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.