The London Pulpit

Would you hear him, reader, then for awhile you must leave the shop or the counting-house, and penetrate with us to the very heart of our great metropolis. The Golden Lecture, as it is called, a lectureship, I believe, belonging to the Mercers’ Company, and worth about £400 a-year, is delivered every Tuesday morning, and Melville is the lecturer. The church of St. Margaret, in Lothbury, is the spot selected, and it is an appropriate place for a Golden Lecture, for everywhere around you, you have —

‘Gold and gold, and nothing but gold,
Yellow and hard, and shining and cold!’

On one side is the bank that hides such treasures in its mysterious and well-guarded cells. An hour’s quiet walk in one of them, my good sir, would make you and me independent for life. Every step of our way we are surrounded by gigantic companies; We walk on enchanted ground; we breathe enchanted air. Fortunes here are made and lost in a day. It was well that the piety of our forefathers selected such a spot, that once in the bustle of the week God’s voice might be heard as well as that of Mammon.

But it is time we enter St. Margaret’s.

Like most city churches, it is small and cold and mouldy – seeming to belong more to the past than the present age. However, for once, it is alive again. The old seats once more abound with beauty, and wealth, and fashion – or, at any rate, with so much of them as belong to City dames. We have left the roar of Cheap-side and Cornhill; but, after all, we have the world with us here as well as there. For awhile we shall forget it, for there is the preacher, and already the magic of his voice has charmed every ear. I know no more magnificent voice. I know no statelier air. It always carries me back in fancy to the days of the elder Pitt – or to the earlier times of Bolingbroke – or to that still earlier day when the Hebrew Paul preached, and the Roman Felix trembled on his seat of splendour and of power.

Tall, of dark complexion, with grey hair and blue eyes, with a face lit up with genius – the most brilliant preacher in the English Church: such is Henry Melville. His action is simple and singular. When he commences scarcely any is observable. Then as he flies along, and warms as he proceeds, the head is dropped with a convulsive jerk, and the right hand is raised, and the climax is ejaculated (for so rapid is his delivery it can scarcely be called preaching) with a corresponding emphasis. No sooner is the text enunciated than he plunges at once into his subject, developing and illustrating his meaning with a brilliancy and rapidity unparalleled in the pulpit at the present day. You are kept in breathless attention. The continuity of thought is unbroken for an instant. Every sentence is connected with that which precedes or follows; and, as the preacher goes on his way like a giant, every instant mounting higher, every instant pouring out a more gorgeous rhetoric, every instant climbing to a loftier strain, you are reminded of some monster steam-ship ploughing her way across the Atlantic, proudly asserting her mastery over the mountain-waves, landing her precious cargo safe in port. When she started, you trembled for her safety; she was so lavish of her power that you feared it would fail her when she needed it most. But on she wends her gallant way, scattering around her the mad waves as in play. I can compare Melville with nothing else, as he stands in that pulpit – in that sea of human souls – drowning all discord by his own splendid voice, mastering all passions by his own irresistible will, piercing all scepticism by his own living faith.

And yet Melville is not what some understand by the term, ‘an intellectual preacher.’ He does not aim to demonstrate the reasonableness of Christian truth – to convince men whose understandings reject it. With the large class who are perpetually halting between two opinions, who to-day are convinced by one man, and to-morrow by another – who have lost themselves hopelessly in German mysticism – Melville has no sympathy whatever. I never heard him use the terms objective and subjective in my life. Of honest intellectual doubt, with all its pain and horror, he seems to have no idea. Melville always is as positive as Babington Macaulay himself. In no circumstances could he have been a Blanco White, or a Francis Newman, or a Froude. As a churchman he stands rigidly inside the pale of the Church. His God is a personal God. His Christ descended into hell. His heaven has a golden pavement, and shining thrones. Wordsworth tells us —

‘Feebly must they have felt, who in old times
Array’d with vengeful whips the furies.
Beautiful regards were turned on me,
The face of her I loved.’

Melville never could have written that. His hell is physical, not mental. It is a bottomless pit where the smoke of their torment ever ascends – where the worm never dies – where the fire is not quenched. In all other matters his vision seems similarly clear, and intense, and narrow. Beside the Church, whose creed he preaches, and whose articles he has subscribed, and whose emoluments he pockets, he knows no other. His Holy Catholic Church is that which the State pays to and supports. His successors of the Apostles are those whom Episcopalian bishops ordain. His redeemed and sanctified ones consist only of those who have been confirmed. According to him, error from the pulpits of the State Establishment is sanctified, owing to some mysterious power its pulpits possess. Pulpits outside the Church are not only destitute of that power, but, alas! destitute also of all saving grace. I have called Melville a brilliant preacher. He is that; but his brilliancy, like that of Sheridan, is the result of intense preparation. I write not this to disparage him. I consider it much in his favour. In these days, when the pulpit contains so small a part of the learning or the intellect of the age, no pulpit preparation can be too intense, or elaborate, or severe. It is said Melville writes and re-writes his sermons till they arrive at his standard of perfection. It is said he not unfrequently devotes a week to the composition of a single discourse. I can quite believe it. Every sentence is in its proper place – every figure is correct – every word tells – and the whole composition bears the stamp of subdued and chastened power.

Considering how rich the Church to which Mr. Melville belongs is, and how transcendently his talents outshine the mild mediocrities by which its pulpits are adorned, Mr. Melville cannot be considered to have been very successful in the way of patronage. His income from Camden-town Chapel, Camberwell – a place of worship belonging to a relative – was about £1000 a-year: he resigned that when he was made President of Haileybury College. As Chaplain of the Tower, I believe, he has about £300 a-year. I have already stated what his Golden Lectureship is worth. Certainly, he is not a poor man, but, compared with some of his brethren, he cannot be considered very rich. He has published several sermons. ‘Fraser,’ some years since, in a severe criticism on them, detected several remarkable coincidences between passages in them and in Chalmers’ Sermons – of whose style, certainly, Melville strongly reminds one. But I am not aware that the criticism did Melville much harm; and he is still in as great request as ever. I am told there is no such successful preacher of charity sermons in London: no other preacher is so successful in taking money at the doors. As an orator, in the Church or out of it, no man can produce a greater effect. He strikes the chords with a master’s hands. At his bidding strong men tremble and despair, or believe and live.

THE HON. AND REV. MR. VILLIERS

I know not that there is a happier berth in the world than that of a fashionable Evangelical preacher in this enlightened city and enlightened age. See him in the pulpit, adored by the women, envied by the men! Wherever he goes he is made much of. The shops in his neighbourhood abound with his portrait; his signature graces a thousand albums; young ladies of all ages and conditions work him his worsted slippers; his silver teapot and his easy chair are the contributions of his flock. If there be an elysium on earth, it is his private residence. If a man is to be deemed fortunate this side the grave, it is he. If mortal ever slept upon a bed of roses, such is his enviable fate. In old times men suffered for their religion; were deemed as dirt and dishonour; were things to point at and to shun. In old times they had to suffer more than this: the man who would be loyal to his conscience or his God might not look for happiness and peace on earth. He had to wander in sheepskins and goatskins; he had to renounce father, mother, sister, brother – all that was dear to him as his own life. From the fair enjoyments of the world and the bright love of woman he had to tear himself away. A sad, solitary life, and a bitter and bloody death, were what Christianity entailed on you in the olden time. Ay, you must have been a strong man then to have borne its yoke. And yet, sustained by a living faith, young, tender, delicate women bore it as if it were a wreath of flowers. Men might talk of self-denial and taking up the cross then: they did so then. But they are gone; and now, if you wish to learn self-denial and take up the cross, you must renounce Christianity. Its sleek and popular minister can tell you little either of one or the other. Religion now dresses in silk and satin, goes to court, has all Belgravia hallooing at her heels. Her ways indeed are ways of pleasantness, and her paths, paths of peace. Dr. Watts was right —

‘Religion never was design’d,
To make our pleasure less.’

Take, for instance, the honourable and reverend rector of St. George’s, Bloomsbury. As the brother of a Lord, Mr. Villiers has great claims on a British public; as a canon of St. Paul’s, the rector of a well-filled church, still greater. Bloomsbury Square is not exactly high life, but it is respectable. The better sort of professional men and merchants abound in it. Its neighbourhood is a step in a genteel direction. It is not part and parcel of that vulgar place, the City. It is on the way to the West-end. One might live in a worse place. Its natives are civilised, eschew steel forks, and affect silver spoons. Most of them speak English, and a few have carriages of their own. The place has seen better days; but it is not altogether of the past. It abounds with the latest fashions. It can talk of the last new novel. Even its religion smacks of the genteel – carries a morocco prayer-book, with silver clasps, is followed by a page with buttons of shining hue, and has its services performed by men of honourable and exalted name. Many in the Church have been born in low stations – have risen up to high rank, nevertheless. Still it is a merit to be of aristocratic descent, and even in the Church that fact is as patent as in the world. It is only in Turkey that birth carries no weight – but then the Turk is but little better than one of the wicked.

Independently, however, of these considerations, Mr. Villiers must have been a popular preacher. He is a fine, well-made man; his figure is prepossessing – a great thing in a public speaker. Weak, stunted, deformed, wretched-looking men have no business in the pulpit. A man should have a portly presence there. He should also have a fine voice, and Mr. Villiers is singularly happy in this respect. In the Church there is not a man who can read its stately service with more effect. And that service, well read to the hearer in a fitting mood, is a sermon itself. Nor does Mr. Villiers’ merit end here. He is no dull drone when the service is over and the sermon has begun. With downcast eye he reads no moral essay that touches no conscience and fires no heart. On the contrary, he is exceedingly active and energetic in the pulpit. He looks his congregation in the face – he directs his discourse to them. He takes care that not a single word shall lose its aim. His musical voice is heard distinctly in every part of his crowded and enormous church. Mr. Villiers is not an intellectual preacher; nor is he a man of original mind; nor does he revivify old themes, so as to make them seem fresh and new. The common truths of orthodox Christianity are those which form the staple of his discourses. To convert the sinner and edify the saint are his aim. Philosophy and the world’s lore he passes by. His plainness makes him popular. The poorest can understand what he says, and they love to hear him, especially when he denounces the fashionable follies of high life. Against such fashions Mr. Villiers is always ready to protest. The theatre and the ballroom are the objects of his bitterest denunciations; the frequenters of such places find no mercy at his hands. Of course this plainness delights his congregation. As they frequent neither the one nor the other, they care little what harsh things he says of those who do.

Out of the pulpit we know little of Mr. Villiers. One does not hear of him at Exeter Hall. The Freemasons’ Tavern seldom echoes the sound of his voice. His parish duties seem to absorb him. He does not publish a new volume of theology every month, like Dr. Cumming, though he has published a volume or two of his Sermons, and some of his Lectures to Young Men. To be sure he has enough to do where he is. But still many ministers attempt much more, and his preaching cannot be a very severe tax on his mental powers. Robert Montgomery published a book, called ‘The Gospel before the Age’ – the Gospel of Mr. Villiers certainly has no such claim. The school to which he belongs has very little reference to the age – has a very easy way of settling all the problems of the heart – never seems to imagine that there can be two sides to a question at all. This makes it very easy work for preacher and people. Such being the case, the wonder is not that Mr. Villiers preaches so well, but that, with his powerful voice and action, he does not do it better. Since the above was written Episcopalianism in Bloomsbury has sustained a loss – Mr. Villiers is now a bishop.

The Independent Denomination

THE REV. THOMAS BINNEY

All the world, I take it, is acquainted with the Monument, which,

‘Like a tall bully, lifts its head and lies.’

You have been to see it, or you have passed it as you have rushed to take the boat to Greenwich, or Hamburg, or the ‘Diggins.’ In either of these cases, unless you had been too much absorbed, you might have seen a plain, substantial building, evidently devoted to public worship. There is nothing peculiar about its appearance; but there is something peculiar in the man who generally fills its pulpit – for it is the Weigh-House Chapel, and the preacher is the Rev. Thomas Binney.

Let us suppose it is a Sabbath morning, and the time half-past ten. A stream of people has been flowing for the last quarter of an hour to the door of the above-named chapel: a few in private carriages – some in cabs – the rest on foot. The larger portion consists of males, and, again, that majority consists of young men. They come, evidently, from the shops and warehouses and counting-houses of this great metropolis. They belong to the commercial classes. They are the raw material out of which are evolved, in process of time, aldermen, merchant princes, and Lord Mayors. They are such as Hogarth, were he alive now, would sketch for his industrious apprentice. A few medical students from the neighbouring hospitals, and men of law or literature from the more aristocratic West, and you have the usual congregation to which the Rev. Thomas Binney ministers in holy things.

It is something to preach to these twelve hundred living souls; to place before them, immersed as they are in the business and bustle of this world, the reality of that which is to come; so to speak that the voice of God shall be more audible to them than that of gold. Yet, surely, if it can be done by man, he can do it whom we now see, with reverent step, ascending the pulpit stairs. What power there is in those great limbs, that full chest, and magnificent head! Nature has been bountiful to him. Such a man as that you can’t raise in London or Manchester. You can imagine him the child of the mountain and the flood – learning from nature and his own great heart and the written Word – wild and strong and fierce as the war-horse scenting the battle from afar. You see he has a warm heart, human sympathies; that, in short, he is every inch a man – not a scholastic pedant, nor an intellectual bigot, nor an emasculated priest. Oh, it is pitiful to see in the pulpit, preaching in God’s name, some poor dwarf who has never had a doubt nor a hope nor a noble aim, and who enunciates your damnation with the same heartlessness with which he tells you two and two make four. There are too many of such in our pulpits – men made ministers in some narrow routine of theological study, in some college where they get as accurate an idea of the world against which they have to warn men as the Chinese have of us.

It was not so in the grand old apostolic times. Paul, Peter, James, and John preached of what they had seen and heard and known and felt. Too generally the modern preacher tells you what he has read, and which, parrot-like, he repeats. It is not so with Binney. You see all that man has to go through, he must have gone through – that scepticism must have stared him in the face – that passion must have appealed to him in her most seductive forms – that the great problem of life he has not taken upon trust, but unriddled for himself – that he has gone through the Slough of Despond – passed by Castle Doubting, and sees the gilt and the rouge in Vanity Fair: or, as he says himself in his life, ‘the man has conquered the animal, and the God the man.’ Such a man has a right to preach to me. If he has known, felt, thought, suffered, more than I, he is master, and I listen. Such a man is Binney. I can yet read in his face the record of passion subdued, of thought protracted and severe, of doubt conquered by a living faith.

Well, the service has been begun. The congregation has joined in praise; and now it is hushed and still, while in accents feeble at first, but gradually becoming louder and more distinct, the preacher prays. The liturgy of the English Church is beautiful and touching, but it is cold and unvarying. It does not, with its eternal sameness, answer to the shifting moods of the human soul. Such prayers as those of Binney do. They bear you with them. Your inward eye opens and refines. Earth grows more distant, and heaven more near. For once you become awe-struck and devout. For once there comes a cloud between you and the world and the battle of life. You are on the mount, and breathe a purer air. Your heart has been touched, and you are ready for the preacher and his discourse. At first you hardly hear it. The great man before you seems nervous, awkward, as a raw student. He runs his fingers through his scanty hairs. He takes out half a dozen pocket-kerchiefs and blows his nose. Being asthmatic, you are compelled to cough, and you have immediately the preacher stopping, to turn on you a withering glance. But at length you catch, like a gleam of sunshine in a November fog, a fine thought in fine language. Your attention is riveted. What you hear is fresh and original, very different to the common run of pulpit discourses. The preacher warms, his eye sparkles, his voice becomes loud, his action energetic. You listen to powerful reasoning and passionate appeal. Binney has been compared to Coleridge. I don’t think the comparison good. He is far more like Carlyle. The latter, a Christian, with a good digestion, would preach precisely as Binney. Binney is a Christian Carlyle, with the same poetry and power, the same faculty of realizing great and sterling thoughts; but with a light upon his way and in his heart which Carlyle has never known.

I have said Binney is not the kind of man born in great cities. You see that in his physical frame; it is also evident in his mental character. Everything about him is free and independent. Whatever he is, he is no narrow-hearted sectarian, shut up in his own creed, having no sympathies outside his own church. I take it that he sees also a certain kind of goodness in the world; that he does not feel

‘What a wretched land is this
That yields us no supplies;’

that he thinks life is to be enjoyed, and that genius, and wit, and beauty, are far from sinful in themselves. The result is, Binney’s experience of life is greater than that of most ministers, and he keeps abreast of the age. He studies to understand its thought, to answer its questionings, to lead it up to God.

And yet this man – with his great Catholic heart, standing by himself, tied down by no creed or common organisation – because, in a moment of excitement, seeing what was to him a dearth of truth and life in the Establishment, he said that it destroyed more souls than it saved, has been looked upon as the incarnation of all that is fierce and narrow in political Dissent. Never was a bigger blunder made. As regards all such matters, Binney is a latitudinarian. I dare say even sharp-scented theologians may see a little of what they call heresy occasionally wrapped up in the sermons of the Weigh-House Chapel. The charge is a common one in the mouths of those who would make a man an offender for a word. The curse of the pulpit and the pew, hitherto, has been that such snarling critics have abounded in each. To such, Binney is a terrible stumbling-block. They cannot understand him, and yet they dare not condemn.

Mr. Binney is still in the prime of life. He was born somewhere in the north, where they have bigger heads and frames than we southerns have. He was educated at Wymondley College; he was then settled, as the phrase is, at Bedford, from which place he moved to Newport, in the Isle of Wight. About twenty years since, he was invited to the Weigh-House Chapel, where ever since he has remained. His income from that source must be very respectable, as the Weigh-House Chapel congregation is pretty well to do in the world, and can afford to pay its pastor handsomely. As an author, Mr. Binney has gained extensive popularity, although he has not done much in that respect; and his first work, the ‘Life of the Rev. S. Morrell,’ a friend and fellow-student of his own, was a most extraordinary performance – just the thing a man like Binney would write when young. It has, however, long been out of print. His principal work is ‘Discourses on the Practical Power of Faith.’ His sermons have been his most frequent publications, and his Lecture on Sir F. Buxton – a lecture delivered to young men, with whom Mr. Binney is always popular – has been reprinted on both sides of the Atlantic, as I believe also has been his last published work, ‘How to Make the Best of Both Worlds.’ I believe, also, Mr. Binney has written some poetry. I recollect a few powerful lines, with his name to them, commencing with —

‘Eternal light – eternal light,
How pure that soul must be,
That, placed within thy searching sight,
It shrinks not – but with calm delight
Can live and look on thee.’

His sermons often are prose poems. Occasionally they are common-place. We are all dull at times; but they are generally lit up with

‘The light that never shone
On shore or sea.’

I fancy, sometimes, Mr. Binney imagines that he has now made his position, and that, therefore, less exertion is required on his part than formerly. A weaker man would have sunk into the idol of a coterie long before this. A minister is never safe. Popularity is often a fatal boon. Some men it withers up at once.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about our subject has yet to be said. 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 institution – 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 passions of the multitude, 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 repetition 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 class 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 circumstances 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 repetition 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 passes 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 illustrations 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 mass, destitute 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 class 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 destitute alike of faith and heart and hope – you will see a big cumbrous 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.’