I fear there is very little difference between the Church and the world.
In both the tide seems strongly set in favour of ignorance, presumption,
and charlatanism. In the case of Mr. Spurgeon, they have both agreed to
worship the same idol. Nowhere more abound the vulgar, be they great or
little, than at the Royal Music Hall on a Sunday morning. Mr. Spurgeon's
service commences at a quarter to eleven, but the doors are opened an
hour and a half previously, and all the while there will be a continuous
stream of men and women--some on foot, some in cabs, many in
carriages--all drawn together by this world's wonder. The motley crowd
is worth a study. In that Hansom, now bearing a decent country deacon
staying at the Milton, you and Rose dashed away to Cremorne. Last night,
those lovely eyes were wet with tears as the Piccolomini edified the
fashionable world with the representation of the Harlot's career. That
swell was drinking pale ale in questionable company in the
Haymarket--that gay Lorette was sinning on a gorgeous scale. This man
was paying his needlewomen a price for their labour, on which he knows it
is impossible for them morally to live; and that was poisoning a whole
neighbourhood by the sale of adulterated wares.
A very mixed congregation is this one at the Surrey Gardens. The real
flock--the aborigines from Park Street Chapel--are a peculiar
people,--very plain, much given to the wearing of clothes of an ancient
cut--and easy of recognition. The men are narrow, hard, griping, to look
at--the women stern and unlovely, yet they, and such as they alone, if we
are to believe them, are to walk the pearly streets of the New Jerusalem,
and to sit down with martyrs and prophets and saints--with Abraham, and
Isaac, and Jacob--at the marriage supper of the Lamb.
'The toe of the peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he galls
his kibe.' Here is a peer, and there his tailor. Here Lady Clara de
Vere kills a weary hour, and there is the poor girl who sat up all night
to stitch her ladyship's costly robe. Here is a blasphemer come to
laugh, there a saint to pray. Can these dry bones live? Can the
preacher touch the heart of this listening mass? Breathed on by a spell
more potent than his own, will it in its anguish and agony exclaim, What
must we do to be saved? You think how this multitude would have melted
beneath the consecrated genius of a Chalmers, or a Parsons, or a
Melville, or an Irving,--and look to see the same torrent of human
emotions here. Ah, you are mistaken--Mr. Spurgeon has not the power to
wield 'all thoughts, all passions, all delights.' It is not in him to
'shake the arsenal, and fulmine over Greece.' In the very midst of his
fiercest declamation, you will find his audience untouched; so coarse is
the colouring, and clumsy the description, you can sit calm and unmoved
through it all--and all the while the haughty beauty by your side will
fan herself with a languor Charles Matthews in 'Used Up' might envy.
Look at the preacher;--the riddle is solved. You see at once that he is
not the man to soar, and soaring bear his audience, trembling and
enraptured, with him in his heavenward flight.
Isaiah, the son of Amos, when he received his divine commission,
exclaimed, 'Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean
lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips!' but the
popular minister of New Park Street Chapel has no such trembling
forebodings; no thought of his own unworthiness, no fear that he is
trespassing on sacred ground, or that he is attempting a task beyond his
powers, impedes the utterance of his fluent tongue. Not a trace of the
scholarship, or reading, or severe thought, or God-sent genius, or of
that doubt in which there lives more faith than in half the creeds, will
you find in the whole of his harangue.
On the pulpit, or rather the platform, Mr. Spurgeon imitates Gough, and
walks up and down, and enlivens his sermons with dramatic
representations. He is 'hail fellow, well-met' with his hearers. He has
jokes and homely sayings and puns and proverbs for them. Nothing is too
sacred for his self-complacent grasp; he is as free and unrestrained in
God's presence as in man's. Eternity has unveiled its mysteries to him.
In the agonies of the lost, in the joys of the redeemed, there is nothing
for him to learn. His 'sweet Saviour,' as he irreverently exclaims, has
told him all. Of course, at times there is a rude eloquence on his lips,
or, rather, a fluent declamation, which the mob around takes for such.
The orator always soars with his audience. With excited thousands
waiting his lightest word, he cannot remain passionless and unmoved.
Words and thoughts are borne to him from them. There is excitement in
the hour; there is excitement in the theme; there is excitement in the
living mass; and, it may be, as the preacher speaks of a physical hell
and displays a physical heaven, some sensual nature is aroused, and a
change may be effected in a man's career. Little causes may produce
great events; one chance word may be the beginning of a new and a better
life; but the thoughtful hearer will learn nothing, will be induced to
feel nothing, will find that as regards Christian edification he had much
better have staid at home. At the best Mr. Spurgeon will seem to him a
preacher of extraordinary volubility. Most probably he will return from
one of Mr. Spurgeon's services disgusted with the noisy crowding,
reminding him of the Adelphi rather than the house of God; disgusted with
the common-place prayer; disgusted with the questionable style of
oratory; disgusted with the narrowness of the preacher's creed, and its
pitiful misrepresentations of the glorious gospel of the blessed God;
disgusted with the stupidity that can take for a divine afflatus brazen
impudence and leathern lungs. Most probably he will come back confessing
that Mr. Spurgeon is the youngest, and the loudest, and the most
notorious preacher in London--little more; the idol of people who dare
not go to theatres, and yet pant for theatrical excitement.
When Mr. Whiteside finished his five hours' oration on Kars, Lord
Palmerston replied, that the honourable gentleman's speech was highly
creditable to his physical powers. A similar reply would be suitable to
Mr. Spurgeon. You come away, having gained nothing except it may be a
deeper disgust for the class of preachers of which Mr. Spurgeon is a
type. We have heard somewhat too much of Negative Theology--it is time
we protest against the Positive Theology of such men as Mr. Spurgeon.
There are no doubts or difficulties in his path. The last time I heard
the reverend gentleman, he had the audacity to assure us that the reason
God allowed wicked men to live was, that as he knew they were to be
damned, he thought they might have a little pleasure first. Mr. Spurgeon
is one of the elect. His flock are in the same happy condition. God
chooses them out of the ruins of the fall, and makes them heirs of
everlasting life, while he suffers the rest of the world to continue in
sin, and consummate their guilt by well-deserved punishment. If he sins,
it matters little; 'for that vengeance incurred by me has already fallen
upon Christ my substitute, and only the chastisement shall remain for
me.' Mr. Spurgeon has heard people represent 'God as the Father of the
whole universe. It surprises me that any readers of the Bible should so
talk.' To the higher regions of thought Mr. Spurgeon seems an utter
stranger--all his ideas are physical; when he speaks of the Master, it is
not of his holy life or divine teaching, but his death. 'Christians,' he
exclaims, 'you have here your Saviour. See his Father's _vengeful_ sword
sheathed in his heart--behold his death-agonies--see the clammy sweat
upon his brow--mark his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth--hear
his sighs and groans upon the cross.' Again, he exclaims, 'Make light of
thee, sweet Jesus! Oh, when I see thee _with thy shirt of gore_,
wrestling in Gethsemane--when I behold him _with a river of blood_
rolling down his shoulders,' &c. All his sermons abound with similar
instances of exaggerated misconception.
Mr. Spurgeon steps on the very threshold of great and glorious thoughts,
and stops there. Of God he speaks as irreverently as of Christ. 'Oh!'
cries the sinner, 'I will not have thee for a God.' 'Wilt thou not?'
says he, and he gives him over to the hand of Moses; Moses takes him a
little and applies the club of the law, drags him to Sinai, where the
mountain totters over his head, the lightnings flash, and thunders
bellow, and then the sinner cries, 'O God, save me!' 'Ah! I thought thou
wouldst not have me for a God.' 'O Lord, thou shalt be my God,' says the
poor trembling sinner; 'I have put away my ornaments from me. O Lord,
what wilt thou do unto me? Save me! I will give myself to thee. Oh!
take me!' 'Ay,' says the Lord, 'I knew it; I said that I will be their
God; and I have made thee willing in the day of my power.' 'I will be
their God, and they shall be my people.' Here is another passage.
Preaching at Shipley, near Leeds, our young divine alluded to Dr. Dick's
wish, that he might spend an eternity in wandering from star to star.
'For me,' exclaims Mr. Spurgeon, 'let it be my lot to pursue a more
glorious study. My choice shall be this: I shall spend 5000 years in
looking into the wound in the left foot of Christ, and 5000 years in
looking into the wound in the right foot of Christ, and 10,000 years in
looking into the wound in the right hand of Christ, and 10,000 years more
in looking into the wound in the left hand of Christ, and 20,000 years in
looking into the wound in his side.' Is this religion? Are such
representations, in an intellectual age, fitted to claim the homage of
reflective men? Will not Mr. Spurgeon's very converts, as they become
older--as they understand Christianity better--as the excitement produced
by dramatic dialogues in the midst of feverish audiences dies away--feel
this themselves? And yet this man actually got nearly 24,000 to hear him
on the Day of Humiliation. Such a thing seems marvellous. If popularity
means anything, which, however, it does not, Mr. Spurgeon is one of our
greatest orators.
It is true it is not difficult to collect a crowd in London. If I simply
stand stock still in Cheapside in the middle of the day, a crowd is
immediately collected. The upper class of society requires finer weapons
than any Mr. Spurgeon wields; but he preaches to the people in a homely
style--and they like it, for he is always plain, and never dull. Then
his voice is wonderful, of itself a thing worth going to hear, and he has
a readiness rare in the pulpit, and which is invaluable to an orator.
Then, again, the matter of his discourses commends itself to uneducated
hearers. We have done with the old miracle plays, wherein God the Father
appears upon the stage in a blue coat, and wherein the devil has very
visible hoofs and tail; but the principle to which they appealed--the
love of man for dramatic representations rather than abstract
truths--remains, and Mr. Spurgeon avails himself of it successfully.
Another singular fact--Mr. Spurgeon would quote it as a proof of its
truth--is that what is called high doctrine--the doctrine Mr. Spurgeon
preaches--the doctrine which lays down all human pride--which teaches us
we are villains by necessity, and fools by a divine thrusting on--is
always popular, and, singular as it may seem, especially on the Surrey
side of the water.
In conclusion, let me not be understood as blaming Mr. Spurgeon. We do
not blame Stephani when Caliban falls at his feet and swears that he's 'a
brave god and bears celestial liquor.' Few ministers get people to hear
them. Mr. Spurgeon has succeeded in doing so. It may be a pity that the
people will not go and hear better preachers; but in the meanwhile no one
can blame Mr. Spurgeon that he fearlessly and honestly preaches what he
deems the truth.
The Presbyterian Body.