The friendly rector frequently visited at Stanley Grove, and, for my
father's sake, honored me with his particular kindness. Dr. Barlow
filled up all my ideas of a country clergyman of the higher class. There
is a uniform consistency runs through his whole life and character,
which often brings to my mind, allowing for the revolution in habits
that almost two hundred years have necessarily produced, the
incomparable _country parson_ of the ingenious Mr. George Herbert.[1]
[Footnote 1: See Herbert's Country Parson, under the heads of the parson
in his house, the parson praying, the parson preaching, the parson
comforting, the parson's church, the parson catechizing, the parson in
mirth, &c., &c. The term parson has now indeed a vulgar and
disrespectful sound, but in Herbert's time it was used in its true sense
_persona ecclesiae_. I would recommend to those who have not seen it,
this sketch of the ancient clerical life. As Mr. Herbert was a man of
quality, he knew what became the more opulent of his function; as he was
eminently pious, he practiced all that he recommended. "This appellation
of parson," says Judge Blackstone, "however depreciated by clownish and
familiar use, is the most legal, most beneficial, and most honorable
title, which a parish priest can enjoy." _Vide Blackstone's
Commentaries._]
"I never saw _Zeal without Innovation_," said Mr. Stanley, "more
exemplified than in Dr. Barlow. His piety is as enlightened as it is
sincere. No errors in religion escape him, through ignorance of their
existence, or through carelessness in their detection, or through
inactivity in opposing them. He is too honest not to attack the
prevailing evil, whatever shape it may assume; too correct to excite in
the wise any fears that his zeal may mislead his judgment, and too
upright to be afraid of the censures which active piety must ever have
to encounter from the worldly and the indifferent, from cold hearts and
unfurnished heads.
"From his affectionate warmth, however, and his unremitting application,
arising from the vast importance he attaches to the worth of souls, the
man of the world might honor him with the title of enthusiast; while his
prudence, sober-mindedness, and regularity, would draw on him from the
fanatic, the appellation of formalist. Though he is far from being
'content to _dwell_ in decencies,' he is careful never to neglect them.
He is a clergyman all the week as well as on Sunday; for he says, if he
did not spend much of the intermediate time in pastoral visits, there
could not be kept up that mutual intercourse of kindness which so much
facilitates his own labors, and his people's improvement. They listen to
him because they love him, and they understand him, because he has
familiarized them by private discourse to the great truths which he
delivers from the pulpit.
"Dr. Barlow has greatly diminished the growth of innovation in his
parishes, by attacking the innovator with his own weapons. Not indeed by
stooping to the same disorderly practices, but by opposing an
enlightened earnestness to an eccentric earnestness; a zeal _with_
knowledge to a zeal _without_ it. He is of opinion that activity does
more good than invective, and that the latter is too often resorted to,
because it is the cheaper substitute.
"His charity, however, is large, and his spirit truly catholic. He
honors all his truly pious brethren, who are earnest in doing good,
though they may differ from him as to the manner of doing it. Yet his
candor never intrenches on his firmness; and while he will not dispute
with others about shades of difference, he maintains his own opinions
with the steadiness of one who embraced them on the fullest conviction.
"He is a 'scholar, and being a good and a ripe one,' it sets him above
aiming at the paltry reputation to be acquired by those false
embellishments of style, those difficult and uncommon words, and that
labored inversion of sentences, by which some injudicious clergymen make
themselves unacceptable to the higher, and unintelligible to the lower,
and of course, the larger part of their audience. He always bears in
mind that the common people are not foolish, they are only ignorant. To
meet the one he preaches good sense, to suit the other, plain language.
But while he seldom shoots over the heads of the uninformed, he never
offends the judicious. He considers the advice of Polonius to his son
to be as applicable to preachers as to travelers--
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
"In his pulpit he is no wrangling polemic, but a genuine Bible
Christian, deeply impressed himself with the momentous truths he so
earnestly presses upon others. His mind is so imbued, so saturated, if I
may hazard the expression, with scriptural knowledge, that from that
rich store-house, he is ever ready to bring forth _treasures, new and
old_, and to apply them wisely, temperately, and seasonably.
"Though he carefully inculcates universal holiness in all his
discourses, yet his practical instructions are constantly deduced from
those fundamental principles of Christianity which are the root and life
and spirit of all goodness. Next to a solid piety, and a deep
acquaintance with the Bible, he considers it of prime importance to a
clergyman to be thoroughly acquainted with human nature in general, and
with the state of his own parish in particular. The knowledge of both
will alone preserve him from preaching too personally so as to hurt, or
too generally so as not to touch.
"He is careful not to hurry over the prayers in so cold, inattentive,
and careless a manner, as to make the audience suspect he is saving
himself, that he may make a greater figure in delivering the sermon.
Instead of this, the devout, reverential, and impressive manner in which
he pronounces the various parts of the Liturgy, best prepares his own
heart, and the hearts of his people, to receive benefit from his
discourse. His petitions are delivered with such sober fervor, his
exhortations with such humble dignity, his thanksgiving with such holy
animation as carry the soul of the hearer along with him. When he
ascends the pulpit, he never throws the liturgical service into the back
ground by a long elaborate composition of his own, delivered with
superior force and emphasis. And he pronounces the Lord's prayer with a
solemnity which shows that he recollects its importance and its author.
"In preaching, he is careful to be distinctly heard, even by his
remotest auditors, and by constant attention to this important article,
he has brought his voice, which was not strong, to be particularly
audible. He affixes so much importance to a distinct delivery, that he
smilingly told me he suspected the grammatical definition of a
substantive was originally meant for a clergyman, whose great object it
was, if possible, _to be seen_, but indispensably to be _heard_, _felt_,
and _understood_.
"His whole performance is distinguished by a grave and majestic
simplicity, as far removed from the careless reader of a common story,
as from the declamation of an actor. His hearers leave the church, not
so much in raptures with the preacher, as affected with the truths he
has delivered. He says, he always finds he has done most good when he
has been least praised, and that he feels most humbled when he receives
the warmest commendation, because men, generally extol most the sermons
which have probed them least; whereas those which really do good, being
often such as make them most uneasy, are consequently the least likely
to attract panegyric. '_They_ only bear true testimony to the excellence
of a discourse,' added he, 'not who commend the composition or the
delivery, but who are led by it to examine their own hearts, to search
out its corruptions, and to reform their lives. Reformation is the
flattery I covet.'
"He is aware that the generality of hearers like to retire from the
sermon with the comfortable belief, that little is to be done on _their_
parts. Such hearers he always disappoints, by leaving on their minds at
the close, some impressive precept deduced from, and growing out of, the
preparatory doctrine. He does not press any one truth to the exclusion
of all others. He proposes no subtleties, but labors to excite
seriousness, to alarm the careless, to quicken the supine, to confirm
the doubting. He presses eternal things as things near at hand; as
things in which every living man has an equal interest.
"Mr. Stanley says, that though Dr. Barlow was considered at Cambridge as
a correct young man, who carefully avoided vice and even irregularity,
yet being cheerful, and addicted to good society, he had a disposition
to innocent conviviality, which might, unsuspectedly, have led him into
the errors he abhorred. He was struck with a passage in a letter from
Dr. Johnson to a young man who had just taken orders, in which, among
other wholesome counsel, he advises him 'to acquire the courage to
refuse _sometimes_ invitations to dinner.' It is inconceivable what a
degree of force and independence his mind acquired by the occasional
adoption of this single hint. He is not only, Mr. Stanley, the spiritual
director, but the father, the counselor, the arbitrator, and the friend
of those whom Providence has placed under his instruction.
"He is happy in an excellent wife, who, by bringing him a considerable
fortune, has greatly enlarged his power of doing good. But still more
essentially has she increased his happiness, and raised his character,
by her piety and prudence. By the large part she takes in his affairs,
he is enabled to give himself wholly up to the duties of his profession.
She is as attentive to the bodies, as her husband is to the souls of his
people, and educates her own family as sedulously as he instructs his
parish.
"One day when I had been congratulating Dr. Barlow on the excellence of
his wife's character, the conversation fell, by a sudden transition, on
the celibacy of the Romish clergy. He smiled and said, 'Let us
ministers of the Reformation be careful never to provoke the people to
wish for the restoration of that part of popery. I often reflect how
peculiarly incumbent it is on us, to select such partners as shall never
cause our emancipation from the old restrictions to be regretted. And we
ourselves ought, by improving the character of our wives, to repay the
debt we owe to the ecclesiastical laws of Protestantism for the
privilege of possessing them.'
"Will it be thought too trifling to add, how carefully this valuable
pair carry their consistency into the most minute details of their
family arrangements? Their daughters are no less patterns of decorum and
modesty in their dress and appearance, than in the more important parts
of their conduct. The Doctor says, 'that the most distant and
inconsiderable appendages to the temple of God, should have something of
purity and decency. Besides,' added he, 'with what face could I censure
improprieties from the pulpit, if the appearance of my own family in the
pew below were to set my precepts at defiance, by giving an example of
extravagance and vanity to the parish, and thus by making the preacher
ridiculous make his expostulations worse than ineffectual.
"So conscientious a rector," added Mr. Stanley, "could not fail to be
particularly careful in the choice of a curate; and a more humble,
pious, diligent assistant than Mr. Jackson could not easily be found. He
is always a welcome guest at my table. But this valuable man, who was
about as good a judge of the world as the great Hooker, made just such
another indiscreet marriage. He was drawn in to choose his wife, the
daughter of a poor tradesman in the next town, because he concluded that
a woman bred in humble and active life, would necessarily be humble and
active herself. _Her_ reason for accepting _him_ was because she
thought that as every clergyman was a _gentleman_, she of course, as his
wife, should be a _gentlewoman_, and fit company for any body.
"'He instructs my parish admirably,' said Dr. Barlow, 'but his own
little family he can not manage. His wife is continually reproaching
him, that though he may know the way to heaven, he does not know how to
push his way in the world. His daughter is the finest lady in the
parish, and outdoes them all, not only in the extremity, but the
immodesty of the fashion. It is her mother's great ambition that she
should excel the Miss Stanleys and my daughters in music, while her good
father's linen betrays sad marks of negligence. I once ventured to tell
Mrs. Jackson that there was only one reason which could excuse the
education she had given her daughter, which was that I presumed she
intended to qualify her for getting her bread; and that if she would
correct the improprieties of the girl's dress, and get her instructed in
useful knowledge, I would look out for a good situation for her. This
roused her indignation. She refused my offer with scorn, saying, that
when she asked my charity, she would take my advice; and desired that I
would remember that one clergyman's daughter was as good as another. I
told her that there was indeed a sense in which one clergyman was as
good as another, because the profession dignified the lowest of the
order, if, like her husband, he was a credit to that order. Yet still
there were gradations in the church as well as in the state. But between
the _wives_ and _daughters_ of the higher and lower clergy, there were
the same distinction which riches and poverty have established between
those of the higher and lower orders of the laity; and that rank and
independence in the one case, confer the same outward superiority with
rank and independence in the other."