The London Pulpit Part 5

Thus Mr. Martin has won his way, and become a power in the pulpit. About fifteen years since, he came to London from a provincial college-a college which the self-satisfied young gentlemen of Highbury, with their acknowledged popular preaching talents, regarded in much the same way as Nazareth was regarded by the Jews. A new chapel had just been erected in Lambeth by the Congregationalists, and immediately Mr. Martin filled it.

Where there had been a few wretched hovels there rose up a temple crowded with worshippers. Every part was full. The preacher was young; his style was exceedingly simple; but he had the calm self-possession of a man with a mission to men's souls, and he had a clear voice, and a manner grave and, at times, pathetic or severe. It was seldom that men had seen, on such young shoulders, so old a head; and the Dissenting world rushed to hear the boyish preacher who seemed miraculously endued with the wisdom and gravity of age, and whose popularity even seemed to have left him simple and unaffected, in spite of it all. In time, a new chapel was erected in Westminster, not far from the residence of royalty; and of that chapel Mr. Martin became the minister. There he yet remains, and there his popularity is as great as ever. You are lucky if you get a seat, the chapel, which has recently been enlarged, being always full.

Mr. Martin's forte is seriousness. He appears always solemn and devout.

In the man himself you see no sign of great intellectual power. Dressed in sober black, close b.u.t.toned to the chin, you see a young man, with a pale heavy face, worn down by work. You may listen a long time before fire flashes from those eyes and lips, or before that brain thinks out of the commonest style of pulpit thought. It is really remarkable with how little instrumentality Mr. Martin produces so great an effect. He looks perfectly unimpressible-as if the world's vanities never could charm him-as if he pa.s.sed his life in some hermit's dismal cell, and not in the city's pa.s.sionate and restless crowd. You would fancy that he was the inhabitant of an altogether different sphere, that he never laughed or smiled or read 'Punch;' and this appearance, I take it, is some help to his pulpit success. Charles Fox said it was impossible for any one to be as wise as Lord Thurlow looked. I would not go so far as to say that no man can be as devout as Mr. Martin looks, but certainly his appearance must be in his favour with the large cla.s.s who attend public worship, although his nasal tw.a.n.g is not very agreeable, and his face itself is more indicative of the priest of narrow thought and of ascetic habits, than of the man with glowing sympathies and generous life.

In the pulpit all this tells. Wait awhile, if you are sceptical, and you will soon be convinced of the fact. The ma.s.s around you will soon be permeated by the preacher's power. As he unfolds his subject-as he goes directly to the point-as, with plain and terrible language, he warns men of sin, and of its fearful results-as he expatiates on the terrors and splendours of a world to come-as he realises the day when the trumpet shall sound, when the grave shall give up its spoil, when the dead, small and great, shall stand before G.o.d-you see that he has got at the heart of his audience-that it hangs upon his lips-that he sways it at his will-that at his bidding it trembles and despairs-or that it believes and hopes, and loves and lives. And all this seems done with little effort, in the boldest and plainest language possible.

A man of one book is always a formidable foe. Mr. Martin is a man of one book. That one book, as he reads it, proclaims one fact-salvation by the cross; and to proclaim that fact is the one mission of his life, and the one message on his lips. Out of that book other men may get more; out of it Mr. Martin gets but one great and all-absorbing idea. This being the case, one is not surprised that Mr. Martin is not met with frequently out of the pulpit, or that what little he has published has been in the sermon line. He has identified himself with Ragged Schools and the Early Closing Movement, and the United Kingdom Alliance for the Suppression of the Liquor Traffic; and has, I believe, written and spoken in their favour. But the pulpit is his peculiar sphere: there he is great-there he has no rival near the throne-there he speaks as one having authority, as an accredited amba.s.sador from G.o.d to man. In thus acting he shows his wisdom; for there he has achieved a success which men of greater brilliancy, of wider intellectual power, have often sought in vain.

Cowper draws his model preacher:

-'Simple, grave, sincere- In doctrine uncorrupt; in language plain, And plain in manner; decent, solemn, chaste, And natural in gesture; much impress'd Himself, as conscious of his awful charge, And anxious mainly that the flock he feeds May feel it too; affectionate in look, And tender in address, as well becomes A messenger of grace to guilty man.'

Mr. Martin might have sat for the portrait.

THE REV. A. J. MORRIS.

The Rev. A. J. Morris is an Independent, _alias_ a Congregational, minister at Holloway. Of course my fashionable readers don't know where Holloway is. I may as well then briefly inform them that it is a suburb of London, not far from Islington and the New Cattle Market. Holloway belongs to the Dissenting part of London. The metropolis is cut up into sections:-Quakers congregate in Tottenham, and Edmonton, and Stoke Newington; Jews in Houndsditch; the Low Church party is very strong in Clapham; at the east, down by the river, there is an immense number of Baptists; in that large district, known at election times as the Tower Hamlets, Dissenting chapels are plentiful as blackberries, while in the more fashionable districts of Chelsea and Brompton you will hardly find one. The philosopher of Malmesbury (Sir W. Molesworth could have shown you the pa.s.sage in the Leviathan) argues that a man should always be of the religion of his country, and thus is it these sects have become hereditary in their respective localities. You never hear of Puseyism in the Tower Hamlets; you might as soon expect to find the Italian Opera there as a St. Barnabas. Almost all the Dissenting families of London have been born, brought up, and gathered to their fathers in one locality. To this day the Dissenters of London are buried on almost the very spot where De Foe wrote his satires, and Dr. Watts his hymns.

In spite, however, of this intuitive faith in the past, a faith no logic, no mental illumination, can root out or destroy, dissent has its new chapels and new men. Of these latter the Rev. A. J. Morris is one.

People who read Mr. Ruskin, and talk sentimentally about architecture-a practice very rare among architects themselves-will see in Mr. Morris's chapel something of the character of the man. It is new, but still it appropriates to itself what is graceful and useful in the past. For instance, it has more of an Episcopalian character than dissenting chapels at the time of its erection generally had. Up to that time dissenters had prided themselves on the uncomely and unpoetical aspect of the places in which they met for public worship. Your dissenting chapel was generally a square, built of the ugliest red brick, and rendered hideous internally by square deal boxes, called pews, in which the people sat under a common-place divine, generally as plain as the place. Such was the meeting-house, as it was termed in the hallowed days of dissent, in the good old times. The whole affair was an abomination to men of taste. Mr. Morris has introduced a great reform-he has abolished the pew system. He has as graceful a gothic chapel as heart could desire; his place of worship is reverential and in keeping with its character. 'That man of primitive piety,' as glorious old Isaak Walton termed him, Mr.

George Herbert, says in his Temple:-

'quit thy state, All equal are within the church's gate.'

Such certainly is the language of Mr. Morris's chapel, and such I imagine more or less would be the language of Mr. Morris himself.

Having entered the chapel and got a seat, a matter of some little difficulty,-for the place, which is not very large, is almost always full,-of course you naturally look in the direction of the pulpit. There you will see a man in the prime of life, of average size, with a light complexion, with a head nearly bald, and with what little hair it can boast of a colour popularly known as sandy. The head is well shaped, round and compact, and complete. Mr. Morris's appearance is that of a recluse, of a student of books and his own thoughts rather than of manners and of men. He wears no gown, but, nevertheless, has an ecclesiastical appearance, partly possibly resulting from the fact of his wearing an M.B. waistcoat. M.B., perhaps it may be as well to observe on the authority of a late Edinburgh Reviewer, means Mark of the Beast, and was a term used by clerical tailors to denote those square, closely b.u.t.toned vests, much affected at one time by curates and other young people suspected of a Puseyite tendency. Mr. Morris's voice is loud, but not very agreeable. He has a singular mannerism which is anything but pleasant till you are used to it, and when, as was the case the last time I heard him preach, the reverend gentleman asks-'Ow shall we lay up for ourselves treasure in Eaven?' you are apt to forget the gravity of the occasion, and to indulge yourself with a feeble smile.

In what Mr. Morris himself says, however, you will find no occasion for a smile. What he says is worth hearing. In this unsettled age you will see that he has settled convictions-that his religion is a real thing-that it is that which his intellect has fed on-that by which he has squared his life-that by the truth of which he lives, and by the lamp of which he is prepared to find his way when he comes to the valley of the shadow of death. The peculiarity of Mr. Morris as a preacher seems to me to be healthy manliness. He preaches as a man to men. Those whom he addresses are most of them engaged in business, and his aim is to teach them that Christianity is as fit for the counting-house as it is for the closet-as fit for the week-day as the Sabbath-as fit for the world as it is for the church. Some men once in the pulpit seem to forget that there is such a thing as the living present. They are perpetually dwelling on the past, trying to make dry bones live. They can tell you what the old divines said. They can quote their favourite commentators. They can parody the religion of men whose religion at any rate was a real thing, but that is all. Of our times they have no idea. Of the human heart, as it beats and burns in this age of the-

"Steamship and the railway, and the thoughts that move mankind,"

they are profoundly ignorant. They are strangers in a strange land.

Amongst us but not of us-of an alien race and speaking an alien tongue-with garments, it may be, unspotted by the world, but without the strength and the heart and the rich experience which contact with, and mastery over, the world alone can give. Mr. Morris is not one of this cla.s.s-nor is he a painter of idle pictures, whose talk is of fields ever clothed in living green-of white garments-of pavements of sapphire and of shining thrones-nor is he a dreamy sentimentalist lisping out the attributes of the Majesty of heaven and of earth in terms of maudlin endearment, as some drivelling dotard might tell of the goodness and the virtue and the precocious cleverness of the child of his old age. Were Mr. Morris either of these, he might have a larger audience-he might be a more popular preacher-but he certainly would be a less useful one. He thinks, and he gives you something to think about as well. His own creed he has not taken upon trust, nor does he want you to do so either. He has a clear, definite conception of spiritual realities, and he aims to give you the same. Mr. Morris has not genius-but he has intellect clear and strong-perhaps a little deficient in fire, and a habit rare, but invaluable in a minister, of independent thought and action. As a preacher he ranks high in his denomination. Out of the pulpit he is almost unknown. As a platform orator I know not that he has any actual existence at all. I imagine he belongs to that growing cla.s.s in all denominations who have less faith in public religious meetings every year.

As a writer, Mr. Morris has acquired some little reputation; not that he has written much, but that what little he has done has been well done.

His chief performance is, 'Religion and Business, or Spiritual Life in one of its Secular Departments.' The _Spectator_-a journal not much given to theology, especially that of Dissent-was compelled to confess it was a 'series of able and thoughtful lectures on the union of Christianity and business, addressed apparently to a Nonconformist congregation. The topic is treated forcibly, without the mannerism frequent among dissenters, and the rules of life enforced are not impracticably rigid.' He has also published several sermons; 'Christ, the Spirit of Christianity,' is one. A 'Review of the Year 1850' is another; and another is the 'Roar of the Lion,' which, as it was suggested by the papal aggression, and was praised in the _British Banner_, was, I should fear, an inferior production. His last work is, 'Glimpses of Great Men; or, Biographic Thoughts of Moral Manhood,' a work intended to ill.u.s.trate, by the examples of Oberlin, Hampden, Luther, Fox, Bunyan, Cromwell, Milton, Moore, De Foe, Knox, Whitfield, Foster, Irving, Christian heroism in its beauty and power. The sketches are short but practical and to the point, well worthy especially of the attention of the young, for whose benefit they were more especially designed.

The Baptist Denomination

THE REV. WILLIAM BROCK.

In the times of Robert Hall, when the talents of that rather over-rated orator gave the Baptists a lift in public estimation, and made them respectable, save in the eyes of gentlemen of very strict Church principles, the Rev. Mr. Kinghorn, a strange spare man, a keen debater, and a great Hebrew scholar, presided over a select Baptist congregation, at St. Mary's, Norwich.

Norwich at that time was very literary. William Taylor, the first Englishman to sound the German Ocean, and to return laden with its spoils of heresy and erudition, lived there; as did also Wilkin, the Editor of the best edition of that rare light of Norwich, Sir Thomas Brown, and William Youngman, a severe critic, though a writer little known beyond the city in which he so long resided. At that time Norwich drove a considerable trade in logic as well as in woollens. The whole city had a disputatious air. The weaver-boys-and William Johnson Fox, now M.P. for Oldham, was one of them-learned to dispute and define and doubt. There Harriet Martineau philosophised in petticoats, and George Borrow, at its grammar-school, fitted himself for the romance of his future life. In a city thus given to thought were required, in the pulpit, men of superior power-especially in the Dissenting pulpit; for, while the clergyman of the Establishment can say "Hear the Church!" his Dissenting brother can only say "Hear me!" and that he must say to people, the condition of whose existence is free thought.

At Norwich, Mr. Kinghorn, it was considered, was equal to his post, and held it long. He gathered around him a congregation rich and intelligent. He instilled into their minds the strictest principles of Baptism. To their communion-table none were to be admitted-no matter how pure their creed, how consistent their life, how Christian their heart-unless they had been the subject of water immersion. It seems strange that men should ever have quarrelled about such trifling matters; and yet to their heaven Mr. Kinghorn and his flock would admit none but the totally baptised. (If sectarians had their own way, what a place this world would be!) But, in time, Mr. Kinghorn obeyed the common law and died, and the church had to seek out a successor.

After several ministers had preached on probation, the choice fell upon the Rev. William Brock-then, I believe, a student fresh from the Baptist College at Stepney. The choice was a happy one. The cause prospered, the church increased, the place was enlarged, and still the pews were full. It was considered a great treat to hear Mr. Brock. Of course the female s.e.x fluttered round the new pastor. Of course the gentlemen fluttered round them. An air of taste pervaded the chapel. It was called "the fashionable watering-place."

But this was not to last for ever: a time was coming when the pastor would be removed. Amongst the great railway contractors, one of them, it seems, was a Baptist, and an M.P. Sir M. Peto-for it is he to whom I allude-became M.P. for Norwich, and bought an estate in the neighbourhood. This naturally led to his connection with Mr. Brock, and this connection led to Mr. Brock's removal to London. In the immediate neighbourhood of the baronet's residence, Russell Square, there was no popular Baptist preacher. To go every Sunday to Devonshire Square, where the _elite_ of the Baptists did congregate, was a long and dreary ride.

It were far better that the mountain should come to Mahomet than that Mahomet should go to the mountain. Sir M. Peto did not wish in vain.

These great railway contractors can do what they like. In a very short while a very fashionable chapel was built in the neighbourhood of Bedford Square. It stands out in bold relief by the side of a tawdry Episcopalian chapel-of-ease and a French Protestant place of worship. As soon as the new chapel was completed, Mr. Brock was duly installed as pastor.

Mr. Brock's _debut_ in London was a decided success. The chapel, which, I should think, could contain fifteen hundred hearers, is invariably crammed. If you are late, it is with difficulty you will get standing room. The genteel part of the chapel is down stairs, and if you do get a seat, you will find it a very comfortable one indeed. In a very snug pew, at the extreme end on the right, you will see Sir M. Peto and his family. Half-way down on your left you will see the spectacles and long head of Dr. Price, Editor of the 'Eclectic Review.' Lance, the beautiful painter of fruits and flowers, also attends here, but I believe you will find him in the gallery. The people all round you look comfortable and well fed, and no one presents a more comfortable and well-fed appearance than the Rev. W. Brock himself.

There he stands, in that handsome pulpit, in that richly-ornamented chapel, with all those genteel people beneath him and around him-a stout, square-built man-a true type of Saxon energy and power-without the slightest pretensions to elegance or grace. Such men as he are not the men young ladies run after, fall in love with, get to write in their alb.u.ms, buy engravings of for their boudoirs; but, nevertheless, with their strong pa.s.sionate speech, and indomitable pluck, they are the men who move the world. During the war, we are told, it was the weight of the British soldiery that carried everything before it. The Frenchman might be more scientific, more agile, more skilful every way, but the moment the word was given to charge, resistance was hopeless-you might as well try to stay the progress of a torrent or an avalanche. What the Englishman is in the field, Brock is in the pulpit. You are borne down by his weight. He gives you no chance. On comes the tide, and you are swept away. You are learned-evidently the man before you has little more than the average learning picked up in a hurry, in a second-rate academic inst.i.tution. You like to theorise on the beautiful and divine-the preacher before you cares nothing for your flimsy network, born of Plato and Sch.e.l.ling. You explain away and refine-Brock does nothing of the kind: 'It is in the Bible-it is there!' he exclaims, and that is sufficient for him. You may say it is absurd, it is opposed to reason and common-sense. You can no more move Brock than you can the Monument.

I take it, this is the secret of Brock's success: he is positive and dogmatic, and people want something positive and dogmatic. It is only one day in the week that Smithers can spare for theology; and, wearied with the cares of six working days, he requires the theology he gets on the seventh shall be positive and plain. With the monk in 'Anastasius,'

he feels that life is too short to hear both sides. The British public does not like to be bothered. It likes everything settled for it, and not by it. Hence it is Macaulay's 'History of England' is so popular.

Your popular preacher must be dogmatic: the more dogmatic he is, the more popular he will be. Brock's earnest dogmatism does everything for him.

There is no great beauty in his style, there are no bursts of splendour in his sermons, there is no speculation in his eye; but he has a vehement tone, is plain, affectionate, practical, full of point and power.

Brock is one of the Catholic Baptists, and will admit to the table of their common Lord all who believe in Christ as their common head. He has not improved by his removal to London. He preached better sermons in Norwich than here, and he has got a slight affectation which I don't remember at Norwich. He mouths his a's as if he had, to use a common phrase, an apple-dumpling in his mouth, and occasionally painfully reminds you of a vulgar man trying to speak fine; but I believe this is unconsciously done on his part. At Norwich he was an ardent politician, advocated complete suffrage, defended the Anti-State-Church movement, and is, I believe, one of the few leading London Dissenting ministers who still fraternise with the a.s.sociation now known as the Society for the Liberation of Religion from State Patronage and Control. As a platform orator, he is very effective: he is everywhere the same-everywhere you see the same hearty dogmatism and genial sincerity. You may differ from such a man, but you cannot dislike him; you would rather have him for a friend than a foe. To his own denomination he is a tower of strength.

He is the first man who has made the Baptists popular at the West-end.

Till Brock came, the Baptist congregations in the neighbourhood were very meagre. Brock cannot do for his sect what Hall did, or what John Foster did. By his writing he does not appeal to the religious cultivated mind of England, nor by his graceful eloquence does he commend it to men of taste; but he speaks to the practical English mind, to the shop-keeping middle cla.s.s, of whom I believe he was originally one, and to the door of whose instinct and hearts he evidently holds the key. Scarlett succeeded, we are told, because there sat listening in the jury-box twelve Mr. Scarletts. For the same reason Mr. Brock succeeds. The men he speaks to are men of like pa.s.sions with himself.

THE REV. J. HOWARD HINTON, M.A.

In a very unaristocratic neighbourhood-in no more fashionable a locality than that of Devonshire Square, Bishopsgate Street-preaches the Rev. J.

Howard Hinton, till Mr. Brock came to London the acknowledged great man of the Baptist denomination.

Nor was this t.i.tle undeserved. If the possession of a powerful mind-subtle, a.n.a.lytic, acute-a mind fertile in the destruction of fallacies, and in the reception and exposition of great truths, gives its possessor any weight at all, Mr. Hinton must, in any rank of life, have occupied no mean place. Still more may be said in his favour, especially in his character of a Christian minister-that his language is forcible-that his own feelings are strong-that in season and out of season it is evidently his aim to expound and declare, to the utmost of his ability, Christian truth.

Yet Mr. Hinton has a very small congregation. I should think Devonshire Square Chapel cannot contain more than five hundred hearers at the very outside-a very small proportion, it must be admitted, of the intelligent frequenters of public worship in London.

The real reason of this scant attendance, I suppose, is that Mr. Hinton has no clap-trap about him-that he has none of the fascinating airs of the popular Evangelical divine-that he has long past that time of life when young ladies take an interest in their darling minister-and that, if you wish to get any good from the preacher, you must not merely listen to him, but must use your own intellectual powers as well-an exertion far from common amongst the church and chapel goers of London. Six days in the week those who have brains are working them in this crowded city, and the seventh they wish to be a day of rest. They take the Sabbath as a pleasant opiate-as a kind of spiritual G.o.dfrey's Cordial for the soul-that they may go back to the world with renewed energy and power.

To such Mr. Hinton does not preach: with such he is no favourite. No singer of sweet songs-no player upon pleasant instruments is he. Tall, sickly with the work and study of a life, grey-haired, inelegant as all book-worms and men of thought-with the exception of Sir Bulwer Lytton-are, with a voice by no means melodious, but tremulous with emotion as it is played upon by the soul within: such is Howard Hinton.

If you stay to listen-if you have sense enough to see the heart in that ungainly frame and the intellect in that capacious brain-you will hear a sermon that will repay you well. From whatever subject he is preaching on Mr. Hinton always manages to extract something new; you are really instructed by his sermons; your views become clearer and more enlarged; you understand better the Christian scheme. Mr. Hinton is more than what I have here implied. He is something more than a great reasoner or acute divine. He has a heart, and he speaks out of it to you. He excites your emotions as well as convinces your understanding. There is flame as well as light in that pulpit-flame, perhaps, all the more glowing that you did not expect to find it there. On all subjects Mr. Hinton is an independent, an original, and a fearless preacher. On some he is peculiar-on most he is far ahead of the denomination to which he belongs.

This is, especially, the case with regard to the strict observance of the Sabbath. Mr. Hinton believes that it was made for man, not man for it-a fact of which the denominations which pride themselves on being Evangelical seem to have become utterly oblivious. Mr. Hinton sees in Christianity a principle at variance with the observance of set times.

He sees in man's nature abundant reason why the man who does not profess to be religious should not be chained down to a form. He sees the man of genuine religion will so shape his life that every day shall be a Sabbath, and be religiously observed; and that, if he be not religious, it is worse than mockery to ask him religiously to observe a day. It is to the credit of Mr. Hinton that he has ably and faithfully preached this doctrine-a doctrine which, if it be much longer denied by the clergy of this country, threatens to be attended with most disastrous results. It is dangerous to establish an inst.i.tution which the Author of Christianity never made; and if ministers choose to say that Christianity is inconsistent with fresh air-inconsistent with the preservation of physical life-inconsistent with the laws the G.o.d of nature has ordained, the certainty is that the lower cla.s.ses in 'populous cities pent,' who toil from morning till night six days in the week, will do as they now practically do-reject Christianity altogether.

I have said Mr. Hinton's theology is original. A short sketch of it will soon make this clear. Thus, while he holds the doctrine of human depravity, he contends that 'No man is subject to the wrath of G.o.d, in any sense or degree, because of Adam's sin, but every man stands as free from the penal influences of his first parent's crime as though Adam had never existed, or as though he himself were the first of mankind.'

Calvinism Mr. Hinton _in toto_ explodes. He says: 'Without being moved thereto by the Spirit of G.o.d, and without any other influence than the blessing which G.o.d always gives to the use of means, you are competent to alter your mind towards G.o.d by obeying the dictates of your own conscience, and employing the faculties of your own being. Think on your ways, and you will turn your feet to G.o.d's testimonies. This is what G.o.d requires you to do in order to obtain deliverance from His wrath; and, except you do it without regard to any communication of His Spirit, he leaves you to perish.' At times Mr. Hinton seems to contradict himself.

But, after all, is not the theme one on which the human intellect can never be perfectly consistent and clear?

At one time Mr. Hinton was much in public life. In the Anti-Slavery agitation he took a conspicuous part. He was also connected with the Anti-State-Church a.s.sociation, and is still a great advocate of voluntary education. Within the last few months several able letters have appeared, from his pen, on this subject, in the 'Daily News.' But on the platform he is not often heard, as was his wont. Mr. Hinton was settled, I believe, originally, at Reading, where he won a high reputation-I am told the Rev. Mr. Milman, the poet, who resided in Reading at the time, always spoke of Mr. Hinton as by far 'the most original-minded man among us'-and came to London when Dr. Price resigned, on account of ill health, the pastorate of the church in Devonshire Square. Mr. Hinton then became his successor.

His publications are various. The following list will show his industry at least: 'Athanasia,' in four books; 'On Immortality in 1849;' 'Letters written during a Tour in Germany in 1851;' 'Memoirs of William Knibb, the celebrated Missionary in Jamaica;' 'A History of the United States of North America;' 'Theology, or an Attempt towards a Consistent View of the Whole Counsel of G.o.d;' 'The Work of the Holy Spirit in Conversion Considered;' 'Elements of Natural History; or, an Introduction to Systematic Zoology, chiefly according to the Cla.s.sification of Linnaeus.'

Besides, Mr. Hinton has written pamphlets in favour of Voluntaryism in religion and education, and published sermons innumerable. In the pulpit or the press, his labours are most unremitting. He may be denied the possession of great talent, but all must admit his power of persevering toil.