H 
 
 

 £^^J 
 
 L I B R A- R Y 
 
 OF TilK 
 
 Theological Seminary, 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 8 .G7 V3 .795-I8681C 
 
 -^'"^^d;rnTuip'it viewed is5 
 fts^felationto the sta^^ 
 
 BV 420 
 
 Vau 
 
 Th 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 TO BE HAD OF ALL BOOKSELLERS. 
 
 THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF JOHN DE 
 WYCLIFFE, D.D., illustrated principally from his unpublished Manu- 
 scripts, with a Preliminary View of the Papal System, and of the state 
 of the Protestant Doctrine in Europe, to the commencement of the Four- 
 teenth Century. With a finely engraved Portrait, by E. H. Finden, 
 from the original Picture by Sir Antonio More, now an heir-loom to 
 the Rectory of Wycliffe, Richmondshire. The Second Edition, improved. 
 2 vols. 8vo. It Is. 
 
 "All these (preceding) biographers have their own share of merit; but the 
 strenuous and well-directed labours of Mr. Vaugban are such as entitle him to a 
 very decided pre-eminence. In this age of flippant and flimsy compilations, it is 
 highly gratifying to meet with something that reminds us of better times ; to 
 meet with a book which at once relates to a subject of real importance, and is 
 prepared with a due mixture of ardent perseverance and judicious deliberation." 
 — Edinburgh Review, October, 1832. 
 
 '' There seems to be no repository of ancient literature in the empire which has 
 escaped the industry of Mr. Vaughan. I have found his work a most valuable 
 guide." — Professor Le Bas — Preface to the Life of Wiclif in Rivington's 
 Theological Library. 
 
 " Vaughan and Le Bas, both of whose works I like." — Coleridge : Table 
 TaUt, 2nd ed. vol. ii. p. 182. 
 
 THE CAUSES OF THE CORRUPTION OF 
 CHRISTIANITY. The Congregational Lecture for 1834. 1 vol. 
 8vo. 10«. 6d 
 
 " Mr. Vaughan has brought to his undertaking the knowledge of the historian, 
 the learning of the divine, and the spirit of the philosopher." — Spectator. 
 
 " The examination of the effects produced on Christianity by the influence of 
 Gentile philosophy, is equally remarkable for learning and discrimination." — 
 Athen<Bum. 
 
 RELIGIOUS PARTIES IN ENGLAND : their Prin- 
 ciples, History, and Present Duty. 8vo. 5s. 
 
 " A searching view, and philosophical estimate, of the characteristics of reli- 
 gion and religious parties at the present day." — Spectator. 
 
 " The ingenious youth of our community will find in this book a most instruc- 
 tive survey of the ecclesiastical history of their country, treated witth consummate 
 judgment, the fruit of deep research, and calm philosophical discernment and re- 
 flexion." — Congregational Magazine. 
 
 "In this admirable publication there is a rare mixture of philosophical calm- 
 ness with religious earnestness. The impartiality of the witness is uuited with 
 the warmth of the disciple." — Leeds Mercury. 
 
 " Professor Vaughan's views of the state of parties is able and temperate." — 
 AthentBum. 
 
 " A more masterly, faithful, philosophical, dispassionate review, in so con- 
 densed a form, we never heard or read." — Patriot. 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN WARFARE ILLUSTRATED. 
 
 1 vol. 8vo. 10s. 6d. 
 " A work eminently adapted to inform the mind and improve the heart." — 
 Baptist Miscellany. 
 
 "A truly valuable work." — Eclectic Review. 
 
 The HISTORY of ENGLAND under the HOUSE of 
 STUART, including the COMMONWEALTH. 2 vols. 8vo. 16s. 
 Published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. 
 
 " While we would point to this work as an earnest of the spread of correct his- 
 torical views, in regard to a period which, only at the beginning of this century, 
 was so ill understood, we consider it entitled to special praise for the clear, tem- 
 perate, and candid manner in which these views are enforced." — Athenmum. 
 
 " It is written, as all such works ought to be written, in the spirit of a Chris- 
 tian, a scholar, and a philosopher." — JEclectic Review. 
 
 " The most honest and satisfactory book that has appeared upon the period." — 
 Spectator. 
 
 CONGREGATIONALISM ; or, the Polity of Indepen- 
 dent Churches viewed in its Relation to the State and Tendencies of 
 Modern Society. 
 
 "An admirable essay; we heartily recommend it." — Tairs Magazine. 
 
 " In breadth and comprehension of view, in composition, and frequently in 
 that practical sagacity which rises above the prejudices of sect and party, Con- 
 gregationalism will support Dr. Vaughan's reputation." — Spectator. 
 
 " We know not how to employ terms sufficiently strong in commendation of 
 this volume." — Congregational Magazine. 
 
 "Just the book which a man ought to write in the nineteenth century." — 
 Eclectic Review, 
 
 PREPARING FOR PUBLICATION, 
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THE AGE OF GREAT CITIES; or, Modern Civi- 
 lization viewed in its Relation to Intelligence, Morals, and Religion. 
 1 vol. 8vo. 
 
 Contents : Chapter I. On the Social Characteristics of Great Cities 
 in Ancient and Modern Times. — Chapter II. On the Tendencies in 
 Modern Society towards the formation of Great Cities. — Chapter III. 
 On the Age of Great Cities in its i-elation to Science, Art, and Litera- 
 ture. — Chapter IV. On the Age of Great Cities in relation to Popular 
 Intelligence. — Chapter V. On the Age of Great Cities in its relation to 
 Morality. — Chapter VI. On the Age of Great Cities in its relation to 
 ReUgion. — Chapter VII. On the Missions and Prospects of Christianity 
 in connexion with the Age of Great Cities. 
 
THE MODERN PULPIT 
 
 VIEWED IN ITS RELATION TO 
 
 THE STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
THE 
 
 MODERN PULPIT 
 
 VIEWED IN ITS RELATION TO 
 
 THE STATE OF SOCIETY. 
 
 BY 
 
 KOBERT VAUGHAN, D.D. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JACKSON AND WALFORD, 
 
 18, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH- YARD. 
 
 1842. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 rAOE 
 
 Pbeface ^ii 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 On the Office of Preaching, and on the Place assigned to it 
 in the New Testament 1 
 
 CHAPTEB n. 
 
 On the General Characteristics of Modern Society ... 8 
 
 CHAPTER ni. 
 
 On the Manual-Labour Classes, and on the Pulpit in its re- 
 lation to them 12 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 On the Middle Classes, and on the Pulpit in its relation to 
 them 36 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 On the Higher Classes, and on the Pulpit in its relation to 
 them 46 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 On the Modem Pulpit in its relation to the Past .... 67 
 
VI CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER Vn. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 On a Self-educated Ministry 144 
 
 CHAPTER vin. 
 
 On the value of a good Elocution, and on the Means of at- 
 taining it 152 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 On Divine Influence, in its relation to the Success of the 
 Gospel 171 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 On the Scriptural Connexion between Personal Religion and 
 the Ministerial Office 177 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 On the Duty of Churches in relation to the Christian 
 Ministry 188 
 
 CHAPTER xn. 
 
 On some points of Caution necessary to Preachers and 
 Hearers 198 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The late George Storer Mansfield, Esq., who resided 
 many years near Derby, accumalated considerable 
 property, which, in purpose, he bequeathed to his two 
 sisters, Mrs. Glover, and Miss Mansfield. These 
 ladies were more concerned to see their brother a man 
 of piety, than to become possessed of his wealth. They 
 agreed to offer the prayer of faith in his behalf, and 
 that prayer they lived to see fully answered, so that 
 the practical disregard of religion, which they had 
 long deplored in their relative, was followed by a 
 habit of enlightened and fervent devotedness to the 
 service of God. Soon after this change, Mr. Mans- 
 field, with the cheerful concurrence of his sisters, 
 appropriated the whole of his estates, and some other 
 property, to establish a college, in which young men 
 of piety and talent might receive education prepara- 
 tory to the Christian ministry. To the munificent 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 gifts of Mr. Mansfield, others have been added by his 
 sisters, and at their decease an income will be reahzed 
 from these sources amounting to nearly £1700 per 
 annum. 
 
 In this manner has originated the Independent 
 College at Spring Hill, near Birmingham. The plan 
 of a building, to be raised by public subscription, 
 sufficiently spacious to become the residence of fifty 
 students, and which, with its furniture, will cost, it is 
 calculated, httle less than £25,000, has been agreed 
 upon ; and such progress has been made in obtaining 
 contributions toward that object, through the inde- 
 fatio-able labours of my esteemed friend and brother, 
 the Rev. Timothy East, as to warrant the expectation, 
 that within five years the intended edifice will be 
 raised. Early in the next year, also, a building, on a 
 scale no less extended, and dedicated to the same 
 objects, will be completed near Manchester, nearly 
 the whole cost of which has been met by the liberality 
 of the dissenting churches in Lancashire belonging 
 to one denomination only. 
 
 In both these colleges, the means of education wiU 
 be provided on a plan, equal in respect to the essential 
 branches of learning, and superior in respect to theo- 
 logy and pastoral science, to what is generally obtained 
 at Oxford or Cambridge. Both, also, are founded by 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 congregationalists, and they make their appearance in 
 addition to the older colleges at Homerton and High- 
 bury, and those of Rotherham, Airdale, and Exeter, 
 as belonging to the same denomination of Christians. 
 
 The present treatise owes its origin to a discourse 
 delivered by the Author at the annual meeting of 
 Spring Hill College, in June last. His fathers and 
 brethren who were present on that occasion, requested 
 that the thoughts which had engaged their attention 
 from the pulpit might be submitted to them from the 
 press. But the preacher soon discovered, that the 
 theme which he had selected embraced too wide a 
 compass, and too great a variety of topics, to admit of 
 its being treated, with any approach toward justice, 
 within the space allotted to him in the pulpit. He has 
 accordingly recast, and greatly expanded, the whole 
 matter of the discourse, in the hope of rendering it in 
 some degree less unworthy of the subject to which it 
 relates. 
 
 In conclusion, the Author would not be understood 
 as addressing himself in the following pages to the 
 ministers of religion, more than to the laity ; nor to 
 one class of Protestant Christians, to the exclusion of 
 others. It is his settled conviction, that in the times 
 coming upon us, the power of scriptural religion, as 
 exposed to the influence of superstition on the one 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 hand, and of scepticism on the other, must depend 
 mainly on the power which may have place in the 
 Protestant pulpit; and that the Protestant pulpit in 
 the future, will be found to possess the required effi- 
 ciency, only as our laity shall be resolved on seeing 
 that it does possess it. On the deficiencies and faults 
 observable in the present state of that pulpit, the 
 Author has spoken with fi-eedom ; and his apology 
 for that fi-eedom must be in the confession that they 
 are deficiencies with which he feels himself to be in a 
 great degree chargeable, and faults which he has 
 himself only very partially unlearned. 
 
 Nutting Hill, 
 
 August 3, 1842. 
 
THE MODERN PULPIT. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ON THE OFFICE OF PREACHING, AND ON THE PLACE 
 ASSIGNED TO IT IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 One consequence attendant on the discovery of print- 
 ing has been, to render society less dependent than 
 formerly on oral instruction. In the ancient world, 
 and down to the close of the middle age, the student 
 learnt nearly everything from the lips of his teacher. 
 During the last three centuries, the printing press has 
 done much toward supplying the place of the living 
 instructor. Hence while the people of England in 
 the fourteenth century must have been as a small 
 fraction only, if subtracted from our present popula- 
 tion, the numbers resorting to Oxford as pupils were 
 much greater in that age than in our own. This fact 
 may be in part explained by another — the instituting, 
 subsequently, of so many local seminaries for primary 
 education, which has served to restrict the matters 
 taught in universities to the higher branches of scho- 
 
 B 
 
2 THE OFFICE OF PREACHING, 
 
 larship. It may also be somewhat further explained 
 by the circumstance, that ecclesiastical persons are no 
 longer the only pei'sons engaged in conducting the 
 work of education. But even these causes have not 
 done so much, probably, toward producing this change, 
 as the discovery which has raised the printed volume, 
 in so great a degree, into the place of the college pro- 
 fessor, sending the means of instruction which was 
 once almost confined to the walls of colleges, home to 
 the fireside of every student. 
 
 But great as this change may be, it has its limits. 
 No prevalence of written learning can wholly super- 
 sede the services of the oral teacher. Dependence on 
 such assistance may be less than formerly, and may 
 be different, but it will still be felt, and that feeling 
 will be acted upon widely. Greater facility with regard 
 to attainment, must always bring with it a higher 
 a\'erage of attainment. The more ample the means 
 of education, the higher will be the demand made 
 upon the educated. Oral teachers, accordingly, may 
 not be required to teach in the same manner, nor to 
 teach the same things, and still be required to teach. 
 Their instruction, indeed, may have become only the 
 more necessary, as, from these causes, it has become 
 less elementary. Such aid may not be the less valued 
 along with the possession of books, because it is now 
 oftentimes only subsidiary to what must be learnt, in 
 the main, from the study of books. It is inseparable 
 from the susceptibilities of our nature, that private 
 
AND PLACE ASSIGNED TO IT, ETC. 3 
 
 Study should be stimulated by the countenance and 
 voice of the living teacher, by access to him in all 
 cases of difficulty, and by association with class-fellows, 
 as well as by that consciousness of reahzing both a 
 more speedy and a more certain progress which is 
 the natural effect of such advantages. We can hardly 
 conceive of circumstances that should prevent these 
 causes from operating so as everywhere to congregate 
 the young for the purposes of education by such 
 means, and so as to perpetuate, in different forms, 
 and especially in relation to the higher objects of 
 study, the old relationships between the less taught 
 and the more taught. 
 
 But if nothing may be expected to separate the pro- 
 gress of scholarship from its relation to the chair of 
 the professor, assuredly nothing can be expected to 
 separate the progress of religion from its relation to 
 the pulpit. If secular knowledge must possess its 
 places of secular training in respect to the few, reli- 
 gious knowledge must not be wanting in its places of 
 rehgious training with regard to the many. It is not 
 more certain that we may not do without colleges in 
 the one department, than that we may not do without 
 churches and chapels in the other. If it would be 
 vain to expect that the minority, consisting of the 
 highly educated, should ever be wholly independent 
 of college lecturing in regard to general learning ; not 
 less vain must it be to expect that the majority, con- 
 b2 
 
4 THE OFFICE OF PREACHING, 
 
 sisting, for the most part, of the comparatively unedu- 
 cated, should ever be independent of pulpit instruc- 
 tion in regard to religious learning — that learning 
 v^^hich is the proper business of every man, and his 
 proper business from the beginning of his days to the 
 end of them. Indisposition to the exercise of reading, 
 and the consequent proneness to depend on oral in- 
 struction, is always strongest where mental cultivation 
 is the weakest, and on no subject is this so much the 
 case as in respect to religion. The feebler the re- 
 sources of the individual, the more must he depend 
 on the aids of association. The more limited his attain- 
 ments or capabilities as a learner, the more must he 
 need the sensible presence, the animating utterance, 
 and the power of simplification peculiar to the living 
 teacher. But if the principle and feeling of associa- 
 tion have their roots so deeply fixed in our nature, 
 that even the studious who assemble in colleges have 
 always been governed by them in relation to their 
 studies, and are never likely to be less governed by 
 them than at present, is it to be supposed that it will 
 ever be otherwise in the case of the busy multitude 
 of men, if they are to acquire the power of exercising 
 their thoughts with any degree of wisdom in the study 
 of religion ? Is it not at once obvious, that the aids 
 both of the feeling of association and of oral instruc- 
 tion must always be greatly more needed in the latter 
 case than in the former ? 
 
AND PLACE ASSIGNED TO IT, ETC. 5 
 
 We see, then, what the effect of the printing press 
 has been in this view — that it has rendered self-educa- 
 tion more possible than formerly, and has devolved a 
 larger portion of the labour of education in all cases 
 upon the learner ; but that so far as respects the ser- 
 vices of the public instructor, its effect has been to 
 give them a higher character, rather than to supersede 
 them, and that this has been its effect in an eminent 
 degree with regard to the instruction designed to be 
 conveyed from the pulpit. The demand now is, not 
 that preaching should cease, nor that it should be less 
 frequent than formerly ; but that, in general, it should 
 be of a higher order, as being addressed to an auditory 
 capable of reading, to an auditory in possession of 
 books, and to an auditory whose education is much 
 more general than obtained among assemblies of the 
 people in former ages. The Christian minister, then, 
 is not to surrender his office to the printing press. 
 He may sometimes have to contend with it as an anta- 
 gonist, but his proper vocation is to labour with it as 
 an ally. 
 
 Such is the view we should be disposed to entertain 
 with regard to the office of preaching in relation to 
 modern society, if the scriptures had been silent on 
 the subject. Books may do much, but the law is 
 eternal which places man in much dependence on the 
 immediate tuition of man. In this respect, as in every 
 other, the gospel has anticipated social improvement. 
 The prominence assigned in the New Testament to 
 
6 THE OFFICE OF PREACHING, 
 
 preaching, and assigned to it as its permanent place 
 under the Christian dispensation, has been determined 
 in the clear foresight of all the change that has been, 
 and that shall be. Revolutions in the social and in the 
 moral world may greatly affect the mode and com- 
 plexion of preaching, but its high uses must be per- 
 petual, inasmuch as the great aptitudes of human na- 
 ture to which it commends itself must be perpetual. 
 The labours of our blessed Lord consisted almost en- 
 tirely in preaching. It was in this office that the 
 apostles were to find their almost constant occupation. 
 It was as preachers that the seventy were deputed 
 when they were sent forth two and two into every 
 city and place whither their Lord himself would come. 
 To this kind of labour the risen Saviour pointed when 
 he said, in his emphatic address to Peter, " Feed my 
 sheep, feed my lambs ;" and still more instructive in 
 this view was his parting command to his disciples, 
 when the heavens were receiving him out of their 
 sight — " Go, preach my gospel to every creature." 
 
 Everything in the history of the church during the 
 apostolic age is in harmony with these intimations. 
 Preaching everywhere appears as the great employ- 
 ment of the apostles, and not less so of the settled 
 pastor, " Let the elders who rule well be counted 
 worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in 
 the word and doctrine.''^* The inspired guides of the 
 
 * 1 Tim. V. 17. 
 
AND PLACE ASSIGNED TO IT, ETC. 7 
 
 church sometimes touch upon the institutes of religion, 
 and upon matters of church government, but it is 
 always briefly, and for the most part indirectly, leaving 
 nearly the whole space in the apostolic records to be 
 occupied with the matter proper to preaching — viz., 
 the exposition, the defence, and the enforcement of 
 the great truths and duties of religion. The apostles 
 were not indifferent to the true principles of church 
 government, but their great concern was that churches 
 should be governed by the spirit of an enlightened 
 Christianity. They well knew the symbolic use of 
 the Christian institutes, but they trusted not to them 
 as expounders of the truths of which they were 
 the symbols. When Paul gave thanks to God that 
 he had baptized so few of the Corinthians, adding — 
 " Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the 
 gospel,"* he announced distinctly the place assigned 
 to the work of preaching in the New Testament. 
 He knew the terms of the commission which had 
 been given to him as an apostle, and his conclu- 
 sion from those terms was, that it is more important — 
 greatly more important, to preach than to baptize. 
 So great, indeed, was the difference between these 
 things, that he speaks of the one as though it pos- 
 sessed no value, even as though it had no existence, 
 compared with the other. It follows, accordingly, 
 that among the means of promoting religion in the 
 
 1 Epb. i. 17. 
 
8 THE OFFICE OF PREACHING, ETC. 
 
 world, preaching should alwaj-s hold the first place. 
 All other institutes, even when clearly the appoint- 
 ments of God, as in the instance of baptism, and 
 when administered in all respects scripturally, as 
 in the first churches, are thus made to have their 
 place and value as subordinate to preaching. No- 
 thing can be more plain than that Paul looked to 
 preaching as the great means in forming churches, 
 and as the great means by which they were to be 
 edified when formed. It is from the state of the 
 pulpit, accordingly, that we should judge, in the 
 main, as to the state of religion in the case of any 
 people. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 ON THE GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 No age has been so characterized by a diffused intel- 
 ligence as the age in which we live. Its remaining 
 ignorance and folly may be sufficiently humiliating, 
 but its amount of knowledge and culture is unprece- 
 dented in the history of the human family. If we 
 look to past times, even to the spaces which have 
 been rendered most conspicuous by the works of 
 
ON THE GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS, ETC. 9 
 
 genius and the progress of civilization, we see, in 
 general, the civilization of a class, rather than of a 
 people, and the intelligence and dominance of a few, 
 contrasted with the ignorance and subjection of the 
 many. Such has ever been the state of things in the 
 East, and such, in a degree little apprehended in 
 modern times, was the condition of society even in 
 Greece and Rome. Throughout the ancient world, 
 authors were a class, and their readers were a class, — 
 the people at large possessing little sympathy with 
 either. Even the arts were aristocratic rather than 
 popular, affording a better indication in respect to 
 the wealth and power of men in authority, than in 
 respect to the social state of the people subject to that 
 authority. The majority were slaves, and a small 
 minority only could read — need we say more? 
 
 So far as concerns the soil of Europe, this phase in 
 social history has passed away, and passed never to 
 return. Books no longer consist of costly manuscripts, 
 which find their way only to the hands of the opulent. 
 They now have their place among the cheapest of 
 commodities, and everywhere cross the path even of 
 the poorest. The inducement to learn to read has 
 gone along with this new facility for exercising that 
 pleasing and powerful faculty when acquired. The 
 absence of domestic slavery, the elevation of the 
 female character, the diffusion of the principles of 
 political franchise and self-government, and, above 
 all, the liberty of worship, and the right of private 
 b3 
 
10 ON THE GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 
 
 judgment in matters of religion — all these have con- 
 tributed to call forth habits of thought and feeling, 
 and facts and relations in the social world, which are, 
 strictly speaking, new things in the history of our 
 race, and new things which cannot fail to give character 
 to the ages to come, as distinguished from the bygone. 
 This change has come also — not as with the sudden- 
 ness of accident, but as with the gradualness of a 
 great law of providence. It has its roots everywhere, 
 and, notwithstanding temporary oscillations, it will 
 have its permanence everywhere. 
 
 We know that, in all ages, the education of men 
 has not been the effect of what has been taught them 
 from books, so much as a natural result of the training 
 inseparable from the domestic relations, and from the 
 intercourses of social life. Parents do more in this 
 way than schoolmasters. The young owe their 
 character much more to the influence which they 
 exert over each other, than to the direct labour of 
 their professional instructors. Society is the great 
 free school, in which, as by a ceaseless pressure toward 
 that end, thought is adjusted, habit is formed, and 
 character is made indelible. So long as the majority 
 were unable to read, they were of course left wholly 
 to such influences. The things written in books 
 affected them powerfully, but indirectly — not in the 
 manner of something inscribed upon parchment, and 
 deposited in the pavilions of the wealthy, but in the 
 manner of something always floating through society. 
 
OF MODERN SOCIETY. 11 
 
 Failing to learn by the side of the domestic hearth, 
 in the workshop, in the theatre, in the street, or in 
 other places of public resort, they failed to learn at all. 
 Such places were their great seminaries, and in them 
 they found almost their only teachers. 
 
 But it is obvious, that the whole of that social ap- 
 paratus, as bearing upon instruction, exists among 
 ourselves. Among us also, it exists with a wonder- 
 fully improved aptitude for accomplishing its object. 
 We know nothing of the distinction between the bond 
 and the free. Books, and the power to read books, 
 are no longer peculiar to the privileged, but common 
 to the multitudes of men. The leaven of written 
 intelligence, which once came to the people at large 
 only through the medium of others, and in fragments, 
 now comes to them directly, and is exhibited in forms 
 studiously adapted to interest and instruct. Society 
 is still the great schoolmaster, but it is society with 
 better means of self-improvement ; society itself better 
 taught ; society including more of the equalities which 
 conduce to mutual instruction ; and society, accord- 
 ingly, conveying instruction which in its modes of 
 communication, its variety, and its amount, is peculiar 
 to the times in which we live. All the channels of 
 instruction which are natural to the relations of social 
 life, and which were possessed by the ancients, we 
 possess ; and we use them with much greater effect, as 
 being aided by our more advanced social position, and 
 by that prodigious increase to the means of knowledge 
 
12 ON THE GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS, ETC. 
 
 which has been supplied by the printing-press — a 
 power which is not restricted to place or time, and 
 which combines in itself not a little of the potency of 
 the senate, the forum, and the pulpit. 
 
 In no country is the effect of these changes more 
 observable than in Great Britain. The manner in 
 which they have affected the character of the manual- 
 labour classes will be the subject of the next chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ON THE MANUAL - LABOUR CLASSES, AND ON THE 
 rULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 
 
 It must be manifest, on the slightest observation, that 
 the manual-labour classes in this country are men of 
 a widely different character from those occupying the 
 same social position a century, or even half a century 
 since. Inasmuch as all may now derive some know- 
 ledge from reading, a considerable number, even 
 among those classes, give a portion of their time to 
 such employment, and the few who are most disposed 
 to employ themselves in that manner, act as constant 
 instructors in respect to the greater number who read 
 much less than themselves. Living in nearness to each 
 other, or accustomed to almost ceaseless intercourse 
 
THE MANUAL-LABOUR CLASSES. 1 3 
 
 from the nature of their avocations, working men par- 
 take, almost imperceptibly, of something like an identity 
 of thought and impression. They are connected by so 
 much in common, that they are naturally influenced 
 by strong tendencies towards assimilation — the more 
 shrewd ever acting, in this manner, upon the less 
 shrewd. 
 
 But in Great Britain, artificial causes have so 
 affected the bearings of this intelligence, both as 
 regards social questions, and matters of religion, as to 
 have given to the labouring classes in these kingdoms 
 a character almost peculiar to themselves. The work- 
 ing man on the Continent is, in general, better edu- 
 cated, and much better conducted, than the working 
 man in England ; and, what is more remarkable, he 
 participates little in the disaffection of the English 
 artisan with regard to the existing institutions of 
 society.* 
 
 We may observe, as somewhat in explanation of 
 this last fact, that the mechanic abroad is less familiar 
 than the Englishman with the forms and spirit of a 
 free constitution, and is in consequence less likely to 
 
 * ''Apart from Switzerland, generally speaking, the working 
 classes of the Continent are thoroughly indifferent to politics. 
 Their politics, even at Lyons, where they have acted so conspicuous 
 a part in hostility to the existing dynasty, may be attributed more 
 to the prompting of agitators acting on the irritability of empty 
 stomachs, than to any decided political feeling or thoughtfulness on 
 the part of the people themselves." — Arts and Artisaiis at Home 
 and Abroad. By Jelinger C. Symons, Esq., p. 112. 
 
14 THE MANUAL-LABOUR CLASSES : 
 
 fix his attention on matters of a political complexion 
 in order to discover the cause of his sufferings, or the 
 means of providing against them. Nor has he ex- 
 perienced, in the same degree, the distress attendant 
 on the fluctuations of commerce and manufactures. 
 The English artisan has been subject to more frequent 
 and more severe privation than his neighbour; while 
 his manner of thinking, as the subject of a free 
 government, is such as to assure him that, had he 
 been fairly dealt with, the balance in this respect 
 must have been in his favour. With a better govern- 
 ment, he accounts himself worse governed. 
 
 It is painful to contemplate the spirit which has 
 grown up from these causes, and become in a great 
 degree characteristic of the English mechanic. Often 
 does he look on the comparative ease of the classes 
 above him, as though exhibiting little else than the 
 gain of a selfish policy successfully pursued ; and on 
 the splendour of the rich, as realized in great part by 
 means of an unrighteous exaction fi'om the poor. 
 Nor is there anything in the pomp thrown about the 
 possession of power, to divert him from scrutinizing, 
 with the utmost freedom, the object so invested, nor 
 to prevent his evincing towards it, in too many in- 
 stances, mingled hostility and scorn. 
 
 The natural urbanities, and the mutual trust and 
 good-will, which once held the different grades of 
 society together, are so diminished as to be almost 
 effaced from our habits and character. Variety in 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 15 
 
 allotment, which has so often conduced to social unity 
 and power, seems to be fast losing its tendency to- 
 ward any such result. The portions of the com- 
 munity which are unlike, are almost everywhere the 
 portions of it which are at enmity. It is a great gulf 
 which separates between the richest and the poorest ; 
 and in the case of the classes which come nearer 
 together, the jealousy and ill-will between them is 
 oftentimes more deeply rooted and bitter than in the 
 case of those who are separated in the greatest degree 
 from each other. Equality seems to have become the 
 great want and object of the manual-labour classes ; 
 and the worship offered to this idea, is as to a species 
 of divinity, which it is only needful to make pro- 
 pitious in order to realize the visions of a golden age. 
 Of course, the degree in which the mind is fascinated 
 with this object, is the degree in which its enmity 
 rises against all opposition to the prosecution of it. 
 Hence the ideas of wealth and power have become 
 identified, very generally, in such quarters, with those 
 of selfishness and oppression — so much so, indeed, 
 that to be apprehensive of some great social con- 
 vulsion, would seem to be a greatly more reasonable 
 state of mind, than strong confidence as to the con- 
 tinuance of tranquiUity. 
 
 Religion, also, as being unhappily blended with 
 everything secular about us, shares largely in this 
 enmity. Of all the parts, indeed, included in the 
 established order of things, this is viewed as in the 
 
16 THE MANUAL-LABOUR CLASSES : 
 
 least degree just and humane. Among all the offices 
 which are accounted useless or pernicious, those of 
 the dignitaries of the English hierarchy are regarded 
 as the least endurable ; and of all men, the clergy of 
 the established church are the last to whom this class 
 would think of looking for any concession in favour 
 of popular power. In the state church, these men 
 see a state eng-ine — an ena-ine of immense cost and 
 portentous mischief. Judging of Christianity from 
 such exhibitions of it, they regard it as a policy, and 
 not as a religion ; and if they ever appeal to it with 
 any appearance of respect, it is when they would 
 reproach its ministers with having divorced its creed 
 from its practice, or with being zealots for its doc- 
 trines, while they manifest the deepest repugnance to 
 its social morality. By these persons, as in the case 
 of much more educated men during the last century, 
 little distinction is made between the Christianity 
 which is perpetuated by selfish usage or state polity, 
 and that which is sustained by means of its own 
 worth. It has not been convenient, in either of these 
 cases, to be observant of such distinctions, and the 
 precious and the vile have been confounded ac- 
 cordingly. 
 
 But whatever right we may have to complain with 
 regard to such a method of proceeding, the great fact 
 remains — it is so, that from these and other causes, we 
 have not only to do with a more diffused and a more 
 vigorous popular intelligence than our predecessors. 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 17 
 
 but we have to do with it as disposed to take a wrong 
 direction, so far as regards rehgion, rather than a 
 right one. The classes who, less than a century ago, 
 regarded everything English with blind admiration, now 
 look on nearly everything established with an aversion 
 hardly more discriminating. Extreme has come, for 
 a time, into the place of extreme. We needed 
 change, but it has not halted at the right point. The 
 false has been discarded, but it has not always been 
 that the true might come into its place. We have 
 something very like the spirit of insubordination in 
 place of the spirit of servility ; and scepticism has come, 
 too commonly, into the place of credulity. Enmity to 
 our social institutions is proclaimed as on every house- 
 top ; and enmity to revealed religion, in every form, 
 is published in a manner scarcely less notorious. 
 
 Should the indolent statesman, or the confidins 
 Christian, be disposed to account these appearances 
 a trivial matter, we would remind such persons of the 
 maxim which derives strength from unity, and would 
 bid them look to the capabilities of organization with 
 which this new spirit is associated, as evidence, of the 
 most unequivocal nature, in regard both to its preva- 
 lence and power. It is a leading fact in the social his- 
 tory of our times, that the idea of power has come to be 
 almost inseparable from the idea of centralization and 
 unity ; and even in the class adverted to, among whom 
 concert of this nature was least to have been expected, 
 this notion has not only become familiar, but has ob- 
 
18 THE MANUAL-LABOUR CLASSES : 
 
 tained the place of a fixed maxim, and has been acted 
 upon with a singular measure of success. 
 
 It is not necessary to our present object, that we 
 should deliver any definite opinion concerning the 
 merit or demerit of the objects contemplated by this 
 novel species of popular combination. It may be, 
 that we ought to see in it, nothing more than the na- 
 tural effect of some much older, and by no means 
 less selfish combinations, in favour of the interests to 
 which it is opposed. It may be, that the unreasonable 
 contained in it has derived its measure of influence 
 and power from its alliance with much that is not un- 
 reasonable. It is always safe, as well as humane, to 
 judge leniently concerning the errors of the people, 
 and, on the whole, it may be, that the weak in this 
 case, as in most others, possess a more weighty claim 
 upon our sympathy than the strong. But whether 
 addressing the many who toil, or the few who luxu- 
 riate, we mean not to use flattering words, and we 
 must confess, that the insufferable arrogance, and the 
 ill-disguised mental depravity observable in not a few 
 who aspire to be as masters over this popular organi- 
 zation, are such as to leave no doubt in our mind with 
 regard to the course which such men would pursue, 
 were their power once to become commensurate with 
 their inclinations. We are willing to believe that the 
 course taken in this respect by multitudes among the 
 labouring classes, is not to be ascribed to those darker 
 intentions which are often imputed to them, so much 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 19 
 
 as to their limited knowledge, their want of consider- 
 ation, and, above all, to their complicated suffering 
 and their deep sense of its being unmerited. 
 
 But when every deduction of this sort shall have 
 been made, the fact that so many of our countrymen 
 should have given even the semblance of an adhesion 
 to a course of proceeding which is hardly less than 
 hostile to everything rehgious among us, than to every- 
 thing political, is a matter sufficiently ominous. Many 
 thousands — many myriads, of the working men of 
 England have been disposed to take their course apart 
 from such questionable associations, but this has been 
 almost uniformly as the effect of their having been 
 brought under some religious impression by means of 
 an evangelical ministry, either in the established 
 church, or among the various bodies of methodists 
 or dissenters, and to this fact we must attribute the 
 ferocious attacks which have recently been made on 
 all denominations of Christians, through some of the 
 organs of the party whose ranks have been thus 
 affected. If we succeed in diffusing sobriety of 
 thought, and the fear of God, among the people, we 
 must lay our account, it seems, with not a little 
 of such invective. 
 
 But, as Christian ministers, and religious men, our 
 attention is naturally directed towards this social phe- 
 nomenon, considered mainly in its bearing upon reli- 
 gion ; and in this view the point which I am desirous 
 of pressing upon the attention of my brethren is, that 
 
20 THE MANUAL-LABOUR CLASSES : 
 
 while we are at full liberty to be observant of the 
 good, and of all that may be excused or extenuated in 
 these appearances, it is imperative that we should 
 look to the evil that is in them — look to it in its 
 whole compass, and in its lowest roots, if we would 
 deal with it wisely. It must be remembered, that in 
 these appearances we find the most remarkable feature 
 of the age in which we live. To a great extent, 
 popular passiveness and superstition have given place 
 to popular restlessness and irreligion. We see in this 
 change a great social reaction — a reaction in excess, 
 and a reaction, in consequence, which will probably 
 subside, though not, perhaps, within the time of the 
 present generation. It may be, that as the lines 
 which have separated our two great political parties 
 are becoming less and less distinct every day, the main 
 effect of these new indications with regard to popular 
 feeling, intelligence, and power, will be to give a more 
 beneficial character to that new adjustment of the 
 great elements of political society which seems to be 
 at hand. 
 
 What, then, is the report that should be made con- 
 cerning the pulpit, viewed in its relation to this large 
 portion of the community ? Our answer must be, 
 that we cannot avoid accounting it as beino-, in a 
 great measure — perhaps in a majority of instances — a 
 manifest failure. Nor are the more considerable of 
 the causes which have conduced to this failure hard to 
 discover. 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 21 
 
 It would seem to be a cardinal error among the 
 great majority of preachers in our time, that they 
 think much too meanly of the popular understanding. 
 It is their manner to judge of the minds of men too 
 much by the standard of a technical education, with- 
 out keeping sufficiently in view either the sameness or 
 the variety of those natural capabilities which God 
 has bestowed upon men as such. It is little remem- 
 bered, in consequence, that the slightly-educated man 
 in the pew, may possibly be possessed of much greater 
 sagacity than the thoroughly-educated man in the 
 pulpit. Ministers of religion should not need to be 
 reminded, that the smith at his anvil may have more 
 compass of soul in him, than is found in the scholar, 
 however much given to his books. In the case of the 
 one, there may be naturally a robust mental health, 
 such as no amount of artificial means would suffice to 
 confer in the case of the other. Equality in these 
 things is of much wider extent than is commonly 
 supposed. The peer and the mechanic are alike spe- 
 cimens of humanity, and, not unfrequently, all the 
 training in the world w^ould fail of securing to the 
 man of high degree, the same habit of intelligent per- 
 ception which may be existing as so much natural be- 
 stowment in the man of low degree. In all time, the 
 toe of one grade has come, in this manner, near upon 
 the heel of another accounted as greatly its betters. 
 But in no time has this rivalry between the children of 
 
22 THE MANUAL-LABOUR CLASSES : 
 
 nature, and the children of fortune, been so prevalent, 
 or so marked, as in the time in which we live. 
 
 It is a great mistake to suppose, that in order to in- 
 terest and instruct the popular mind, it will be neces- 
 sary to descend to it in a manner inconsistent with 
 good taste. It is not denied that some men do thus 
 descend, and that they do so with their measure of suc- 
 cess ; but we deny, even in their case, that success has 
 been necessarily dependent on such means. One of 
 our greatest masters in eloquence has assured us, that 
 all the highest powers in oratory consist in producing 
 such passages as may at once affect even the most 
 promiscuous auditory, and that the most elaborate 
 graces of composition are rarely thrown away even 
 upon such an auditory, provided they are graces 
 adapted to their object. " Clear, strong, terse, yet 
 natural, and not strained expressions; happy anti- 
 theses; apt comparisons; forms of speech that are 
 natural without being obvious ; harmonious periods, 
 yet various, spirited, and never monotonous or too 
 regularly balanced ; — these are what will be always 
 sure to captivate every audience, and yet in these, 
 mainly consists finished, and elaborate, and felicitous 
 diction. ' Mirabile est,' says Cicero, * cum pluri- 
 mum in faciendo intersit inter doctum et rudem, 
 quam non multum differat in judicando.'* The best 
 speakers of all times have never failed to find that 
 * De Orat. iii. 51. 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THE3I. 23 
 
 they could not speak too well or too carefully to a po- 
 pular assembly; that if they spoke their best — the 
 best they could address to the most learned and cri- 
 tical assembly, they were sure to succeed."* Thus, 
 even among the ancients, with whom oratory was 
 much more a matter of mere embellishment or amuse- 
 ment than among ourselves, the utmost care was taken 
 that the erudite should always be subservient to the 
 popular, and that the effect of the utmost degree of 
 literary refinement should be a stronger popular inte- 
 rest, and a deeper popular impression. 
 
 But in the modern pulpit, the effect of learning, 
 and of elegant scholarship, has commonly been to 
 render men incapable of producing impression of that 
 nature in any degree. In the case of such preachers, 
 neither the diction they use, nor the mould into which 
 they cast their expressions and sentences, nor the 
 comparisons they introduce, nor anything belonging 
 to their rhetoric, has been an object of study with a 
 view to its fitness to secure the attention, and to move 
 the thoughts and passions of such assemblies as are 
 generally convened by the preacher — assemblies made 
 up from the popular, much more than from the 
 thoroughly educated classes of society. The great 
 object of this class of preachers has been to acquit 
 themselves learnedly, or to acquit themselves elegantly. 
 It is grievous to witness the mischiefs which have 
 
 * Dissertation on tlie Eloquence of the Ancients, 424, 425. 
 
24 THE MANUAL-LABOUR CLASSES : 
 
 resulted from this conventionalism in pulpit taste. If 
 our pulpit lessons must be veiled in the language of 
 a particular kind of scholarship, then the people gene- 
 rally, and even men of good natural parts, who have 
 not been initiated into that scholarship, will fail to 
 perceive our meaning, and will begin, as the conse- 
 quence, to cast about for some better employment 
 than listening to the utterances of our unknown 
 tongue. 
 
 It should be accounted as a pleasing proof of the 
 good sense pervading the popular mind, when the 
 people refuse to be put off with the jingle of style 
 in place of the clear statement, and vigorous enforce- 
 ment of truth. Nevertheless, on the ground that the 
 people almost uniformly estimate such pulpit trifling 
 at its proper value, are they commonly reproached as 
 incapable of appreciating pulpit excellence ! In general, 
 the scholar needs only speak in his own language to 
 be understood by the scholar ; but should it become 
 his object to make himself equally understood by men 
 who are not scholars, it will be necessary that he 
 should study to become expert in the use of language 
 which may not be strictly his own. He must look 
 from his own immediate associations to the associations 
 of other men. He must become observant of the 
 modes of apprehension which belong to minds widely 
 different from his own. He must be capable of effort 
 to place himself as in the stead of such minds ; and 
 from that point he must learn to judge concerning the 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 25 
 
 manner in which such mental habits may be ap- 
 proached with the best effect. Nor must he regard 
 this as being akogether a work of condescension. It 
 is not condescension that is demanded of him, so 
 much as adaptation. This manner of observation, 
 and this kind of study, may be necessary, not so much 
 because the minds about him are weaker than his 
 own, as because they are different. The point to be 
 guarded against is, that what is pecuhar to the class of 
 the teacher on the one hand, and to that of the 
 taught on the other, may not be allowed to prove 
 fatal to the sympathy which might otherwise arise 
 from what is common to them both. Should it be 
 necessary to condescend, it will not be the wisdom of 
 the public instructor to seem to do so. Any intima- 
 tion to that effect would be felt as so ill a compliment, 
 in many cases, as to prove in itself sufficient to ensure 
 a failure. 
 
 On this whole subject, the following passage abounds 
 in the most apposite truth — and truth of such practical 
 importance that no public speaker can ponder it too 
 closely. " It is a common thing with those who, 
 because Cicero is more ornate, suffers the artifice of 
 his composition to appear more plainly, and indulges 
 more in amplification, imagine that he is less argu- 
 mentative than the Greek orators, to represent the 
 latter, and especially Demosthenes, as distinguished 
 by greater closeness of reasoning. If by this is only 
 meant that he never wanders from the subject, that 
 
 c 
 
26 THE MANUAL-LABOUR CLASSES I 
 
 each remark tells upon the matter in hand, that all 
 his illustrations are brought to bear upon the point, 
 and that he is never found making any step in any 
 direction which does not advance his main object, 
 and lead toward the conclusion to which he is striving 
 to bring his hearers — the observation is perfectly just ; 
 for this is a distinguishing feature in the character of 
 his eloquence. It is not, indeed, his grand excel- 
 lence, because everything depends upon the manner 
 in which he pursues this course, the course itself 
 being one quite as open to the humblest mediocrity as 
 to the highest genius. But if it is meant to be said 
 that these attic orators, and especially their great chief, 
 made speeches in which long chains of elaborate 
 reasoning are to be found — nothing can be less like 
 the truth. A variety of topics are handled in succes- 
 sion, all calculated to strike the audience. Passions 
 which predominated in their minds are appealed to — 
 feelings easily excited among them are roused by 
 skilful allusions — glaring inconsistencies are shewn in 
 the advice given by others — sometimes by exhibiting 
 the repugnance of those councils among themselves, 
 sometimes by contrasting them with other counsels 
 proceeding from the same quarters. The pernicious 
 tendency of certam measures is displayed by referring, 
 sometimes to the general principles of human action, 
 and the course which human affairs usually take ; 
 more frequently by a reference to the history of past, 
 and generally of very recent events. Much invective 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 27 
 
 is mixed with these topics, and both the enemy 
 without, and the evil counsellor within the walls, are 
 very unsparingly dealt with. The orator was ad- 
 dressing hearers who, for the most part, were as inti- 
 mately acquainted as himself with all the facts of the 
 case, and these lay within a sufficiently narrow com- 
 pass, being the actual state of public affairs, and the 
 victories or the defeats which had, within the memory 
 of all, attended their arms, or the transactions which 
 had taken place among them in very recent times. 
 No detailed statements were therefore wanted for 
 their information. He was really speaking to them 
 respecting their own affairs, or rather, respecting what 
 they had just been doing or witnessing themselves. 
 Hence a very short allusion alone was generally 
 required to raise the idea which he desired to present 
 before his audience. Sometimes a word was enough 
 for his purpose ; the naming of a man or a town ; the 
 calling to their recollection what had been done by 
 the one, or had happened to the other. The effect 
 produced by such a rapid interchange of ideas and 
 impressions must have struck every one who has been 
 present at public meetings. He will have remarked 
 that some such apt allusion has a power — produces an 
 electrical effect — not to be reached by any chain of 
 reasoning, however close, and that even the most 
 highly-wrought passages, and the most exquisite com- 
 position, fall far short of it in rousing or controlling 
 the minds of a large assembly. Chains of reasoning, 
 
 c2 
 
28 THE MANUAL-LABOUR CLASSES : 
 
 examples of fine argumentation, produce their effect 
 upon a far nicer, a more confined, and a more select 
 audience. But such apposite allusions — such appro- 
 priate topics — such happy hits (to use a homely but 
 expressive phrase) have a sure, an irresistible, a magic 
 effect upon a popular assembly. In these the Greek 
 oratory abounds, and above all, its greatest master 
 abounds in them more than all the lesser rhetoricians. 
 They would have been highly successful without the 
 charms of composition ; but he also clothes them in 
 the most choice language, arranges them in the most 
 perfect order, and captivates the ear with a music 
 which is fitted at his will to provoke or to soothe, but 
 ever to charm the sense, even were it possible for it to 
 be addressed apart, without the mind too being moved. 
 "Let any one examine the kind of topics on which 
 those orators dwell, and he will be convinced that 
 close reasoning was not their object — that they were 
 adapting their discourse to the nature of their audi- 
 ence — and that, indeed, not a few of their topics were 
 such as they would hardly have thought of using, had 
 they been arguing the matter stringently with an 
 antagonist, ' hand to hand, and foot to foot ;' or, 
 which is the same thing, preparing a demonstration 
 to meet the eye of an unexcited reader. It is certain 
 that some of Demosthenes' chief topics are exactly 
 those which he would use to convince the calm reason 
 of the most undisturbed listener or reader — such as 
 the dangers of inaction — the formidable, because able 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 29 
 
 and venturous enemy they had to contend with — the 
 certainty of the peril which is met by procrastination 
 becoming greater after the unprofitable delay. These, 
 however, are the most obvious considerations, and on 
 these he dwells the less because of their being so 
 obvious. But the more striking allusions and illustra- 
 tions by which he enforces them are not always such 
 as would bear close examination if considered as argu- 
 ments, although they are always such as must, in the 
 popular assembly to which he addressed them, have 
 wrought a wondrous effect." * 
 
 In nearly all these respects, effective public speak- 
 ing with the moderns, is precisely what it was with the 
 ancients. The use, indeed, of the apt allusion or 
 illustration, for the purpose of giving the effect of ar- 
 gument to points of mere ingenuity, is, of course, no 
 peculiarity to be imitated by any ingenuous speaker, 
 and least of all, by the Christian minister. Nor are 
 we insensible to some other material differences be- 
 tween the eloquence proper to the forensic orator and 
 that proper to the divine. But it would be well if 
 the eloquence of the pulpit M^ere made to partake of 
 all that is strictly appropriate to it in the eloquence of 
 the senate and the bar. The barrister, in laying his 
 case before a jury, has all the inconveniences to sur- 
 mount which can beset a preacher when addressing 
 himself to the partially instructed, in the presence of 
 
 * Brougham's Dissertation on the Eloquence of the Ancients, 
 432—435. 
 
30 THE MANUAL-LABOUR CLASSES : 
 
 many belonging to a higher class. He has to bear in 
 mind that he is speaking as one of a profession which 
 is understood to be restricted to persons possessing 
 the attainments of the scholar and the feeling of the 
 gentleman. He has to speak also in the presence of 
 a court before which nothing at variance with the 
 established notions of taste or decorum would be al- 
 lowed. He has at the same time to secure the atten- 
 tion of a jury consisting of persons selected from the 
 occupied, more than from the educated classes — the ma- 
 jority always needing to be addressed with the greatest 
 regard to lucid arrangement, clearness of expression, 
 and popular modes of illustration, if the case is to be 
 presented so as to obtain a favourable verdict. 
 
 Thus it will be seen, that the lawyer, in order to 
 success, is obliged to be at once erudite and popular ; 
 and that he is expected to exhibit this versatile power 
 without descending to the coarse or the vulgar. 
 And has the divine any right to complain because 
 success in his case is made to depend on a similar ne- 
 cessity? No man expects that a barrister will be 
 successful, except as he is found capable of casting a 
 luminous glance over all the points of a case when 
 submitted to him, capable of assigning to the points 
 of greatest importance their due place, and capable of 
 setting forth the whole with a distinctness and strength 
 adapted to apprehensions of much less discipline than 
 his own — and shall we complain, because the condi- 
 tions of success in the pulpit are the same in these re- 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 31 
 
 spects with the conditions of success at the bar ? No 
 advocate ever dreams of being effective, except as he 
 shall have made the minds to which he has to address 
 himself an object of study, so as to facilitate his pro- 
 gress in the great art which enables a man to throw off 
 the results of accurate, and, it may be, of profound 
 learning, in the most popular form. Need I say, that 
 it is precisely by such a process that we should seek 
 to reahze eminence as preachers ? 
 
 It is in vain that we cast the blame of our failure in 
 this capacity on the popular taste. Men capable of 
 teaching, will succeed in that office, if they only study, 
 with a view to success, so as to deserve to succeed. 
 No man, whose aim in elaborating sermons has been to 
 give clearness and force to Divine truth, has ever had 
 reason to complain of the obtuseness of the popular 
 apprehension, or of the coldness of the popular grati- 
 tude. But the preacher who would find this assertion 
 corroborated in his experience, must be careful that 
 his labour is indeed to make truth plain, and not to 
 obscure it — to give it power, and not to render it 
 pointless. K observant of these very obvious maxims, 
 he will soon perceive that there is very little knowledge 
 in the mind of our preachers, which might not be made 
 to have its place in the great majority of the people 
 looking up to them for instruction. There is nothing 
 so wonderful in our thoughts, even in the case of the 
 most intellectual, as to prevent men in general from 
 sympathizing with them, whenever the object of the 
 
32 THE MANUAL-LABOUR CLASSES : 
 
 preacher is to shed light upon thought, and to render 
 it impressive. 
 
 But not a few preachers would seem to have been 
 more solicitous to discover a plea for indolence in 
 looking to the weakness of the popular mind, than 
 to realize a stimulus to exertion by looking to its 
 strength. How else may we account for the conduct 
 of persons who appear to have come to the conclusion, 
 that the best way to interest men is, not to com- 
 municate knowledge, but to indulge in a constant 
 iteration on what is already known. Man is so con- 
 stituted by the law of his Creator, as to be capable of 
 finding immeasurably greater pleasure in the sense of 
 going onward, after the manner of a rational being, 
 than in the sense of going merely round and round, 
 after the manner of a mill- horse. But manifest as this 
 fact may be, on the slightest reflection, there are 
 many preachers who seem to have spent a long life 
 without taking any real cognizance of it. In the 
 train of this weakness every sort of evil naturally 
 follows. No pains are taken to explain the obscure 
 or to establish the doubtful, partly because these things 
 would require effort, but mainly because the preacher 
 has learnt to think that such labour would be useless, 
 and possibly worse than useless. Hence, in the midst 
 of a generation which has left nothing unquestioned, 
 the man continues to preach as though the credulity 
 of the middle age had never been disturbed. While 
 every appliance is abroad on the side of error, such 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 33 
 
 preachers deem it enough that they repeat, to utter 
 weariness, a mere proclamation of the elements of 
 truth ; and should this fail of convincing the gain- 
 sayer, they account their office as performed, when 
 they have imputed to such persons everything bad in 
 motive, and have consigned them to everything ter- 
 rible in destiny. Even such preaching may not be 
 without a measure of the Divine blessing, and may, 
 accordingly, produce some good impression ; but that 
 impression will be very much confined to the more 
 passive and feeble-minded, even among the humbler 
 classes, while upon the more shrewd in those classes, 
 and especially upon such as may have imbibed pre- 
 possessions opposed to all credence in revealed 
 truth, the tendency of such preaching must be rather 
 to excite disgust than in any way to conciliate. 
 
 Having used this freedom of expression with regard 
 to the defects of the pulpit viewed in its relation to 
 the manual-labour classes, it will be proper to add, 
 that we are happy in the assurance that there are 
 many hundreds — indeed, we can readily believe many 
 thousands — among the preachers of the gospel in 
 Great Britain, who are not insensible to the wants of 
 the age in this respect, and whose efforts in some 
 degree to supply those wants, entitle them to 
 much commendation. In England, great praise is 
 due, on this ground, to a large class of preachers 
 among the Wesleyan methodists, among evangelical 
 dissenters, and in the established church. On the 
 
 c3 
 
34 THE MANUAL-LABOUR CLASSES : 
 
 whole, we judge that the gospel has not been preached 
 in so much of its apostolic import and spirit, by so 
 large a number of men, in any period of our history 
 as at present, or in any period in the history of any 
 other people since the age of the apostles. 
 
 Our matter of regret is, that notwithstanding these 
 signs of improvement, deficiency in this respect is still 
 so manifest among us when compared with the demand 
 of the times. It is to be regretted, also, that the 
 attempts made by methodists and dissenters, to adapt 
 religious instruction to the classes adverted to, should 
 have been so often made in a manner inconsistent 
 with that regard to decorum, and that good religious 
 taste, which never should, and never need be dispensed 
 with in the pulpit ; and that in all these connexions, 
 the effort to render instruction popular should have 
 been so generally allowed to wear the appearance of 
 an act of condescension. The educated do not need 
 to be regardless of dignity on the one hand, nor to 
 put on this seeming of the superior on the other, 
 when accosting the uneducated on the village green, 
 or by the way side, and why should these things be 
 suffered to make their appearance in the pulpit ? 
 
 But while some preachers give themselves to the 
 study of what is needed from them, as such, by the 
 age in which they live, and a greater number 
 possess only a little light on that subject, there is a 
 greater number still, who seem to be wholly in- 
 capable of understanding what is expected from them 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 35 
 
 in the office they sustain ; and our fear is, that, in 
 many cases, persons of this latter class will take to 
 themselves the benefit of the favourable exception 
 just made, while nothing is farther from our intention 
 than that they should be so comforted. On this 
 subject there is much need to pray that those who 
 see not might see, and that those who see in part 
 might see more clearly. Only as the Christian 
 ministry shall become characterized by much sound 
 practical intelligence in relation to the duties of the 
 pulpit, can we hope to see the mass of the people 
 retained in any profession of regard to the gospel ; 
 and if the existing religious bodies do not occupy 
 themselves wisely and sedulously, with a view to 
 efficiency in that form, let them not be surprised if 
 it should appear that the nineteenth century is to 
 give existence to some new religious movement, after 
 the manner of the eighteenth. It is not in the 
 history of methodism only that we see the zeal of 
 new sects employed as means of correcting the errors 
 or expelling the lethargy of the old; and in this 
 connexion, as in every other, if the same causes are 
 permitted to recur, the same effects must be expected 
 to follow. If the impression which it is so necessary 
 should be made on the masses of society, in regard to 
 the claims of revealed truth, is to be made, it must 
 be in the main by the ministry of men who, with 
 minds devoutly intent on doing good, will know 
 how to unite the advantages of scholarship with the 
 
36 THE MIDDLE CLASSES : 
 
 Studious culture of popular talent; and if the existing 
 ministries of the church should fail to send forth a 
 large supply of such men, it is to be expected that 
 the Head of the church will himself raise them up, 
 by a special intervention to that end, and the new 
 agency will probably make its appearance in quarters, 
 and in circumstances, of which we have at present no 
 sort of foresight. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ON THE MIDDLE CLASSES, AND ON THE PULPIT IN 
 ITS RELATION TO THEM. 
 
 It has appeared, then, that the increase of numbers 
 in the labouring classes of Great Britain, within the 
 last half century, great as that increase has been, is 
 not so remarkable as the change which has taken 
 place in the character of those classes. Of course, 
 this great moral revolution has not come alone. Cor- 
 responding change is observable in the middle class, 
 and has reached, more or less, even to the highest. 
 
 The present intelligence of the middle classes, re- 
 garded in its average, is much more varied, and of a 
 much higher character, than that of the gentry of 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 37 
 
 England a century since. It is now felt that every 
 trade demands a new degree of skill, promptitude, 
 and energy ; that every profession is based on quite 
 another grade of attainment ; and that men who 
 would distinguish themselves in public life, must do 
 so through a process of competition and ordeal un- 
 precedented in our history. 
 
 We have our prejudices still, fully enough of them, 
 but they are everywhere, in some degree — if the ex- 
 pression may be allowed — reasoning prejudices. Men 
 continue to hold very absurd opinions, but they are 
 nearly always founded on some apprehension of truth, 
 and are sustained by something of the plausible in 
 argument. Literature is no longer an appendage to 
 aristocrac}^, but a possession of the people, and espe- 
 cially of the people in the middle ranks of life. 
 Authors look immeasurably more to the patronage of 
 the professional and trafficking classes of society than 
 to persons above such classes. The taste of this wider 
 circle of readers is for the clear, the direct, the 
 forcible, and the demand produces the supply. 
 Poetry, description, narrative, argument, eloquence — 
 all the forms of composition come before them from 
 the press almost every hour, and serve to familiarize 
 them imperceptibly with the exhibition, the clothing, 
 and the working out of thought, after the manner of 
 educated minds. 
 
 Hence while we find not in the history of any 
 other country so large a middle class as in Great 
 
38 THE MIDDLE CLASSES : 
 
 Britain, in no other country do we find that class 
 including so large an amount of wealth, intelligence, 
 and power. It is true, it is a middle class severed 
 too much from the lower classes, and subject often to 
 unwholesome influences from the higher ; but the 
 intrinsic strength retained by it in these somewhat 
 unfavourable circumstances, is still such as to present 
 to the eye of the preacher a wide and most promising 
 field of mind on which to bestow his labour. In this 
 department he can bring no real skill to the public 
 service which he may not expect to see fairly appre- 
 ciated. Within this enclosure school instruction has 
 been considerable ; but the shrewdness and know- 
 ledge which have grown up within it, indirectly and 
 imperceptibly, as consequent on the daily intercourses 
 and occupations of life, are such as no school or 
 college would have imparted. Of course, the powers 
 of mind which have become acute, penetrating, com- 
 prehensive, from their contact with the world, do not 
 cease to possess these qualities of strength when invited 
 to an examination of the claims of religion. Habits 
 of forethought, caution, scrutiny, calculation — all are 
 so many forms of mental power, and if taken in the 
 track in which they are accustomed to move, are so 
 many avenues by which the preacher may hope to 
 reach the understanding and affect the heart. Pro- 
 fessional life, and commercial life, have never done 
 so much to give discipline and force to the general 
 capabilities of the human mind as at the present 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 39 
 
 time ; and never, in consequence, has so large a 
 demand been made upon qualities of that nature 
 in the preacher when addressing himself to minds 
 engaged in such pursuits. Our aim, accordingly, 
 should be, to see that the intellect which is put forth on 
 the side of the religious, is not less powerful than the 
 intellect which is thus on the side of the secular ; that 
 the stronger cause may not bo allowed to appear as 
 the weaker, through weakness on the part of its ad- 
 vocate ; that the men who plead for the future may 
 be capable of contending, closely and successfully, 
 with the men who give themselves wholly to the 
 present ; and that we no more commit the folly of 
 sending forth contemplative imbecility, to make pro- 
 clamation of its weakness by attempting to do battle 
 with active power. 
 
 One effect of the position taken by the labouring 
 classes, and of other causes of a similar complexion in 
 our recent history, has been an augmented zeal on 
 the part of the wealthy, the professional, and aristo- 
 cratic classes, in favour of the older forms of our insti- 
 tutions, and especially in favour of the established 
 church, producing in a large body of the clergy of 
 that church, and among many of its laity, a much 
 stronger disposition to recede toward the Christianity 
 and the civilization of the middle age, than to allow 
 themselves to be drifted onwards, they know not 
 whither, by the new tendencies of society. Upon 
 the less wealthy sections of the middle class, this dis- 
 
40 THE MIDDLE CLASSES : 
 
 position to fall back upon the servile and superstitious 
 will probably make little impression. But there are 
 other classes, a little more fortunate in life, and more 
 beset, in consequence, with a disposition to ape the 
 tastes and manners of the classes above themselves, 
 who will not be unwilling that their natural sympathies 
 or preferences in matters connected with religion 
 should be accounted as piety ; and many among the 
 more untaught and the lowest classes, will be as readily 
 disposed to substitute the forms of ecclesiastical ob- 
 servance, in the place of the intelligent, the moral, 
 and the devout, which alone constitute the religion of 
 Holy Writ. 
 
 In what state, then, is the English pulpit with 
 regard to this class, filling as it does its wide space 
 between the two extremes of society ? 
 
 In the case of devout churchmen, much incon- 
 venience and cost are frequently incurred to place 
 themselves in connexion with an evangelical ministry, 
 which sometimes proves everything they desire, but 
 is more frequently regarded as a matter for which they 
 should endeavour to be thankful, seeing that it is the 
 best of its kind they can obtain. Very commonly, 
 such persons have a much better conception in regard 
 to what preaching ought to be than the preacher him- 
 self, and they find themselves obliged to bear with a 
 want of capacity and adaptation in the pulpit, which 
 they would not tolerate a week in the case of persons 
 entrusted with the management of anything respon- 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 41 
 
 sible in their worldly business. It often happens, 
 indeed, in this connexion, that well-meaning people, 
 strongly attached to certain walls, to particular forms, 
 and to one class of ministers, learn to content them- 
 selves with the most puerile round of instruction, so 
 that it comes to them through the right channel, so 
 that care also be taken to set it forth in a certain 
 phraseology, and with the required tone of seriousness. 
 But even these persons are often secretly conscious, 
 that the pulpit, as they see it filled, instead of being 
 in advance of the times, is a pitiable loiterer in the 
 rear of them. 
 
 With regard to churchmen in the same social posi- 
 tion, who give no preference to evangelical instruc- 
 tion, deficiency of this sort may be less felt in their 
 case, but it is by no means unperceived even by such 
 persons. Every clergyman, it is presumed, is a man 
 of ability in some way, seeing he has patent as such, 
 under the seal of a university. But few things are 
 more common than a feeling of surprise and regret 
 that the results in this case, so far as regards preach- 
 ing, should be so little commensurate with the under- 
 stood cost and labour of the process. Not that these 
 persons in general care much about preaching, as a 
 matter relating to themselves ; but they look to it as 
 something for which a good price has been paid, as 
 something which on that account ought to be done 
 well, so done as to accomplish its object ; and they 
 look to it, moreover, in connexion with what obtains 
 
42 THE MIDDLE CLASSES : 
 
 of the same kind elsewhere — and it is not at all grati- 
 fying to perceive that their own ministers, who claim 
 to be in all things belonging to their vocation as the 
 first, should so often be in this very notorious matter 
 of preaching as the last. 
 
 Looking to churchmen of the middle class gene- 
 rally, particularly to the more shrewd and informed, 
 and taking in the leading men in mercantile and pro- 
 fessional life, we cannot avoid the conclusion, that the 
 honest and fixed opinion of those parties must be, that 
 no portion of the public service is, on the whole, so 
 defectively performed, as the service of the pulpit. Such 
 men cannot fail to see, that of all the products in our 
 social system, those of the pulpit are the most costly, 
 and the worst supplied. Nor are the clergy them- 
 selves wholly insensible to this fact. Hence, in great 
 part, the ceaseless attempt, in the case of a large num- 
 ber of them, to depreciate the office of preaching alto- 
 gether, as compared with the reading of prayers, and 
 other official services. If we would trace this anti- 
 apostolic theory — which aims to put disparagement, 
 rather than special honour, upon the men who labour 
 in word and doctrine — to its root, it will be seen, we 
 suspect, to arise out of the conviction — a conviction 
 not the less real for being unavowed — that if the 
 church of England has stability and power in the 
 land, it is on account of what she is in other respects, 
 and not on account of her company of preachers. 
 
 Once for all, we would readily do honour to the 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 43 
 
 able, the laborious, and the devout among the minis- 
 ters of the established church — and they are not a few 
 who may be so described — but we speak now of the 
 ministry of that church viewed generally ; and, so re- 
 garded, it is manifestly below the age, a most evident 
 failure, and a framework which, for the most part, 
 would fall to pieces to-morrow, if its artificial means 
 of support were once struck away. 
 
 Congregationalists derive their strength from the 
 middle class. But we do not mean to conceal — we 
 dare not conceal, our impression, that the state of the 
 pulpit among ourselves is open to much — very much 
 of the complaint which we regard as applicable to it 
 elsewhere. If deficiency in pulpit ability, in certain 
 respects, is not so manifest among us as in the esta- 
 blished church, it is mainly because our system is of a 
 nature to be always placing such evils in process of 
 correcting themselves. Our preaching may not con- 
 sist in reading the smooth pointless essay, but it may 
 not be on that account the less barren of instructive 
 thought, and impressive utterance. It may be much 
 in advance of the preaching which is tolerated, and 
 even praised, in the case of the feebler portion of the 
 evangelical clergy, and still be so far below its proper 
 level, as to be of small effect and very little valued. 
 Extemporaneous discourses may partake largely of 
 the faults of that manner of preaching, and very little 
 of its excellences. The consciousness of possessing 
 thought, may be allowed to induce a negligence of 
 
44 THE MIDDLE CLASSES : 
 
 utterance ; or a consciousness of possessing utterance, 
 may be allowed to induce a negligence of thought. 
 In the former case, we lose our hold on the less intel- 
 ligent ; in the latter, on the more intelligent, by 
 whom the less is generally governed. Our notions in 
 regard to the ministerial office, and our manner of 
 education as ministers, may not be of a kind to sepa- 
 rate us widely from the general habits of the occupied 
 about us. But we may fail, nevertheless, to make that 
 class of persons sensible, that, as the consequence of 
 being less professional, we are more natural, more 
 sagacious, better informed concerning them and their 
 circumstances, and better skilled in exhibiting the 
 lessons of the gospel in their adaptation to both. If 
 it be inexcusable to underrate the capacity to receive 
 instruction in the case of the labouring classes, fault of 
 that nature must be still more reprehensible when it has 
 respect to parties who are all more or less educated 
 men, and all men whose avocations are constantly 
 tending to enlarge their knowledge of human nature, 
 to sharpen their faculties generally, and, without making 
 them preachers, to constitute them shrewd judges of 
 what preaching ought to be. It is a sore trial of 
 patience to hear some preachers talk of the inability 
 of their hearers to appreciate good sermons as the 
 reason why they do not labour to produce such ser- 
 mons. It would often be well for the preacher, in 
 such cases, did he possess half the capacity of not a 
 few of. the minds which he has learned to despise. 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 45 
 
 Good sermons are discourses adapted to edification, 
 and my experience has never brought me in the way of 
 a middle class auditory that could not at once appre- 
 ciate a sermon characterized by that kind of good- 
 ness, always supposing it to be delivered with a good 
 natural manner. 
 
 It is to errors of this description — errors of a nature 
 which it would seem most natural in men of sense to 
 avoid — that we must look for an explanation of the 
 fact, that the instances in which our own pulpits are 
 occupied in a manner so little suited to the times in 
 which we live are so numerous as we find them. 
 It is painful when even the preaching of the gospel 
 comes to be a matter borne with, rather than a matter 
 highly esteemed and valued. But so it is at present 
 to a grievous extent, and so it must be whenever dis- 
 parity is felt to be on the side of the teacher rather 
 than the taug-ht. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 ON THE HIGHER CLASSES, AND ON THE PULPIT IN 
 ITS RELATION TO THEM. 
 
 The state of the English pulpit in respect to the higher 
 classes may seem to be a topic with which Protes- 
 tant dissenters have no great concern, inasmuch as 
 the ministrations of the established church, be they 
 of what character they may, are the only ministrations 
 which such persons will be found to attend. But by 
 the upper classes we would not be understood as re- 
 ferring to persons of rank merely, nor to persons of 
 great wealth, so much as to the intellect and refine- 
 ment of the age generally, and the position of the 
 pulpit in this view, is a question of interest and im- 
 portance. 
 
 If we look to the scientific world, we see every de- 
 partment occupied in a manner of which the history 
 of science affords no precedent. The multitude of 
 persons devoted to such studies has supplied an aug- 
 mented stimulus to exertion. Every branch of know- 
 ledge has been divided and subdivided in a manner 
 peculiar to our times, in order that the whole might 
 
ON THE HIGHER CLASSES, ETC. 47 
 
 be the better understood, as the result of a better at- 
 tention to the parts. Acquirement and skill which 
 would once have been accounted extraordinary, now 
 have their place as so much moderate attainment. The 
 men possessed of such attainment are found every- 
 where. Disciplined mind, accordingly, is everywhere ; 
 and the ever-increasing number of such minds, is the 
 constant diffusion of a power which cannot fail to dis- 
 tinguish between the instructed and the uninstructed, 
 the skilful and the unskilful, in preaching as in other 
 things. Such men may not have been students of 
 divinity, nor have given much attention to the teach- 
 ing contained in books on the subject of pulpit oratory; 
 but the mental training which has given them the 
 power of clear and vigorous conception on one matter, 
 is inseparable from considerable power of judgment 
 in relation to many other matters, and especially in 
 regard to such qualities as are of the greatest import- 
 ance in a sermon — viz., a real knowledge of the sub- 
 ject, together with order, precision, adaptation, and 
 force in the manner of treating it. 
 
 In all these respects it is with the world of letters 
 as it is with the world of science. Everywhere we find 
 men capable of sympathizing with the spirit of our 
 general literature, and men who can themselves use 
 our language in a manner fitted to meet the public 
 eye. Even the men occupied in the regular craft of 
 authorship, would seem to be almost as numerous as 
 the members of the most crowded professions. That 
 
48 THE HIGHER CLASSES ; 
 
 easy, accurate, and effective style of writing, which 
 secured so much fame to our Drydens and Popes, 
 our Addisons and Johnsons, would now appear to be 
 within the power of almost any man choosing to at- 
 tempt it. Not only does the periodical press abound 
 with compositions of that high order, but even the 
 cheapest productions of that description, meant for 
 the humblest class of readers, frequently exhibit a 
 literary power scarcely inferior to that displayed 
 in the most costly publications. In this ready 
 mastery of our mother-tongue, in this power over the 
 material of thought, and in this aptness in all matters 
 of arrangement, description, argument, and eloquence, 
 we see the standard with which the intellect of our 
 times is familiarized as regards the manner in which 
 topics of discourse or appeal should be treated, and in 
 which such topics must be treated in the pulpit, if the 
 pulpit is to be to the age what the age demands. In this 
 aspect of the public press, very much is implied, both 
 as to the widely-diffused power of a highly cultivated 
 authorship, and as to the still more widely diffused 
 capacity to appreciate such authorship. Ignorance, 
 dulness, feebleness, are nowhere — success is bound up 
 with the reverse of such things. 
 
 We should now observe further, that with this more 
 general passion for knowledge has come a more general 
 feeling of interest in respect to everything pertaining 
 to the history of knowledge. Hence everything within 
 the wide domain of science and literature has its asso- 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THExAL 49 
 
 ciations with the past as well as its relations to the 
 present. In the mind of multitudes, the great charm 
 consists, not simply in its being what it is, but in its 
 relation to the processes and the times through which 
 it has become such. In this manner, subjects which 
 are little poetical in their own nature, are made to 
 carry with them something of the element of poetry. 
 Every branch of knowledge can boast, more or less, 
 of its great men, of the difficulties which have been 
 surmounted in its favour, of the distant, the shadowy, 
 the romantic, as belonging to its story. Thus the 
 very knowledge which has superseded the past, in one 
 respect, has given new interest to it in another. Our 
 age, accordingly, matter-of-fact as its character may 
 appear in some views of it, is still highly imaginative ; 
 its knowledge, its institutes, and its aims, being in a 
 great degree its own, while its tastes still linger in no 
 slight degree amidst the scenes of other days — much 
 as the heart of manhood is found to retain its fond re- 
 collections of childhood and youth. 
 
 Hence in an age so much imbued with the spirit 
 of calculation and gain as our own, the artist and the 
 engraver ascertain that few subjects are better adapted 
 to remunerate their toil, than pictures of the feudal 
 and the bygone. In literature, also, the soberness of 
 history and truth has been almost extruded from its 
 place, by the more vivid representations of social life 
 in past ages as supplied by the genius of fiction. 
 Evidence in regard to the prevalent tendency to indulge 
 
 D 
 
50 THE HIGHER CLASSES : 
 
 in such reminiscences, is before us on the walls of every 
 picture- gallery, and on the table of every drawing- 
 room, and frequently in the antique form given to 
 our domestic architecture, and to the interior deco- 
 rations and furniture of our dwellings. Thus, while 
 our principles would seem to be propelling us to the 
 greatest distance from the realities of the past, our 
 tastes are constantly disposing us to be calling up its 
 shadoivs and its forms. 
 
 Now let it not be supposed that this is a trifling 
 matter, even in relation to our present subject. It is 
 not a small number of mankind who are governed by 
 their tastes more than by their principles, especially in 
 those cases in which their being so governed is not 
 attended by inconvenience. Society in our day em- 
 braces large classes, who, while they know how to 
 tolerate vice, can never be made to tolerate coarse- 
 ness, — points of taste being with them a much more 
 serious matter than points of morality. Such is the 
 character of modern education, that we are surrounded 
 by multitudes whose distinction from the crowd con- 
 sists wholly in a superficial and showy sort of refine- 
 ment ; and this large class of persons, we may be sure, 
 will always be much more influenced by the elegant 
 or the picturesque in the form of things, than by any 
 consideration about the true or the rational as relating 
 to their substance. Romanism has never ceased to 
 lay heavy tribute on this infirmity in human nature, 
 and has succeeded by this means in substituting 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 51 
 
 emotion in the place of principle, and in confounding 
 the feeling of taste with the feeling of piety. Oxford 
 is now pursuing the same course. In both those con- 
 nexions religion is arrayed in the drapery of art, and 
 the worship of her costume is accounted as the worship 
 of herself. Our literature during the last thirty years, 
 and particularly by reason of the character and posi- 
 tion it has given to works of fiction, has contributed 
 powerfully to diffuse this feeling, and has done much, 
 incidentally, toward reviving ideas and sentiments in 
 connexion with religion of a nature most inimical to 
 its purity and power. Puseyism, like popery, will be a 
 religion of pageantries and mystical pretension, and 
 will derive its main strength from ministering to a 
 species of poetic taste, under the name of religion, in 
 the case of the educated ; and from misleadino; the 
 religious instincts, by means of the ignis fatuus of 
 imposing forms, in the case of the uneducated. 
 
 It would have been well, however, if the intellect 
 and refinement of the age had always been found 
 tending in this manner toward religion in some shape. 
 But since the year 1660, the educated classes in Eng- 
 land have exhibited a considerable bias towards scep- 
 ticism ; and no one can need be reminded, that the 
 more expanded, and the much higher mental cultivation 
 of our own time, is by no means without an alloy of this 
 nature. The excesses of the infidel faction during the 
 heat of the French Revolution, gave some check to 
 such tendencies in this country, but there is room to 
 D 2 
 
52 THE HIGHER CLASSES : 
 
 fear that the change thus produced, while real in some 
 cases, has been often much more apparent than real. 
 At present, this bias in such quarters rarely betrays 
 itself by any direct attempt to disturb the credence of 
 the popular mind with regard to religious matters ; — 
 but it has its occasions on which it can hint as to 
 what it might do in that way, if so disposed; and 
 many connexions in which the little that is written or 
 said is meant to suggest, that informed and thinking 
 men, if believers at all, have very good reasons for not 
 beino: such in the sense of the multitude. 
 
 In general, both the information and the thinking 
 of these persons, on the subject of Christian evidence, 
 are of no great amount ; but it happens commonly, 
 that in the case of each man, some real or supposed 
 difficulty of this sort has arisen within his own depart- 
 ment of study, and though the power which has 
 realized that difficulty might have sufficed to realize an 
 abundant solution of it, the will so to employ that power 
 has been wanting, and the general effect, from this 
 cause, and some others, has been, to leave the mind 
 without anything deserving the name of religious 
 belief, and possibly to occupy it with much secret or 
 avowed hostility to all persons seeming to be in earnest 
 in the profession of such belief. Such are the gentle- 
 men whose after-dinner or evening conferences often 
 assume the tone of a profound philosophizing about 
 religions and religionists. 
 
 The votaries of politics, science, letters, art, and 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 53 
 
 taste — often embracing persons of the greatest opu- 
 lence and of the highest rank — all have their re- 
 spective divinities, to which they are wont to bow 
 down and worship. It is the manner of each, to as- 
 sociate the idea of everything most exaked in intel- 
 lect and refinement, with the homage of the deity to 
 whose shrine he is himself especially devoted ; and 
 all are perhaps of one mind in regarding it as a 
 mark of wisdom to be thus intent on exploring, ana- 
 lyzing, and imitating the created, and to be devoid 
 of solicitude in regard to the means by which man 
 may rise to the knowledge of the Creator — the being 
 from whom all created things have proceeded, as the 
 matter of a grand discourse, or as an embodiment 
 
 given to a few from amona; that infinitude of won- 
 ts ~ 
 
 drous thoughts which have their dwelling-place with 
 him from everlasting ! 
 
 Every sober man must have had fi'equent occasion to 
 deplore the narrow views, the intoxicating vanity, the 
 inconsiderate and imbecile conceits, which are often 
 attendant on intellectual pursuits, so far as concerns the 
 judgment frequently formed by such minds in regard to 
 religion, and must have regarded it as no mean evidence 
 of the depravity of human nature, that such men should 
 so commonly form conclusions on religion as they do 
 not on any other subject — viz., without any adequate 
 effort to understand either its nature or its evidence. 
 But, little reputable as the frequent scepticism of the 
 higher classes may be to them, considered in what it 
 indicates with regard to their general knowledge. 
 
54 THE HIGHER CLASSES : 
 
 capacity, and ingenuousness, the fact that such scep- 
 ticism exists, and that it is nourished by much in the 
 science, literature, and taste constituting the fashion 
 of the age among those classes, is still before us, and 
 a great social fact it is, of which the preacher must 
 not be unmindful. In such quarters it is hardly to 
 be expected that revealed truth will obtain even a 
 hearing, except as it is presented with the kind of 
 ability which it would not be expedient to seem to 
 despise. Knowledge must be opposed by knowledge, 
 intellect by intellect, and religion be presented as the 
 grand and the beautiful, in such forms as may leave 
 little of grandeur or beauty to anything beside. Reli- 
 gion is all this ; the intellect of man is capable of so 
 presenting it; and there are occasions when to give 
 up his whole nature to such effort becomes the duty 
 of the preacher. 
 
 Such, then, in general, is the character of the in- 
 telligence and refinement of our times, especially in 
 regard to science, literature, and taste. Is the English 
 pulpit equal to its office, viewed in relation to times 
 of this complexion ? In answer to this question, I 
 shall borrow the language of a critic, who, while in 
 the highest degree competent to form an enlightened 
 judgment on all such topics, would be among the 
 last of his generation to judge uncandidly or in- 
 considerately with regard to the Christian ministry, 
 or anvthing Christian. My reference is to the author 
 of a recent article in the Edinburgh Review, on the 
 works of Mr. Isaac Taylor, in the course of which. 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 55 
 
 touching on the state of theology and of the pulpit 
 in this country, the writer observes : — " Feeble, in- 
 deed, are many of those who attempt to draw this 
 Durindana from the scabbard. Malignity itself cannot 
 accuse our pulpits and theological presses of beguiling 
 us by the witchcraft of genius. They stand clear of 
 the guilt of ministering to the disordered heart the 
 anodynes of wit or fancy. Abstruse and profound 
 sophistries are not in the number of their offences. 
 It is mere calumny to accuse them of lulling the con- 
 science to repose by any syren songs of imagination. 
 If the bolts of inspired truth are diverted from their 
 aim, it is no longer by enticing words of man's 
 wisdom. Divinity fills up her weekly hour by the 
 grave and gentle excitement of an orthodox discourse, 
 or by toiling through her narrow round of systematic 
 dogmas, or by creeping along some low level of school- 
 boy moraUty, or by addressing the initiated in mythic 
 phraseology ; but she has ceased to employ lips such 
 as those of Chrysostom or Bourdaloue. The sanctity 
 of sacred things is lost in the familiar routine of 
 sacred words. Religion has acquired a technology, 
 and a set of conventional formulas, torpifying those 
 who use and those who hear them. Her literature 
 also bears the impress of an age in which the art of 
 writing has wellnigh proved fatal to the power of 
 thinking ; when the desire to appropriate gracefully 
 has superseded the ambition to originate profoundly ; 
 when the commercial spirit envelops and strangles 
 
56 THE HIGHER CLASSES: 
 
 genius in its folds ; when demi-gods and heroes have 
 abandoned the field ; and the holiest affections of the 
 heart die away in silence ; and the ripest fruits of 
 the teeming mind drop ungathered into the reaper's 
 bosom ; — an age of literary democracy and intellectual 
 socialism, in which no bequests are made to remote 
 posterities, and no structures are rising to command 
 and break the universal mediocrity." 
 
 Now, be it remembered, that this melancholy esti- 
 mate with regard to the state of theological literature 
 in our country, and especially with regard to the 
 manner in which that literature is made to bear upon 
 our people from the pulpit, is the estimate of a lay- 
 man, of a literary man, and of a mind exhibiting one 
 of the rarest combinations of large knowledge, exqui- 
 site refinement, and profound wisdom, in union with 
 a truly Christian charity. It is an estimate, as we 
 humbly think, which might have been rendered some- 
 what less gloomy, and still have been consistent with 
 the whole truth. But all the faults which it depicts 
 so forcibly, manifestly exist — exist over a wide sur- 
 face, and if, on the whole, this description be only 
 admitted as making some considerable approach to- 
 wards a just representation of the case, is it not 
 high time that we should endeavour to awake out of 
 sleep ? 
 
 Concerning the dependence of all human effort 
 upon a Divine influence for its success, we shall speak 
 in another place. But in the meantime, we scruple 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 57 
 
 not to say, that if the intellect of the scientific world 
 is to be brought to the obedience of faith, we must be 
 prepared to compete with it in the use of its own 
 weapons, and after its own manner. And if the high- 
 minded pretension which so often obtrudes itself 
 upon us in the world of letters is to be effectually re- 
 pressed, and to give place to the reverence with 
 which the religion of Holy Writ should be regarded, 
 this will only be in proportion as we shall know 
 how to make such men sensible that the matters of 
 which they judge so highly have not been excluded 
 from our knowledge and scrutiny any more than from 
 their own. It will be folly to hope that such men will 
 be found assigning to revealed truth its proper place, 
 if they are obliged to tolerate imbecilities in its favour 
 which they do not tolerate elsewhere. 
 
 It is true that these persons are by no means shut up 
 to the necessity of exercising such forbearance in order 
 to their becoming Christians. The present state of 
 things is not so bad, as to allow that any pretence of 
 that nature should be honestly pleaded, in vindication 
 either of their scepticism, or of their religious indiffer- 
 ence. Our theological presses, and even the sermons 
 in our language, are still such as to demonstrate, that 
 there is a mental power among us that may be brought 
 to the side of religion, which is of a much higher 
 order than anything displayed against it. But the 
 evil to be deplored is, that these appearances should 
 be so much the exception, and that something so very 
 
 d3 
 
58 THE HIGHER CLASSES : 
 
 different should be found to constitute the rule. Hence 
 it commonly happens, that the contact in this respect 
 into which such men are brought, is with the imbeci- 
 lity which becomes to them an occasion of stumbling, 
 rather than with the sagacity which might be taken 
 as a safe and honourable guidance. 
 
 Nor shall we be negligent even of the province of 
 taste in matters of religion without loss. We dare not 
 attempt a commendation of the gospel to men by means 
 of those vain trappings which some of its professors 
 have thrown about it. We depend for our success upon 
 what Christianity is, and not upon the adjuncts which 
 man may bring to it. In this respect, time, and the 
 course of events, have served to place protestant dis- 
 senters at much disadvantage as compared with the 
 Christians of some other communions. We cannot 
 boast of structures which have stood through many 
 long centuries, on whose curving roofs, and time- 
 worn pavements, and curious panellings, and half- 
 obliterated monuments, the eyes of many a remote 
 generation have fallen. No scenic costume, varying 
 from the most gorgeous vestments to the most simple 
 or austere, are at our disposal ; nor have we the aid of 
 those symbolic forms in the office of the sacraments ; 
 nor of those mystic exhibitions in the worship about 
 the altar ; nor of those daily or nightly pageantries 
 which chant their way through the cloistered aisle, or 
 along those sacred floors where architecture rises like 
 a forest towards heaven. Such spectacles lend their 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 59. 
 
 sort of fascination not only to the vulgar sense, and 
 the vulgar imagination, but oftentimes to minds in 
 which the tenderest natural sensibility has been 
 wrought up into the truly heaven-bound aspiration ! 
 These wizard elements, of which superstition has made 
 such potent use, are not at our bidding. 
 
 But the greater is the need that all which may be 
 done truly and wisely to affect the kind of suscepti- 
 bility which is addressed by such means should be 
 done — done studiously, and done upon system. If 
 we may not convert the worship of God into so much 
 artistic display, the greater is the need that we secure 
 to it the charm of decency and order. If our services 
 are not to be powerful in their appeal to the senses, 
 the greater is the need that they should be powerful 
 in their appeal to the understanding, and in their fit- 
 ness to move the devout affections. If minds of sensi- 
 bility and imagination are not to be influenced by 
 mere ritual and show, the greater is the need that they 
 should be influenced by those more illustrative and 
 tender modes of exhibiting the great and the affecting 
 in religion itself which are especially adapted to 
 awaken and interest such susceptibilities. If our 
 taste in all matters connected with religion must be 
 simple, the greater is the need of care that it may not 
 fail of being appropriate and impressive. If a super- 
 stitious reliance on forms be a kind of deception in re- 
 ligion most fearful in its power, the greater is the need 
 that the argument on the side of religion, considered 
 
60 THE HIGHER CLASSES : 
 
 in the proper spirituality of its nature, should be made 
 clear and irresistible. In a word — if it be the practice 
 of men to throw so much artificial attraction about the 
 false, how can we hope to succeed except as we throw 
 all its legitimate attraction about the true? If we 
 aim not to subdue men — as the manner of some is — 
 by ensnarements addressed to the senses, must it not 
 behove us to commend ourselves the more skilfully 
 and earnestly to all that may be affected as belonging 
 to their inwar'd nature ? If we depend less than others 
 on the aids of the imagination, should we not look 
 'with a deeper intensity than others to the intellect, the 
 conscience, and the heart ? Is not all this imperative if 
 we would demonstrate that scriptural Christianity, in 
 the use of no other than its proper means, is really 
 stronger than corrupt Christianity, with all its world 
 of false appliances at command ? 
 
 But it must be clearly perceived, that in endea- 
 vouring to counteract the advantages which are thus 
 on the side of error, and to avail ourselves to the full 
 of those which are on the side of truth, the pulpit 
 must be our grand instrument Powerful as may be 
 the agency of the press, it is by means of preaching 
 that the battle of religious truth must be fought — 
 whether we look to it as a conflict with superstition 
 on the one hand, or with infidelity on the other. It 
 will never cease to be the fact in relation to this sub- 
 ject, that the mass of the people will be much more 
 affected by what they hear than by what they read. 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 61 
 
 Hence the religious denomination which shall com- 
 mend itself to the ear of the people with the greatest 
 effect, will be the strongest to mould their religious 
 opinions and preferences. The false in religion is 
 more congenial, in many respects, with depraved 
 human nature than the true ; and that the true may 
 nevertheless prevail against the false, it must be pre- 
 sented with a greater force than can be given to 
 the false — be so presented to men at large, and so 
 presented especially from the pulpit. 
 
 Nor is there need to despair of seeing it thus exhi- 
 bited. It may be that our polity and ritual are very 
 simple, so that we hardly expect to see them associated 
 with any strong exercise of the imagination. It may be 
 that we have learned to look on them as so prosaic and 
 literal, that the mind seeing as to the end of them at 
 a glance, and nothing being left to awaken curiosity, 
 or to hold out its visions to the fancy, we find it diffi- 
 cult to suppose that they might be readily allied with 
 a feeling of deep and permanent interest. But in so 
 judging, do we not overlook the great facts in His 
 history who was himself the first preacher of his own 
 truth ? Did he account the impressiveness of his 
 own teaching as dependent on the aids of human 
 architecture and decoration, on the pomp of priestly 
 vestments and priestly pageantries, or on anything 
 artificial, however beautiful in itself, or however vener- 
 able from its relations to the past? Was not his 
 course as studiously separated from all the gauds 
 
62 THE HIGHER CLASSES : 
 
 of an ecclesiastical greatness, as from those of a secular 
 greatness ? Was he not in his appearance, and man- 
 ners, and teaching, as little like the priests of his 
 time, as like its potentates ? Has he not taught us, 
 in this manner, that the power of his truth in the 
 earth is as little dependent on its alliance with tem- 
 ples, as on its alliance with palaces? Does he not 
 point to the sea-shore and the mountain-side, to the 
 green field and the desert place, to the solitary village 
 road and the crowded pathways of the city, and bid 
 us see in them, both the places and the circumstances 
 of his ministry ? Was not the earth as the pavement 
 of his temple, the heavens as the covering beneath 
 which he constantly offered up his spiritual sacrifices ; 
 and all the wonders in earth and heaven — were they 
 not as the matters of a marvellous ritual, which, 
 touched by his words, became everywhere as the sha- 
 dows of a living substance — as the ever-present forms 
 of an ever-living truth ? 
 
 He has thus taught us, that the symbolic which 
 is of God, is much more to the purpose of the 
 preacher than that which is of man. He has thus 
 assured us, that art can present no such adumbra- 
 tion of divine truth as may be seen in nature. He 
 has done enough to make it certain, that the minister 
 of the New Testament who shall be careful to avail 
 himself of the semblances and illustrations of scrip- 
 tural truth which are everywhere presented in the 
 visible and living world, need not fear the issues of a 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 63 
 
 contest with men who place their great trust in cere- 
 monial observances — matters, which can be at the best 
 only a poor or tawdry imitation of the realities which 
 are constantly passing before the eyes of all men in 
 the evolutions of providence, and the changeless ap- 
 pearances of nature. Our polity and ritual may be 
 simple, but what they denote is shadowed out by 
 imiversal nature, and is infinitely more wonderful 
 than universal nature. In themselves they are as no- 
 thing — in their relations, they embrace all things. We 
 may see to the end of them as mere forms, but no cre- 
 ated mind can see to the end of them in their spiritual 
 import. While only an object of the senses, they pre- 
 sent nothing of the indefinite or mysterious, and are 
 little adapted to fill the imaginative spirit with those 
 vague thoughts, and still more vague emotions, which 
 it covets ; but vieM^ed under the light of a sanctified in- 
 tellect, we see them send forth, in lengthened perspec- 
 tive, the perfection of the ways of God. Thus viewed, 
 they stand in relation to a thousand mysteries in time, 
 and to much deeper mysteries as pertaining to eternity. 
 No wing of created imagination can ever reach to the 
 borders of that land which is thus opened before us ! 
 
 But it is our happiness to live under a dispensa- 
 tion in which the minister of religion has less to do 
 with the ceremonial, that he might have more to do 
 with the rational ; in which teaching is to be less the 
 work of a ritual priesthood, and more the work of the 
 oral instructor ; and in which the emblematic exhibi- 
 
64 THE HIGHER CLASSES : 
 
 tions of inspired truth, in place of being confined to a 
 few prescribed observances, are to be selected, in the 
 freedom of a truly Christian intelligence, from the 
 wide phenomena of nature, and from everything 
 having place among the passing events of time. If 
 it has been the manner of Antichrist to cluster upon 
 the simple institutes of the gospel an endless trum- 
 pery devised by man, be it ours to bring to them 
 those better adornments which their Divine Author 
 has furnished to us in his own works, and which our 
 Blessed Lord himself has thus appropriated through 
 the whole course of his recorded ministry. The great 
 demand now made on us in this respect is, that what 
 other men aim to do by scenic show from the altar, 
 should be done, and much better done, in our case, by 
 effective instruction from the pulpit ; and that on the 
 whole matter of visible aids in religion, we should spare 
 no pains in opposing to every illusive spectacle sup- 
 plied by art, the truthful utterances which may be 
 always successfully invoked from the real magnifi- 
 cence of nature ! 
 
 But the power necessary to this kind of preaching, 
 while it must come in part from nature, must come 
 also from much study, and from a devout solicitude to 
 lead men into the paths of truth and piety. Nor is 
 anything further from our thoughts in the above 
 observations, than to encourage that kind of preaching, 
 which, in its exuberance of language and allusion, 
 seems not to belong either to poetry or prose. Ser- 
 
THE PULPIT IN ITS RELATION TO THEM. 65 
 
 mons, in general, are addresses to the people, and, as 
 such, should be eminently popular ; in some con- 
 nexions, a certain measure of homeliness would be 
 their great excellence. But men do not need to be 
 unnatural in making use of nature. Our example in 
 this respect is before us in His manner, who preached 
 on — the sower that went forth to sow — on the blade, 
 and the ear, and the full corn in the ear — and on the 
 man who built his house upon the rock, and the other 
 w^ho built upon the sand. 
 
 Let it be remembered also, that a religion based 
 upon poetry must be a frail thing in the hour of trial, 
 compared with a religion based upon principle. Men 
 governed by emotion have necessarily much less sta- 
 bility in them than men governed by reason. Con- 
 cerning the sort of Christians that are formed, by the 
 system which has more respect to the great truths of 
 theology than to trivial points of church government, 
 and which attaches greater value to an enlightened 
 moral consciousness than to accuracy in matters of 
 ecclesiastical observance, some judgment may be 
 formed from the conduct of the confessors and mar- 
 tyrs in the primitive church, and from that of the 
 same class of sufferers in the south of France during 
 the middle age, and in the history of Europe from 
 the age of Wycliffe and Luther downwards. It was 
 a Christianity restored to something of its ancient 
 simplicity — a Christianity much of the puritan mould, 
 which enabled the old Germanic states to assert their 
 
QQ THE HIGHER CLASSES, ETC. 
 
 ecclesiastical freedom; -which gave so formidable a 
 character to the remnant of Protestant feehng; in 
 France ; which nerved the arm of the Dutch while 
 opposed to the fearful odds arrayed against them by 
 his Catholic majesty ; which sustained the heroism of 
 the covenanters amidst the wilds of Scotland; and 
 which, under God, sufficed to preserve both the Pro- 
 testant religion and civil and religious liberty in 
 England. Wherever you find a poetical Christianity, 
 you find a despot ; and in the history of despotism, 
 whether ecclesiastical or civil, the governing are 
 doomed to reap as they have sown^ — being often 
 placed in exigencies in which they are made to 
 learn, that subjects trained to the passiveness of chil- 
 dren, must not be expected to shew the vigour of 
 manhood at the pleasure of their rulers. Exceptions 
 to this rule, in the case of individuals, there may be, 
 but the rule is not disturbed by them. So far as re- 
 spects communities, or the people at large, the daring 
 and endurance proper to manhood, will be found 
 along with the independence and freedom proper to 
 manhood. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ON THE MODERN PULPIT IN RELATION TO THE PAST. 
 
 About the year 1500, there lived, in the village of 
 Thurcaster, in Leicestershire, an honest yeoman, 
 whose acres were sufficient, according to the usage of 
 those times, to constitute a farm, though the rental 
 did not exceed some four pounds a year. In the 
 tillage of those acres, six able-bodied men found con- 
 stant occupation. Within those limits also, this sober 
 cultivator of the soil found walk for a hundred sheep, 
 and his frugal wife milked her thirty kine. Feudalism 
 in those days was on its wane, but it was still the 
 pride of the substantial yeoman to be able to furnish 
 the king a harness, to mount his own horse, and to 
 present himself duly accoutred at the royal call ; 
 and it was well remembered by the children of tlie 
 yeoman adverted to, that he so presented himself 
 before his sovereign at a muster on Blackheath field. 
 The children who were thus mindful of their father's 
 loyalty and prowess, were mostly of the softer sex, 
 whom the good man, as om' authority reports, was 
 careful to bring up in godliness, and all of whom he 
 saw married, and gave them, on the happy day of their 
 espousals, the sum of twenty nobles, or about five 
 
68 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST: 
 
 pounds in the money of that time, as a father's dowry. 
 But while thus bountiful, from such slender means, it 
 would have been a sore grief to this prudent father, 
 had he not found it possible to reserve something 
 from his in-comings to be disposed of as alms to the 
 poor ; and something with which to shew hospitality to 
 such of his neighbours as were not to be accounted 
 receivers of alms, but who w-ere much less wealthy 
 than himself. 
 
 But among the children who gathered round the 
 winter-hearth of this good yeoman of Thurcaster, there 
 was a son, and, judging from what has since become 
 known concerning him, a lad of fine spirit and high 
 promise, as we are tempted to think, he must have 
 been. His features, as he grew toward man's estate, 
 were all regularly and finely formed — the forehead 
 being beautifully elevated, the nose slightly aquiline, 
 and the mouth characterized by an admirable 
 mixture of firmness and intelligence, while the eyes 
 which had their place in this goodly fellowship 
 always beamed with a mingled intelligence and kind- 
 ness, and kindled at times in such manner as bespoke 
 a keen relish of wit and humour. This youth evinced 
 an early fondness for books, and a father who possessed 
 ability enough to manage all his worldly matters 
 with so much discretion, was not likely to be inobser- 
 vant of the tastes and capacity of such a son, though 
 of a different bias from his own. Suffice it to 
 say, the lad was kept some time at school, and was 
 
AGE OF THE REFORMATION. 69 
 
 afterwards sent to Cambridge, where he passed through 
 the usual course of education with credit, and being 
 ordained a priest, became, after the manner of the 
 more ardent spirits of those times, a zealous papist. 
 As he began to number the years of manhood, our 
 native of Thurcaster distinguished himself on various 
 public occasions by his opposition to the doctrines of 
 the German reformers, particularly to some of the 
 opinions of Melancthon. His zeal and talent called 
 forth loud applause, and in further reward of his 
 services, on days when the university went forth in 
 solemn procession, the office of cross-bearer was 
 assigned to this champion of orthodoxy. His honesty 
 in this course no man doubted — not even Master 
 Stafford, whose divinity lectures he had often publicly 
 opposed on account of the approaches toward a more 
 scriptural theology which were sometimes observable 
 in them. But perfection is not in humanity, and it 
 may be that the son of the Leicestershire yeoman 
 was not altogether insensible to the honour w^hich 
 attended him as a defender of the faith. However 
 this may have been, it is certain that his zeal increased 
 with his years, and that he meditated giving himself 
 up more passionately than ever to the prevailing super- 
 stitions, by relinquishing his priesthood, and becoming 
 a monk. 
 
 But it happened that there was in Cambridge at that 
 time another priest, who, though less gifted than our 
 zealous cross-bearer, was not a whit less honest, nor 
 
70 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 less ardent. This priest had learned to account the 
 worship of images and saints, and many kindred 
 superstitions, as so much pitiable delusion, and was 
 himself considerably enlightened concerning the true 
 meaning of Scripture. This devout person, with a zeal 
 which may be regarded as exceeding his discretion, 
 presented himself privately to the cross-bearer, praying 
 that he might be permitted to confess to him, and in the 
 course of that confession made such exposition and de- 
 fence of his novel opinions, that the cross-bearer to the 
 university became a disciple of Lutheranism. The good 
 priest who did this kind office, afterwards proved to be 
 the martyr Bilney, and his convert rose subsequently 
 to the dignity of prelacy in the reformed Church of 
 England; became known, all England over, as a zealous 
 advocate of the truth which he had once laboured to 
 destroy ; appeared often as a preacher before kings ; 
 and closed his career in front of Balliol College, Ox- 
 ford, in the seventy-fifth year of his age, with all the 
 dignity becoming the hoary-headed martyr in the 
 cause of the Protestant faith. Such, in brief, was the 
 career of Hugh Latimer, the father of pulpit eloquence 
 in England. 
 
 No man ever applied himself to the office of 
 preaching with a more simple or considerate aim to 
 communicate instruction, and to make the right im- 
 pression, than did honest Hugh Latimer. He was a 
 preacher eminently adapted to his own age, and one 
 who would not have failed to adapt himself to any age. 
 
LATIMER. 71 
 
 During some space before his time, it had been the 
 custom of the clergy to substitute rehgious plays in 
 the place of sermons. The imbecile, the indolent, 
 and the facetious in our monasteries, found occupation 
 meet both to their capacity and their humour in 
 getting up those rude dramas, which bore the name of 
 " mysteries." In the said dramas some of the great 
 facts and lessons of holy Scripture were exhibited, 
 and exhibited in such manner as was deemed most 
 conformable to the tastes and apprehensions of the 
 people. Our notions may scarcely bear the • shock 
 produced, on seeing the truths of revealed religion set 
 before the people much as the early dramatists of 
 Greece had taught the principles of the Greek mytho- 
 logy to their countrymen ; but so long as preaching 
 after this strange fashion found favour with the people, 
 it was natural that preaching generally should partake 
 strongly of the dramatic — being frequently enlivened 
 with dialogue, anecdote, and biography. In most 
 catholic countries, the tastes belonging to that stage 
 in the history of preaching have come down to the 
 present time. The Englishman who shall take his 
 place with the auditories assembled in village churches 
 in Italy or Spain, will there find the pulpit still occu- 
 pied by men of nearly the same mould with those 
 who addressed our docile countrymen on the same 
 topics some three centuries since. In those countries, 
 every preacher is required to acquit himself in the 
 manner of an extemporaneous orator, and the man 
 
72 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST: 
 
 whose natural aptitude may enable him to paint and, 
 illustrate his theme most in the manner of the 
 dramatist is the most popular. 
 
 In such a school did the genius of Latimer expand 
 itself, and from such causes did his memorable sermons 
 derive the strong characteristics by which they are 
 distinguished. In his age the preacher was the only 
 orator. In vain was it in those times that the student 
 of eloquence looked either to the senate or the bar. 
 Even the printing press had produced little perceptible 
 impression. It was a benefactor in chains, and its 
 productions were few and far between. The pulpit 
 was to the people as the printing machine, the legal 
 advocate, and the political debater, all in one. It was 
 from the pulpit that the ordinances of the state were 
 made public, and it was from the pulpit that the 
 people were to be instructed in their civil as well as 
 in their ecclesiastical duties. Preachers, accordingly, 
 scrupled not to express their opinions concerning the 
 politics of the world, as well as concerning the spiri- 
 tualities belonging to the church. It was expected of 
 them that thej'^ should be observant of the state of 
 society, and of the public manners, and that they 
 should exercise their censorship on such matters with 
 a freedom and boldness which could not fail to sound 
 in modern ears as harsh and intrusive. But so great 
 was the difference of opinion, and feeling, and usage 
 in this respect, in the age of Latimer, that his sermons 
 became so many vivid pictures of the times, and are, 
 
LATIMER. 73 
 
 in fact, more valuable to us as documents of histon', 
 than as discourses on theology. His preaching was 
 always to men as individuals, and to individuals as 
 belono-ing: to a class, and men and classes are thus 
 isolated and depicted, that the same unshrinking 
 fidelity might be meted out to them all. 
 
 It is observable, too, that the censor who could 
 thus adapt himself with equal ease to the yeoman and 
 his menials on the borders, and to the king and his 
 nobles at court, would seem to have been capable of 
 exercising this versatile power with as much prompti- 
 tude as skill. We learn from good authority, that 
 Latimer was appointed, in a comparatively early 
 period of his career, to preach a Latin sermon before 
 the university of Cambridge, and that when he had 
 made some progress in his discourse, the Bishop of 
 Ely unexpectedly entered the chtirch, and took his 
 seat as a listener. Latimer well knew that the object 
 of the prelate in so presenting himself was not Chris- 
 tian edification, but to disturb the preacher, and to 
 catch him in his words. After a short pause, he 
 began to diverge from his previous course of argument, 
 and commenced, from the resources of the moment, a 
 delineation of the office and character of a bishop. 
 The portraiture was sketched with that directness and 
 vigour which mark everything from the same hand, 
 and touch after touch was felt as giving greater force 
 to the contrast, between the character of the ideal 
 prelate, and that of the right reverend personage who 
 
 E 
 
74 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 had now become as much an object of attention with 
 the auditory as the preacher. West, the bishop so ad- 
 monished, is described as suppressing his resentment, 
 but he could not bring his conference with the preacher 
 afterwards to a close without betraying some feeling 
 of that sort — " Well, well, Mr. Latimer, I perceive 
 you somewhat smell of the pan ; you will repent this 
 gear some day,"* were the significant words with 
 which his lordship dismissed the subject. 
 
 Latimer had frequent experience of the inconve- 
 niences attendant on this spirit of fidelity, but in no 
 presence could he be deterred from pursuing this 
 course. When preaching on one occasion before 
 Henry VIII. — a personage whose displeasure it was 
 much easier to excite than to control, — a courtier 
 charged him, in the hearing of the king, with having 
 uttered seditious words. " What say you to that, 
 sir?" was the abrupt inquiry of the half-offended 
 monarch. " Then," says the reformer, " I kneeled 
 down, and turned me first to mine accuser, and 
 required him — ' Say what form of preaching would you 
 appoint me to preach before a king? Would you 
 have me for to preach nothing concerning a king in a 
 king's sermon? and have you any commission to 
 appoint me what I shall preach?' Besides this, I 
 asked him divers other questions, and he would make 
 no answer to none of them all : all had nothing to 
 
 * Strype*s Ecclesiastical Memorials, iii., 233. 
 
LATIMER. 75 
 
 say. Then I turned to the kin^ and submitted myself 
 to hisgracej and said, ' I never thought myself worthy, 
 nor I never sued to be a preacher before your grace ; 
 but I was called to it, and would be willing (if you 
 mislike me) to give place to my betters ; for I grant 
 there be many more worthy of the room than I am ; 
 and if it be your grace's pleasure to allow them for 
 preachers, I would be content to bear their books 
 after them. But if your grace allow me for a preacher, 
 I would desire your grace to give me leave to dis- 
 charge my conscience. Give me to frame doctrine 
 according to my audience. I had been a very dolt to 
 have preached so at the borders of your realm, as I 
 preach before your grace.' And I thank Almighty 
 God, which hath always been my remedy, that my 
 sayings were well accepted of the king, for like a 
 gracious lord he turned unto another communication. 
 Certain of my friends came to me with tears in their 
 eyes, and told me they looked I should have been in 
 the Tower the same night." * 
 
 * Third Sermon before King Edward, page 44. Ed. 1584. 
 The following passage is from one of the sermons preached before 
 Edward. The first sentences are addressed to the king, and the ex- 
 tract altogether bears little resemblance to the paragraphs of court 
 sermons in later time : — " Read the chronicles of England and 
 France, and you shall see what changes of religion have come by 
 marriages, and for marriages. ' Marry my daughter and be bap- 
 tized,' and so forth, or else, &c. Fear them not. Remember the 
 sparrows. And this rule should all states and degrees of men 
 follow; whereas now they fear men and not God. Ifthereisa 
 trial between a great man and a poor one, then must there be a 
 
 E 2 
 
76 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 This passage is interesting and instructive on many 
 accounts, but we have cited it principally as illustrating 
 that adaptation both of the matter and manner of dis- 
 course to the character of the audience, which was the 
 constant study of Latimer, and which, within certain 
 limits, must be the study of every man who would 
 acquit himself with intelligence and effect as a 
 preacher. We want not all the colloquialism of 
 
 corruption of justice for fear. ' Oh, he is a great man, I dare not 
 displease him.' Fie upon thee ! art thou a judge, and wilt thou be 
 afraid to give right judgment ? Fear him not, be he ever so great a 
 man, but uprightly do true justice. Likewise, some parties go 
 from their cure, they are afraid of the plague, they dare not come 
 nigh any sick body, but hire others, and they go away themselves. 
 Out upon thee ! — the wolf comes upon thy flock to devour them, and 
 when they have most need of thee, thou runnest away from them. 
 The soldier, also, that should go on warfare, he will draw back as 
 much as he can. ' Oh, I shall be slain ! — such and such went, and 
 never came home again. Such men went last year into Norfolk, 
 and were slain there.' Thus they are afraid to go : they will labour 
 to tarry at home. If the king command thee to go, thou art bound 
 to go; and serving the king, thou servest God." — (Second Sermon 
 before King Edward.) In this manner did the Reformer divide to 
 every man his portion in his season, from the king downwards. 
 
 The following passage points to an evil of which the Reformer 
 seldom loses sight long together: — " Since lording and loitering 
 hath come up, preaching hath come down, contrary to the apostles' 
 time ; for they preached and lorded not, and now they lord and 
 preach not. It is no meet office for lords — it is not seeming for their 
 estate. Thus came up lording loiterers : thus crept in unpreaching 
 prelates, and so have they long continued . For how many unlearned 
 prelates have we now at this day ! They hawk, they hunt, they 
 card, they dice, they pastime in their prelacies with gallant gentle- 
 men, with their dancing minions, and with their fresh companions, 
 so that ploughing (preaching) is set aside." — Sermon of the Plough. 
 
LATIMER, 77 
 
 Latimer, and certainly not his occasional coarseness, 
 which should be ascribed to the age more than to the 
 man, but it would be well for England if modern 
 preachers were found addressing themselves to the 
 times with as much of aptitude as marked the labours 
 of the Reformers in the sixteenth century. The sim- 
 plicity, earnestness, and strength with which they set 
 forth the whole matter of their teaching, were so emi- 
 nently suited to their object, that they found accept- 
 ance equally with the peasant and the courtier. The 
 boys who followed on the heels of Latimer, did so 
 because they never listened to him without interest ; 
 and it was to this same preacher that Sir John Cheke, 
 one of the most sagacious and cultivated minds of the 
 age, was heard to say — " I have an ear for other 
 divines, but I have a heart for you." 
 
 Some of Latimer's sermons were delivered to audi- 
 tories of this mixed description under the " shrouds," 
 or tented covering, that sheltered the congregation at 
 St. Paul's Cross in the winter. In general, his 
 preaching was in the open air ; and a print, prefixed to 
 an edition of his Sermons, printed in 1578, exhibits 
 the Reformer as preaching in the garden of the 
 palace in Westminster, with Edward VL seated at 
 the window, and surrounded by his attendants. The 
 pulpit, with the exception of a raised step for the 
 preacher, is occupied by the congregation ; and of 
 the auditory immediately about him, or seated in a 
 sort of gallery, many appear with their caps on. 
 
78 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 So wide and immediate, then, was the censorship 
 of the pulpit in the practice of Latimer, holding all 
 classes responsible to it, and so responsible, as to 
 be liable to be judged from it publicly, and almost by 
 name. In the case of Bernard Gilpin, and others, 
 the same licence of speech is observable. It was 
 hardly surprising, therefore, that the civil power 
 should have frequently exercised its authority in those 
 times, to silence or control the utterances of the 
 preacher. So long as it was the manner of the 
 preacher to meddle with the province of the states- 
 man, so long it was natural that the statesman 
 should meddle with the province of the preacher. 
 However much kings, and ministers, and magistrates, 
 might be willing to profit, in arbitrary and corrupt 
 times, and at certain junctures, by this use of the 
 pulpit, they could not be insensible to the fact, that 
 this free access to the ear of the people, which chanced 
 to be so much in favour of their policy to-day, might 
 prove no less formidable as opposed to it to-morrow. 
 No prince of the house of Tudor was likely to be 
 blind to this danger, nor was it in the blood of the 
 princes of that line to be at ease while exposed to it. 
 
 It was in the nature of Elizabeth to regard all 
 power with suspicion which came in any degree in 
 competition with her own. The pulpit accordingly 
 never ceased to be the special object of her jealousy. 
 It was the popularity of the puritan clergy as preachers 
 which exposed them, beyond all other considerations, 
 
THE PURITANS. 79 
 
 to her resentment. During her whole reign, she was 
 more distm'bed by a fear of the mischiefs which might 
 possibly result from eloquence and power in the 
 pulpit, than by the signs of " papistry" as still linger- 
 ing among the mass of the people from the want of 
 such power. The religion was by no means to her 
 taste, which taught men to regard the allegiance of 
 subjects to their sovereigns, as subordinate to the 
 allegiance of the conscience to God. But all to that 
 effect was the rehgion of the puritan, and his mental 
 freedom and energy were the natural result of his 
 solemn feehng in respect to the higher of these rela- 
 tionships. Such men as the Cecils and Lord Bacon, 
 knew the efficacy of preaching in the hands of the 
 puritans, and often spoke of it as the only means by 
 which her majesty could hope to see the " papistical 
 numbers" diminished ; but they reasoned against the 
 mixture of pride and fear which ceased not to operate 
 as an incubus on the eloquence of the pulpit in 
 England to the close of the sixteenth century. 
 
 In the judgment of the puritans, preaching bore a 
 nearer relation than any other institute to the reli- 
 gions, liberty, and happiness of a people. Improve- 
 ment of the younger clergy in the knowledge of the 
 Scriptures, and in the power to arrange their thoughts 
 with promptitude, and to clothe them readil}'^ with 
 extemporaneous expression, was the main object of 
 the district meetings convened by the puritan minis- 
 ters, under the name of " prophesyings." So great. 
 
80 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 too, was the importance which they attached to those 
 meetings, that they ceased not altogether from hold- 
 ing them, even when the known hazard in so doing 
 was the high displeasure of the queen. 
 
 During the interval from the death of Elizabeth to 
 the Restoration, the mind of the English people 
 evinced an unwonted spirit of freedom, the pulpit 
 shared in the general feeling of emancipation, and 
 the impression made by it on society was everywhere 
 visible. Preaching in those times was often learned, 
 but rarely so much so as to cease to be richly theolo- 
 gical. Divines were conversant with the writings of 
 schoolmen and philosophers, but seldom at the cost of 
 ceasing to be divines. Our language, as employed by 
 them, was often somewhat rough hewn, or put forth in 
 un wieldly masses, and the anatomy of the form throuo-h 
 which they presented the living power of truth was 
 generally much too perceptible. But the truth was 
 there, and there animated with so much of the re- 
 deeming spirit of a pious earnestness, that the fre- 
 quent enumeration of the parts of a discourse was 
 felt more as an aid than an inconvenience ; huge 
 sentences seemed only to harmonize with the strong 
 continuous thought embodied in them ; and an occa- 
 sional abruptness, and negligent freedom of expression, 
 fell commonly upon an auditory, as natural to men 
 whose bursting announcements came forth from the 
 well-spring of their own spirits, more than from the 
 artificial reservoir of books. Uninformed as the 
 
THE PURITANS. • 81 
 
 people of England may have been in those times with 
 regard to many things, they were a soundly instructed 
 people with regard to the matter of preaching. In 
 that day, the cii'cle of every pious family was a spe- 
 cies of theological seminary, and when the people 
 flocked from the country round to join in the worship 
 of the sanctuary, and to listen to a favourite preacher, 
 it was as expectants of a happiness such as no banquet 
 on earth beside could promise them. Next to their 
 reverence towards God, was the esteem in which they 
 held the men who expounded to them his blessed 
 will. Never, since the age of inspired teachers, had 
 the pulpit been filled by men more sustained by the 
 prayers, as well as by the affections of their auditory, 
 and never, since that age, had the church seen a man 
 more entitled to such regard, than was the puritan 
 minister, when true to his vocation. 
 
 There was especially one of their number, the sight 
 of whom, in the pulpit, and of the crowd about him, as 
 they hung upon his lips, it must have been worth 
 going far to see. Be it remembered, that the puritan 
 preacher, while a reformer of the church, had his 
 place within it. His pulpit rose near the ancient aisle, 
 hollowed by the footsteps of the many generations 
 who have traversed it. Above him stretched the 
 arches of the old Gothic roof. Before you, and 
 around, are the curiously carved and half decayed 
 enclosures, within which a lengthened succession of 
 kneeling worshippers have paid their homage to the 
 e3 
 
82 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 Omniscient and Everlasting. Beneath you, are the 
 tombs of the dead, and about you, on every space that 
 can meet the eye, are their mouldering monuments. 
 In the pulpit stands the man of God. The book, rich 
 in the idiom of our mother tongue, and richer still in 
 its heavenly treasure, is open before him. The cap 
 which forms its sable line across the summit of that 
 forehead, only serves to place the fine intellectuality 
 of the space beneath in greater prominence. The 
 mingled force and tenderness of those dark eyes 
 comes forth in beautiful keeping with the brow that 
 covers them, and with the curvature of those lips, so 
 fraught with sensibility, while in so little sympathy 
 with the animal nature, and in such neai' affinity with 
 the intellectual. Over the lining, the expression, the 
 complexion, the whole cast of that countenance, you 
 see the signs of feehng and of thought — of feeling 
 ever active, of thought ever intent upon its labour. 
 From the shoulders downward, falls the drapery of 
 the college-robe, worn with no superstitious or vain 
 intent, but as a seemly vestment, sufficing to distin- 
 guish between the teacher and the taught, and suf- 
 ficing also to bespeak, that in religion there is still a 
 use of authority, as well as an abuse of it. On every 
 hand, and off to the walls and door-ways, you see 
 gathered men, and women, and children, of all grades, 
 embracing minds of various adjustment, power, and 
 culture, and all moulded into a greater variety still, by 
 the various pressure of those memorable times. 
 
THE PURITANS. 83 
 
 But as the preacher proceeds, you find that he 
 knows them all — their coming in and their going out. 
 So much skill has come to him from long practice, that 
 the most learned and acute may not readily evade 
 him. The busy and the worldly soon become aware 
 that their working-day kind of life has been his study. 
 The most obscure are made to feel that his benevolent 
 thought has penetrated into their lot also ; and even 
 the young children, as they look up, here and there, 
 from the family groups about, learn, with a mixture of 
 surprise and fear, that the preacher has been careful 
 to watch the budding thought and feeling even in 
 children — while upon them all you see his words 
 distil like the dew, words which breathe the mercy of 
 the cross, and point, as with a power from heaven, to 
 the visions of hope and blessedness which that cross 
 has revealed to the children of mortality ! What 
 wonder if you see every eye intent on such a preacher, 
 every ear open to him, every countenance sending 
 forth the signs of a deep interest, and every heart 
 vibrating beneath the touch of thoughts so devout, of 
 emotions so heaven-born ! In him they see the puri- 
 fied nature of the saint, without the perverted nature 
 of the ascetic. He is an ambassador from God, but 
 he is one with man. His devotion is impassioned — 
 celestial, but it is a devotion which has given a new 
 tenderness and force to every feeling of humanity, to 
 every social affection. His preaching points to heaven, 
 but his sympathies identify him with everything in 
 
84 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 the allotment of humanity on earth, and all that he 
 might become thus potent in leading men to heaven. 
 Such, in the pulpit, was Richard Baxter, and such, in 
 no mean degree, according to the testimony of Baxter, 
 were many — very many of the piu-itan preachers in 
 the seventeenth century.* 
 
 We are not ignorant concerning the sort of picture 
 which some men would set forth in contrast with this 
 representation, exhibiting the puritan pulpit, and 
 " presbyterian eloquence" in particular, as charac- 
 terized by narrow views, and by the worst possible 
 taste. Nor will any man of intelligence pretend that 
 faults of that nature did not attach in some degree 
 both to the matter and manner of pulpit instruction 
 in those times. Puritan sermons generally treated 
 with much effect on points of theology, and on the 
 bearing of those points with regard to the devout 
 affections — or religious experience : but they appear 
 to have been frequently wanting in broad and intelli- 
 
 * " What skill doth every part of our work require; and of how 
 much moment is every part. To preach a sermon is, I think, not 
 the hardest part ; and yet what skill is necessary to make plain the 
 truth, to convince the hearers, to let in irresistible light to their con- 
 sciences, to keep it there, and to drive all home ; to screw the truth 
 into their minds, and to work Christ into their affections ; to meet 
 with every objection that gainsays, and clearly to resolve it; to 
 drive sinners to a stand, and to make them see that there is no hope, 
 but that they must unavoidably be converted or condemned : and 
 to do all this so for language and manner as becomes our work, and 
 yet as is suitable to the capacities of our hearers : this, and a great 
 deal more, that should be done in every sermon, should surely be 
 done with a great deal of holy zeal." — Baxters Refor?ned Pastor. 
 
THE PURITANS. 85 
 
 gent views with respect to moral questions. Lord 
 Bacon speaks of the puritan preachers of his time, as 
 pubhc instructors who succeeded admirably in bring- 
 ing their hearers to the question — " Men and brethren, 
 what shall we do ?" — but laments that the hand 
 which could lay the foundation with so much strength 
 and skill, should be so often found defective in raising 
 the superstructure. The cause of this occasional 
 deficiency was sufficiently obvious. No candid man 
 ever imputed it to an indifference with regard to 
 moral obligation. It resulted in part from an excess 
 of zeal against the supposed popish doctrine of salva- 
 tion by works, and in part from disgust with the 
 Arminian, and merely ethical preaching, which was 
 understood to be characteristic of a court divine. It 
 is worthy of observation, that the example furnished 
 by Lord Bacon, as illustrating the defectiveness of 
 puritan logic on moral subjects, is one which most 
 readers, we presume, will regard as much more to the 
 honour of puritan discernment than to its dis- 
 credit. " They have pronounced generally," he writes, 
 " and without difference, all untruths unlawful ; not- 
 withstanding that the midwives are directly reported 
 to have been blessed for their excuse ; and Rahab is 
 said by faith to have concealed the spies ; and Solo- 
 mon's selected judgment proceeded upon a simulation ; 
 and our Saviour, the more to touch the heart of the 
 two disciples with an holy dalliance, made as if he 
 
86 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 would have passed to Emaus."* Had the puritans 
 been otherwise minded on this point, what eloquent 
 comparisons might not have been made between them 
 and the Jesuits ? The passage is important, as shewing 
 that if the puritan clergy did not bestow so much time 
 in the pulpit on the discussion of moral questions as 
 the court clergy, it was by no means as the conse- 
 quence of their being less strict in their moral notions. 
 Similarly at fault is the charge made against the 
 same class of men on matters of taste. It is true in 
 part, but only in part. In an age when literary re- 
 finement, according to our feeling in such matters, 
 had made small progress anywhere, very much re- 
 garded as bespeaking a great want in that respect 
 might no doubt be culled from the popular oratory of 
 the pulpit. It should not be forgotten, however, that 
 if the puritan clergy were very deficient in such 
 matters, so must Oxford and Cambridge have been, 
 inasmuch as it had been made indispensable in the 
 case of that whole class of men that they should 
 receive the usual education in those seminaries. The 
 probable conclusion from that fact, is no doubt the 
 true one — viz., that the instances in which ministers 
 of puritan opinions failed in the respect adverted to, 
 as compared with the cultivation of their times, were 
 the rare exception, much more than the rule. Such 
 
 * Advertisement touching the Controversies of the Cliurch of 
 England. 
 
EPISCOPALIANS. 87 
 
 a charge might apply to Scotland much more than to 
 England, and to England subsequent to the commence- 
 ment of the civil war, somewhat more than previously; 
 but we deem it, on the whole, more reasonable, and 
 certainly much more generous, to form our judgment 
 with regard to religious parties from the men among 
 them who make their bequests to posterity, than from 
 such as constitute the weakness of a body rather than 
 its strength, and who die, as a matter of course, in the 
 obscurity in which they have lived. John Wesley was 
 a scholar, and a man of taste, though we are not able 
 to say so much in favour of many who have had place 
 among his followers ; and a similar disparity, though 
 very rarely to the same extent, may be admitted as 
 existing between such men as Baxter, Owen, and 
 Howe, and some preachers who adhered to the peculiar 
 principles of those distinguished men in the course 
 of times so unsettled as were those through which 
 they lived. 
 
 The puritan period in our history terminates with 
 the Restoration. In no respect were men so sensible 
 to the greatness of the change which had been 
 brought about by that event, as on looking to the 
 altered character of the English pulpit. With little 
 exception, the men who could preach were silenced, 
 and the men who could not came into their place. 
 Preaching which had signally moved both the under- 
 standing and the heart, gave place generally to a 
 manner of preaching which was neither suited nor 
 
»» THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 designed to produce any such effect. Popular preach- 
 ing, indeed, was generally denounced, as having been 
 the great engine of mischief during the late troubles ; 
 and almost as much pains were now taken to see that 
 the pulpit should be rendered useless, — except for the 
 purposes of tyranny and court faction, — as had been 
 taken formerly to render it useful. Men accounted 
 the most sagacious in such matters did not scruple to 
 teach, that the less the people thought about preach- 
 ing, and the more their attention could be restricted 
 to a decent observance of the authorized forms of re- 
 ligion, and to just so much knowledge concerning it 
 as might be presented in a creed or a catechism, the 
 better for them. "If godliness be the design," says 
 Dr. South, " it ought also, by consequence, to be the 
 measure of men's knowledge in this particular ; which 
 consideration, well and duly improved, would dis- 
 cover how needless it is, to say no more, that ignorant 
 people should be let loose to read and judge of 
 writings that they do not understand. The j^rinciples 
 of Christianity, briefly and catechistically taught them, 
 is enough to save their souls ; but, on the other hand, 
 they may read themselves into such opinions and persua- 
 sions, as may at length destroy a government, and fire a 
 whole kingdom : and for this I shall not seek for argu- 
 ments, after experience. ^^ * 
 
 Dr. South was known to his contemporaries, and is 
 known to us, solely as a preacher. Excellence in 
 
 • Sermons, v., p. 83. Oxford Ed. 1823. 
 
EPISCOPALIANS — DR. SOUTH. 89 
 
 that capacity was the one object to which he applied 
 his genius, from the beginning of life to its close ; 
 and he was, in some respects, the most able preacher 
 of his times. What, then, must have been the esti- 
 mate formed elsewhere concerning the utility of 
 preaching, when even such a man could speak of it 
 after this manner — as an ordinance having no mis- 
 sion to the people at large, but as designed exclu- 
 sively for the educated ? Of course, the seven volumes 
 of sermons which have come down to us from the pen of 
 Dr. South, are to be regarded as so many theological 
 or literary disquisitions, addressed to the educated, 
 who ought not to have needed such instruction, but by 
 no means to the ignorant, who really did need it. 
 Indeed, from the manner in which this facetious di- 
 vine, and many beside, often expressed themselves, it 
 would seem as though the great business of preaching 
 had come to be, to persuade men how well the world 
 might be made to move on without preaching. The 
 upper classes could hardly be supposed to need it, in- 
 asmuch as they were educated, and the pulpit had 
 now ceased to be the place in which it could be 
 deemed proper to attempt to school them into pro- 
 priety, however much they might be thought to need 
 such schooling. On the other hand, the middle and 
 lower classes were not to be preached to, inasmuch as 
 they were not educated — the main effect of preaching 
 in their case having been, to put them upon trou- 
 
90 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 bling their heads about matters above their compre- 
 hension. 
 
 Lost in this manner to the service of religion, no- 
 thing could be more lamentable than the general state 
 of the English pulpit during the interval from the 
 Restoration to the Revolution. Concerning the bad 
 uses that were made of it in those times, we have 
 abundant evidence, as in the history of the Popish 
 plot, and in the course of those changes which 
 brought Russell and Sydney to the scaifold. Its good 
 deeds, on the contrary, are very little apparent. When 
 the assize time came round, when a bishop was to be 
 consecrated, or on occasion of some civic festival, the 
 divine generally made his appearance with his ser- 
 mon — a composition rarely wanting in the sophistries 
 usually urged in support of the doctrine of passive 
 obedience, and containing a large infusion of invec- 
 tive against Protestant nonconformists, exhibiting 
 them as hypocrites in religion, and as anarchists, 
 plunderers, and regicides in matters of state. There 
 were some exceptions to this rule, of which we shall 
 make due mention presently, but such, for the most 
 part, are the sermons which have come down to us 
 from those times. 
 
 It is well known that a few men had distinguished 
 themselves as, the writers of sermons previously to the 
 year 1688, and subsequently the pulpit began to add 
 a literature of its own to the general Uterature of the 
 
EPISCOPALIANS. 91 
 
 period. The age of Dryden and Pope, was that of 
 Atterbury and Sherlock. But even then, and down 
 to a full century later, men pubhshed sermons too 
 much as they published poems, less in the expecta- 
 tion of their being read by the people, than in the 
 hope of their obtaining favour with the critic, the 
 opulent, and the powerful. The age was emphati- 
 cally the age of patronage — the age of dependence on 
 great men ; and that it was so, was as rarely absent 
 from the thoughts of the divine, as from those of the 
 poet or the politician. The publication might be, a 
 discourse on death, an ode upon a birth-day, or a 
 pamphlet on the South Sea scheme, in general the 
 mainspring was alike apparent, and always the same 
 — everything looked one way. During the century 
 which followed upon the Revolution, the English 
 nation was left to find its edification in being a con- 
 stant witness of the quarrels which took place between 
 the different court factions for the possession of power, 
 and then among the winners about the division of the 
 spoil. It followed, not unnaturally, from this state of 
 things, that the few should become as the breath of 
 their nostrils to the many, and that the many should 
 worship at the shrine of the few accordingly. No 
 man acquainted with the lives of literary men, and 
 the " dedications" prefixed to literary works in those 
 times, can need proof on this point : and a glance at 
 the language in which Atterbury has dedicated his 
 sermons to the Bishop of Winchester, will be sufficient 
 
92 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST: 
 
 to shew, that, as it was in this respect with the poet, 
 so was it in a great degree with the preacher. 
 
 But manifest as this infirmity may have been, and 
 manifest as may have been the defects and faults of 
 the greater part of the sermons produced in such cir- 
 cumstances, no theological student should account his 
 education complete until he has acquired a pretty 
 famihar acquaintance with the published discourses of 
 our English divines, both conformist and noncon- 
 formist, from the age of Jeremy Taylor to the rise of 
 Methodism. The discourses printed by divines of 
 the church of England during that period exhibit, as 
 will be supposed, a great variety in character and 
 merit. They embrace many peculiarities which the 
 modern preacher will be concerned to avoid rather 
 than to imitate, and their defects in respect to theolo- 
 gical matter, and a mode of teaching adapted to the 
 popular apprehension, are such as cannot escape ob- 
 servation, but they nevertheless abound, not unfre- 
 quently, in high qualities, such as eminently deserve a 
 considerate perusal — a patient study. Knowledge on 
 this subject, as a matter of mere literary history, should 
 be interesting, and in the education of a preacher, 
 should be deemed indispensable. 
 
 Almost every page in the sermons of Jeremy 
 Taylor bears witness to his various and extraordinary 
 learning, and to his most copious eloquence. His 
 imagination appears to be without limit, and his feel- 
 ings, while rising occasionally to some loftiness, are 
 
EPISCOPALIANS — JEREMY TAYLOR. 93 
 
 always bland, catholic, and benignant. His genius is 
 essentially poetical. No great thought ever comes to 
 him alone, but in its train a multitude of lesser points 
 crowd upon each other, as subordinate to it, and these 
 groups of ideas are often made to carry with them all 
 the lavished beauty of finished pictures. So free also 
 is the flowing of this exuberance, both of genius and of 
 learning, that a manner of writing which would have 
 appeared as the effect of elaborate purpose, or as so 
 much cold and formal pedantry, in the hands of 
 almost any other man, is felt as the utterance most 
 natural to a mind so richly stored, so variously gifted, 
 and surrendered so manifestly to the impulses of 
 a moral and pious earnestness. 
 
 But the defects of Taylor are scarcely less observable 
 than his excellences. Such was the tendency of this 
 writer to pour forth his erudition, even in his sermons, 
 that the paragraphs and pages are frequent in which 
 there would seem to be a striving between the dead 
 languages and the living as to which should occupy 
 the largest space. In this profusion of learned quo- 
 tation, the writings of Taylor may remind some readers 
 of the " Anatomy of Melancholy," more than of any 
 other book in the history of English literature. Ser- 
 mons studded after this manner with Latin and Greek, 
 and in which so much room was assigned to the poets 
 and philosophers of antiquity, and to the fathers and 
 schoolmen of later ages, as sometimes to leave small 
 standing-place to much better authorities, could never 
 
94 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 have been regarded, even by their author, in any other 
 light than as devotional treatises, to be read by highly 
 educated persons in their closets. It is true, even the 
 promiscuous congregation in that age expected the dis- 
 course of a learned preacher to be adorned with scraps 
 of Latin, and sometimes with a little Greek, but the 
 preacher who should have poured such fragments upon 
 his auditory with the freedom of Taylor in his sermons 
 on " the House of Feasting," and on " the Marriage 
 Ring," would soon have discovered that the unintel- 
 ligible in that shape must have its limits. 
 
 Nor was the substance of these sermons, any more 
 than the mode of them, in strict accordance with the 
 popular perception and feeling in that day. Their 
 bearing was much more upon morals than upon theo- 
 logy ; and while, in the latter respect, they harmonized 
 little with the Calvinistic tenets of the puritans, they 
 were not accounted unexceptionable even in their 
 discussions on subjects strictly ethical. 
 
 Even the eloquence of Taylor is a power in respect 
 to which the orator himself appears not so much in 
 the posture of a master as in that of a victim. It re- 
 sembles a torrent, which has become so impetuous as 
 not to brook the impertinent interference of the reason 
 in favour of a more calm and lucid distribution of 
 thought, or of a more brief and perspicuous construc- 
 tion of sentences — all things being hurried onward, in 
 a manner which frequently sets distinctness, and 
 sometimes even grammar itself at defiance. 
 
EPISCOPALIANS — BARROW. 95 
 
 The labours of Taylor as an author belong, for the 
 most part, to the period preceding the Restoration ; 
 the five volumes of sermons published by Dr. Barrow 
 may be regarded as belonging to the first seventeen 
 years subsequent to that event. Barrow was not the 
 equal of Taylor in some branches of learning, but ex- 
 celled him in others. In theology both were of the 
 Arminian school. It was the practice of both to base 
 their doctrine very largely on the authority of heathen 
 authors, fathers, and schoolmen. Barrow does this 
 less than his predecessor, but still does so very gene- 
 rally. Both, also, are much disposed to occupy them- 
 selves with reasoning on the duties of religion which 
 border on common life, and in expounding the 
 distinctive truths of the gospel, are rarely found 
 contemplating those truths in their influence upon 
 that inward and spiritual conflict which is understood 
 as constituting the great moral struggle peculiar to 
 the Christian. The views of Barrow in relation to 
 the doctrine of justification by faith, and with regard 
 to the office of the Holy Spirit as the source of pro- 
 gressive light and spiritual power to the renewed 
 mind, are those usually termed evangelical, but he 
 oftentimes inculcates the general duties of Christians 
 at great length, on a variety of moral grounds, without 
 any intelligible reference to the peculiar relation sub- 
 sisting between these duties and such doctrines. But 
 passing over this very material defect, nothing can be 
 finer than the amplitude with which the mind of 
 
96 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 Barrow embraces the whole compass of every subject 
 upon which he happens to fix his attention. With re- 
 gard to style, he exhibits less imagination, and much 
 less warmth than Taylor, but he displays a more 
 masculine power of understanding, which shews itself 
 in the more deliberate and lucid arrangement of 
 his thoughts, in the greater simplicity and accuracy of 
 his expressions, and, on the whole, in the greater 
 weight and impressiveness of his manner generally. 
 In short, among all the standard divines of the church 
 of England, there is no man whom we regard as so 
 deserving to be read in the present day as Dr. Barrow. 
 Barrow died in 1677. South, who began his career 
 as a preacher a little before the Restoration, continued 
 in the pulpit until 1716. This person possessed little 
 in common with the distinguished men above named. 
 Nothing could be more in contrast with his nature, 
 than the sweetness of disposition which characterized 
 Taylor, or than the noble-minded candour which was 
 no less characteristic of Barrow. Wherever Protestant 
 nonconformity was concerned. South had learned 
 to account himself virtuous in proportion as he 
 could free his spirit from all taint of honesty, and 
 esteemed himself devout only in so far as he could excel 
 other men in the force of his malignity and in the lofti- 
 ness of his arrogance. What may have disposed such 
 a man to profess a creed somewhat more Calvinistic 
 than was fashionable in his time, and at the cost of 
 seeming to retain some affinity in that respect with 
 
EPISCOPALIANS — DR. SOUTH. 97 
 
 the great object of his aversion — the nonconformist, 
 is a point about which it is not perhaps important to 
 inquire — but such was the fact. His better creed, 
 however, was greatly wanting in the better spirit that 
 should have been produced by it. Nothing within 
 the same range of composition is more destitute of 
 devotional feeling than his sermons. All his attempts 
 to inculcate affections of that nature, are in the manner 
 of a man who would seem never to have known any- 
 thing of such feelings from experience. Little effort 
 is made to exhibit the good to admiration, but much 
 is done to hold up the evil to alternate hatred and 
 derision. Such, indeed, is the temper which he com- 
 monly betrays, that his chief motive in preaching 
 truth and duty would almost seem to be, that he might 
 realize the exquisite pleasure of putting the parties to 
 torture, who have failed to receive the one, or have 
 run counter to the other. Everything tends to con- 
 vict rather than convert, to madden rather than re- 
 claim. His rebukes fall, in consequence, in tones 
 more proper to a minister of vengeance, than to the 
 minister of reconciliation. 
 
 No clergyman in that age had ventured to assume 
 a manner in the pulpit so much bordering on levity. 
 In this respect he was original, and in a large city 
 almost any sort of originality, if allied with a measure 
 of real talent, becomes attractive or notorious. In 
 South there was this double element of notoriety — 
 novelty and power. His sermons presented nothing 
 
 F 
 
98 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 of the poetry of Taylor, nothing of the dignity or 
 learning of Barrow; but they possessed qualities that 
 could not fail to secure a more immediate and a 
 wider popularity. In style they were more idiomatic 
 than elaborate, more pointed than regular — bearing a 
 nearer resemblance to a ready and able utterance in 
 conversation or discussion, than to the formal style 
 usual at that time in books, particularly in books 
 on religion. The sermons of Latimer are full of 
 this popular point as regards expression, and are 
 enlivened with wit and humour; but those racy pecu- 
 liarities in his case, were allied with a manifest fide- 
 lity of temper which placed all the honest upon his 
 side, and were under the direction of a benevolence 
 and piety which gave him a strong hold on the 
 sympathies of the humane and the devout. We 
 need not repeat that the sermons of South were of 
 another complexion in these respects. He was the 
 only preacher of his age who had deemed the pulpit 
 a fitting place for sarcasm, jibes, and wit, and while 
 he directed these shafts against a considerable range 
 of vices, he never seemed to point them toward their 
 object with so much hearty good-will as when they 
 were made to plant themselves among the roundheads 
 and puritans of the last reign, or among those in his 
 own generation who were regarded as sympathizers 
 with the bygone rebel and fanatic. 
 
 With regard to his general ability as a preacher. 
 South has been, ^ we think, much overrated. His 
 
EPISCOPALIANS — DR. SOUTH. 99 
 
 power in seizing on the import of a text does not ex- 
 hibit anything remarkable ; and in the easy and 
 natural disposition of the materials of a sermon, he 
 was excelled, toward the close of life, by some of his 
 contemporaries, as in the case of Atterbury and Sher- 
 lock. But his frequent turns of ingenuity, the vigour 
 of his separate thoughts, the skill with which he could 
 sometimes lay bare the doubling of human motives, 
 the strength of the pictures relating both to character 
 and general manners which a few touches sometimes 
 sufficed to strike off, and the alternate play of the 
 droll and the biting, — of the things which commended 
 themselves, now to the levities, and now to the resent- 
 ments of his hearers, — these were the attractions 
 which, during the greater part of the reign of Charles 
 II., brought the idlers from the court, and elsewhere, 
 about the pulpit of Dr. South. But towards the close 
 of that reign, and during the whole of the next, affairs 
 became much too grave in their aspect to allow of 
 much time being spent in laughter. Nor were the 
 events consequent on the revolution much more to 
 the taste of our preacher. The idea of liberty of 
 worship he had always denounced, and when tolera- 
 tion became a branch of our liberties by an act of the 
 state. South appears to have found his chief solace, as 
 thrown upon such evil times, in warning his hearers 
 that should they presume to avail themselves of the 
 freedom in this respect which the state now permitted 
 them to use, and protected them in using, they would 
 F 2 
 
100 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST: 
 
 SO do at the almost certain cost of finding their way 
 to perdition. 
 
 Contemporary with Barrow and South was Bishop 
 Beveridge. The sermons of this eminently pious 
 person amount to a series of volumes. But they are 
 more remarkable from their number, and on account 
 of the simple and earnest piety by which they are 
 pervaded, than from any other consideration. Each 
 discourse, whether delivered before the most august 
 assembly, or upon the most ordinary occasion, is the 
 strict counterpart of the whole, exhibiting the same 
 total absence of imagination, the same extreme plain- 
 ness of expression, the same mediocrity, or rather 
 feebleness of thought, along with the same deep 
 seriousness, and the same intentness to communicate 
 scriptural instruction, and to lead the people into the 
 paths of scriptural goodness. His narrow views as a 
 churchman, were more consistent with his circum- 
 stances, and with the limits of his understanding, 
 than with the simplicity and fervour of his devout 
 affections. It should be added that, so far as my 
 memory serves me, the greater part of these ser- 
 mons are posthumous. 
 
 We have now reached the period from which the 
 divines of the church of England become con- 
 spicuous as the authors of sermons. Among the 
 names so distinguished, the most considerable are 
 those of Stillingfleet, Atterbury, Tillotson, Sherlock, 
 Bull, Waterland, Seed, Clarke, Jortin, Seeker, Butler, 
 
EPISCOPALIANS. 101 
 
 Home, and Balguy. But these authors, with some 
 others of the same class, whose labours are spread 
 over the century which followed upon the revolution 
 of 1688, belong so much to one school, and are so 
 much more characterized by what is common to them 
 all, than by what is peculiar to them separately, that 
 any attempt to indicate their several lesser peculiarities 
 would be a tedious, and not, perhaps, a very profitable 
 employment. 
 
 With regard to style, this class of sermons generally 
 exhibit that simplicity which, in England at least, 
 would seem to be natural to true scholarship. Perhaps 
 the greatest exception to this remark may be seen in 
 the declamatory rhetoric of Atterbury, and in a fond- 
 ness for the flowers of sentiment in Seed, while the 
 perfection of that dignified sobriety of language, that 
 masculine plainness, which characterizes this school, 
 may be seen in Butler and Balguy. But this style 
 generally, — so much more regular and subdued than 
 anything that had hitherto obtained in the history of 
 the English pulpit, — is often to the last degree elabo- 
 rate. Its character is derived from the restraint rather 
 than the excess of imagination, and from the poverty 
 rather than the profusion of ornament, but the greatest 
 attention is paid to accuracy, to the choice and collo- 
 cation of words, to the harmonized structure of sen- 
 tences, and to the finish of the whole composition. 
 Effort is not unfrequently made by the preacher to 
 remove difficulty, and to give clearness to the obscure. 
 
102 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST: 
 
 but such attention to the matter of discourse is never 
 prosecuted at the cost of the expected smoothness 
 and dignity of expression. Too commonly, the 
 thoughts to be communicated appear to be less a 
 matter of solicitude, than the manner of presenting 
 them — so continuous is the measured formalism of the 
 language, however varied the subject of which it 
 becomes the vehicle- In this style the appearance 
 of the body is so quiescent, that we are tempted to 
 think it cannot have the feeling and impulse of a 
 soul, or, at the best, only those of a very cold and 
 feeble one. In short, composition in the pulpit in 
 those times came to be, in general, that of the graver 
 papers in the Rambler, or the Spectator — a language 
 which, even in its most familiar form, was not so 
 much that of the people as that of the polite and the 
 educated. In general, it was much too pointless ever 
 to strike upon the multitude, and much too stately 
 and uniform to be capable of taking a strong hold on 
 any man. Such would have been its character had it 
 been a language to be spoken, but as a language to 
 be read, its effect on almost any auditory must have 
 been, as we should think, to lull them into slumber, 
 rather than to command attention and awaken interest. 
 The cold, monotonous level to which the sermon had 
 been reduced as a composition, was usually incom- 
 patible with any degree of warmth in the delivery ; 
 nor was anything further from the notions which then 
 prevailed on the subject of pulpit taste, than that 
 
EPISCOPALIANS. 103 
 
 either the style or the manner of the preacher should 
 be found to rise, on any occasion, above the tone of 
 a grave and scholarlike elocution. The time past was 
 deemed sufficient for discretion and dignity to have 
 given place to enthusiasm and rant. It was, indeed, 
 a large world which lay between the school of Latimer, 
 as a preacher, and this school among his successors. 
 It would have been well if the faults of the former 
 could have been avoided, without so strong a diver- 
 gence into the greater faults of the latter. In the 
 sixteenth century princes were addressed in the 
 language of the people ; in the eighteenth, the people 
 and their language, so far as the pulpit was concerned, 
 hardly seem to have an existence. 
 
 In their theological preferences, all these divines 
 belong to the Arminian school. Some, as in the case 
 of Bull and Waterland, were zealous Trinitarians; 
 others, as in the case of Clarke and Hoadly, were 
 regarded as holding defective views on that doctrine, 
 and on some points collateral to it. But it is observable, 
 in the case of all these writers, that they bestow a 
 large space on discussions relating to duties which 
 belong not so immediately to religion as to the morals 
 of social life; and that in their treatment of theo- 
 logical topics, their object is very generally contro- 
 versial, the points of combat being Socinianism, 
 Romanism, or Scepticism. 
 
 In dealing with points of moral obligation, they 
 appeal largely to the supposed innate susceptibility of 
 
104 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 men, and to their natural power of discernment, in 
 regard to such subjects, basing the principle of obedi- 
 ence very strongly, up to a certain point, on what is 
 called natural religion. This is particularly observable 
 in Tillotson, but is common, in a great degree, to all 
 his contemporaries. In conducting their argument 
 upon this ground, these writers have entitled them- 
 selves to the praise of much acuteness, often accom- 
 panied with very searching views of human nature, 
 and sometimes with great learning in respect to the 
 history of mental science. It is in this department 
 that the study of their works would be of eminent 
 service to nearly the whole of the modern evangehcal 
 school of preachers. Evangelical preachers, in the 
 prominence and application which they give to the 
 distinctive truths of Christianity, supply abundantly 
 the great want in that respect in the sermons of the 
 episcopal clergy of the last century — but their own 
 want of power to enforce the duties of the gospel with 
 the requisite discrimination, compass, and strength, is 
 as conspicuous as their right-mindedness with regard 
 to its doctrines. In this department, too commonly, 
 everything needful is supposed to be done when a few 
 apposite and well-known texts are cited. But it was 
 the manner of the divines adverted to, not merely to 
 cite texts, but to expound them. 
 
 Socinianism made some appearance in England so 
 early as the middle of the seventeenth century, but 
 did not become so considerable as to attract much 
 
EPISCOPALIANS. 105 
 
 notice until toward the close of that period. The 
 final expulsion of the professors of that creed from 
 Poland took place in 1660, and as the fugitives found 
 their natural asylum in Holland, the accession of 
 William III. to the English throne, appears to have 
 favoured a wider diffusion of their opinions in this 
 country. The most memorable of the publications 
 bearing upon this controversy during about a century 
 from the Revolution, were those of Bishop Bull, par- 
 ticularly his " Defence of the Nicene Creed," in 
 which the object of the writer is to demonstrate the 
 orthodoxy of the ancient church to the beginning of 
 the fourth century, by means of large quotations from 
 the fathers to that purpose. From some examination 
 of those authorities, Patavius, a Jesuit, Courcelles, a 
 learned Arminian, and our own Cudworth, had come 
 to a conclusion unfavourable to patristic orthodoxy, 
 and though Bull did not satisfy all his readers that 
 these persons were in error in adopting such a con- 
 clusion, the bishop earned great reputation by his 
 labours, both among his protestant brethren in Eng- 
 land, and his catholic admirers in France. While the 
 most learned in our universities gave themselves to 
 such authorship, it will not be supposed that the pulpit 
 was silent upon the controversy to which it related. 
 
 It was during the early part of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, much more than subsequently, that the dis- 
 courses of the clergy were strongly imbued with 
 hostility to Romanism. The panic in relation to that 
 f3 
 
106 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 subject during the latter part of the reign of Charles 
 IL, and the real danger connected with it in the time of 
 his successor, left the public mind under the influence 
 of a lingering apprehension in that respect, which did 
 not wholly subside so long as any importance could 
 be attached to the machinations of the exiled family, 
 or to those of the partisans whom they had left be- 
 hind them. Stillingfleet especially distinguished him- 
 self in this warfare, and next to him in promptitude 
 and ability was Tillotson ; but such was, or had been, 
 the power of Louis XIV., and such was the kind of 
 splendour which continued to vest the Galilean 
 church, that few preachers, who were men of any 
 efficiency, failed to hazard a lance occasionally with 
 the defenders of Romanism. It would have been 
 well if many who were most forward in assailing some 
 of the opinions and forms of the papal system, had 
 been careful to eschew its spirit. 
 
 But so far as the more educated classes were con- 
 cerned, it would seem that neither Socinianism nor 
 Romanism was the form of religious error from which 
 there was most to apprehend. The reaction on the 
 side of licentiousness which had come in with the 
 Restoration, had continued to flow on until it had 
 swept away nearly all ground of confidence with re- 
 spect both to God and man. Distrust of human 
 virtue, and of all virtue, whether human or divine, 
 had spread its deep taint through society. So long 
 as this temper was content to vent itself in gibes 
 
EPISCOPALIANS. 107 
 
 against the fanatics and regicides of the last age, or 
 against their demure descendants in the age present, 
 it was accounted as nothing more than sound Enghsh 
 feehng, and no portly vicar or squire, who prided him- 
 self on his sympathy with the " olden time," failed to 
 give it cordial greeting. But of late this spirit had 
 shewn a disposition' to push itself beyond its former 
 limits. It had ceased to distinguish between priests 
 with a true apostolic pretension, and priests with any 
 pretension whatsoever. It saw no more to respect in 
 persons of that class who were in the pay of Caesar, 
 than in those who had been so long subject to exile, 
 confiscation, and imprisonment, at his bidding. In 
 short, it was plain that it had lost all reverence for the 
 "church," whatever it might have retained for the 
 " king." One half of its good ancient toryism was mani- 
 festly gone, and, in the judgment of the persons whom 
 that fact most concerned, the half which had vanished 
 was much the better half To be wanting in fidelity 
 to the church, was to be wanting in fidelity to the 
 best thing in the land — the best, at least, in the sense 
 of furnishing place and pay. In this light, unhappily, 
 was that church viewed by most of its adherents, lay 
 and clerical, at that period, and the fruit natural to such 
 a habit of thinking followed. What wonder, if men, 
 after being so long schooled into laughing at piety in 
 some connexions, began to laugh at it in all con- 
 nexions ? What wonder, if worldly sagacity was seen 
 to break away thus from the feeble leading-strings 
 
1 08 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 of a narrow ecclesiastical cunning ? What marvel was 
 it, when the plea of religion had been used for so many 
 long years on the side of almost every species of craft, 
 injustice, and oppression, that men should learn to re- 
 gard the whole of that plea as so much miserable gri- 
 mace ? We state deliberately, it would be expecting 
 more from human nature than anything belonging to 
 our knowledge of it would warrant, to suppose that 
 the course pursued by the only accredited guardians of 
 the national faith subsequent to 1660, should have 
 led to any other result than was seen in this precise 
 state of things some fifty years later. The men who 
 should have been the special conservators of the 
 Christian faith, were the men who did most to bring 
 it into this state of peril. 
 
 Many of the clergy, subsequent to the Revolution, 
 particularly the dignified clergy, laboured with me- 
 morable effect to repair the mischiefs which had been 
 thus produced. It was their lot to enter into other 
 men's labours in a sense which did not commend 
 itself to their ease, though it did much for their repu- 
 tation. The mention of Butler, and the " Analogy," 
 will be a sufficient illustration of this remark. But it 
 was an evil of great amount, that it should have be- 
 come expedient for preachers to occupy so much time 
 it combating this scepticism in the upper classes. Its 
 effect, in connexion with other causes tending to the 
 same point, was not only to call the attention of di- 
 vines too much from Christianity itself, to its mere out- 
 
EPISCOPALIANS. 109 
 
 works, but especially to prevent them from minis- 
 tering to the spiritual wants of the people, who were 
 little affected by the kind of speculations which had 
 become so prevalent among their betters. Hence a 
 large number of the sermons delivered in those times 
 were discourses relating to the being of a God, the 
 necessity of a revelation, the authenticity of the 
 scriptures, the claims of the gospel, the causes of 
 infidelity, and similar topics. In these discussions 
 the abstruse and the learned were unavoidable, and 
 as you listen to the preacher, much occurs to remind 
 you of schoolman grappling with schoolman, but very 
 little of a nature to suggest that the speaker is address- 
 ing you from a pulpit, and that the matter and lan- 
 guage to which you listen are those of a sermon. 
 Even when the subject of discourse becomes more 
 theological and Christian, the case does not always 
 greatly improve. Still you would often be constrained 
 to listen as to an academic prelection, or a literary 
 essay, more than as to an exposition of revealed truth, 
 designed to convey instruction to the ignorant and 
 salvation to the lost. We should be glad to suppose 
 that this manner of preaching, so much more adapted 
 to schools of philosophy than to promiscuous assem- 
 blies of people, was peculiar to sermons " preached at 
 the Rolls Chapel," or before " the Worshipful the 
 Masters," in the Temple Church ; but we fear, from 
 all that we can learn, that preaching generally partook 
 very much of this character. 
 
110 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 Nor is this all. Even when the topics of discourse 
 are the more familiar lessons of doctrine and practice, 
 and when the style is the most simple, the language 
 is still that of books more than of oral communication, 
 and in scarcely any case are the opinions expressed 
 those understood by the term evangelical, but gene- 
 rally of a nature considerably opposed to such views. 
 If the Trinity, the Atonement, and the grace of the 
 Holy Spirit, are not for the most part passed over, 
 the recognition of those great truths is in general 
 so defective, that neither the hope nor the obliga- 
 tion of the Christian are made to rest with a scriptural 
 distinctness on their proper foundation. Bishop 
 Bull's "Harmonia Apostolica" is fatal to the doc- 
 trine of justification by faith, and on that vital point 
 the divines of the church of England during the 
 eighteenth century are much more the disciples of 
 Bull, than of Luther, or of Hooker. Hence the great 
 object of the theological student, in making himself 
 acquainted with the works of these justly celebrated 
 authors, must be, to enlarge the stock of his subsidiary 
 knowledge, and to familiarize his mind with the exer- 
 cises of highly disciplined intellect in regard to a wide 
 field of evidence and moral reasoning, more than to 
 learn from them either what he is to teach as the 
 great theme of his ministry, or what is, upon the 
 whole, the best mode of presenting instruction from 
 the pulpit. In their works, generally, moral senti- 
 ment is too much in the place of religious sentiment. 
 
NONCONFORMISTS. Ill 
 
 moral motives are too much in the place of the mo- 
 tives that should be derived from the cross, and the 
 doctrine of the cross is not only exhibited for the most 
 part very imperfectly, but with very little of its in- 
 tended bearing on the production and nurture of a true 
 spiritual life in the soul, and with scarcely anything of 
 the unction — the really Christian devotion which 
 should be always attendant upon it. 
 
 We should now glance at the state of the pulpit 
 among the nonconformists during this period. From 
 1662 to 1688, the nonconformists can scarcely be 
 said to have had a pulpit. Towards the close of that 
 period, some of their number availed themselves of 
 the liberty of worship which had been proclaimed in 
 their favour by the dispensing power — the power of 
 the crown, as exercised irrespective of the pleasure of 
 parliaments. But, strictly speaking, the nonconformist 
 pulpit in England cannot be regarded as dating earlier 
 than the passing of the Toleration Act, after the ac- 
 cession of William III. Hence the publications of 
 the nonconformists previous to the Revolution, con- 
 sist not so much of sermons as of theological and de- 
 votional treatises. Between the Restoration and the 
 Revolution, Dr. Owen published nearly fifty works, 
 varying in their extent, from a primer for children, to 
 his series of folios on the Epistle to the Hebrews; but 
 none of these publications are sermons. 
 
 No preacher in the unsettled times preceding the 
 passing of the act of toleration, would seem to have 
 
112 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 been so popular as the author of the " Pilgrim's Pro- 
 gress." Bunjan must have possessed great powers of 
 attraction as a preacher. More than twelve hundred 
 people often assembled before seven o'clock on a 
 winter morning to hear him. When he came to 
 London, one day's notice was sufficient to bring more 
 persons together as his auditory than the largest place 
 of worship would contam. Nothing like this had oc- 
 curred since the times of the commonwealth, nor do 
 we meet with anything of the sort again until the age 
 of Whitfield and Wesley. It is said that Dr. Owen 
 was frequently one of Bunyan's hearers, and that 
 Charles II. once expressed his surprise that a man of 
 the Doctor's learning could attend the preaching of a 
 tinker ; to which Owen replied — " Had I the tinker's 
 abilities, please your Majesty, I would most gladly re- 
 linquish all my learning." * 
 
 The works of Dr. Owen include many sermons, 
 published in part during his lifetime, but mostly from 
 his papers after his decease. They all exhibit the 
 general characteristics of his mind, great power of 
 understanding, much theological learning, and an in- 
 timate acquaintance with the various aspects of the 
 Christian character, and with all the exercises of the 
 devout affections. But along with these qualities, his 
 discourses also exhibit that want of spirited compres- 
 sion, of ready and skilful arrangement, and of ease 
 and clearness of style, which detracts so much from 
 
 * Orme's Life of Owen, 399. 
 
NONCONFORMISTS. 113 
 
 the pleasure that would otherwise have been derived 
 from the study of his writings. If Dr. Bates had been 
 less a man of mere style, and Dr. Owen less a man of 
 mere substance, it would have conduced much to their 
 mutual reputation and usefulness. In the finish and 
 beauty of his language, no man in the English pulpit 
 exceeded Dr. Bates during his lifetime. With these 
 names, mention should be made of Doctor Thomas 
 Goodwin, described by Anthony Wood as " one of 
 the atlases and patriarchs of Independency ;"* and 
 who, during the commonwealth, was president of 
 Magdalen College, Oxford. It is, however, as a theo- 
 logian, more than as a preacher, that Goodwin is 
 distinguished. His judgment was not sufficiently 
 sound to prevent his pushing the points of Cal- 
 vinism into some excess ; but he possessed great 
 knowledge of the Scriptures, was well read in ecclesi- 
 astical history, excelled in his powers as a biblical 
 critic, and was especially versed in everything relating 
 to the nature and history of church polity and disci- 
 pline. His works extend to five folio volumes. He 
 died in 1679, in the eightieth year of his age. 
 
 Among the theologians who had made some figure 
 in the times before the Restoration, and who survived 
 until the times of the Revolution, the most memorable 
 beyond comparison is John Howe. Of this extraor- 
 dinary person it has been justly said — " He seems to 
 have been a combination of very various, and, in 
 * Alh. Ox, ii. 556. 
 
114 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 some respects, almost heterogeneous excellences, every 
 one of which may have been seen in a greater degree 
 somewhere or other, but have seldom been concen- 
 trated in one person in such perfection. To the 
 acutest powers of argument, and the noblest talents for 
 speculation, he conjoined a most discriminating judg- 
 ment, and shed around all the light of a powerful and 
 sublime imagination. He possessed talents which 
 equally fitted him for a contemplative or an active 
 life ; and though the tendencies of his mind would 
 have led him to the former as a matter of choice, he 
 was capable of performing the most arduous services 
 in the latter when a matter of duty. To the most 
 enlarged acquaintance with abstract science, he united 
 a knowledge, not less profound, of human nature. In 
 all transactions with the world, he exhibited a rare 
 combination of prudence and integrity. In that most 
 delicate task, the reproof of others, he was inflexibly 
 faithful, yet always kind ; and while he remembered 
 what was due to the majesty of truth, never forgot 
 what was also due to the claims of charity. He was 
 frank, yet not rash ; and cautious, yet free from sus- 
 picion. In his deportment, he knew how to conciliate 
 the utmost elevation of character with the gentlest 
 condescension and the acutest sensibility. Dignified 
 but not austere ; he was ' grave without moroseness, 
 and cheerful without levity.' While he subjected all 
 the inferior principles of his nature to the severe con- 
 trol of reason, itself enlightened by the Spirit of God, 
 
NONCONFORMISTS — JOHN HOWE. 115 
 
 he was not so absurd as to attempt their annihilation ; 
 nor did the loftiest attainments of intellect interfere 
 with the varied display of human charities. 
 
 " Above all, these qualities were crowned, or rather 
 sustained and nurtured, by a deep, ardent, habitual, 
 all-pervading spirit of piety — a piety, which united 
 the most burning zeal with the coolest judgment ; the 
 most intense desire for the glory of God, with cease- 
 less efforts for the welfare of man ; the loftiest exer- 
 cise of a deeply meditative and devotional spirit, with 
 the sedulous cultivation of the homeliest graces ; 
 that rarest of all combinations, the closest communion 
 with the future and the eternal, with a conscientious 
 and busy discharge of all the duties of to-day. Such 
 was John Howe ; the rude elements of this various 
 excellence were, indeed, bestowed at his birth ; but it 
 was the power of the gospel of Christ, and that alone, 
 which developed and expanded them ; which directed 
 them to the noblest objects ; which controlled, puri- 
 fied, and exalted them. As his reception of the 
 gospel was an illustrious tribute paid to its truth, so 
 his character and life were an emphatic exhibition of 
 its power. That he had his faults, we are certain, 
 for he was man; while all the excellences he pos- 
 sessed, he would have been the first to attribute solely 
 to the influence of the Spirit of God. That these 
 were many, we may judge from the language of 
 Spademan, his friend and coadjutor — language already 
 quoted, and worthy of being quoted again — that it 
 
116 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 seemed as though he was intended to be an inviting 
 example of universal goodness." 
 
 It is, however, more as a theologian, and a man of 
 genius, than as a preacher, that eminence of this high 
 order is due to Howe. Speaking of him in this capacity, 
 the able writer to whom we are indebted for the above 
 extract, observes — " Whether we judge from the dis- 
 courses he has left behind him, or from the testimony 
 of his contemporaries, Howe must have possessed very 
 considerable powers. Still, the impression he pro- 
 duced is to be attributed, I apprehend, principally, to 
 the intrinsic excellence of his matter, (equally valuable, 
 whether presented in books or sermons,) and to the 
 earnestness, solemnity, and majesty of his manner. 
 
 " The distinguishing characteristics of his genius 
 were certainly not such as promise great oratorical 
 excellence. Quite the contrary. Considered as a 
 public speaker, his principal defects are obvious. He 
 was evidently too philosophical, too fond of metaphy- 
 sical discussion, and of refined and subtle analysis. 
 Often must his audience have been wearied out by 
 the long trains of reasoning, and the abstruse and 
 often profound speculations, in which he took so much 
 delight. That this was the case, we may safely con- 
 clude, from the fact, that (though, for obvious rea- 
 sons, such a disquisitory style is far more tolerable in a 
 treatise than in a sermon) even his readers often 
 complain of the above peculiarities. 
 
 " These peculiarities have most undoubtedly rendered 
 
NONCONFORMISTS — JOHN HOWE. 117 
 
 some of the finest pieces of Howe less popular than 
 they would have been, and, so far, less useful. The 
 reader is apt to be wearied with so much preliminary 
 skirmishing. Calamy tells us that the same peculiarity 
 marked his usual style of preaching, the first part of 
 his sermons generally displaying great depth and 
 reach of thought. They uniformly closed, however, 
 in a strain level to the comprehension of the meanest, 
 and with an earnestness and pathos calculated to pro- 
 duce the deepest impression. Mr. Foster has re- 
 marked, that the very same peculiarities often dis- 
 tinguished Mr. Hall's sermons ; nor is this the only 
 point in which Howe and Hall resemble one another. 
 " I have heard of a good woman who, having read 
 some of Howe's pieces, shewed her displeasure at the 
 above-mentioned defects of method, by saying, that 
 * he was so long laying the cloth, that she alicays 
 despaired of the dinner.'' 
 
 " From the mere faults which had their orio-in in 
 the barbarous taste and uncouth fashions of the age, 
 Howe was for the most part free. No one can charge 
 him with an ostentatious display of his learning, or 
 with an idle and pedantic introduction of scraps of 
 Greek and Latin. Neither does he often indulge in 
 the quaint conceits, or the coarse and ridiculous allu- 
 sions, which in that age were so general. The sobriety 
 of his mind, and his strong sense of propriety, equally 
 concurred to preserve him from such follies as these. 
 " In one fault of the age, however, (as Robert Hall 
 
118 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 justly remarks,) he far outwent many of his most ex- 
 travagant contemporaries — I mean, in minute and 
 frivolous subdivision. We have sometimes heads, 
 arranged rank and file, half a score deep. 
 
 " It is astonishing that such a man as Howe, or, 
 indeed, that men every way inferior to him, should 
 not have perceived the . utterly unphilosophical cha- 
 racter of such a principle of classification. To affix 
 numbers to the few leading topics of discourse (and 
 these must of necessity be few) is very well. It 
 serves to indicate the great line of thought on which 
 the speaker intends to travel, and thus to assist the 
 memory of the hearer. But if that division becomes 
 intricate — if it consists of several sets of figures — a 
 more successful expedient for thoroughly and hope- 
 lessly bewildering the mind can hardly be devised. 
 
 " If any would wish to see the full extent to which 
 Howe carried this fault, they may look into the 
 ' Scheme' (a very accurate one) which his publishers 
 prefixed to the j^r^^ edition of the * Delighting in God.' 
 By the time the student has thoroughly digested and 
 mastered that, he will find little difficulty, I appre- 
 hend, in any of the first six books of Euclid. 
 
 " Though Howe's genius was not peculiarly 
 adapted for oratory, the talents he did possess were 
 diligently and successfully cultivated. The ministry 
 of the gospel was not only his duty, but his delight ; 
 and he spared no effort which might enable him to 
 discharge it with success. Calamy tells us — ' his 
 
NONCONFORMISTS. ] 1 9 
 
 ministerial qualifications were singular. He could 
 preach ofF-hand with as great exactness as many 
 others upon the closest study. He delivered his ser- 
 mons without notes, though he did not impose that 
 method upon others.' I may remark, that all contem- 
 poraneous accounts represent his preaching as deeply 
 impressive." * 
 
 The fault which was so manifest in Howe, in the 
 matter of excessive divisions and subdivisions, is hardly 
 less observable in the otherwise excellent discourses 
 of David Clarkson, the colleague, as a preacher, of 
 Dr. Owen, and the tutor of Archbishop Tillotson. 
 Altogether, this mischievous error — an error in judg- 
 ment no less than in taste, betrayed itself among the 
 nonconformists much longer than among the clergy of 
 the estabhshed church, principally, we may presume, 
 in consequence of the greater reverence with which 
 they regarded the example of their puritan prede- 
 cessors. 
 
 Speaking generally, we regret to say that we find 
 much more to deplore than to admire in the state of 
 the nonconformist pulpit during the former half of 
 the eighteenth century. Arianism, and something 
 still more removed fi*om the truth, began to shew itself 
 widely among the presbyterians ; and many pulpits 
 which did not become altogether unimpressive as the 
 
 * Life and Character of John Howe, M.A., by Henry Rogers, 
 pp. 474— 477; 503—505. 
 
120 TIIK PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 effect of such opinions, became very feeble in their 
 influence from other causes. 
 
 Perhaps we may regard the sermons of the Rev. John 
 Barker and those of the Rev. Joseph Stennett as exhi- 
 biting a very favourable specimen of the preaching 
 which obtained among dissenters during the half cen- 
 tury subsequent to the Revolution. In reading these 
 discourses we can readily cede to the authors the 
 praise claimed for them in their title-pages — that of 
 being " learned." Nor should we withhold from them 
 the praise of having distributed the matter of their 
 discourses with considerable judgment, and of having 
 expressed their thoughts with great propriety and 
 clearness, and with occasional force. Their orthodoxy, 
 and the evangelical influence of that orthodoxy on the 
 habit of their own mind, are above suspicion. No 
 one can doubt the piety of their feelings as men, or of 
 their intention as preachers. But the greater part of 
 their discourses partake too little of the applicatory 
 character that should characterize a sermon, and too 
 much of the system, expansion, and coldness, which 
 might have been felt as more in place in a college 
 lecture. If the reader can call to memory the sub- 
 stance and manner of Stennett's sermons on " Christ 
 Crucified," he will at once understand what is meant. 
 In the sermons of Barker and of Stennett there is not 
 generally any want of the distinctive truths of the 
 gospel, in proportion as the text or subject may be of 
 
NONCONFORMISTS. 121 
 
 a nature to embrace them, but texts which are not 
 evangehcal in their direct import have Httle doctrine 
 of that nature brought to them, and when such doc- 
 trines are put forth, it is too much in the manner of 
 topics in a disquisition or an essay, with scarcely any- 
 thing of that animated and searching appeal to the 
 auditory, which is so necessary to secure attention and 
 to produce deep and permanent interest. The object 
 of the preacher, for the most part, would seem to be 
 instruction, rather than conversion — the edification of 
 the believing, more than the conviction of the unbe- 
 lieving. 
 
 Such discourses might contribute, along with regular 
 pastoral oversight, to retain dissenting families in their 
 relation to the dissenting interest, but they were little 
 adapted to command attention beyond those limits. 
 Population was increasing rapidly, and with it popular 
 ignorance and irreligion ; and the manner in which 
 the services of the meeting-house were conducted, 
 seemed to possess little more of adaptation to the 
 growing exigencies of the times, than the services of 
 the parish church. Formalism, of a certain kind, 
 though the fact would not perhaps be acknowledged, 
 had its home in the places of dissent as certainly as 
 elsewhere. Eminent piety existed in many noncon- 
 formist families. Devotional works passed through 
 many editions, and furnished very widely the material 
 of private reading and meditation. But the feeling 
 of piety seemed to find the limits of its influence with 
 
 G 
 
122 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST: 
 
 the individual, with the family circle, or at most with a 
 particular church and congregation. The great policy 
 of religion appeared to be to retain its hold, rather than 
 to extend it — to perpetuate an interest, rather than to 
 convert a neighbourhood. Without some extraordi- 
 nary movement in order to overtake the increasing 
 numbers of the people, who were fast slipping away 
 from all the ordinary means of religious instruction, 
 there was no prospect of their being retained under 
 any sort of religious influence; — but to adopt any 
 such movement seemed, unhappily, to be scarcely 
 more in the way of the dissenter than of the church- 
 man. 
 
 It is towards the close of this period that we meet 
 with the honoured names of Watts and Doddridge. 
 Watts, in his " Humble Attempt towards the Revival 
 of Practical Religion among Christians," has suffi- 
 ciently indicated his impression with regard to the 
 main cause of the alleged declension of power and 
 numbers among dissenters. " I am well satisfied," he 
 writes, " that the great and general reason is the decay 
 of vital religion in the hearts and lives of men, and the 
 little success which the ministrations of the gospel 
 have had of late for the conversion of sinners to holi- 
 ness, and the recovery of them, from the state of cor- 
 rupt nature and the course of this world, to the life of 
 God by Jesus Christ. If this be not our hope and 
 design, the support of the dissenting interest is but of 
 little importance. What is it that we mean by assert- 
 
WATTS AND DODDRIDGE. 123 
 
 ing the rights and freedom of conscience in our sepa- 
 ration from the Estabhshed Church, but more effec- 
 tually to promote the kingdom of God among men, to 
 do more honour to the name of Christ our Saviour in 
 his institutions, and better to carry on the blessed 
 work of the salvation of souls ? 
 
 " But if these things are not happily promoted 
 amongst us, it is no wonder that persons release them- 
 selves from all the inconveniences that in some places 
 may attend their separation from a public establish- 
 ment, especially when it is so evident that the allure- 
 ment of riches and honours, and public trusts and 
 offices, lie all on one side. 
 
 " ;Nor is the complaint of the declension of virtue 
 and piety made only by the protestant dissenters ; — 
 it is a general matter of mournful observation amongst 
 all that lay the cause of God to heart ; and therefore 
 it cannot be amiss for every one to use all just and 
 proper efforts for the recovery of dying rehgion in the 
 world."* 
 
 It appears from this very interesting publication, 
 that the great want was, not that preaching should be 
 orthodox, nor that it should be evangelical, instruc- 
 tive, and even searching, considered in its relation to 
 Christians, but that it should be pointed more earnestly 
 and directly towards " the conversion of sinners to 
 holiness." The most able preacher among the dis- 
 
 * An Humble Attempt, &c.. Preface, third edition. 
 g2 
 
124 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 senters in that age was Thomas Bradbury, the minister 
 of New-court Chape], Carey Street, London. But 
 from the numerous sermons pubUshed by Bradbury, 
 most of which, it should be added, were dehvered on 
 special and public occasions, we should be disposed to 
 fear that the greater point, animation, and genius of 
 this preacher, did not tend more strongly than the 
 less-gifted labours of his brethren towards the object 
 which appeared to the devout spirit of Watts as the 
 great want of the times — " the conversion of sinners 
 to holiness." Bradbury is not the only man who 
 has become so occupied with defending the polity and 
 outworks of dissent, as to appear to lose sight of the 
 fact, that Congregationalism, next to its being, as we 
 truly think it to be, a part of the will of the Saviour, 
 derives its great value from its special aptitude to 
 diffuse a serious and vital Christianity among the 
 people. Men who become intent on making them- 
 selves felt through the ecclesiastical framework of a 
 nation, too often fail of making any great impression, 
 of the best kind, on the sphere immediately about 
 them. Men of a less venturous aim, and given to 
 more obscure labours, frequently do more, not only 
 toward the advancement of piety, but toward the ad- 
 vancement of their distinctive principles. Watts and 
 Doddridge adhered to the principles of Bradbury as a 
 congregationalist, but placed them in a more marked, 
 and a more just subordination to piety, and the effect 
 of their wiser and better policy may be seen, in the 
 
WATTS, DODDRIDGE, BRADBURY. 125 
 
 much wider and more permanent service to the cause 
 of those principles which has resulted from their 
 labours. The labours of Bradbury have passed into 
 comparative forgetfulness, along with the excitements 
 which produced them, and to which they were ad- 
 dressed ; while those of Watts and Doddridge belong 
 to our age as much as to their own, and by exhibiting 
 independency in its true light, as a system of piety, 
 rather than as a system of mere policy, have done more 
 than the labours of all the men of their generation 
 beside to give it reputation and power. 
 
 Watts did not possess the physical strength necessary 
 to effectiveness as a preacher, and Doddridge was di- 
 verted from giving himself wholly to the service of the 
 pulpit, partly by his habits as a student, and partly by 
 his duties in later life as a tutor. But the sermons of 
 both, in common with all their devotional writings, 
 breathe a spirit of piety so intelligent and so fervent, 
 that they could not have been feeble in their impres- 
 sion on those who listened to them. It was no doubt 
 an eminent service which these holy men were called 
 to perform in relation to the piety of their times ; 
 but the darkness which pervaded the established 
 church, and the declension and lethargy which had 
 come upon the churches of the nonconformists, were 
 much too formidable to be greatly affected by exertions 
 so subdued, so cautious, and so regular, as were those 
 which could alone commend themselves to the habits 
 and tastes of such men. Much they did, beyond 
 
126 THE PULPIT EST THE PAST : 
 
 doubt, towards kindling the flame of devout feeling 
 which began to shew itself, about the middle of the 
 last century, within the established church ; and to- 
 wards reviving the feeling of piety among the noncon- 
 formists, so as to fit them for retaining their place 
 when required to compete with the daring irregu- 
 larities and the astounding novelties of Methodism. 
 But to do the work of Methodism was not to be ex- 
 pected from such men as Watts and Doddridge. 
 Conventional notions of propriety were as deeply fixed 
 among nonconformist ministers as among those of the 
 church of England. The spirit needed was one 
 which should possess equal piety with that of the 
 good men adverted to, but greater freedom. Not a 
 spirit of greater learning, but one of more boldness. 
 Not a spirit feeling more deeply for the perishing con- 
 dition of the people, but one capable of breaking 
 through the fastidiousness, and the deference to social 
 usage, commonly induced by very studious habits, and 
 of resolving to meet new and more desperate forms of 
 evil, by means of new and stronger expedients. Such 
 was the spirit of Methodism. 
 
 We know pretty well all that can be said in respect 
 to the faults of Methodism, but to Methodism, with 
 all its faults, belongs the high praise of having " re- 
 membered the forgotten, attended to the neglected, 
 and visited the forsaken." In the spirit of Him who 
 called it forth — as the foolish that should confound 
 the wise — it had " compassion on the ignorant, and 
 
METHODISM. 127 
 
 on them that were out of the way." Nearly a century 
 had passed, during which the greater part of the 
 people of England had been as sheep without a shep- 
 herd. From 1662 to 1688, the men who were alone 
 authorized to instruct them, with little exception, did 
 not instruct them. Subsequently, there were some 
 signs of improvement, both within the established 
 church and beyond its pale, but irreligion diffused 
 itself more rapidly than the power that should have 
 been present to counteract it. Preachers, in all con- 
 nexions, continued to address themselves too much to 
 the rich and the learned, who would not hear; and 
 too little to the poor and the ignorant, who, as the 
 event proved, were waiting for instruction. Learning, 
 and authority, and ecclesiastical pretension in all its 
 grades, had passed by on the other side, and had left 
 it to men, whose noble-hearted contempt of the re- 
 cognised and the orderly exposed them to the ban 
 of spiritual proscription, to pour the oil and the wine 
 into the wounds which the hands of the violent and 
 the plundering had made ! 
 
 The leaders of Methodism were themselves educated 
 men. Contemporaneous also with Whitfield and 
 Wesley, as seceding clergymen, were the labours of a 
 small band of ministers who preached the same doc- 
 trines, and in the same spirit, from the pulpits of the 
 established church. On the whole, however, there 
 was much in the movement, which men of education 
 — men of those nicer perceptions and feelings which 
 
128 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 education naturally brings with it — could not have re- 
 garded with pleasure. But it was to the honour of 
 that practical good sense, and of that largeness 
 of heart, which distinguished the pious men just 
 named, that they did not allow themselves to be im- 
 peded in their course by such considerations. In 
 their circumstances, it was wise, it was magnanimous, 
 when they could not do good by the services of the 
 sort of men whom they would have chosen, to avail 
 themselves of such services as they could obtain. 
 Their mission was to rouse the sleeper, and to save 
 the lost, and the last fragment of fitting agency at 
 their disposal did they put into requisition for that 
 purpose. The wise men of the time accounted them 
 rhapsodists and fanatics, but they were preachers dis- 
 tinguished by elaborate preparation for the pulpit, by 
 the most studied aim to reach the conscience, and 
 move the passions of their auditory, and by a rational 
 and devout solicitude, to convince and affect the spirit 
 of their hearers, in order to their enlightenment, 
 sanctity, and salvation. 
 
 In connexion with these efforts, there were, no 
 doubt, many displays of ignorance, conceit, fanaticism, 
 and vulgarity. But with qualities of that nature, as 
 observable in many of the preachers called forth by 
 Methodism, others of a better character and tendency 
 were prominently mingled. If ignorant in some re- 
 spects, there was a knowledge, the gravest and the 
 best, in respect to which even the humblest of those 
 
METHODISM. 129 
 
 worthy men was by no means uninstructed. If not 
 wholly secure from the influence of vanity, they pos- 
 sessed that deeper feeling of humility which men 
 derive from a contemplation of the Infinite, and from 
 a knowledge of their own depravity. If liable to im- 
 pulses bordering on the extravagant, they were, on 
 the whole, impulses strictly natural to men who lived 
 by faith amidst the scenes of the saved and the lost, 
 as unveiled by Holy Writ. And if there was much in 
 their occasional wit, in their familiar talk, and in 
 their tales of terror or amusement, that must have 
 offended, to the last degree, against the notions of 
 every orthodox churchman with regard to pulpit de- 
 corum, there was mixed up with all this a love of the 
 true, of the tender, of the devout, and of the heavenly, 
 as nourished by the visions of the garden, the cross, 
 and the world to come, which gave to the character of 
 these preachers a real dignity, a true moral greatness, 
 more to be coveted than any conceivable proficiency 
 in those lesser proprieties of life in which the most 
 vicious and frivolous of mankind oftentimes excel. 
 It is when we look on Methodism as a whole, and in 
 its great moral results, that we see it to be of God. 
 It is in this manner that we are accustomed, at our 
 present distance, to regard the progress of the Reform- 
 ation ; and, in the same manner, a devout posterity 
 will regard the progress of Methodism. On the one 
 class of Reformers, it devolved to break the yoke of 
 papal superstition ; on the other, to break the slum- 
 g3 
 
130 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 bers of a protestant formalism. In neither case was 
 the agency without its imperfections, but in both it 
 was eminently Christian. The effect of Methodism 
 on the EngUsh pulpit, has been to do much towards 
 restoring to it the evangelical and popular character 
 which distinguished the preaching of the sixteenth, 
 and the first half of the seventeenth centuries, giving 
 to the substance and the manner of preaching which 
 obtained in those times, a considerable measmre of 
 modification, so as to meet the different condition of 
 mind, characterizing the state of society during the 
 century which has just now reached its close. 
 
 If there is anything valuable to be learned from the 
 retrospect of this chapter on the history of the pulpit 
 in England, it would not be unprofitable to glance in 
 the same manner at what has been most observable in 
 the history of preaching on the Continent during the 
 same period. But this is a large subject, on which 
 we can touch only very briefly. 
 
 The principle of appeal to the right of private 
 judgment is the great principle of the Reformation. 
 Its effect on the pulpit, both in England and on the 
 Continent, was at once manifest. The sermons of 
 Luther, of his coadjutors, and of their successors 
 to the close of the sixteenth century, are, in nearly 
 all respects, such as were preached in England 
 during the same interval. The early sermons of Lu- 
 ther, as well as those delivered by him when he be- 
 came more known as an innovator, possess much of 
 
LUTHER — THE REFORMATION. 131 
 
 the same kind of adaptation to the popular modes of 
 thinking, and the same homely reference to the fami- 
 liar circumstances of life, which we have seen in the 
 sermons of Latimer. His speculations concerning 
 the relation of the moral law to the gospel, sometimes 
 led him to express himself with more strength than 
 accuracy, as in his sermon on the " lost sheep ;" but 
 any one who shall read that sermon through, will per- 
 ceive that nothing was farther from the intention of 
 the preacher than to minister to practical antino- 
 mianism in any form, and the same may be said, we 
 think, of his writings generally. The theory of self- 
 righteousness he regarded as the great error of the 
 times ; his zeal against that error was his strong feel- 
 ing ; and extreme was, in a measure, the result of ex- 
 treme. Hence, in what it opposed, and in what it 
 laboured to establish, the mind of Luther exhibited 
 the spirit of his age. 
 
 That age was the juncture when the worship of 
 antiquity began to give place to something more than 
 distrust with regard to nearly everything ancient and 
 established; when the prejudices which had dis- 
 posed men to lean upon others for everything in re- 
 ligion, began to prompt them to lean wholly upon 
 themselves in such matters ; and when the thoughts 
 and the hearts of men, which had been so long con- 
 tent to move on slowly in the settled groove of earthly 
 affairs, began to be agitated with new ideas, to be im- 
 pelled by a strong passion for spiritual freedom, and 
 
132 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 to be so fascinated by visions relating to human im- 
 provement, as to be prepared to pursue such objects 
 vs^ith an ardour that did not comport with any adequate 
 attention, either to those intermediate difficukies 
 which it was needful to overcome, or to those ulterior 
 issues, which always come in the train of great 
 changes, and which are not the less serious from being 
 scarcely, if at all, anticipated. But the pulpit had 
 been the great agency in calling up this new state of 
 things, and in the pulpit its wisdom and its folly, its 
 good and its evil, were all naturally reflected. The 
 pulpit, indeed, was not the place in which to broach 
 subtle disquisitions on such questions as arose about 
 the eucharist. But the grosser forms of superstition, 
 tyranny, and worldliness, which disfigured the papal 
 system — its saint-worship and its image-worship, its 
 idle fasts and its worse than idle pilgrimages, the 
 frauds allied with its system of monkery, and the 
 oppressions exercised, religious and secular, by its 
 haughty priesthood — all these were topics which plain 
 men could understand, which such men could com- 
 pare with the scriptures given to them in their mother 
 tongue, and on which preachers, in the comparatively 
 rude eloquence of the sixteenth century, dwelt with 
 so much effect, as to shake the supposed stability of 
 episcopal thrones from one end of Christendom to the 
 other. It is always to be observed, with respect to 
 this great intellectual movement, which diffused so 
 much misgiving over the whole surface and splendour 
 
FRENCH PREACHERS. 133 
 
 of society, that it rose from the many — from beneath; 
 and that the new force then given to those broad and 
 deep elements in the social world which had so long 
 reposed as in their imbedded quietude, was a force 
 given to them mainly by preaching. It may be, that 
 many causes, less strictly religious than those above 
 eimmerated, lent their influence to the wheels of that 
 memorable revolution ; but the sinister passions of 
 the selfish, owed the success of their policy to the re- 
 ligious fervour which gave so much intensity to the 
 purposes of the devout. 
 
 Subsequent to the age of Luther and Calvin, the 
 protestant pulpit on the Continent appears to have 
 lost much of its power; and it is not until the times 
 of Louis XIV. that the preacher again appears as an 
 important personage in the social alEFairs of Europe. 
 It is the glory of protestantism, that it lives only 
 through intelligence, and through the intelligence of 
 the many, more than through that of the few. It is 
 from this cause that it has so often acted as a reformer 
 even upon Catholicism itself. It was the act of pro- 
 testantism to restore the pulpit to its due place among 
 the means of religious improvement, and no sooner 
 had protestantism seized upon the pulpit, than Catho- 
 licism followed its example, and so ran the current 
 of wholesome provocation in a multitude of things 
 beside. 
 
 During the latter part of the long reign of Louis 
 XIV. the eloquence of the French pulpit was such. 
 
134 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 that it seemed to vie with the attractions of the French 
 theatre. In that age, France appeared to have at- 
 tained the zenith of her power in the poHtical affairs 
 of Europe, and her highest point in respect to learn- 
 ing, genius, and splendour ; and the pulpits of her capi- 
 tal were then the place of an oratory which frequently 
 extorted praise from the vainest, the proudest, and 
 the most impious. But where, since that age, do we 
 find her Bossuets and Massillons, her Bourdaloues 
 and Saurins ? The office of those distinguished men 
 descended to others, but their mantle has not de- 
 scended with it. In the continental pulpit, both 
 catholic and protestant, the men disappeared, and 
 children, through a long and dreary space, came into 
 their room. The sanctified genius which once seemed 
 to possess so much power over the human spirit, has 
 been succeeded, for the most part, by an ever recur- 
 ring sameness of thought, by an abstruse mysticism, 
 or a moral heartlessness, which has left the adversary 
 of truth and goodness to work out his mischiefs with 
 little disturbance. The literary excellence which no 
 department of letters could surpass, has been followed 
 by a wearisome mediocrity, rarely heard of beyond 
 the circle of the listless assembly, or the empty pews, 
 to which it has been addressed. In short, among our 
 Gallic neighbours, the preacher, from having been 
 almost the only orator, has come to be almost the last 
 person whom men expect to see conspicuous in that 
 character. 
 
FRENCH PREACHERS. 135 
 
 If report speaks truly, there are just now some signs 
 of improvement in this respect, both among catholics 
 and protcstants, but much more, we regret to learn, 
 among the former than the latter. " The Domini- 
 can," says the last number of the " Dublin Review," 
 "is seen no more, as before the revolution, going 
 from door to door, in the morning, through the streets 
 of Paris ; but the crowds that thronged the aisles of 
 Notre Dame, when it was announced that M. Lacor- 
 daire would appear in its pulpit, and the enthusiasm 
 inspired by his thrilling eloquence, when he unfolded 
 the ancient catholic glories of his country, justify the 
 hope that the habit in which he appeared will once 
 more become familiar to the catholics of France." 
 
 The same authority further reports — " The confe- 
 rences of Pere Ravignan, in the cathedral, during 
 last Lent, were attended more numerously and re- 
 spectably, if possible, than before. With an elo- 
 quence worthy of his order, and of the greatest lights 
 of the church of France, he expounded the certainty, 
 motives, and object of the Christian faith, and two of 
 its principal mysteries. But it was not the eloquence 
 of the preacher, nor sympathy for an order which in- 
 fidel prejudices and university jealousy prevent from 
 resuming its place in public instruction, that attracted 
 to the crowded aisles of Notre Dame an audience 
 composed principally of the students from different 
 professions, and of the talent, rank, and wealth of 
 Paris. The religious recollection of the audience 
 
136 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 during the retreat conducted by the preacher diu*ing 
 the last week in Lent; and 1800 men receiving com- 
 munion from his hands, on Easter Sunday, in the 
 church where he had given his instructions, prove the 
 progress reHgion is making amongst that class from 
 whom it has always received most opposition." * 
 
 It is probable that the feeling of the partisan has 
 lent some shades to the colouring of these pictures, 
 but the passages suffice to shew the estimate formed 
 among catholics with respect to the influence to be 
 expected, in regard to public opinion, from a wise 
 use of the pulpit. Protestantism, as we have seen, 
 depends much more than Catholicism on efficiency in 
 the office of preaching, and should it prove less power- 
 ful than its antagonist, even in that particular, what 
 can be its prospect of success ? The only sermons by 
 protestant divines in that country which have come 
 to my hands, are those of Bonnet, Audebez, and 
 Grandpierre ; the first is pastor of the French church 
 at Francfort-on-the-Main, the second and thii'd are 
 pastors in Paris. The discourses of Bonnet possess 
 no literary pretension, but they are full of scriptural 
 sentiment, and breathe a fervent and devout spirit. 
 The sermons of Audebez are of a higher order, both 
 in respect to matter and style ; but those of Grand- 
 pierre rise, in those respects, considerably above the 
 average of the evangelical discourses which issue 
 from the press in this country. With such men as 
 * Vol. xii., pp. 432, 440. 
 
GERM.\J^ PREACHERS. 137 
 
 Grandpierre, D'Aubigne, and Monod, presiding over 
 French schools of theology, we may hope to see the 
 protestant pulpit become powerful even in France. 
 
 But if we must indulge in hope, rather than in con- 
 gratulation, when we look to the protestant pulpit in 
 France, this is hardly less the case in Germany. We 
 possess many proofs of the theological learning of 
 Germany, but her pulpit exhibits little power. Liberty 
 ceded to the professor in addressing his class, is not 
 permitted to the preacher when addressing the people. 
 The form of government which has hardly left to the 
 state the name of freedom, has been fatal to pulpit 
 eloquence. Where there is no liberty of the press, 
 there will be no hberty of prophesying. It is true 
 there may be much useful, and even able preaching, 
 the knowledge of which does not extend beyond the 
 limits of its own language and country. But wherever 
 preaching is really popular on a large scale, it is 
 reasonable to expect that so notorious a fact should 
 be generally known ; and that where multitudes do 
 well, some should rise to excellence. Let there be a 
 greater number who preach with effect to the many, 
 and the next step will be the appearance of a lesser 
 number who will preach with effect to the few, and 
 the fame of this lesser number will be matter of 
 observation from afar. But nothing of this sort is ob- 
 servable in the present state of the pulpit in any por- 
 tion of the continent of Europe. 
 
 The act of the late King of Prussia, which amalga- 
 
138 THE FULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 mated the ancient Lutheran and Calvinistic churches 
 into one form of creed, polity, and worship, has not 
 only deprived the clergy of their old privilege of free- 
 prayer both before and after the sermon, but has, by 
 royal edict, restricted the time of the sermon to half 
 an hour, and on fast-days, or other days of particular 
 religious observance, it is the practice of the govern- 
 ment to supply the preachers through the state with 
 the text from which they are expected to discourse to 
 the people.* 
 
 The effect of this spirit of restraint and dictation it 
 is easy to imagine. While subject to a censorship of 
 this jealous and meddling description, there is little 
 probability that the German pulpit will be found 
 capable of producing much impression ; and judging 
 from the German sermons which are best known to 
 us, particularly those of the eminent divine. Professor 
 Tholuck, there is reason to apprehend that the evan- 
 gelical preachers — the pietists, as they are called — 
 in Germany, are too much disposed to indulge in the 
 obscure and mystical, to allow of their making them- 
 selves felt in the pulpit at all in the manner of their 
 famous predecessors somewhat more than two centuries 
 since. But until men shall arise in the states of 
 Europe, knowing how to use the pulpit more in the 
 manner of the Luthers and Latimers of a former ase, 
 it must be vain to expect that new conquests will be 
 
 * Laing's Notes of a Traveller, 208, 209. 
 
CONCLUSION. 139 
 
 made, either upon the space still occupied by Roman- 
 ism, or upon that which has been seized by scepticism. 
 If any marked change in this respect is to come, it 
 must be preceded by change in another respect — the 
 office of the preacher must be identified in the public 
 mind in a much less degree with the immaturity and 
 feebleness of the age, and in a much greater degree 
 with its intelligence and power. 
 
 The state of the pulpit in Great Britain is both 
 worse and better than upon the Continent. We have 
 many good men among us as preachers, whose deficient 
 education would have precluded them from all place 
 in the Christian ministry in any other state of Europe. 
 But while we concede this point of inferiority, as a 
 consequence naturally attendant on our system of 
 liberty, we are satisfied that we lose nothing from this 
 cause as regards the comparative amount of proper 
 pulpit ability; and as regards the average qualifica- 
 tions of our preachers, and the number of them who 
 rise above mediocrity, bringing to their duties much 
 of the mind and cultivation demanded by the times, 
 it is, as we fear, but too certain, that we may abide 
 comparison, not merely with any one state of pro- 
 testant Christendom, but with the whole of them 
 taken together. 
 
 From the review with which we have been occupied 
 in this chapter, it is plain that the manner of preach- 
 ing which has proved effectual at one time, must not 
 be relied upon as promising to be no less effectual at 
 
240 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 all times. The causes which affect the character of 
 the people, must always affect the manner of the 
 preacher. Human nature, viewed in its great elements^ 
 is changeless as the heavens, but viewed as it may be 
 affected by external influences, it is ever varying like 
 tlie clouds. We are observant of these varieties, as 
 they serve to characterize the several races of men in 
 the different regions of the earth. The map of the 
 geologist, with its many colours, indicating the distinct 
 layers on the surface of the globe, is not more diver- 
 sified than is the mental, moral, and social complexion 
 of the families and nations of mankind, though all 
 made of one blood, and sent off from one stock. But 
 strong as are those lines of separation between dif- 
 ferent races and nations, they do not exhibit a greater 
 variety than may often be seen in the history of the 
 same people upon the same soil, if we take in a large 
 space of their story, and compare the men of one age 
 with their remote progenitors in another. The whole 
 transition belonging to social life, reaching from the 
 lowest barbarism to the highest refinement, may thus 
 pass before us. Within the space occupied by this 
 great change, many lesser changes are included. Men 
 become more known by class and gradation. These 
 classes become distinguished by different habits of 
 thought, feeling, and usage. Culture, prejudices, 
 passions— all pass under new influences. Hence 
 modes of producing impression which possessed emi- 
 nent fitness as applied to the men of one century, may 
 
CONCLUSION. 141 
 
 be wholly wanting in suitableness as applied to the 
 men of the next. 
 
 But obvious as all this may seem, it is to be marked 
 as one of the besetting infirmities of our nature, that 
 men frequently adhere pertinaciously to old means, 
 when the difficulties to be overcome have assumed a 
 new form. No doubt, it is much less costly to move 
 on thus in the old track than to venture upon striking 
 out a new path. It not only requires less thought, 
 and a less sacrifice of ease — it incurs less censure. 
 We flatter ourselves, moreover, that our conduct in 
 this case carries with it the test of experience, and 
 the sanction of reputable precedent. But it ought to 
 be very plain to us, that the true lesson to be learned 
 from such precedents is, the importance of endeavour- 
 ing wisely to adapt the means to the end. It is that 
 we should study the men of our time, as our fathers 
 studied the men of their time, — and that we should 
 mould our instructions accordingly. Its teaching is, 
 not that we should continue the apparatus unchanged, 
 but rather that we should subject it to new construc- 
 tion, and new modes of operation, from time to time, so 
 as to meet the ever-changing forms which may be given 
 to our common depravity, by the constantly-shifting 
 influence of the different elements of society. In the 
 history of the pulpit, next to its dependence on its 
 theme, and on the divine blessing, is its dependence 
 on this kind of adaptation ; and it is one of the most 
 instructive and interesting facts observable in the 
 
142 THE PULPIT IN THE PAST : 
 
 divine dispensations, that the social world should have 
 been made subject to these ceaseless changes, in order 
 that the church, in place of moving on in one mecha- 
 nical routine, might be aroused, from point to point 
 in her history, to put forth her skill and power in new 
 forms, in order to meet these new exigencies. 
 
 Our doctrine, therefore, is, that the past has had a 
 preaching of its own, and that so it must be with the 
 present. The preaching of the reformers was a 
 preaching of its own order ; the same may be said of 
 the preaching of the puritans ; and the same, again, 
 of methodism. But our preaching must not consist 
 in a ceaseless iteration of the elementary principles of 
 protestantism, as in the first of these instances ; nor 
 in the skilful wielding of a cumbrous theological 
 learning, as in the second instance; nor in an an- 
 nouncement of little more than the doctrine of salva- 
 tion by repentance towards God, and faith in the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, as in the third instance. Romanism is 
 no longer the great antagonist; our people are no 
 longer a nation familiar with the forms and phrases of 
 a technical theology; and the great object of our 
 vocation as preachers, is no longer to arouse the 
 dormant faith of the worldly and the thoughtless, but 
 to convince the gainsayer, and to build up the church 
 of God in the intelligent, the holy, and the moral, 
 — and to do this in the face of a generation more 
 wakeful and scrutinizing than any that has arisen in 
 the history of nations. Need it be said on this subject, 
 
CONCLUSION. 143 
 
 that if we hope to be strong we must dare to be 
 original ? Is it not plain, that the past can have no 
 model to furnish, inasmuch as the past has had no 
 times like ours ? And with regard to the present, is 
 it not manifest that the states of Europe can scarcely 
 be said to have any preaching in them that we should 
 be concerned to imitate ? Our idea with regard to 
 what preaching ought to be, must not be derived from 
 what has been successful in the past, nor from what 
 now obtains elsewhere, but from what is before us in 
 the example of inspired men, and from what is de- 
 manded by the age in which we live. In the preaching 
 of reformers and puritans, and in that of episcopalians, 
 nonconformists, and methodists, much may be observed 
 from which we shall do well to learn, but much must 
 be added to what may be so learned, and added purely 
 from our own studious and devout consideration. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ON A SELF-EDUCATED MINISTRY, 
 
 The time appears to have arrived, in which, with a 
 view to the greater efficiency of the Christian ministry, 
 it will be important to exercise a much greater degree 
 of misgiving than formerly, with regard to what may 
 be expected in relation to a permanent discharge of 
 the duties of that office, from merely natural talent, 
 or from self-culture. That some change in this 
 respect is needed, is now very generally felt. But 
 on this point change must have its limits, and must 
 not be entered upon rashly. Our usage in this 
 respect has resulted from circumstances and necessity', 
 and by the same law it must still be regulated. 
 
 Unhappily, it is not a small portion of our popu- 
 lation who are subject to deep poverty, and who seem 
 to be wedded to the suffering, and to the degraded 
 social condition, natural to such poverty. It is 
 scarcely necessary to say, that the spiritual wants of 
 these classes must on no account be forgotten. In 
 such connexions, the ministry of religion must con- 
 tinue to be in some degree peculiar, and as a case of 
 exception. Good natural ability, a fair amount of 
 
ON A SELF-EDUCATED MINISTRY. 145 
 
 knowledge, a ready and impressive delivery, and a 
 heart intent on contributing to the spiritual improve- 
 ment and comfort of the poor, must continue to be 
 the main qualifications demanded in the case of a 
 somewhat large class of religious teachers, if the mul- 
 titudes who have their place as on the lowest verge of 
 our civilization are to be brought at all under the in- 
 fluence of religion. The bigot, the inconsiderate, the 
 frivolous, the vain — all such persons will continue to 
 cast their reproach on preachers of this description, 
 upon the ground of their limited education, and on 
 our general ministry as being identified with them. 
 But a glance at the spiritual destitution of so many 
 myriads among our countrymen, for whom no better 
 provision can be made, must sufiice to render every 
 mind imbued with the spirit of the gospel proof 
 against reflections of that nature. To subordinate 
 the pride of learning, to a feeling of compassion toward 
 spiritual natures perishing for lack of knowledge, 
 should be no work of difficulty with men holding 
 the office of Christian ministers. 
 
 Nor should we forget, that in such departments of 
 labour, the natural ability of the comparatively unedu- 
 cated, must carry with it a much greater promise of 
 success, than the merely acquired ability of minds pos- 
 sessing little original capacity. We see every day, 
 that the man of little technical scholarship may be a 
 man of power, while the man who has been most 
 
 H 
 
146 ON A SELF-EDUCATED MINISTRY. 
 
 patiently trained to such scholarship may be a man 
 without power. 
 
 We should bear in mind, also, that the distance 
 separating between the social habits of the teacher 
 and those of the taught, must be in no case very great, 
 if there is to be the degree of sympathy between them 
 which is necessary to success. Gentlemen who pride 
 themselves on the aristocratic character of the asso- 
 ciations and tastes which their manner of educa- 
 tion has been calculated to bring along with it, are 
 not likely to be among the most suitable persons to do 
 the work of an evangelist among classes whose rough 
 and hard lot has its place at the lowest point beneath 
 their own. The gulf which intervenes between 
 such parties, is commonly found to be much too wide 
 to allow of any real intercommunion of thought or 
 feeling. Who can need be reminded of the distance 
 which separates between the habits of a college and 
 those of a colliery ? 
 
 Nor is this all — not only would one uniform standard 
 of ministerial education deprive us of much suitable 
 agency for communicating religious instruction, and 
 for communicating that instruction where it is most 
 needed, but it would manifestly have left our churches 
 without the eminent services which they have derived 
 from the labours of many highly-gifted men, who, by 
 pei'severing self-culture, have become ornaments of 
 their respective denominations. It must always be 
 
ON A SELF-EDUCATED MINISTRY. 147 
 
 truly refreshing to the right-minded to see nature 
 vindicate the claims of her high bestowments, after 
 this manner, against the force of circumstances. 
 Literature does not scruple to contribute her memo- 
 rials to the honour of the uneducated poet. Science 
 does not respect the sagacity the less which has made 
 its way to a solution of her abstruse questions, because 
 that sagacity has been for the most part self-regulated 
 and self-sustained. Shall religion be less generous 
 than they? 
 
 But while the proper answer to such a question 
 must be obvious, we must not suffer the illusions of 
 hope on this subject to neutralize the lessons of ex- 
 perience. For one self-educated preacher who has 
 become eminent, it were easy to name a multitude 
 whose self-reliance in this respect has been painfully 
 misplaced. We may add, also, that for one able 
 minister of the New Testament, who has become 
 such by the force of merely natural talent, it were 
 easy to mention hundreds who have owed their success 
 to early educational advantages, much more than to 
 any original mental superiority. Thus the rule is on 
 the side of preliminary education, and the exception — 
 the very rare exception only remains, to hold out the 
 possible prospect of success to the preacher who shall 
 enter upon the duties of his office in the neglect of 
 such education. To the labours of the ministry in 
 some of its humbler departments, such a man may not 
 be found incompetent, provided the absence of early 
 
 h2 
 
148 ON A SELF-EDUCATED MINISTRY. 
 
 initiation shall be in a measure supplied by sedulous 
 habits of reading and reflection. But the instances 
 in which minds exposed to the influence of such dis- 
 advantages, ever rise superior to them, are so unusual, 
 that the man who should calculate on being the happy 
 exception in such a case, would betray, in the very 
 indulgence of such a hope, an ominous infirmity of 
 judgment. 
 
 In this respect, as in respect to everything Chris- 
 tian, men are generally seen to reap as they have 
 sown. If the seed time has been comparatively neg- 
 lected, the harvest time is affected accordingly. It is 
 not only the hand of diligence which maketh rich, but 
 the hand of diligence put forth in its season. Power 
 is from knowledge, and knowledge is no longer from 
 miracle, but from labour — and from labour which must 
 be commenced early, if the knowledge acquired is to 
 be of great compass, and is to be used with great 
 effect. Men incapable of mental effort, not unfre- 
 quently aspire to become Christian ministers; but 
 encouragement given to such persons is cruelty to 
 them, and often so much deep wrong inflicted on the 
 churches which happen to be committed to such over- 
 sight. It is observable, that men who once put their 
 hand to this plough, in however humble a connexion, 
 rarely look back ; and we oftentimes see a long life 
 embittered with disappointment and mortification, 
 as the result of that sort of mistake on this subject at 
 its commencement, which a little judicious fidelity 
 
ON A SELF-EDUCATED MINISTRY. 149 
 
 might have sufficed to prevent. The man himself, 
 those dependent upon him in after life, the churches 
 with which he becomes connected, and the character 
 of our ministry generally — all share in the mischiefs 
 consequent on this want of honest caution and dis- 
 countenance at the fitting season. If the chief office 
 of our colleges were only to test the incompetency of 
 this class of minds, and to secure to them the needed 
 council before they become too fully committed to the 
 work, even such a service to our churches should be 
 deemed of no small value. 
 
 It is one thing to begin the labours of the Christian 
 ministry with a degree of promise, and in such man- 
 ner as to secure a transient popularity, and another to 
 be so trained, instructed, and self-governed, as to be 
 capable of putting forth new strength as the race pro- 
 ceeds. Such is the natural effect of early mental dis- 
 cipline, and such effects are rarely observable except 
 as the result of such discipline. It must be remem- 
 bered, that minds wholly without education are now 
 much fewer everywhere, and that ministers deficient 
 in that respect must, in consequence, be fewer. The 
 discernment which can at once detect the signs of 
 mental poverty in the case of the feeble or the indo- 
 lent in the pulpit, is more diffused, and the failure of 
 every preacher incapable of bearing such scrutiny, 
 has, of necessity, become more certain and speedy. 
 It may have been well in the early stages of me- 
 thodism, to send forth preachers of almost an}^ sort. 
 
150 ON A SELF-EDUCATED MINISTRY. 
 
 when it was not found possible to obtain the services 
 of preachers of the best sort. But a poHcy which 
 may have been wise in circumstances of one descrip- 
 tion, may be unwise in circumstances of another de- 
 scription ; and it may be doubted, accordingly, in our 
 own case, whether it would not have been well, in 
 many instances, to have spared something from the 
 quantity of our preaching, if we might thereby have 
 improved its quality. Even our smaller churches are 
 generally sustained, in a great measure, by a few- 
 educated families, to whom the ministry of men infe- 
 rior to themselves in general cultivation must neces- 
 sarily be, in a great degree, unacceptable. 
 
 We know that a ministry characterized by a very 
 small amount of qualification may do some good, but 
 it will also do harm, and the harm resulting from such 
 incompetency would sometimes appear to be much 
 greater than the good. It may do more to expose 
 religion to contempt, than to secure it reverence. It 
 may serve to repel men from the sanctuary, rather 
 than to attract them toward it. The persons to whom 
 it proves a good may be few and feeble, compared 
 with those to whom it becomes as a stumbling-block. 
 In this manner, it may contribute more to destroy 
 souls, than to save them. Such is the evil especially 
 to be apprehended, when imbecility and indolence 
 become fixed in a pulpit through the abuse of an en- 
 dowment. In such case, an incompetent ministry 
 becomes an instrument of portentous spiritual mis- 
 
ON A SELF-EDUCATED MINISTRY. 151 
 
 chief in a double sense, inasmuch as it not only con- 
 sists of a ministry which must operate, in the main, 
 as a defective or a false representation of religion over 
 a whole neighbourhood, but must effectually preclude 
 another ministry, which would probably come as a 
 great regenerating and saving power over that neigh- 
 bourhood ! The mischief done in this case, and the 
 good prevented, are inseparable from great guilt, and 
 that guilt, while it rests in part upon the preacher, 
 will rest in part probably on those who, without 
 due consideration, have accredited him in that cha- 
 racter. 
 
 If the observations with which we commenced this 
 chapter are borne in mind, it will not be supposed 
 that we mean to intimate in these remarks, that no 
 man should be recognised as a preacher who is not, in 
 the common meaning of the expression — a scholar. 
 We have shewn that we are far from so meaning. 
 
 We may add also, that as we would not restrict our 
 ministry, in every case, to persons of a collegiate 
 education, neither would we wish to see the advan- 
 tages afforded by our colleges restricted to such stu- 
 dents only as may be capable of applying themselves 
 with success to all those higher branches of study 
 with which their colleagues generally are expected to 
 become familiar. The aptitudes of the human mind 
 vary continually, and in such cases, it must be, as we 
 humbly think, the Avisdom of the tutor, to consult 
 those aptitudes, within certain limits, so as to secure 
 
152 ON A SELF-EDUCATED MINISTRY. 
 
 to each pupil the kind of efficiency which nature has 
 placed the most within his power. 
 
 On the whole, if we would profit by the past, so as 
 to regulate our course wisely toward the present and 
 the future, it will be important that we should fix our 
 attention on a much higher standard of natural talent 
 as necessary to warrant our giving encouragement to 
 any man to become occupied with preaching; and 
 that we should hesitate much more than has been 
 deemed necessary in past times, to become parties in 
 sending persons forth as settled ministers, even though 
 possessed of unusual natural capacity, who have not 
 passed through a considerable course of preliminary 
 instruction. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ON THE VALUE OF A GOOD ELOCUTION ; AND ON 
 THE MEANS OF ATTAINING IT. 
 
 The aim of every well-regulated system of education 
 is to discipline the mind. It will be of a nature to 
 ascertain the strength or weakness of capacity in the 
 pupil, and to give to his capabilities promptitude and 
 power as the result of exercise. But in the instance 
 of the preacher, education must extend much beyond 
 this point. It must embrace the communication of 
 large and various knowledge, and not merely the 
 
ON THE VALUE OF A GOOD ELOCUTION, ETC. 153 
 
 formation of the habit which may quahfy a man to 
 make such acquisitions. It ma}' leave much to be 
 done in this way, but it must do much. It must send 
 the student forth capable of entering immediately on 
 the discharge of his proper duties ; and, in general, 
 it must see that he possesses all the means and apti- 
 tudes necessary to success, if he is really to succeed. 
 It is an education carried on until the moment of ac- 
 tion, and it should be an education concerning itself 
 immediately with whatever is necessary to efficiency 
 in action. In this view it should not be more favour- 
 able to habits of reading and thinking, than to habits 
 of public speaking. The well-disciplined and the 
 well-furnished mind, should not be deemed more in- 
 disoensable than the well-trained utterance. 
 
 J. 
 
 In the experience of the dissenting minister, the 
 value of everything within the range of mental disci- 
 pline and acquirement, must depend, almost entirely, 
 on his ability to express himself in the presence of 
 large assemblies with freedom, appropriateness, and 
 force. In the absence of a considerable measure of 
 such ability, his career must be a failure. Whatever 
 may have been the cost incurred in his education, it 
 must have been, in this case, incurred in vain. In pro- 
 portion, also, as a man shall be at fault in this particular, 
 and be in other respects a man of talent and attain- 
 ment, two causes must operate strongly against his 
 continuing to retain any place in the ministry among 
 dissenters — on the one hand, his superior and culti- 
 
 h3 
 
154 ON THE VALUE OF A GOOD ELOCUTION, 
 
 vated mind will not allow of his being satisfied, while 
 falling manifestly below mediocrity in his proper voca- 
 tion ; and on the other hand, a consciousness that he 
 might employ himself with much more effect in other 
 ways, can hardly fail of disposing him to become so 
 employed. Let the system in our colleges, therefore, 
 be such as to make our students scholars, without 
 making them preachers, and before long you may ex- 
 pect to see them dwindle rapidly from divines into 
 private tutors or schoolmasters, or, perhaps, you will 
 see numbers of them relinquish the ministry altoge- 
 ther, and give themselves wholly to literary or secular 
 pursuits. 
 
 The case in this respect is widely different between 
 the educated and the uneducated. The dissenting 
 minister of very limited ability, and of little or no 
 education, may meet with much to humble and vex 
 him, but his vocation as such, after all, may embrace 
 more of the creditable and profitable than it would be 
 in his power to realize in any other social connexion. 
 But this must be less the case in our ministry, in pro- 
 portion as it shall come to consist, in a less degree, of 
 such men : the educated being manifestly much less 
 shut up to an endurance of the mortifications attendant 
 on failure, than the uneducated. 
 
 Should it be necessary, therefore, in order to secure 
 to the students in our colleges an agreeable and effec- 
 tive elocution, we do not hesitate to say, that it would 
 be wise to bestow as much attention on this branch 
 
AND ON THE MEANS OF ATTAINING IT. 155 
 
 of education as upon the study of the Greek language. 
 We speak thus strongly on this point, because there 
 would seem to have been great deficiency in this re- 
 spect in most of our collegiate institutions, and be- 
 cause there is special danger that this deficiency will 
 become more observable, rather than otherwise, as we 
 raise the standard of scholarship. Readiness in speak- 
 insr is so much a natural eift, and consists so often 
 with the superficial in almost everything else, that 
 men of real power, and solid acquirement, are often- 
 times disposed to hold such talent in little estimation, 
 and not unfi-equently cease to be themselves men of 
 ability in speaking, in the degree in which they be- 
 come men of thought and learning. 
 
 We scarcely need say that such a course of things 
 is the result of a radical error in judgment — an error, 
 so childish and absurd, that a man pretending to saga- 
 city in anything, should blush to find that he has 
 allowed himself to be ensnared by it. The want of 
 sound practical sense in cases of this sort is so mani- 
 fest, as to afford strong presumption, that the man 
 who has thus failed in relation to the pulpit, will 
 hardly succeed in relation to any other object. No- 
 thing could be more plain, than that it became him, 
 when purposing to take upon himself the office of a 
 preacher, to be constantly mindful of the fact, that no 
 attainment could be of value to him in that capacity, 
 except as it might be popularized, and made to sub- 
 serve his power as a speaker. But of that fact he has 
 
156 ON THE VALUE OF A GOOD ELOCUTION, 
 
 not been mindful, and he has failed — failed deservedly, 
 inasmuch as his failure has resulted from a negligence 
 of those means, attention to which should have been 
 seen at a glance as strictly necessary to success. We 
 repeat, therefore — let our students fail in the matter 
 of elocution, and, so far as regards their ministry 
 among protestant dissenters, it will matter little in 
 what else they may succeed. 
 
 It is our happiness to see rising among our 
 churches a much stronger feeling; in favour of col- 
 legiate institutions. But if this feeling is to be per- 
 petuated and increased, the subject adverted to must 
 no longer have its place as a matter of subordi- 
 nate importance in a ministerial education. Our 
 congregations judge of scholarship from its real or 
 supposed effect as seen in the pulpit. It is a good 
 thing, in their view, in proportion as it gives a man 
 power to interest and instruct an auditory, and only 
 in that proportion. If it should generate speculative 
 notions of taste, which only cause a man to hesitate 
 and fail in addressing his fellow-men more than he 
 would have done if devoid of such notions, its effect 
 will be regarded as an evil, rather than as a good. 
 Our young ministers must not only knoio how things 
 ought to be done, but be capable of doing, in a good 
 degree, according to their knowledge, if their know- 
 ledge is not to become more an occasion of weakness 
 than of power. In a word — it is as our colleges pro- 
 duce able preachers, that they will be sustained, and 
 
AND ON THE MEANS OF ATTAINING IT. 157 
 
 only as they so do — scholarship from the press being 
 an element of power which bears much less directly 
 and obviously upon our interests, as protestant dis- 
 senters, than ability in preaching. 
 
 It is the more important that this subject should 
 be pressed in connexion with college education, inas- 
 much as what is not learned in this respect during the 
 years of college life, is rarely, if ever learned. It too 
 commonly happens, that the student, on becoming a 
 pastor, ceases to be a learner. When he has made 
 that transition, his faults as a preacher may be suffi- 
 ciently scrutinized, but very few will venture to re- 
 mind him of them directly, or in such manner as 
 might lead to improvement. He will then be left to 
 conjecture from the conduct of men, as to what their 
 thoughts may be concerning him, very little being 
 allowed to escape them on that subject in conversa- 
 tion, especially if the case should be one which might 
 justify expressions the contrary of the laudatory. 
 Hence it is observed, that the elocution with which 
 young men leave our colleges, is generally that which 
 adheres to them to the end of their days — habit be- 
 coming necessarily stronger from indulgence, and in- 
 dulgence becoming fixed as the effect of being little 
 exposed to disturbance. 
 
 Nor should our congregations be censured on the 
 ground, that they never fail to visit negligence in this 
 respect, with the kind of penalty which is seen to be 
 attendant upon it. No preacher should need to be 
 
158 ON THE VALUE OF A GOOD ELOCUTION, 
 
 reminded, that to guard against inflicting pain upon 
 an auditory by a wearisome monotony in utterance, is 
 as much his duty, as to guard against exhausting their 
 patience by a ceaseless iteration of common places in 
 thought and language. There may be as much bad 
 taste in the mode of delivery, as in the matter of ex- 
 pression or illustration, and fault in the former shape 
 is likely to be a much more general impediment to 
 edification than in the latter. 
 
 " Action is eloquence, and the eyes of the ignorant 
 More learned than their ears." 
 
 To conciliate, and to interest, is hardly more the pro- 
 vince of the mind, than of what falls upon the ear, 
 and meets the eye. To be negligent with regard to 
 voice and manner, is to be wanting in one of the most 
 natural modes of expressing respect towards an audi- 
 tory, and the speaker who shall seem to be wanting 
 in such respect, should not calculate on being re- 
 spected. We speak of fault in regard to such things 
 as the result of negligence, because it is so, in a very 
 great degree, in the majority of instances, and the 
 sins of negligence are next in their crirainahty to 
 those of design. 
 
 The dignified and agreeable in deportment, is no 
 less the result of study, than elegance of mind ; and as 
 it is with manners and mind, so is it with the voice. 
 Nature may do much more in some cases than in 
 others in these respects, but the finest bestowments of 
 
AND ON THE MEANS OF ATTAINING IT. 159 
 
 nature owe their development to education. Civili- 
 zation is not an accident, but a science — a study, and 
 as it is with the state of things distinguishing the 
 civilized from the barbarous viewed as a whole, so is 
 it with all the parts which constitute the whole. It is 
 not more true of the memory, the imagination, or the 
 reason, that they become powerful by means of exer- 
 cise adapted to their improvement, than it is that the 
 intonations of the voice, and the proprieties of man- 
 ner, may be thus improved. The ploughman and the 
 courtier owe the difference distinguishing them, in the 
 modulations of speech, and in everything belonging to 
 external appearance and habit, not to anything that 
 distinguished them as infants, but purely to the dif- 
 ferent processes through which they have passed in 
 arriving at manhood — processes, which shew what 
 may be done in the matters adverted to by education, 
 what may be left undone, and what may be worse 
 than left undone. The distance may be great be- 
 tween the most polished — as in this case — and the 
 least so ; but in every step of the gradation between 
 these extremes, men become what they are, from 
 an adapted agency in circumstances, or from direct 
 training, and scarcely at all from accident. So mani- 
 festly is this the case, that it is not too much to 
 say, that the great majority of public speakers who 
 have failed, might have succeeded ; and that the ma- 
 jority of those who have succeeded, might have be- 
 come eminent, if they had only given themselves to 
 
160 ON THE VALUE OF A GOOD ELOCUTION, 
 
 labour, in order to success, somewhat in the manner 
 of the orators of antiquity. 
 
 In the ancient world, no man regarded the path to 
 office or power as open to him, except as he had 
 become a successful student in the art of public 
 speaking. Men who aimed to be great as com- 
 manders, regarded their proficiency in that art, as 
 next in importance to their knowledge in military 
 tactics. The war of words was as regularly antici- 
 pated by them as the war of the sword. How to 
 address their soldiers with effect, and how to debate 
 or negotiate with skill, was a part of their education, 
 and a part scarcely less laborious than that which 
 related to the ordering of a campaign, or the conduct 
 of a battle. No art was more a matter of regular 
 apprenticeship, or less a matter left, after our manner, 
 to spring up as it may, from the chance of natural 
 fluency, or the exigencies of actual life. Learning to 
 speak, was as much an affair of school exercise, as 
 learning to write, the former department of instruction 
 being made to embrace fully as laborious a discipline 
 as the latter. Men practised oratory in the presence 
 of each other, in the presence of their teachers, and 
 in every mode which, by exposing them to the severity 
 of criticism, promised to detect their faults, to inure 
 them to effort, and to ensure success. 
 
 No man can become a great orator without the aids 
 of great mental power and resources, but it is remark- 
 able that the greatest orators in antiquity were men 
 
AND ON THE MEANS OF ATTAINING IT. 161 
 
 who had to overcome very formidable natural impedi- 
 ments in the way to that greatness. It was not per- 
 mitted that the crowns they wore, should seem to have 
 come to them as the easy fruit of mere natural talent. 
 They were received rather as a just reward, coming 
 in the train of invincible perseverance. Such were 
 the faults of Demosthenes, both in elocution and 
 action, that nothing could seem more hopeless than 
 the failure of his early efforts. The early experience 
 of Cicero was not greatly more promising. His feeble 
 lungs were to him what an impediment in speech had 
 been to Demosthenes ; and the undignified gesture of 
 the Greek was hardly more incompatible with success 
 than the excessive vehemence of the Roman. But it 
 was possible to overcome these defects, and as the 
 result of severe and protracted discipline they were 
 overcome. We have all heard of the exercises of 
 Demosthenes, when he addressed himself to " the 
 noise of the waves," on the sea-shore, in order to 
 realize the power and self-possession necessary when 
 exposed as an orator to " the tumult of the people." 
 Cicero travelled through many lands in search of the 
 best teachers, and in the daily practice of his art, and 
 rose only by slow degrees to the eminence which he 
 attained. It was thus with all great men in those 
 times. Oratory was their study, a study pursued 
 with a degree of system and ardour proportioned to 
 its importance, and if we hear more of Demosthenes 
 and Cicero than of many who were famous as orators 
 
162 ON THE VALUE OF A GOOD ELOCUTION, 
 
 in their time, this has happened in part from the acci- 
 dents attendant on the history of literature, and in 
 part from the fact, that to occupy- much space in the 
 eye of remote generations belongs only to the highest 
 order of genius. 
 
 In these observations concerning the method and 
 the ardour with which oratory was studied by the 
 ancients, it is by no means our intention to beget in 
 the mind of young men generally the persuasion that 
 to be as great as Demosthenes they have only to be 
 as persevering. It is no doubt true of the great orator, 
 as of the great poet, that he must be such from the 
 gifts of nature, more than from rules applied by art. 
 We bear in mind, also, that oratory, as studied by the 
 preacher, should be, in many respects, a very different 
 thing from oratory as studied by secular men. It is 
 not ambition, nor the love of fame, but the spirit of 
 benevolence and piety that should prompt the Christian 
 minister in bestowing attention on such studies. His 
 effort should not be a labour to become great, so much 
 as a labour to be found faithful. It is effort in which 
 the apostolic injunction, " Neglect not the gift that is 
 in thee," is regarded in its application to this depart- 
 ment of his natin'al ability, in common with every other. 
 In this view, such effort is not only consonant with the 
 spirit proper to the office of the preacher, but is dis- 
 tinctly enjoined by the responsibilities inseparable from 
 that office. Hence the plea of spirituality, in place of 
 serving as a pretext on the side of indolence in this 
 
AND ON THE MEANS OF ATTAINING IT. 163 
 
 particular, should be felt as suggesting the strongest 
 motive to assiduity. The pious Mr. Simeon, of Cam- 
 bridge, spent more time, toward the close of his life, 
 in preparing to read his sermon with effect, than some 
 men bestow on the preparation of the sermon itself. 
 The study of Whitfield, also, with a view to impressive 
 delivery, was much greater than would seem to have 
 had place in the history of all the preachers to be found 
 with in some of our counties. We want no " start thea- 
 tric" manner — but the modesty and power of nature. 
 
 It will be perceived that in these remarks we 
 contemplate preaching as to consist, not in reading 
 sermons, but in such extemporaneous delivery as ob- 
 tains at the bar and in the senate. We account it, 
 on the whole, one of the greatest mischiefs that have 
 befallen the church, and the cause of religion gene- 
 rally, that any other mode of communicating instruction 
 than obtains in those connexions, should have become 
 prevalent in the pulpit. In the history of Europe, 
 the practice of reading sermons is almost peculiar to 
 Endand : and one of its effects has been, to render 
 preaching, which should have been the most popular 
 form of public speaking, in the great majority of 
 instances the least so. It is a practice which became 
 prevalent among us subsequent to the Restoration, 
 and became established as the invariable usage of 
 preachers in the church of England, and as the 
 general usage among nonconformists, by the close of 
 the seventeenth century. 
 
164 ON THE VALUE OF A GOOD ELOCUTION, 
 
 We are not ignorant with regard to the objections 
 usually made to extemporaneous preaching. But 
 these objections consist almost entirely of arguments 
 derived from a misconception of the practice intended, 
 or from its abuses only. It does not follow because 
 the language of a discourse is extemporaneous, that 
 the substance is unpremeditated. It is not to be sup- 
 posed because a speaker has not stored his memory 
 with words, that he has not been careful to store his 
 mind with thoughts. Nor does it follow because 
 the greater part of an address is clothed in language 
 supplied at the moment, that this must be the case 
 with every part of it. We say not, that no good has 
 come to our pulpit literature, or to religion, from 
 written sermons, we only say that the good which has 
 so come might well have been spared, for the sake of 
 the much greater good that might have been realized 
 by a different method. No man of sense would be 
 understood to intimate that extemporaneous discourses 
 always display the best judgment or the best taste. 
 We reason from the general effect of the practice, and 
 not from its exceptions or its parts. Every man 
 knows that the contrary practice of reading sermons, 
 is no guarantee that the sermon read will be well 
 read, or vdll be at all worth reading. It often happens, 
 that the men who only read sermons, never write 
 them, and not unfrequently they betray a lamentable 
 want of discernment even in availing themselves of 
 the labours of other men. We advocate extempo- 
 
AND ON TUE MEANS OF ATTAINING IT. 165 
 
 raneous preaching, not as demanding less labour or 
 less talent than the opposite practice, but as being 
 more natural, more impressive, more adapted to the 
 ends of preaching, and as involving, when entered 
 upon with the due amount of preparation, the most 
 wholesome exercise both of the mental and moral 
 faculties. We no more mean that the extemporaneous 
 preacher should be a mere rhapsodist, than we mean 
 that such should be the character of pleading at the 
 bar, or the character of oratory in the senate. 
 
 The great French preachers, who were more atten- 
 tive to the finish and beauty of style than any class 
 of preachers in the history of the pulpit, were men 
 who delivered their discourses, in our sense, extem- 
 poraneously ; and the '* Dialogues on Eloquence" by 
 the refined and pious Fenelon, are especially adapted 
 to form preachers of that description. " If pastors," 
 he writes, "applied themselves to all the particular 
 duties of their function, as administering the sacra- 
 ments, directing pious souls, and comforting afflicted 
 or dying persons, it is certain they could not have 
 much time to make elaborate sermons, and learn 
 them word for word. ' The mouth ought to speak 
 from the abundance of the heart,' and communicate 
 to the people the fulness of gospel knowledge, and 
 the affecting sentiments of the preacher. As for what 
 you said yesterday, about getting sermons by heart, I 
 had the curiosity to seek out a passage in St. Augus- 
 tine, which I had read before ; it is to this purport : 
 
166 ON THE VALUE OF A GOOD ELOCUTION, 
 
 ' He thinks that a preacher ought to speak in a more 
 plain and sensible manner than other people ; for 
 since custom and decency will not permit his hearers 
 to ask him any questions, he should be afraid of not 
 adapting his discourse to their capacity. Wherefore,' 
 says he, ' they who get their sermons by heart, word 
 for word, and so cannot repeat and explain a truth 
 until they see their hearers understand it, must lose 
 one great end and benefit of preaching.' You see by 
 this, sir, that Augustine only prepared his subject, 
 without burdening his memory with all the words of 
 his sermons. Though the precepts of true eloquence 
 should require more, yet the rules of the gospel 
 ministry will not permit us to go further. While a 
 priest, who ought to be ' a man of God, thoroughl3'^ 
 furnished unto all good works,' should be diligent in 
 rooting out ignorance and offences from the field of 
 the church, I think it unworthy of him to waste his 
 time in his closet, in smoothing periods, giving delicate 
 touches to his descriptions, and inventing quaint 
 divisions. When a man falls into the method and 
 employment of these pretty teachers, he can have no 
 time to do anything else ; he applies himself to no 
 other business or useful kind of study ; nay, to refresh 
 himself he is oftentimes forced to preach the same 
 sermons over and over again. — What ! shall a dis- 
 penser of the divine mysteries be an idle declaimer, 
 jealous of his reputation, and fond of vain pomp? 
 Shall he not dare to speak of God to his people. 
 
AND ON THE MEANS OF ATTAINING IT. 167 
 
 without having ranged all his words, and learned his 
 lesson bj heart like a school-boy ?" * 
 
 These are objections to memoriter preaching. The 
 objections of Fenelon to the practice of reading ser- 
 mons are still more strongly expressed. Some rare 
 occasions there are, on which it may be well to deliver 
 a whole discourse memoriter, or even to read ; but 
 among the persons w^ho have been truly obliged to 
 adopt either of these methods as a general practice, 
 there are few, we suspect, that should have become 
 preachers. Multitudes, who seem to be wholly de- 
 pendent on such methods, have become so purely 
 through habit — habit which has derived its licence 
 from custom, and its strength from indulgence.! 
 
 Every argument that will apply to freedom of utter- 
 
 * Dialogues concerning Eloquence, 172 — 174. 
 
 f " This leads me to consider the difference that is between the 
 reading and the speaking of sermons. Reading is peculiar to this 
 nation, and is endured in no other. It has indeed made our sermons 
 more exact, and so has produced to us many volumes of the best 
 that are extant. But after all, though some few read so happily, 
 pronounce so truly, and enter so entirely into those affections they 
 recommend, that in them we see both the correctness of reading, 
 and the seriousness of speaking sermons, yet every one is not so 
 happy. Some, by hanging their head perpetually over their notes, 
 by blundering as they read, and by a cursory running over them, 
 do so lessen the matter of their sermons, that as they are generally 
 read with very little life or affection, so they are heard with as little 
 regard or esteem. Besides, the people (who are too apt to censure the 
 clergy) are easily carried into an obvious reflection on reading — that 
 it is an effect of laziness." — Burnet's Discourse of the Pastoral Care, 
 chap. ix. 
 
168 ON THE VALUE CF A GOOD ELOCUTION, 
 
 ance in preaching will apply in favour of the same 
 kind of utterance in prayer. In this case, as in the 
 former, the freedom for ^A'hich we plead is not a free- 
 dom precluding all forethought, but such as allows 
 thought to be clothed for the most part in the expres- 
 sions of the moment, such as may admit of allusion to 
 passing seasons and events, and of that expansion and 
 warmth which is so natural to the mind when it be- 
 comes really interested in such exercises. So far are 
 we from pleading for the kind of free prayer which 
 has no relation to preparatory mental discipline, that 
 we should delight to see the manner of prayer ac- 
 counted of no less importance, as an object of study, 
 than the manner of preaching. Such an attention to 
 the subject would secure to the young minister a 
 fixed and scriptural idea concerning the nature of 
 prayer, and could hardly fail to familiarize his mind 
 with modes of thought, and scriptural examples, of a 
 nature adapted to impart fluency, order, variety, ap- 
 propriateness, and withal richness and unction, to the 
 devotional exercises in our public services, such as 
 even those of the contrary practice would often be 
 constrained to approve and imitate. 
 
 Among the persons distinguished by their place in 
 the court or the cabinet during the reigns of Charles 
 11. and James II., there was no man who possessed, on 
 the whole, a better knowledge of his contemporaries, or 
 of the times in which he lived, than the Marquess of 
 Halifax. His sagacity as a statesman was allied with 
 
AND ON THE MEANS OF ATTAINING IT. 169 
 
 great refinement and power of thought, and with an 
 unusual command of language as an author; and we 
 scarcely need say that he is not to be suspected of any 
 leaning, on general grounds, toward the practices of 
 the nonconformists. But it is in the following terms 
 that his lordship has expressed himself on the com- 
 parative claims of free prayer and forms of prayer. 
 " I am far from relishing the impertinent wanderino-s 
 of those who pour out long prayers upon the congre- 
 gation, and all from their own stock— too often a barren 
 soil, which produces weeds instead of flowers, and by 
 this means they expose religion itself to contempt 
 rather than promote men's devotion. On the other 
 side, there may be too great a restraint put upon men 
 whom God and nature have distinguished from their 
 fellow-labom-ers, by blessing them with a happier 
 talent, and by giving them not only good sense, but a 
 powerful utterance too, which has enabled them to 
 gush out upon the attentive auditory with a mighty 
 stream of devout and unaffected eloquence. When a 
 man so qualified, endued with learning too, and, above 
 all, adorned with a good life, breaks out into a warm 
 and well-delivered prayer before his sermon, it has 
 the appearance of a divine rapture ; he raises and leads 
 the hearts of the assembly in another manner than the 
 most composed and studied form of set words can ever 
 do; and the ^pray we's,' who serve up all their ser- 
 mons with the same garnishing, would look hke so 
 many statues, or men of straw in the pulpit, compared 
 
170 ON THE VALUE OF A GOOD ELOCUTION, ETC. 
 
 with those who speak with such a powerful zeal, that 
 men are tempted at the moment to believe that heaven 
 itself has dictated their words to them." * 
 
 What can be more important in relation to public 
 worship, than the kind of service, which, when well 
 conducted, is found capable of producing such impres- 
 sion, even in such quarters? Indolence, under the 
 mask of a pious humility, may allege that the true 
 spirit of prayer is from God, but so is the true spirit 
 of preaching also, and both are included in the apos- 
 tolic admonition—" Neglect not the gift that is in 
 thee." 
 
 * This passage is cited in " Watts's Humble Attempt," 161— 
 162. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ON THE DOCTRINE OF DIVINE INFLUENCE IN ITS 
 RELATION TO THE SUCCESS OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 The great distinction between the Mosaic and the 
 Christian dispensations, consists in the latter beino- 
 eminently « the ministration of the Spirit." In con- 
 nexion with the former dispensation, there was a 
 Divine Influence— and not only such as enabled the 
 prophets to deliver the will of God, but such as 
 illumined and purified the minds of all true worship- 
 pers, constituting of them— in those times as in the 
 present— the real church of God, as distinguished from 
 the merely outward or visible church. But neither as 
 the source of inspiration, nor as the power which en- 
 lightens and sanctifies the spiritual worshipper, was 
 the Holy Spirit then present with the church, in so 
 large a measure, as since the ascension of our incar- 
 nate Lord to his throne as Mediator. It is written 
 concerning the prophets in those times, that " they 
 inquired and searched diligently— searching what, or 
 what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was 
 in them did signify, when it testified beforehand 
 the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should 
 I 2 
 
172 THE DOCTRINE OF DIVINE INFLUENCE IN 
 
 follow."* But on the ascension of the Redeemer, 
 the promised Spirit was poured out — that Spirit of 
 whom Christ spake when he said — " He shall teach 
 you all things."t From that time, John could say to 
 Christians generally — " Ye have an unction from the 
 Holy One, and ye know all things.''^ Subsequently 
 to the day of Pentecost revealed truth was made to 
 embrace all things appointed to be known by man, in 
 respect to religion, during his connexion with this 
 world; and as the word was complete, so was the 
 divine influence which accompanied it, that hence- 
 forth " the man of God might be perfect," being 
 thoroughly furnished, so far as related to divine pro- 
 vision with a view to his guidance and aid, " unto all 
 good works." 
 
 But the success of the written truth thus perfected, 
 depends on the descent of this perfected influence of 
 the Holy Spirit, and the effects always dependant on 
 this conjoint influence, have their place in an inti- 
 mate relation with human agency. Paul exclaims— 
 "Thanks be to God, who always causeth us to 
 triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of 
 his knowledge by us in every place." § In this scrip- 
 ture, the power which ensured success is from God, 
 the immediate agency is from man. " I have planted," 
 says the same apostle, " ApoUos watered, but God 
 o-ave the increase. So then, neither is he that planteth 
 
 * 1 Pet. i. 10, 11. t John, xiv. 26. X 1 John, ii. 20. 
 § 2 Cor. ii. 14. 
 
RELATION TO THE SUCCESS OF THE GOSPEL. 173 
 
 anything, neither he that watereth, but God that 
 giveth the increase."* Hence the exhortation : " We, 
 then, as workers together with him, beseech you also, 
 that ye receive not the grace of God in vain."f 
 
 It is thus manifest, that the same relations, between 
 human agency and the divine, which are observable 
 through the natural world, have place in the spiritual 
 world. There is a province which the Infinite has 
 reserved to himself, and there is a province which he 
 has devolved upon man. The mariner cannot con- 
 trol the winds and waves, but he may calculate on 
 the safety of his voyage in proportion as he shall have 
 made the best provision to secure it. The husband- 
 man cannot call forth the sunshine or the shower, nor 
 can he determine or comprehend the secret processes 
 of vegetation ; but he may expect the abundance of 
 harvest, according as he shall have employed the 
 means which are placed within his reach, manifestly 
 in order to that end. It is thus in respect to all the 
 pursuits of life. Everywhere the habit of expectation 
 is, that as men sow, so they will reap ; that the hand 
 of the diligent only maketh rich ; and that labour 
 only can lead to eminence. 
 
 Such is the constitution of nature, and such is the 
 law of providence ; and the spiritual economy made 
 known to us in revelation is in harmony with both. 
 This obvious analogy between the natural and the 
 
 * 1 Cor. ii. 6, 7. f 2 Cor. vi. 1. 
 
174 THE DOCTRINE OF THE DIVINE INFLUENCE IN 
 
 spiritual, is in strict accordance with reasonable ex- 
 pectation. As nature, providence, and revelation pro- 
 ceed from the same perfections, it was to have been 
 expected that thej would be found bearing upon 
 them the same impress. In natural husbandry, the 
 harvest is from the use of means, and in proportion to 
 the use of them. The influences of the elements, and 
 the mysterious transformations which take place be- 
 neath the soil, are from God ; but the wilderness 
 becomes a fruitful field, only as it is made subject to 
 the labour of man : and such is the law recognised in 
 the following questions : " How shall they call on 
 him in whom they have not believed ? and how shall 
 they believe in him of whom they have not heard ? 
 and how shall they hear without a preacher ? and 
 how shall they preach except they be sent ?" * 
 
 It was not a matter of necessity, that the diffusion 
 of religious knowledge and feeling should depend, 
 after this manner, on the kind offices of religious 
 men. But while the power of God might have suf- 
 ficed to have accomplished his will by some other 
 process, altogether excluding the agency of man, it 
 has appeared good to his wisdom and benevolence to 
 accomplish it by this process, in which that agency is 
 made to be so prominent. 
 
 But the law which prescribes the use of means at 
 all, in this connexion, must be understood as enjoin- 
 
 * Rom. X., 14, 15. 
 
RELATION TO THE SUCCESS 4)F THE GOSPEL. 175 
 
 ing that we use the best means, and that we use the 
 best means in the best manner. If we do anything 
 in relation to this object, it must be good that what 
 we do should be done well. If the former be morally 
 incumbent upon us, the latter must be no less so ; 
 and to this effect are all those inspired exhortations 
 which require the ministers of religion to give them- 
 selves wholly to such exercises as reading, meditation, 
 and prayer, so as to make full proof of their ministry, 
 to divide to every man his portion in his season, and 
 to acquit themselves as workmen not needing to be 
 ashamed. If there be meaning in language, the 
 meaning of such language must be, that religion gene- 
 rally may be expected to be prosperous in the world, 
 as the ministry of religion shall become characterized 
 by eminent abiUty — the ability which consists in the 
 best culture of our natural powers, with a view to the 
 best discharge of our spiritual duties. 
 
 The apostle of the Gentiles possessed much of this 
 kind of ability by education, the rest of the apostles 
 were made to possess it by miracle. In this man- 
 ner we are taught, that the influence of the Holy 
 Spirit, from which the preaching of the gospel derives 
 aU its success, was not meant to supersede our obhga- 
 tion to seek the conversion of men, by the use of all 
 such means as may seem to carry with them, in the 
 greatest degree, the natural promise of success. Those 
 who thus honour God, by endeavouring to serve him 
 with their best, God will honour. But shall he ac- 
 
1 76 ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE DIVINE INFLUENCE. 
 
 cept the lame as sacrifice, or send down the signs of 
 his approval on the service which involves no real 
 effort of mind or heart in his cause ? No ; the influ- 
 ence of the Holy Spirit comes not as a bounty upon in- 
 dolence, but as a stimulus to exertion. Its office is not 
 to give the human faculties a licence to slumber, but 
 to supply them with motives to wakefulness. Its de- 
 scent upon the church is not as the creeping torpor 
 which betokens disease, but as an element of activity, 
 bespeaking moral and spiritual health. 
 
 In short, while, on the one hand, it is not possible 
 that the Christian minister should entertain too deep 
 a sense of his insufficiency to accomplish that change 
 in the spirits of men which needs to be wrought in 
 them ; on the other hand, it is not possible that he 
 should be too deeply impressed with that sense of re- 
 sponsibility, which may constrain him to labour for the 
 salvation of men as though their salvation depended 
 wholly on his own efforts, and to expect success only 
 as he shall be found so labouring. 
 
CHAPTER X, 
 
 ON THE CONNEXION BETWEEN PIETY AND USEFULNESS 
 IN THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 
 
 We have seen, that in some religious systems, much 
 more importance is attached to ecclesiastical observ- 
 ances, than to preaching. In such connexions, edifi- 
 cation is subordinate to formalism, and everything 
 else has its place and character in consistency with 
 that leading error. Men are accounted safe, not ac- 
 cording to what they are spiritually or morally, but 
 according to what they are ecclesiastically. The signs 
 of the true church come to consist of matters relating 
 to polity, and not of evidence relating to piety. And 
 as the true church is to be known by marks separate 
 from her piety, it is only consistent that her ministers 
 should put forth their official claims on grounds sepa- 
 rate from considerations of that nature. Hence, ac- 
 cording to this scheme, to find the true church, we 
 must look to the one point of apostolical succession ; 
 to find the true priesthood, we must do the same ; and 
 we must do the same again, if we would distinguish 
 the true Christian from the crowd bearing that name. 
 In the esteem of these eminent purists, what men 
 I 3 
 
178 ON THE CONNEXION BETWEEN PIETY AND 
 
 are, as good or bad, is in fact as nothing, compared 
 with what thej are, as obedient or disobedient with 
 regard to certain matters of ecclesiastical prescription. 
 The institutional in religion, is not accounted by 
 these persons simply as means, relating to the moral 
 and the holy as the end, but it is, in effect, both the 
 means and the end. To be institutionally right, is to 
 be altogether right. The point to be determined is 
 not the relation of the spirit to Christ by faith, peni- 
 tence, and the renewed affections of the devout mind; 
 but the fact of having been baptized, confirmed, and 
 communed by the hands of a duly-appointed minis- 
 try. The piety of a Watts, or a Doddridge, can 
 weigh as nothing, against the fact of their having 
 received the waters of baptism, or the elements of 
 the eucharist, from hands which were not episcopal. 
 Thus everything is determined by a point of polity— 
 the true church, the true ministry, the true Christian. 
 In this manner, revealed religion has become a piece 
 of pohtical machinery, adjusted to subserve the ambi- 
 tion of a priesthood. The simple institutes of the 
 New Testament are converted into a mere frame- work 
 of priestly and secular domination. The power to be 
 derived from them, in this form, constitutes their great 
 value, in comparison with which their relation to 
 truth, morals, and godliness is a question of no mo- 
 ment. Such is Romanism, wherever its tendencies 
 have full development, and strictly of this tendency 
 are all the distinctive principles of Puseyism. 
 
USEFULNESS IN THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 179 
 
 Among all the forms of delusion which have been 
 foisted upon men to frustrate the purposes of the 
 Christian religion, this is the most subtle, elaborate, 
 and destructive. Not that it embraces anything new. 
 We find no evil in Romanism which may not be 
 traced to tendencies common to human nature ; nor 
 anything which has not had its place in those sys- 
 tems of false religion to which the infirmities of 
 human nature have given existence from the earliest 
 times. Romanism is to scriptural Christianity, 
 what paganism was to the scriptural theism of the 
 ancient chmxh. Formalists among protestants often 
 became papists, as formahsts among the Jews often 
 became idolators. In the ancient paganism, and in 
 the servile copy of it which has been transmitted to 
 us in modern Romanism, we see the same advantage 
 taken of the weakness of human nature, and the same 
 seneral substitution, in effect, of the ceremonial ser- 
 vices of religion, in the place of religion. With all its 
 pomp and pretension, accordingly, Romanism is at 
 heart a stale and vulgar thing, old as the earliest 
 apostasies from revealed truth and goodness, and 
 strong through the weakness of the human intellect, 
 and the low sense-bound condition of human pas- 
 sions. 
 
 The great criminality in every system of this nature 
 is, that it tends to perpetuate the intellectual and 
 moral feebleness of human nature, rather than to re- 
 move it ; and that it deigns even to profit by infirmi- 
 
180 ON THE CONNEXION BETWEEN PIETY AND 
 
 ties, from which it should have been especially con- 
 cerned to set men free. It comes, accordingly, in 
 many respects, as an evil rather than a good° inas- 
 much as it uses the sanctions of religion to uphold 
 things in their own nature the most irreligious. It 
 puts itself forth under the name of truth, and succeeds 
 by that means in giving a new power to falsehood. 
 While it arrogates an exclusive claim to sanctity, it 
 may be seen eagerly employed in undermining every 
 principle of morals. This it does as often as it is 
 heard giving names of piety to the passions of the 
 persecutor, and to the forms of injustice, oppression, 
 and cruelty natural to those passions. In this man- 
 ner, under the covert of a zeal for religion, the bigot 
 may often be seen making war upon the very instincts 
 of humanity— the moral sentiments of the heart, being 
 effaced by the immoral dogmas of authority. Was it 
 not thus in the case of the priest and the Levite when 
 they passed by on the other side ? Was it not thus in 
 the case of the multitude who said— "Not this man, 
 but Barabbas ?" Has it not been thus, more or less, 
 among all people ? 
 
 It is one of the provisions made in every system of 
 this sort, that the people should not concern them- 
 selves about the character of their minister, except to 
 ascertain that he has been appointed to his office after 
 a certain manner. That he should be a regular man, 
 is a point about which they cannot be too scrupulous, 
 but whether he be a good man or not, is a matter not 
 
USEFULNESS IN THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 181 
 
 meant to come under their judgment. His minis- 
 trations as a priest, are in no respect vitiated by faulti- 
 ness in his character as a man. If regularly appointed, 
 his hands are equally the channel of the divine bless- 
 ing, whether those of a Judas, or a St. Paul. It is not 
 from man, but from God, that the power comes, 
 which imparts efficacy to priestly services, and God 
 will honour his own sacraments, by connecting his 
 own power with them, whether administered by the 
 hands of the pure or the impure. 
 
 This theory, which, in common with so much 
 beside, exhibits the gospel as giving the first place to 
 the ceremonial in religion, and only a subordinate 
 place to the moral, would be sufficiently difficult to 
 receive, could we regard the office of the Christian 
 minister as designed to consist in nothing more than 
 the administration of sacraments after a prescribed 
 form. But the flagrant impiety in this case is, that, 
 with a daring measure of consistency, the abettors of 
 this doctrine do not hesitate to apply it to preaching, 
 as well as to the more formal official services of the 
 ministry. Men, it seems, should be willing to receive 
 all ministers regularly sent to them, and simply 
 because they are so sent, in the capacity of teachers, 
 as well as in the capacity of persons deputed to per- 
 form ceremonies. The man so sent may not teach 
 the truth, he may inculcate doctrine strongly the con- 
 trary of the truth — but the most defective, and even 
 the most erroneous teaching, from the lips of a 
 
182 ON THE CONNEXION BETWEEN PIETY AND 
 
 minister deputed to his office after a particular manner, 
 should be preferred to instruction never so ample, or 
 never so truthful, from the lips of a minister not so 
 deputed !* 
 
 We are happy in the knowledge that there are very 
 many among our episcopalian brethren who would be 
 as the first to repudiate a doctrine so manifestly op- 
 posed to the spirit and letter of the New Testament, 
 and hardly less opposed to the simplest elements of 
 morality as recognised in common life, and to the 
 readiest dictates of common sense. But it is never- 
 theless true, that episcopalians whose creed as such is 
 fraught with this measure of folly and impiety, are 
 found almost everywhere, and that minds of this mis- 
 guided complexion would seem to be increasing rather 
 than diminishing. 
 
 Widely different is our own doctrine on this subject. 
 We regard the ordination of the congregational pastor 
 to his office, as being in no respect less valid than that 
 of the episcopalian, and as being even more orderly, 
 taking the New Testament as the model of order in 
 such matters. But it is not by means of such tests 
 that we judge concerning the probable success of the 
 Christian ministry in any case. We regard some 
 modes of appointment to the ministerial office as more 
 scriptural than others, and as being on that account 
 
 * For a passage from a sermon, printed by the Rev. H. Melville, 
 in v?hich this frightful doctrine is broadly inculcated, see Note (A), 
 at the end of this volume. 
 
USEFULNESS IN THE CHKISTIAN MINISTRY. 183 
 
 preferable ; but our expectations in regard to the 
 probable usefulness of a Christian minister, are not at 
 all influenced by circumstances of that nature, but 
 purely by the measure of ability and piety which 
 such a person may bring to the discharge of his pro- 
 per ministerial duties. 
 
 Are we wrong in this conclusion ? We think not. 
 The great business of the Christian minister is not to 
 be employed in the administrations of a ceremonial 
 law, but in labours tending to build up the human 
 mind in habits of " knowledge, righteousness, and 
 true holiness." By the nature of his vocation, his 
 attention is fixed on the moral condition of man — on 
 man in a condition resembling an edifice in ruins. 
 It is important that he should be capable of judging 
 with some intelligence in respect to tbe original ap- 
 pearance of this now smitten and desolated structure. 
 Cast down, and mouldering as it may be, it still 
 retains many traces of its departed greatness. Its 
 fragments are so extraordinary, and only so partially 
 mutilated, that the imagination can in a measure 
 reconstruct the whole, and realize to the eye, not 
 only its ancient space and altitude, but the propor- 
 tions, the harmonies, and the elaborate beauties by 
 which it was once pervaded. 
 
 But to judge with intelligence in regard to the con- 
 dition of human nature in its primitive state, interest- 
 ing and instructive as that may be, must be a matter 
 of less moment than to be capable of looking wisely 
 upon the condition in which we now find it. It is 
 
184 ON THE CONNEXION BETWEEN FIETY AND 
 
 plain that man, in place of being as lord over all 
 creatures, has ceased to be master of himself. In every 
 power he is more or less a slave — enthralled in intel- 
 lect, enthralled in heart, enthralled in appetite. His 
 piety is gone, his moral susceptibility is everywhere 
 deeply impaired. The knowledge of God is no longer 
 the great science of the understanding, the love of 
 God is no longer the great passion of the heart — and 
 in the train of this diversion of the intellectual and 
 moral powers from their proper objects, have come 
 darkness, defilement, misery, and ruin. Enough of 
 the proper in perception and feeling remains to entail 
 the condition of the accountable, but not enough to 
 ensure the blessedness of a moral restoration. Still, 
 such is the nature of this chief workmanship of God, 
 that even in this state it presents the aspect of a sur- 
 passing, a mysterious grandeur. It is as a temple 
 overthrown — as the palaces of the mighty when 
 brought low. 
 
 But it is the office of the preacher to labour toward 
 the perfect restoration of this noble edifice. It is 
 incumbent on him to be ceaselessly employed in en- 
 deavouring to restore all the parts of this building to 
 their due place, and to keep his mind intent on that 
 point when the whole will not only be made to ex- 
 hibit all the beauty, life, and joyousness which were 
 once so natural to it, but will become vested with this 
 its ancient glory even more abundantly than before. 
 The cross is to this fallen creature as the symbol of 
 forgiveness. The promise of the Holy Spirit is as the 
 
USEFULNESS IN THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 185 
 
 return to his nature of the light, and purity, and 
 peace which had forsaken it. The progress of this 
 great spiritual change, is that process of transformation 
 which endeth not until men have " put off the old 
 man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, 
 and are renewed in the spirit of their mind, and have 
 put on the new man, which after God is created in 
 righteousness and true holiness." In the course of 
 this transformation the human mind exhibits itself in 
 states of the greatest conceivable variety, both as 
 regards apprehension and feeling; external circum- 
 stances are constantly effecting these inward changes 
 and habits of the spirit; and religious and moral 
 questions are thus constantly arising, which require to 
 be dealt with in the exercise of a Christian knowledge 
 and wisdom. 
 
 Must it not, then, be manifest, that if there be any 
 department of human occupation demanding intelli- 
 gence, it is the department assigned to the Christian 
 minister ; and should it not be equally plain, that if 
 there be any pursuit among men in which a strong 
 passion with regard to the object pursued is necessary 
 to perseverance and success, it is so in this case ? The 
 theme committed to the preacher is the Divine Nature, 
 considered in all the forms in which it has been made 
 known as related to the nature of man. It may be 
 said, accordingly, to embrace everything that can be 
 known in relation to God, and in relation to ourselves. 
 It is a theme, moreover, the applications of which are 
 
186 ON THE CONNEXION BETWEEN PIETY AND 
 
 beset, in one view, with every kind of difficulty and 
 discouragement, through the whole process of that 
 spiritual change in the condition of human nature 
 which it is designed to realize and perfect. Hence, 
 to a just discharge of the duties of the Christian 
 ministry, knowledge is indispensable; and not less 
 so patience, forbearance, and all the charities which 
 belong to a state of eminent piety. 
 
 It is not our manner to expect excellence in any of 
 the pursuits of life except as the heart has been given 
 to them. We so judge in relation to science, litera- 
 ture, taste, commerce — everything. On this general 
 ground, we conclude, that men without religion, can 
 never be at home in the ministrations of religion. 
 The heart devoid of sympathy with devout aifections, 
 can bring no real warmth or affinity to its labours, 
 when employed professionally in endeavouring to in- 
 culcate such affections. Such a man may be acquainted 
 with the theory of evangelical truth, and may preach 
 it, but the exercises of his mind upon subjects of a 
 spiritual nature must be so much cold and reluctant 
 service. Every anxious spirit looking to him for 
 counsel, must be to him as a reprover. Every sick 
 chamber, must be to himx as a scene calling him to the 
 discharge of most unwelcome duties. Every house of 
 mourning, must be the place of his presence fi'om 
 necessity only, and never from choice. His worldly 
 passions may derive some gratification from the social 
 accompaniments which attend upon the office on 
 
USEFULNESS EST THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 187 
 
 which he has obtruded, but the duties belonging im- 
 mediately to that office must be to him as a series of 
 tasks. — his career as a minister of relio-ion being as a 
 chain, all the links of which have been so many acts 
 of self-denial ! 
 
 There is a hidden strength which can make the 
 yoke even of this arduous service easy, and its burden 
 light, but concerning that strength such men have no 
 knowledge. In connexions where the minister of 
 religion can put forth his claim to support on the 
 ground of having been duly observant of a certain 
 prescribed course of ritual services, men may begin 
 their ministry in such a temper of mind, and may be- 
 come grey-headed in it only to deteriorate more and 
 more, rather than to improve. But in connexions 
 where the people possess the power to free themselves 
 from the burden of such spiritual incompetency, they 
 naturally find the means of doing so ; and where 
 matters may not come to that issue, it commonly 
 happens, in the case of such men, either that some 
 great transgression breaks forth and sweeps them sud- 
 denly away, or else, that the constant recurrence of 
 their habitual infirmities is found to eat away their 
 reputation as a canker, reducing them ere long to a 
 state of feebleness and contempt, whatever may be 
 the amount of their acquirement or natural talent. 
 Such is the prospect, which the history of the Chris- 
 tian ministry among protestant nonconformists, has 
 placed before every man entering upon the sacred 
 office among us without deriving his great motive to 
 
188 ON THE DUTY OF CHURCHES IN RELATION 
 
 this spiritual calling from the spiritualities of his own 
 character. That power which animates the soul of 
 the poet, the artist, and all other aspirants in the 
 affairs of the world, must be in the man who would 
 look with success to this vocation — viz., a congeniality 
 of nature with the object, sufficient to induce a com- 
 manding love of it. It must become his choice, his 
 taste, his passion. This will be his great security 
 against halting, dulness, or insufficiency in any form. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 ON THE DUTY OF CHURCHES IN RELATION TO THE 
 CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 
 
 The religion of the New Testament is eminently 
 social. It contemplates the formation of churches ; 
 and it is explicit in respect to the duties which mem- 
 bers of churches owe to each other, and in respect to 
 the obligation of churches, as such, with regard to their 
 common Christianity viewed in its relation to the 
 world at large. 
 
 It is an obligation devolving immediately upon 
 every Christian church, that it should serve as a de- 
 pository of revealed truth, and as an agency to perpe- 
 tuate the knowledge of the gospel, and an observance 
 of its institutes. Every church formed after the man- 
 
TO THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 189 
 
 ner of the churches of the New Testament, consists of 
 persons who have become associated on the ground 
 of their common faith in the truths of the revelation 
 committed to them, and with a view to cherishing 
 those mutual affections which truths of such a charac- 
 ter naturally tend to call forth and strengthen. It is 
 not permitted that these persons should pursue their 
 spiritual pilgrimage alone. It is enjoined, that, 
 having given themselves to Him who died for them, 
 they should give themselves to each other according 
 to the will of God.* In this manner the multitude of 
 those who believed in Jerusalem "were together;" 
 and so it was in every city where the gospel was 
 published with success in the age of the apostles. 
 Hence, all men making profession of the faith of 
 Christ are admonished, not to forsake the assembling 
 of themselves together; and it was everywhere the 
 custom of such persons, in primitive times, to hold 
 regular assemblies, and to meet especially on the first 
 day of the week, to break bread, and to seek the edifi- 
 cation to be derived from social prayer, fi-om hearing 
 the word of God, and from Christian fellowship, f 
 What the first churches were in these respects, they 
 were as a model to all chm'ches. Every such society 
 was meant to be as an ark to the truth received from 
 heaven, and as a conservator of those institutes which 
 derive their authority fi:om the same source with that 
 truth. 
 
 * 2 Cor. viii. 5. t Acts, ii. 44. Ibid. xx. 7. Heb. x. 25. 
 
190 ON THE DUTY OF CHURCHES IN RELATION 
 
 But as the idea of perpetuity in respect to those 
 objects is inseparable from our notion of the being of 
 a church, so the idea of diffusion is inseparable from 
 every just view of the responsibilities of a church. 
 The kingdom of God is like leaven, and the church 
 is the agency by which that leaven is to be made to 
 penetrate the surrounding mass, until the whole is 
 leavened. Christians are associated into churches, 
 that they might act only more effectually as the 
 Hghts of the world. Hence it does not more pertain 
 to the chm'ch to uphold the truth, than to propagate 
 the truth. Nor is it to uphold the institutes of the 
 gospel purely for its own sake ; but that others may be 
 constrained to an observance of them, and to an 
 observance of them for the sake of that truth which 
 they embody, or which they are meant to subserve. 
 
 By the church, we understand, not the ministry of 
 the church, but its people, of whom alone it is consti» 
 tuted; and by the obligations of the church, accord- 
 ingly, we understand the obligations, not of any parti- 
 cular class of men, but of the great Christian brother- 
 hood. The church was not made for the ministry, 
 but the ministry for the church. It is no part of 
 Christianity, that we should account the voice of a 
 priesthood, as the same thing with the voice of the 
 church. The utterances of a clergy carry no just 
 authority along with them, without the concurrent 
 utterance of the laity. In the first age of the gospel, 
 the Christian ministry derived its authority in great 
 part immediately from heaven. In subsequent ages. 
 
TO THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 191 
 
 the continuance of this ministry has been dependent 
 on the authority permanently vested in the church, 
 and exercised by the free suifrage of the church 
 towards that end. 
 
 It is the province of the ministry to ordain ; but to 
 choose the men who may be deemed ehgible to ordi- 
 nation, is the province of the people. Some excep- 
 tions to this rule may occur, but in churches at all 
 properly constituted these will be rare, and will be 
 exceptions in appearance more than in reality. Until 
 some church shall have recognised the man desiring 
 the office of a minister as being a Christian, and as 
 competent to the duties of that office, the ceremony 
 of ordination would be felt as bearing upon it all the 
 marks of intrusion and disorder. With the church is 
 the power in this case, and with the church, in the 
 main, rests the responsibility. 
 
 But while these obser\'ations point to nothing more 
 than the manifest rit/hts of the church, they suggest 
 that rights of so much importance must carry with 
 them obligations of no less importance. The ministry 
 of the church is to arise out of the church — it is to 
 originate in it, to be sustained by it, and to derive its 
 complexion from it. In the more regular times which 
 have followed upon the age of miracles, to perpetuate 
 the Christian ministry is not so much the office of the 
 ministry itself, as that of the people for whose sake 
 the ministry is instituted. And if it be in an eminent 
 sense the duty of churches to see that the Christian 
 ministry is perpetuated, it must be their duty 
 
192 ON THE DUTY OF CHURCHES IN RELATION 
 
 to see that it is perpetuated in the best possible 
 form. 
 
 If the great object of good men in becoming thus 
 associated is usefulness — the strengthening and dif- 
 fusing of everything Christian — it is plain that the 
 ministry must be the grand instrument of that useful- 
 ness; and that the means, accordingly, which may 
 conduce to give the highest degree of efficiency to 
 that instrumentality, mtist possess the strongest possible 
 claim on their practical regard. Among protestant 
 dissenters, the strength of all other agencies, in the 
 various departments of usefulness, is manifestly de- 
 pendent on the strength of this particular agency. It 
 is as the fountain to the streams. Let our ministry 
 be made good, and everything else will be good. In 
 some connexions, the ecclesiastical machinery is so 
 arranged, that everything which may be determined 
 as a matter of routine or system, is so determined, and 
 as little as possible is left to depend on the accidents 
 of competency or incompetency in the persons ad- 
 mitted to the office of the ministry. But among pro- 
 testant dissenters it is far otherwise. Congregation- 
 alism, especially, always supposes the presence of 
 intelligence and piety. Where these are found, it 
 realizes the elements which are in affinity with itself, 
 and its working is harmonious, generous, and noble. 
 But where these are wanting, its very excellences be- 
 come so many facilities to mischief — much as when 
 the immunities of civil freedom pass into the hands of 
 the ignorant and the worthless. 
 
TO THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 193 
 
 But while the character of everything good amono- 
 us is in a great degree dependent on the character 
 of our ministry, it should be obvious, that as it is felt 
 to be the duty of each church to act upon this prin- 
 ciple in relation to the manner in which its own pulpit 
 and pastorate are filled, it must be no less its duty so 
 to act with regard to the character of our ministry 
 viewed generally. It must not only be incumbent on 
 every such community to maintain a ministry of this 
 description, so far as it may, in its own instance, but 
 it must be no less the duty of such parties to do what 
 in them lies towards securing a succession of such 
 ministers, and towards diffusing our peculiar princi- 
 ples, and our common Christianity, by multiplying the 
 services of such a ministry. If it be the duty of eacli 
 church to support a ministry of this character, it must 
 be the duty of all churches to combine in favour of a 
 general ministry which may be so characterized. The 
 ministry which is good for the parts, must be good for 
 the whole ; and as regards the means by which such 
 a ministry may be best provided and diffused, what 
 may not be done by the parts, may be done by the 
 whole. We do not hesitate to say, that our ministry 
 is, under God, in its relation to our churches, what 
 our machinery is in its relation to our manufactures. It 
 exhibits, pre-eminently, the combinations of skill and 
 power on which we depend, next to the Divine bless- 
 ing, for all our success, and in neither case must we 
 expect to see the means necessary to success assume 
 
 K 
 
194 ON THE DUTY OF CHURCHES IN RELATION 
 
 the needed construction and adaptation from accident, 
 or spontaneously, but as the result of steady calcula- 
 tion, ingenuity, and effort. Even in the affairs of 
 providence, success is from above, but the means are 
 with men. We admit this truth more emphatically in 
 its relation to everything Christian, and, most of all, is 
 it applicable to everything belonging to the history 
 of the Christian ministry. 
 
 So long as a church is permitted to luxuriate be- 
 neath the dropping fruit of its own vine, or fig-tree, 
 it may be little considerate on this topic. But let its 
 able pastor be removed, and the difficulties attendant 
 on the effort to supply his place, may possibly suggest 
 some new thoughts concerning the wisdom of looking 
 toward such exigencies before they arise. One is 
 sometimes tempted to think, that the perplexities 
 which not unfrequently belong to this juncture in the 
 history of some of our churches, have a little of the 
 retributive in them. What wonder if churches which 
 have done httle, or nothing, toward strengthening our 
 general ministry, are seen languishing and suffering 
 for a while as the consequence of its weakness ? Is it 
 not fitting that the sins of churches, as well as of indi- 
 viduals, should be sometimes brought in this manner 
 to their remembrance ? Our usages in this respect 
 will not be in a healthy state, until the claims of our 
 colleges, shall become as much a matter of principle 
 and regular observance, as the claims of our missionary 
 labours at home or abroad. 
 
TO THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 195 
 
 It is to be regretted that when the sons of the more 
 wealthy families among dissenters direct their thoughts 
 to the Christian ministry, they so often become resi- 
 dents in Oxford or Cambridge, and take their place as 
 clergymen in the estabhshed church. 
 
 Objections made by such persons to our colleges 
 simply as places of residence, have not been so apph- 
 cable to them of late years as formerly. We know 
 not that the sons of the most opulent will find any- 
 thing in the arrangements of our leading colleges of 
 which just complaint may be made as compared with 
 what is known to obtain very generally elsewhere. In 
 regard to society, also, such seminaries generally con- 
 tain everything which a candidate for the office of the 
 Christian ministry should be anxious to obtain ; and 
 with regard to instruction, should he, at the end of his 
 com-se, prove deficient in that respect, it will generally 
 be from the want of application on his own part, 
 much more than from any want of access to adequate 
 means of assistance. We must admit, that in some 
 quarters, our academic system is still defective in 
 these respects, and the sooner such defects can be 
 removed the better ; but the time has come, in which 
 no man desirous of avoiding any such inconvenience 
 or disadvantage, need be at great pains in doing so. 
 
 But it is not the transition from the indulgences 
 of an opulent home, to the more common level, which 
 is inseparable in a measure from college life, that is 
 chiefly felt by such persons. Nor in many cases must 
 
] 96 ON THE DUTY OF CHURCHES EST RELATION 
 
 we attribute the preference shewn by them, mainly, 
 if at all, to the more favourable social position of the 
 clergyman, compared with that of the dissenting 
 minister. In not a few instances, the conduct we 
 blame in these persons, is the natural result of conduct 
 for which we are ourselves to blame. It may be, that 
 these young men have seen the dissenting minister 
 exposed to so much vulgar annoyance, from the 
 purse-proud on the one side, and from the spiritually- 
 proud on the other, as to have lost heart when con- 
 templating an entrance upon the same office in the 
 same circumstances. It may be, that from this cause, 
 more than from any other, the incipient disposition 
 has arisen, to questioning as to whether these things 
 ought so to be, and that in this manner the mind has 
 been put upon that track which has ended in the con- 
 clusion, that a system which seems to make a better 
 provision against such coarse intrusiveness must be on 
 the whole a preferable one. 
 
 Very commonly, indeed, the causes of such defec- 
 tion are sufficiently manifest, and of a kind for which 
 little excuse can be urged. The schools in which the 
 young ladies and gentlemen have passed the most 
 susceptible years of life, and the notions and tastes 
 which they have very naturally derived from those 
 sources, have been such as to enable any man of dis- 
 cernment to foresee, that so soon as they should feel 
 themselves at liberty, they would choose their religion, 
 as they choose their millinery or their tailoring. To 
 
TO THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY. 197 
 
 a mind which has no real sympathy with piety, dissent 
 can rarely appear as an affair of much value. 
 
 But while there are men, and even churches, who 
 libel our polity, by the base manner in which they abuse 
 the noble freedom it concedes to them, it must be no 
 matter for wonder, if young men of piety, and honest 
 meaning, but who are conscious that they do not 
 possess the hardihood, or the power, necessary to con- 
 tend with a "fierce democracy," should draw back from 
 the probabilities of such a conflict. If our ministers 
 are to be subject to rude and coarse treatment, then, 
 in the name of consistency and humanity, let it be 
 understood that we desire none save coarse-minded 
 men to be ministers. It is, however, only reasonable 
 to conclude, that the causes which are prompting our 
 churches to so much laudable effort in favour of our 
 colleges, will prove to be of the kind especially adapted 
 to abate the force of such evils in the connexions 
 where they may still have some existence. 
 
 k2 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 ON S03IE POINTS OF CAUTION NECESSARY TO 
 PREACHERS AND HEARERS. 
 
 Much has been said in the preceding pages, concern- 
 ing the necessity of intelligence and effort, if the 
 pulpit in our age is to be to society what society 
 demands. But we have written to little effect if it 
 has not appeared, that the preaching we regard as 
 demanded from the ministers of religion in our time, 
 is far from being the kind of preaching which is 
 characterized by an unnatural straining after the 
 novel, the startling, or the great, either in thought or 
 language. Neither the discourses of our Lord, nor 
 those of his apostles, were of this order. In their 
 preaching, we see the effort of teachers whose object 
 was a lucid and impressive exhibition of truth ; that 
 truth being so exhibited, simply with a view to bring 
 men habitually under the influence of truth, and so 
 to enable them to realize the holy and the happy. 
 Their preaching was not of a kind to make men 
 wonder, so much as to make them thoughtful. In 
 general, there was a comparative repose in their 
 utterances, the excitement of the moment being little 
 
ON SOME POINTS OF CAUTION, ETC. 199 
 
 valued by them, except as it might arise from the 
 rational conviction likely to continue beyond the 
 moment. The instructed and the disciplined mind, 
 and the natural manner, in the Christian minister, 
 may be of great value, but it must never be forgotten 
 that it is the truth — " the truth as it is in Jesus," and 
 that truth apprehended by men in its own solemn 
 reality, which must accomplish everything really 
 Christian that is accomplished by our ministry. 
 
 While we are thus cautious to assign its due place 
 to revealed truth, apart from which all human agency 
 is as nothing ; it is important, also, that ministers and 
 congregations should guard against the unreasonable 
 in aim or expectation, with regard to preaching of 
 that more intellectual kind, which in some connexions 
 is so much needed. Great sermons can be preached 
 only by great men. Preachers who forget this, and 
 aim at an object beyond their reach, only make their 
 littleness appear less. Congregations, also, which 
 contract the habit of regulating their expectations of 
 the useful, according to the frequency with which 
 their attention is roused by the brilliant, betray in 
 that habit a great feebleness of judgment, and great 
 poverty as regards the tone of spiritual feeling which 
 pervades the New Testament. 
 
 Even great men, if they must preach often, can 
 preach great sermons only very rarely. The few 
 preachers of our time who have resolved not to ap- 
 pear in the pulpit, except as they could bring some 
 
200 ON SOME POINTS OF CAUTION 
 
 elaborate performance before the people, have been 
 obliged to restrict their pulpit labours to a single ser- 
 mon a week, and even that amount of such labour has 
 proved to be beyond their powers. In the case of 
 preachers who are at full liberty to choose their occa- 
 sions, this uniform elevation in preaching may be 
 practicable ; but in the case even of the most able 
 men, who do not possess that liberty, it must be other- 
 wise. In the Romish church, the practice of regard- 
 ing Lent, and some other intervals, as special 
 preaching seasons, has operated in favour of occa- 
 sional preaching characterized by unusual power. 
 The most memorable discourses in the history of the 
 French pulpit were delivered at such times. Among 
 protestants, those seasons are less a matter of observ- 
 ance. With us, the men who preach at all, are ex- 
 pected to be preaching constantly ; and thus continuity 
 of the same kind of labour is, of necessity, fatal to the 
 kind of preaching which must involve great labour in 
 any form. It may be greatly to the reproach of men 
 who preach very rarely, that they do not always 
 preach well ; and much to the dishonour of not a few 
 among such men, that they do not enrich our pulpit 
 literature in a much greater degree ; but nothing can 
 be more preposterous than to conclude, because a 
 minister is capable of deUvering himself in powerful 
 discourse on some occasions, he must be capable of so 
 delivering himself on all occasions. Much facihty, no 
 doubt, is derived from practice, but we still think it 
 
NECESSARY TO PREACHERS AND HEARERS. 201 
 
 true, that our best preachers must preach less, if they 
 are to preach better. 
 
 On the whole, we may be assured on this subject, 
 that what is not found to be practicable, was not 
 meant to be obligatory. The kind of service to which 
 ministers are vmequal, is the kind of service which is 
 not needed. Had it been necessary that the church 
 should be largely supplied with preaching of the high 
 order adverted to, the Head of the church would 
 have provided for his own to that effect. It is not 
 necessary that all preachers should account themselves 
 called to be great preachers : nor is it necessary that 
 great preachers should be such at all times. In this 
 matter, the demand generally made, has respect to a 
 comparatively humble range of instruction, and the 
 supply furnished by providence has always been con- 
 formable to the nature of this demand. The obligation 
 devolving on the Christian ministry, and that which 
 the church has a right to expect from its ministry, is, 
 that preachers should be teachers of the truth to the 
 extent of their power — the possible in this case, being 
 the expedient, and that on which the Divine Influence 
 may be expected to descend, so as to accomplish, in 
 the best manner, all the purposes intended by the 
 institution of the Christian ministry. 
 
NOTE (A). 
 
 " But if a sermon differ from what a gospel sermon should be, 
 men will determine that Christ could have had nothing to do with 
 its delivery. Now this, we assert, is nothing less than deposing 
 Christ from the ministry assigned him in the text." (Heb. viii. 2. — 
 A minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the 
 Lord pitched, and not man.) " We are far enough from declaring 
 that the chief minister puts the false words into the mouth of the 
 inferior. But we are certain, as upon a truth, which to deny is to 
 assault the foundations of Christianity, that the chief minister is so 
 mindful of his office, that every man, who listens in faith, expecting 
 a message from above, shall be addressed through the mouth, aye, 
 even through the mistakes and errors, of the inferior. And in up- 
 holding this truth, a truth attested by the experience of numbers, 
 we simply contend for the accuracy of that description of Christ 
 which is under review. If, wheresoever the minister is himself de- 
 ficient, and untaught, so that his sermons exhibit a wrong system of 
 doctirne, you will not allow that Christ's church may be profited 
 by the ordinance of preaching ; you clearly argue, that the Re- 
 deemer has given up his office, and that he can no longer be styled 
 the minister of the true tabernacle. There is no middle course be- 
 tween denying that Christ is the minister, and allowing that, what- 
 ever the faulty statements of his ordained servant, no soul, which is 
 hearkening in faith for a word of counsel, or comfort, shall find the 
 ordinance worthless, and be sent away empty. 
 
 " And from this we obtain our first illustration of our text. We 
 behold the true followers of Christ enabled to find food in pastures 
 which seem barren, and water where the fountains are dry. They 
 obtain, indeed, the most copious supplies — though perhaps even this 
 will not always hold good — when the sermons breathe nothing but 
 truth, and the sacraments are administered by men of tried piety and 
 faith. But when everything seems against them, so that on a carnal 
 calculation, you would suppose the services of the church stripped 
 of all efficiency, then, by acting faith on the head of the ministry, 
 
NOTE. 203 
 
 they are instructed and nourished, though, in the main, the given 
 lesson he falsehood, and the preferred sustenance little better than 
 poison. And if Christ be thus always sending messages to those 
 who listen for his voice— if he so take upon himself the office of 
 preacher, as to constrain even the tongue of error to speak instruc- 
 tion to his people, &c." — Melville's Sermons, vol. i., sermon 2. 
 
 The italics in the above extract are marked by myself. Christ, it 
 will be remembered, prayed concerning his disciples — " Sanctify 
 them by thy truth, thy icord is truth." But here is a preacher who, 
 that tlie exclusive pretension of his own particular priesthood may 
 not be open to impeachment, would invert this manifest law of 
 Christ's kingdom, and teaches that error, coming from the lips of 
 his order, may sanctify as well as the truth, and is even in doubt 
 whether error does not sometimes do that office better than the 
 truth ! It must be a somewhat desperate pressure, which has 
 prompted a man of intelligence, and, we must hope, a man of 
 piety too, in order to retain his ecclesiastical position, to do a 
 violence of this sort to everything intellectual, and to everything 
 moral in the consciousness of his nature — persuading himself that all 
 the apparent difference, the long reasonably supposed difference, 
 aye, and the clearly alleged difference in holy scripture, between 
 the spiritually healthful in doctrine, and the spiritually poisonous, 
 is, after all, rather imaginary than real ! Transubstantiation con- 
 tains no greater absurdity than this ; and in regard to its tendency, 
 the Romish dogma must be harmless compared with such opinions. 
 It is not, it seems, the integrity and influence of truth, that must 
 be regarded as the great object of the Divine solicitude, so much as 
 the perpetuity and power of a precise order of ministers. How few 
 are the men of sense who could not more readily become infidels, 
 than believers in such a doctrine concerning the God of revelation ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
 T. C. SaviU, Printer, 107, St. Martin's I.iine. 
 
4300 
 
 
 m 
 
 hit 
 
 ^^, 
 
 
 
 
 rt; 
 
 
 ^ 111; 
 
 1 lit. 
 
 '|::J?pl: