The great John Foster (who, by-the-bye, in his essay on 'Decision of
Character,' has much mischief to answer for, as every obstinate mule
quotes his authority when, against all advice and entreaty and common
sense, he persists in going wrong--poor Haydon always quoted Foster)
wrote one of his best essays, 'On the Aversion of Men of Taste to
Evangelical Religion.' The professors of Evangelical religion, I think,
scarcely forgave him. The sanctuary, it was thought, should have a
shibboleth of its own. In its peculiar terms and general formation it
should differ from the ordinary language of other men. If persons of
taste were kept away--if the men of intellect and science and learning
stood aloof--it mattered little; for the wisdom of the world was folly,
and it was ordained that it was to be brought to nought by the weak in
years and understanding--'out of the mouth of sucklings and babes.' The
religious, I fear, some of them with a certain kind of pride--for there
is a pride in the Church as well as in the world, and we all know whose
'Darling sin
Is the pride that apes humility'--
took pleasure in their cant terms, and sprinkled them as plentifully in
their sermons and prayers as ever did skilful cook in time-honoured
Christmas pudding. Wilberforce once took Pitt to hear Cecil. When they
came out, Wilberforce tells us he was surprised by Pitt telling him he
could not understand a word of the discourse. There was nothing
wonderful in that. Pitt had never been to hear an Evangelical preacher
before. His world had been a different one. He was a stranger amongst
strangers. Their language was not his, and conveyed no meaning to his
ear. Greek or Hebrew would have been as intelligible to him. Pitt's
case was a common one then, and is a common one now. Foster's Essay has
lost none of its point or power. There are still not unfrequently in the
services of our churches and chapels, in the peculiar phraseology of the
pulpit, some grounds for the aversion of men of taste to Evangelical
religion. However, there are illustrious exceptions: one of the most
illustrious of these is Henry Melville.
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 pounds
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
pounds a-year: he resigned that when he was made President of Haileybury
College. As Chaplain of the Tower, I believe, he has about 300 pounds
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.