The one great want of the metropolitan pulpit is men abreast of the age,
who can sympathize with its pulsation, can respond to its wants, can
permeate it with a living faith. The majority of the men in the pulpit
cease to be such when they get there. Of the human heart, as it is
fevered with passion, or boils over with desire, they know nothing. They
see men under a mask. Smith does not talk to his minister as he does to
Brown; with Brown he is facetious--occasionally a little loose--and,
after a good dinner and a bottle of wine, speaks in terms almost of
approval of fashionable follies. The minister comes in and the
conversation is changed--allusions are made to the 'Evangelical
Magazine'--the Missionary Society is referred to--something is said of
Sunday Schools, and the world for a time is dropped. Smith, junior, acts
in a similar way. Before his minister he assumes a virtue, if he have it
not--is sedate--quiet, anything, in short, but what his intimates find
him to be. It seems to be the condition of the pulpit that it shall see
life under a mask; and as to thought, that does not move in the regular
time-worn ruts, that is condemned at once. It is not the thought of the
pulpit, and it therefore must be false. It may be born of vigorous
intellect; it may have been nursed by years of severe thought; to get at
it, the thinker may have sacrificed many an early friendship--many a
cherished association--many a sacred tie; but, nevertheless, the pulpit
would blast it with its stern anathemas, and pronounces it a crime.
Occasionally, a man in the pulpit can act differently. Some few years
back, when Professor Scott, then of University College, London, now of
Owen's College, Manchester, was in town, it seemed as if an honest
attempt was made to meet and win to Christianity the philosophy that was
genuine and earnest and religious, though it squared with the creed of no
church, and took for its textbook the living heart of man rather than the
written Word. In our time the same thing is attempted. The man who has
had the courage to make the attempt--and to whom honour should be given
for it--is the Rev. Thomas Lynch.
Judged by externals, the Rev. Thomas Lynch is a failure. He is a small
spare man; his bodily presence is contemptible; he is a reed shaken by
the wind. You get no idea of the church militant when you look at him,
'Of the drum ecclesiastic,
Beat with fist instead of a stick.'
He is none of your bully 'Bottoms,' to roar 'so that the Duke will say,
let him roar again.' His chapel is in the very unfashionable
neighbourhood of Tottenham Court Road. His hearers are few and far
between. Out of the immense crowd of church and chapel goers in this
great city, not three hundred can be got to hear him; and yet I know no
man better worth your hearing. Your popular orators, your Dan O'Connells
and your Dr. Leifchilds, are big men--and yet your small men have often
the organization favourable to the development of poetry and thought. So
is it with Mr. Lynch. It is the old Gospel he preaches; but he handles
it in a new and fresh form. What is wearisome from others, comes with a
peculiar fascination from him. The truths common-place men have made
prosaic and common-place, the magic of his genius can render quite the
reverse. His is the rare power, given to the true poet alone, 'to clothe
the palpable and the familiar with golden exhalations of the dawn;' and
his also is the still rarer power to show piety--
'Sitting as a goddess bright,
In the circle of her light.'
You see that Christianity to him is life and power--no form of words, but
a reality; that it fills his heart; that it works in his intellect; that
it sanctifies his utterance. Hence it comes fresh to you as it does to
him; it is alive with the light of genius and of God; with him it is
applicable to the conditions of existence, to man's need and nature--no
tinkling cymbal--no empty brass. A brother and a man preaches to you;
your equal in philosophy, in thought, in lettered lore; your superior in
what is greater and nobler still. Yes, that frail man, with an imperfect
frame--with a voice so weak that you can scarcely hear him--with an
appearance so homely that you would never think that in such a casket a
soul of any greatness could be enshrined--can speak to you of the great
things of God--of righteousness, and temperance, and the judgment to
come, so that you--worldly scoffer or philosophic sceptic though you
be--must listen with admiration and respect.
A tale is told of a certain divine who was much given to a practice
common in the Scotch Church, though not very popular here--of exposition.
Once upon a time, when remonstrated with, the worthy preacher, with a
candour deserving of all praise, replied, that he did so because, when he
was persecuted in one text, he could flee to another. Mr. Lynch needs no
such practice. His Bible is no sealed book, but a revelation of light,
and splendour, and truth. To him there is nothing common, or barren, or
unclean. All is food for his intellect, always active--and his fancy,
always copious and rich. Nor even does that, luxuriant though it be,
lead him astray. All the while he is in earnest, illustrating, as he
himself writes in that choice book of his, 'Theophilus Trinal'--that
'the powers that play in fancy,
Can a holy earnest show,
As the colours of the bubble
Shine serenely in the bow.'
His theology we will describe in his own words. In the book we have
already referred to, he writes: 'Human nature, like ancient Job, is foul
and sore with disease, spirit-worn, and weary with incessant strivings of
heart. The Philosophies, as friends, come with their sympathy and
wisdom; but their words are dark clouds, edged brightly, which reveal the
splendours of truth behind them, but disclose not the orb; and to the
parched heart they are but as clouds, with a wind indeed, but without
rain. But after the discoursings of philosophy with human nature, there
is heard the voice of God, saying, "I am; behold my works; hope and
believe!" As experience enlarges, spiritual questions accumulate, till
at the last they pass into one great question concerning the world and
human life, which the heart expresses not in words, but which fills it
with a mute agony of wonder. To this question there is no answer, or
hope of any, till the voice of God is heard, saying, "I am!" This voice
from a whisper rises till it has the sound of many waters. Happy are we
if we believe and feel that the man of sorrows, and of success after
sorrows, Jesus, the Son of God, is still his real and sufficient
representative. He is God's surety to the world. He, bearing the sins
of the world, bears also its difficulties. In the faith of Christ have
the men of many generations found fixed standing-place, immovably secure.
In him they have heard the voice, "I am!" "Here we rest," they have
said; "our God, we will not distrust thee!" He bears the golden key of
love that shall unlock the secret of the world. This key is a key of
escape from a prison; key of entrance to a palace. Oftentimes, in life,
we may seem as those who struggle in a wide stormy sea, knowing their
strength only by the greatness of their ineffectual efforts. Yet are we
safe. For though we may feel as if rather drifting in a slight skiff
over boisterous waters than making way over them in a strong vessel, yet
if, after dreary days, Columbus found the land which reason taught him to
hope for, much more shall we reach the country promised to the faithful.'
Having thus referred to 'Theophilus Trinal,' a book which has already
reached a second edition, we may as well add here that Mr. Lynch has
published a sermon explanatory of his views and aims, and Four Lectures
delivered at Manchester, on various forms of Literature, and is, and has
been for some time, one of the principal contributors to a magazine
called the 'Christian Spectator'--a magazine understood to be intimately
connected with that section of the religious world of which Edward Miall,
late M.P., and Editor of the 'Nonconformist,' is the great exponent and
type. In this sketch it is impossible altogether to ignore the Lynch
Controversy; let me describe it in a few words. In 1856 Mr. Lynch
published a volume of religious poems called the Rivulet, some of them
for private perusal, some for public worship. The Eclectic Review had a
favourable notice of the book; the Morning Advertiser was sorely offended
with this review, and, in the style of criticism peculiar to that
journal, proceeded to show that the Rivulet was deeply tainted with
deadly heresy. Some leading ministers of the denomination to which Mr.
Lynch belonged generously declared their belief that Mr. Lynch was a man
to be honoured for his Christian creed and life, whatever the reviewer
might think. This led to a still further storm. Not content with
attacking Mr. Lynch, the Morning Advertiser made the protesting ministers
the subjects of its censure. The British Banner endorsed all these
charges, and gave to them, to the immense delight of the Record on one
side and the Reasoner on the other, a wider circulation. Considerable
confusion followed--reverend gentlemen and Christian laymen quarrelled
with all that bitterness which usually distinguishes the
divine--pamphlets and letters were plentiful as blackberries. Actually
the Congregational Union postponed their autumnal meeting on account of
the strife thus generated. The upshot of the whole matter was, that the
publicans complained, and the Advertiser for a time directed its
attention to more congenial subjects than those connected with
theology--that Dr. Campbell's connection with the British Banner was
terminated, and that Mr. Lynch had a much speedier sale for his poems
than, I fear, otherwise he would have had.
That Mr. Lynch has no larger congregation, I take it, is a reproach to
the Christian Church. One would think that there was a divorce between
it and talent and taste, or Mr. Lynch would preach to crowded benches.
As it is, however, more time is left him for the press, and, after all,
the world is ruled by what is read, not heard. The spoken word may
die--the printed one must live. What of truth there is in that is
immortal. It will forever bud and blossom and bear fruit.
In conclusion, it may be as well to state here that Mr. Lynch is a
minister of the Congregational body, and that his chapel is in Grafton
Street, Tottenham Court Road; that he was educated at Highbury College,
and then became minister of a small body of seceders from Dr. Leifchild's
congregation. He is young yet. He is older in thoughts than in years.
His inner life has been of richer growth than his outer one. A popular
preacher he can never become; but to men of thought, especially to men of
literature--to the school of Tennyson and Coleridge--his will always be a
welcome name.