By A. A. LIVERMORE, D.D.
It is often said in these days that the power of the pulpit has
declined from what it was in the time of our fathers. The press has
stolen a march upon the preacher. The lyceum draws better than the
meeting-house. The stump speaker has more hearers than the minister.
The advocate for reform makes more stir than the Sunday-going parson.
The newspaper has got to be the American Bible. The magazine has more
readers than the Gospel of Mark, and the Epistle to the Romans.
But this croaking overlooks the fact that our civilization is wider
and broader than it used to be fifty or one hundred years ago. It
comprehends more interests, strikes the key to more subjects, sweeps
into its ever-widening circumference a greater variety of pursuits and
influences. The pulpit may be as important as ever and as potent, but
relatively other factors have in these latter days come into play,—art,
science, philosophy, reform, politics, sociology, and thus have
seemingly encroached upon the once almost absolute domain of religious
worship and instruction. But it is more in seeming than in reality.
Because other powerful auxiliaries have come up alongside of the
pulpit to challenge the attention of mankind, and assist in the great
enterprise of the upbuilding of humanity, it by no means follows that
the peculiar office which the pulpit and the preacher fulfill may not
be more needful and more demanded than ever to save the souls of men,
and bring the kingdom of God on earth.
It almost however goes without the saying that facts disprove the
dismal theory that our civilization is running away from the public
administration of religion. We have as mighty preachers in the field
to-day on both sides of the water as ever lifted up their voices in
Christendom. I need only mention Spurgeon, Beecher, Philips Brooks,
Moody, Pere Hyacinth, Bishop Simpson, Prof. Swing, Robert Collyer. And
they draw great audiences, produce great effects, convert sinners,
edify saints, “hurl back the floods of tyrant wrong” and sin, and bring
in the kingdom, as effectually as was ever done by the Chrysostums and
Ambroses, the Robert Halls and John Wesleys of the past. God hath not
left, and never will leave himself without witness. The eloquence of
the spoken word is not yet dead or buried. We have placed at the head
of our article one of these great and glorious names, Charles Haddon
Spurgeon, Baptist preacher in London. He was born in Helvedon, Essex,
near London, June 9, 1834. He is now therefore in the forty-eighth year
of his age, but how solidly he has packed those years with services
to God and man! His origin was in the Congregational body of England.
He is a self-taught man, and contrary to what was said of another
distinguished self-taught man, that he had a very poor teacher, Mr.
Spurgeon had a very good and wise teacher. He became a schoolmaster
of others at sixteen, and at eighteen the pastor of a church at
Waterbeach. He soon rose to such popularity that he was called to
London, where ordinary churches could not contain the crowds that came
to hear him. He occupied successively the Baptist Chapel in Southwark,
Exeter Hall, Surry Music Hall, and now he preaches in a cathedral-like
edifice, called the “Tabernacle,” built for him, where he has an
audience of five or six thousand. But like Wesley he is not only a
great preacher, but a great organizer and also an affluent writer. On
an average he preaches a sermon every day. Ten or more volumes of his
sermons have been published in England and reprinted in this country.
He has edited the works of some of the old religious classics. He
has published lectures to divinity students, tracts for the people,
as “John Ploughman’s Pictures,” and “John Ploughman’s Talks with the
People.” He is a Calvinist, but not a close communion Baptist. In
popularity and wide influence among the masses he stands at the head
of the English dissenting pulpit. He has thirty preaching stations in
London. He carries on a divinity school, and has educated between three
and four hundred young men for the ministry. The expenses of his school
are $25,000 a year which he raises himself. He has, according to the
testimony of his stewards, appropriated no part of the income of his
church to himself for the last three years. He meets the wants of the
great middle class of English society. His administration drives at the
practical, direct, and pungent application of Christianity to the sins,
crimes, and woes of the great capital of the world, and in that world
of Great Britain he is a mighty power for good.
The secret of his influence is not far or hard to seek. In the first
place, Mr. Spurgeon is built on a large scale in personality and
natural endowment. He is John Bull _in maximo_, a stocky frame, big
head, vigorous constitution, a good digester, a deep breather, a
massive face, a strong round-about man every way. It is not native to
his constitution to be sick, and if he is so it is because of the load,
which, like Atlas, he bears on his broad shoulders, of care and duty
and preaching, and divinity school, and writing and publishing, and
travel, and the superintendence of his thousand and one enterprises
to carry forward the cause. He knows how to work himself, and another
secret equally important, he knows how to make others work.
Some years ago I heard him preach in his throne of power. It was
a sight to behold and never to be forgotten. Thousands of people
gathered to hear one man speak. His subject was from Corinthians: “We
are ambassadors for Christ.” His tone was kindly, no overbearing, no
intellectual pretense or insolence, such as we sometimes see in great
men, while his appeal was persuasive and rational. There was a deep and
tender tone of sympathy and good will, an evident desire to bring over
to his own happy state of trust and love those far from God and Christ,
wandering in darkness, in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity.
A deep stream of piety and devotional ardor flowed through all the
services. His language was plain Anglo-Saxon speech, few “dictionary”
words, as they are called, and easy to be understood by the common
people.
But next to his piety and zealous faith, should be given as instruments
of his power, great affluence of illustration. He tips his sentences
not unfrequently with a bit of poetic fire. He levies on the Bible
imagery largely. He uses, as Jesus did, the common every day’s events
and scenes about him to wing his arrows and point his spears. He has no
subtleties, mysticisms, speculations, to clog the minds of his hearers.
“Jesus and him crucified” is his paramount theme, as it was that of
Paul. He is the John Bunyan of the nineteenth century, and long may he
guide the “Pilgrims” in their “Progress to the eternal city.”
The same day we heard Spurgeon in the great Tabernacle we heard Dean
Stanley in Westminster Abbey. Both had great audiences. Both gathered
many strangers from beyond the sea to hear the most distinguished
pulpit orators of Great Britain. Dean Stanley gave his eulogy on the
Bishop of Winchester, who had been instantly killed by a fall from
his horse. It was a memorable occasion, attended by what was most
brilliant in rank, in culture, in power and wealth in England, the
lords and ladies of the empire. The music transported you to the
seventh heaven. The Dean spoke to the learned, refined and powerful,
Spurgeon to the common people, “not heard of a mile from home.” The
Dean had more learning, culture, taste, and swept a broader circle
of thought; Spurgeon more power, bored deeper into the heart and
conscience. Stanley was more a literary man and author; Spurgeon a
minister and converter of souls. Stanley is a broad churchman, and
aims at the progress of Christianity in the dialect of the nineteenth
century; Spurgeon lays about him like Talus, with his tremendous
flail, to warn people and drive them from the wrath to come, and to
administer the average orthodox doctrines without note or comment, or
nice speculations. Both are great men, each good for his sphere. Both
refute the notion that the Christian pulpit of this age can not match
that of any previous age in the power, influence and following of the
noted preachers. There were giants of old, and there are giants now.