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.'
Just so preaches Dr. Campbell. In the pulpit he has it all his own way.
You cannot contradict him. You cannot even intimate dissent; and he
harangues with the air of a judge. Evidently the congregation has been
dragooned into what it is, for the preacher gives no sign of intelligence
or vigour. He takes a text and preaches from it. The divisions of the
sermon are the sentences of the text, and he talks in the most desultory
manner imaginable. The oratory belongs to the deadly-lively school, and
consists of mild common-places, pumped out with a ferocity reminding one
of the stern Puritans of the olden time, but rather out of place in the
Tabernacle in which the Doctor reigns supreme, and which we suppose is
licensed for public worship, according to Act of Parliament. Moderate
your expectations if you go there. Dr. Campbell has been far too busy a
man to master the thought and aspect and characteristics of our age. Of
what man in England, in London, in the nineteenth century, is aiming at,
he seems to have but a remote idea. So blind is he that, if he wants a
heathen, he puts on his spectacles and reads you an account of one out of
some old Missionary Magazine. Nor does the Doctor atone for this by the
beauty of his style and the perspicuity of his tone. His voice is husky
and, at times, inaudible; his manner, bad. Sheridan had a bad voice, so
had Fox, so had Burke; but these men were orators, nevertheless. Dr.
Campbell is not one, and never was one. He builds up no lofty structure.
He bears you on no unfaltering wing far,
'Far above this lower world,
Up where eternal ages roll.'
He overflows with no brilliant eloquence, and burns with no celestial
fire. He never ascends into the region of beauty and splendour, and life
and light. His is not the magic art to take you from step to step along
the Christian path, till your soul heaves, and you exclaim, 'It is good
to be here!' On the contrary, he leaves you flat and cold and dull. He
amplifies, and waves his right arm, and quotes texts, and repeats a
feeble sentence emphatically; but that is all; he makes no progress. In
going from Edinburgh to Stirling, by water, you are carried backwards and
forwards, by the winding of the stream, in the most remarkable manner.
You see Stirling long before you approach. You keep going, and yet you
don't seem going on. Dr. Campbell winds just in the same way. You have
talk without effect; action without progress; words without thought.
The real truth is, Dr. Campbell is one of the failures of the age. His
'Martyr of Erromanga' has been his only creditable work. No man has
talked more, or done less. He attempts too much. He would be
everything, and is nothing. Superficiality has ever been his bane. A
fatal copiousness of words has ruined him. More golden opportunities
than those he has had, no man ever had. A failure in the pulpit, he
turned himself to the press; and a powerful body, with an organization in
almost every town and village in the land, rallied round him as their
chief. To circulate his publications the most gigantic efforts were
made. The 'pulpits were tuned,' the Sunday-school was invaded, the
congregation was taken by storm. Like most men whose invective powers
are strong, the Doctor can flatter, and he did so with a vengeance. The
model church was the church which took in the most of the Doctor's
publications. The successful minister was the minister who sold the most
of them. The people of whom the Doctor had hopes were the people who
subscribed 4s. 4d. per quarter to Bolt Court.
But the Doctor can bear no rival; he must reign supreme. John Childs, of
Bungay, and Dr. Adam Thomson, of Coldstream, destroyed the Bible
monopoly; but Dr. Campbell had the command of the press, and took the
credit to himself. An eminent publisher started a newspaper and a
religious magazine, and the Doctor looked coldly on him till he sold the
newspaper and gave up the magazine. When the 'Anti-State-Church Society'
was formed, the Doctor was one of its members, but it had a ruling spirit
who was not the pastor of the Tabernacle, and the Doctor's zeal soon died
away. The Doctor also professes to be with the Teetotalers; but they
don't all go to Bolt Court, and the Doctor damns them with faint praise.
If the Congregationalists grow restive, it matters little; they have no
chance against him; they have been delivered over to the Doctor, body and
soul. It is in vain they struggle to be free. Will the Doctor publish
what would militate against himself? Will the Doctor withhold from
publishing when it gives him the chance of an easy triumph? Of course, a
man is a fool to enter into a controversy with a newspaper editor. The
editor is omnipotent; you must give in. If it is folly to kick against
the pricks, it is the height of folly to encounter the editor of a
newspaper. Hence the Doctor's triumphs have been easy; but they have
been due more to the weakness of his foes than to any strength of his
own.
As to the utter weakness of the Doctor in execution, let us turn to the
'British Banner.' A man may be heavy, rambling, in the pulpit; but with
his pen he may be quite the reverse. The 'Banner,' when under the
Doctor's care, was a failure. That was to have been a paper to
Christianize the world; to win over the discontented infidelity and
chartism of our age; to pervade the land with a living Christian faith:
for this, Doctor Campbell had a support such as was never given to man
before. The Doctor told us that there was an infidel press; that that
infidel press circulated by tens of thousands; and that it behoved
Christian men to try and arrest such a state of things. Christian men
believed the Doctor, and invested him with tremendous power. And what
has been the consequence? That the world has a fresh sectarian paper,
and that the readers of the infidel press remain just where they were.
Is this a success?
Take another test. The London weekly papers exchange with the country
ones; the consequence is, many of the leaders appearing in the former are
reprinted in the latter. This is about the best test you can have of
what a newspaper is. The editors of the country papers are very fair
representatives of the intelligence of the age. What they reprint must
be generally good. You would expect this to be so, and it actually is
the case. The papers which have the highest reputation for talent and
clearness of view are precisely the papers most quoted from. But who
ever saw a reprint of a leader from the 'British Banner'? If the leaders
in the 'Banner' were as distinguished for the vigour of language, for the
correctness of their views, they would be reprinted as extensively as the
papers the 'Banner' was intended to supersede. If the Doctor's aim were
good, if it were desirable to start a paper that should be Christian, and
yet popular, so that it should circulate everywhere, the Doctor's failure
has been complete; for he has not only not done so, but he has hindered
the men who would.
Like most vituperative men, Dr. Campbell is terribly thin-skinned. You
may praise, but you must not blame. He seems conscious that honest
criticism would tear him to shreds and tatters. We heard of a Scottish
paper in the habit of giving pulpit portraits. It was expected the
Doctor would be served up in course of time. The Doctor let it be
understood that, if anything of the kind were done, he would write the
paper into the Broomielaw: and the matter dropped.
The last time I heard the Doctor he was preaching about the Chinese. He
told us, what most of us knew well before, that China was a very large
country, that it had a wall eighteen hundred miles long, that Confucius
lived three or four hundred years before Christ; but there was one thing
he did not tell us--that the Chinese call a man of talk, and swagger, and
rhodomontade, a paper tiger. But perhaps the Doctor was wise, as
comparisons are odious. After all, that such a man, with his fulsome
eulogies and violent invective, should have come to be a power, is a
melancholy fact--a fact indicating that Dissent will have to undergo a
very formidable purifying process before men of taste, and intellect, and
learning will be found willing to join its ranks.