In that celebrated chapter in which Gibbon explains the rise and progress
on natural grounds of the Christian religion, it has always seemed to us
that he has not done justice to the immense influence which the
institution of the pulpit must originally have possessed. Had he gone no
further than the pages of his New Testament, the distinguished historian
would have found many an instance of oratorical success. He would have
read how Herod quailed before the rude orator who in the desert drew
multitudes to hear him as he proclaimed the advent of the Messiah, and
warned a generation of vipers to flee from the wrath to come; he would
have read how, whilst the Teacher spake as never man spake, the common
people heard him gladly; how Felix trembled in his pride and power, and
how the polished intellect of Athens listened, and admired, and believed,
while Paul preached of an unknown God. It is true that in a subsequent
chapter Gibbon does not altogether ignore the pulpit, and admits the
sacred orators possessed some advantages over the advocate or the
tribune. "The arguments and rhetoric of the latter," he writes, "were
instantly opposed with equal arms by skilful and resolute antagonists,
and the cause of truth and reason might derive an accidental support from
the conflict of hostile passions. The bishop, or some distinguished
presbyter to whom he cautiously delegated the powers of preaching,
harangued without the danger of interruption or reply a submissive
multitude whose minds had been prepared and subdued by the awful
ceremonies of religion. Such was the strict subordination of the Roman
Catholic Church, that the same concerted sounds might issue at once from
a hundred pulpits of Italy or Egypt, if they were _tuned_ by the master
hand of the Roman or Alexandrian bishop." But much more than this may be
said. Wonderful is the power of oratory. Gibbon may have under-rated
it, for we know that he never could summon up the requisite courage to
make a speech in Parliament; but nevertheless rare power is his, who can
speak what will touch the hearts, and form the opinion, and mould the
lives of men. The more unlettered be the age, the more triumphant will
be this power; and when the theme is the stupendous one of religion--when
in it, according to the belief of preacher and hearer, eternal interests
are involved--woe that shall never pass away--joy that shall never
die--when, moreover, this living appeal is put in the place of dead form
or dreary routine, what wonder is it that before it should fade away the
pagan faith of Greece or Rome? The pulpit and Christianity are
identical. In times of reformation and revival, the pulpit has ever been
a power. When spiritual darkness has come down upon the land--when the
oracles have been dumb--when the sacred fire on the altar has ceased to
burn, the pulpit has been a form, a perquisite, a sham, rather than a
message of peace and glad tidings to the weary and heavy laden.
How comes it to pass that in these days the pulpit of the Establishment
has failed to be this? Mr. Christmas, a clergyman of the Established
Church, in a volume recently published, seeks to answer this question.
To use his own language, "the author had long felt that through some
cause or other the Church had not secured that hold on the attention of
the multitude without which her ministration could be but partially
effective." Why, even in these few lines we see a reason of the failure
which Mr. Christmas mourns. Clergymen live in a world of their own, and
will not look at facts as worldly men are compelled to do. Now, as a
matter of fact, the Church of England is not the church, but merely a
section of the church; and yet you cannot go into an episcopalian place
of worship but you hear what the church says--what the church holds--what
the church commands--when common sense tells every one that the speaker
is merely referring to the Establishment in England, and that even if he
were appealing to the custom and tradition of that body of believers
which, in all countries and ages, constitutes the church, the inquiry is
of little consequence after all--the appeal, in reality, being to the
Bible, and the Bible alone, which, in the well-worn language of
Chillingworth, is the religion of Protestants. Thus is it so much
preaching in the Church of England fails to reach and attract the masses.
The ministers will deal in fictions--will exclaim, "Hear the
church"--will wander away from topics of human interest into questions
with which the educated (and still more the uneducated) mind has no
sympathy. The middle-class public go to hear--for it is the genteel
thing to go to church--but they sit silent, passive, exhausted by the
long preliminary service, wearied, and unmoved. What wonder is it that
the more independent and manly--the men who do not fear Mrs. Grundy--who
are not afraid of conventionalisms, either stop at home, or leave the
Establishment for the more living service of dissent? Mr. Christmas
observes:--"Few will venture to say that the style of preaching most
valued among nonconformists is inferior to that heard from the pulpits of
the Establishment." The reason is not far to seek: dissent has no
ancient prestige to plead; dissent has no rich endowment to fall back on;
dissent lives on and is strong in spite of the cold shade of aristocracy,
or of the sneer of the bigot or the fool; dissent depends upon the
pulpit. If that be weak and cold, and dull and dim, dissent melts like
snow beneath the warm breath of the south. Dissent reminds us more than
the Establishment of the earlier period of Christianity, of the
Carpenter's Son who had not where to lay his head; whose apostles were
fishermen, and whose kingdom, to use His own emphatic declaration, "was
not of this world." The public mind is shocked and estranged when it
hears the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as he did the other day, defending
a recent ecclesiastical appointment, on the plea that the fortunate
individual was a man of blameless life, of high family, and great wealth.
"Mr. A. B.," says Mr. Christmas, "must be a clergyman, and Mr. A. B. has
not the gift of utterance. Well, he will be able to read his sermons,
and the rest of his brethren do the like. It is no detriment to a man's
prospects that the church is half empty when he preaches. 'He is a very
learned man--or a very well connected man--or a very good man--or an
excellent parish priest: it is a pity he is not more successful in the
pulpit; but then, really, preaching is the smallest part of a clergyman's
duty.'" Such is the way in which such a subject is treated within the
pale of the Establishment.
But the Sunday Evening Service at St. Paul's Cathedral is an answer to
all this. Let us see! On a cold winter evening, underneath its
magnificent dome, are seated some three thousand well-dressed people. On
the first occasion of holding evening service, the scene was rather
indecorous for Sunday evening. A large number of those who had been
unable to obtain admission to the service were lingering about the south
door, and as the carriages of the Lord Mayor and other civic dignitaries
were leaving with their occupants, the assembled crowd gave vent to their
feelings by unmistakable groans of displeasure, as if they considered
themselves to have been unfairly excluded. But this is over--the thing
has become a fact. The audience has toned down to the level English
standard of propriety. The sublime service, in spite of its length and
monotony, has been listened to with a patience almost devout; and the
choir, "200 trebles and altos, 150 tenors, and 150 basses," the largest
and most complete choir that was ever yet organised, has done its part to
heighten the rapture and piety of the night. A clergyman now ascends the
pulpit to preach. He is a popular clergyman--the crowd to-night is
larger than it has ever yet been--active, learned, industrious,
charitable, devout. He is the Rev. Canon Dale, rector of St. Pancras.
Yet what is his theme? The Church--the Mother of us all--the divinely
appointed means of man's recovery from the power and the consequence of
sin. Is not this a fatal blunder? What man wants is, not the Church,
but the message it proclaims--the voice itself, not the messenger--the
good tidings of great joy, not the human instruments by which they are
revealed to man.
But this service shows the strength of the church in the metropolis. The
reply to this, we fear, is unsatisfactory. The present able Bishop of
London is endeavouring to procure a union of the City churches. The
answers to the inquiries of the bishop made by the clergy present some
curious features. The Rev. J. Charlesworth, rector of the joint parishes
of St. Mildred, Bread-street, and St. Margaret Moses, replies in answer
to the bishop's interrogatories that the largest attendance at any of his
church services is ten, that his net income is 220 pounds a year, and
that the population is 258. The Rev. J. Minchin, rector of the joint
parishes of St. Mildred, Poultry, and St. Mary, Colechurch, reports that
the largest attendance at his service is 30, his net income 280 pounds,
and the population 600. The Rev. Thomas Darling, rector of St. Michael
Paternoster Royal and St. Martin's Vintry, reports that his largest
attendance is 25, his net income 240 pounds, population 430. The Rev.
Dr. Kynaston, high master of St. Paul's School, reports that the
attendance at the church of the joint parishes of St. Nicholas Cole Abbey
and St. Nicholas Olave, of which he is rector, is 30, his income 263
pounds, with a house in good repair, population 592. The Rev. Charles
Mackenzie, rector of the joint parishes of St. Benet, Gracechurch, and
St. Leonard, Eastcheap, states the attendance at 48, net income 287
pounds, population 300. The Rev. Dr. Stebbing, rector of St. Mary
Somerset and St. Mary Woolchurch Haw, reports that his largest attendance
is 40, net income 250 pounds, population unknown. The Rev. Thomas Jones,
rector of Allhallows, Lombard-street, reports that his largest attendance
is 50, his net income 396 pounds, population 456. The Rev. F. J.
Stainforth, incumbent of Allhallows Staining, reports that his largest
attendance is 50, net income 800 pounds, population 500. Many more of
the same sort might be given from the official returns, and in some cases
there is an attendance of 100 or 150 persons where the income of the
incumbent is upwards of 1,000 pounds a year.
One reason of this wretched state of things we have hinted at. The
removal of the city population, we may be told, is another: but the
population in the neighbourhood of these places is sufficient to fill
them were the population given to church-going. With all due deference,
we would fain ask the clergy if they do not fail to attract the public,
owing to their themes and manner of treating them? Some preachers always
manage to bring in the Old Testament dispensation. The preacher is
dwelling among the priests and Levites: perpetually he tells you what the
Jews did and did not; how they were a stiff-necked people; how they went
after strange gods; how their nation was blotted out, and their temple
razed to the ground, and their very name became a reproach. Man needs
not the Hebrew learning, but the Christian faith; not the voice that
thundered from Sinai, but the accents of mercy that were heard on Calvary
in that awful hour when the earth trembled, when the grave gave up its
dead, when the veil of the Temple was rent in twain, and the Son of Man
died upon the cross. The preacher of the class we have referred to
almost seems to think otherwise: he ignores the present, and lives only
in the past. He is worse than a lawyer with his precedents. His dialect
is obsolete, and a stumbling-block to active, earnest, intelligent living
men, whether rich or poor. He is like a man with corks, who is afraid to
cut them off, and strike out boldly for himself. He cannot ask you for a
penny for a new church without showing how liberally the Jews supported
the public worship of their day. He is great in Deuteronomy and
Leviticus. He seems as if he could have no faith in Christianity unless
he could lock it up with Old Testament texts. "I fear," writes Erasmus,
in his "Age of Religious Revolution," "two things--that the study of
Hebrew will promote Judaism, and that the study of philology will revive
Paganism." Really we sometimes are inclined to believe that the first
fear has been realised. Many a preacher reminds us of Bishop Corbett's
"Distracted Puritan," when he says--
"In the blessed tongue of Canaan
I placed my chiefest pleasure,
'Till I prick'd my foot with a Hebrew root,
And it bled beyond all measure."
We can well imagine many a preacher thus speaking, and feel disposed to
wish that such might prick their feet with Hebrew roots till they wholly
discontinue their references to extinct forms of worship, and apply the
truth that Christ came to preach to man's present position--to the hopes
and fears--to the struggles and duties--to the passions and vanities of
to-day. There is progress everywhere. Why should preaching be the
exception? If, as is admitted, the eloquence of the bar or senate has
declined, may we not naturally conclude that in that of the pulpit there
has been a falling off as well, especially when we remember how much the
press has supplemented the latter? Verily, the clergy, whether in or out
of the Establishment, must exert themselves. The nation demands that the
enormous wealth and patronage possessed by the latter be devoted to
something more than refined enjoyment or epicurean ease. It is not
churches we want, but parsons. An orator can preach anywhere, as well
from an old tub as from a pulpit, costly and consecrated, and curiously
wrought.