The Rev. A. J. Morris is an Independent, _alias_ a Congregational,
minister at Holloway. Of course my fashionable readers don't know where
Holloway is. I may as well then briefly inform them that it is a suburb
of London, not far from Islington and the New Cattle Market. Holloway
belongs to the Dissenting part of London. The metropolis is cut up into
sections:--Quakers congregate in Tottenham, and Edmonton, and Stoke
Newington; Jews in Houndsditch; the Low Church party is very strong in
Clapham; at the east, down by the river, there is an immense number of
Baptists; in that large district, known at election times as the Tower
Hamlets, Dissenting chapels are plentiful as blackberries, while in the
more fashionable districts of Chelsea and Brompton you will hardly find
one. The philosopher of Malmesbury (Sir W. Molesworth could have shown
you the passage in the Leviathan) argues that a man should always be of
the religion of his country, and thus is it these sects have become
hereditary in their respective localities. You never hear of Puseyism in
the Tower Hamlets; you might as soon expect to find the Italian Opera
there as a St. Barnabas. Almost all the Dissenting families of London
have been born, brought up, and gathered to their fathers in one
locality. To this day the Dissenters of London are buried on almost the
very spot where De Foe wrote his satires, and Dr. Watts his hymns.
In spite, however, of this intuitive faith in the past, a faith no logic,
no mental illumination, can root out or destroy, dissent has its new
chapels and new men. Of these latter the Rev. A. J. Morris is one.
People who read Mr. Ruskin, and talk sentimentally about architecture--a
practice very rare among architects themselves--will see in Mr. Morris's
chapel something of the character of the man. It is new, but still it
appropriates to itself what is graceful and useful in the past. For
instance, it has more of an Episcopalian character than dissenting
chapels at the time of its erection generally had. Up to that time
dissenters had prided themselves on the uncomely and unpoetical aspect of
the places in which they met for public worship. Your dissenting chapel
was generally a square, built of the ugliest red brick, and rendered
hideous internally by square deal boxes, called pews, in which the people
sat under a common-place divine, generally as plain as the place. Such
was the meeting-house, as it was termed in the hallowed days of dissent,
in the good old times. The whole affair was an abomination to men of
taste. Mr. Morris has introduced a great reform--he has abolished the
pew system. He has as graceful a gothic chapel as heart could desire;
his place of worship is reverential and in keeping with its character.
'That man of primitive piety,' as glorious old Isaak Walton termed him,
Mr. George Herbert, says in his Temple:--
'quit thy state,
All equal are within the church's gate.'
Such certainly is the language of Mr. Morris's chapel, and such I imagine
more or less would be the language of Mr. Morris himself.
Having entered the chapel and got a seat, a matter of some little
difficulty,--for the place, which is not very large, is almost always
full,--of course you naturally look in the direction of the pulpit.
There you will see a man in the prime of life, of average size, with a
light complexion, with a head nearly bald, and with what little hair it
can boast of a colour popularly known as sandy. The head is well shaped,
round and compact, and complete. Mr. Morris's appearance is that of a
recluse, of a student of books and his own thoughts rather than of
manners and of men. He wears no gown, but, nevertheless, has an
ecclesiastical appearance, partly possibly resulting from the fact of his
wearing an M.B. waistcoat. M.B., perhaps it may be as well to observe on
the authority of a late Edinburgh Reviewer, means Mark of the Beast, and
was a term used by clerical tailors to denote those square, closely
buttoned vests, much affected at one time by curates and other young
people suspected of a Puseyite tendency. Mr. Morris's voice is loud, but
not very agreeable. He has a singular mannerism which is anything but
pleasant till you are used to it, and when, as was the case the last time
I heard him preach, the reverend gentleman asks--'Ow shall we lay up for
ourselves treasure in Eaven?' you are apt to forget the gravity of the
occasion, and to indulge yourself with a feeble smile.
In what Mr. Morris himself says, however, you will find no occasion for a
smile. What he says is worth hearing. In this unsettled age you will
see that he has settled convictions--that his religion is a real
thing--that it is that which his intellect has fed on--that by which he
has squared his life--that by the truth of which he lives, and by the
lamp of which he is prepared to find his way when he comes to the valley
of the shadow of death. The peculiarity of Mr. Morris as a preacher
seems to me to be healthy manliness. He preaches as a man to men. Those
whom he addresses are most of them engaged in business, and his aim is to
teach them that Christianity is as fit for the counting-house as it is
for the closet--as fit for the week-day as the Sabbath--as fit for the
world as it is for the church. Some men once in the pulpit seem to
forget that there is such a thing as the living present. They are
perpetually dwelling on the past, trying to make dry bones live. They
can tell you what the old divines said. They can quote their favourite
commentators. They can parody the religion of men whose religion at any
rate was a real thing, but that is all. Of our times they have no idea.
Of the human heart, as it beats and burns in this age of the--
"Steamship and the railway, and the thoughts that move mankind,"
they are profoundly ignorant. They are strangers in a strange land.
Amongst us but not of us--of an alien race and speaking an alien
tongue--with garments, it may be, unspotted by the world, but without the
strength and the heart and the rich experience which contact with, and
mastery over, the world alone can give. Mr. Morris is not one of this
class--nor is he a painter of idle pictures, whose talk is of fields ever
clothed in living green--of white garments--of pavements of sapphire and
of shining thrones--nor is he a dreamy sentimentalist lisping out the
attributes of the Majesty of heaven and of earth in terms of maudlin
endearment, as some drivelling dotard might tell of the goodness and the
virtue and the precocious cleverness of the child of his old age. Were
Mr. Morris either of these, he might have a larger audience--he might be
a more popular preacher--but he certainly would be a less useful one. He
thinks, and he gives you something to think about as well. His own creed
he has not taken upon trust, nor does he want you to do so either. He
has a clear, definite conception of spiritual realities, and he aims to
give you the same. Mr. Morris has not genius--but he has intellect clear
and strong--perhaps a little deficient in fire, and a habit rare, but
invaluable in a minister, of independent thought and action. As a
preacher he ranks high in his denomination. Out of the pulpit he is
almost unknown. As a platform orator I know not that he has any actual
existence at all. I imagine he belongs to that growing class in all
denominations who have less faith in public religious meetings every
year.
As a writer, Mr. Morris has acquired some little reputation; not that he
has written much, but that what little he has done has been well done.
His chief performance is, 'Religion and Business, or Spiritual Life in
one of its Secular Departments.' The _Spectator_--a journal not much
given to theology, especially that of Dissent--was compelled to confess
it was a 'series of able and thoughtful lectures on the union of
Christianity and business, addressed apparently to a Nonconformist
congregation. The topic is treated forcibly, without the mannerism
frequent among dissenters, and the rules of life enforced are not
impracticably rigid.' He has also published several sermons; 'Christ,
the Spirit of Christianity,' is one. A 'Review of the Year 1850' is
another; and another is the 'Roar of the Lion,' which, as it was
suggested by the papal aggression, and was praised in the _British
Banner_, was, I should fear, an inferior production. His last work is,
'Glimpses of Great Men; or, Biographic Thoughts of Moral Manhood,' a work
intended to illustrate, by the examples of Oberlin, Hampden, Luther, Fox,
Bunyan, Cromwell, Milton, Moore, De Foe, Knox, Whitfield, Foster, Irving,
Christian heroism in its beauty and power. The sketches are short but
practical and to the point, well worthy especially of the attention of
the young, for whose benefit they were more especially designed.