The London Pulpit Part 4

Though the popular pastor of a popular London congregation, he is still plain Thomas Binney-still without the very questionable honour of an American D.D. appended to his name.

THE REV. BALDWIN BROWN, B.A.

The pulpit is an old inst.i.tution-next to the theatre, perhaps the oldest we have. To almost every generation of men on this small isle set in the silver sea it has revealed all that it has had to communicate relative to this world or the next. 'Thanks to the aid of the temporal arm,' writes Thierry of Edbald, King of Kent, 'the faith of Christ arose once more, never again to be extinguished, on both banks of the Thames.' Before that the pulpit had been introduced, and it remained powerful when England, at a monarch's nod, forcibly dissolved the spiritual union she had so soon contracted and so long maintained with Rome. To the Protestants the pulpit was more essential than to the Catholics. To the Protestants who dissented from the Established Church it became more important still. Without it they were nothing. Dissenting vitality depends upon the pulpit. If that be weak and cold, unable to get at the heart and to act upon the pa.s.sions of the mult.i.tude, Dissent melts like snow beneath the warm breath of the south. If it be otherwise, Dissent flourishes and grows strong. The history of sects is the history of individuals. Whitfield, Wesley are instances. In the Church of England it is otherwise. That has a status independent of the pulpit. Without any particular individual, it has a service elaborate and solemn and complete, and more attractive than from its eternal monotony, in spite of Puseyite natural attempts to the contrary, one would imagine would be the case. Yet it is becoming confessed the Dissenting pulpit has ceased to be what it was. I own I hardly understand why. Tom Moore tells in his diary that no exercise of talent brings so immediate a result as oratory.

I believe every one who has ever got upon his legs will say the same thing, and where can the orator have a wider field than in the pulpit?

At the best, the senate or the bar have nothing of equal interest. I believe the difficulty may be partly explained in two ways. In the first place, the pulpit is too much a repet.i.tion of creeds and theologies that are becoming extinct; and in the second place, there is a dead weight in the pews which masters the pulpit, and deadens its intellectual life. I believe many a minister says things in private conversation that he has not courage enough to utter in the pulpit, and that when he tries to do so, owing to the vagueness of theological terms, what he says in one sense is understood by his hearers in another. No wonder then that the pulpit is so barren of power, and that many a man of gifts and parts in our days of universal reading prefers the press to the pulpit, and chooses rather to teach with his pen than with the living voice. Yet the pulpit is not wholly deserted. It can still boast its consecrated talent. It has still in it men who would have succeeded, had they tried other professions-who have something more to distinguish them than a sleek appearance or a fluent voice. To this cla.s.s does the Reverend Baldwin Brown belong.

Some years back Clayland's Chapel was erected in the Clapham-road. A dissenting D.D., famed for his eloquence and wit-for his book against the theatre-for his encounter with Sidney Smith-for the strict orthodoxy of his reviews in the _Evangelical Magazine_-and for sundry indiscretions not quite so orthodox, became its minister. The reverend gentleman failed to gather around him a flock. He preached and none came to hear him. The pews were unoccupied, and the quarterly returns were small. He abandoned the chapel, and with dubious fame, and an appearance somewhat too much that of a _bon vivant_ for the minister of a religion of self-denial and mortification of the flesh, went down to Warwickshire to become the pastor of a village congregation, and in time to die.

Clayland's chapel then was placed under the care of the Rev. Baldwin Brown, then a young man fresh from Highbury College, to which place he had gone after completing his education at University College, becoming a graduate of the London University, and having been, I believe, called to the bar. Mr. Brown is now in the prime of life. He cannot be much above thirty. He attained his position earlier than ministers generally do.

His father was a man of some standing in the world, as well as in his own denomination. His uncles were no less distinguished personages than Drs.

Liefchild and Raffles, and last, and not least, he had that easy confidence in his own powers, which are great, and his attainments, which are greater, without which you may have the eloquence of Paul, or the piety of John, and yet no more move the world or the most insignificant portion of it than a child can arrest a steam engine, or than a lady's parasol can still a storm.

Mr. Brown's settlement at Clayland's Chapel has been successful. The cause-to borrow the conventional phrase-has prospered; the chapel has been filled, and the church has considerably increased. His fame has grown. He has become a man of note. At Exeter Hall his voice is often heard. Undoubtedly some of his success is due to the circ.u.mstances I have already mentioned, but undoubtedly the greater part of it is due to himself alone. It is something for a man to find a position already made for him. It saves him many a year of herculean and unregarded toil; but to keep a position is almost as difficult as to make it, and this Mr.

Brown has succeeded in doing. The reason of this must be sought for in Mr. Brown himself. The man must have some speciality to fit him for his work, or he cannot be successful in it. That Mr. Brown has this is, I take it, beyond a doubt; nor can you long attend upon his ministry without finding such is the case. Mr. Brown's distinguishing characteristic is freshness. There is nothing stale or conventional about him. He evidently preaches what he thinks. His speech is a living speech, not a monotonous repet.i.tion of old divinity. He has wandered out of the conventional circle. He has come in contact with great minds. He has had a richer experience than generally falls to the lot of the divine. He views things broadly and in a manly manner, not from the narrow platform of a sect. His faith is a living one. His Christianity is practical-that by which men may shape their life as well as square their creed. Instead of wandering weakly and sentimentally in other lands and in other ages, he brings his mind and heart to bear upon the realities of the present day. The questions of our age, not of past ages, he discusses in his pulpit. The day that pa.s.ses over him is the day to which he devotes his energies. He gives you an idea of earnestness and activity and independence-of a mind well educated and drawn out-filled with Christian truth, and earnest in the application of that truth. He is not a great rhetorician-his strength seems to be in his common sense. If the Bible be true, the sooner man gets that idea into his head and acts according to it, the better. If man have to obey the Divine law, the sooner he submits himself to it the happier he will be in this life as well as in that which is to come. I know there is nothing new in this,-that other men attempt to teach the same thing,-that all divines are saying it one way or another every Sunday; but the merit of Mr. Brown is that he says it as a man of common-sense would say it to men possessed of common-sense-that he does not wrap his meaning in the unreal verbiage of a mystic and unreal theology-that he takes his teachings, and arguments, and ill.u.s.trations from real life-and that he talks of religion as men of the world of consols and railways; and no man can do this, to whom religion is not the business of his life. In personal appearance there is nothing particularly remarkable about Mr.

Brown. He is tall-thin-of light complexion, a very different style of man to the fat, indolent-looking old gentlemen that figure in the picture gallery of a certain popular religious magazine, but with an appearance of intellectual activity and readiness for his work and age, to which few of the good old conventional divines now happily gathered to their fathers ever seem to have had an idea.

THE REV. JOHN CAMPBELL, D.D.

If the reader has ever been in the habit of attending public meetings, he must occasionally have seen an amendment proposed by a man evidently in a minority, yet proposed nevertheless. The man who does this is a man of confidence, of good lungs and nerve. First, the meeting will not hear him at all. 'Down, down!' is the universal cry. But the man stands firm, fixes his arms across his breast in the manner of the 'Napoleon musing at St. Helena' of the late Mr. Haydon. He knows that that angry hubbub cannot last long: that the indignant public will be out of breath in five minutes; that the more frantic it is now, the more exhausted and quiet it will be anon; and, with a calm smile of pity, he waits the result. All that he has to do is simply to stand still, and, if he does this long enough, there is no meeting on the face of the earth that can refuse him a hearing.

In some such manner has the Rev. John Campbell made good his position in the religious world, or rather in that one section of the Congregational body over which he rules with a rod of iron. At times there has been a hubbub, but the Doctor knows no hubbub, however loud and angry, can last long; and to the ma.s.s, dest.i.tute alike of information and principles, it is a real blessing to get hold of a firm, dogmatic man, who knows his own mind, and who will kindly take care of theirs. Fluent in pen, meagre in attainment, seemingly master of no one subject, yet writing vehemently on all, the Doctor is precisely the man to give the law to that low cla.s.s of readers more or less present in all religious denominations. It is easy to see what he is, and what he is not. He is not an accomplished orator, for he eschews the graces of the platform. He is not a man of learning, for learning softens the manners. He is not a man of lofty grasp of thought, for he has never said a word, or written a line, that is not narrow and sectarian and one-sided. But he is hard, energetic, confident, loud in voice, and boisterous in manner; as unabashed as the Duke of York's monument in Waterloo Place.

You can see what manner of a man Dr. Campbell is in the twinkling of an eye. It is not often he preaches now; but if you chance to be at the Tabernacle, in the City Road, when he does preach, you will feel the description of him is correct. The memory of that Apostle in an age of sensualism and sin, George Whitfield, still sheds a fragrance round the dreary-looking chapel, in which some few hundreds, chiefly of the poorer sort of small tradesmen, meet, Sabbath after Sabbath, and where the Editor of the 'Christian Witness,' of the 'Christian Penny Magazine,' and of the 'British Standard,' occasionally harangues. If you go, gentle reader, take with you a good stock of patience, for you will not find the service easy, or the sermon short. There, in the very pulpit where Whitfield, the persuasive, the silver-tongued, stood-the Whitfield, whom lords and ladies flocked to hear; who lit up with light and life a wicked and adulterous generation-an age dest.i.tute alike of faith and heart and hope-you will see a big c.u.mbrous man, of severe face and repulsive manner, with a voice harsh and rough as a mountain-stream. The face is almost hidden between two uncomfortable collars, which create your sympathy for the unfortunate mortal in such an unpleasant fix.

Continuing your search, however, you see piercing eyes beneath bushy brows, a nose of a decided character, a most firm chin, and a head of thick grey hair, the obstinate irregularities of which would throw a fashionable hair-dresser into despair. Moore wrote of Castlereagh that-

'He gave out his small beer with the air of a chap Who thinks to himself, 'T is prodigious fine tap.'

Just so preaches Dr. Campbell. In the pulpit he has it all his own way.

You cannot contradict him. You cannot even intimate dissent; and he harangues with the air of a judge. Evidently the congregation has been dragooned into what it is, for the preacher gives no sign of intelligence or vigour. He takes a text and preaches from it. The divisions of the sermon are the sentences of the text, and he talks in the most desultory manner imaginable. The oratory belongs to the deadly-lively school, and consists of mild common-places, pumped out with a ferocity reminding one of the stern Puritans of the olden time, but rather out of place in the Tabernacle in which the Doctor reigns supreme, and which we suppose is licensed for public worship, according to Act of Parliament. Moderate your expectations if you go there. Dr. Campbell has been far too busy a man to master the thought and aspect and characteristics of our age. Of what man in England, in London, in the nineteenth century, is aiming at, he seems to have but a remote idea. So blind is he that, if he wants a heathen, he puts on his spectacles and reads you an account of one out of some old Missionary Magazine. Nor does the Doctor atone for this by the beauty of his style and the perspicuity of his tone. His voice is husky and, at times, inaudible; his manner, bad. Sheridan had a bad voice, so had Fox, so had Burke; but these men were orators, nevertheless. Dr.

Campbell is not one, and never was one. He builds up no lofty structure.

He bears you on no unfaltering wing far,

'Far above this lower world, Up where eternal ages roll.'

He overflows with no brilliant eloquence, and burns with no celestial fire. He never ascends into the region of beauty and splendour, and life and light. His is not the magic art to take you from step to step along the Christian path, till your soul heaves, and you exclaim, 'It is good to be here!' On the contrary, he leaves you flat and cold and dull. He amplifies, and waves his right arm, and quotes texts, and repeats a feeble sentence emphatically; but that is all; he makes no progress. In going from Edinburgh to Stirling, by water, you are carried backwards and forwards, by the winding of the stream, in the most remarkable manner.

You see Stirling long before you approach. You keep going, and yet you don't seem going on. Dr. Campbell winds just in the same way. You have talk without effect; action without progress; words without thought.

The real truth is, Dr. Campbell is one of the failures of the age. His 'Martyr of Erromanga' has been his only creditable work. No man has talked more, or done less. He attempts too much. He would be everything, and is nothing. Superficiality has ever been his bane. A fatal copiousness of words has ruined him. More golden opportunities than those he has had, no man ever had. A failure in the pulpit, he turned himself to the press; and a powerful body, with an organization in almost every town and village in the land, rallied round him as their chief. To circulate his publications the most gigantic efforts were made. The 'pulpits were tuned,' the Sunday-school was invaded, the congregation was taken by storm. Like most men whose invective powers are strong, the Doctor can flatter, and he did so with a vengeance. The model church was the church which took in the most of the Doctor's publications. The successful minister was the minister who sold the most of them. The people of whom the Doctor had hopes were the people who subscribed 4s. 4d. per quarter to Bolt Court.

But the Doctor can bear no rival; he must reign supreme. John Childs, of Bungay, and Dr. Adam Thomson, of Coldstream, destroyed the Bible monopoly; but Dr. Campbell had the command of the press, and took the credit to himself. An eminent publisher started a newspaper and a religious magazine, and the Doctor looked coldly on him till he sold the newspaper and gave up the magazine. When the 'Anti-State-Church Society'

was formed, the Doctor was one of its members, but it had a ruling spirit who was not the pastor of the Tabernacle, and the Doctor's zeal soon died away. The Doctor also professes to be with the Teetotalers; but they don't all go to Bolt Court, and the Doctor d.a.m.ns them with faint praise.

If the Congregationalists grow restive, it matters little; they have no chance against him; they have been delivered over to the Doctor, body and soul. It is in vain they struggle to be free. Will the Doctor publish what would militate against himself? Will the Doctor withhold from publishing when it gives him the chance of an easy triumph? Of course, a man is a fool to enter into a controversy with a newspaper editor. The editor is omnipotent; you must give in. If it is folly to kick against the p.r.i.c.ks, it is the height of folly to encounter the editor of a newspaper. Hence the Doctor's triumphs have been easy; but they have been due more to the weakness of his foes than to any strength of his own.

As to the utter weakness of the Doctor in execution, let us turn to the 'British Banner.' A man may be heavy, rambling, in the pulpit; but with his pen he may be quite the reverse. The 'Banner,' when under the Doctor's care, was a failure. That was to have been a paper to Christianize the world; to win over the discontented infidelity and chartism of our age; to pervade the land with a living Christian faith: for this, Doctor Campbell had a support such as was never given to man before. The Doctor told us that there was an infidel press; that that infidel press circulated by tens of thousands; and that it behoved Christian men to try and arrest such a state of things. Christian men believed the Doctor, and invested him with tremendous power. And what has been the consequence? That the world has a fresh sectarian paper, and that the readers of the infidel press remain just where they were.

Is this a success?

Take another test. The London weekly papers exchange with the country ones; the consequence is, many of the leaders appearing in the former are reprinted in the latter. This is about the best test you can have of what a newspaper is. The editors of the country papers are very fair representatives of the intelligence of the age. What they reprint must be generally good. You would expect this to be so, and it actually is the case. The papers which have the highest reputation for talent and clearness of view are precisely the papers most quoted from. But who ever saw a reprint of a leader from the 'British Banner'? If the leaders in the 'Banner' were as distinguished for the vigour of language, for the correctness of their views, they would be reprinted as extensively as the papers the 'Banner' was intended to supersede. If the Doctor's aim were good, if it were desirable to start a paper that should be Christian, and yet popular, so that it should circulate everywhere, the Doctor's failure has been complete; for he has not only not done so, but he has hindered the men who would.

Like most vituperative men, Dr. Campbell is terribly thin-skinned. You may praise, but you must not blame. He seems conscious that honest criticism would tear him to shreds and tatters. We heard of a Scottish paper in the habit of giving pulpit portraits. It was expected the Doctor would be served up in course of time. The Doctor let it be understood that, if anything of the kind were done, he would write the paper into the Broomielaw: and the matter dropped.

The last time I heard the Doctor he was preaching about the Chinese. He told us, what most of us knew well before, that China was a very large country, that it had a wall eighteen hundred miles long, that Confucius lived three or four hundred years before Christ; but there was one thing he did not tell us-that the Chinese call a man of talk, and swagger, and rhodomontade, a paper tiger. But perhaps the Doctor was wise, as comparisons are odious. After all, that such a man, with his fulsome eulogies and violent invective, should have come to be a power, is a melancholy fact-a fact indicating that Dissent will have to undergo a very formidable purifying process before men of taste, and intellect, and learning will be found willing to join its ranks.

THE REV. THOMAS T. LYNCH.

The one great want of the metropolitan pulpit is men abreast of the age, who can sympathize with its pulsation, can respond to its wants, can permeate it with a living faith. The majority of the men in the pulpit cease to be such when they get there. Of the human heart, as it is fevered with pa.s.sion, or boils over with desire, they know nothing. They see men under a mask. Smith does not talk to his minister as he does to Brown; with Brown he is facetious-occasionally a little loose-and, after a good dinner and a bottle of wine, speaks in terms almost of approval of fashionable follies. The minister comes in and the conversation is changed-allusions are made to the 'Evangelical Magazine'-the Missionary Society is referred to-something is said of Sunday Schools, and the world for a time is dropped. Smith, junior, acts in a similar way. Before his minister he a.s.sumes a virtue, if he have it not-is sedate-quiet, anything, in short, but what his intimates find him to be. It seems to be the condition of the pulpit that it shall see life under a mask; and as to thought, that does not move in the regular time-worn ruts, that is condemned at once. It is not the thought of the pulpit, and it therefore must be false. It may be born of vigorous intellect; it may have been nursed by years of severe thought; to get at it, the thinker may have sacrificed many an early friendship-many a cherished a.s.sociation-many a sacred tie; but, nevertheless, the pulpit would blast it with its stern anathemas, and p.r.o.nounces it a crime. Occasionally, a man in the pulpit can act differently. Some few years back, when Professor Scott, then of University College, London, now of Owen's College, Manchester, was in town, it seemed as if an honest attempt was made to meet and win to Christianity the philosophy that was genuine and earnest and religious, though it squared with the creed of no church, and took for its textbook the living heart of man rather than the written Word. In our time the same thing is attempted. The man who has had the courage to make the attempt-and to whom honour should be given for it-is the Rev. Thomas Lynch.

Judged by externals, the Rev. Thomas Lynch is a failure. He is a small spare man; his bodily presence is contemptible; he is a reed shaken by the wind. You get no idea of the church militant when you look at him,

'Of the drum ecclesiastic, Beat with fist instead of a stick.'

He is none of your bully 'Bottoms,' to roar 'so that the Duke will say, let him roar again.' His chapel is in the very unfashionable neighbourhood of Tottenham Court Road. His hearers are few and far between. Out of the immense crowd of church and chapel goers in this great city, not three hundred can be got to hear him; and yet I know no man better worth your hearing. Your popular orators, your Dan O'Connells and your Dr. Leifchilds, are big men-and yet your small men have often the organization favourable to the development of poetry and thought. So is it with Mr. Lynch. It is the old Gospel he preaches; but he handles it in a new and fresh form. What is wearisome from others, comes with a peculiar fascination from him. The truths common-place men have made prosaic and common-place, the magic of his genius can render quite the reverse. His is the rare power, given to the true poet alone, 'to clothe the palpable and the familiar with golden exhalations of the dawn;' and his also is the still rarer power to show piety-

'Sitting as a G.o.ddess bright, In the circle of her light.'

You see that Christianity to him is life and power-no form of words, but a reality; that it fills his heart; that it works in his intellect; that it sanctifies his utterance. Hence it comes fresh to you as it does to him; it is alive with the light of genius and of G.o.d; with him it is applicable to the conditions of existence, to man's need and nature-no tinkling cymbal-no empty bra.s.s. A brother and a man preaches to you; your equal in philosophy, in thought, in lettered lore; your superior in what is greater and n.o.bler still. Yes, that frail man, with an imperfect frame-with a voice so weak that you can scarcely hear him-with an appearance so homely that you would never think that in such a casket a soul of any greatness could be enshrined-can speak to you of the great things of G.o.d-of righteousness, and temperance, and the judgment to come, so that you-worldly scoffer or philosophic sceptic though you be-must listen with admiration and respect.

A tale is told of a certain divine who was much given to a practice common in the Scotch Church, though not very popular here-of exposition.

Once upon a time, when remonstrated with, the worthy preacher, with a candour deserving of all praise, replied, that he did so because, when he was persecuted in one text, he could flee to another. Mr. Lynch needs no such practice. His Bible is no sealed book, but a revelation of light, and splendour, and truth. To him there is nothing common, or barren, or unclean. All is food for his intellect, always active-and his fancy, always copious and rich. Nor even does that, luxuriant though it be, lead him astray. All the while he is in earnest, ill.u.s.trating, as he himself writes in that choice book of his, 'Theophilus Trinal'-that

'the powers that play in fancy, Can a holy earnest show, As the colours of the bubble Shine serenely in the bow.'

His theology we will describe in his own words. In the book we have already referred to, he writes: 'Human nature, like ancient Job, is foul and sore with disease, spirit-worn, and weary with incessant strivings of heart. The Philosophies, as friends, come with their sympathy and wisdom; but their words are dark clouds, edged brightly, which reveal the splendours of truth behind them, but disclose not the orb; and to the parched heart they are but as clouds, with a wind indeed, but without rain. But after the discoursings of philosophy with human nature, there is heard the voice of G.o.d, saying, "I am; behold my works; hope and believe!" As experience enlarges, spiritual questions acc.u.mulate, till at the last they pa.s.s into one great question concerning the world and human life, which the heart expresses not in words, but which fills it with a mute agony of wonder. To this question there is no answer, or hope of any, till the voice of G.o.d is heard, saying, "I am!" This voice from a whisper rises till it has the sound of many waters. Happy are we if we believe and feel that the man of sorrows, and of success after sorrows, Jesus, the Son of G.o.d, is still his real and sufficient representative. He is G.o.d's surety to the world. He, bearing the sins of the world, bears also its difficulties. In the faith of Christ have the men of many generations found fixed standing-place, immovably secure.

In him they have heard the voice, "I am!" "Here we rest," they have said; "our G.o.d, we will not distrust thee!" He bears the golden key of love that shall unlock the secret of the world. This key is a key of escape from a prison; key of entrance to a palace. Oftentimes, in life, we may seem as those who struggle in a wide stormy sea, knowing their strength only by the greatness of their ineffectual efforts. Yet are we safe. For though we may feel as if rather drifting in a slight skiff over boisterous waters than making way over them in a strong vessel, yet if, after dreary days, Columbus found the land which reason taught him to hope for, much more shall we reach the country promised to the faithful.'

Having thus referred to 'Theophilus Trinal,' a book which has already reached a second edition, we may as well add here that Mr. Lynch has published a sermon explanatory of his views and aims, and Four Lectures delivered at Manchester, on various forms of Literature, and is, and has been for some time, one of the princ.i.p.al contributors to a magazine called the 'Christian Spectator'-a magazine understood to be intimately connected with that section of the religious world of which Edward Miall, late M.P., and Editor of the 'Nonconformist,' is the great exponent and type. In this sketch it is impossible altogether to ignore the Lynch Controversy; let me describe it in a few words. In 1856 Mr. Lynch published a volume of religious poems called the Rivulet, some of them for private perusal, some for public worship. The Eclectic Review had a favourable notice of the book; the Morning Advertiser was sorely offended with this review, and, in the style of criticism peculiar to that journal, proceeded to show that the Rivulet was deeply tainted with deadly heresy. Some leading ministers of the denomination to which Mr.

Lynch belonged generously declared their belief that Mr. Lynch was a man to be honoured for his Christian creed and life, whatever the reviewer might think. This led to a still further storm. Not content with attacking Mr. Lynch, the Morning Advertiser made the protesting ministers the subjects of its censure. The British Banner endorsed all these charges, and gave to them, to the immense delight of the Record on one side and the Reasoner on the other, a wider circulation. Considerable confusion followed-reverend gentlemen and Christian laymen quarrelled with all that bitterness which usually distinguishes the divine-pamphlets and letters were plentiful as blackberries. Actually the Congregational Union postponed their autumnal meeting on account of the strife thus generated. The upshot of the whole matter was, that the publicans complained, and the Advertiser for a time directed its attention to more congenial subjects than those connected with theology-that Dr. Campbell's connection with the British Banner was terminated, and that Mr. Lynch had a much speedier sale for his poems than, I fear, otherwise he would have had.

That Mr. Lynch has no larger congregation, I take it, is a reproach to the Christian Church. One would think that there was a divorce between it and talent and taste, or Mr. Lynch would preach to crowded benches.

As it is, however, more time is left him for the press, and, after all, the world is ruled by what is read, not heard. The spoken word may die-the printed one must live. What of truth there is in that is immortal. It will forever bud and blossom and bear fruit.

In conclusion, it may be as well to state here that Mr. Lynch is a minister of the Congregational body, and that his chapel is in Grafton Street, Tottenham Court Road; that he was educated at Highbury College, and then became minister of a small body of seceders from Dr. Leifchild's congregation. He is young yet. He is older in thoughts than in years.

His inner life has been of richer growth than his outer one. A popular preacher he can never become; but to men of thought, especially to men of literature-to the school of Tennyson and Coleridge-his will always be a welcome name.

THE REV. S. MARTIN.

Is the language of the Psalmist, descriptive of himself, universally true? Is it true that man is born in sin, and shapen in iniquity; that he is depraved; that he hates what is good, and loves what is bad? If it be so, that fact, of itself, sufficiently accounts for the war ever carried on between faith and reason, the church and the world. If it be so, it is vain that philosophy attempts to break down the line of demarcation, and to lead men to what it deems a purer faith. At its best and highest it is powerless-nothing better than, in the language of Carlyle, 'Thrice refined pabulum of transcendental moonshine.'

The only remedy for this is to return to the practice of the Wesleys and the Whitfields of an earlier day, to proclaim the naked truth: That man is a rebel against G.o.d-that he is destined to eternal perdition-and that every step he takes, till his heart be touched by divine grace, and won by the attraction of the cross, leads him further and further in his downward way. It is a terrible doctrine, this; yet, strange to say, it is a popular one. The men who preach it are the most popular preachers.

Their Gospel tramples on intellect, and they do the same. According to them, the weak things of the world, and the things that are despised, are powerful to bring to nought things that are; and, therefore, they take their stand above the science and literature and philosophy of man, which they hold but as dirt in comparison with the truths they teach and the discoveries they reveal. Their appeal is not to the intellect or the taste. For neither do they care. They display no pride of learning, no affluence of imagination, no pomp of words. They abound with no thoughts rich and rare. The perilous paths which the human intellect finds for itself, when in wandering mazes lost, they altogether ignore.

Hence their immense success. The common ma.s.s of church and chapel goers are not given, by mental speculation, to trains of abstract and protracted thought. Generally, their education is of the most limited description, consisting of little more than is requisite for the ordinary business of ordinary life. The London _bourgeoise_ are not a very learned folk. Were a Coleridge set down amongst them they would say, 'Much learning hath made this man mad.' They would at any time prefer a Hall to a John Foster, or such a man as Robert Montgomery to Professor Maurice or Mr. Lynch. But they can be reached through the heart, and they love so to be reached. Nor on religious matters is this very difficult to do so. The chief requirements are simplicity and earnestness-that you should not reason, but command and appeal. The more simply and authoritatively this is done, of course, the better it is done. An audience does not love to be distracted, or to have its mental powers severely taxed; but it comes to be excited, to be quickened, to be delivered for a time from the things which are seen and temporal, and to realise those which are unseen and eternal. The men who aim straight at this end-if they have at all the requisite amount of voice and manner-are sure to have an audience fit, and not few.