The London Pulpit

SHERIDAN KNOWLES

A playwright in the pulpit seems an anomaly. The stage and the pulpit have generally been at bitter war. Jeremy Collier had the best of it in his day, and I believe would have the best of it in ours. The stage with its paint and sawdust and glaring gas – the stage as it is – is the last place to which an earnest man would turn with hope. Originally religious, it has long ceased to be such. It has become simply an amusement – if the reproduction of all that is heartless and flippant and rotten in society be considered as such. Our English Catos don’t go to the theatre at all, and when one who is not a Cato goes there, it becomes to him a sight melancholy rather than otherwise, unless he have sunk altogether into the unhappy life of that dullest of all dogs, a gay man about town. As to the stage being a school of morals, the idea is the most preposterous that ever entered the head of man. At the best, when it collects a goodly company – when it is lit up with beauty – when it resounds with merriment – when it is electrified by wit – it is a pleasant place for the consumption of an idle hour. More it is not now. More it has never been since people could read and write. More it can never be.

Yet even the stage has had its saints, as in old times the world gave up its high-spirited and gay to the cause of God. If emperors have become monks, it is not wonderful nor surpassing the bounds of probability that men should give up writing plays and take to writing sermons instead. A few years back Gerald Griffin exchanged the world for a monastery. In our own day Sheridan Knowles is an example of a still greater change, for he has left the stage for the pulpit, and has consecrated the evening of his life to the advocacy of Christian truth. I fear in this latter character he is not so successful as in his former. Well do I remember him at the Haymarket. It was the first time I ever was inside a theatre. The enjoyment of the evening, I need not add, was intense. A first visit to a theatre is always enough to bewilder the brain. You never see men of such unsullied honour – women of such gorgeous beauty – scenes of such thrilling interest in real life – and when I learned that the drama itself was the production of Knowles, my admiration of him knew no bounds. But I confess in the pulpit he did not appear to me to so great an advantage. It may be that I am older. It may be that time has robbed me, as he does every one else, of the wonder and enthusiasm which, to the eye of youth, makes everything it looks on beautiful and bright. It may be that I, as every one else does, feel daily more deeply —

but nevertheless the fact, I fear, is but clear, that Knowles does not shine in the pulpit as he did on the stage, which he has now renounced some years. Of course he has a crowd to hear him, for a player turned parson is a nine days’ wonder, and run after as such. The question is not, can he read well? not, can he convey his thoughts in elegant language? not, can he compose a lecture which, to his own satisfaction, at least, can demolish insolent popes and self-conceited Unitarians, against which classes he principally labours; but can he preach – preach so that men are awe-struck – acknowledge a divine influence, and shudder as they look back on the buried past? I fear this question must be answered in the negative.

Let us imagine ourselves in one of the numerous Baptist chapels of the metropolis – for to that denomination of Christians does Mr. Knowles belong – while he is preaching in the pulpit. You see a shrewd, sharp-looking old gentleman, dressed in black, with a black silk-handkerchief around his neck, and with a voice clear and forcible as the conventional old sea-captain of the stage. He takes a text but remotely connected with his discourse, and begins. You listen with great interest at first. The preacher is lively and animated, and is apparently very argumentative, and nods his head at the conclusion of each sentence in a most decided manner, as if to intimate that he had very considerably the best of the argument. Now, this is all very well for five minutes, or even ten; but when you find this lasting for an hour – with no heads for you to remember – you naturally grow very weary. Knowles, I imagine from his preaching, seems to think argument is his forte; never was a man more mistaken in his life. His sermons are bundles of little bits of arguments tied up together as a heap of old sticks, and just as dry. He seems an honest, dogmatic man, certainly not a great one, and clearly but a moderate preacher after all. A man may eschew the conventionalities of the stage, and the conventionalities of the pulpit, and yet fail. Mr. Knowles is a case in point. As a lecturer, I am told he has been very successful in Scotland. He seems to suit the Scotch better than the English. He lectures against Popery, and the Scotch will always listen with kindly feelings to the man who does that. I don’t imagine that in London Mr. Knowles will do much. He is very controversial. Theology is to him a new study, and he rushes into it with all the zeal of a juvenile enthusiast. This suits the Scotch, but not the English. We are a more tolerant folk. We are all orthodox, of course, but our orthodoxy takes a milder form. We tolerate a clever George Dawson, an infliction against which Scotland rigidly rebels. We may be one nation, but we are far from being one people. We yet live on different fare.

I have already said Mr. Knowles is a Baptist. He has been connected with that sect ever since he left the stage and became a religious man. It was in Glasgow, I believe, that he, to use the common phrase of the evangelical sects, came to a knowledge of the truth. It was in consequence of his attendance on the ministry of the Rev. Mr. Innes, a Baptist minister in that city, that the change took place – and that he was led to look upon the world, and man, and his relation to them both, in a new light. It was in Glasgow that he was baptized, and became a member of the church. That he should turn preacher was natural. Accustomed to address public audiences, there was no necessity why he should give up the practice, and there were many reasons why he should not. Accordingly, every Sunday almost he is engaged in preaching, and occasionally takes lecturing engagements in the country. He is also Professor of Elocution at the Baptist College, Stepney – a teacher of deportment – a clerical Turvey-drop to the pious youth of that respectable institution. This is all very well. If art is of use – if it can make the eloquent more eloquent, and the dull less so – its aid should surely be invoked by the Christian Church.

I would only add, that Mr. Knowles is an Irishman, – that he was born in 1784, – and that his plays, especially the Hunchback, still retain possession of the stage.

THE HON. AND REV. BAPTIST NOEL

Next in estimation in this great democratic country to a real live lord is a real live lord’s relative. If you can’t shake hands with a real peer, it is something to shake hands with his brother. It is impossible to get people to believe that human nature is everywhere the same; that God has made of one blood peers and people, black and white. In this unsettled age, perhaps, faith in the peerage is as abiding a conviction as any whatever. Nor is it limited to what is called the world. The Church participates deeply in the folly; no piety is so acceptable, has so genuine an odour, as piety in high life; no homage is considered so graceful to the Lord as the religion of a lord. A lord at a Bible meeting – a lord stammering a few unconnected common-places about Missionary Societies or the conversion of the Jews – a lord writing a book on the Millennium, throws the religious world into a state of heavenly rapture.

This, I take it, is the origin of the success of the Hon. and Rev. Baptist Noel as a preacher in this great metropolis. If Baptist Noel is not a lord himself, he is of lordly origin. His mother was a peeress in her own right, and, as a tenth son, he must have a little blue blood in his veins. His sister is, or was, a lady in waiting to the Queen. His brother is an earl. He himself, at one time, was one of the royal chaplains. He is redolent, then, of high life: what a delightful thought for the London shopkeepers and tradesmen, who were wont to resort to St. John’s Chapel, Bedford Row! I really believe that these good people felt that by going to hear him they were killing two birds with one stone – getting into the very best society, and at the same time worshipping the God of heaven and of earth.

But this is not Baptist Noel’s only claim. His position has done much for him; but his real merits have done much more. It is something to find a man who is brought up to the Church, honestly devoting himself to his sacred calling; scorning the pomps and allurements of the world; in season and out of season a faithful minister of Christ. With his high rank, with his family influence and the family livings – for to suppose that the family has not such, is to deny that it is a respectable family at all – though a younger son, Baptist Noel might have led a haughty and luxurious life – a life of sensual indulgence or lettered ease. For such a course he could have quoted precedents enough. But religious truth had sunk deeply into his heart. His creed was no scholastic dogma, but a living faith. With his inner eye he had seen the vanities of this world, and the awful realities of the next; that all men were guilty before God; and that it was only by faith in the atonement that the guilt could be wiped away. Hence his perseverance, his single-mindedness, his zeal, He preached, not to please men’s fancies, but to save men’s souls – not to lull them into a deceitful peace, but to induce them to fly for mercy from the wrath to come. True to this unvaried theme, Baptist Noel leaves to others gorgeously to declaim, or learnedly to define, or coldly to moralize. Evidently with him, for such matters, life is too short and eternity too long.

Hence he is one of the plainest preachers of the metropolis. He aims at your heart, not at your head. He touches your affections, if he cannot master your understanding. He may win you over by his gentleness, though he fail to convince you by his power.

Such, as a preacher, is Baptist Noel. Immediately he rises in the pulpit you feel that you have that undefinable mystery, a gentleman, before you. Few, indeed, are the gentlemen who surpass him in elegance of appearance, or urbanity of manner. He is about fifty-five years of age, tall, and of a fine figure; his hair is of a light brown colour, his complexion is fair and pale, his face long, and his features handsome. He has a high forehead, deep-set blue eyes, a long and rather aquiline nose, and an expressive mouth. His voice is rich and silvery, not ‘harsh and crabbed,’ but

and so indeed it ought, for Baptist Noel rarely concludes his sermons within an hour. If his eloquence be compared to that of a stream, it must be that of no mountain country, but of peaceful plains, of one of which it may be said that

He is remarkably fluent; his sentences are particularly smooth and well constructed, and his voice gently modulated: of action, he can be said scarcely to have any. Baptist Noel is a thorough Englishman in this respect.

As a thinker, he has been more remarkable for his freedom and candour than for his consistency and depth. He has always held, in the main, what are called Evangelical views, but his views have not always been on all matters the same. At one time he was an opponent of Millenarian views – he then became strenuous in their favour – now he has returned to his original opinions, and opposes them as warmly as before. He acted a similar part with reference to the British and Foreign Bible Society, and his amiable little tract, on the Unity of the Church, was considered very inconsistent, by Churchmen and Dissenters alike, with his position as a minister of the Establishment.

As a writer Mr. Noel’s principal work has been that on the Union of Church and State, in which he justified, at considerable length, his secession from the Establishment. He has also published an account of a tour in Ireland, to which he was sent on a visit of inspection by the Whigs a few years since; and he has also written a little poetry, some of which has found its way into print. It is hardly necessary to say that it is of that common character which it is said neither gods nor men allow.

To many, Mr. Noel’s whole career as a Churchman was very offensive. They had no idea of a clergyman of the Church of England standing on the same platform with a Dissenting brother. I believe, by his conduct, Baptist Noel drew down upon himself more than one Episcopal rebuke; and, therefore, few were surprised when the time came when he burst the bonds that had long held him, and became the minister of the Baptist church, John Street, Bedford Row – a church formed by the Rev. John Harrington Evans, like Mr. Noel, originally a clergyman of the Establishment. Still the effort was a bold one. By such a step he had nothing to gain, and much to lose. Worldly considerations would have prompted him to remain where he was. I honour him that he obeyed the dictates of conscience. Men do so rarely, and, when they do so, they are but rarely honoured. The religious world made much more of Baptist Noel when he was in the Church than now. Scarcely a religious public meeting was held in the metropolis without Mr. Noel being put down in the bills as one of the speakers: now his voice is rarely heard.

This is strange, but true. Regret it as we may, such is the fact. It was when Baptist Noel preached at St. John’s that he was run after. What crowds filled that dreary place! How difficult it was to get a seat there! The dingy, dirty old building itself was enough to draw a crowd. It was built for that fiery, foolish priest, Sacheverell. Scott, famed for his Commentary on the Bible, was a curate there. There also preached the scarcely less celebrated Cecil. In his steps followed Daniel Wilson, the Bishop of Calcutta. Wilberforce had worshipped there. The building itself was a fact and a sermon as well. The place had a religion of its own. The neighbouring pulpit in which Baptist Noel now officiates has nothing of the kind. Perhaps, however, the less Dissent is encumbered with tradition or history the better. As it is, the soul is sluggish enough. Leaden custom lies too heavy on us all.

THE REV. C. H. SPURGEON

I fear there is very little difference between the Church and the world. In both the tide seems strongly set in favour of ignorance, presumption, and charlatanism. In the case of Mr. Spurgeon, they have both agreed to worship the same idol. Nowhere more abound the vulgar, be they great or little, than at the Royal Music Hall on a Sunday morning. Mr. Spurgeon’s service commences at a quarter to eleven, but the doors are opened an hour and a half previously, and all the while there will be a continuous stream of men and women – some on foot, some in cabs, many in carriages – all drawn together by this world’s wonder. The motley crowd is worth a study. In that Hansom, now bearing a decent country deacon staying at the Milton, you and Rose dashed away to Cremorne. Last night, those lovely eyes were wet with tears as the Piccolomini edified the fashionable world with the representation of the Harlot’s career. That swell was drinking pale ale in questionable company in the Haymarket – that gay Lorette was sinning on a gorgeous scale. This man was paying his needlewomen a price for their labour, on which he knows it is impossible for them morally to live; and that was poisoning a whole neighbourhood by the sale of adulterated wares.

A very mixed congregation is this one at the Surrey Gardens. The real flock – the aborigines from Park Street Chapel – are a peculiar people, – very plain, much given to the wearing of clothes of an ancient cut – and easy of recognition. The men are narrow, hard, griping, to look at – the women stern and unlovely, yet they, and such as they alone, if we are to believe them, are to walk the pearly streets of the New Jerusalem, and to sit down with martyrs and prophets and saints – with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob – at the marriage supper of the Lamb.

‘The toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls his kibe.’ Here is a peer, and there his tailor. Here Lady Clara de Vere kills a weary hour, and there is the poor girl who sat up all night to stitch her ladyship’s costly robe. Here is a blasphemer come to laugh, there a saint to pray. Can these dry bones live? Can the preacher touch the heart of this listening mass? Breathed on by a spell more potent than his own, will it in its anguish and agony exclaim, What must we do to be saved? You think how this multitude would have melted beneath the consecrated genius of a Chalmers, or a Parsons, or a Melville, or an Irving, – and look to see the same torrent of human emotions here. Ah, you are mistaken – Mr. Spurgeon has not the power to wield ‘all thoughts, all passions, all delights.’ It is not in him to ‘shake the arsenal, and fulmine over Greece.’ In the very midst of his fiercest declamation, you will find his audience untouched; so coarse is the colouring, and clumsy the description, you can sit calm and unmoved through it all – and all the while the haughty beauty by your side will fan herself with a languor Charles Matthews in ‘Used Up’ might envy. Look at the preacher; – the riddle is solved. You see at once that he is not the man to soar, and soaring bear his audience, trembling and enraptured, with him in his heavenward flight.

Isaiah, the son of Amos, when he received his divine commission, exclaimed, ‘Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips!’ but the popular minister of New Park Street Chapel has no such trembling forebodings; no thought of his own unworthiness, no fear that he is trespassing on sacred ground, or that he is attempting a task beyond his powers, impedes the utterance of his fluent tongue. Not a trace of the scholarship, or reading, or severe thought, or God-sent genius, or of that doubt in which there lives more faith than in half the creeds, will you find in the whole of his harangue.

On the pulpit, or rather the platform, Mr. Spurgeon imitates Gough, and walks up and down, and enlivens his sermons with dramatic representations. He is ‘hail fellow, well-met’ with his hearers. He has jokes and homely sayings and puns and proverbs for them. Nothing is too sacred for his self-complacent grasp; he is as free and unrestrained in God’s presence as in man’s. Eternity has unveiled its mysteries to him. In the agonies of the lost, in the joys of the redeemed, there is nothing for him to learn. His ‘sweet Saviour,’ as he irreverently exclaims, has told him all. Of course, at times there is a rude eloquence on his lips, or, rather, a fluent declamation, which the mob around takes for such. The orator always soars with his audience. With excited thousands waiting his lightest word, he cannot remain passionless and unmoved. Words and thoughts are borne to him from them. There is excitement in the hour; there is excitement in the theme; there is excitement in the living mass; and, it may be, as the preacher speaks of a physical hell and displays a physical heaven, some sensual nature is aroused, and a change may be effected in a man’s career. Little causes may produce great events; one chance word may be the beginning of a new and a better life; but the thoughtful hearer will learn nothing, will be induced to feel nothing, will find that as regards Christian edification he had much better have staid at home. At the best Mr. Spurgeon will seem to him a preacher of extraordinary volubility. Most probably he will return from one of Mr. Spurgeon’s services disgusted with the noisy crowding, reminding him of the Adelphi rather than the house of God; disgusted with the common-place prayer; disgusted with the questionable style of oratory; disgusted with the narrowness of the preacher’s creed, and its pitiful misrepresentations of the glorious gospel of the blessed God; disgusted with the stupidity that can take for a divine afflatus brazen impudence and leathern lungs. Most probably he will come back confessing that Mr. Spurgeon is the youngest, and the loudest, and the most notorious preacher in London – little more; the idol of people who dare not go to theatres, and yet pant for theatrical excitement.

When Mr. Whiteside finished his five hours’ oration on Kars, Lord Palmerston replied, that the honourable gentleman’s speech was highly creditable to his physical powers. A similar reply would be suitable to Mr. Spurgeon. You come away, having gained nothing except it may be a deeper disgust for the class of preachers of which Mr. Spurgeon is a type. We have heard somewhat too much of Negative Theology – it is time we protest against the Positive Theology of such men as Mr. Spurgeon. There are no doubts or difficulties in his path. The last time I heard the reverend gentleman, he had the audacity to assure us that the reason God allowed wicked men to live was, that as he knew they were to be damned, he thought they might have a little pleasure first. Mr. Spurgeon is one of the elect. His flock are in the same happy condition. God chooses them out of the ruins of the fall, and makes them heirs of everlasting life, while he suffers the rest of the world to continue in sin, and consummate their guilt by well-deserved punishment. If he sins, it matters little; ‘for that vengeance incurred by me has already fallen upon Christ my substitute, and only the chastisement shall remain for me.’ Mr. Spurgeon has heard people represent ‘God as the Father of the whole universe. It surprises me that any readers of the Bible should so talk.’ To the higher regions of thought Mr. Spurgeon seems an utter stranger – all his ideas are physical; when he speaks of the Master, it is not of his holy life or divine teaching, but his death. ‘Christians,’ he exclaims, ‘you have here your Saviour. See his Father’s vengeful sword sheathed in his heart – behold his death-agonies – see the clammy sweat upon his brow – mark his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth – hear his sighs and groans upon the cross.’ Again, he exclaims, ‘Make light of thee, sweet Jesus! Oh, when I see thee with thy shirt of gore, wrestling in Gethsemane – when I behold him with a river of blood rolling down his shoulders,’ &c. All his sermons abound with similar instances of exaggerated misconception.