but also he must doe well, and as a pomegranate be fruitful! himself and full of good workes. Even as the pillars of the taber- nacle were made of Shittim wood, and overlaid with pure gold : so preachers (which are called in the Epistle to the Galatians the pillars of the Church) must not onely be over- laid outwardly with pure gold, teaching the word of God purely, but also they must doe as they say, and inwardly be made of Shittim woode, which never corrupteth, never rotteth, having no corruption, no rottenness in their lives. Hereupon our Lord, speaking to his Prophet saies, Lift up thy voice as a trumpet. Divers things there are which sound louder then a trumpet. The sea, the thunder, or such like. Yet he saies not, Lift up thy voice as the sea, or lift up thy voice as the thunder, but lift up thy voice as a trumpet. Because a trumpeter when he sounds his trumpet, he winds it with his mouth, and holds it up with his hands : and so a Preacher which, is a spirituall trumpeter, must not onely by teaching wel, sound forth the word of life with his mouth, but also by doing well he must support it, and hold it up with his hands. And then doth he lift up his voice as a trumpet. Those mysticall beasts in Ezekiel, which S. Gregorie understandeth to be the ministers of the Church, had hands under their wings. Many preachers are full of feathers, and can scare aloft in a speculative kind of dis- coursing : but if you should search for hands under their wings, perhaps you should scarce find many times so much as halfe a hand amongst them. But the godly pastor must have not onely wings of high wisdome and knowledge, but also hands under his wings to doe that which he knoweth. For as the Prophet Malachie witnesseth. The Priests lips should keepe knowledge. He saies not, they should 356 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. babble or utter knowledge to others, and have no care to keepe it themselves, but having delivered it to others, they must as well as others observe and doe it themselves. And then indeede may their lips rightly be said to keepe knowledge. For even as they which repaired the walls of Jerusalem, held a sword in one hand and wrought with the other : so Preachers which by winning souls repaire and build up the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem, must not onely hold the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God in one hand, but also they must labour with the other hand. Els they shall pull downe and destroy rather then build up. But if they doe as fast as they say, then TH CENTURIES. 357 the horsman, but also the chariot of Israel : he must have upon the fringes of his vesture, not onely bells, but also pomgranats : he must be like the pillars of the tabernacle, not onely overlai'd outwardly with gold, but also inwardly made of Shittim woode : he must not onely lift up his voice, but also lift it up as a trumpet : he must not onely have wings, but also hands under his wings : he must not onely with his lippes utter knowledge to others, but also keepe knowledge himself : he must not onely hold a sworde in one hand, but also labour with the other hand : he must not onely devide the word of God aright, but also shew himself a workman whifh neede not be ashamed : he must not onely deliver holesome words, but also shewe the true patterne of holesome words, which is a godly life. The sum is this : The faithfull Pastor must not onely teach well, but also doe well. For He that both doth and teacheth, the same shal be called great in the kingdom of heaven." Here also from the same sermon :— " Beloved in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, It is a verie monstrous thing, that any man should have more tongues then hands. For God hath given us two hands, and but one tongue, that we might doe much, and say but little. Yet many say so much and doe so little, as though they had two tongues, and but one hand : nay, three tongues and never a hand. In so much as that may be aptly applied to them, which PandtdpJms said to some in his time ; You say much, but you do litle : you say well, but you doe ill : againe, you doe little, but you say much : you doe ill, but you say well. Such as these (which do either worse then they teach, or else lesse then they teach : teaching others to doe well, and to doe much, but doing no whit themselves) may be resembled to div^erse things. To a whetstone, which being blunt it selfe, makes a knife 358 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. sharpe. To a painter, which beeing deformed himselfe, makes a picture faire. To a signe, which beeing weather- beaten and hanging without it selfe, directs passengers into the Inne. To a bell, which beeing deafe and hearing not it selfe, calls the people into the Church to heare. To a nightingale, which beeing restles and sitting upon a thorne her selfe, brings others by her singing into a sweet sleepe. To a goldsmith, which beeing beggerly and having not one peice of plate to use himselfe, hath store for others which he shewes and sels in his shoppe. Lastly, to a ridiculous actor in the citie of Smyrna, which pronouncing o ccelum, O heaven, pointed with his finger toward the ground : which when Polemo the chiefest man in the place sawe, he could abide to stay no longer, but went from the companie in a chafe, saying. This foole hath made a solecisme with his hand ; he hath spoken false Latine with his hand. Such are all they, which teach one thing, and do another: which teach well, and doe ill. They are like a blunt whet- stone : a deformed painter : a weather-beaten signe : a deafe bell : a restless nightingale : a beggerly goldsmith : a ridiculous actor, which pronounceth the heaven, and pointeth to the earth. But he that sitteth in the heaven, shall laugh all such to scorne, the Lord shall have them in derision, and hisse them off from the stage. Because howsoever they have the heaven commonly at their tongues ende, yet they have the earth continually at their fingers end. So that they speak false Latine with their hand, nay that which is worse, they speake false Divinitie with their hand. Whereas we might easily avoide all such irre- gularitie, and make true cogruitie between the tongue and the hand, if we would make this text of Holy Scripture, the rule of our whole life. For then, I assure you, we should every one of us play our parts so well, that in the ende, the tragedie of this wofuU life being once finished, we should have an applause and a plaudite of the whole theatre, THE PULPIT OF i-jTH AND i8th CENTURIES. 359 not onely of men and angels, but even of God himselfe, who doth always behold us."* That which has been called his trifling style is well illustrated in the copious manner in which he gathers up images and fancies in the following passage : — " Otherwise, the remembrance either of vices or vertues, is so farre from putting us any whit forward, that it casteth us backward. For as Marke the Eremite witnesseth, The remembrance of former sinnes, is enough to cast him downe altogether, who otherwise might have had some good hope. Our sins and Elies sonnes are alike. Eli hearing his sonnes were slaine, whom he himselfe had not chastised and corrected as hee ought, fell downe backward and brake his necke. And so all they that remember and hearken after their former sinnes, which they should have mortified and killed, fall downe backward, and turne away from God. For this is the difference betweene the godly and the wicked. Both fall. But the godly fall forward upon their faces, as Abraham did when hee talked with God : the wicked fall backward upon the ground, as the Jewes did when they apprehended Christ. Hee that re- members his sinnes, to be sorie for them, as Abraham did, falles forward upon his face : but he that remembers his sinnes, to rejoyce in them, as the Jews did, falles backward upon the ground. Wherefore if thou bee upon a moun- taine, looke not backward againe unto Sodome as Lots wife did : if thou be within the Arke, flie not out againe into the world, as Noah's Crow did : if thou bee well washed, returne not againe to the mire as the hogge doth : if thou bee cleane purged, runne not again to thy filth, as thee * The admirable reiterative power in these extracts is very noticeable. 36o THE VOCATlOlSr OF THE PREACHER. dogge doth : if thou be going towards the land of Canaan, thinke not on the flesh-pottes of Egypt : if thou be march- ing against the hoast of Madian, drinke not of the waters of Harod : if thou be upon the house top, come not downe : if thou have set thy hand to the plough, looke not behinde thee; remember not those vices which are behind thee. No, nor those vertues neither. For as Gregorie writeth ; The remembrance of former vertues doth many times so besot and inveigle a man, that it makes him like a blinde Asse fall down into a ditch. When Orpheus, went to fetch his wife Eurydice out of hell, hee had her granted to him, upon condition that hee should not turne backe his eyes to looke upon her, till hee had brought her into heaven. Yet having brought her forward a great way, at length his love was so excessive, that hee could not containe any longer, but would needes have a sight of her. Whereupon forth- with hee lost both her sight and herself, shee suddenly againe vanishing away from him. This is a poeticall fiction. Nevertheless it serveth very fitly to this purpose. To ad- monish us, that if we have any vertue, which is to be loved as a man is to love his wife yet wee must not be so blinde in affection, as to doate too much upon it, or to fall in admiration of our selves for it, or to be alwaies gazing and wondering at it, lest by too much looking upon it, and by too well liking of it, and by too often remembering it, wee lost it. Because indeed hee that remembers his virtues, hath no vertues to remember." Here is what would be to the audience of St. Paul's Cross a delicious piece of trifling. " NAPHTHALI, THE HIND LET LOOSE. " So that the prophecie of the Patriarke Jacob is now also fulfilled, who saith, Nepthalie shal be as a Hind let loose, giving goodly words. For Christ did first preach in the THE PULPIT OF i-jTH AND iSth CENTURIES. 361 land of Nepthalie among the Jews. But seeing the Jews would not obey him, therefore he hath turned to the Gentiles. And So Nepthalie is as a hind let loose, giving goodly words. Because Christ, who first preached in Nepthalie, is not now any longer in prison among the Jews ; but, as a hind let loose, leaping by the mountaines, and skipping by the hills, so he hath run swiftly over all the world, and with his goodly words, with his gratious words, he hath persuaded Japheth, and all the Gentiles, to dwell in the tents of Shem, and to ride in the chariots of Amminadab. These chariots of Amminadab are called in Latine, Quadrige, because each of them is drawne with foure horses. Which very aptly befitteth the doctrine of the Gospel. For, as Calvin noteth in the Epistle before his Harmonie, God hath of set purpose ordained that the Gospel should be written by foure Evangelists, that so he might make a triumphant chariot for his sonne. Which being drawn with fowre horses, and running upon fowre wheels might quickly pass over all the earth, and so shew the gloria of the Lord, unto all his Church." Another writer may a little hold our notice, Anthony Maxey, Dean of Windsor, and apparently one of the chaplains of Charles the First. In his sermons there is less of strength than in Playfere's, but assuredly even more of tenderness. There is another, less argumentative than Playfere, not so tender and rhetorical as Maxey, but abounding in strong, vigorous, and more impressive images, John Stoughton, also one of the preachers before kings, a chaplain of James the First, and one of the thunderers at St. Paul's Cross. There is one beginning of that thick overlaying of the old learning and allusion, w^hich, ornamental as it looks in print, is to be 362 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. guarded against or very dexterously used, lest it become only a means of rather hiding the truth, than of revealing it. None of these men were either Basils or Chrysostoms ; we are not, it must be con- fessed, so completely captivated with the setting, as in the earlier fathers of Christian eloquence — their method in the pulpit is the type for multitudes. It would not profit our readers, only should we amuse them, if we gave the method, and outline of any of the sermons of good John Stoughton, especially in Baruch's Sore Gently Opened, — indeed, it is egre- giously ludicrous. Yet he was able to talk thus of " PEACE WITH CONSCIENCE. "The Bride that hath good cheere within, and good musicke, and a good Bridegroome with her, may be merrie, though the hail chance to rattle upon the tiles without upon her wedding day : though the world should rattle about his eares, a man may sit merrie that sits at the feast of a good conscience : nay, the child of God, by vertue of this, in the midst of the waves of affliction, is as secure as that child, which in a shipwracke was upon a planke with his mother, till shee awaked him securely sleeping, and then with his prettie countenance sweetly smiling, and by-and-by sport- ingly asking a stroake to beat the naughtie waves, and at last when they continued boisterous for all that, sharply chiding them, as though they had been but his playfellovves. O the innocencie ! O the comfort of peace ! O the tran- quillitie of a spotless mind ! There is no heaven so cleere as a good conscience. " Againe, all outward blessings cannot make a man happie that hath an ill conscience, no more than warme cloaths can produce heat in a dead carkasse, if you would heap never so many upon it : there is no peace to the wicked, THE PULPIT OF \-jTH AND \%th CENTURIES. 363 Attt St pax, bello pax ea detcrior. For with this, a man in his greatest fortunes, is but like him that is worship! in the street with cap and knee, bui as soon as hee is stept within doores, is cursed and rated by a scolding wife : like him that is lodged in a bed of ivorie, covered with cloth of gold, but all his bones within are broken : like a book of Tragedies bound up in velvet, all faire without, but all blacke within, the leaves are gold, but the lines are bloud ; O the racke ! O tl e torment, O the horror of a guiltie mind ! There is no hell so darke as an ill-conscience, from which no earthly thing can free a man : if hee that is bound up in a velvet suit, fiUetted with gold laces, were sure to escape this, I think velvet would never be cut out for patches, to hang out for signes of the tooth-ach : But it is not a Crowne of gold can cure the head-ach, nor a velvet slipper can ease the gout, nor al the Minstrels can make the Maid that is dead for sin rise and dance : no more can honour, or riches, or pleasure, quiet the con- science ; onely the harp of David, the holy Singer of Israel can charme this evil spirit. For the Hebrewes observe, that the letters in the name of God, are literce guiesce7ites, letters of rest. God only is the Center, where the soul may find this rest; God only can speake peace to the conscience, and God speaks this peace only by religion which brings in the last place, peace with God." "the god of peace. "God is the best store-house that a man can have, the best Treasurie that a Kingdom can have : God is the best Shield of any person, and the best Safe-guard of any Nation, if God be our enemie, nothing can secure us ; if God be our friend, nothing can hurt us : for when the enemie begirts a Citie round about with the straightest siege, he cannot stop the passage to Heaven, and so long as that is opened, there may come releese and succour from thence, if 364 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. God be our friend, if he be in league with us. Faith is a better Enginer than Dcedalus, and he yet made wings, with which he made an escape over the high wals, within which he was imprisoned : let Pharaoh bee behind, the red sea before, the mountaines on each side, the Israelites can find a way, Restat iter ccelo, ccelo tentabimus ire: When there is no other way to escajje a danger, a Christian can goe by Heaven. Againe, when a Citie is compast round about with a wall that is impregnable, it will yet be open still toward Heaven, and therefore cannot bee out of danger, if God be an enemie : for all their wals and bars, God could raine fire and brimstone upon the Sodomites from Heaven, Alexander asked the Scythians, what they were most afraid of, thinking they would have said of himselfe, who was so victorious everie where ; but they answered scoffingly, They were most afraid lest Heaven should fall upon them, mean- ing they feared no enemy ; but we indeed need not feare anything, but this onely, lest the heaven should fall upon us, lest God should be our enemy." "without god in the world, " For as Heraclitus said. If the Sun were wanting, it would be night for all the Stars ; so if the light of God's counte- nance be wanting, if hee frowne us, a man may sit in the shadow of death, for all the glister of all worldly content- ments : for, I beseech you tell mee, suppose the houses were paved with pearles, and walled with diamonds, if the roofe were open to the injuries of Heaven, would those shelter you from the storms and tempests ? would you chuse to bee so lodged in an hard winter? Suppose the king should set you in a Chaire of State, at a table richly furnished, royally attended, but his sword hangs over your I^ead in a twined threed, would that honour make you merrie ? would you desire to bee so feasted ? Suppose God himselfe should make you this offer, crowne your heads with THE PULPIT OF i-jTH AND x^th CENTURIES. 365 rose-buds, and wash your paths in butter ; cloath your selves in purple, and fare deliciously everie day, take your fill of pleasures, open your mouth wide, and I will fill you with all that heart can wish of worldly things, only this Facitum meant nunqumn videbitis ; You shall never see my face : would you think you had a good offer ? would you accept of the condition ? " In this rich and delightful way the Puritan preacher of Aldermanbury talked, interlacing his words with a variety of recondite allusion from the Rabbins, and from the classics — in the like of him, however, and his style.* The dawn of the Reformation was in a day when the preaching of the Romish Church was especially cold, formal, and from the lips ; the words of our Reformers, and the words of awakened Protestantism, have been especially characterised by this, — they have searched the conscience. We might attempt to delineate the vices of the French school of pulpit eloquence, and to lay down some principles from the materials which the Puritan pulpit has handed down to us. Both have their faults ; true, the French school, so far as it is represented to us by Bossuet, seems to us audaciously sinful ; and here let us say that no lessons of pulpit rhetoric should be for the purpose of creating eloquent, as that term is usually understood — that is, florid, showy, artistic, and rhetorical speakers. The work of the true preacher is the searching of the entrance into mens consciences^ by * A good deal of condensed information and acquaintance with the pulpit of St. Paul's Cross may be found in " Sketches of the Reformation and Elizabethan Age taken from the 'Contemporary Pulpit,' " By J. 0. W. Haweis, M.A. 366 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. the knowledge of his own. The preaching of Bossuet is sonorous, and showy sound. Versailles, in those days, in the age of Louis the Thirteenth, had a theatre and a chapel, and the spirit of the one pre- sided over the other ; alike in either place, it was the acting of things which did not for a moment affect the auditors' life ; it produced, but never really touched, the passions. What, then, is in preaching ? Manner, matter. The French is almost exclusively attentive to manner. Verbal crotchetiness was very characteristic of many of even the best preachers of the reigns of James the First and Charles the First ; our readers will re- member how this defaces the sermons even of Bishop Andrewes, and of a greater mind still, that of Dr. Donne. No doubt our preaching has somewhat im- proved. Echard tells us of a preacher who may be said to have a shop-keeping sort of eloquence. He told his hearers that " Christ is a treasury of all wares and commodities," and then he cried aloud, " Good people, what do you lack ? What do you buy? Will you buy any balm of Gilead, and eye-salve ? Any myrrh, aloes, or cassia ? Shall I fit you with a robe of righteousness, or with a white raiment ? Say, then, what is it you want .-' Here is a very choice armoury ; shall I show you a helmet of salvation, a shield or breastplate of faith "i Will you please to walk in and see some precious stones } A jasper, a sapphire, or a chalcedony ? Speak, what do you buy } what do ye buy ? " To some of our notions this is but little short of shocking. But it has been usual to give the credit of all these sins against bad taste, and therefore against good sense, to the Puritan. THE PULPIT OF i-jth AND \d,TH CENTURIES. 367 Robinson, in his edition of " Claude," has given a multitude of instances illustrative of the sins of the educated, and even of bishops and High-Church dignitaries. At a later period the well-known Daniel Burgess used to say : — " That is the best key which fits the lock and opens the door, though it be not a silver or a gold one." In one of his sermons he told his congregation that " if they wanted a suit for a year, they might go to Mr. Doyley ; if they wanted a suit for life, they might go into chancery ; but if they would have one to last for ever, they must go to Christ Jesus, and get the robe of His righteousness to clothe them." In William's reign, he said, " The reason why the people of God who descended from Jacob were called Israelites was, because God did not choose that His people should be called Jacobites." The times are full to overflowing of such stories as these. Amazing and amusing are some of these things in our possession. We have one sermon entitled Tke Royal Merchant A Sermon preacHd at Whitehall, before the King's Majesty, at the Nuptials of an Honourable Lord and his Lady. By Robert Wilkin- son, of Cambridge. The second edition — for it passed into a second edition — bears the imprint of 1708 ; it is mainly a description of the bride, and the happy text taken — " She is like a merchant ship, she bringeth her goods from afar!' Every line of it is the most delightful nonsense. A wife is to be like a ship — a merchant ship — to teach ! (i) The merchant is a profitable ship, to teach a wife in all things to endeavour her husband's profit. (2) The merchant is a painful ship, and she must be a pain- 368 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. ful wife. (3) He is the merchant, she the ship; she must conclude she was made for him, etc. (4) She is like a merchant's ship, that is, a friendly fellow and peaceable companion, not a man-of-war to him. Then we have the following exquisite passage : — " But of the Qualities, a Woman must not have one quality of a Ship ; and that is too much Rigging. O ! what a wonder is it to see a Ship under sail, with her Tacklings, and her Masts, and her tops and top-gallants ; with her upper Decks and her Nether-decks, and so bedect; with her Streamers, Flags, and Ensigns, and I know not what; yea, but a world of wonders it is to see a Woman created in God's Image, so miscreate oftentimes and deformed, with her French, her Spanish, and her foolish fashions, that he that made her, when he looks upon her, shall hardly know her, with her Plumes, her Fans, and a silken Vizard ; with a Rufif like a Sail ; yea, a Ruff like a Rain-bow ; with a Feather in her Cap, like a flag in her Top, to tell (I think) which way the Wind will blow. Isaiah made a profer in the third of his Prophecy, to set out by enumeration the Shop of these vanities ; their Bonnets, and their Bracelets, and their Tablets, their Slippers, and their IMufflers; their Vails, their Wimples, and their Crisping-pins ; of some whereof if one should say to me, (as Philip sometime said to the Eunuch) Under stand est thou what thou readest ? {Acts 8.) I might answer with the Eunuch again, How can I without a Guide? that is, unless some Gentlewoman would comment on the Text. But Isaiah was then, and we are now ; now that fancy hath multiplied the Text of Fashions with the time, so as what was then but a Shop, is now encreased to a Ship of Vanities. But what saith the Scriptures ? The King's Daughter is all glorious within, Psal. 45, and as Ships which are the fairest in shew, yet are not always the fittest for use ; so neither are Women the THE PULPIT OF ijth AND iZth CENTURIES. 369 more to be esteem'd, but the more to be suspected for their fair trappings ; yet we condemn not in greater Personages the use of Ornaments ; yea, we teach that Silver, Silks, and Gold were created, not only for the Necessity, but also for Ornament of the Saints : In the practice whereof, Rebeccah, a holy Woman is noted to have received from Isaac a Holy Man, even Ear-rings Habiliments and Bracelets of Gold, Gen. 24, therefore this is it we teach for Rules of Christian Sobriety, That if a Woman exceed neither Decency in Fashion, nor the limits of her State and Degree ; and thai she be proud of nothing, we see no reason but she may wear any thing. " It foUoweth, She is like a Ship, but what a Ship ? A Ship of Merchants, no doubt, a great Commendation : For the Kingdom of Heaven is like a Merchant, Matt. 13. and Merchants have been Princes, Isa. 23. and Princes are Gods, Psal 82. The Merchant is of all Men most laborious for his Life, the most adventurous in his Labour, the most peaceable upon the Sea, the most profitable to the Land ; yea, the Merchant is the Combination and Union of Lands and Countries. She is like a Ship of Merchants, therefore first to be reckon'd (as ye see) among the Laity ; not like a Fisherman's-Boat, not like St. Peters Ship; for Christ did call no She Apostles, indeed it is commendable in a Woman, when she is able by her Wisdom to Instruct her Children, and to give at Opportunities good Counsel to her Husband; but when Women shall take upon them (as many have done) to build Churches, and to chalk out Discipline for the Church; this is neither commendable, nor tolerable : For her Hands (saith Solomon) must ha?idle the Spindle, Ver. 19. the Spindle or the Cradle, but neither the Altar nor the Temple; for St. yohn commendeth even to the Elect Lady, not so much her talking as her walking in the Commandments, 2 yohn 5. 6. therefore to such preaching Women, it may be answered, as St. Bernard sometimes answered the Image of the Blessed Virgin at the 24 370 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. great Church at Spire in Germany; Bernard was no sooner come into the Church, but the Image straight saluted him, and bade him, Good morrow, Bernard, whereat Bernard well knowing the Juggling of the Fryars, made answer again cot of St. Paul. O (saith he) your Ladyship hath forgot yourself, It is not lawful for Women to speak in the Church." Assuredly, all the nonsense was not on the lips of the Nonconformist. Of course, the period to which we refer was the time when these moral essays abounded — those pretty little performances, of which, it has been well said by Dr. Newman, to still and to overcome the force of the passions they are as effectual as the feathers of the Chinese, thrown into the sea to quiet the storm and to drive away the devil. We have quoted some specimens of Romanist oratory, which certainly shows that prejudice had not blinded our eyes to any measure of excellence among the orators of that Church ; but we could fill a volume with specimens of nasty sermons, nonsense sermons, and vulgar sermons, from the lips and pens both of Popish and Church of England orators. After such specimens as these, who shall ridicule the preaching of the so-called Puritan carpenters or cobblers .■' Things come round, for the very sermons so ridiculed were frequently preached by those who ridiculed them. " Odd fate," exclaims Robinson, " of a Puritanical sermon, — studied in a jail, preached under a hedge, printed in a garret, sold at a pedlar's stall, bought by a priest's footman, uttered from a pulpit in a cathedral, applauded by a bishop, and ordered to the press by a procession of gentry." A mode of treatment of Scripture truth more un- THE PULPIT OF \^TH AND i8th CENTURIES. 371 like our now ordinary method, than that adopted by- some of these men, it is impossible to conceive. How different from Keil and Dehtzsch, from Lange, Olshausen, Ebrard, Ewald, or Hengstenberg ! These old men dealt with Scripture in altogether another fashion. When they sat down to the Bible they never said, " What do you here } Who sent you 1 Whence came you? How do you prove yourself.''" There were not many of them even who said, " What is the meaning of you 1 " They accepted all that as understood from the commencement ; they said to the Bible, or the part of it to which they addressed themselves, "You are here, and I am here; comfort me, help me, talk to me, be wisdom to me, light to me, treat me tenderly, guide me truly." They submitted themselves to the Bible with a simplicity and earnestness w hich, to most of our modern divines, would seem the most helpless and hopeless im- becility. Do we mean by this to give altogether our admiration and adhesion to the method of the old Puritan commentators ? No. We are thankful to the modern men for much ; but, assuredly, the things we cannot often press out of them are — comfort, refreshment, and sweetness. Where is there one of whom that can be said which Mr. Grosart says of Richard Bernard's Ruth f — " As you read, you feel refreshed as with the blowing of bean-blossom- scented breezes in your evening walk ; you fancy its author has a gentle spirit, living apart from the crowd in cloistered piety ; the pastor of some small rural flock bringing the odour of kine and grass into some antique village church." Again, he speaks of him, and of another of his works — " As Z^2 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. full of wit, wisdom, penetration, and ineffable touches, as the tints in sea-shells, or the cups in flowers." We shall look a rare long time among modern theologians of the scholastic or expository, critical or exegetical order, before we meet with any likeness to things so sweetly, simply, and delightfully natural. We have no doubt that, comparing the two orders of men together, in breadth of thought, perhaps in the quality of pure thought, the moderns have an advantage over their fathers ; of criticism, of course, in our sense of the word, most of these fathers were entirely ignorant — though even in this department we would back " Owen on the Hebrews " against any of the innumerable efforts of modern times to dig into the depths, or scale the heights of that stupendous epistle ; and we still remember with homage the immense labours of Lightfoot and Pocock ; they excelled in that which seems to be so much passed over, forgotten, unknown, or unappre- ciated among modern theologists, — whether from the pulpit, the professor's chair, or the press ; — these ancient men were tender, emotional, and experi- mental. The probability is, if a man assay that nowadays, he sprawls over into the most deplorable stupidity, or, with the most perfect sa7ig froid, he offers you a glass of the most watery milk and water. The old commentators were human, thoughtful, perfectly serious in their apprehension of life, and the life to come ; they were profoundly experimental, and, even now, they better read the human states of some of us than do the men who are living in our midst. Their diffuseness was immense ; to us, if our con- THE PULPIT OF i-jTH AND \?>th CENTURIES. 373 venience did not permit us to skip huge gulfs, they would most of them be frequently tedious. If it be true, as Guibert de Nogent says, " a tedious sermon only causes anger, what was good in it is forgotten, and men go away feeling only aversion," then we think the auditors of those times must have often gone away angry. It must be admitted that about many of them there is a great sameness ; but they are rich in illustration and in feeling. Many of them could scarcely ever have laid down their pen ; they must have been always in the study, they carried the study perpetually with them, they communed with their own heart. It is probable the night-lamp continued trimmed to a late hour, " outwatching The Bear ;'' it is still more probable that they were up at an early hour. One wonders how their works con- trived to find a sale sufficient to pay the printer — of more than this they were usually careless. Conceits and fancies fastened themselves like burrs upon them, and led them to all sorts of even whimsical, spiritual, allegorical interpretations, like Richard Bernard's description of the marshalling the subjects of the proceedings in Manshire : — " Sin is the Thief and Robber ; he stealeth our graces, spoileth us of every blessing, utterly undoeth us, and niaketh miserable both body and soul. He is a murderer : spares no person, sex, or age ; a strong thief : no human power can bind him ; a subtle thief: he beguiled Adam, David, yea, even Paul. The only watchman to spy him out is Godly-Jealousy. His resort is in Soul's Town, lodging in the heart. Sin is to be sought in the by-lanes, and in Sense, Thought, Word, and Deed Streets. The hue and cry is after fellows called Outside, who nod or sleep at 374 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER, Church, and, if awake, have their mind wandering : Sir Worldly Wise, a self-conceited earthworm ; Sir Lukewarm, a Jack-on-both-sides ; Sir Plausible Civil ; Master Machiavel ; a licentious fellow named Libertine ; a snappish fellow, one Scrupulosity ; and one babbling Babylonian ; these conceal the villain Sin. To escape, he pretends to be an honest man ; calls vices by virtuous names ; his relations, Ignor- ance, Error, Opinion, Idolatry, Subtility, Custom, Fore- fathers, Sir Power, Sir Sampler, Sir Must-do, Sir Silly, Vain Hope, Presumption, Wilful, and Saint-like, all shelter and hide him. The Justice, Lord Jesus, issues his warrant — God's Word — to the Constable, Mr. Illuminated Under- standing, dwelling in Regeneration, aided by his wife, Grace ; his sons. Will and Obedience, and his daughters. Faith, Hope, and Charity ; with his men Humility and Self- denial, and his maids Temperance and Patience. Having got his warrant, he calls to aid his next neighbour, Godly Sorrow, with his seven sons. Care, Clearing, Indignation, Fear, Vehement Desire, Zeal and Revenge : these are capable of apprehending the sturdiest thief. He goes to the common inn, an harlot's house called Mistress Heart, a receptacle for all villains and thieves, no dishonest person being denied house-room. Mistress Heart married her own father, an Old-man, keeping no rest night and day, to prevent any godly motion from lodging there. The house has five doors, Hearing, Seeing, Tasting, Smelling, and Feeling. Eleven maids, impudent harlots, wait upon the guests. Love, Hatred, Desire, Detestation, Vain-hope, Despair, Fear, Audacity, Joy, Sorrow, and Anger, and a man-servant Will. The Dishes are the lusts of the flesh, served in the platter of pleasure ; the lust of the eyes, in the plate of profit ; and the pride of life. The drink is the pleasures of sin j their bedroom is natural corruption. * In this room lieth Mistress Heart, all her maids, her man, and all her guests together, like wild Irish.' The bed is Impenitency, and the coverings Carnal Security ; when the THE PULPIT OF i'jth AND i2>th CENTURIES. 375 Constable enters, he attacks them all with * apprehensions of God's wrath,' and carries them before the Judge, who examines the prisoners, and imprisons them until the assizes, in the custody of the jailor New Man. If any prisoner breaks out, the sheriff — Religion — must bear the blame ; saying. This is your religion, is it? " The keepers and fetters, as vows, fasting, prayer, etc., are described with the prison. Or, as in another like description of the trial of the prisoner, and judgment without appeal : — " The commission is conscience ; the circuit, the Soul ; the council for the king are Divine Reason and Quick-sighted- ness ; the clerk, Memory ; the witness, Godly Sorrow ; the Grand Jury, Holy Men, the inspired authors : the traverse jury, Faith, Love of God, Fear of God, Charity, Sincerity, Unity, Patience, Innocency, Chastity, Equity, Verity, and Contentation ; all these are challenges by the prisoners who would be tried by Nature, Doubting, Careless, &c., all freeholders of great means. This the Judge over- rules ; Old-man is put on his trial first, and David, Job, Isaiah, and Paul, are witnesses against him. He pleads, * There is no such thing as Original Corruption ; Pelagius, a learned man, and all those now that are called Anabap- tists, have hitherto, and yet do maintain that sin cometh by imitation, and not by inbred pravity. Good my lord, cast not away so old a man, for I am at this day 5,569 years old.' He is found guilty, and his sentence is : ' Thou shalt be carried back to the place of execution, and there be cast off, with all thy deeds, and all thy members daily mortified and crucified, with all thy lusts, of every one that hath truly put on Christ.' Mistress Heart is then tried, Moses (Gen. viii. 21), Jeremiah (xvii. 9), Ezekiel (xi. 19), Matthew (xii. 34), and others give evidence, and she is convicted, and sentenced to perpetual imprisonment under 376 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. the jailor, New Man. All the rest of the prisoners are tried." Some of our readers will say, Precisely so, it is the spirit of fancy and conceit ; these " quirks and quid- dities " of speech, with which these men abound, are not pleasant to us. To which we may also reply, Where such characteristics are, this nimbleness of pregnant fancy brings many other better things with it ; it is like the light or the rain — valuable, not only for what they are in themselves, but for what they open in others. We like such words as the following, quoted by Mr. Grosart from Samuel Torshell, in which he so happily sketches the humble rustic believer. He says : — " There lies a great deal of wealth in some obscure and neglected Christians. They do not more ordinarily tread upon and walk over the unknown veins of gold in America, than many supercilious and conceited professors do pass by and neglect golden and very precious spirits. One would not think what dexterity in the Scriptures, what judgment in controversies, what abihty to settle and comfort a dis- turbed conscience, what fervency and expressions in prayer, what acquaintance with God and His providence, what strength of faith, what patience, meekness, moderation, contentedness, heavenly- minded ness, and what not, may be now and then found out and discovered in plain people, men and women that wear plain clothes, that have plain carriage and plain speech. And besides, there may haply be more where grace is expected than we look for, more in a saint than a bare sentence or action will or can express. The golden vein is broader and thicker than sometimes we guess it to be. How then is the necessary use of wisdom to be able to see further than the russet? Not to be THE PULPIT OF x^th AND i8r// CENTURIES. 377 cozened with reverend beards and grave furs and demure countenances (like the councillors to the Muscovian that I spake of in my " Hypocrite "), as if graces and gifts dwelt only at those signs. And when we find a vein, there must be skill to dig it. Oh ! how did the old patriarchs remove their habitations for the benefit of water springs ! how did they rejoice when they found a well ! and we, when we have met with these ' wells of living water,' how shall we fetch it up 1 '*' (Prov. XX. 5). The reading of these men vi^as peculiar ; it was a reading we have learned to despise. They were not great in novels, and compendious notes, and treatises of philosophy ; these were few then ; indeed, modern philosophy had scarcely left her kingdom of Egyp- tian night of the dark ages to set forth upon her pilgrimage to the promised land. We read a hun- dred books to their one ; but for the weight of real learning, we have in general, perhaps, the propor- tion of a grain to their hundredweight. They were thoroughly well-bottomed men ; they turned over the fathers with infinite delight. Dear to them " Gregory the Great on Job ; " dear to them " Augustine on the Psalms ; " and words and works such as these became index fingers to them of matters they were to make their own by experience. They put us in mind of that Solitary of the desert, who came into the city of Alexandria and carried back with him a single text of Scripture, refusing afterwards to learn another because he could never fully practise the first. We find fault with them because they found a whole body of theology, a perfect universe, in a text ; and }'et, perhaps, they were more reasonable than we are, for as the whole firmament is held in a drop of rain 378 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. or dew, and all the forces of nature may be held in solution in a single grain, so it does not seem un- reasonable that even a single portion of the Book of God should contain the whole of the Book of God ; and it was a characteristic of most of these com- mentators that they liked to find, and to dwell upon texts which were to them little, but comprehensive Gospels, the self-contained chapters and portions of the Book of God, and every text was a kind of geometrical staircase, and stood self-poised and balanced. Many of these men can never be suffi- ciently loved, their lives were the salt of our English earth, their ashes and memories give a sanctity to many an out-of-the-way village church or tabernacle, and their words, while we receive with thankfulness the thoughtful criticism of modern times, possess a searching and sustaining grace and vigour which thought and criticism alone can never bestow. A notice of these men, their commentaries and sermons, would be quite incomplete if it did not include a reference to the great and bulky books of Christopher Ness * and John Trapp ; f the estimates formed of these seem also, for the most part, characteristic of Thomas Gouge, of Edward Elton, of Elnathan Parr, of Michael Jermin, of William Cowper, of Daniel Rogers, and innu- merable authors besides, amongst whom, it must * " A Complete History and Mystery of the Old and New Testaments, Logically Discussed and Theologically Im- proved," etc., etc. 4 vols., folio. 1690. •f " A Commentary', or Exposition upon the Whole Bible." By John Trapp, M.A., once of Christ's Church, Oxford, now of Weston-upon-Avon, in Gloucestershire, 1650 — 1660. 5 vols,, folio. Now reprinted by R. D. Dickenson, London. THE PULPIT OF ijth AND iSth CENTURIES. 379 be confessed, there is considerable sameness of doctrine, remark, and style ; among them, perhaps, Trapp may be regarded as chief, more desultory than many, less critical, more amusing and illustra- tive, but very substantially the same. Trapp was no commentator to please the men of the modern critical school, or nice, over-refining, and fastidious tastes. A great deal that he said will bear perhaps no sort of close scrutiny ; he set down everything as it came to his nimble and wondrously furnished memory, and rapid-glancing mind ; of all the spiritualising old commentators he is the chief Matthew Henry has a flowing and felicitous style ; he is often quaint, never coarse, every word may be read in the family ; what he knew and had read never appears, he always keeps such a highway of speech that the most illiterate can apprehend him ; he must have known Trapp's book well. Their method is very similar, and both dealt with Scripture exactly as Augustine and Gregory the Great have set to all times the example. We do not mean, of course, to compare in weight or worth our two dear commentators with the grand and immortally beloved bishops of Hippo and Rome. But they all treated the words of Scripture in a manner which seems now to be impossible. Every remotest thread of the fringe of sacred speech was to those men penetrated with Divine aromas of fra- grances ; like " the oil that went down to the beard, even Aaron's beard, unto the skirts of his garments," so spiritual power and meaning pulsed along every syllable of the Holy Book. They could not read a text without saying, "Surely God is in this place." 380 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. All the words, too, panted and were alive with spiritual meanings — Christ must be everywhere. They constantly heard Him saying, in all the texts of the old Book, " They testify of Me." This is Trapp's method. A good deal of modern criticism and com- mentary results in a beautifully adroit success in lowering to the reader's mind the whole tone and intention, exclusiveness and spirituality of the Book. There is a great deal of nonsense in Trapp ; we are often compelled to smile, and something more, per- haps, but we do not hesitate to say that his nonsense is always innocent, and we would rather have it than a great deal that passes for modern critical refine- ment and sense. The things in his pages which are most far-fetched and amusing are delightful compared with some of the dreary dissertations, the occult, critical sagacities, and impersonal etymological abstractions in which some modern minds cut themselves adrift from all the moorings of sense. His reading must have been extraordinary ; he lays it all under con- tribution ; we have no commentary at all approach- ing it in its multiplicity and variety of reference and suggestion. The Fathers, the Greek and Latin poets, historians, and philosophers, the chroniclers of our own country, all yield him admirable illustra- tions ; he who read no book but Trapp, translating, referring to, and verifying, all the authors he quotes, could only be a learned man. Then, he is quaint and witty, and, again, he holds all in a solutioi. of rich unction and tenderness. His work abounds with anecdote, and while there is much in so large a work with which we might dispense, so that we have often thought it might be well condensed for family read- THE PULPIT OF i^th AND iSr// CENTURIES. 381 Jng, yet we are compelled to feel that for ministers and teachers who desire to be masters of assemblies, no commentary is so rich and useful. He does not refine either in learning or thought ; he teems with corresponding texts whatever passage he expounds. His knowledge of Scripture must have been, so to speak, infinite; he explains a text, and, in doing so, refers you to some out-of-the-way text, or Scripture illustration, which has most likely escaped your notice, and thus often guides you to a whole chain of illustration. Certainly William Orme's criticism, in his " Bibliotheca Biblia," partakes only of his often ungenerous, and always cold criticism, when he says that " Trapp was a man of some vigour of mind, but his language is often exceedingly quaint and un- couth." A large volume would not suffice to trace the cha- racteristics, and even slightly to illustrate the various features of, the pulpit of the seventeenth and eigh- teenth centuries. Yet we should like to mention some names, not often heard now, names of men whose works are few and scarce, and not very likely to be reprinted : some of these names are associated with a rare amount of learning, of piety, of calm thought, and, still more frequently, with the excur- sions of a most lively fancy. We turn to the shelves of the Puritan divines — those massive, square, closely printed volumes, those stately folios — they were all spoken in churches before the great parties came to their defiant struggle, and the madness of that imbe- cile, old, frantic Laud tore the Church in twain ; or in churches in villages and in towns, while the strife was raging, and the Independents and Presbyterians 382 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. were renewing the contest, which had been between freedom and episcopacy ; or, perhaps, in lonely village chapels and conventicles, in the poor meeting- house, retreating into the lonely lane from the sneer of the satirist, or the warrant of the magistrate. Let us mention a few whose names and works will be light, help, and aid, if our readers place them within reach in their study. There were men to whom, we confess, we have an attachment of heart — the Puritan mystics ; especially George Sikes, the friend and biographer of Sir Harry Vane,* and his friend, Peter Sterry, whose work on " The Freedom of the Will," and his rare and highly prized " Rise, Race, and Royalty of the Kingdom of God in the Soul of Man," and his posthumous work " On the Appearance of God to Man in the Gospel," refract and glow with broken and mystical splendours in every syllable, disorderly and incoherent as they are. More to the level of ordinary apprehension is John Everard,t of Kensington ; and to those who care to enter upon the treasures of mystical divinity, this volume, as well as those mentioned before, is a perfect exche- quer of Divine wealth and suggestion ; and not at all inaptly does he illustrate a large religious philosophy of his time, and the mode in which the letter of the word was made to give up unexpected stores to the patient seeker. An instance of this occurs in his mode of expounding Joshua xv. 15, 16, 17 : — * " Evangelieal Essays to'wards the Discovery of a Gospel State." By George Sikes, 1666 " Ah Exposition of Ecclesi- astes, or. The Preacher." First printed 1680. + " Some Gospel Treasuries Opened, or the Holiest of all Unvailing," etc., etc. By John Everard, D.D., 1653. THE PULPIT OF i^th AND \%th CENTURIES. 383 "the smiting of kirjath-sepher. " But to all this I reduce only this part of this chapter now read, to unfold and interpret all this : And for the present I have made choice of these two verses, to give light to that whole chapter ; and that chapter is the exposition of this, as I before said : O, how like is my text, and every part thereof, to those new washed sheep ! Cantl iv. 2, Every word beareth tivins, and there is none barren among them. " Of which two verses, I shall say, as Abigail said of Nabaly when David came to destroy him, " Regard not this son of Belial, and let not my Lord be angry, Nabal is his name, and so is he : So I may say of this text, as their names are, so are they. " Here is Kiriath-sepher, and Caleb, and Othniel, and Achsah. We will see what secrets and mysteries the Holy Spirit hath couched under these vails : For as they are in Hebrew, they express nothing to us; but read them in English, and take off their vail, and you may see what honey will come out of the mouth of the eater, and out of the strong sweetness. " What, then, is Kiriath-sepher ? In Hebrew it signifies the City of the Booh, or the City of the Letter. " We will first interpret them to you into English, and then we shall come to show you what they are to every one of us ; for it is the office of the ministers of the New Testa- ment, to strive to take off the vail, that every one may see his own face in the Scriptures. "In the next place, what is Achsah? In Hebrew it signifies, the rending of the vail. "And then what signifies Caleb? In the Hebrew it is as much as to say, My heart, or a perfect heart, or a good heart. " And what, then, is Othniel ? In the Hebrew it is, God's good time, or the Lord's fit opportunity 384 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. " I have, beloved, as yet read it to you but in Hebrew : And then it runs as it is written, and Caleb said, Whosoever smiteth the city Ki7-iath-sepher and taketh it, to him will I give Achsah ?ny daughter to wife ; and Othniel, the son of Kenaz, the brother of Caleb, took it, a?id he gave icnto him Achsah his daughter to wife, and so on. But in English it is to be read thus : And my heart said, or a good heart said, that whosoever smiteth and taketh the City of the Letter, to him will I give the tearing or rending of the vail ; And Othniel took it, as being God's fit time or opportunity, and he married Achsah ; that is, enjoyed the rending of the vail, and thereby had the blessing possessed by Achsah, by the vail being rent, both the upper springs, and the nether springs. To him that obtains this rending of the vail, to him shall be given the mysteries of the kingdom of God • he possesses full content, heaven and all happiness, and whatever his heart can wish for, as we shall show hereafter, if God permit. " The smiting of this Kiriath-sepher is the smiting of the Letter ; we must strike this Letter, this Scripture, and take it, and then we shall have bonas, the gift, or reward ; there is no getting of Achsah to wife without the smiting of this Kiriath-sepher, and taking it ; you yourselves must be the Othniels, but it must be a Caleb, a good heart, that must make proclamation in you, encourage, and put you on to this work ; you must know this. Self can nev^r smite this Letter. If you smite it for your own ends — for your own carnal advantages, or for your own liberty — there is enough would so smite the Letter, as St. Paul saith, to abuse their liberty by Jesus Christ, to the satisfying of the flesh — this is nothing but the Devil's and Satan's smiting and taking the Letter ; for flesh and the old man wished there were no law to rule and bridle it : this is not Othniel's, nor a Caleb's smiting and taking ; but this is ourselves — this is not to strike it in Christ's name, but in our own names, and then we shall never marry Achsah. THE PULpiT OF \^TH AND iBth CENTURIES. 385 "He that rightly strikes the City of the Letter, shall have Achsah to wife : observe hence — " Thai we may have the Scriptures, and yet not marry Achsah ; we may be very conversant with, and daily use the Scriptures, and yet never marry Achsah, never possess the rendi?ig of the vail. Oh, brethren ! know this for certain, we may be bred and born with the Scriptures, live and die with the Scriptures, rise and go to bed with the Scriptures, eat and drink with the Scriptures ; they may be always in our hands, and ahvays in use ; insomuch that we may be able to give account of the whole Bible by heart, and yet not marry Achsah, and yet this rock yield no water to quench our thirst, and all because we read them as a history, as things done long ago without us, and not at present doing in us. " Let us labour to preserve the Letter of the Word whole, entire and untouched ; but the Letter is said to kill, not that it doth so in its own nature, but per accidens : it is so to him who looks no farther then the Letter, we make it so to ourselves, a killing Letter. " As if, suppose I should give you a cogal, or an oyster, and I should tell you. Take this, for therein is precious meat to sustain and nourish you. Now if you take this and keep it by you and never crack the shell, that so you may come at the meat and the virtue that is in it ; I may say now, the shell kills you, for if you only look on the shells, and lie watching the outside only, will this nourish, will this give life ? Certainly no ; but if you crack it, and open it, and eat the fneat, this will nourish : yet I may justly and truly say, this cogal, or these oysters kill you, because you depend upon that which will starve and undo you, but the meat, that gives life, so in the same sense is it spoken concerning the Word. The Letter kills, but the Spit it gives life. If you be always handling the Letter of the Word, always chewing upon that, what great things do you? No marvel you are such starvelings ; no marvel you thrive not ; 25 386 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. no marvel you are such monsters^ always children, and never come to any growth ; no marvel you go not on to perfection ; what do you more then every carnal man may do ? what do you more than hypocrites ? Do not hypocrites the same ? Nay, does not the devil the same ? For he knows the Letter exactly, and he can discourse excellently thereof, far beyond the learnedest Rabbi in the world ; but I say then, if you rest only in the Letter, that kills, except this Letter be crackt, except this city, Kiriath-sepher, be smitten and taken, ye cannot come at the kernel, ye cannot have Achsah, Caleb's daughter. " Though the Letter contain in it life and nourishment, as the oyster-shell doth the oyster, and as the shell of the cogal doth the meat ; and ye cannot have the oyster without the shell, yet you see you cannot have the meat neither, with- out you crack and break the shell." This w^as a singular method of exposition ; the style of Peter Sterry was more suggestive, rich, and magnificent ; literally his pages shine like the dewy spangles of the hedges upon a bright summer morn- ing : they are glowing with a mystical gold and glory. Alas ! how many names for the present we leave unmentioned ; the ages to which this chapter refers were the ages of Hooker, and Milton, and Barrow, and Taylor, the age of the Field of Cloth of Gold of our language and literature. Every man's mind, as we shall see by-and-bye, makes its own style ; we do not commend this style to our readers ; but true stateliness is strength, and even the most popular style gains by that tone sup- plied by Hooker and Milton. We cannot conceive either of these vast men as orators, their works had no nimblenesSy they move like the sails of vast ships 2 HE PULPIT OF x-jTH AND i^th CENTURIES. 38,-' and fleets, not like the wings of birds ; this is not the impression the pulpit is to convey ; the preacher is to attack, to be busy with scaling ladders, to use the arrows of choice words ; these men rather blow the trumpet, and parley and cry aloud for a truce while one matter is being debated. Beloved names crowd on names. We find it good to pronounce them, but we cannot tithe the shelves that give wealth to language, and speech, and thought. We can say nothing of Thomas Watson ; of Thomas Brooks ; of Nehemiah Rogers, the author of " The Fast Friend," " The Figless Fig Tree," and other such pieces ; of Obadiah Sedgwick, a master of wit and tenderness, especially in his beautiful piece, " The Shepherd of Israel ; " and Godfrey Goodman, the quaint author of "The Fall of Man." Their faults are not so much the want of clear arrangement, as of mere verbal and desultory obser- vation ; a lively fancy led them too often to the mere remarking about a word or a text rather than to a protracted inquiry into the scope and relations of it ; from this vice Willet, Sclater, Jacomb, the Goodwins, and Manton, are very greatly free, but of all of them, and of these also, it may be said, for the most part, they broke their treatment of subjects and texts too much into heads ; we read them with love, and with use, but still are often compelled to think, as we read, of Herder's definition of a sermon, "An animal, with an emaciated body, stretching out two heads one after the other, displaying two or three teeth, and dragging after it a four, three, or two-fold tail, which feebly wags." Emaciated bodies these sermons can scarcely be said to possess, but they were 3^^ THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. wanting in that architecture, in the laying of the bricks of the building, likely to impose and to com- mand success. Nothing is more remarkable than that, while the writings of Taylor, South, and Barrow should have received the honour of incessant commendation and qftotation, the writings of Thomas Adams, Brooks, and Watson should be almost unknown ; it cannot be the faults of their style : these exist in even a larger degree in Jeremy Taylor; it cannot be their inattention to the principles of ne quid nirnis, the presence of superfluities ; that was a fault of their age : there scarce si an exception to the sin of super- fluity in any of those whole pages upon which the fame of these men has floated. Their wealth is over- flowing ; their language, their ideas and illustrations roll in waves upon our mind. There is the wit and pungency, with no unhallowed and servile coarseness, and there is the richness of learning, and majesty, variety, and beauty of style, with tender, imaginative pathos. CHAPTER XIII. PURITAN ADAMS. THOMAS ADAMS has been called the Shake- speare of the Puritans. In no sense does this convey any idea of the place he occupies ; but perhaps he was the Herbert — the George Herbert — of the pulpit. There is scarcely a name the age to which he belonged has preserved which is so surrounded by an atmosphere of oblivion as his. He is now to us a voice out of a cloud — at best a shade, and nothing more : " no man knoweth his sepulchre ; " there is no likeness of him ; nothing is known of his parentage ; nothing can be gathered of his life, or his manner of life ; over his grave "the iniquity of oblivion," as Sir Thomas Browne would say, " has blindly scattered her poppy," He is, doubtless, found in the register of God ; but all about him, if we may trust the industry of those who have sought to perpetuate his works, has passed from the record of man. Our folio edition of his collected works bears the im- print of the year 1629 He was alive in the year 1658, when the two sermons were published which are included in Dr. Angus's edition. He can be traced from pulpit to pulpit, but this is all that can 390 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER, be gathered of him. In 1612 he was preacher of the Gospel at Willington, in Bedfordshire; in 16 14 he was at Wingrave, in Buckinghamshire ; in 1 6 1 8 he held the preachership of St. Gregory's, under St. Paul's Cathedral, and was " observant chaplain " to Sir Henry Montague, the Lord Chief Justice of England ; in 1629 he published the folio collection of his works, now reprinted; in 1633 he published the well-known Commentary on the Second Epistle of Peter ; then he vanishes from sight. Hints there are of his being sequestrated during the period of the Revolution and Protectorate ; this is possible, even probkble. In 1653 ^^ was living in a "de- crepit and necessitous old age," and most likely died before the period of the Restoration. Through what an eventful period he lived we have seen, through what changes of events and princes. His sermons have all the marks of the transition age ; they have all the mannerisms of the Puritan theology ; while in his ideas of government he had all the traces of absolute Toryism. Like most of the Low Church party of the present day, he held, no doubt, to Puritanism in doctrine, and Whitgiftism in Prelacy, rubric and general Church symbolism. Hence he not only indulges in ample eulogy upon Queen Elizabeth and her thrice-blessed memory, but floats with almost all the preachers and writers of his age in flattering homage to James, and to the doctrine of the Divine right of kings. Puritan Adams, no doubt, suffered by being, what he must have been, a popular preacher. Had Hooker been under the necessity of delivering his " Ecclesiastical Polity " in discourses at St. Paul's Cross, had George Herbert PURITAN ADAMS. 391 been a city preacher, or Sir Thomas Browne one of the divines of his day, in no instance should we have had the rich, rare, and peculiar gems they have contributed to our language. Adams is very popu- lar, but his style is often very rugged. He speaks to the populace, and his fancies and conceits, his ana- grams and conundrums of speech, are frequently a snare to him throughout his discourses. He is usually rather pretty than powerful. Instances of bad taste are abundant in his writings ; are they not also said to be abundant in the writings of men of his time, far greater than he ? Moreover, he was a preacher of an extinct order ; for sermons on manners have now gone quite out of date, and his were such. In the pulpit he portrayed character, we cannot say after the manner of Bishop Earle, and Qverbury, and Butler, since he preceded these writers. Thus, the portrait of the inconstant and un- stable man, like many another such sketch, justifies this remark : — "He would be a Proteus too, and vary kinds. The reflection of every man's views melts him, whereof he is as soon glutted. As he is a noun, he is only adjective, de- pending on every novel persuasion ; as a verb he knows only the present tense. To-day he goes to the quay to be shipped for Rome ; but before the tides come, his tide is turned. One party thinks him theirs, the adverse theirs; he is with both — with neither ; not an hour with himself. Because the birds and beasts be at controversy, he will be a bat, and get him both wings and teeth. He would come to heaven but for his halting. Two opinions (like two water- men) almost pull him apieces, when he resolves to put his judgment into a boat, and go somewhither ; presently he steos 392 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. back, and goes with neither. It is a wonder if his afTections, being but a little lukewarm water, do not make his religion stomach-sick. Indifference is his ballast, and opinion his sail; he resolves not to resolve. He knows not what he doth hold. He opens his mind to receive notions, as one opens his palm to take a handful of water ; he hath very much, if he could hold it. He is sure to die, but not what religion to die in ! he demurs like a posed lawyer, as if delay could remove some impediments. He knows not whether he should say his Paternoster in Latin or English ; and so leaves it, and his prayers, unsaid. He makes himself ready for an appointed feast ; by the way he hears of a sermon ; he turns thitherward ; and yet, betwixt the church-gate and church-door, he thinks of business and retires home again. He receives many judgments, retains none, embracing so many faiths that he is little better than an infidel. . . He loathes manna, after two days' feeding, and is almost weary of the sun for perpetual shining. If the Tempje Pavement be ever worn with his visitant feet, he will run far to a new teacher. . . . His best dwelling would be his confined chamber, where he would trouble nothing but his pillow. He is full of business at church, a stranger at home, a sceptic abroad, an observer in the street, everywhere a fool." But while he performed this task well, it required a loose and rapid manner and tongue to give effect to the delineations. He draws with a bold hand the pictures of the manners of the times. Indeed, it is impossible to read Adams attentively without feeling that the writers whose names we have just mentioned, not only knew, but felt themselves beneath the influence of his portraitures. He is, perhaps, rather a Divine moralist than a theologian. He follows no thought out in the spirit of Aquinas PURITAN ADAMS. 393 and the schools, or even in the spirit and manner of St. Augustine. He is a man of quick impulses, and often seems to be mastered by words and forms. He never ventures into the region of abstract thought ; is never tormented by the causes of things. He is a preacher, and as such, he holds up the mirror to his hearers. He is never far from them in heights or in depths. There is often a cheerful, easy garrulity about him. He preached in stirring times, and he knew how easily to turn the popular feelings by hints and references to the political events of the day. He lived and preached in the day of the Gunpowder Plot ; preaching from the text, " Thou hast caused men to ride over our heads," he exclaimed, " They love fire still : they were then for faggots ; they are now for powder. If these be Catholics, there are no cannibals." The point of many of his allusions lay in the memory, and, therefore, in the ready sympathy of the people. Of illustrative aphoristic words the reader may take the following : — "A beast hath one kind of eye, a natural man two, a Christian three. The beast hath an eye of sense ; the natural man of sense and reason; the Christian of sense, of reason, and faith." " To want the eyes of angels is far worse than to want the eyes of beasts." " Riches are called bona fortuna, the goods of fortune ; not that they come by chance, but that it is a chance if they ever be good." "Philip was wont to say, that an ass laden with gold would enter the gates of any city ; but the golden load of bribes and extortions shall bar a man out of the city of 394 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. God. All that is to follow is like quicksilver ; it will be running." " Not seldom a russet coat shrouds as high a heart as a silken garment. You shall have a paltry cottage send up more black smoke then a goodly manor. It is not, therefore, wealth, but vice, that excludes men out of heaven." " There are some that ' kiss their own hands ' (Job xxxi. 1 2) for every good turn that befals them. God giveth them blessings, and their own wit or strength hath the praise." " It is usual with God, when he hath done beating his children, to throw the rod into the fire. Babylon a long time shall be the Lord's hammer to bruise the nations, at last itself shall be bruised. Judas did an act that re- dounds to God's eternal honour and our blessed salvation, yet was his wages the gallows. All these hammers, axes, rods, saws, swords, instruments, when they have done those offices they never meant, shall, for those they have meant, be thrown to confusion." "The five senses are the Cinque Ports, where all the great traffic of the devil is taken in." " When the heart is a good secretary, the tongue is a good pen ; but when the heart is a hollow bell, the tongue is a loud and lewd clapper. Those undefiled virgins admitted to follow the Lamb have this praise, ' In their mouth was found no guile.' " " Ask the woman that hath conceived a child in her womb will it be a son ? Peradventure so ! Will it be well- formed and featured ? Peradventure so ! Will it be wise ? Peradventure so ! Will it be rich ? Peradventure so ! Will it be long-lived ? Peradventure so ! Will it be mortal ? Yes, this is without peradventure ; it will die 1 " The following passage upon the almost casual ex- pression in 2 Peter i. 1 7 — " Such a voice " — well illustrates how a word caught him, and often carried PURITAN ADAMS. 395 him away upon a stream of learned and gorgeous fancy and discourse : — " SUCH A VOICE. " Tully commends voices : Socrates' for sweetness; Lysias' for subtlety; Hyperides' for sharpness; yEschines' for shrillness ; Demosthenes' for powerfulness ; gravity in Africanus ; smoothness in Loelius — rare voices ! In holy writ, we admire a sanctified boldness in Peter ; profoundness in Paul ; loftiness in John ; vehemency in him and his brother James, those two sons of thunder; fervency in Simon the zealous. Among ecclesiastical writers, we admire weight in TertuUian ; a gracious composure of well-mattered words in Lactantius ; a flowing speech in Cyprian ; a familiar stateliness in Chrysostom ; a conscionable delight in Bernard; and all these graces in good Saint Augustine. Some construed the Scriptures allegorically, as Origen ; some lite- rally, as Jerome ; some morally, as Gregory ; others pathetic- ally, as Chrysostom; others dogmatically, as Augustine. The new writers have their several voices : Peter Martyr, copiously judicious ; Zanchius, judiciously copious. Luther wrote with a coal on the walls of his chamber : Res et verba Philippus ; res, sine verbis Lutherus ; verba, sine re Erasmus : nee res nee verba Carlostadiiis. Melancthon had both style and matter ; Luther, matter without style ; Erasmus, style without matter ; Carlstadt, neither the one nor the other. Calvin was behind none, not the best of them, for a sweet dilucidation of the Scriptures, and urging of solid arguments against the Anti- Christians. One is happy in expounding the words ; another in delivering the matter ; a third for cases of conscience ; a fourth to determine the school doubts. But now put all these together ; a hundred Peters and Pauls; a thousand Bernards and Augustines ; a million of Calvins and Melancthons. Let not their voices be once named with this voice : they all spake as children. This is the voice of the Ancient of Days ^ 396 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. Thus he rang the changes very effectively on a word, as in DUST. " Diist, the matter of our substance, the house of our souls, the original grains whereof we were made, the top of all our kindred. The glory of the strongest man, the beauty of the fairest woman, all is but dust. Dust, the only com- pounder of differences, the absolver of all distinctions. Who can say which was the client, which the lawyer ; which the borrower, which the lender ; which the captive, which the conqueror, when they all he together in blended dust 1 '^ JDust ; not marble nor porphyry, gold nor precious stone, was the matter of our bodies, but earth, and the fractions of the earth, dust. Dust, the sport of the wind, the very slave of the besom. This is the pit from whence we are digged, and this is the pit to which we shall be resolved. ' Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return again,' Gen. iii. 19. They that sit in the dust, and feel their own materials about them, may well renounce the ornaments of pride, the gulf of avarice, the foolish lusts of concupiscence. Let the covetous think, What do I scrape for? a little golden dust ; the ambitious, What do I aspire for ? a little honourable dust ; the libidinous, What do I languish for ? a little animated dust, blown away with the breath of God's displeasure. " Oh, how goodly this building of man appears when it is clothed with beauty and honour ! A face full of majesty, the throne of comeliness, wherein the whiteness of the lily con- tends with the sanguine of the rose ; an active hand, an erected countenance, an eye sparkling out lustre, a smootli complexion, arising from an excellent temperature and com- position ; whereas other creatures, by reason of their cold and gross humours, are grown over, beasts with hair, fowls with feathers, fishes with scales. Oh, what a workman was this, that could raise such a fabric out of the eartn, and lay such PURITAN ADAMS. 397 orient colours upon dust 1 Yet all is but dust, walking, talking, breathing dust ; all this beauty but the effect of a well-concocted food, and life itself but a walk from dust to dust. Yea, and this man, or that woman, is never so beautiful as when they sit weeping for their sins in the dust: as Mary Magdalene was then fairest when she kneeled in the dust, bathing the feet of Christ with her tears, and wiping them with her hairs ; like heaven, fair sightward to us that are without, but more fair to them that are within. "The dust is come of the same house that we are, and when she sees us proud and forgetful of ourselves, she thinks with herself, Why should not she that is descended as well as we bear up her plumes as high as ours ? Therefore she so often borrows wings of the wind, to mount aloft into the air, and in the streets and highways dasheth herself into our eyes, as if she would say. Are you my kindred, and will not know me? Will you take no notice of your own mother ? To tax the folly of our ambition, the dust in the street takes pleasure to be ambitious." The mind of Puritan Adams did not express itself in the copious and sonorous eloquence of Hooker, nor had his fancy the solemn, quaintly gargoyled style and thoughtfulness, the subtle paradoxical style of Sir Thomas Browne ; for, as we have already said, he was a preacher, and he evidently thought con- stantly of his audience ; but in his sermons will be found many of the best characteristics of all the wit of Fuller, the allegoric lights of Bunyan, and much of the out-of-the-way learning, and radiant fancy of Jeremy Taylor. His method and style of treating a text or subject are altogether his own ; a style, how- ever, adopted and found very taking since his day. We cannot commend it. Thus in his sermon, " A Generation of Serpents," from the text, " Their 398 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. poison is like the poison of a serpent, like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear," he expounds eleven characters — (i) The Salamander, the troublesome and li4;igious neighbour, whoever loves and lives in the fire of contention. (2) The Dart, that is, the angry man. (3) The Dipsas, the drunkard. This serpent lives altogether in moorish places : the serpent in the fens, the man at the ale-house. (4) The Crocodile, the hypocrite. (5) The Cockatrice, said to kill with its eyes — the courtesan. (6) The Caterpillar, or the earthworm, emblem of the covetous. (7) The Asp, the traitorous seminary. (8) The Lizard, an emblem of the slothful. (9) The Sea Serpent, the pirate, a very common character in Adams' day. (10) The Stellion, the extortioner. (11) Draco, the great red dragon. Sometimes his illustrations are of the very queerest. Thus he speaks of the wonderful making of the tongue : — "To create so little a piece of flesh, and to put such vigour into it : to give it neither bones nor nerves, yet to make it stronger than arms and legs, and those most able and serviceable parts of the body. ** Because it is so forcible, therefore hath the most wise God ordained that it shall be but little, that it shall be but one. That so the paruity and singularity may abate the vigour of it. If it were paired, as the arms, legs, hands, feet, it would be much more unruly. For he that cannot tame one tongue, how would he be troubled with twain ! ** Because it is so unruly, the Lord hath hedged it in, as a man will not trust a wild horse in an open pasture, but prison him in a close pound. A double fence hath the Creator given to confine it — the lips and the teeth — that through those bounds it might not break." PURITAN ADAMS. 399 A certain quaint and frequently happy ingenuity characterises all the sermons and the writings of Adams. We have before noticed his resemblance to Herbert : the quaintness of the good parson of Bemerton is found in abundance here, not less than his piety. Churchman as he was, we do not find, indeed, the same temple like stillness, or carved imagery of thought. Herbert's life was secluded, lonely, and hermetic ; that of Adams was passed, apparently for the most part, in London. Herbert, too, was a more intense ecclesiastic ; his fervours were monastic ; and although his poems are not organ-like airs, they are notes from a choir, a strange piercing song. Adams was a man of action, in- terested in all that went on in the great world ; and quaint as he is, his quaintness is rather that which we notice in the carved oak tracery of some domestic hall or ancient manor, than the writhing gargoyles, or the dim forms of ancient church window. He did not, like Herbert, invite his fancies in to stay and converse with him ; he followed them out ; and even while he followed one, a host started up, and we sometimes think he chases them all in rather undignified gait or mood. Yet there are some notes — and they are very frequent — which remind the reader of George Herbert, or, more aptly, of Jeremy Taylor. ** Men and brethren, let us be thankful. Let our medita- tions travel with David in the 148th Psalm, first up into heaven. Even the very heavens and heights praise Him. And those blessed angels in His court sing His glory. Descend we then by the celestial bodies, and we shall find the sun, moon, and all the stars of light praising Him. A little lower, we 400 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. shall perceive the meteors and upper elements, the fire and hail, snow and vapour, magnifying Him, even the wind and storms fulfilling His word. Fall we upon the centre — the very earth. We shall hear the beasts and cattle, mountains and hills, fruitful trees and all cedars, extolling His name. The chirping birds still sing sweet psalms and carols to the Creator's praise, every morning when they rise, every evening when they go to rest. Not so much as the very creeping things, saith the Psalmist, noisome dragons, and crawling serpents in the deeds, but they do, in a sort, bless their Maker. Let not man, then, the first-fruits of His creatures, for whose service all the rest were made, be unthankful." And the following is very sweetly expressed : — *' Pride, fraud, drunkenness, is as Mount Seir to the lovers of them. But, alas ! how unsafe : if stronger against, and further removed from the hand of man, yet nearer to God's hand in heaven, though we acknowledge no place far from God or from His thunder. But we say, it is not always the safest sailing on the top of the mast. To live on the moun tainous height of a temporal estate is neither wise nor happy. Men, standing in the shade of humble valleys, look up and wonder at the height of hills, and think it goodly living there, as Peter thought Tabor. But when, with weary limbs, they have ascended, and find the beams of the sun melting their spirits, or the cold blasts of wind making their sinews slack, flashes of lightning, or cracks of thunder, soonest endangering their advanced heads, then they confess (checking their proud conceit) the low valley is safest. For the fruitful dews that fall fast on the hills stay least while there ; but run down to the valley : and though, on such a promontory, a man further sees, and is further seen, yet, in the valley, where he sees less he enjoys more 1 " Again : — "There is so much comfort in sorrow as to make all PURITAN ADAMS. 401 affliction to the elect, a song in the night. Adversity send us to Christ, as the leprosy sent those ten. Prosperity makes us turn our backs upon Christ and leave him, as health did those nine (Luke xvii.) David's sweetest songs were his tears. In misery he spared Saul, his great adver- sary ; in peace, he killed Uriah, his dear friend. The wicked sing with grasshoppers, in fair weather ; but the faithful (in this Hke sirens) can sing in a storm. When a man cannot find peace upon earth, he quickly runs to heaven to seek it Afflictions sometimes maketh an evil man good, always a good man better." We could imagine the author of the " Urn Burial " had the following in his mind in a famous pas- sage : — " No, they that are written in the eternal leaves of heaven, shall never be wrapt in the cloudy sheets of darkness. A man may have his name written in the chronicles, yet lost ; written in durable marble, yet perish ; written on a monu ment equal to a Colossus, yet be ignominious ; written on the hospital gates, yet go to hell ; written on his own houses yet another come to possess it. All these are but writings in the dust, or upon the waters, where the characters perish so soon as they are made. They no more prove a man happy than the fool could prove Pontius Pilate a saint, because his name was written in the Creed. But they that are written i?i heaven, are sure to inherit it." But it was the age of strange conceits ; and absurdities inwrought themselves with every depart- ment of taste : the age had not recovered from the grotesque freaks of the Elizabethan time. From those outrageous leaps, and acrobatic displays of genius, even Shakespeare is not free, and the archi- tecture of the time, like the speech, we know abounds 26 402 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. with strange displays ; allegoric lessons were con- stantly offering their teachings from classic forms and allusions, and essays on the wisdom of the ancients were written in a way which often to us seems ludicrous enough, graceless and tasteless in the different departments of domestic architecture. The pulpit of those times has often been found in har- mony with the taste which only employed the power of its genius *' To raise the ceiling's fretted height, Each panel in achievements clothing, Rich windows that exclude the light. And passages that lead to nothing." And quaintness and queerness did assuredly in- spire not only many of the lines of the poets and designs of the architects, but the plans and concep- tions of the preachers too. Few could preach with- out interlacing their English with little bits of Latin, — to our ears and eyes it seems the merest pedantry — purposeless, for nothing is illustrated, and nothing proved. It was an absurd fashion of speech. Here are two illustrations of this most singular mode ; from both sermons we leave out, as too long, the more ludicrous of similar passages. From the text " Take thou thy son," etc. *' Not to preface away any more tyme, please yow to call to mind these four generalls observable in the text. " I . — Victhfia, the Hoast or Sacrifice ; described here by a double name. i. Proper, Isaak. 2. Appellative, or a name of relation, Sonne; which likewise is further illustrated by two other attributes ; the one taken ab ehdione divina, the other ab affectione humana. i. Unigenitus, his onely sonne; PURHAN ADAMS. 403 there's God's inscrutable election. 2. Dilectus, his beloved Sonne ; there's Abraham's deerest affection. " 2. — SacerdoSy the Priest which was to offer up this sacrifice. The person not exprest, but in the word Tolle, Take thow. God speakes to Abraham : The Father must bee the Priest and Butcher of his own sonne. " 3. — Altare, the Altar or Place where this was to be offered ; set downe i, Generally, the land of Moryah. 2, Specially super uno montium, one particular mountayne in that land. "4. — Ritus,\hQ Rite and Manner of sacrificinge, or the kind and quality of the sacrifice : Holocaustum, it must bee an whole burnt offringe." Again, from the text, "Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them," etc. " In which Prayer and Supplication of his these six thinges are observable. " I. — Q2ui7tdo, the tyme when. When hee was hanginge now on the Crosse, and ready to yield up the Ghost ; Tunc^ then Jesus sayd. " 2. — Qtiis, the party prayinge. Dixit Jesus, it was Christ Jesus. "3. — Cui ox ad Quern, the object to whome his prayer is directed ; and that is God his Father. " 4. — Quid, the matter and subject, or thinge for what he prayed ; which is Pardon and Forgivenes. " 5. — Pro quibus, for whome hee prayeth ; Illis, them, his Enemyes. "6. — Qiare, the ground and reason of his petition; which was theyr Ignorance; for they know not what they doe. " The Tyme, when : the Persons, who ; the Person, to whome ; the Persons, for whome ; the Thinge, for what j and the Cause, wherefore." 404 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. In a state of transition from the times which pro- duced these curious formularies was the age when Thomas Adams began to preach. He must have been contemporary with Bishop Andrewes and Dr. Donne. We love Bishop Andrewes, but his style, almost through every line of it, abounds with strange read- ings and words, thus, " Wherefore art Thou red in Thine apparel ? " " Let Him be arrayed in scarlet, it is His due." His " Doctor's weed " — **0N THE BIRTH OF CHRIST AT EPHRATA. " Even so, Lord, saith our Saviour, for so is thy pleasure. And since it is His pleasure so to deal, it is His further plea- sure (and it is our lesson out of this Bethlehem minimd). Even this, ne minima miiwni, that we set not little by that which is little, unless we will so set by Bethlehem and by Christ and all. He will not have little places villified, little Zoar will save the body, little Bethlehem the soul, nor have, saith Zacherie, dies parvus — little times — despised, unless we despise this day, the Feast of Humility. Nor have one of these little ones offended. Why? for, Ephrata may make amends for, parvula, ex tefor tu." How quaint and singular reads the following : — "Will ye now to this inglorious Signe heare a glorious Sofig ; to this cratch of humilitie, a hymne of caelestiall har- monie? If the 6'/^«.? mislike you, ye cannot but like the Song, and the Queer that sing it. The song I shall not be able to reach to, will ye but see the Queer? and that shall serve for this time : For, by all meanes, before I end, I would deal with somewhat that might ballance this Signe of His low estate. This the Evajigdists never faile to doe ; Ever, they look to this point carefully: If they mention ought, that may offend, to wipe it away streight, and the Scandall of it, by some PURITAN ADAMS. 405 other high regard. See you a sort of poore Shepherds ? Stay, anci ye shall see a troope of God's Angels. Heare ye one say, layd in the cratch below ? abide, and ye shall heare many sing, Glorieon high, in honour of Him that lyeth in it. " Vidisti vilia (saith St. Ambrose) audi mirisica : Were the things meane you have seen ? " Wonderful shall they be, ye now shall heare and see both. Vilescit prcesepe, ecce Angelicis cantibus honoratur : Is the Cratch meane ? Meane as it is, it is honoured with the musike of Angels ; it hath the whole Queer of Heaven to sing about it. This also will prove a signe, if it be well looked into ; a counter-signe to the other : That, of His humilities ; this of His glorie." Lancelot Andrewes illustrates the monastic method in a Protestant Church ; let us listen to him intently, bring to his words, what we will certainly meet in them, a spirit of prayerful devotion, forgive the quaint- ness of the preacher for the holiness which shines through all his words, and we shall not listen in vain. His sermons will bear modern adaptation, if the mind adapting them and using them be itself informed, and filled with ardent and seraphic reverence for the great truth of the Incarnation ; for indeed there is the glow of a seraph about him, quaint as he is, the aureola of a saint shines over him ; cloistral and monastic, his sermons are wholly free from the wider inspirations of thought and worldly knowledge : they are narrow in their range, but they are intense ; the live coal from off the altar has given to all his faculties a pure flame ; but even as a coal presents strange and grotesque faces in the fire, so with the ardours of his style, they are as grotesque as they are holy ; fancies in words took him captive, often, 406 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER, it must be admitted, very pleasantly. Thus Christ the Conqueror coming from Edom and from the grave : — " And comming backe thus, from the debellation of the spiritual Edojn, and the breaking up of the true Bozra indeed, it is wondered, W7io it should be. Note this that nobody knew Christ at His rising; neither Mary Magdalen nor they that went to Emmaiis. No more doth the Prophet here. " Now there was reason to aske this question, for none would ever think it to be Christ. There is great oddes ; it cannot be He. " I. Not He : He was put to death and put into His grave and a great stone upon Him not three days since. This Partie is alive and lives alike. His Ghost it cannot be : He glides not (as Ghosts, they say, doe) but paces the ground very stro?igly. ^^ Not He: He had His apparell shared amongst the souldiers ; was left all naked. This Partie hath gotten Him on glorious apparell, rich scarlet. " Not He: if He come, He must come in white, in the linne?i He was lapped in, and laid in his grave. This Partie comes in quite another colour, all in red. So the colours suit not. To be short, not He ; He was put to a foile — to a foule foile — as ever was any : they did to Him even what they listed ; scorned and insulted upon Him. // was then the houre and power of darknesse. This Partie, whatsoever He is, hath got the upper hand, won the field j marches stately, Con- guerour-\\ke. His the day sure." The following little extract illustrates the refresh- ing way Andrewes had of pressing out comfortable truth in his barbarous Latinities. "There was then a new begetting, this day. And if PURITAN ADAMS. 407 a new begetting, a new Paternitie and Fraternitie, both. By the hodie gemiite of Christmas, how soone Hee was borne of the Virgin's wombe. Kee became our brother (sinne, except) subject to all our infirmities ; so to mortalitie and even to death it selfe. And by death that brotherhood had beene dissolved, but for this dayes rising. By the hodie genuite of Easter, as soon as Hee was borne again of the wombe of the grave, Hee begins a new brother-hood, founds a new fraternitie straight ; adopts us (wee see) anew againe, by His fratres meos ; and thereby, Hee that was ^rimogenitus d mortiiiSy becomes primogenitus inter multos frat7-es : when the first begotten from the dead, then the first begotten in this respect, among ?na?iy brethren. Before Hee was ours : now wee are His. That was by the mother's side ; so, Hee ours. This is by Patrem vestrum, the Father's side ; So wee His. But halfe-b rot hers before ; Never of whole bloud, till now. Now, by Father and Mother both, Fratres germanie, Fratres fraterrifni, we cannot be more." Bishop Andrewes talks like an old monk of the cloister, devout, narrow, and intense ; John Donne, another of the courtly preachers of those times, talks like a monastic schoolman ; he also was a contem- porary of Adams : they were both city preachers. But Donne was in himself wonderful, he was a kind of poetical Aquinas, in the pulpit most metaphysical of preachers ; he ran his speculative spirit into all strange subtleties, his fancies were not verbal but real. His mind, like mysterious lenses and glasses, explored the infinity revealed in little things and large things ; the remote orbs of distant, dark, and inaccessible heavens ; the unsuspected recesses of homely objects and tritest truths. His gospel was the same as that which Andrewes preached. As 4o8 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. compared with Adams both Andrewes and Donne had a more semi-Lutheran and semi-Romanist way of regarding it, in their ideas of the functions of the Church, and perhaps in their conceptions of a moral, rather than forensic justification, althougli none of these things must be pressed too closely as the attributes of their theological system. Donne had a consuming genius ; its flames slew him. But we have referred to him because, amidst all its magnificence, he illustrates the eccentricity of the age in thought and in style : " Every man is but a sponge, a sponge filled with tears." " We fell by Adam's fall into the dirt, from that we are washed in baptism, but we fell into a heap of sharp stones too, and we feel all those wounds and bruises our whole lives after." There is nothing simply barbarous in his style ; his fancies startle : they do not degrade. " CLOUDS. " We take a star to be the thickest, and so the impurest, and ignoblest part of that sphere, and yet, by the illustration of the sun, it becomes a glorious one. Clouds are but the beds, and wombs of distempered and malignant impressions of vapours, and exhalations, and the furnaces of lightnings and of thunder; yet by the presence of Christ, and his employ- ment, these clouds are made glorious chariots to bring him and his saints together. Those vapours and clouds which David speaks of, St. Augustine interprets of the ministers of the church, that they are those clouds. Those ministers may have clouds in their understanding and knowledge (some may be less learned than others), and clouds in their elocution and utterance (some may have an unacceptable deliverance), and clouds in their aspect and countenance (some may have an unpleasing presence), and clouds in PURITAN ADAMS. 409 their respect and maintenance (some may be oppressed in their fortunes), but still they are such clouds as are sent by Christ to bring thee up to him. And as the children of Israel received direction and benefit, as well by the pillar of cloud as by the pillar of fire, so do the children of God in the church, as well by preachers of inferior gifts, as by higher. In nubibus ; Christ does not come in a chariot and send carts for us. He comes as he went ; This same Jesus which is taken upfront you into heaven shall so come, in like maimer as ye have seen him go into heaven ; say the angels at his ascension." "god in a circle. " He shows no mercy which you can call his greatest mercy : his mercy is never at the highest ; whatsoever he hath done for thy soul or for any other in applying himself to it, he can exceed that. Only he can raise a tower whose top shall reach to heaven ; the basis of the highest is but the earth ; but though thou be but a tabernacle of earth, God shall raise thee piece by piece into a spiritual building ; and after one story of creation, and another of voca- tion, and another of sanctification, he shall bring thee to meet thyself in the bosom of thy God where thou wast at first, in an eternal election ; God is a circle himself, and he will make thee one ; go thou not about to square either circle, to bring that which is equal in itself to angles and corners, into dark and sad suspicions of God, or of thyself, that God can give, or that thou canst receive, no more mercy than thou hast had already. This, then is the course of God's mercy ; he proceeds as he begun, which was the first branch of this second part; it is always in motion and always moving towards ally always perpendicular, right over every one of us, and always circular, always communicable to all ; and then the particular beam of this mercy shed upon Ahaz here in our text is Dabii signum, The Lord shall give you a sign. It is a great degree of mercy that he affords us signs. A 410 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. natural man is not made of reason alone, but of reason and sense ; a regenerate man is not made of faith alone, but of faith and reason ; and signs, eternal things, assist us all." But, as we have said of Adams, he is now un- known, save by these reliquaries of his pen ; like his predecessor in metropolitan fame for Puritan speech, Henry Smith, of whom, indeed, little as we know, we know more, for of him we have a rumour, and an &^%y — such as it is — but of Adams we know nothing. Surely these felicitous and happy sayings, these bril- liant and vivid pieces, must have won the ears of multi- tudes ; they could not have been delivered with any cold and feeble mannerism. His friendships have gone, too. He knew Donne ; they both ministered in the same old St. Paul's Church. What appreciation had they of each other — the subtle, metaphysical speaker, with the clear, practical one — the quaint creature, full of visible oddities of eloquence, with the solemn spirited man, the dark sayings of whose harp, none the less practical, spoke to the depths of inner con- duct and speculation } It is interesting to think of Adams in London, while the great roar of events rose to the ear from the Continent, and throughout the land. It was a glorious age — the age immedi- ately succeeding that of Elizabeth — the great struggle rising in England between the people and prerogative; the great struggle rising in France, too; — the age of the independence of Holland ; the age of the Mayflower ; the age of the murder of Raleigh; of the fall of Bacon ; of the translation of the Bible; of the Quixotism of Laud; of the execution of Strafford ; of the rise of the civil war. Adams was PURITAN ADAPTS. 411 preaching through all these events, and in the most powerful and wealthy district of the city of London. He was there when the members took shelter from the King within its liberties ; and the spirit of that free age seems to speak out in the words of the man. What does it matter really that we know so little of him ? As men live neither in their names nor in their bodies, so neither do they live in their tombs nor in the hatchments over them ; and of multitudes of men, perhaps as worthy or as mighty as Adams, we know as little, or less. So drifts away many a simple parish minister, or conventicle teacher ; no tombstone marks his grave, no printed piece of paper commemorates his name, but the " enduring substance " abides in spiritual power con- ferred, although its ancestry cannot be traced. Fame is a most capricious inheritance, even like wealth ; it is distributed very blindly. We know a great deal about that ridiculous Pepys, and that absurd jackanapes Brummell. Our author vanishes entirely out of sight, wraps his invisible cloak about him, and goes altogether away from a world which did not, it would seem, treat him too well ; becomes possessor of the " oblivion which is not to be bribed," and some may think his lot enviable ! His works have long been prized as a vast mine of illustrations, a fertile field of happy imagery. Adams we in no case commend as the architect of thought or of theology. His views — and decidedly Calvinistic they were — were clear to himself, but they were expressed in too much of the style of Paul's Cross to be the best means for furnishing a student ; but, for a happy, witty characteristic, for 4t2 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. the quaint intermingling of learning, allusion, fable, and fancy, for felicitous description, for powerful appeals to, blows, indeed, on, the conscience of the hearer — say rather, vivid lightning-like glances into the eyes of conscience — Adams, we believe, has few rivals and scarcely any superior. CHAPTER XIV. THE PREACHERS OF WILD WALES^ ALTHOUGH we have already treated this subject so copiously in a former work,* we feel that a volume on the vocation of the preacher would scarcely be complete without some reference to these most marvellous and interesting men ; for in the history of preaching there is not a more curious chapter than that of the strange preachers of wild Wales. They have an idiosyncrasy quite as singular as that of the country in which they carried on their ministrations. The preaching friars of the Dark, or Middle Ages are very remarkable from the occasional glimpses we are able to obtain of them. Very remarkable also the band of men evoked by the rise of Methodism in England, those who spread out all over the land, treading the paths indicated by the voice and iinger of Whitefield and Wesley. Very entertaining, too, are the stories of the preachers of the backwoods of America, the sappers and miners who cleared a way for the plant- ing of the word in the forests of the far west. The Welsh preachers are unlike any of these, — they had a character altogether their own ; a great * " Christmas Evans — the Preacher of Wild Wales." By Paxton Hood. Messrs. Hodder and Stoupliton. 414 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. many of them were men of eminent genius, glowing with feeling and fancy ; never having known college training or culture, many were, never- theless, men who had somehow attained a singular variety of knowledge, lore which would perhaps be despised as unscientific and unclassified, but which was not the less curious, and, to the Celtic mind, enchanting. They all lived, and fared hard ; all their thoughts and fancies were high. They were eminently men of " low living and high thinking," but whom, if they marched before us now in the nineteenth century, Brighton in England, or Boston in America would regard as a set of very rough tykes. Perhaps the nineteenth century would regard Elijah, Amos, Nahum, and sundry other equally respectable persons in much the same way. Rude and rough in gait and manner, the rudeness and the roughness would perhaps be forgotten if we could interpret the torrent and the wail of their speech, and be for a short time beneath the power of the visions of which they were the rapt seers and unveilers ; to us several of them, — notably John Elias and Christ- mas Evans, — seem to realise the idea of the Ancient Mariner : — *' I pass like night from land to land, I have strange gift of speech ; The moment that his face I see, I know the man that must hear me ; To him my tale I teach." For preaching is in Wales the great national characteristic. The dwellers among those mountains, and upon those hill-sides, have no concerts, no theatres, no means of stimulating or satisfying their THE PREACHERS OF WILD WALES. 415 curiosity. We, — who now care little for preaching, and to whom the whole sermon system is perhaps becoming tedious, — we can have but little sympathy with that form of religious society where the pulpit is the orchestra, the stage, and the platform, and where the charms of music, of painting, and of acting are looked for and found in the preacher ; we should very likely be disposed to look with com- placent pity upon such a state of society (it has not yet expired) where the Bulwers and Dickenses, the Thackerays and the Scotts are altogether unknown, but where the peculiar forms of their genius, — certainly without their peculiar education, — display themselves in the pulpit. If our readers suppose a large amount of ignorance, yet it is such an ignorance as that which developed itself in Job and his com- panions in his age, — an ignorance like that we may conceive in Homer, or in yEschylus. In fact, in Wales the gates of every man's being have been opened. It is possible to know much of the grammar, the history, and the lexicography of things, and yet to be so utterly ignorant of the things themselves, as never to have felt the sentiment of strangeness or of terror, and, without having been informed of their names, it is possible to have been brought into the presence and power of the things themselves. Thus the ignorance of one man may be higher than the intelligence of another ; there may be a large memory and a very narrow consciousness ; — on the contrary, there may be a large consciousness, while the forms it embraces may be uncertain and undefined. But then the language ! Of course the language 41 6 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. had a great deal to do with this preaching power ; on all hands the Welsh is acknowledged to be a wonderful language. It is a speaking, and a living language without any shallows, a language which seems to compel the necessity of thought before using it ; our English language is fast becoming serviceable to that large part of the human family who speak without thinking ; to this state the Welsh can never come : that unaccommodating tongue only moves with a soul behind it. A Welshman will tell you there is no language like it on the face of the earth, but that is a testimony borne by many scholars who are not Welshmen ; perhaps there is no other language which so in- stantly conveys a meaning, and, at the same time, touches emotion to the quick. It is full of nomi- natives, nouns substantive, and adjectives, and there- fore it is singularly realising ; it is rich in vowel power, and therefore it touches emotion. True, like the Welshman himself, it is bony, and strangers to its power, who look at it and cannot speak it, and never heard it spoken, laugh at its never- ending succession of consonants. Somebody has said that the whole language is as if it were made up of such words as our word " strength ; " but if our readers will compare in their minds the effect of the word " power " as contrasted with the word " strength," which is the synonym of power, they will feel something of the force of the language, and its fitness for the purpose of conveying impression ; — but still this conveys but a poor idea of its great attributes. It is so literal that a competent hearer, or reader, realises instantly, from its words, things. THE PREACHERS OF WILD WALES. 417 Well do we remember sitting, in Wales, with a group of Welsh ministers and Welshmen, round a pleasant tea-table ; we were talking of the Welsh language, and one of our company, who had perhaps done more than any one in his country for popular Welsh literature, and who was one of the order of eminent Welsh preachers of whom we are speaking, broke forth : " Oh," he said, " you English people cannot see all the things in your Bible that a Welshman can see ; now your word ' blessed,' — it seems a very dear sweet thing to an Englishman and to a Welshman ; but a Welshman sees the thmg in the word ' Gwyn Ei fyd,' that is a white world, white — literally * White their world,' so a Welshman would see there is ' a white world ' for the pure in heart, a white world for the poor in spirit, a white world for them that are persecuted for righteousness' sake; and when you read, 'Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity,' the Welshman reads his Bible, and sees there, a white world, for such an one, that is, all sin wiped out and the place quite clean to begin again." We say this is a mighty power in the Welsh language, that, as a window, it is so clear ; the Welshman is able to see the thing in the word. The best essay on rhetoric which we know is in the old " Welsh Triads and Proverbs." He who would remember and act upon its rules would very likely gain more from the old prescription than from the study of Blair, Quintilian, or Whately. There are three indispensables of language, — purity, copiousness, and aptness. There are three supports of language, 27 4i8 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. — order, strength, and harmony. There are three uses of language, — to relate, to describe, to excite. There are three correct qualities of language, — correct construction, correct etymology, and pronun- ciation. There are three marks of the purity of lan- guage,— the intelligible, the pleasurable, the credible. Three things constitute just description, — ^just selec- tion of words, just construction of language, and just comparison. Three things appertain to just selection, — best language, best order, best object. But the vowel power of the language constitutes its strength ; consonants give bones to language, but vowels are its nerve, its muscle, its human life ; and what a mistake they make who charge upon the Welsh language an especial multiplicity of consonants ! Most persons would be surprised to know that it has seven vowels, — in addition to these, the double /, double d, and ch have all the power and softness of the vowel ; the idea of harshness, therefore is an error. To us it seems that it must be on account of its vowel power that Welsh preach- ing is so great, in the melody of the refrain, the repetition of the word or text over and over again ; — high strains of thought rendered into the sweet variety, melting tenderness, and grand strength of the language of Wales ; tender and terrible, sweetness alternating with strength. Welsh preaching derived in its greatest men, how much from its power of varying accent. Our readers may conceive it for themselves if they ever listened to that wonderful chorus in Handel's Messiah^ which Herder, the great German, truly called the Christian Epos ; but the chorus to THE PREACHERS OF WHD WALES. 419 which we refer is that singular piece of varying pictorial power " Unto us a Child is born," repeated again and again, in sweet, whispered accents, playing upon the thought ; first, the shepherds having kept watch over their flock by night, and having heard the angels say it, repeat it — " For unto us a Child is born ; " and then rolls in the grand thunder — " And His name shall be called Wonderful ! " and then we return to the sweet silvery accents — " For unto us a Child is born ; " — and we see the wise men approaching and offering their gifts, and as they do so, again roll in the grand and overwhelming words, " And His name shall be called Wonderful ! " and, yet again, that for which we waited, the tender, silvery whisperings — " Unto us a Child is born," until it seems as if angels and shepherds, flocks and herds, fields, stars, and wise men all united with the family of Jesus beneath the song, singing through the clear heavens and the starry night, "Unto us a Child is born;" and " His name shall be called " Wonderful ! " W^e, who have listened to this chorus, may form some idea of the way in which a great preacher, like Williams of Wern, for instance, will run his thought and its corresponding expression up and down through various tones of feeling, and every one awakening on some varying accent a fresh interpretation of thought and expression. We believe it is the institution and ordinance of preaching which keeps the religious instinct alive in any land ; the great revivals and awakenings of any age have usually been preceded, as we have said, by the tongue of fire, — the kindlings of soul 420 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. beneath the glow of speech. It is so, — we repeat it, — that our great revivals have been kindled by- preaching, and the religious life is, or ought to be, very greatly sustained by preaching, for it is the language of reciprocations ; but then its fine effect depends upon our not having too much of it, — short measure, but good quality. We have heard, or read, how an eagle was once caught in the ice. He rested there, on his high Alpine crag, surveying the surging sea of mountains over which his wing had sailed, the wild and grisly cliffs, far beyond the horn of the hunter, or the bugle of the forest bee, and there, amidst the regions of perpetual snow, the eagle began to doze. While he slept, the snow came down ; his wings contracted, — the feathers froze together; his feet, warm with his upward flight, and noble exertion to ascend, became fixed, rigid ; they adhered to the rock ; the snow fell round the monarch of the mountains, and still he slept ; his wings congealed, — they turned to ice. His mighty feet were fastened to the ice, the royal eagle was caught in the ice, and still the snow came down. He opened his eyes — those royal eyes which had gazed undazzled on the sun — it was all in vain, — ** The ice was here, the ice was there, The ice was all around." And such an eagle is the intellect separated from the emotions, an eagle caught in the ice ; the religious mind of England in our day is very much such an eagle, an eagle detained in the ice. The teachings of Alexander Bain, and Comte, and Herbert Spencer have come down upon the primal THE PREACHERS OF WILD WALES. 421 instincts of our nature like icy hail, and we need some sun to come forth to scatter the snows, and melt the ice, and to bid the wings expand again in their royalty of freedom and of life. That which would be most likely to melt the frozen air, and to set the imprisoned eagle free from its ice chain, would be a fine, free, wise speech, clad in the mighty vowel power of soul-convincing accent. To this end Christmas Evans, perhaps the most popular, and, on the whole, the most mighty of the great Welsh preachers, described in his own allegoric fashion THE FOUR METHODS OF PREACHING. " We behold," he said, " such an one as Lazarus, lying in a cave, locked in the sleep of death; now, how shall he be raised t how shall he be brought back to life } Who will roll away for us the stone from this sepulchre ? First came one who went down to the cave with blankets, and salt, to rub with the fomentations of duty, to appeal to the will, to say to the sleeping man that he could do it if he would ; chafing the cold and inert limbs, he thinks to call back the vital warmth ; and then retiring, and standing some distance apart, he says to the other spectators, ' Do you not see him stir .? Are there no signs of life ? Is he not moving ? ' No, he lies very still ; there is no motion ! How could it be otherwise 1 how could a sense of moral duty be felt by the man there, for the man was dead ! " The first man gave up in despair. And then came the second. ' I thought you would never do it,' he said, ' but, if you look at me, you will see 422 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. a thing ! No,' he said, ' your treatment has been too gentle.' And he went down into the cave with a scourge. Said he, ' The man only wants severe treatment to be brought back to life ; I warrant you I will make him feel ! ' And he laid on, in quick succession, the fervid blows, the sharp threatenings of law, judgment, future danger, and doom ; and then he retired to some distance. * Is he not waking .-* ' he said. ' Do you not see the corpse stir } ' No ; a corpse he was before the man began to lay on his lashes, and a corpse he con- tinued still. For the man was dead ! *' * Ah,' said another, ' you none of you know how to do it, but I have wonderful power. You, with your rubbing, and your smiting, what can you do 1 But I have it, for I can do two things.' And he advanced, and he fixed an electric battery, and disposed it so that it touched the dead man, and then, from a flute which he held, he drew forth such sweet sounds, they charmed the ears which were listening ; and whether it were the battery, or whether it were the music, so it was that effect seemed to be produced. ' Behold,' said he, * see what the refinements of science, and culture, and education will do ! ' And, indeed, so it was, for the hair of the dead man seemed to rise, and his eyeballs seemed to start and dilate ; and, see, he rises, starts up, and takes a stride down the cave ! Ah, but it is all over ; it was nothing but the electricity in the battery : it was not life ; and the corpse sank back again on the floor of the cave, for the man was dead ! " And then, when all were filled with despair, there THE PREACHERS OF WILD WALES. 423 came One and stood by the entrance of the cave ; but He was Messenger of the Lord and Giver of life, and, standing there, He said, * Come from the four winds, oh breath, and breathe on this slain one that he may Hve ! ' and He put His hands to the cold dead hands, and His lips to the dead cold lips, and He said, ' Christ hath given thee life. Awake, thou that sleepest ! ' And the man arose, and shook off his graveclothes ; what he had needed had come to him now — life ! Life is the only cure for death ; not the prescriptions of law, nor the threats of punishment, and damnation ; not the arts and refinements of education, but life, spiritual, Divine life, is the only cure for spiritual death ! " We have said we would speak of some of the oddities of Welsh pulpit eloquence, some of them very odd ; but the most odd of them had a touch of the sublime, and the most sublime of them were often odd. There was Shenkin of Penrydd ; he was a rough rude farmer, but an ordained minister ; he has left a living reputation behind him, and he was quite a type of the rude, but not the less effective, Welsh orator. Whatever the Welsh preacher had to say, however abstract, had to be committed to an illustration, to make it palpable, and plain. In those early times a very large room, or barn, in which were several hundreds of people, would perhaps have only one solitary candle feebly glim- mering over the gloom. It was in such circum- stances, or in such a scene, that Shenkin preached on Christ as the Light of the world. In the course of the sermon he came to show that the world was 424 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. not its own light, and announced to his hearers the truth, which might perhaps startle some of them, " that light was not in the eye." It seemed as if he had no sooner said this than he felt it to be a matter that required illustration. As he warmed with his subject, going round and round to make his meaning plain, but all the time seeming to fear that he was not doing much towards it with his rustic congregation, he suddenly turned to the solitary candle, and blew it out, leaving his congre- gation in utter darkness. " There," he exclaimed triumphantly to his invisible congregation, " what do you say to that .? Is the light in the eye .' " This, of course, settled the matter in the minds of the most obtuse ; but it was still a serious matter to have to relight, in the lonely little chapel, or barn, an extinguished candle. Wales was covered with such men ; perhaps it may be thought we ask our cultured reader to condescend too low in soliciting his notice of them ; yet how many of them deserve the memory of those tender lines of Samuel Johnson, — " Their virtues walked their narrow round. Nor made a pause, nor left a void; And sure the Eternal Master found Their single talent well employed. And still they fire affection's eye, Obscurely wise, and coarsely kind, And let not arrogance deny Its praise to merit unrefined." Somewhat illustrative of this order of men was an instance which happened in Bristol near a hundred years since ; a beloved old friend, who has been THE PREACHERS OF tVILD WALES. 425 twenty years in heaven, related the circumstance to us ; he was present in the chapel, and witnessed the scene. It was a service in which, as was not unusual then, two ministers were to preach, one after the other. There was at that time a Welsh preacher, one Samuel Breeze, popularly called by the multitudes, who delighted in his ministry, " Sammy Breeze ; " he came periodically from the mountains of Cardiganshire, and spoke with tolerable efficiency in English ; he was to preach on this occasion. The other preacher, a young man with some tints of academical training, and some of the livid lights of a, then, only incipient rationalism on his mind, took the first place in the pulpit. He announced his text, " He that believeth shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned ; " but he con- doned the heavy condemnation, and, in an affected manner, shaded off the darkness of the doom of unbelief, very much in the style of another preacher, who told his hearers that he " feared lest they should be doomed to a place which good manners forbade his mentioning." The young man also grew senti- mental, and begged pardon of an audience rather more polite than usual for the sad statement made in the text. " But, indeed," said he, " he that be lieveth shall be saved, and he that believeth not, — indeed, I regret to say, — I beg your pardon for utter- ing the terrible truth — but indeed he shall be sen- tenced to a place which here I dare not mention." The last words were delivered in a whisper. Then up rose Sammy Breeze. He began, " I shall take the same text to-night which you have just heard. Our young friend has been fery foine to-night ; he 426 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. has told you some fery polite things, I am not fery foine, and I am not polite ; but I will preach a little bit of Gospel to you, which is this — ' He that pelieveth shall be saved, and he that pelieveth not shall be tamned,' and I begs no pardons^ He con- tinued, " I do look round on this chapel, and I do see all fery learned and intellectual. You do read books, and you do study studies ; and fery likely you do think that you can mend God's Book, and are fery sure you can mend me. You have great — what you call thoughts, and poetries. But I will tell you one little word, and you must not try to mend that ; but if you do, it will be all the same. It is this, look you — ' He that pelieveth shall be saved, and he that pelieveth not shall be tamned,' and I begs no pardons. And then I do look round your chapel, and I do see you are foine people, well-dressed people, well-to-do people. You are not only pious, but you have fery foine hymn-books and cushions, and some red curtains, for I do see you are fery rich, and you have got your moneys, and are getting fery proud. But I will tell you it does not matter at all, and I do not mind it at all — not one little bit — for I must tell you the truth, and the truth is — ' He that pelieveth shall be saved, and he that pelieveth not shall be tamned,' and I begs no pardons. And now," continued the preacher, " you will say to me, ' What do you mean by talking to us in this way } who are you, sir ? ' And now will tell you I am Sammy Freeze. I have come from the mountains of Cardiganshire on my Master's pusiness, and His message I must deliver. If you will never hear me again, I shall not matter much ; THE PREACHERS OF WILD WALES. 427 but while you shall hear me, you shall hear me, and this is His word to me, and in me to you — * He that pelieveth shall be saved, and he that pelieveth not shall be tamned,' a7id I begs no pardofis!' But the scene in the pulpit was a trifle to the scene in the vestry. There the deacons were in a state of great anger with the blunt teacher ; and pne, the relative — we believe the ancestor — of a well-known religious man in Bristol, exclaimed, " Mr. Breeze, you have strangely forgotten yourself to-night, sir. We did not expect that you would have behaved in this way. We have always been very glad to see you in our pulpit ; but your sermon to-night, sir, has been most insolent, shameful ! " He wound up a pretty smart condemnation by saying, " In short, / don't understand you ! " " Ho ! ho ! " said Sammy. "What ! you say you don't understand me ? Eh ! look you, then ; I will tell you I do understand you I Up in our moun- tains, we have one man there : we do call him Excise- man ; he comes along to our shops and stores, and says, ' What have you here ? Anything contraband here ? ' And if it is all right, the good man says, ' Step in, Mr. Exciseman ; come in, look you.' He is all fair, open, and above-board. But if he has any- thing secreted there, he does draw back surprised, and he makes a foine face, and says, ' Sir, I do not understand you.' Now, you do tell me that you don't understand me, but I do understand you, gentlemen, I do ; and I will say good-night to you ; but I must tell you one little word ; that is, * He that pelieveth shall be saved, and he that pelieveth not shall be tamned,' ayid I begs no pardons ! " 428 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. But we shall not hesitate to say that these preachers dealt with great truths. A mind which lives in the light will by its own sincerity make the subject clear which it attempts to expound ; some of these preachers, and Christmas Evans especially, on whose name we shall dwell at length presently, had the faculty eminently of making abstruse, or abstract truths shine out with luminous and distinct beauty. This is most noble when the mind of a preacher rises to the highest truths in the Christian scheme. A great deal of our preaching in the present day well deserves the name of pretty ; but how many men, whose volumes of sermons are upon our shelves, both in England and America, seem as if they had been students in the natural history of religion, gathering shells, — pretty rose-tinted shells, — or leaves, or insects for a theological museum. And a very pretty occupation, too, to call attention to the lily-work of the temple, or the bells and pome- granates on the vesture of the priest. But there are others whose aim has rather been " To see great truths That touch and handle little ones." Such men are of that order who occupy the mind and single eye rather on the pathway of a planet beyond them than in the study of the most exquisite shell on the sea-shore. Among religious students, and even among eminent preachers, there are some who may be spoken of as Divine and spiritual as- tronomers ; they study the laws of the celestial lights ; they are concerned in the spiritual order of the universe, and in the conditions of spiritual order ; — THE PREACHERS OF WILD WALES. 429 and there are others who may be called religious entomologists, and they find themselves at home amidst insectile prettinesscs ; more interesting to them, by far, a beetle or a butterfly, a univalve, bivalve, or multivalve, than the mysterious belts of Jupiter, or the gorgeous rings of Saturn ; and Christ and the soul are trifling matters compared with some little question uninteresting alike to God and men. Now the power of great truths overwhelms the man who feels them, and this gives rise to that impassioned earnestness which enables a preacher to storm, and to take possession of the hearts of his hearers. The man, as it has been truly said, was lost in his art and his theme, — was swallowed up in excited feeling, like a whirlpool bearing along the speaker, and his hearers with him, on the current of the strong discourse. The histories of the greatest orators — for instance, Massillon, Bossuet, Robert Hall, and the great Welsh preachers — show this ; the excited feelings of the audience manifested themselves by their starting from their seats, and sometimes by loud expressions of acclamation and approbation. But, in order to this, a preacher must be at once self-abandoned and self-possessed. The worth and the value of all great preaching must depend upon the measure to which it represents the preacher's own familiarity with the truths he touches and proclaims; this is the preaching which " searches Jerusalem with candles." Preachers live too much now in the presence of published sermons to be in the highest degree effective. He who thinks of the printing press cannot abandon himself ; he who uses notes slavishly 430 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. cannot abandon himself ; and without abandonment, — that is, self-forgetfulness, — what is oratory? what is action ? what is passion ? If we were asked, What are the two greatest human aids to pulpit power ? we should say, Self-possession and self- abandonment ; the two are perfectly compatible, and, in the pulpit, the one is never powerful without the other. Knowledge, belief, preparation, these give self-possession ; and earnestness and unconsciousness, these give self-abandonment ; the first, without the last, may make a preacher like a stony pillar covered with runes and hieroglyphics, and the last, without the first, may make a mere fanatic, with a torrent of speech plunging lawlessly and disgracefully abroad. We suppose there never was a time when ministers were more afraid of their audiences than in this day, — afraid of the big man with his wealth ; afraid of the highly cultured young man with the speculative eye-glasses, who has finished his education in Germany ; afraid lest there should be the slightest departure from the most perfect and elegant taste ; and so, in this highly finished, furnished, and culti- vated time, we have few preachers who in the pulpit can either possess their souls, or abandon them to the truth in the text they have to announce. Preachers and preaching ! we are no preacher ; we cannot do it, although we have been making a kind of vain attempt at it all our life. But we believe in preachers and in preaching, and these Welsh preachers were very wonderful. There was Rowlands of Llangeitho ; he had the power of the thunder and the dew. There was Williams of Wirn, the master of Divine analogy ; his mind was a THE PREACHERS OF WILD WALES. 431 camera obscura, and as he preached he invited his hearers to see the procession of sacred representa- tions of spiritual things ; so luminous were his pictures, so incisive his words, so Divine and so devout his utterances ! But John Elias ! heard our readers ever of John Elias ? The stories told of what John Elias did when he assayed to preach read almost like miracles ; his preaching was no rippling out of mild, meditative, " innocent young sermons ; " it was no recreative play. John Elias, of Wales, was really a kind of Elijah the prophet, or John the Baptist ; his preach- ing effected social regenerations in neighbourhoods ; he put down fairs, and race-courses. There was one great race especially coming off, a great disturb- ance and curse to the whole neighbourhood ; Elias prayed passionately and earnestly that the Lord would do something to stop it, and his prayer was so remarkable that some one said, " Elijah is pray- ing,— Ahab must prepare his chariot, and get away." And it was so ; just before the time, the sky began to darken ; the lamps were lighted in the shops ; the rain descended in torrents, and continued without intermission for two days ; the crowds dispersed, and they did not reassemble that year, nor the next. The eminence of this preacher was so great, so astonishing, that wherever he went, whatever hour of the day, or time, or season, business was laid aside, shops were closed, and the mighty crowds followed him to hear him. But we cannot give our readers his sermons ; only shall we say that it has been said of him, " Behold, I will make thee a new sharp threshing instrument having teeth : thou shalt thresh 432 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. the mountains, and beat them small, and make the hills like chaff." We have broken away so hurriedly from Elias and the other preachers of wild Wales because we would devote the remainder of this chapter to the wonderful " one-eyed man of Anglesea," Christmas Evans. He exercised his ministry for half a century, and retained, through all the time, freshness and variety of feeling and imagination ; his wing never seemed little, or petty in its flight. There was the firmness and strength of the beat of a noble eagle. Some eloquence sings, some sounds ; in the one we hear the voice as of a bird hovering in the air, — in the other we listen to the thunder of the plume ; in Christmas Evans it was as the thunder of the plume. His words and thoughts became radiant with fire and metaphor ; they flew forth, rich, bright, glowing like some rich metal in ethereal flames. It was the nature and habit of his mind to embody and impersonate ; attributes and qualities took the shape and form of persons ; he seemed to enter mystic abodes, and not to talk of things as a metaphysician, or a theologian, but as a spectator or actor. The magnificences of nature crowded round him, bowing in homage as he plucked from them, to adorn or to illustrate his theme, all things beautiful or splendid, all things fresh and young, all things old and venerable. He gave it as his advice to a young preacher, " Never raise the voice while the heart is dry ; let the heart and the affections shout first ; let it commence within!' A man who could say, " Hundreds of prayers bubble from the fountain of m)'' mind," such a man was THE PREACHERS OF WHD WALES. 433 rich in all the manifoldness of genius ; what sort of preacher was he likely to make ? " He mused, and the fire burned ;" like the smith who blows upon the furnace until the iron is red-hot, and then strikes on the anvil until the sparks fly all round him, so he preached. Then he had an astonishing power of parable. He is, before any one else, the Bunyan of the modern pulpit ; he preached among people to whom it was necessary to speak in pictures ; sometimes he spread a large canvas, like Paul Veronese, sometimes a small, but most distinct and homely piece, a very Teniers, or Wilkie, or Tideman ; of the latter order we find innumerable exquisitely pretty sayings, as when he says, " The crocodile of death shall be harnessed to the chariot of the daughter of Zion to bring her home to her Father's house." That is very pretty when, preaching on Ruth, he says, " Faith is the wedding ring by which the daughter of the old Ammonite is married to the Prince of peace ; she is raised from poverty to opulence, from degradation to honour, not because of the intrinsic value of the ring, though it is a golden one, but on account of the union which it • signifies between her and the beloved Prince." Such things as these are strewn along all his sermons, only in all he was pre-eminently an orator. He stood six feet high, and his whole bearing was grand and dignified. He had but one eye, it is true, — like Spiridion, he lost it in the cause of his Saviour, — but that one eye was singularly penetrating, burning with wonderful power. Some- body, who had never heard him, said to Robert Hall, " Why, sir, he has only one eye." " Ah," said Hall, 38 434 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. " but that's a piercer ! Only one eye, sir ? Why, sir, it's an eye to light an army through a wilderness in a dark night ! " He often had an odd way of dealing with -his texts, — with Paul, for instance, or Saul of Tarsus, and his seven ships. It was a sermon preached to sailors. He described Saul as once a very thriving merchant, and extensive ship-owner. He had seven vessels of his own, the names of which were, — I. Circumcised the Eighth Day ; H. Of the Stock of Israel; III. Of the Tribe of Benjamin; IV. A Hebr^ of the Hebrews ; V, As touching the Law, a Pharisee ; VI, As Concerning Zeal ; VII. Persecuting the Church : the seventh was a man-of-war, a mighty privateer, with which he one day set out, well supplied with ammunition, from the port of Jeru- salem, from the arsenal of the high-priest, with a view to destroy a small port at Damascus. He was wonderfully confident, and breathed out threatenings and slaughters ; but he had not got far before the Gospel ship, with Jesus Christ Himself as Commander on board, hove in sight, and threw such a shell among the merchant's fleet that all his ships were instantly on fire. The commotion was tremendous, and there was such a volume of smoke that Paul could not see the sun at noon. While the ships were fast sinking, the Gospel Commander gave orders that the perishing merchant should be taken on board. " Saul, Saul, what has become of all thy ships .? " " They are all on fire." " What wilt thou do now } " " Oh, that I may be found in Him, not having on my own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through faith in THE PREACHERS OF WILD WALES. 435 Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith." One of the grandest of what we may call his dramatic sermons is the trial of the witnesses of our Lord's resurrection ; one who heard it , says, " While I have the faintest trace of memory as to sermons I have heard, this must always be pre- eminent and distinct ; in its oratorical eminence it stands alone even among his great achievements," The guard of soldiers who had seen the Saviour rise were on their examination before the Sanhedrim, the chief priests. He heard them talk, had a clear perception of the difference of the tone, and more especially when the high-priest said in an anxious agonising whisper, "Shut the door;" and then, "You, tall soldier, approach ; was it not you who pierced His side > " " Ah, yes, it was I." " When Christmas Evans simulated the high-priest, and singled out the tall soldier, and the conversation went on between the two, such a combined triumph," says his great reporter, " of sanctified fancy and sacred oratory I never expect to witness again." All such lives have their grand compensations — compensations which cannot be estimated by ordinary men. Conceive such an occasion, when " the one- eyed man of Anglesea " had been for many years at the height of his power. This will be one of his great occasions, and he has been expected here for many weeks ; no expectation hanging on the appearance of Christine Nilsson, or Jenny Lind, or Sims Reeves on some great musical festivity, can reach, in our imagination, the expectations of these poor scattered villagers as they think of the delight 436 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. they will experience in listening to their wonderful and well-loved prophet. So all along the roads they press, an untiring crowd, showing that something unusual is going on somewhere. The roads are picturesque, and lively with all sorts of people, on foot, on horseback, in old farm carts, and even in carriages, all wending their way to the largest, and most central chapel of the neighbourhood. It is the chief service ; the congre- gation is wedged together in the spacious house of God ; it becomes almost insupportable, but the Welsh like it. The service has not commenced, and a cry has already been raised that it had better be held in an adjoining field ; this would be inconvenient. The doors, the windows are all thrown open ; and so the time goes on, and the hour for commencing the service arrives, the eyes are strained, the door opens beneath the pulpit, and the minister of the congregation comes in, and makes his way for himself and his friend, the great preacher. Amidst the hundred ministers following, there is he, that tall commanding figure; that is he, "the one-eyed man of Anglesea." Then there are murmurs of joy, gruntings, and whispers of glad congratulation, which seem to want to burst into acclamations, which pass over the multitude. There is, of course. . prayer, singing, and reading, and a short sermon, a very short sermon. There are crowds of preachers beneath the pulpit, but they have all come to hear the mighty minstrel ; and the moment is here. A few more verses of a hymn, during which there is no little commotion, in order that there may be none by-and- bye, those who have been long standing changing THE PREACHERS OF WILD WALES. 437 places with those who have been sitting ; and there he is up before the people, and, in some such circum- stances, he seems to have first sung that wonderful song or sermon — SATAN IN DRY PLACES. The preacher appears to have been desirous of teaching the beautiful truth that a mind preoccupied and inhabited by Divine thoughts cannot entertain an evil visitor, but compels him to betake himself to flight by the strong expulsive power of Divine affections. He commenced by describing Satan as a vast and wicked, although invisible spirit, somehow as Milton might have described him ; and the preacher was not unacquainted with the grand imagery of the Paradise Lost, in which the poet describes the Evil One. " Who shall tempt with wandering feet The dark, unbottomed, infinite abyss, And through the palpable obscure find out His uncouth way ? " So Christmas described him as spreading his airy flight on indefatigable wings, determined to insinuate himself, through the avenues of sense, to some poor soul, and turn it to destruction. And, with this end, flying through the air, and seeking for a dwelling place, he found himself moving over one of those wide Welsh moors, which the preacher so well knew, and had so often travelled ; and his fiery, although invisible, glance espied a young lad, in the bloom of his days, and the strength of his power, sitting on the box of his cart, driving, on his way to the quarries, for slate or lime. 438 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. " 'There he is,' said Satan ; 'his veins are full of blood, — his bones are full of marrow ; T will cast my sparks into his bosom, and set all his passions on fire. I will lead him on, and he shall rob his master, and lose his place, and find another, and rob again, and do worse, and he shall go on from worse to worse, and then his soul shall sink, never to rise again, into the pit of fire ! ' " But just then, as he was about to dart a fiery temptation into the heart of the youth, the boy gave a flank with his whip, and the dismayed Evil One heard him sing out, •' ' My God, the spring of all my joys, The life of my delights, The glory of my brightest days. And comfort of my nights.' " * Oh, but this is a dry place,' said the Evil One, and the fiery Dragon fled away. " But I saw him pass on," said the preacher, " hovering like a vulture or a hawk in the air, and casting about for a place where he might nestle his black wings, when, at the edge of the moor, he came to a lovely valley ; the hills rose round it ; it was a beautiful, still, meadow-like spot, watered by a lovely stream, and there, beneath the eaves of a little cottage, he saw a girl of some eighteen years of age, a flower among the flowers ; she was knitting, or sewing, at the cottage door ; said Satan, ' She will do for me ; I will whisper the evil thought into her heart, and she shall turn it over and over, again and again, until she learns to love it ; and then the evil thought shall be an evil deed ; and then she shall be obliged to leave her village, and to go to the great town, and she shall live a life of evil, all astray from the paths of my Almighty Enemy. Oh, I will make her mine ! and then, by-and-bye, I will cast her over the precipice, and she shall sink into the furnace of the Divine wrath ! ' And so he hastened to approach and to dart into the mind of the maiden ; but, while he was approaching, all the hills and THE PREACHERS OF WILD WALES. 439 crags seemed to break out into singing, as her sweet voice rose high and clear chanting out the words, " ' My God, I am Thine ; What a rapture Divine ! What a blessing to know that my Saviour is mine ! In the Heavenly Lamb Thrice happy I am, And my soul, it doth dance at the sound of His name.' " ' Ah, this is a dry place too,' said the Dragon as he fled away. " And so he passed from the valley among the hills, but with hot rage. * I will have a place to dwell in,' he said ; ' I will somehow leap over the fences and hedges of the purpose and covenant and grace of God. I do not seem to have succeeded with the young to-day; I will try the old ; and all in good time for me,' he thought, for, passing down the village street, he saw an old woman ; she, too, was sitting at the door of her cot, and spinning there on her wheel. * Ah,' said Satan, ' it will be good to lay hold of her grey hairs, and make her to taste of the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone.' And he descended on the eaves of the cot ; but, as he approached near, he heard the trembling quaver- ing voice of the old woman, murmuring to herself lowlily, ' For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed, but My kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of My mercy be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.' And the words hurt the Evil One, as well as disappointed him ; they wounded him as he fled away screaming, ' Another dry place I ' "Ah, poor Devil!" exclaimed the preacher, "and he usually so very successful; but he was quite unsuccessful that day ! And now it was night, and he was scudding about like a bird upon his black wings, and pouring forth his screams of rage. But he passed through another Welsh village, the white cottages gleaming out in the pure moon- 440 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. light on the sloping hillside. And there was a cottage, and in the upper room was a faint light trembling, and * Oh ! ' said the Devil to himself, ' Devil, thou hast been a very foolish devil to-day ! and there, in that room where the lamp-light is, old Williams is slowly, surely wasting away. Over eighty, or I am mistaken ; not much mind left, and he has borne the burden and heat of the day, as they call it. Thanks to me, he has had a hard time of it ; very few mercies to be thankful for ; he has not found serving God, I think, a very profitable business. Come, cheer up. Devil ! it will be a grand thing if thou canst get him to doubt a bit, and then to despair a bit, and then to curse God, and die ! that will make up for this day's losses.' " Then he enters the room ; there was the old man lying on the poor bed, and his long, thin, wasted hands and fingers lying on the coverlid, his eyes closed, the long silvery hair falling over the pillow. Now, Satan, make haste ! the hour is coming ; there is even a stir in every room in the house ; they seem to know that the old man is passing. But, as Satan himself moved before the bed to dart into the mind of the old man, the patriarch rose, stretched forth his hands, and pinned his enemy to the wall, as he exclaimed, 'Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me : Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me ; Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemy ; .Thou anointest my head with oil — cup runneth over — goodness and mercy all the days of my life — house of the Lord for ever ! ' " Oh, that was a fearfully dry place! the old man sank back ; it was all over ; and those words beat Satan down to the bottom of his own bottomless pit, for that was a very dry place 1 " Such was the preaching of Christmas Evans. CHAPTER XV. THE PLACE OF THE PULPIT IN POETRY AND FICTION. FICTION ! what then has fiction to do with the pulpit ? Let us inquire ; and, first, this is, beyond any other age of the world, the age of fiction, — fiction of every order, — some of it, no doubt, worthy of every reprobation ; but this is also most remarkable, that the very noblest streams of literature have turned into the channels of fiction ; history, metaphysics, the problems of faith, the problems of society, the purest of poetry, the most soothing influences for the study and the fireside, all these are to be sought for, and found, in modern fiction. It seems from the number of novels which teem from the press, and from the same pen, this must be the order of writing most easily written, and most remunerative ; — the most in demand, and the best paid ; it is not wonderful, it is an instru- ment so truly human, and in all ages it has been the vehicle of pleasure and instruction, but never so much so as in this age. All preachers will do well to consider this, and to take it into account in their studies for the pulpit ; and it cannot be doubted that the greater amount of that mental force, which in other ages was found in the pulpit, 442 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. has discovered a more useful, more independent, and far more lucrative employment in the profession of the pen, and, perhaps, even of the pen of fiction. But the pulpit itself, — it also has been introduced by its various representative preachers into the pages of fiction. We could fill a volume with the varieties of preacher and sermon life as delineated by our great novelists. Oh, these great novelists knew how to preach, and very many of their characters give to us perfect studies in homiletics ; the late Lord Lytton, for instance, in his noble young curate in " What will he do with it ? " and, more especially, in that model of a sermon by Parson Dale, in the first volume of " My Novel," on the text " Bear ye one another's burdens." In a very remarkable novel, the first of the Cheveley Novels, " The Modern Minister," a work which has won golden ore of criticism from every order of reviewer, there is an astonishing sermon, which was preached to an astonished congregation by the minister, who was suffering beneath a cloud of calumny, and which is made up entirely of choicely chosen texts of Scripture, without any commentary ; and it is quite instructive to see and to feel how every text pierced home. And we remember few things more powerful, as illustrating the force of a general truth brought home, quite unconsciously, to the individual conscience, than Mrs. Riddell's sermon in her novel, " The Mystery of Palace Gardens," from the text "Thou art the man;" it is a study in the art of useful sermon-making the preacher knew when to stop ; there was nothing THE PULPIT IN POETRY AND FICTION. 443 to weaken the force of a mighty sermon ; he had roused many consciences, but he had pierced one as with a lance of fire ; in a large and fashionable congregation, rustling in silks, and blazing with jewels, the word had found out the conscience to which it had distinctly and authoritatively said, altogether unknown to the preacher, " Thou art the man." Then what a picture is that drawn by Victor Hugo in his story of the cardinal bishop ! what a study ! And, indeed, an instructor of men ought to know how to use the whole of that immense mountain of intellectual ore to purpose ! What a picture of the preacher, to the roughest order of mind, in Schiller's " Wallenstein," in the Capuchin friar in Wallenstein's camp : and in glorious Sir Walter's " Old Mortality," in the fiery sermons of Macbriar, the young Covenanter and martyr, in the camp of the faithful before the battle ! Indeed, the preachers portrayed in fiction seem to us sometimes as instructive as, or more so than, the studies from real life ; such characters, for instance, as Parson Marsh, in " Norwood," of whom it was said, " his sermons were like the meeting-house, — the steeple was the only thing seen by the folks after they got home." Preachers should study fiction if they would learn how to preach, and not merely, as we have indicated, in the character of the preacher, and of a certain order of sermons, but even in the influence and character of a certain order of theology in its social influence ; it seems to us that New England literature has been remarkable in this ; we might refer to " The 444 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. Minister's Wooing," by Mrs. Stowe, and some of her other pieces, but we will especially mention " Dr. Johns," by Ik Marvel. Dr. Johns is a dear, beautiful, lovely, and lovable old owl, representing the dogmatic side of the old faith ; and it is very pathetic to read of one of the old Calvinist preacher's sermons after the death of his wife, and how, in a pathetic passage, the listeners whispered to each other, ** He thinks of Rachel," but, instantly, as if correcting himself, and fixing his eyes above, he went on, " Sometimes I think thus, but oftener I ask myself, Of what value shall human ties be, or their memories, in His august presence whom to look upon is life } What room shall there be for other affections, what room for other memories than those of the Lamb that was slain .'' " And so, within eight months after his loss, Mr. Johns thought of Rachel only as a gift which God had bestowed on him to try him, and had taken away to work in him humiliation of heart ! More severely than ever he wrestled with the dogmas of his chosen divines, harnessed them to his purposes as a preacher, and wrought on with a zeal that knew no abatement and no rest. And it was so when another stroke came, at sixty years of age, in the death of his only son. We do not know any more distinct and tender picture of a grave old Calvinistic owl, and the effect of a certain order of theological opinion diverted from the humanity in the teaching of our Lord, and its effect also, by its rigidity of teaching, upon the daily movement, mental life, and emotions even in sequestered villages. It is not less from the pages of fiction than THE PULPIT IN POETRY AND FICTION. 445 poetry that we find the exercise of satire upon some of the pulpit manifestations of our times. We need not refer to a novel so well known as Mrs. Oliphant's " Salem Chapel," in which, however, not only the preacher, but his deacons, come in for the thong of the satirist. "'Three more pews applied for this week, fifteen sittings in all,' said Mr. Toscr ; ' that's what I call satisfactory, that is ; we must let the steam go down not on no account. You keep well at them on Sundays, Mr. Vincent, and trust to the managers, sir, to keep 'em up to their duty. We ought to spare you, and you ought to spare yourself. There hasn't been such an opening in our Church for fifteen years ; go on to it, Mr. Vincent, and I see no reason why we shouldn't put another fifty on your salary next . > >> year. But the keenest satire upon the false and futile method of modern so-called intellectual preaching is to be found in Robert Browning's " Christmas Eve and Easter Day ; " he ridicules, with scorching and withering satire, the notion that modern thought has risen above the historical and objective Christ to find Him only in the subjective idea, forgetful altogether, it seems, that, as it has so often been said, it takes a Christ to forge, or to invent a Christ, even as it would take an Euclid to invent an Euclid, a Plato to invent a Plato, or a Newton to forge a Newton ; but we can only thus briefly refer to this singular piece of mingled poetry, satire, and power. Some novelists have very adroitly reproduced the characteristics of the pulpit ; and our readers know 446 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. how, early in the history of the Church, we find the sermons of the Fathers prefaced by a text ; Charles Kingsley, in his fine novel of " Hypatia," which is really a most graphic piece of Church history, gives a vivid picture of the preaching of St. Augustine, which no one at all acquainted either with his exposition of the Psalms, of the Gospel according to John, or, indeed, with any of his writings, will think at all exaggerated. He was preaching to a mixed multitude ; he, the master of ancient rhetoric, the courtly and learned student, had before him not merely an assembly of monks, but of rough soldiers — Thracians, Gauls, Belgians, and others. Certainly one attentive listener won- dered what the Bishop of Hippo could have to say to these ; and then, when he took his text from a psalm he had just read, one of the battle psalms concerning Moab and Amalek, he wondered what the preacher would have to say about that. And yet he seemed to start lamely enough, in spite of the ex- quisite grace of his voice, the beauty of his language, and the epigrammatic terseness of his sentences. His treatment of his text seemed at first like fanciful allegorising of the Psalm ; and yet, somehow, there began to look out a great comprehensiveness of Durpose, so that the apparently foolish allegorising presently became very obviously personal, and, although the Edomites had been made to put on their name to signify one sort of sin, the Ammonites another, and the Amalekites another, the hearer, and all the hearers, began to wince, and very soon to confess that, whether Augustine knew truths for all men or not, he knew sins for all men, for himself THE PULPIT IN POETRY AND FICTION 447 as well as for all his hearers. And it soon became clear that there was in the mind of the Father a real, vital, organic connection with what seemed to be an arbitrary allegory, while all the outward people of the Psalm represented really the powers and the people of the soul, and his hearers were taught that they were weak against Moors, and earthly enemies, because they were weak against enemies more deadly than Moors, and that they could not fight for God outwardly while they were fighting against Him inwardly. He would not go forth with their hosts ; how could He when He was not among their hosts ? He, a Spirit, must dwell in their spirits, and the shout of a king would be among them, and " one of them should chase a thousand." We have always regarded this passage in " Hypatia " as a fine reproduction of the style of St. Augustine in dealing with texts, and it is very interesting to notice it, for this great master of Western theology has, more or less unconsciously, ruled the method of the pulpit from his time, and it is only in ours that this method of dealing with texts has known decay or decline. Tennyson has not altogether omitted the preacher, and one passage from the " Northern Farmer " is as graphic a piece of description as any we possess of the old English country parson in his relation to his parishioners. The sick farmer, in the absence of his nurse, had broken his bounds, but he had been visited by both doctor and parson ; the farmer appears to have imagined all moral delinquencies to be condoned by his mere occasional attendance at church. 448 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. " ' Parson's a-bean loikewoise, an' a-sittin' 'ere o' my bed. "The Amoighty's a-taakin' o' you to iss6n, my friend," a said, An' a towd ma my sins, an's toithe were due, an' I gied it in hond ; I done moy duty by 'un, as I 'a' done by the lond. " ' Larn'd a ma' bea. I reckon I annot sa mooch to lam. But a cost oop, thot a did, 'boot Bessy Harris's barn. Thof a knaws I hallus voated wi' Squoire, an' Choorch, an' Staate, An' i' the worst o' toimes I wur niver agin the raate. ** 'An' I hallus coom'd to's choorch afoor moy Sally wur dead. An' 'eerd 'un bummin' awaay loike a buzzard clock * ower my yead. And I niver knaw'd whot a mean'd but I thout a 'ad summut to saay, An' I thout a said whot a owt to 'a' said, an' I coom'd awaay. " ' Bessy Marris' bam ! tha knaws she laaid it to mea, Mowt 'a' bean, mayhap, for she wur a bad 'un, shea — 'Siver, I kep' 'un, I kep' 'un, my lass, tha mun understond; I done my duty by 'un as I 'a' done by the lond. " ' But, Parson, a comes an' a goos, an' a says it easy and freea, 'The Amoighty's a-taakin' you to issen, my friend,' says 'ea ; I wean't saay men be loiars, thof summun said it in 'aaste : But he reads won sarmin a weeak, an' I 'a' stubb'd Thor naby waaste.' " There is a description, not encouraging, if we could possibly think that it could apply to the like of us and our ministrations : " I 'eerd 'un bummin' * Cockchafer. THE PULPIT IN POETRY AND FICTION. 449 awaay like a cockchafer ower my yead," and I niver knaw'd whot a mean'd but I thout a 'ad summut to saay," etc., etc. We laugh at the farmer, but it is a very fair description of a large per- centage of those who are most regular listeners to sermons. We have often thought that among hearers there is a large class closely resembling " the mollusc." George Henry Lewis, in his most fresh and instruc- tive volume the " Seaside Studies," made these crea- tures a very special object of observation. It is curious that " the mollusc only recognises intensity, loudness. A wave of sound agitates the oolithes in his ear, and their agitation communicates to the ganglion a sensation of sound, loud in proportion to the agitation." Such are many hearers — molluscous men ; we cannot but feel that we do frequently very largely over-estimate the intelligence of our congregations, — - like the mollusc, they appreciate loudness, like the lobster, or the crab, which are, we are told, sensible to the noise of the ever-rolling, ever-moaning sea, but their sense of hearing, so exquisite in us, is insen- sible to all the marvellous inflections of speech ; music would be quite lost on them, deafer than the deafest adder, "charm you ever so wisely;" and such are some men ; they are no more aware that they are ignorant than is the lobster or crab aware of its deafness to melody : these men have the sense of hearing, but they are quite insensible to all that power of music which thrills along other nerves, in Handel's melodious thunder, in Beethoven's involved harmony, in Schubert's wild or choral pathos, in 29 450 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. Mendelssohn's sweet symphony. Molluscous men ! Still we have to preach to these people ; and we can preach to them ; but it is a havd matter, for let the autumn mists creep up along the fields, or the winter snows swathe them, or the spring or summer brightness mantle them in verdure or bloom, it is all the same ; there are men whose feelings are touched with no delicate nor pensive melancholy, nor with any reviving joy. There is no mystery in the bloom, or brightness, or decay of nature ; the stars light up no worlds of wonder to the soul ; the seasons, in their annual round, speak to no sense of the marvellous or the wonderful in them ; their own being they revolve no more than the cattle which ruminate in the fields, and look out at us, as we pass, with their large tender eyes. The last and highest degree of wonder that molluscous man knows is as when a cow stands before a new gate in a field ; if he have thoughts, they do not wander through eternity ; they are " thoughts which perish," even as he, in the language of the Scriptures, is as " the beasts that perish." Our readers are surely well acquainted with the extraordinary poem of Whittier, called " The Preacher ; " it is indeed a very fine essay on some of the features of the old pulpit of New England ; for instance, the portrait of Jonathan Edwards : — " In the Church of the wilderness Edwards wrought, Shaping his creed at the forge of thought ; And with Thor's own hammer welded and bent The iron links of his argument, Which strove to grasp in its mighty span The purpose of God and the fate of man 1 THE PULPIT IN POETRY AND FICTION. 451 Yet faithful still in his daily round To the weak, and the poor, and the sin-sick found. The schoolman's lore, and the casuist's art Drew warmth and life from his fervent heart. Had he not seen in the solitudes Of his deep and dark Northampton woods A vision of love about him fall ? Not the blinding splendour that fell on Saul, But the tenderer glory that rests on them Who walk in the new Jerusalem, Where never the sun nor the moon are known. But the Lord and His love are the light alone 1 And watching the sweet, still countenance Of the wife of his bosom rapt in trance, Had he not treasured each broken word Of the mystical wonder seen and heard ; And loved the beautiful dreamer more That thus to the desert of earth she bore Clusters of Eshcol from Canaan's shore ? " Man has within him a nature which thirsts for living water, sighs for light, longs for a certain sound, and the whole story of the pulpit through all ages is only the story of the efforts made by patient, painful, and earnest men, to supply those infinite desires and wants. To satisfy such desires some of the most glorious and gifted of our race have separated themselves, and set themselves apart. Jonathan Edwards had many of the attributes of all, light, refreshment, and awakening ; very much such a character as the lovely and illustrious Bishop Berkeley, he ran his metaphysics into impossible and unattainable zeniths, and heights. His "Freedom of the Will " is unanswerable, but it is dreadful ; like Hegel, he dealt with the universe and mind as pure thought ; but a tender affectionateness modulates every sentence in his " History of Redemp- 452 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. tion ; " and when he preached, his accents, permeated by deepest feelings, justified to himself by-pro- foundest speculation, harmonised and fitted to his conception of God's purposes and man's respon- sibilities, compelled men to listen, and quiver and tingle through every nerve of their moral being while they listened. Marvellously inconsistent seem some of the moods and powers of the preacher with some of the speculations of the thinker; and wonder- ful, it sometimes seems, that so sweet, seraphic, and tender a nature could have been so severe. Emotion welled up within him, but it fell into the iron cistern and basin of hard imperious logic. Perhaps a little thought will explain the coherence of this remark- able character ; the logical ^possibility prepares the way for Divine possibilities, and assurances of grace, when science only reveals her despair. The supernatural missions of the Spirit, which can never be straitened, become more infinitely bright, sooth- ing, and tender to that part in man which can never be satisfied by sequences and conclusions unless they minister to its infinite hopes. In some way this same contradiction has been felt and transcended by all the greatest souls ; by Luther, in several notable and noble passages ; and, more popularly, by Whitefield, called to sound, and gauge, the moral lapse of his race, and the times in which he lived, and to draw in sharp lines the contrast of human frailty with the perfect law of truth ; and hence Whittier, in the same poem in which he describes Edwards, delineates Whitefield : two friends are walking and talking not far from the old and quiet town ; THE PULPIT IN POETRY AND FICTION 453 *' Awhile my friend with rapid search O'erran the landscape. ' Yonder spire Over grey roofs, a shaft of fire ; What is it, pray ? ' ' The Whitefield Church 1 » Walled about by its basement stones, There rest the marvellous prophet's bones. Lo ! by the Merimack Whitefield stands In the temple that never was made with hands,— Curtains of azure, and crystal wall, And dome of the sunshine over all ! A homeless pilgrim, with dubious name Blown about on the wings of fame ; Now as an angel of blessing classed. And now as a mad enthusiast. Possessed by the one dread thought that lent J Its goad to his fiery temperament, Up and down the world he went, A John the Baptist crying, — Repent 1 Yet he, to whom, in the painful stress Of zeal on fire from its own excess. Heaven seemed so vast, and earth so small That man was nothing, and God was all." This would be all-imperfect — is perhaps imperfect — if we did not remember that the world can well afford a prophet, his soul all on fire, ablaze with zeal for the Lord of hosts, coming down from his rapt communions, and Divine and illuminating perceptions. He may well be hailed, when it is known that man is in a state of fearful aberration from the rectitude and purity of the Divine law ; the immense lapse in the one instance may well permit the fearful thunders of Ezekiel and Nahum to roll in the other ; and preaching never becomes the voice of inspiration to startle and alarm until the infiniteness of Divine law and the infinite consequences of its infractions are perceived. 454 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. Among the very sweet delineations of American ministerial life is that in Mr. Aldrich's " Prudence Palfrey," the description of Parson Wiburd Hawkins' trouble. Poor Parson Hawkins had played his part nearly to the end, but did not perceive that the scene had changed ; he had been prattling innocently to half-averted ears for many a summer and winter ; the parish, as a parish, had become tired of old man Hawkins, although, for fifty years, he had christened, married, and buried them, and now they wanted to get rid of him ; and that day the deacons waited upon him, in the cobwebbed old parsonage, to suggest the expediency of his retirement from active parochial duties ; he was seventy-nine last Thanks- giving ; he had come among them fresh from the university, and had given to them the enthusiasm of his youth and the maturity of his manhood, and it was his prayer that when the angel of the Lord came to call him away, he might be found preaching the word from the pulpit of the old brick church of Rivermouth. But the old, old pulpit, which had been hallowed by a hundred associations, had been removed, — it had been built in King George's time — and eminent divines whose names are fresh in the colonial history had stood under that antiquated sounding board ; that did not matter so much to him, for he did not care whether the Scriptures were expounded from pine, or black walnut ; but now the real trouble had come upon him. Deacons Wendell and Twembly, however, found their mission per- plexing. " We tried to let him down easy," said Deacon Zeb Twembly, " but, Lord bless you, you never see an old gentleman so unwillin', and so hard THE PULPIT IN POETRY AND FICTION. 455 to be let down." But when finally he was made to comprehend the astounding fact that the old brick church of Rivermouth actually wished him to relinquish his pastorate, the aged clergyman bowed his head, and, waving his hands in a sort of bene- diction over the two deacons, retreated slowly, with his chin on his breast, into a little room adjoining the study, leaving these pillars of the Church standing rather awkwardly in the middle of the apartment. For a new generation had come up ; there were young ministers who came along, and talked about one Mr. Darwin. Old Parson Hawkins never talked about this latest of the apostles, Darwin. And then there was that great man, the retired brewer, John Dent, who troubled himself very little with parish affairs, although he contributed very liberally to all the charities, and was always in his pew at the Sunday morning service, although during the sermon, whether it were long or short, brilliant or dull, he invariably went to sleep ; he did not admire the poor old parson warmly, but, if Mr. Dent had loved him, he would have gone to sleep all the same ; there are men who cannot, to save themselves from perdition, keep awake in sermon-time. So the deacons served the notice on old Parson Hawkins, and he went and locked himself in his inner study ; and the hours went on, and he did not come forth ; the stroke had been too much for him. It was evening, and the day was dying, as they broke open the door, and found him sitting, the Bible open on his knee, and his finger seemed to be pointing to the text ; some read it as they peeped over the slanted shoulder, — "Well done, thou good and faithful 456 2HE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. servant ; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord ! " " That was the parson's last text," said Uncle Jedd. " Capital punishment ought to be abolished in New- Hampshire," said Ex-postmaster Snelling, " if they don't hang Deacon Wendell and the rest of 'em ! " " Might as well have took a musket and shot the ole man," observed another. Mr. Snelling was not naturally a sanguinary person, but he had been super- seded in the post office the year before by Deacon Wendell, and flesh is flesh ! This is a suggestive little portrait, but we should not have thought it so applicable to the state of society in America as to that of our country ; with us, it is simply true that the age which is supposed to give ripe wisdom and experience to other professions, when, in the army, men are looking for highest promotion, when the accomplished lawyer expects to exchange the bar for the bench, when, in our English episco- pate, the clergyman expects to be raised to the rank of the bishop, the age of maturity, of wisdom, of fruitful learning, this is the age when the Congre- gational clergyman is cast out as a dry tree ! And this is one of the circumstances which will always depreciate the pulpit, the fact that the old age of the minister is delivered over to years of which he says, " There is no pleasure in them." We suppose the sweetest portrait of a woman preacher is that of Dinah in " Adam Bede ; " indeed, George Eliot is remarkable for the distinct variety of portraits of preachers suspended in the gallery of her pages. What a succession of studies in her " Scenes and Sketches of Clerical Life " ! what portraits of old English vicars and rectors ! what THE PULPIT IN POETRY AND FICTION. 457 likenesses of every order of preacher, from the great Savonarola to the charming Congregationalist minister, Rufus Lyon, in "Felix Holt " ! But Dinah Morris, this is the portrait most impressive of all. We are ourselves almost as much struck with her appearance as the stranger who saw her mount the cart and stood to hear her preach — " the pretty preacher woman," as some of her hearers called her ; no mantling smile of conscious saintship, nor indica- tion of denunciatory bitterness, and nothing of the ecstatic bilious ; walking to the place of preaching as unconsciously as if going to market ; unconscious of her outward appearance, and nothing which said, " I know you think me a pretty woman, too young to preach ; " no casting up or down of the eyelids, no attitude of the arms which said, " You must think of me as a saint." She held no book in her ungloved hands, but let them hang down, lightly crossed before her, as she stood, and turned her grey eyes on the people. There was no keen- ness in the eyes ; they seemed to be rather shedding love than making observations. It is a very charming portrait, and many artists, since the pub- lication of " Adam Bede," have attempted on the canvas to realise Dinah Morris to the eye. And the words and the sermons of Dinah are among the sweetest of words. " Think what it is not to hate anything but sin ; to be full of love to every creature ; to be frightened at nothing ; to be sure that all things will turn to good ; not to mind pain, because it is our Father's will ; to know that nothing — no, not if the earth was to be burnt up, or the waters to come and drown us — nothing 458 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. could part us from God, who loves us, and who fills our souls with peace and joy, because we are sure that whatever He wills is holy, just, and good. Take this blessedness ; it is offered to you ; it is the good news that Jesus came to preach to the poor. It is not like the riches of this world, so that the more one gets the less the rest can have ; God is without end ; His love is without end. ** * Its streams the whole creation reach. So plenteous is the store ; Enough for all, enough for each. Enough for evermore ! ' " And perhaps we shall not be wandering from the immediate topic of this chapter when we say that, as to poetry and what is called fiction, the Bible is altogether written in a language now, to us, very greatly incoherent and unknown. Bishop Warburton has said in his " Divine Legation of Moses," " The old Asiatic style, so highly figurative, seems, by what we find of its remains in the prophetic language of the sacred writings, to have been evidently fashioned to the mode of the ancient hieroglyphics, both curiologic and tropical ; of the second kind, which answers to the tropical hiero- glyphic, is the calling empires kings, and nobles by the names of the heavenly luminaries, — the sun, moon, and stars ; their temporary disasters, or entire overthrow, by eclipses and extinctions ; the destruc- tion of the nobility by stars falling from the firma- ment ; hostile invasions by thunder and tempestuous winds ; the leaders of armies, conquerors, and founders of empires, by lions, bears, leopards, goats. THE PULPIT IN POETRY AND FICTION 459 or high trees. In a word, the prophetic style seems to be speaking hieroglyph." No doubt there is much truth in all this, and it is wonderful that we have no single work, so far as we are aware, worthy to be called adequate and harmonious on the figurative language of the Bible ; and most men have spoken without any key to its long-forgotten and mystic meanings. CHAPTER XVI. SOME VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE FROM A PREACHERS POINT OF VIEW. TPIE pulpit is a Christian institution ; Gibbon, the satirist, the historian, and the slanderer of early Christianity, says, " The custom of preaching which seems to constitute a considerable part of Christian devotion had not been introduced into the temples of antiquity, and the ears of monarchs were never invaded by the harsh sounds of popular elo- quence until the pulpits were filled with sacred orators, who possessed some advantages unknown to their profane predecessors." Such is Gibbon's sar- castic way of stating the fact of the rise and origin of preaching in the world. It was derived from no precedent nor example in the schools of Greece and Rome ; it emanated from the example and commis- sion of our Lord. In the brief period during which Julian the Apostate cast down the youthful Church, and permitted the empire, in the language of Gibbon, to breathe the air of freedom of literature and paganism, Julian himself sought to institute preaching for the purpose of teaching the doctrines of paganism and idolatry. Of course such an insti- tution for paganism would be, must be impossible. Preaching is an eminently spiritual power ; as its VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 461 spiritual functions fade, it dies down into the merest machinery. Paganism and Atheism are little better than exhausted air-receivers. The wings of faith and noble speech can find no vivacity nor movement. But in all ages of Christianity, and especially in all the more living ages, it has been the aegis, the palladium, and almost, it may be said, the oracle of the Church. It is confidently affirmed, however, on many hands, that the pulpit is almost an institution of the past ; that it will not long survive ; that its triumphs are now rather apparent than real ; that immense masses of the population, and the intelligence and wealth of the nations, never come beneath its influence at all ; that it has felt the pressure of the highly fascinating literature of our age ; that its diminished power is proportioned to, if not caused by the diminished reverence for the Sabbath ; that the very practical character of the age impairs its influence ; that, in a word, the pulpit no longer sways the imperial sceptre it once held over manners and morals in society, conscience, thought, and character. It has even been said that oratory is a lost art ; that modern eloquence cannot exhibit the glorious perfection of olden times ; that Greece had her Demosthenes, and Rome her Cicero, but that no speakers in modern times can be pronounced their equals ; — we may leave the senate and the bar to find their own vindicators, but we scarcely feel that the pulpit has occasion for so mournful an elegy ; it may be granted that, though there are few living orators, the most recent times have known extraordinary men ; we need no more hesitate 462 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. to refer again and again to Robert Hall than the admirers of classical times to refer again and again to Demosthenes. And yet far be it from us to depreciate the work of the ministry ; it seems as if the pulpit had fallen upon evil times ; there are other hearers like old Gridly Byles, in Dr. Holmes' novel, who used to go to church, and listen to the preaching of the Rev. Mr. Sloker, because he did not believe a word of Mr. Sloker's favourite doctrines, but then he liked to go there " because it gave him the opportunity of growling to himself during the sermon, and to go home growling and scolding all the way about it." Something different is Ralph Waldo Emerson's opinion of preaching. He says, " It is a physician conquering his audience by infusing his soul into them, and hence," he continues, " I do not know of any kind of history, except the event of a battle, to which people listen with more interest than to any anecdote of eloquence, and the wise think it better than a battle. You may find the orator as a physician in some lowly Bethel by the seaside, where a hard-featured, scarred, and wrinkled Methodist becomes the poet of the sailor and the fisherman, whilst he pours out the abundant streams of his thought through a language all glittering and fiery with imagination, a man who never knew the looking-glass or the critic, a man whom college drill or patronage never made, and whom praise cannot spoil." This beautiful eulogy upon preaching and the pulpit from the great sage of Concord, whose testimony is above all suspicion, most likely refers VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 463 to Father Taylor, whose first ministrations were among the rough fishermen of Marblehead, while his finished and polished eulogist was pursuing his brief ministry in Boston. We are not likely to forget, many, many years since, when a very young man, being called to preach at St. Ives, in Cornwall, a sort of English Cape Cod ; and the reading of that charming little New England sea idyl and gem of genius, " The Cape Cod Folk," reminded us of the people we saw in Cornwall then ; we remember, shortly after we arrived, walking through the town, and we strolled into a very large Methodist chapel ; the body of the church was full, from five to seven hundred people, fishers, miners, their wives, mothers, sisters, and children, all on their knees. When we entered all was still ; there seemed to be no leader ; there was no voice ; presently a voice, a clear, sweet, matured voice struck up — and all the six or seven hundred joined, — *' I'm glad I am converted, Ye followers of the Lamb I Sing on, pray on, followers of Emmanuel f Sing on, pray on, followers of the Lamb ! " There was a pause — silence — we expected to hear a voice in prayer, but from another part of the chapel another voice struck up — and again all joined, — " I'm going to see the Saviour, You're going to see the Saviour, We're going to see the Saviour, Followers of the Lamb ! Sing on, pray on, followers of Emmanuel! Sing on. pray on, followers of the Lamb ! " ,464 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. It seemed all inexpressibly sweet, so simple, no effort ; the voices rose and fell like the tides of a quiet sea. There followed some words of medi- cine for the soul, like those of which Mr. Emerson speaks ; then some two or three prayers, very brief, live coals from the altar, only a few sentences ; and then as all were on their knees, some voice struck up that old refrain, — old now, but heard by us for the first time then, — ah, so many, so many years ago ! This also was a woman's voice which led the song, " Come to Jesus — just now I He will save you — ^just now I I bellQve it— just now I " Perhaps we take a liberty in describing these scenes of a warm religious life, but the memory seems so simple and so sweet, so natural and so good, and contrasts so lovably with the rude Salvation Armyism to which we have become accus- tomed. We think Emerson would have enjoyed that service in the old Cornish chapel. What is the work of the minister "i Beyond ! Beyond ! " We want a beyond everywhere." Did not Jacobi well define man to be " a yonder-sided animal " .-* and this was never much better put than by the old sailor in one of George MacDonald's fictions, who said, " I ain't a bit frightened of our parson ; I'll tell you why, sir ; he's got a good telescope, and he gets to the masthead, and he keeps a good look-out, and he sings out, * Land ! land ahead ! ' or * Breakers ahead ! ' and he gives direc- tions accordin'." We say, at the risk of shocking VARTETTFS OF CLERICAL LIFE. 465' our readers, that we give to natural theology, and to the doctrines and utility of natural theology, the very smallest portion of our faith. Of course we believe in the deductions of the unity, per- sonality, beneficence, and wisdom of God from the fields of nature ; but it is very clear, to our mind, that neither of these deductions would be very possible without revelation. Perhaps it would be possible from the book of nature to prove the converse of the unity, personality, beneficence, and wisdom of God. Nature seems to say very contradictory things. The light is cheerful, but the lightning is terrible ; the rain freshens, but the hailstorm frightens ; we can wish to walk upon the wings of the wind, but who would wish to walk through the halls and the secret places of thunder .'' The ocean is calm and glorious, but we have seen a brave vessel go down ; it melted like a snowflake, and every soul perished. The vintage of Italy is gay and merry, but the fires of the Phlegraean fields are fierce ; and the legends of Vesuvius are neither few, nor comfortable. Nature is a great contra- diction. We cannot but fancy sometimes that we see some spiteful demon destroying her intelligence and her beauty. We walk into our garden, and see the blight upon our beanstalk, the rot at our potato root. If we fly to the arctic realms, we perish in huge empires of ice ; if we make our hut beneath the rich gums and trees of the south, the tiger leaps on us from the jungle, the cobra or the constrictor from the tree ! All creatures are at war with each other. Sometimes the whole world seems to us to be a drop of stagnant water 30 466 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. in the universe, or a great spider's web. We look, and behold a huge Midgard serpent coiling round the whole world — our planet. It is plain there have obtruded powers into our world not Divine. Deny the existence of a devil if we will, it is still clear to us that there is a malignant element going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it. On the whole, we do not thank nature for her consolations. We have tried them ; they end by turning us into a stoic or a stone. We have interrogated nature ; we see how much she will give us. Go to a weeping widow, or husband, by the side of the dreadful coffin, and carry your volume of natural theology ; if one brought it to us there, mad and frantic, we should throw it into the flames. Go to a cottage in a famine, and talk natural theology ! Go to the poor in a workhouse, and talk natural theology! Read a lecture on natural theology on a battle-field ! Why, it is one of those horrible pieces of wall-eyed cold-stone mockery that would drive a brave heart deaf, dumb, frantic, mad! Beautiful! beautiful! Read some pages of Seneca, Boethius, or Paley, when your house is in flames, your wife dying, your only child lying dead ! Oh soul ! fancy a gospel without the sujferna.tura\ ! Why, God, to such a system of thought, seems to sit upon a throne of glaciers ! Immortality looks like a pathway seen girt and gleaming, but through Alpine snows ! Christ stands before us like a marble statue in a church hoary with the frosts of ages ! Religion is chiselled down to duty, devotion to thinking about God. The human race welters before us like a world full of VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 467 helpless idiots shipwrecked on the frozen zone ; and the Gospel, to mend all, is a messenger of which it may be said, not to the poor, to the wayfaring man is it preached, but to the rational, the polite, the frigid scholar, " is the word of this salvation sent." Now, after such a cheerless faith, the Gospel is like the birth of the Magnet to the nations ; and what a revelation was that ! " Long lay the ocean paths from man concealed ; Light shone from heaven, the magnet was revealed 1 " It has never been the same world since the discovery of the magnet ; and, with all our ample discoveries lately, — printing press, steam, and tele- graph,— let us attempt to conceive what a world it would be if the revelation of the magnet were lost. And is it not wonderful to think of it ? — the vast ocean highway covered with fleets of nations, every ship lying at the mercy of a little dancing needle ! Think of the law of the needle'! the subtle, mystical chemistry, the calculable but inconceivable force which makes the tremulousness of the little bit of steel to be even as a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day to wandering captains. One wonders how they ever managed their seafaring exploits before this discovery. Now what the magnet has been to the commerce of the world, that Christ has been in the revelation of His truth to men. And just as every captain has his own needle on board his ship, and that needle is his nautical creed, just such is faith in Christ to all believers ; but the needle is not the loadstone ; " eye 468 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive " the mysteries of that secret occult North, but every pilot knows where he is, and how he is, by that trembling little presence, and by it he steers right on. So the faiths of individuals, men, and Churches, are no more than needles which have felt the power of the loadstone ; but the measure to which they have felt it gives the law and the rectitude, we would even say the vitality of the steering. Now in our brief recitation of the varieties of preaching life, we need not begin by attempting to recite any of the wild stories of early monkery ; let our readers read them for themselves in Montalem- bert's fascinating " History of the Monks of the West ; " wonderful are the tales of those first preachers, as they set forth on their early enterprises into the woods and forests, — stories like that which is told of GerasimuSj a great preacher, who, having drawn a thorn out of the foot of a lion, was never abandoned by the grateful animal ; the terrible beast laid aside all his bad ways, and lived ever after as a kind of monk and member of the monkish community ; he lived upon milk and boiled herbs, just like the other monks, and he drew water from the spring for the needs of the monastery, and, when his friend, the old Abbot, died, he followed him to the grave, making great lamentations over him all the way. Poor old lion ! converted from his wild and wicked ways and becoming a monk ! It is exactly in stories like this that, somehow, Protestant ministers and preachers seem so inferior to Rome. We have never been able to achieve this kind of success ; we VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 469 read of converted wolves, appearing regularly every night at the hut, exactly at the supper hour, for the remains of the evening repast, licking the hands of the host in gratitude and thankfulness ; we have no such stories ; but the history of Africaner, the mighty African chief, and his conversion by Robert Moffat shows how " Lions and beasts of savage name Put on the nature of the Lamb." We have dealt with these stories somewhat satiri- cally, but, perhaps, could we have been a little nearer than we are to the scenery of the miracle, it might only be that thus was set forth some great human conversion, like that of Africaner, strong as the lion, cruel as the wolf, to whom the preacher's word, used by Divine grace, had given the meekness and docility of the saintly child. But leaving monastic stories and times, we must direct our attention nearer home, and to lives nearer to our own ; and we may, not unusefully, regard a homely kind of character, and a homely eloquence which has sometimes seemed to us at once most pleasant and most effective ; for the monarchs of eloquence are not always seated on the high and ornate throne, and we have often to remember that the occupant of a throne in a little state, while he is as powerful in his own realm, is often more charming than the sceptred autocrat of a boundless empire. But it has often been said that a serious defect in the pulpit method of our day is, that it does not present vivid paintings ; in this singularly unlike our 470 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. old monkish and mediaeval friends. Colouring is not sketching, and many persons in public foolishly suppose that the laying on the canvas of glaring colours charms and delights. Even if it did this, still the question would remain, What is the use of it .'' But, indeed, a very vivid picture may be pre- sented to the eye without any commingling of colours. Mere colours can never interest except for scientific purposes, or ultimate uses. One great object of the preacher should be to interest his audience ; not merely to win their attention, not merely to win their heart, but to hold their intellec- tual and moral nature captive. In all ages and countries men have agreed that this is an object best effected by narrative. The power of parable is very great, and parable and proverb have ever been closely allied together ; indeed, are, and have been almost identical in their signification. There is nothing that can interest the human heart or human understanding of which the preacher may not avail himself. Dramatic composition is held to be the highest and most difficult style of litera- ture ; it includes every style ; it uncurtains the human heart ; it sweeps along on the clouds of descriptive imagery ; it is narrative, and by pathos and by smiles can rivet human sympathies ; it includes wit and humour, as it paints age follies, or launches shafts of scorn upon its vices ; it lays language under contribution, and by the nervous fibres of speech, it is at once sensitive and strong ; and then, to crown all, it inflates the whole with the actor's mighty breath and vehemency of feeling. Now, in all this, we have mentioned no single VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 471 particular unsuited to the pulpit ; nay, these are the characteristics needed for the pulpit. The preacher should be a dramatist ; he fails in effect merely by aiming at that which is more difficult. If he would unaffectedly describe a scene in a cottage, if he would particularise some incident from a bed- chamber, or a parlour, from a workshop, or a garden, or a corn-field, from a factory, or a workhouse, he would win more attention than by lingering long over some abstract proposition, and, in attempting to put it before a congregation, winning for himself a character for learned dulness. We have heard how Jonathan Edwards first had his attention directed to the importance of style in the pulpit. That stern, granitic genius, than whom no man ever seemed farther away from the floral wreaths of fancy and the pictures of poetry, read Richardson's pages, and they convinced him that it was necessary to be careful, not merely for the truth, but for the style in which the truth is pre- sented; not merely for the diamond, but the setting; not merely for the painting, but for the frame. We think what Jonathan Edwards did not disdain to do, inferior preachers may study a little. The novelists ! Look at the writings of Bulwer, espe- cially " The Caxtons " and " My Novel." Look at the writings of Dickens, especially " Bleak House " and the " Old Curiosity Shop." Don't tell us they are novels. We know they are called so, and we know you read them. Now close them, and tell us how it is that books like these have an audience so vast and wonderful. Our impression is that we might carry the method of the parable, the vivacity 472 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. of narrative and dialogue, into the pulpit — put our great truth into a form in which the multitudes may apprehend it. In reply to all which, it will be said, " You set your standard every way too high. In the first place consider," it will be replied, " that the inventiveness of genius which can construct parables, and invest abstract principles with the attractive graces of narrative, is very rare ; in the next place, remember that the people are not usually far in advance. Do not attempt too much, or all good designs will prove abortive." Replying to the last item first. Medio- crity, it is most true, is the characteristic of the multitudes, yet " the common people heard Christ gladly," because He spoke in pictures, and adaptation should be the study of the preacher ; his aim should be to present something for every mind and taste, and if he be fitted for his station, he will be able to do it. It is also true we have no right to expect more than respectable mediocrity in most ministers. We have no right to expect great fancy, great imagi- nation, great profundity, or great breadth. Well, we will now venture to give utterance to what will seem to many a piece of moral delinquency. Let the minister who feels his own deficiency, who longs to present clear pictures before his people, but finds his mental inability, study to become an accom- plished thief; let him study well the beautiful fables of Krummacher and Lessing, and ponder well the delightful verses of glorious George Herbert. He will most likely be able to translate from their easy Latin the " Sentences " of St. Bernard. All of these VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 473 are richly suggestive. Surely he knows that noble old folio, " Adams on Peter," full of quaint sugges- tion, allegoric allusion, and practical application. To mediocrity we would say, Never mind Jeremy Taylor, never mind Burke ; their gorgeousness and learned allusion will be useless to you and to your audiences. Stick to Adams on Peter, and his volumes of sermons ; he will do you and yours more good than South or Barrow, and infinitely more good than Robert Hall, or Dr. M'All. You will obtain pictures and ideas which will stick upon the memories of your villagers, and lead you away into many another analogy which shall be wholly yours. Elnathan Parr is another of those old writers whose fulness informs minds that desire piously to present a truth which yet they cannot altogether beat out. Arrowsmith is a writer capable of instructing all, and his method and his figures are very pertinent and suggestive, while John Smith of Essex (not of Cambridge — he is a man of another mark) will supply any ordinary preacher with parables for a lifetime. Yes, there are many men to whom we should say, Be accomplished thieves ; to know how to steal gold, and work it up into jewels, is only second to the art of digging the gold from the vast mines of thought. The humble preacher who seeks only to enlighten his own audience, whose sermon uttered is done with, may use materials which he must not use who occupies such a position that all his words are regarded as absolutely his own, and who perhaps carries to the press the words spoken on the Sabbath. Suppose, then, we had the advent of a Gough 474 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. into our English pulpits. What would that do for religion and the Churches ? In the first place, we have to say we are not pleading for any abnormal, excited, and spasmodic action. We want a course of teaching sustained, dignified, and influential. We travelled two hundred miles on purpose to hear John Gough, and we heard him — and heard him to advantage — heard him repeat all the good things we had read twenty times before. By all fairness of criticism he must be tried by a very high standard. Who ever before achieved such a fame as he in the most intelligent and cautious nation on the earth, in the most intelligent age t He has in every town spoken to thousands of persons, the charges for admission being as high as to the most respectable theatres. If the greatness of the audience be any test of the greatness of the man, then John Gough is one of the most eminent orators the world has seen since the days of Whitefield.* We speak in no captiousness, in no unkindness. We are thankful for all the truth our orator has spoken in our country to so many — perhaps we are not exaggerating when we say — millions of people. Still, our inquiry now is with this as a method of public teaching, and it is obvious, in the first place, that the discourses of Mr. Gough are merely recitations. If during his residence in England he has spoken five hundred times, it is certain that he has not given a dozen separate lectures; they merit the character of power- fully acted, and telling anecdotes. What has most * It is unnecessary to say that this was written long before the popular temperance orator had entered into his rest. VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE, 475 amazed us, after the most amazing fact that a man with his heart fully alive to his subject, and feeling its importance deeply, which we do not for one moment doubt, but most cordially and thoroughly believe, should be able to repeat — again, and again, and again, for probably thousands of times — the same stories, without serious deterioration to his whole moral nature — after this we are amazed at the absence of all spontaneity — that such an im- pulsive nature as an actor's may be supposed to be, with language at command, should never find it surging or heaving for utterance before those mighty and magnificent audiences who have hung for hours on his lips ; and we have been amazed too at the absence of all the higher forms of power for which the greatest orators have ever held a reputation, and which so especially distinguish our own speakers — • Brougham, Lyndhurst, Canning, George Thompson, William Fox, Thomas Binney, James Parsons. With any of these great speakers how preposterous would be the comparison of John Gough ! All circumstances being equal, let us select any one of these, and let the two speak together, Gough reciting one of his old melodramas, and it is possible that his might be the palm of praise, though we doubt even this under such circumstances ; but let him stand by the side of any one of these men to pronounce a new oration, or an impromptu speech, and there is not one before whom his fame would not be shrivelled, and parched up like a scroll : and surely variety, adaptation, and impromptu power are among the tests of popular oratory ? No wit, no imagina- tion, no flow of eloquent words, no power even of 476 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. verbal painting, — it is incessant, and most exagge- rated action. We have no objection to action, — we would that, in its proper degree, we had more of it ; but the true orator will not only have his moods of vehement physical action, he will also have his moods of mighty passion, when, like the air before the thunderstorm, a profound silence will presage the tempest — when the leaves will scarcely seem to stir — when, like himself, the audience will feel the stifling heat of suppressed sensations, and know that the hushed and subdued manner is indeed the prelude and promise of swift, arrowy lightnings, and crashing, fiery bolts. It is true that " action is eloquence," but not always ; silence is eloquence, but not always ; but feeling is always eloquence. Mighty effects have ere now been produced in pulpit and on platform by a subdued manner. It has been usual to commend action for effects which in fact were the result of feelings which gave vitality to the action. Coleridge remarks, " Schiller has the material sublime to pro- duce an effect : he sets you a whole town on fire, and throws infants with their mothers into the flames, or locks up a father in an old tower ; but Shakespeare drops a handkerchief, and the same or greater effects follow."* May we not say indeed, that, in proportion as the orator has occasion to tax physical energies to give effect to his words, his words are defi- cient in the true Divine afflatus and breath } Well, we do not dogmatically assert this, but it is true, with some slight reservation. A truly wonderful orator, * " Table Talk." VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 477 as we have seen, was the great Jonathan Edwards ! It seems difficult to conceive it, but he was an orator beyond any we have ever, perhaps, heard speak. He stood motionless in the pulpit, resting upon it the arm whose hand held the little manu- script book close to his eyes, while the other made the few gestures in which he ventured to indulge ; but he could keep an audience, assembled to hear a morning sermon, rapt and unconscious, until the rays of the setting sun streamed through the church windows. Wonderful, as we have elsewhere said, are the instances related of his power. Cold indifferent- ism was roused from its careless apathy when he preached. Once, on being requested to discourse at Enfield, U.S., where he was a stranger, to an assembly so indifferent to religion as to be even regardless of the decency of silence during his prayer, he had not half finished his sermon before the startled sinners, having already passed through the valley of silence, began to wail and weep so bitterly that he could not go on for their distress. " These," says Rufus Gris- wold, " are triumphs of eloquence not dreamed of by such as deem themselves masters of the art from reading the foolish recipe ascribed to Demosthenes." George Gilfillan says of this great man, " He reminded you of Milton's line, — " * The ground bums frore. And cold performs the efifect of fire.* A signal instance of this is recorded. A large con- gregation, including many ministers, were assembled to hear a popular preacher, who did not fulfil his appointment. Edwards was selected to fill his place, principally because, being in the habit of reading his 478 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. discourses, he happened to have a sermon ready in his pocket. He ascended the pulpit accordingly, amid almost audible marks of disappointment from the audience, whom, however, respect for the abilities and character of the preacher prevented from leaving the church. He chose for his text, 'Their foot shall slide in due time,* and began to read in his usual quiet way. At first he had barely their attention ; by-and bye he succeeded in riveting every one of them to his lips ; a few sentences more, and they began to rise by twos and threes ; a little farther,^ and tears were flowing ; at the close of another, particular deep groans were heard, and one or two went off in fits ; and ere he reached the climax of his terrible appeals, the whole audience had risen up in one tumult of grief and consternation. And, amid all this, there stood the calm, imperturbable man, reading on as softly and gently as if he were in his own study. And, in reading the sermon, we do not wonder at the impression it produced upon an audience consti- tuted as that audience must have been. It is a succession of swift thunder-claps, each drowning and deafening the one which preceded it. We read it once to a distinguished savant, who, while dis- approving of its spirit, was compelled, literally, to shiver under the ' fury of its power.'" * But we may be sure of one thing : in Edwards, if there were no action, there was feeling. Action is as often the simulation of feeling as the reality of it ; but where there is neither reality nor simulation, there will be no effect. Carry ice to ice, and ice * " Sketches of Modern Literature and Eminent Literary Men." London, 1845. VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE, 479 remains ; but if you rub even ice against ice, the friction will produce heat : so sometimes a cold soul in a heated body has roused other cold souls ; but without heat of some kind never yet did any mortal kindle a hearer. And Gough has dropped two or three hints which ought not to be thrown away upon us. He has shown to us the force of physical earnestness ; he has shown to us the power of narra- tive and anecdote. We have no fault to find on the score of bad taste, bad grammar, or any other of the bad things which are of an inferior order in influenc- ing the public mind : let all these go. It is true, we think, that we have had in England, for many years, many men who have been in the habit of speaking quite as well as John Gough on the same subject, and, all circumstances considered, perhaps very much better. In looking at him we can learn how impossible it is to convey adequate ideas of living and speaking orators to future ages. Actors and orators "die and make no sign." Gough is Whitefield reft of his inspiration. Were he inspired more, he would act less. We heard him, and cer- tainly he never made us shiver nor shudder. We followed the butterfly up Vesuvius ; it was admirably done. We saw the boat go over the rapids of Niagara — the ripple and the roar of the mighty hurricane of waters — the shout from the banks — the flow of the mighty tide of death ! We greatly admired the whole scene. The terrible struggle of the poor spell-bound spirit pawing his hands to keep off the demons in delirium tremens. It was very effective and scenic, but what detracted from it was that we knew it all before. Everything said com- 48o THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. mended itself to us. Many of the strokes were very powerful, but nothing appeared to us of a high cast of oratory. We have known, while listening, the shiver and the shudder, the creeping of the blood and the tingling of the nerves, the swaying of the senses and the blood, the boiling of the brain and the heart, but we sat unmoved while our actor was striding to and fro ; and mentally we had resolved that how- ever taking the style might be, for ultimate efficiency nothing could be conceived more useless than the style of John Gough. We knew one man, a most Socratic teacher — we wish we could say we knew many such, but we only knew one. Everybody loved him, but nobody suspected that he was great. He seemed to reach celestial goodness without labouring along the trani- road of the intellect. We think nature gave him little besides an overflowing heart, but God poured into the fulness of this overflowing heart a wonderful portion of His own Spirit. All this, and, perhaps, nothing more ! Yet it is very astonishing what power there was in his words, and the words were always flowing — flow, flow, flow, always flowing ; they had no richness, no arrangement, no mental method, but they were always flowing — as freely in the street talking with a poor old woman as on the platform, — as freely in the cottage, beneath the shade of domestic sorrow, or the light of domestic joy, as in the pulpit. This man did not think that best words should be kept for best occasions. He used fitting words on fitting occasions, and used them without an effort ; and we must say, spite of all the talk of profound preparation, that the discourse must VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 481 be greatest that leaps unbidden to the lips, and starts forth without effort. He had travelled much in many kingdoms, and parts of the world, and there are few towns in England in which he has not preached ; and we think he never spoke without opening the great fountains of tears ; — but what we marvel at is that this constant play on the fountains of tears never marred the innocence and simplicity of his own nature. He was as natural as a flower, or a child. Some people said, " Ah ! but how simple he is ! " Would to God that all the Lord's people were simple ! We are sadly afraid that is a fault that will never be laid at your door, or ours, brother. And then he was as wise as a serpent, too, with all his simplicity — a very frequent com- bination, that of great shrewdness with great open- heartedness. Now we will tell our readers how he preached. They shall hear two or three sermons : — He was walking on the banks of a canal, and a boat had been dragging wearily along, and now for some reason was stopping. "Good-morning," said our friend to the bargeman. Good-morning." (A rather gruff reply.) " Well, to-morrow will be Sunday — a day of rest for you. I suppose you don't work Sundays, do you ? " " No ! hang it all ! we work hard enough, but not quite so bad as that." " Ah, well, I'm glad to hear it. You have a little rest. You read a little, now — the New Testament, I should think "i " " No ; can't say as I do. I reads the newspaper a bit." " Well, the newspaper is very interesting, isn't it ^ And what do you like best in it .? " " Oh ! I looks over it all. I like to see how things go on everywhere 31 482 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER, a bit. There's the Duke of Welhngton's dead, and heaps o' things." "Well, now, my friend, do you know I know you, and I have formed a bad opinion of you ? " " Well, what for ? I don't know that I care much about it, though." " Why, because you've behaved badly to your Father. Now, not to say any more, there's the letter your Father wrote to you, and you've never opened it and never read it." " Well, I don't know who you be ; but that's a lie, anyhow. Why, I never had but one letter from the old man, and I read that ever so carefully. I couldn't spell it very well, but I made it out ; and I got the old man's letter now." " I can't help what you say, my friend. I say you've treated your Father badly — never read His letter, and such an important letter, too ! " " Well, I don't know who you be, and I'm sure you don't know who I be if you say 1 treated Father badly. Why, I looked after the old man as long as he lived, and I tried to do my duty to him." "Ah! my friend, I'll tell you. God's your Father, and the New Testament is God's letter to you ; and here you tell me you spend Sunday in reading newspapers, full of things in which you are not at all interested, and neglecting the New Testament, so full of all that must do you good. Think of your Father's letter. Shake hands. Good-morning. Don't forget your Father's letter." Another time he was walking down the streets of a city. He heard a man swearing very badly ; he stopped, took a little book from his pocket, went up to the man : — " My friend, will you have a little book ? " " No ; VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 483 I've got no money for books." " But I'll give it you, if you'll accept it."" " Oh ! well, I don't mind, then." " Is that your wife .? " " Yes." " Will you allow me to give her a little book ? " " Why, you're very good ; yes, if you like." " And have you got any children .? " " Yes ; two." " Now I should like to' give you a book each for them." " Well, it's very kind of you ! What are you giving away these books like this for.?" "Why, I'll tell you: it's because I heard you speaking very shamefully to a Friend of mine." " Come, master ; you're wrong there — I don't know any friend of yours." " Ah ! perhaps not ; but you spoke very badly to Him ! " " Well, I don't believe it I " " Why, God is my Friend — the loving God ; and you were calling on Him just now to damn you, and to damn your wife. God is my Friend. Now, I'm going to ask you to do something." " What's that .? " " Try not to swear again." " Lor' bless you ! it's no use tryin'. Bless you, I couldn't leave off, nohow." " Try — ■ come, try to leave off swearing." After a time he said, " Well, I'll try." " That is right ; now, remem- ber, there are four witnesses — me, your wife, your heart, and our Friend ! Shake hands. Good- morning ! " Another time, staying in a town for a few days, a gentleman said, " We have a number of Irish here, and we have Irish Testaments, but we cannot get at them to distribute ; now do you come with us, and try and preach." So they went, but it seemed they were likely to go in vain. The Irish were a rough race, and they wouldn't hear a word. " Qhat do you mane," they said, " be comin' to the likes 00 uz ? Go 484 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER, and prache to your own ; they want it bad enuf, and bad luck to you ! " Another said, " Now, if the gentleman's got a showl in him, he'll go up and see poor Katie Donovan; shure she's lost her man entirely." So upstairs he went, and said a good word to the poor widow, and gave her a shilling. Presently he came back again, and it had got wind about that he had been kind to poor Katie ; and he tried to speak, and was very likely to get a hearing, when one, more pertinacious than the rest, shouted out, " If we hear ye spake now, sure, can ye tell us what was the first word that Adam ever spoke .-• " " Well," said our cunning friend, " perhaps I can tell you that too, if ye'll wait a bit. Wouldn't it be ' Erin go bragh ' "i " said he. " Hear him — hear him ! " said they: "this is the rt£-k^ potato — this is a broth of a boy ! Sure he's Irish altogether ! " " Now," said our friend to the man who had been most annoying, "can you read Irish?" "Shure he could do that, anyhow !" "Would he read a bit of real illegant Irish ? " " Yes ! " And so our friend inveigled him into reading a chapter from the New Testament, which he expounded to them when the reading was over. Do our readers inquire who was this Socratic talker .? It was the simple, unintellectual, tear-compelling Richard Knill. And his is a power to be envied — this easy home- liness of manner : all admire it, but few possess it. Yet this is the most useful gift. We dare venture to say that a man who has this vital, and organic, and unstudied aptitude constantly about, and in him, will achieve more than the greatest masters of rhe- toric ; indeed, rhetoric in its highest forms is only an VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 485 attempt to reach this — this power to leave an im- pressive word on the memory, and to speak such a word in the faith that it does contain the elements of real power — power to arouse consciousness — power to produce conviction — power to re-create the whole character. Nor are such men unfitted to deal with a higher order of mind ; for they possess a principle of instinctive adaptation. Sympathy is instinctive in its law, and in its operation ; it finds its way by stretching out its feelers ; for it is all eye, all touch, because all heart ; while that bright intelligence, which we expect to do so much, is often horny-eyed because horny-hearted. It may be difficult to address great multitudes of persons on some ordinary topic in an ordinary manner ; it is still more difficult to address children, or simple and lowly natures ; but the most difficult thing is to address all people at all times, in streets, in lanes, and in cottages ; and the man who can do this efficiently is a model preacher. This is, perhaps, what the apostle meant when he spoke of the word of wisdom in the teacher. Among the lesser-known essays and remains of Robert Hall is a memoir of Thomas Toller, of Kettering, a piece characterised by Mr. Hall's beauty of language, but, we have always thought, more remarkable for the discriminative contrast he draws between two men, of whom he says, " It has rarely been the privilege of one town, and that not of con- siderable extent, to possess at the same timiC, and for so long a period, two such eminent men as Thomas Toller and Andrew Fuller ; " and the contrast he draws between these two contemporaneous ministers is not only very graphic, but, more than that, it 486 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. suggests in a very pleasing manner the great varieties of ministerial character and usefulness. The men were both very eminent, and equally eminent, in their different orders ; but, while Mr. Toller devoted himself to those aspects of Christian truth which come more in contact with the imagination and the feelings, exerting a sovereign ascendency over these emotional parts of our nature, Mr. Fuller attempted to examine with microscopic accuracy the separating boundary lines of truth and error. Hence, Mr. Toller overwhelmed his hearers with his pathos, — Mr. Fuller bore them away by his arguments : in listening to the one man, one feels one's self in the grasp of a strong intellect ; listening to the other, we feel ourselves irresistibly yielding to the contagion of his sensibility. Beneath Andrew Fuller one was compelled to listen to trains of thought ; beneath Thomas Toller we were compelled to trains of emotion. Both men were fertile in illustration ; Mr. Fuller's was employed for the more practical comprehension of the subject, Mr. Toller's for the purpose of moving the affections. Andrew Fuller employed himself most in searching out the subter- fuges of hypocrisy, and exposing fallacious pretensions of religion ; he ranged round the terrific region of Sinai, or "sat as a refiner's fire ;" — Mr. Toller never got out of sight of Calvary, and the august Sufferer there ; he was most in his element when exhibiting the consolations of Christ, when dispelling the fears of death, and unveiling the prospects of eternity. Andrew Fuller was what we call a public man, a practical man, ready for all visitation and converse at any time ; — Mr. Toller had a relish for society, VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 487 and shone in it, but it had to be of his own order, and where he could feel that he was perfectly at home; he would not devote much time to ministerial visits ; he had a natural delicacy and reserve, which led him even to quote the language of the apostle as the justification of his conduct, — " Is any sick among you ? let him call for the elders of the Church." Thus Andrew Fuller lived for the world, Thomas Toller for his congregation, his family, and his friends. Mr. Fuller inferred the character of men from their creed ; Mr. Toller was almost disposed to lose sight of their creed in their character. What a charming contrasted parallel such divergent, and divaricating characters afford ! and it is not less interesting to notice that Robert Hall, the friend who drew the delineations of character, certainly united in himself very many of the best attributes of both, and while, no doubt, where his character diverged it leaned over to that of Thomas Toller, he combined in a larger amplitude the characters of each. We have referred to it here to notice it as singular that one obscure little town should, for so many years, have retained two such remarkable pulpit lights ; at the same time, it sug- gests how various pulpit character may be, and as useful as various. Let men say what they will, when the throne is set on the great white cloud, and when the books are opened, it is from the ranks of the ministry, through all the ages of the Church, that there will be called forth those who have most illustriously and unselfishly served the world ; let the minister magnify his office ; it is to be feared that it 488 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER, has become a diminuendo in our day, and it seems that it has Httle opportunity of obtaining significance unless it serve on boards or committees, and re- present the ovations of wealth. How singular that the pastors of great and wealthy Churches are seldom masters in the pulpit, and have not attained to the splendours of the throne. Thomas Lynch, the most seminal preacher of our time, probably never spoke to a congregation of more than two or three hundred ; the church of Frederick Robertson, the man whose words have gone out into all the earth and to the end of the world, was, in his time, a poor small building in an out-of-the-way corner of Brighton, not equal to many a Primitive Methodist chapel. These are the men who have been as a spectacle to the world, to men, and to angels. Oh, we know the exceptions ! ambitious popes, cardinals, and priests ; wealthy rectors, who have wrapped themselves in the robes of a spiritual office that they might clutch the munificence of worldly temporali- ties ; but what are these ? a scantling compared with the crowds of the poor unhonoured labourers — the real cloud of witnesses. We know what is a poor book of biography ; but Avhat biographies are so interesting as ministerial biographies .-' Yes, on the whole, — on the whole, — these are they who have kept the moral and spiritual instincts of the world alive. Catholic priests, Primitive Methodist ministers, Congregationalists of every order, Quakers, preachers of the Society of Friends, full of errors, full of in- firmities ; what then are the laity, who have reaped the world's honours and wealth t Pieces of Parian loveliness, and Phydian perfection ! — But VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 489 those were the men who jeopardised their lives on the high places of the field ; those are the men who, in all ages, have turned the world upside down ; usually, they have been, especially in England, only a kind of superior, privileged, and tolerated pauper ; scanty the income, and, often, glowering the official who paid it, but, in fact, the true minister cannot be paid ; he has drawn a bill in faith in the morning of the Resurrection ; he believes it will be honoured then ; here, and there, is one who has fallen, although a good and conscientious man, on what seems a good thing ; that is, he has eloquence, wit, and tact which, had they been em- ployed at the bar, would have secured him perhaps twenty or thirty thousand a year, possibly a place in the peerage. What are the rewards of the artist, of the physician, of the merchant ? Think of Charles Kingsley ; think of Horace Bushnell ; think of Lyman Beecher ; think of Andrew Reed ; think of James Parsons ; think of Robert Hall ; think of Jonathan Edwards ; think of George Herbert ; think of John Elliot ; think of David Brainerd ; think of Frederick Faber ; think of Thomas Lynch ; think of William Channing ; think of Thomas Chalmers ; think of Edward Irving ; think of Frederick Robertson ; think, think, think ! Oh, we are compassed about by a great cloud of witnesses ! Come, barristers, artists, merchants, physicians, unveil your heavens, and show to us, if you can, so great a throng of the illustrious, the existent, although invisible, dead ! Look up ! Most of them lived the lives of martyrs, fighting off, or fighting with poverty for Christ's sake. Think of the varieties of ministerial character ; think of the 490 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. missionary : is not he a minister ? — think of Living- stone, who pushed on his great enterprises for Christ's sake ; for what was his motto ? " The end of the geographical feat is the beginning of the missionary- enterprise ! " Think of Adoniram Judson ; think of his great, his noble, painful, and much-enduring life ! We like to read an extract from one of his letters to his first wife, before they were married, and started for India. " What a great change," he writes, " will this year probably make in our lives ! How very different will be our situation and employ- ment ! If our lives are preserved, and our attempt prospered, we shall, next New Year's Day, be in India, and perhaps wish each other a happy new year in the uncouth dialect of Hindoostan, or Burmah. We shall no more see our kind friends around us, or enjoy the conveniences of civilised life, or go to the house of God with those who keep holy- day ; but swarthy countenances will everywhere meet our eyes, the jargon of an unknown tongue will meet our ears, and we shall witness the assembling of the heathen to worship idol gods. We shall be weary of the world, and wish for wings like a dove that we may fly away and be at rest. We shall pro- bably experience seasons when we shall be ' exceed- ing sorrowful, even unto death.' We shall know many dreary desolate hours, and feel a sinking of spirits, anguish of mind, of which now we can form little conception. Oh, we shall wish to lie down and die. And that time may soon come. One of us may be unable to sustain the heat of the climate, and the change of habits, and the other may say with literal truth over the grave : VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 491 " * By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed, By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed, By foreign hands thy foreign grave adorned.' But whether we shall be honoured and mourned by strangers, God only knows. At least either of us will be certain of one mourner." We know it was even so ; the letter was quite a prophecy. Judson himself died years after, on shipboard, and lies buried beneath the deep sea wave ; he had even wished that it should be so. Seeking recovery from fever on the ocean, he found an ocean grave ! No nobler creature of God lies waiting for resurrection light beneath the ocean billow. " Earth shall reclaim her precious things from the&^ Restore the dead, thou sea ! " Do we wander from our text when we speak of missionaries as furnishing one of the varieties of ministerial life ? Where do they not rest, those missionaries ? Some in the wilderness, where no man passeth by ; some in the forest, in some shady spot, beneath a tree, whose branches bend over, catching the winds as they pass whispering over the place of their remains ; and while " rain makes music in the tree," .singing a requiem and an elegy over the remains resting so far away from any mourner's tear. Some rest in the burning tropics, and in villages, on islands locked far away in the Spanish main. ** The tamarind tree may tell their story. While an eternity of glory Crowns their career; But when the noontide lustre gilds the waves, It shines, without a shadow, on their graves/* > 492 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. Where rest they not ? Some hang up high in frozen icebergs. Years ago, a ship set sail from one of the ports of Northern Europe, and it had on board a Moravian bishop bound for Greenland ; and it was discovered years after, when surprise had faded away, that it had never reached its destination, — it had been caught in an ice-drift, borne up and embayed there ; the fangs of the ice had caught it, and we may think of the old minister, missionary, and bishop breathing a warm blessing through the icy air, and the chilled atmosphere freezing and fixing him there, unsepulchred, to wail, with his comrade crew, for the upmounting resurrection moment. Where rest they not ? Unhappy they, if they alone are blessed who rest in earth con- secrated by the priestly prayer and orison, as there are some who tell us. But let us rather say, if any- thing could hallow, beyond the breath of breeze and the song of birds, the sequestered cemetery of earth, then must those nooks be additionally hallowed where the faithful, self-denying, and much- enduring missionary slumbers in his court of peace. But the reader will please to regard this as an episode to the main text on the variety of suggestive pictures of the clerical or ministerial life. If space permitted, we would like to devote more than a few words to the memory of Henry Smith.* Never shall we forget the auspicious moment when we first — now many years since — made the acquaint- ance of that most nimble, youthful pulpit athlete. * There is now an excellent edition of his sermons, published by Mr. Nichol, in the " Library of Standard Puritan Divines." VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE, 493 He was one of the early Puritans — one of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, mentioned by Marsden, with Udall and Peniy ; he was, from the hints of his memorialist, old Thomas Fuller, only saved from their doom by the special protection of Lord Burleigh, accorded to him, no doubt, from his family ties with a large baronial family in Leicestershire. Udall and Penry were of more worthless extraction, and, therefore, fitting food for the gallows and the gaol. But Henry Smith was of the very Praetorian band of Puritans ; he ran a brief course of faithful- ness, and his words ran very nimbly. We apprehend few of the Puritans of that age had, in so eminent a degree, the blessing of Naphthali. »" He was a hind let loose, and he gave goodly words." His was specially the eloquence that " makes straight paths for its feet." No knotty nor perplexed question, nor discussion, could ever induce him to turn aside. When the Strand was a wide street compared to what we see it now, and St. Clement Danes a very different church, it was thronged to listen to the intense earnestness of this youthful Puritan, — for he died young. Let us read together some illustra- tions of the method he adopted in dealing with the conscience, and pressing Scripture home upon it. Thus he exclaims on the text, " Many are the afflic- tions of the righteous, but tJie Lord delivereth him out of them all : " — " This is the anchor of the righteous ; as he looks upon his troubles, the promise cometh in like a messenger from Christ, (while he is praying and weeping) and saith, The Lord will deliver thee out of all. Then he resolveth like Nehemiah, and saith, Shall such a man as I fly ? Shall 494 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. such a man as I recant? If I be faint in the day of ad- versity, Solomon saith, *Thy strength is small;' as if he should say, I was never strong, but did counterfeit like Demas. If I want comfort in trouble, Solomon saith, *A good conscience is a continual feast' As if he should say, that I have not a good conscience, if I have not comfort in the Cross. Therefore, I will wait the Lord's leisure, because Esay saith, Faith maketh no haste. I will not break his bands ; because, then, I am like the heathen. I will not flatter the judge ; because Solomon saith it is in vain. I will not betray the cause ; because God hath appointed it to try me. I will not offend my brethren ; because Paul had rather die than do so. I will not charge my conscience ; because it can vex me more than their bands. I will not turn from my profession ; because I learned it of God, and vowed to leave all for it, in the day that I was baptized a Christian. Though my friends tempt me, like Job's wife ; though my flesh flatter me, like Eve; though my perse- cutors would bribe me, like Balaac; though those which suffer with me should revolt for fear, yet I will be as Joshua, which stood alone ; and as Elkana was, instead of children, to Hannah, so Christ shall be instead of comfort, instead of wealth, and health, and liberty to me. For many were the troubles of Joseph ; and the Lord delivered him out of all: many were the troubles of Abraham, and the Lord delivered hi?n out of all : many were the troubles of David, and the Lord delivered him out of all : many were the troubles of Job, and the Lord delivered him out of all : therefore, he can deliver me out of all. But if he do not, (saith Sidrach, Misaac, and Abednego) yet we will not do evil to escape danger : because Christ hath suffered more for us. Therefore, if I perish, I perish, saith Hester. She was content that her life should perish : but if my purse suffer, my money doth but perish : if my body be imprisoned, my pleasures do but perish : and who can tell when he hath suffered that which is appointed? Therefore, God VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 495 saith, When I see convenient time, I will execute judgment. Not when thou doest think it a convenient time. Therefore, saith David to the Lord, In thee do I trust all the day : that is, if He come not in the morning, He will come at noon ; if He come not at noon, He will come at night ; at one hour of the day He will deliver me : and then, as the calm was greater after the tempest than it was before, so my joy shall be sweeter after tears than it was before. The remem- brance of Babylon will make us sing more joyful in Sion. " Thus Moses describeth the journey of the righteous, as if they should go thorow the sea, and wilderness, as the Israelites went to Canaan. Look not for ease nor pleasure in your way, but for beasts, and serpents, and thieves : until you be past the wilderness, all is strait, and dark, and fearful ; but as soon as you are thorow the narrow gate, all is large, and goodly, and pleasant, as if you were in Paradise. Seeing, then, your kingdom is not here look not for a golden life in an iron world ; but remember that Lazarus doth not mourn in heaven, though he suffered pains on earth ; but the glutton mourneth in hell, that stayed not for the pleasures of heaven. To which pleasures the Lord Jesus bring us, when this cloud of trouble is blown over us. Amen." Again, from the text, Almost thou persiiadest me to be a Christian. " Is this altogether like Paul or like Festus ? Not at all. Now, if we be almost Christians, let us see what it is to be almost a Christian. Almost a son, is a bastard ; almost sweet, is unsavoury ; almost hot is lukewarm, which God spueth out of His mouth. Rev. iii. 16. So almost a Chris- tian, is not a Christian, but that which God spueth out of His mouth. A Christian almost is like a woman which dieth in travail ; almost she brought forth a son, but that almost killed the mother and the son too. Almost a 496 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. Christian, is like Jeroboam, which said, * // is too far to go to J^erusalem to worships and therefore chose rather to worship calves at home. " Almost a Christian is like Micah, which thought himself religious enough, because he had gotten a priest into his house. Almost a Christian is like the Ephraimites, which could not pronounce Shibboleth, but Sibboleth. Almost a Christian is like Ananias, which brought a part, but left a part behind. Almost a Christian is like Eli's sons, which polled the sacrifices ; like the fig tree, which deceived Christ with leaves ; like the virgins, which carried lamps without oil ; like the willing unwilling son, which said he would come and would not. What is it to be born almost If the new man be born almost, he is not born. What is it to be married almost into Christ ? He which is married but almost is not married. What is it to offer sacrifice almost ? The sacrifice must be killed, or ever it can be sacrificed. He which gives almost, gives not, but denieth. He which believeth ai?nost, believeth not, but doubteth. Can the door which is but almost shut keep out the thief? Can the cup which is but almost whole hold any wine? Can the ship which is but almost sound keep out water? The soldier which doth but almost fight, is a coward. The physician which doth but almost cure, is a slubberer. The servant which doth but almost labour, is a loiterer. I cannot tell what to make of these defectives, nor where to place them, nor unto what to liken them. They are like unto children which sit in the market-place, where there is mourning and piping, and they neither weep nor dance, but keep a note between them both ; they weep almost, and dance almost. Believest thou almost ? Be it unto thee (saith Christ) as thou believest. Therefore, if thou believest thou shalt be saved — if thou believest almost, thou shall be saved almost. As when a pardon comes while the thief hangs upon the gallows, he is almost saved, but the pardon doth him no good. So he which is almost a Christian, VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 497 ahnost zealous, almost righteous, which doth almost love, almost believe, shall be almost saved ; that is, if he had not been a Christian altogether, he should not be damned. Thus every man is a Christian almost, before he be a Christian altogether.'^ Yes, there are two admirable men not very often referred to — Henry Smith- and Robert Robinson — both in their way apostolic men ; they are models of perspicuous force and of ready clearness. If we desired that our words should flow like a torrent, we would study Henry Smith ; if we desired the style of calm persuasion, of quaint and concentrated power, we would read and study Robert Robinson. Henry Smith is, every way, one of the happiest representatives of the genius of the old Puritan pulpit ; while Robinson, alas ! alas ! was a sort of passionless farmhouse Abelard. They both spoke to the multitude ; recoiling from all mystic questions, eminently they kept the high-road. Robinson's sentences have more the ring and sound of the hammer, and the accompanying spark ; Henry Smith's have more of the trumpet, the tone of the soldier, the conflict, and the clash of the field. Robinson did not so much preach to you as enter into conversation with you, and his sermons, although so impressive for the pulpit, would have been as impressive if spoken by the fireside. Smith ran nimbly along like a prophet of the Lord, sounding an alarm upon the way, and bringing himself into immediate personal relations with the souls of men. These men have no place in estimation by the great masters of the pulpit ; but if we rightly understand what a model should be, and study these men, we 32 498 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. shall be far more able teachers than if we give our days and nights to Jeremy Taylor, or South, to Barrow, or even to Hall. Yes, Robert Robinson, of Cambridge,* was a remarkable man, of whom Robert Hall, his illustrious successor, said, " He had a musical voice, and was master of all its intonations ; he had wonderful self- possession, and could say what he pleased, when he pleased, and how he pleased." With few advantages of education in early life, from an unhappy and neglected childhood, and bound apprentice to the not very distinguished profession of hair-dresser — although the profession which gave Jeremy Taylor to the bench of bishops, Tenterden to the woolsack, and Arkwright to the manufactures of England — he made himself a perfect and accomplished, although never an elegant scholar. What he was as an orator the eulogy of Mr. Hall has, in some measure, indi- cated. In truth, his style, and the topics upon which he employed it were the counterparts of each other. He was a sort of William Cobbett in the pulpit ; he was a bishop of barns and fields ; yet he handled the most grave and thoughtful topics, and he never handled them in the pulpit with coarse nor vulgar hands. Or he might be called the Warburton of the conventicle ; unepiscopal, uneccle- siastical, he had much of the rude scholarly rugged- ness and omnivorous variety of free-thinking delight in heresy of that singular and quarrelsome prelate. He was impatient of any thoughts which ranged * See " Miscellaneous Works of Robert Robinson," with Memoir, in four vols. ; and " The Select Works," in one vol. By Rev. William Robinson. VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 499 themselves above the ranks of common sense ; and it must be admitted that his mind retained a con- siderable degree of that strength which enabled him to become the teacher of the multitudes, while he raised himself above them. His language was most vigorous, strongly imbued with Saxon significance and vitality ; but imagery in language and mystery in religion seem to have been equally his contempt. He had great power of humour and satire — more of the last than the first — and these he did not hesitate to employ. The gownsmen of Cambridge frequently interrupted his service in a very disgrace- ful manner ; but they sometimes, most undoubtedly, got the worst of it, as appears from the following anecdote. One hot summer's day, when he was nearly in the middle of his sermon, a clergyman fifty or sixty years of age entered. Pew doors were thrown open in vain. He walked to the table-pew, took his seat, and began quizzing, and so disturbing the congrega- tion, to the great annoyance of the ladies. Robinson's spirit was stirred within him. Having paused long enough to regain thoroughly the diverted attention of the audience, he proceeded thus : — " I was speaking about complex and simple ideas, but as few are acquainted with logical terms, I will give an illustration or two. If, walking in the vicinity of the India House, I were to meet a person wearing powder, and silver buckles, and carrying a gold-headed cane, I should have the complex idea of a wealthy merchant. This would be made up of a number of simple ideas ; " and the peculiarities of a successful merchant were enumerated. "Again. 500 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. suppose I were walking in Pell Mell, I might there meet some one wearing a cocked hat, a red coat, gold epaulettes, etc., and I should have the complex idea of an officer of high rank in the army. This, as in the former case, includes a number of simple ideas. Once more : if I were walking near St. Paul's, I might see a portly gentleman, in a shovel hat, full-bottomed wig, black coat, black silk stockings, silver buckles," — describing the dress before him — " and I should have the complex idea of a venerable dignitary of the Church of England. As in the former cases, this complex idea would include many simple ideas, the gentleman, the scholar, the divine;" and then followed an eloquent description of the good minister of Jesus Christ. " But, my friends, you may have forgotten the text. I will repeat it : ' Judge not according to outward appearance, but judge righteous judgment.' " Fixing his keen eye on the stranger in the table-pew, he began to reverse the picture, and describe impertinence and folly in a black dress. The intruder vanished in haste. Robinson, moreover, was a tolerably successful farmer, and as for some time the guaranteed income from his church was £\2 per annum, we will rejoice if he turned his husbandry to good account. He was, moreover, a very voluminous writer ; and, as a historian, his researches were very extensive. We have often been surprised that a man so able, so laborious, so self-denying, and gifted, should be con- signed to so much obscurity. It is true, he was a heretic, a Sabellian, or something like it. The author of that sweet hymn, sung by the whole Church, " Come, thou Fount of every blessing," VARIATIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 501 he was far, in his later years, from possessing a sound faith. Moreover, we have said, his sermons were preached, for the most part, in barns and cottages. Yet we have heard men, and men of power, declare they would, for all practical purposes, exchange the style of Robert Hall for that of Robert Robinson ; and others, again, that they would rather talk like him than like any master of pulpit eloquence. But his " Notes on Claude," and the " History of Baptism," and the " Ecclesiastical Re- searches," must, we suppose, be doomed to the vault of rare, and forgotten, but valuable books. He was born at Swaffham, in Norfolk, the 8th of October, 173$. He was awakened to a know- ledge of God, and interest in a religious life, by a powerful sermon of George Whitefield. He then attended the ministries of Whitefield and Wesley. Dr. Gill, John Guise, and William Romaine were also among his most cherished teachers. These men, however, perhaps, could not have satisfied him long. He soon began himself to preach in villages. In this he was encouraged by that singular piece of eccle- siastical eccentricity, John Berridge. Robinson highly valued him ; and, indeed, while the clergyman was considerably inferior to the young convert in the breadth and build of his mind, they were very much alike in a certain rugged coarseness of mind and character ; but Robinson was constantly availing himself of all resources for mental furniture, whether talking with a day-labourer, or translating Saurin, studying Greek and Latin, or attending to the economy of a farm-yard. The first days of his religious life were passed among the Methodists. 502 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER, He very soon, however, became a Baptist, and in 1759 he received an invitation to become the minister of- the congregation in Cambridge, but con- tinued on trial for two years, and did not settle in Cambridge until 1761. He continued throughout his life a thorough Dissenter, and was wont to ridicule, we think with a somewhat graceless severity, the observances of the Established Church. " Really," he says, " when I compare the little cheap decorations of Reformed Churches with the masterpieces of Italy, our gaudy days with their grand processions, our beggarly imitations of their pontifical magnificence, I call theirs pomp, ours poverty. They are nature in the theatre of the metropolis; we are strollers uttering bombast, in cast-off finery, in a booth at a fair."* The satire is neither true nor kind ; but the writer of the satire was honest. He had many overtures made to him from Church dignitaries after the appearance of his " Plea for the Divinity of Christ," but he resisted all ; and the best sermons of their day continued to be delivered in barns, or meeting- houses little better than barns. His expositions of Scripture were usually remark- ably felicitous, very plain and lucid. Thus we have before us a popular rendering of a criticism upon the text, " Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life^ " Imagine one of these primitive fairs. A multitude of people, from all parts, of different tribes and languages, in * But the Church of England in Robinson's day was a marvellously different thing from that we know. VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 503 a broad field, all overspread with various commodities to be exchanged. Imagine this fair to be held after a good hunting season, and a bad harvest. The skinners are numerous, and clothing cheap. \Vheat, the staff of life, is scarce, and the whole fair dread a famine. How many skins this year will a man give for this necessary article, without which he and his family must inevitably die ? Why, each would add to the heap, and put skin upon skin, for all the skins that a man hath will he give for his life. Imagine the wheat-growers, of which Job was one, carrying home the skins, which they had taken for wheat. Imagine the party engaged to protect them raising the tribute, and threatening if it were not paid to put them to death. What proportion of skins would these merchants give, in this case of necessity ? Skin upon skin, all the skins that they have will they give for their lives. The proverb then means, that we should save our lives at any price. Let us apply it to ourselves." * Most of these sermons were addressed to villagers engaged in the occupations of farmhouse, and country life. Such a congregation vi'ould, we may- suppose, very keenly appreciate the exercise on early rising. The following extract is lengthy, but it is perfectly beautiful, in the succession of sugges- tions and pictures it calls to the eye. The text of the preacher gives the refrain of each paragraph. " Let us look about us, and take notice, at least, of some of the beauties of nature in a morning, for the heavens declare the glory of God, the firmament sheweth his handy work, and day uttereth speech. How incomparably fine is the dawning of the day, when the soft and stealthy light cpmes at first glimmering with the stars, and gradually • " Village Sermons." 504 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. eclipses them all ! How beautifully fitted to excite our attention is the folding and the parting of the grey clouds, drawn back like a curtain to give us a sight of the most magnificent of all appearances, the rising of the sun ! How rich the dew, decking every spire of grass with coloured spangles of endless variety and inexpressible beauty ! Larks mount and fill the air with a cheap and perfect music, and every bush and every tree, every steeple and every hovel, emits a cooing or a twittering, a warbling, or a chirping, a hailing of the return of day. Amidst so many voices, shall man be dumb ? Surely a good man must say, My voice also shall thou hear in the morning, O Lord. " It is in the morning, remarkably, that the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib. Then, if ever, man feels himself the monarch, and to him who rises first, all domestic animals pay their homage. One winds and purrs about him, another frisks and capers and doth all but speak. The stern mastiff and the plodding ox, the noble horse and the harmless sheep, the prating poultry and the dronish ass, all in their own way express their joy at the sight of their master ; he is a god to them, for the eyes of all wait on hi?n, and he giveth them their meat in season. It is to these animals that the prophet sends us for instruction, and from their behaviour to us he would have us learn our duty to God. Let us observe how much these creatures contribute to our ease and comfort through life ; let us remark that we owe them all they look to us for ; let us acknowledge the debt, and our inability to discharge it without the supplies of Providence ; let us address our prayers and praises to that good Master in heaven, whose stewards we have the honour to be ; let us lay up for this great family, who have neither storehouse nor barn ; let us supply them with a liberal hand ; and for wisdom and prudence to perform all these duties, let us resolve with the psalmist, Aly voice shall thou hear in the morning, O Lord. In the morning will I direct my grayer tmto thee, and will look up. VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 505 " When man walks abroad in a morning, every sense is feasted, and the finest emotions of an honest and benevolent heart are excited. It is next to impossible to be sour or dull. Above, the spacious canopy, the tabernacle^ or tent for the sun, in a thousand clouds of variegated forms, glowing with colours in every conceivable mixture, skirted and shaded with sulky mists, afford a boundless track of pleasure to the eye. Around, the fragrant air, perfumed by a variety of flowers, refreshes his smell. He snuffs the odour, and tastes, as it were, in delicate mixtures, the sours and the sweets. " The village pours forth its healthful sons, each with his cattle parting off to his work, with innocence in his employment, a ruddy health in his countenance, and spirits and cheerfulness in his address, that make him an object of envy to a king. Here the sly shepherd's boy surveys and plots for his flock, and there the old herdman tales and talks to his cattle, and loves, patting their flanks, to chant over the history of every heifer under his care. And have I only nothing to do in this busy scene : have I nothing to say among so many voices ? Am I a man, and have I no pleasure in seeing the peace and plenty, the health and happiness of my fellow-creatures ? Have I no good wishes for them ? O Lord, iti the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up. " Should we make our observations on a different season of the year, on the morning after a tempestuous night, in which the howling winds had torn up our timbers by the roots, overset our tottering chimneys, and carried half the thatch of our cottages away ; or in which our sheep lay buried in drifts of snow, and the other cattle were deprived of all their green winter meat ; or in which our rivers had swelled into floods, blown up the banks, laid all our meadows under water, covered the very ridges of our com, threatened the lives of all our flock, and destroyed the hope of man; in all these, and in all other such cases, the 506 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. perfections of God are displayed, the emotions of men and Christians excited, and the language of the text enforced, My voice shall Ihou hear in the morning, O Lord, in the morning will T direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up:' * The following most characteristic letter gives an idea of the mingled industry, humour, and roughness of the man ; but we suppose few ministers could give such an account of the spending of one day. It is addressed to Henry Keene, Esq., of Walworth. " Old Friend — You love I should write folios : that depends upon circumstances, and if the thunder-storm lasts it will be so : but what a sad thing it is to be forced to write when one has nothing to say. Well, you shall have an apology for not writing, — that is a diary of one day. "Rose at three o'clock — crawled into the library — and met one who said, ' Yet a little while is the light with you : work while ye have the light — the night cometh when no man can work — my Father worketh hitherto, and I work.' Rang the great bell, and roused the girls to milking — went up to the farm, roused the horse-keeper — fed the horses while he was getting up — called the boy to suckle the calves, and clean out the cow-house — lighted the pipe — walked round the gardens to see what was wanted there — went up to the paddock to see if the weanling calves were well — went down to the ferry to see whether the boy had scooped and cleaned the boats — returned to the farm — examined the shoulders, heels, traces, chaff, and corn of eight horses going to plough — mended the acre- staff — cut some thongs, whip-corded the boys' plough-whips — pumped the troughs full — saw the hogs fed — examined the swill-tub, and then the cellar — ordered a quarter of malt, for the hogs want * " Village Sermons." VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 507 grains, and the men want beer — fi'led the pipe again, returned to the river, and bought a lighter of turf for dairy fires, and another of sedge for ovens — hunted up the wheel- barrows and set them a trundling — returned to the farm, called the men to breakfast, and cut the boys' bread and cheese, and saw the wooden bottles filled — sent one plough to three roods, another to the three half acres, and so on — shut the gates, and the clock struck five — breakfasted — set two men to ditch the five roods — two more to chop sads, and spread about the land — two more to throw up muck in the yard — and three men and six women to weed wheat — • set on the carpenter to repair cow-cribs, and set them up till winter — the wheeler to mend up the old carts, cart- ladders, rakes, &c., preparatory to hay-time and harvest — walked to the six acres, found hogs in the grass — went back, and sent a man to hedge and thorn— sold the butcher a fat calf, and the suckler a lean one — the clock strikes nine — walked into barley-field — barleys fine, picked off a few tiles and stones, and cut a few thistles — the peas fine, but foul ; the charlock must be topped — the tares doubtful ; the fly seems to have taken them — prayed for rain, but could not see a cloud — came round to the wheat field — wheats rather thin, but the finest colour in the world — sent four women on the shortest wheats — ordered one man to weed the ridge of the long wheats, and two women to keep up rank and file with him in the furrows — thistles many — blue-bottles no end — traversed all the wheat-field — came to the fallow-field — the ditches have run crooked — set them straight — the flag-sads cut too much — rush-sads too little, strength wasted, show the men how to three-corner them — laid out more work for the ditchers — went to the ploughs — set the foot a little higher, cut a wedge, set the coulter deeper, must go and get a new mould-board against to-morrow — went to the other plough — picked up some wool and tied over the traces — mended a horse-tree, tied a thong to the plough hammer — went to see which lands wanted ploughing first — 5o8 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. sat down under a bush — wondered how any man could be so silly as to call me reverend — read two verses, and thought of His loving-kindness in the midst of His temple, gave out, * Come all harmonious tongues/ and set, Mount Ephraim, tune — rose up — whistled — the dogs wagged their tails, and on we went — got home — dinner ready — filled the pipe — drank some milk — and fell asleep — woke by the carpenter for some slats, which the sawyer must cut — the Reverend Messrs. A, in a coat, B. in a gown of black, and C. in one of purple, came to drink tea, and settle whether Gomer was the father of Celts, and Gauls, and Britons, or only the uncle — proof sheet from Mr. Archdeacon — cor- rected it — washed — dressed — went to meeting, and preached from The end of all things is at hand, be ye sober and watch unto prayer — found a dear brother reverence there, who went home with me, and edified us all out of Solomon's song, with a dish of tripe out of Leviticus, and a golden candle- stick out of Exodus. Really and truly we look for you and Mrs. Keene, and Mr. Dore at harvest, and if you do not come, I know what you all are. Let Mr. Winch go where he can better himself. Is not this a folio? And like many other folios ? . . . R.Robinson."* There was much in the affability of Robinson most pleasant and commendable. We read that it was a maxim with him that if a child lisped to give you pleasure, you ought to be pleased. The smallest expression of kindness from villagers, if but the lighting of his pipe, was followed by tokens of his esteem. When preaching in barns, he delighted to visit his poor brethren ; he not only was pleased to regale himself with their brown bread and black tea, but he took care that his poor friends should * " Memoirs of Robert Robinson.'' By George Dyer, 1796. VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 509 lose nothing by their attentions. He often used to say, " "When a poor person shows anxiety to ad- minister to your comfort, do not interrupt him ; why deprive him of the pleasure of expressing his friend- ship ? " After his death, among his papers was found a Hst of memoranda, or Httle commissions to be executed by him when in London, such as the following : — " B.'s petitions ; gown for poor M. ; M. M.'s son to be seen ; H. wishes Mrs. H. to be merciful ; W. thinks his son's wages are too small ; Watts's Hymns for T. H. ; Testament for C." He appeared nowhere to more advantage than among the poorest of his flock. Each Sunday he devoted the intervals betwixt morning and evening service to friendly intercourse, and being fond of a pipe, though he was no drinker, he used to get his poor people round him at an old widow-woman's house near the meeting ; here he gratified himself in hearing their distresses, in answering their difficulties, and, to the best of his power, in relieving their wants. Robin- son's brethren often found fault with him for attending to farming. He was not very courteous in his mode of replying to their condemnations of him. " Godly boobies," he would say, " too idle, many of them, to work ; too ignorant to give instruction ; and too conceited to study ; spending their time in tattling and mischief; are these the men to direct my conduct, to censure my ministry?" He died in Birmingham, whither he had travelled to preach for Dr. Priestly. He had been somewhat depressed in health ; but the night before his death he rallied, and seemed to have regained his usual vivacity. 510 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. "Soon after eleven o'clock he retired to rest, and was found in the morning dead, the bed-clothes being unruffled, the features not distorted, the body almost cold. The physicians pronounced the disease of which he died to be angina pectoris. His wish had been to die 'softly, suddenly, and alone.' " The extracts we have given will sufficiently indi- cate the style of Robinson and the structure of his mind. We have said the architecture of his mind was of the plain barn-door style. His writings abound in illustrations of plain, simple, and unaffected grace ; but his sentences can never be called graceful. They go right forward to their object, and they always reach it, and their directness produces a pleasing impression on the mind ; but this is all. And the style is irresistible, but by the force of simplicity. Every paragraph is laden with convictions. It modifies the. admiration we might feel to know that he had a manner of shocking coarseness, in which he delighted to express himself; when he speaks of Calvin, Cobbett could not use language more gross : " Nothing shocks me so much as to see the Calvinist Baptists sing psalms round the tomb of that bloody Calvin, who burnt Servetus;" but he did not indulge in this kind of speech in the pulpit. Yet we find it easier to commend the architecture of his mind, than the fulness, warmth, or sufficiency of his faith. We suppose Robinson would be regarded as an obscure pulpit light ; yet all his works and sermons are prized highly by those who know them at all, his hymns also, especially " Mighty God I while angels bless Thee," etc. It is to be hoped that every age, our own as well VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 511 as others, has its obscure pulpit lights, lights which shed out their mild but useful radiance — power in weakness. Again we say, we are too much imposed upon by brilliant effects. Moreover, if we were an ill-tempered man, and if we did not think such a chapter would do more harm than good, we could easily write a lengthy one on the pulpit charlatans of all ages — and, perhaps, sacredly it may be done yet — men who have commanded vast audiences by making the pulpit the vehicle for giving notoriety to their own nonsense. Horace Bushnell somewhere says that forty hundred pulpits — he might have said forty thousand — are wondering that there are no more eloquent ministers for them, to which it has been truly replied that eminent excellence is exceptional : we might as well wonder that every village has not a Mozart, a Pericles, a Raphael, or a Thorwaldsen ; and we must remember that, if great gifts be rare, as rare are the audiences which are able to appreciate them. But the pulpit has had in all ages some fine illustrations of " power in weakness," like William Rhodes, a village minister of Damerham, in Wiltshire, of whom Charles Stanford has given so beautiful and instruc- tive a memorial. There have been many of these nervous creatures. Caleb Morris, for a long time a very rare and eminently acceptable minister in London, was one of these ; his nervousness drove him from the pulpit, and his ministrations, highly prized by a few, were delivered in his drawing-room. It is told, however, that in the very last year of his life, when preaching to a crowded congregation in Milford Haven, he was sbout to conclude the service, 512 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. and had closed the Bible, when a minister who had just arrived, standing at the bottom of the chapel, in one of the side aisles, exclaimed, " Mr. Morris, go on a little longer, sir; I have only just come in ; I have had a service in the country, but I wanted to hear some words from you ; go on for another half- hour, sir;" and, thus invoked, Mr. Morris opened the Bible and went on for another half-hour or longer. He was one of the obscure lights, but, we believe, every whit as great a man as Horace Bushnell ; not many brilliant pulpit luminaries would have been equal to that unexpected call. Obscure lights 1 Do our readers know that re- markable anecdote in the life of the great John Owen ? We all know that he was one of the most mighty and influential theologians of his own age, and still of unquestioned eminence in ours. A cir- cumstance once fixed his mind, which was full of agitations and perplexities. It was a troubled time, and his course was undetermined ; he was harassed by fears and despondency. He was residing at the Charter House, in London, when he accompanied a cousin to Aldermanbury Church, to hear the cele- brated Edward Calamy ; but, finding that he was not preaching that day, it was suggested that they should go to St. Michael's, Wood Street, to hear another yet greater celebrity, Thomas Jackson. Owen was indifferent, and preferred to stay where he was. A plain country minister was the preacher. His fervent prayer first arrested the agitated hearer, and he was then further impressed by the text: "Why are ye fearful, oh ye of little faith ? " The sermon was a plain one, and Owen never knew who the VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 513 preacher was ; but it dispelled the clouds, and silenced the agitations in that one hearer's mind. It fixed his convictions ; it restored his health, which had been impaired by severe mental depressions. The power of that sermon sent him forth on the road of future usefulness with " the loins girt and the lamp burning," to be for a long course of years one of the mOot eminent preachers of his time. Obscure lights ! " He, being dead, yet speaketh." We read of the effects of a sermon heard on one continent bringing forth extraordinary fruit upon another. Dr. Edwards Park mentions the instance of a person who heard the great and good John Flavel preach at Dartmouth— dear old, beautiful Dartmouth — the lovely sequestered old village tovvn at the mouth of the Dart, one of England's loveliest rivers, where it opens to the sea at the foot of Dartmoor, in sweet sunshiny Devonshire. This man, when a lad of fifteen years of age, heard Flavel preach from the text, " If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha;" he became a member of the train-band of Cromwell ; he was present at the beheading of Charles the First ; he had some acquaintance with Cromwell. When persecu- tion came, he crossed to America, and there, in Massachusetts, he passed through many experiences ; he became a farmer at Middlesborough, in the New World ; there, sitting in his field, or at the door of his farm, when he was one hundred years of age, he heard the words come back to him as he had listened to them eighty-five years before. He re- membered the appearance of the solemn preacher rising to pronounce the benediction before he dis- 33 514 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. missed the assembly, and exclaiming in piteous tones, " How shall I bless the whole assembly when every person in it who loveth not the Lord Jesus Christ is Anathema Maranatha ? " He was alarmed at the reminiscence, and particularly at the fact that no minister had blessed him during all those years. He pondered that closing remark of Flavel's; and, at the beginning of the second century of his life, he gave evidence that he was worthy to be enrolled among the members of the Church written in heaven, and bore his testimony, for fifteen years afterwards, as to the power of truth over his mind. We have stood by Flavel's tomb in old Dartmouth Church ; we have drunk of the water of Flavel's well, from whence he drank in his daily walk, with the inscription over it, " Whoso drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but whoso drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst." But what a charming little illustrative legend this is of the old Dartmouth well, and the persecutions of the beautiful old Nonconform- ist preacher of those sweet sermons on the " Foun- tain of Life," and that pleasant book on the " Mystery of Providence," which, surely, the above incident seems to illustrate ! We will confess that we are not fond of boy- preachers, yet some have proved themselves ; nor may we forget that boys, by rare exceptions, have proved themselves to be consecrated Samuels, and Davids ; it is probable that Isaiah, " in the year when King Uzziah died," when he saw the Lord, and when he commenced the work of his ministry, was about the same age as Charles Spurgeon was when he entered on his pastorate in London, — VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 515 nineteen, — although otir friend had been a preacher years before. Among such boy-preachers the name of Thomas Spencer of Liverpool has not yet been forgotten ; but it is now only a tradition of a ministry so bright, and so brief; this instance is almost unrivalled in the annals of pulpit oratory. His earnestness, his simplicity, the exceeding beauty of his personal appearance, — all these combined with a manly energy of manner, and majestic grace in delivery, to make him, before he was twenty years of age, the most attractive, powerful, and useful minister in Liverpool. In the presence of five thousand persons, he laid the foundation stone of his new church ; and, very shortly after, on one Monday afternoon, he was drowned, while bathing in the Mersey ! "So Lycidas sank low, but mounted high, Through the dear might of Him who walked the wave ! " Not many times has such a thrill passed through the city of his ministrations, or the Church of his adoption, as that which was felt on the announce- ment of his death. A party of ministers was assem- bled in the drawing-room of the eminent Rev. Dr. Stewart. Spencer was expected, and, amidst the conversation about him, wonder was expressed at his delay ; sounds were heard in the streets, and little companies of awe-struck groups were seen convers- ing ; Dr. Stewart threw up the window, and inquired what was the matter .'' and the reply was given, " Spencer is drowned ! " Can we conceive the startled dismay of that company } It was Monday afternoon, but the outlines of the sermon for the 5i6 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER. following Sunday were found in his pocket. There was something truly prophet-like in his abrupt appear- ance and transit. James Montgomery embalmed the memory of the precocious orator, and youthful saint, in some sweet verses. " The loveliest star of evening's train Sinks earliest in the western main, And leaves the world in night ; The brightest star of morning's host, Scarce risen, in brighter beams is lost. Thus sank his form on ocean's coast; Thus sprang his soul to light ! " Oh Church to whom that youth was dear, The angel of thy mercies hfear, Behold the path he trod, A milky way through midnight skies ; Behold the grave in which he lies ; E'en from this dust thy prophet cries, * Prepare to meet thy God ! ' " And it was said that even from the dust the young prophet did cry, and that many conversions resulted from the quickening of the conscience in the town by the death of the young preacher. Thus really, sometimes, miracles have been wrought by the dead, seeming to renew the story of the miracle wrought by the bones of Elisha. Some men have even died in the pulpit. The beautiful and beloved John Fletcher of Madeley did not die, but he was smitten with death in the pulpit ; staggering down the stairs, as he passed the Com- munion Table, he stretched out his arms, exclaim- ing, " Now I am going to throw myself beneath the wings of the cherubim ! " They were almost VARIETIES OF CLERICAL LIFE. 517 the last, if not the last words he uttered. Glorious deaths there have been ! Remember the death of Dr. Beaumont, one of the most brilliant of our English recent pulpit orators ; his death seems to us the height of the moral sublime, fine in effect, but how much finer in fact! His death arrests the heart and the eye like a martyrdom. Standing there, all his feelings inflamed with the ardour of a lofty devotion, inspired, and ready for the spring of sacred eloquence, his memory ranging amongst the fields of selectest, and most holy imagery, and all his passions on fire with love to his Saviour, and to man, he stood before the vast and waiting crowd, ready for his word 'of power. Ah ! they did not see how the heavens were parting, and, softly radiant, the angel of death — no terrible presence, no stern- browed, darkly clad, and unkind form — was rapidly approaching ! they did not know that all around him, before their eyes, there, the airs were becoming chill, chill, chill, that rings of gelid cold were con- tracting round the loved and honoured form ; they did not see over the pulpit the pressing figures of angel forms, loved old relatives, departed into light, whose strong sympathies were attracted by that hour, and who whispered in their spirit language, " He is coming to us." The spiritual throng was all unseen, the angel who struck the blow all unseen ; they saw only that raised eye ; they only heard that voice, and those were the last, the very last words ever to roll from those lips their melody on this side of the nev/ world. *' Tb^e, while the first archangel sings, He hides his head behind his wings I " 5i8 THE VOCATION OF THE PREACHER, It is done ! hush, hush, rolHng voices ! there is a sound of " harpers harping with their harps." He has already burst into the infinite ; the blaze of the unveiled is around him ; he has been wafted, on the wings of earthly music and devotion, from the temple crowded with worshippers, to the dear, dear city where there is no temple, nor need of the light of the sun. Hush, hush, shrieking voices ! wail not, oh widow, oh child, over the fallen form ; there is nothing to scream over here. This is the true glory ! The prophet had only passed from Nebo to Pisgah. The brave heart had only burst its cere- mental shroud and gone home. " God," says the quaint old Thomas Fuller, " sends His servants to bed when they have done their work," " He lifts me to the golden doors. The flashes come and go ; All heaven bursts the starry floors And strews its hghts below, And deepens on, and up ; the gates Roll back, and far within For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits, To make me pure of sin. The Sabbaths of eternity, One Sabbath deep and wide, A light upon the shining sea. The Bridegroom and the Bride ! " Surely the reader will acquit the writer of affecta- tion in thinking that such verses found a fine realisation in such a death of such a man. INDEX. Abraham and the stranger, i8o. Action is eloquence, 476. Actor V. preacher, 8- 1 7. "Adam Bede," Dinah of, 456-458. Adams, Puritan : — ■ a forgotten worthy, 3S7, 410. career and works, 390. a preacher, 390-393- age of, 393, 410. — — aphoristic words, 393. metliod of treating a text, 397. compared with Herbert, 399. style, 411,412; illustrations of, 391, 395. 396, 398, 399. 400, 401. Affirmative, the preacher should be, 254- Africaner, the chief, 469. Age, a glorious, 410. Ages : — pulpit in the early, 17-28. preachers of the mediaeval, 93. tales of the middle, 102-106. preachers of the middle, 108, 109. Allegory, use of, 187-189; evil use of, 199-201. America, fiction of, 443-445, 454. Analogies, wisdom in the perception of, 168. "Analogy," critique on Butler"s, 164, 165. Analogy, work of, 163, 173 ; an in- genious. 241. Andersen, Hans C, quoted, 178. Andrews, Dr. Edward '.— characteristics, 209, 210. eccentricities, 210, 211. personal appearance, 211. compared with Hamilton, 212. -style of preaching, 212-214, 216, 217, 224. sermons, 213. ■ contrasted with others, 217. varied learning, 218. • a preacher only, 219. questionable taste, 219-221. • Andrewsana, 222, 223. textual method, 225-227. style, illustrations of, 214, 215, 216, 222, 224, 227, 229, 230. Andrews, Lancelot, 405-408 Anecdote : — Asiatic cholera, discoverer of, 254- Assist, St. Francis of I. Barnes, Albert, of, 240. Betty, a voice calling, 254. • Binney, Dr., of, 243. Breeze, Sammy, of, 424. Butler, Bishop, of, 166. clergyman, reproving a, 499. Elias, John, and Matthew Wilks. 240. father, of an ancient, 44. Hall, Robert, of. 17, 433. head, the forgotten, 211. Hume and Butler, of, 165. Huntingdon and Rowland HUl, of, 332, 333. 520 INDEX. Anecdote : — " Iron you, I'll," 342. Jay, \\ illiam, of, 244. lamplighter, a London (note), 305- ministers soon forgotten, 206. mud, pinching, 15. number, the mystic, 146, 147. Owen, John, of, 512. parsons, the two, 235, 236. " People, spare the," 259. preacher and his gown, 57, 58. Rogers, Samuel, by, 242. sermon-box, the, 235. sermons, the stolen, 306-308. soul? do you think of your, 61. Taylor, Father, of, 243. Wells, James, of, 243. Angels, 151. Anthony, St., and the cobbler, 179. Ardour, invocation to missionary, 28. Aretinus, I ID. Ashworth, John, referred to, 66. Athanasius, 21, 22. Athens, Paul preaching at, 182. Audiences, the preacher's two, 46-48. Augustine, St., 22-28; preaching of, 446 ; quoted, 44. " Bank of Faith," character of, 328- 332. Bargeman and minister, 481. Basil, St., style of, 22. Beattie, Dr., on the sermon, 235. Beaumont, Dr., death of, 517. Beelzebub and his hogs, 316. •Believer, the humble rustic. 376. Bellew^ Rev. J., quoted, 182. Bernard, Richard, criticism on, 371- 373- Bernard, St., quoted, 99. " Betty," the voice saying, 254. lishop, the frozen, 493. Blessed, the word, 417. Blind and lame, an allegory, 200. Book V. preacher, 38-40 ; and the preacher, 48. • "Borrowed ! alas, it v^'as," 326. 327. Box, the sermon-, 235. Boy-preachers, 514. Breeches, beseeching God for, 330 332. Breeze, Sammy, 424-427. Bridges, Rev. C, quoted, 43, 44. Browning, Robert, on preaching, 445. Burgess, Daniel, instance of the style of, 367. Burgess, J., queer divisions by, 316. Calvinism and English society, 339. Calvinists, a prophet of high, 336. Cariyle on the stage, 15, 16. Cartwright, Peter, 34. Cathedral, meditataions in a, 29, 30. Catholic home missions, 61-65. Chalmers, Dr., 256, 257. Chapel, service in a Cornish, 463, 464. Charles the Second and sermon- reading, 232; and Dr. South, 310, 3"- Chat Moss and George Stephenson, 173. 175- Chorus, a wonderful, 418. Christ, the believer's magnet is, 467. Christian, almost persuaded to be a, 495-. Christian ? which is the real, 339-341. Christianity, manifestations of its power, 18. Chrysostom, St., 24. Church in danger, the, 294. Church, vision in an empty, 31-33. Clarkson and Wilberforce, anecdote of, 61. Clemens, style of, 19, 20. Clergyman, reproving a, 499. Climax, a master in, 273. (,louds, 408. Coarseness, illustrations of, 316. Coleridge, H., and Dr. Andrews, 211, 212. Coleridge, S. T., quoted, 476. Commentators, two Puritan, 378. 379- Conceits, an age of, 402 ; illustrations of, 402-407. Concubine, the Levite and his, 325. Congregational. sm v. sacerdotalism, 68. Conscience, 142 ; peace with, 362. JNDEX 521 Consciences, we have good, 325. Convert, an aged, 513. Cornwall, a service in, 463, 464. Coster, Francis, story by, IC2. Cromwell, Dr. South on, 310. Cross, St. Paul's, men of, 353. Crowns, many, 203. Cuckoo and the nightingale, 318. Culture, need of, 45. Darkness, power of, 203. Darning-needle, parable of the, 178. David and Shimei, 323. Dead, a group of illustrious, 489. Death, 275, 278, 279. Denunciation, power of, 303. Description, worthless, 182-185 ; a burlesque, 185. Devil, a dialogue with the, 345. Diabolus, Frater, 105, 106. Dilemmas, pulpit, 242-244. Discoveries, happy guesses, 168. Diver, Schiller's, 253. Divines, a group of departed, 206- 209. Divines, works of Puritan, 38 1. 386, 388. Dogma, resting on, 147, 150. Donne, Dr., characteristics of, 400. Dramatist, the preacher should be a, 469-471- Dust, 396. Duty-faith, doctrine of, 341. Eagle, way of the, 189-194. Ear, importance of the, 17. Edom, Christ coming from, 406. Edwards, Jonathan : — delineation of, 450. and style, 471. powerful oratory of, 476-478. Elias, John, of Wales, 431. Eliot, George, clerical portraits of, 456. Eloquence : — pulpit, 247, 248. French school of, 365. a shopkeeping, 366. action is, 476. Emerson on preaching, 462. Entreaty, an afifectionate, 135. Ephrata, birth of Christ at, 404. Epitaph, William Huntingdon's, 333. Eras, a preacher's three, 366. Evangelist, the, 57, 58 ; type of man for, 66, 67. Evans, Christmas : — quoted, 421-423. power and eloquence, 432. power of parable, 433. method with texts, 434. ■ • trial of the witnesses, 435. Satan in dry places, 437-440. Everard, Jolin, of Kensington, 382. Existence, how noble is your, 293. Eye, power of one, 433. Faber, Father : — as a preacher, 72-78, 82-85. a mystic, 76. aphorisms. 80. sermons, character of, 81, 82. style, illustrations of, 78, 80, 87, 90. Faith :— toy armour and weapons of, 70, 71. and rationalism, 152, 153, or works ? 3 1 9. " Father, forgive them," 403. Fiction, age of, 441 ; pulpit in modern, 442-445. Fire? who can dwell with, 11 3- 116; let us have plenty of, 240. Flavel, John, preaching of, 513. Fletcher of Madeley, death of, 516. Foster, John, quoted, 29, 57. Fox, C. J., oratory of, 244. Friars : — power of the preaching, 98, 99. style of, loi, 102, 104. references to names of, 107. Fuller, A., and Toller, contrasted, 485-487. Funeral, an imposing, 335. Gauden, Dr., sermon by, 317. Gerasimus and the lion, 468. Geyser, the religious, 60. Gibbon on the rise of preaching, 460. 522 INDEX, God :— the preacher a witness for, 37, rich in mercy, 87. charged foolishly, 214. glorious the city of, 295. judgments of, 315. in a circle, 409. Goethe, an image by, 304. Gough, John, oratory of, 473, 475, 479, 480. _ Gould, Baring, referred to, 93 ; quoted, 96, 102. Gousset, Father, quoted, 188. Gown, the preacher and his, 57-59. Grosart on Richard Bernard, 371 ; quoted, 376. Guarric of Igniac quoted, 96, 102. Guthrie, Dr., imagery of, 202, 203. Hall, Robert, on preaching, 44 ; anecdotes of, 17, 433. Hallelujah ! what a, 215. Hamilton, Dr, J., quoted, 175. Hawkins, Parson, story of, 454- 456. Hearers and preachers, 175-177; mollusc, 449, 450. Heaven, 276-278; names written in, 401. Helps, Sir Arthur, quoted, 16, 206. Hennell, Miss, and Butler's "Ana- logy," 165. Herbert and Puritan Adams, 399. Hill, Rowland, and W. Huntingdon, 332, 333. Hooker and Milton, 386. Hour, the last, 274. Hugo, Victor, referred to, 443. Hume and Butler, 165. Humour v. vulgarity, 344. Huntingdon, Countess of, quoted, 7. William, 328-333- Ice, an eagle caught in the, 420. Illustration, use of, 186. Images and fancies, 359. Imagination : — prerogative of the preacher, 162. illustrations of the use of, 1 78- 185. I Imagination : — function of, 201. law of, 204. province of, 205. Incidents, great national. 52-55. Instinct, preachingand religious, 419. Instruction, oral, 249. Intellect, discourse on the, 156. Irish, the minister and the, 483. " Iron you, I'll," 342. Jacob, the good second of, 320. Jay, Rev. VV., J. Wells on, 343. Jericho, fall of, 11 6- 119. Jerome, St., 110-112. Jesus, vision of the Child, 102-104 > testimony of, 216. Judgment, the last, 297 ; day of, 319. Kempis, Thomas a, referred to, 109. Kirjath-Sepher, smiting of, 383-386. Kirwan, Dean, as a preacher, 286. Knill, Richard, as a preacher, 286. Lamplighter, a London (note), 305- " Lamps, our, have gone out," 90. Language, character of the Welsh, 415-417- Latimer, Bishop, quoted, 179. "Letter, don't forget your Father's," 481 ; a singular, 506-508. Lile : — Christian and Roman, 20. foes to religious, 68. greatness and littleness of, 160. resurrection unto, 227. bread of, 344. Lights, obscure pulpit, 51 1-5 14. Lines, diverging, 175. Lion, the grateful, 468. " Logic," Whately's, remark on, 143. "Lot's wife, remember," 327. Lytton, Lord, sermons by, 442, 443. Macaulay, Lord, anecdote of, 146, 147. Macdonald, George, quoted, 464. Magnet, effects of the discovery of the, 467. Man, the unstable, 391; a definition of, 464. INDEX. 523 Manshire, marshalling the subjects of, 373-375- Many called, few chosen, 96-98. Martineau, James, quoted, 164. Massillon compared with James Parsons, 267-269. Maxey, Anthony, 36 1. Mediocrity, useful hints to, 472, 473. Methodism, romance of, 4, 5. Minister, dilficulties of the, 6S-70. Ministers, half-way, 344. Missionaries, noble army of, 4S9- 492. Missions, Catholic home, 61-65. Mollusc hearers, 449, 450. Moravian, the frozen, 492. Morris, Caleb, 51 1. Moule, M., on Augustine, 26. Mystic, the. 150. Mystics, Puritan, 382. Napoleon, a saying of, 201. Nature, analogy of, 169-172 ; morn- ing beauties of, 503. Neale, Dr., referred to, 93. Neander quoted, 94, 95. Nelson, John, 7. Nervousness, 245, 246. New England, a Calvinist parson of, 444. Newman, Dr. T. H. : — career and works, 122-124. characteristics of his preaching, 124, 128. and F. Robertson, 132. character of his sermons, 134- 142, 143-145. 148, 149- textual method, 1 36- 140, 156, 158. a schoolman, 142. on Whately's " Logic," 143. on reasoning, 144. humour, 146-148. faith in dogma, 149. not a mystic, 150, 151. power and repose, 152. Newmanana, 154-156. discourse on intellect, 156. work generalised, 158. style, illustrations of, 128-131, 13s. »44, 151. 160. No-thing to No- where, 171. Novelists, pulpit characteristics of, 445-447. 454- Number, the mystic, 146, 147. Opera, an incident at the, 16. Oratory :— description of, 264, 265. tests of popular. 475. an instance of powerful, 476- 478. Origen, style of, 20. "Others, He saved," 85. Outlines, method exhibited in, 27S- 303- Owen, John, anecdote of, 512. Oxford, Dr. Newman at, 126, 127. Padua, Anthony of, 108. Painting v. pulpit, 3 ; word-, 202. Paper and the orator, 247 ; use of in the pulpit, 249. Parable, power in the, 433. " Pardons, I begs no," 224-227. Park, Professor, an analogy by, 241. Parsons, Rev. James : — early popularity, 261, 262. power of, 262, 263. descriptive scene of, 264, 265. his three eras, 266. compared with Massillon, 267- 269. one-sided method, 272. power in climax, 273. character of sermons, 283-2S8, 291. 303- method in outlines, 298-303. in old age, 304. manner in the pulpit, 304-306. — — illustrations of style, 275, 276, 278, 279, 2S1, 292, 293, 294, 295. 297- Parsons, the two, 235. Pastor, a real spiritual, 106. Peace, God of, 363. Peachblossom, Rev. Dr., 12. Pew and pulpit, dialogue between, 34-36. Pitt, William, on Butler's "Ana- logy," 165. 524 INDEX. Pitt and Fox, speech of, contrasted, 242. Plausibility in the pulpit, 249. Playfere, Tliomas, 353 ; at St. Paul's Cross, 354, 357, 359, 360. Poet and preacher, 289. Poetical quotations, 168, 192, 20S, 234, 244, 253. 257, 293, 296, 33S, 402, 414, 424, 428, 438,439, 45S. 4&3, 464, 467, 469, 491, 515, 516, 518. Poetry : — Edwards, Jonathan, 450. Heart's Song, The 275. Deacon's Masterpiece. The, 350. Northern Farmer, 447. Whitefield, 453. national, 50-53. Power, the pulpit a lost. 461. Practical, power of the, 75. Praise, Basil on, 23. Preacher : — and great truths, the, 428. and the press, 429. canon for the, a, 186. — — comfortable, a, 12, 13. descriptive, the, 201, 202. general and descriptive, the, . 44, 45- life of the popular, 269, 270. nervuus, the, 51 1. of manners, the, 390-392. ordinary popular, the, 125, 126. portrait of a woman-, 456-458. should be a dramatist, 469, 471. standard for the, a, 472. V. book, 38-40. two audiences of the, 46-48. work of the Romish, 352. works for the, 472, 473. Preachers : — and modern fiction, 442, 443. boy, 514. four orders of, 421. group of great, 206-209. hearers and, 175-177. knowledge of Scripture by mediaeval, 95-98. St. Pauls Cross, at, 353. Wales, of wild, 413. Preaching : — an analogy on, 241. Browning's satire on, 442. danger of forcible, 270-272. Emerson on, 462. essentials of successful, 55, 56. evangelistic, 57. friars, 98, 99; style of, loi, 102, 104 ; power of, 108, 109 ; sermons of. 120. Gibbon on the origin of, 41' o. hail-fellow-well-met style of, 318. mediaeval, 93. modern method of, 289-291. national institution of Wales, the, 414. Newman's, 124. origin of, 460. reformers, 365. various styles of 240, 24I. V. walking, i. Press : — and pulpit, 37-40. censorship needed for the, 41. preachers and the, 429. Pride, unsafeness of, 400. Prisoner, trial of the. 375. Prophet, the preacher and the, 49, 50. Psalmody, Basil on, 23. Pulpit : — Billingsgate in the, 309. buffoons of the, 346, 347. coarseness in the, 316. censor of the press and. 41, 42. death in the, 516-518. dialogue between pew and, 34-36. dilemmas in the, 242-244. eloquence, 247, 248. early ages of the, 17-23, French, the, 365. is it worthless ? 5, 6. middle ages, in the, 93, 107, 108, 109 HI. obscure lights uf the, 511-514. Parsons, James, in tLe, 304- 306. plausibility in the, 249. poeiry and fiction in the, 441 INDEX. 525 Pulpit :— power, a past, 461. reader of the, 250. rhetoric in the, 283-286. romance of the, 4. satire in the, 444, 445. Sayers, Tom, of the, 310. sins of the, 366, 367. Smith, Sydney, on the, 40. tale of the, 3. Vaughan, Dr., on the, 36, 40. work of the English, 352. Puritan and modern commentators, 371-373- , , . ^ Puritan and the French pulpit, 365. Puritanism, birth of, 352. Puritans, a cluster of, 378, 386-3S8. reading of the, 377. Rationalism and faith, 152, 153. Ratisbon, Berthold of, 107. Reader, the pulpit, 250. Reasoning, implicit and explicit, ^44- . ^ ^ Reformers, preachmg of, 365. Reinhardt quoted, 45. Rhetoric in the pulpit, 283-286. Righteous, many the afflictions of the, 493. Righteousness, God's, 194-199. Riglitwell, Raven, 13. Robertson, F. W., Newman and, 132. Robinson, Robert : — compared with H. Smith, 497. characteristics, 498. and the clergyman, 499. farmer and author, 500. early religious life, 501- thorough Dissenter, 502. exposition of Scripture, 502- 506. a day's work, 506. and the poor, 508. death, 509. style, 510. Rome, teaching of the Church of, 76. Royal merchant, the, 367. Ruskin referred to, 205. Ryland, Dr., and W. Huntingdon, 319- " Safe, now I am," 240. Samson a fool, 320. Satan in dry places, 437-440. Saul as a merchant, 434. " Saved, we are not," 215. ''Say well and doe well," 354-359 Sayers, Tom, of the pulpit, 310. Schoolman, a modern, 142. Scott, Thomas, work and character, 237-239- Scripture : — and analogy, 169. mediieval preachers' know- ledge of, 95, 98. • Puritan dealmg with, 370. Scriptures and the Fathers and Puritans, 379. .Sculptor, anecdote of a, 15. Segneri, Father, 112, 119. Sentences, striking, 229 Sermon : — a little bird's, 180 a fdiliy, 3I7._ fate of a Puritan, 370. Neander on the, 19. Sermons : — Dr. Newman's, 134-142, 148, 149. James Parsons', 283-288. mediceval, 120. stories of stolen, 306-308. Service, a Welsh, 436. an impressive, 463. 464. Slielter, a safe, 224. Shenkin of Penrydd, 423. Sherman and James VVells, 343. Shimei and David, 323. Ship, a woman like a, 367-370. Sienna, Bernardine of, 108. " Signe and song," 404. Simple, John, preaching of, 319, 320. Sin, a sense of, 253, 254. Skin for a skin, 502. Smith. H., of St. Paul's Cross, 353. H., Puritan, 492, 497. Sydney, on the pulpit, 40. Socratic teacher, a, 472. '■ Son, take tliou tliy," 402. Song, the Heart's, 275. Sorrow, comfort in, fOO. 526 INDEX. Soul :— Style, illustrations of: — conflict for man's, 292. death, 278. 279. flight of the. 119. — — devil, dialogue with the, 345. individuality of the, 128-130. disciple, an old, 225-227. Souls, instinct for, 2, 6, 59, 61. dust, 398. South, Dr., coaisenessof, 309, 311- duty-faith doctrine, 341. 313; wit of, 314. entreaty, an afi'ectionate, 135. Southey quoted, 328. existence, how noble is your. Speaker, the extempore, 242, 243. 295- Speech, a canon of, 186 ; power of, exordiums, 324. 247. 249. • faith, episode in a life of, 330. Spencer, Thomas, death of, 516. " Father, forgive them," 403. Stage, Carlyle on the, 15, 16. God charged foolishly, 214. Standard, a preacher's, 472. God, city of, 295. Stanley, Dean, quoted, 49. God, heavens declare the glory Stephen, death of, 230. of, 503-506. Sterne, Laurence, illustrations of, God inexh.austible, 222. 321-327. God is a circle, 409. Stories, vonderful monastic, 468. God, judgment of, 315. Style, illustrations of: — God, man alone conscious of, Abraham and the stranger, 1 80. 222. air, way of the eagle in the, God rich in mercy, 87. 189-194. God. righteousness of, 194-199. Andrewsana, 222. God, souls have a call of, 78. angels, 151. halleiujah ! what a, 215. — — Anthony, St., and the cobbler. " He saved others," 85. 179- heaven, 276. • Artisan, the supreme, 19. heaven, names written in. 401. Athens, Paul preaching at. hell, a picture of, 1 13- 11 6. 182-185. hour, the last, 274. Beelzebub driving his hogs. Jeiicho, fall of, 116-119. 316. Jesus, holy Child, 102. "Behold where they laid Him," "Joseph is yet alive," 99. 298. judgment, the last, 297. believer,the humble rustic, 376. Kirjath-Sepher, smiting of, breviads, 80, 138. 383-386. Christ, hatred and enmity to, lame and blind, the, 200. 222. Levite and his concubine, 326. Christ, on the birth of, 404. life, greatness and littleness of, Christian, almost a, 495. 160. Christian ? which is tiie, 339. life, resurrection unto, 227-229. Church in danger, 294. lines, divergent, 175. city of God, 295. man, the unstable, 391. clouds, 408. Manshire, marshalling the sub- Conqueror, Christ the, 406. jects of, 373-375- conscience, peace in the, 362. many are called, 96. Cromwell, 313. memory and immortality, 223. Cross, thief on the, 300. ministers, half-way, 344. darkness? who hath delivered missionary ardour, invocation ns from, 203. to, 28. darning-needle, the, I "78. mountain and valley, 400. INDEX. 527 Style, illustrations of : — mourning and feasting, the house of, 322. Naphthali, hind let loose, 360. nature a teacher. loi. Newmanana, 154-156. "Our lamps are gone out," QO. " Pardons, I beL;s no," 425-427. • peace, the God of, 363. pleasures, Divine, 20. praise, the duty of, 23. preaching, four methods of, 421. prisoner, trial of the, 375. prophecy, the spirit of, 216. psalmody, 23. reasoning, implicit and explicit, '44- — — rigliteous, afflictions of the, 493-495- Satan in dry places, 437-440. " Saved, we are not," 215. • " Say well and doe well," 354- 359- . . , o sermon, a little bird's, 180. — ■ — shelter, a safe, 224. Shimei and David, 323. ships, women compared to, 368-370. " Signe and song," 404. sins, remembering, 359. skin for skin, 502. " Son, take thou thy," 402. sorrow, comfort in, 400. soul, conflict for mans, 292. soul, individuality of every human, 128-130. Stephen, the death of 230. Strauss, rationalism of, 223. "Thankful, let us be," 399. time and rivers, 222. tongue, the, 398. " 1'ransgressors, I beheld the," 301. truth and time, 199. voice, such a, 395. '■ Wife, remember Lot's," 327. words, aphoristic, 393. work, blessedness of, 347-349. world, without God in the, 364. worship in winter, 131. Style : — importance of, 471, 472. Old Testament proph-jtic, 458, 459- what should b° the pulpit, 40. Swearer, minister and the, 482,45ij. Taste, questionable, 219-221. Teacher, a Socratic, 480-485. 'lears, the test of, 43. 44. Tennyson on the preacher, 447 449. Terror, preaching of, 270-273. Tertul ian, 20. Text, method of treating a. 397. Texts, Newman's method vvilh, 136- 140, 156-158. " Thankful, let us be," 399. Theatre v. pulpit, 8-14. Theology : — of intellect and feeling, 56. mere logic in, 349, 350. gospel of natural, 464-467. Things, four wonderful, iSS. Thinker and preacher. 451, 452. " 'I'hirdly? what was," 243. Thirst, man's infinite, 451. Thtnight, parabolic form of, 177. Toller and Fuller contrasted, 485- 487. Tongue, making of the, 398. Torshell, Samuel, quoted, 376, Trnpp, commentator, 378. 379-381. Truth, an allegory on, 199. Truths, dealing with great, 428,. 429. Uriel, the angel, 255. V.\UGHAN, Dr., on the pulpit, 36, 40. Victoria, Queen, and the mystic number, 146. Vieyra, Anthony of, quoted, loi. Voice, unison of the, 38 ; such a, 395. Wales : — preachers of wild, 413. Shenkin of Penrydd, 423. a group of, 430. John Elias, 431. Warburton on prophetic language, 458, 459- 528 INDEX. Wells, James : — funeral of, 335. prophet of high Calvinists, 336. character of his preaching, 337- 339- . illustrations of his doctrine, 339-342. on Sherman and Jay, 343. humour of, 343, 345. character of his sermons, 346. final review, 349-351. style, illustrations of, 339, 341, 344. 345. 347- Welsh preachers, character of, 413, 414. Whately, Archbishop, quoted, 168, 169. Whitefield, delineation of, 453 Whittier quoted, 450, 453. Wife, a ship like a, 367. Winter, worship in, 131. Witnesses, trial of the, 435 ; the real cloud of, 487-489. Words, aphoristic, 393 Work, a Sabbath day's, 237-239 ; blessedness of, 347-349. Works useful for ministers, 472, 473. Worthy, a forgotten Puritan, 389. York, the Massillon of, 261, 267. Zaccheus, little, 321.