The London Pulpit

EDWARD MIALL, ESQ

In these latter days men have come to think that no man has a right to enter a pulpit unless he prefixes Rev. to his name – unless he wears a white handkerchief round his neck, and scorns to get a living except from the revenues of the Church. With them a daw

You have been ordained, therefore some mysterious virtue attaches to you. You have ceased to be a man, and become a priest. You live in a different world to what we common-place sinners do. The priest has a different tailor to the rest of mankind. We can tell him by his superfluity of white linen and superabundance of black cloth. We can tell him by the downcast eye and the short-cut hair. We know him not by his works, by the beauty of his living faith, or the savour of his holy life, but by his dress. The tailor makes us. One dummy it adorns with red, and that is a soldier. Another it dresses in fashionable costume, and that is the star of Bond-street and the lion of the ball-room. Another it arrays in antiquated vest and sober black, and that’s the divine. Manners do not make the man, but the tailor does.

Yet, happily, the world is not given up to universal flunkeyism. We have still some who recognise the god-like and divine in man; women not everlastingly falling in love with new bonnets, or manhood not utterly lost in the contemplation of new atrocities in the way of checks for trowsers or stupendous collars for the neck. Strange as it may seem, it is no more strange than true, that there are some who can see poets in shoemakers or whisky-gaugers; heroism in the daughters of fishermen; philosophy in Norwich weaver boys; apostles in tent-makers or Jewish sailors; and something greater and grander still in the ‘Galilean Lord and Christ,’ the faith in whose divine mission has made Europe and America the home of civilisation, of intelligence, and life. Faith in reality has not yet died out amongst us. There are still men who dare to take their stand on living and eternal truths – who look beyond the crust, and see the gem within – who see duty urging them on, and become insensible to aught else. Such men make martyrs – missionaries – reformers; on a small scale, such are village Hampdens or Miltons, inglorious and mute. Such men are sure, sooner or later, to have an earnest crowd of devotees, to exercise a powerful influence on their age, to be the teachers and founders of a school.

Of this class, undoubtedly, Edward Miall, the editor of the ‘Nonconformist,’ is one of the latest. Originally a student at Wymondley College, then ‘settled,’ as the phrase is, at Ware, then the pastor of a respectable congregation at Leicester, he was M.P. for John Bright’s own borough of Rochdale, and is, as the Times confesses, a distinguished Nonconformist. I imagine few of my readers require a description of his thin and wiry frame. As a platform speaker, or as a mere orator, Miall is not very effective; he delights his admirers, but he does not do more. In the pulpit, few men are more fitted to shine. Men enter a place of worship under different feelings to those with which they run to Exeter Hall or the London Tavern. In the one case you are in something of a reverential mood, and you are not disappointed by the want of physical power. With eternity for his theme, the preacher soon causes you to forget a feeble voice or a bodily presence not adapted for effect. The sermonising tone is in keeping with the pulpit, and if every word seem to have an air of preparation, and to tell of labour, you think that it is only after mature preparation a man should speak of religious truth to his fellow-men. Calm self-possession is essential to the sanctuary, and there you miss not the abandon which elicits the cheers of an excited audience.

In the pulpit, Miall could always command attention. His manner, if somewhat artificial and prim, evinced the possession of a mind earnest and decided. His language was nervous; his views were broad and catholic. You felt that the man before you was no reproducer of other men’s thoughts, no worn-out echo, no empty sound; that the Christianity he preached he had found to be good for the intellect and soul of man; that it was the foundation of all his knowledge; that on that, as a great fact, he had rested all the hopes and aspirations of his life. Seemingly void of all animalism – a rock with a gleam of sunlight on it – an incarnate idea – a voice crying in the wilderness – a reed, but not shaken with the wind – Edward Miall is an admirable illustration of what a man with a principle may do. It was a bold step for him to give up the pulpit and to start a newspaper; it was a still bolder thing to circulate that newspaper in the Dissenting world, with unmistakable quotations from Shakspeare staring you flat in the face, and to accustom that world, used to a very watery style of composition, to language remarkable for its elegance and power.

The effect was startling. Miall at once became the object of the intensest hero-worship. The old idols were utterly cast out and destroyed. Old gentlemen, who had led a pompous life for half a century, suddenly found themselves of no account. Their power had passed away as a dream. Students in Dissenting Colleges went over en masse to this second Daniel. It was a time of intense political excitement. The corn laws taxed the poor man’s food; Chartism reared its hideous head; everywhere angry discontent prevailed. Miall thought the time had come for Christian men to interfere; he felt that the struggle for political rights was not inconsistent with the utmost purity of Christian life; that the Church, by its sanction of existing abuses and its reverential worship of the powers that were, had done much to alienate the popular mind from Christianity itself; he felt that the Church, loaded with State pay, would always be liable to suspicion, however excellent her creed or pure her clergy; and he felt, therefore, that in asking men’s political rights, and the dissolution of the union between Church and State, he should demonstrate to the world that Christianity meant something more than corn-laws, or tithes, or the celebrated Chandos clause – something more than a comfortable living for younger sons. It is false to suppose that Miall left the pulpit when he left Leicester. His labours in his new sphere were but a continuation of his labours in the old. In everything he was unchanged. He was merely continuing his Leicester work, appealing, not to a county-town, but to the nation at large. He had changed his platform; but his mission remained the same. Instead of using a feeble voice, he had recourse to a powerful pen. His pulpit was the editorial chair, his church the English race.

Place Miall in the pulpit, and a glance will tell you the man. You can see he has been brought up in a divinity college; he has all the prim and unfashionable air of youths reared in such secluded spots. His pale face tells of thought. You see in his small clear eye that thought crystallises in his brain. His clenched hand, his determined teeth, his shrugged-up shoulders, prepare you for the tenacity with which he clings to what thoughts come to him. On the hustings and elsewhere, Miall is the same – not elated when applauded, not depressed when reviled; unbending, imperturbable, mild of demeanour, yet inflexible in purpose. Yet, after all, his success has been more personal than in what he has done. Who ever talks of complete suffrage now? – yet that was Miall’s darling idea when he first appeared in the political world, and the Association which calls him father – which is to emancipate religion from the fetters of the State – it must yet be confessed by its most ardent admirers, has got a considerable amount of work to do.

It does seem strange that so pale, calm, unmoved a man as Mr. Miall seems to be, should have wandered out of the pulpit and the study, with its old books and everlasting commentaries, and exchanged all that elysian dream-land for the fever of politics and the bustle of the newspaper. It seems stranger still that he should have succeeded, that he should have found favour with our turbulent democracy, not partial to the use of soap, or particularly passionate in their attachment to abstract principles. Strangest of all is it that he should have managed to be returned as an M.P. We should have been the last to have prophesied for Miall such a career. Cato at the theatre, Colonel Sibthorp at a Peace Congress, an Irish patriot speaking common-sense, could not surprise us more. Yet that Miall has achieved what he has, shows how much may be done by the possessor of a principle. Miall is a principle, an abstract principle embodied – that man is everything, that the human being is divine, that the inspiration of the Almighty has given the meanest of us understanding. From the Bible he got that principle, and that is the unerring test by which every case is weighed and every difficulty solved. In religion it led him to reject ecclesiastical organisations and claims, the traditions of the Fathers, the pretensions of divines – everything by which the priest is exalted and the people kept down. In politics, the same rule held good. If all men are equal – if God has made of one blood all nations that dwell upon the face of the earth – what need for aristocratic usurpation or the legislation of a class? If all are equal before God, surely they should all be equal before man. Thus, when angry Chartism was asking for universal suffrage, and the Church was preaching contentment and the duty of submission to superiors, and the danger to religion when a man became political, Miall felt that the time had come for him to step out of the conventional circle of the pulpit into a wider and freer sphere, and to show that Christianity was not alien to human right, and that a man might love God and his brother-man as well. It does seem strange now that men should ever have doubted so plain a truth. How it was doubted some few years since, only men like Miall can tell. Miall’s Anti-State-Churchism was also obtained by a similar process. If there were no need of priests, if every man could be a priest unto God, what need of State patronage and pay? At the best they could but corrupt and enervate the Church. It was teaching it to rely on a worthless arm of flesh rather than on the living God.

With such views, Miall may surely be included in the ‘London Pulpit.’ Tried by his own theory, he is a legitimate subject for a sketch. The truth he held in Leicester he holds in London, and he is still as much a divine in the ‘Nonconformist’ office as when he was pastor of an Independent Church. Occasionally he preaches in one or other of the metropolitan pulpits, and the studied discourse read – but read with admirable distinctness – is of a kind to make you regret that Miall is so seldom seen where he is fitted to do so much. If you have not an orator before you in the common acceptation of the term, you have before you a master of argument, gifted with a clearness of expression and a high order of thought, rare anywhere, especially in the pulpit now-a-days. Buckingham wrote of Hobbes’ style, that

Of Miall’s style precisely the same may be said. It is always as clear, sometimes as cold, as ice. As a still further proof of Miall’s claim to be considered a religious teacher, witness his ‘British Churches’ and his ‘Basis of Faith,’ – books eminently adapted for the age in which we live. Yet Miall can speak to the poor, and does so. The teetotalers have built a hall called the Good Samaritan Hall, on Saffron Hill. It is a low neighbourhood. It is surrounded by the dwellings of the poor, and it is erected there as a light for that dark spot, by means of which the drunkard may emerge into a higher life. The last time I heard Miall was there: the room was full. On a table, dressed in an old blue great coat, stood Miall, preaching to men and women, gathered from the highways and byways, from the crowds for whose souls no one cares. Surely that was a finer sight than if, arrayed in lawn, he was preaching to the fashion and wealth of Vanity Fair.

CARDINAL WISEMAN

Roman Catholicism seems part and parcel of human nature. Luther was not more a product of his age than Leo X. That one man should be a Papist seems as natural as that another man should be a Protestant. Our sects and schisms are not a very edifying sight. The greater number of them are eternally wrangling, and uttering at the best but discordant sounds. Few of them make any provision for the sensuous, for the love of decency and order and solemn ceremonial, which is characteristic of some minds. Many of them are actually contemptible when you come into close collision with them, and examine their working, and watch their effect. The harder, the more literal, the more matter-of-fact they are, the greater is the chance that some subjected to their discipline should rebel against it and become converts to the ancient faith. Mr. Lucas was a Quaker till he became the editor of the Tablet. It is very probable that Robert Owen may yet die in communion with Rome. The Roman Catholic Church offers unity – rest for the tempest-tossed – and to the young and the ardent and the impassioned an attractive worship and an imposing form.

By the side of it – the Protestant substitute for it – the Evangelical Alliance seems a poor thing indeed. Hence it is that the cry of Roman Catholic ascendancy has always been raised ever since the Church of England appropriated its wealth and seated itself in its place. It always has been in danger from the Church of Rome, and it always will. Human nature is always the same. What has grown out of it at one time will grow out of it another. Heresy, as Sir Thomas Browne well put it, is like the river Arethusa, which in one place is lost sight of, but only to reappear further on. Each age has its own development. Each age but repeats the past, as the son in his turn reproduces the blunders and the youthful follies of his sire.

It is true we get wise, and —

But the coming age will not take your wisdom – will not follow your footmarks – will experiment for itself. Tell your passionate son that the fair face he now dotes on, in ten years he will have forgotten, and he cannot believe you. It is just as vain to believe that the section who believe in Rome will cease to do so. Roman Catholicism has some congeniality with man, and therefore Protestantism will always be in danger from it – and the more honest this Protestantism is – the more it takes its stand upon the truth and nothing but the truth – the more it relinquishes the political ascendancy it has assumed, the greater that danger will become. Cardinal Wiseman is an illustration of this. Queen Elizabeth or Oliver Cromwell would have soon put a stop to Cardinal Wiseman’s career, but they would have done so in spite of the principles of religious liberty. Now those principles are acknowledged, and England trusts in Exeter Hall – and Dr. Cumming. Protestantism may well be in danger.

One Sunday, hearing that the Cardinal was to preach at Brook Green, Hammersmith, I made the best of my way thither. The church was crowded, and I considered myself lucky in being shown by the woman who acted as pew-opener into a good seat. Yet this good luck had to be paid for. ‘A shilling, sir, if you please,’ said the woman curtseying. ‘A what?’ I repeated. ‘A shilling, sir, if you please,’ was the reply. The woman seemed to consider it so reasonable a charge that I of course complied with her request. At the same time, recollecting that for half that sum you are admitted into what I suppose is considered the dress circle in St. George’s Cathedral, I did think that sixpence would have been sufficient. The service was conducted in the usual manner. It was longer than that of the Church of England as practised at St. Barnabas, and a good deal more attractive. After mass had been celebrated, there was a hush, and immediately a procession from the side door; what the procession consisted of I cannot say. My eyes, and those of every one else, I suppose, were turned upon the Cardinal alone.

And first let me describe the Cardinal’s gown; – it was composed of rich red silk; besides he had a red cap, which he laid aside when preaching, and, in addition, he had a very handsome robe round his neck, and a lace or muslin gown of shorter extent than the red one, which came down to his feet. Only that fluent writer the Court newsman, or he who tells in the columns of the Morning Post of the finery of Drawing Rooms, when the beauty of England prostrates itself before royalty, could do justice to the dress the Cardinal wore. Of course it was a grotesque one – but it was a finer dress than that of an English Bishop, who seems all sleeves, and if you do make an object of yourself, the more striking the object is the better – so that, as far as dress is concerned, the Cardinal beats one of our Archbishops hollow. I think also in his preaching he would be more than a match for them. Him you can hear. He is a tall, stately man. There is an air of power about him. His voice is loud, and brassy, and unpleasant, but it is not monotonous, and his action is very animated and good. He stands before the altar, and takes a text which generally forms an appropriate introduction to his discourse, and delivers a well-reasoned, argumentative address, not cut up into heads, as the manner of some is, but connected and complete. With a fine voice, the Cardinal would be a very effective preacher. As it is, he does very well. I should say he has little imagination, little sentiment, little rhetoric, but that he has great stores of learning and power of argument. He is very plausible, and seems very earnest and sincere, he preaches principally of the peculiar doctrines of his Church; how it is the one on which God’s Spirit rests; how it is the one true guide to heaven; how it has the one true Divine utterance, to which, if man do not listen, he is lost for ever. The Cardinal has a square, massive face, with anything but a pleasant expression. He is yet in his prime. His hair is brown, his complexion fresh, but inclined to be dark. His eyes are concealed by spectacles. A fat, double chin, and large cheeks, minus whiskers, give him a very sensual appearance. But it is not a pleasant sensuality, the jolly sensuality of a Falstaff or an alderman, the sensuality suggestive of good dinners, with good company to flavour them. It is the sensuality of a proud, arrogant, and imperious monk.

Cardinal Wiseman is by birth a Spaniard, and by descent an Irishman. He was born in 1802. At an early age he was sent to St. Cuthbert’s Catholic College at Ushaw, near Durham. From thence he was removed to the English College at Rome, where he was ordained a priest, and made a Doctor of Divinity. He was Professor for a time in the Roman University, and then made Rector of the English College at Ushaw. Dr. Wiseman came to England in 1835, and in the winter of that year delivered a Course of Lectures on the connection between Science and Revealed Religion, which, when published, obtained for him a high reputation for scholarship and learning in all divisions of the Christian church. He subsequently returned to Rome, and is understood to have been instrumental in inducing Pope Gregory XVI. to increase the Vicars Apostolic in England. The number was doubled, and Dr. Wiseman came back as coadjutor to Dr. Walsh, of the Midland District. He was appointed president of St. Mary’s College, Oscott. In 1847 he again returned to Rome. This second visit led to further preferment. He was made Pro-Vicar Apostolic of the London District, in place of Dr. Griffiths, deceased. Subsequently he was appointed coadjutor to Dr. Walsh, and in 1849, on the death of Dr. Walsh, he became Vicar Apostolic of the London District. In August he went again to Rome, not expecting, as he says, to return, ‘but delighted to be commissioned to come back’ clothed in new dignity. In a Consistory held on the 30th of September, Nicholas Wiseman was elected to the dignity of Cardinal by the title of Saint Prudentia, and was appointed Archbishop of Westminster – a title which drove silly churchmen into fits, and which made even Dissenters wild. Under the Pope he is the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England, and a Prince of the Church of Rome, at which place he now principally resides. His sojourn in England is understood to be but temporary. He has published several sermons, and a few volumes, in support of transubstantiation and the other doctrines of the church of which he is such an ornament. But his literary reputation is principally based on the series of lectures to which I have already referred.

The Cardinal has no great love for our age, and little love for England, if we are to judge by his epistle to his clergy on the Indian Mutiny. In a sermon on the Social and Intellectual State of England, compared with its Moral Condition, published in 1850, he asks, ‘Are we convinced that the real moral tone of society in every part is on the increase? Is it not notorious that crimes, and crimes even that were unknown among us a few years ago – that deeds of violence which not even the hot passionate blood of the South is here to palliate – that such crimes as these are increasing in the great masses of our population? Is it not well known that the relations of the family are sadly isolated, and that multitudes live without a consciousness of their sacred nature? Are we improving the people in regard to these things? Are we doing anything to convince them more thoroughly, and upon true Church grounds, of their great duty to God, to society, to their families, and to themselves? I fear we must answer no; and I will say boldly that there are reasons why it should be so. There are immense obstacles in the religious institutions of the country to this being possible – because it is not in their power to come home to the feelings, to the affections of the poor. They raise not up any who devote themselves to them – who sacrifice themselves for them – who find a higher reward than man can give in making themselves servants of the servants of God. And what is the visible result of this? That any great institutions which make us think that we are acting so powerfully on the masses, reach not to the very depths of the miseries which have to be probed, and which have to be healed. We are content with raising the position of the artizan, with making him more intelligent, with providing him with the means of education, with instructing him in his leisure hour to store his mind with knowledge. All this is good, and yet the institutions that work upon that class have not of their own nature a direct moral tendency.’ All this may be true or not, yet it is clear that the institutions which the Cardinal would recommend, equally fail, so far as morality is concerned. A Protestant is not less moral than a Catholic. The population of England is as moral as that of France. Roman Catholic Ireland can boast no superiority over Protestant Scotland. Luther has not to answer for all the sins of the world.

THE REV. DOCTOR WOLFF

There are some people who maintain the Wandering Jew to be a myth. I believe the contrary – that he exists amongst us, and that he is known to men as Dr. Wolff. I hope the Hon. Mrs. Norton will make a note of this. It is a fact of which she ought to be aware, as should Dr. Croly, and especially Dumas, otherwise his wondrous tale will be incomplete. Yes, Dr. Wolff is the Wandering Jew – not the melancholy personage of the poet and the novelist, but a fat jolly Jew, for whom ‘the law having a shadow of good things to come’ has ceased to exist, and to whom, if I may imagine by his portly presence and unctuous face, the good things have already come. We may look long ere we see in his countenance