Part 4 (1/2)

Though the popular pastor of a popular London congregation, he is still plain Thomas Binney-still without the very questionable honour of an American D.D. appended to his name.

THE REV. BALDWIN BROWN, B.A.

The pulpit is an old inst.i.tution-next to the theatre, perhaps the oldest we have. To almost every generation of men on this small isle set in the silver sea it has revealed all that it has had to communicate relative to this world or the next. 'Thanks to the aid of the temporal arm,' writes Thierry of Edbald, King of Kent, 'the faith of Christ arose once more, never again to be extinguished, on both banks of the Thames.' Before that the pulpit had been introduced, and it remained powerful when England, at a monarch's nod, forcibly dissolved the spiritual union she had so soon contracted and so long maintained with Rome. To the Protestants the pulpit was more essential than to the Catholics. To the Protestants who dissented from the Established Church it became more important still. Without it they were nothing. Dissenting vitality depends upon the pulpit. If that be weak and cold, unable to get at the heart and to act upon the pa.s.sions of the mult.i.tude, Dissent melts like snow beneath the warm breath of the south. If it be otherwise, Dissent flourishes and grows strong. The history of sects is the history of individuals. Whitfield, Wesley are instances. In the Church of England it is otherwise. That has a status independent of the pulpit. Without any particular individual, it has a service elaborate and solemn and complete, and more attractive than from its eternal monotony, in spite of Puseyite natural attempts to the contrary, one would imagine would be the case. Yet it is becoming confessed the Dissenting pulpit has ceased to be what it was. I own I hardly understand why. Tom Moore tells in his diary that no exercise of talent brings so immediate a result as oratory.

I believe every one who has ever got upon his legs will say the same thing, and where can the orator have a wider field than in the pulpit?

At the best, the senate or the bar have nothing of equal interest. I believe the difficulty may be partly explained in two ways. In the first place, the pulpit is too much a repet.i.tion of creeds and theologies that are becoming extinct; and in the second place, there is a dead weight in the pews which masters the pulpit, and deadens its intellectual life. I believe many a minister says things in private conversation that he has not courage enough to utter in the pulpit, and that when he tries to do so, owing to the vagueness of theological terms, what he says in one sense is understood by his hearers in another. No wonder then that the pulpit is so barren of power, and that many a man of gifts and parts in our days of universal reading prefers the press to the pulpit, and chooses rather to teach with his pen than with the living voice. Yet the pulpit is not wholly deserted. It can still boast its consecrated talent. It has still in it men who would have succeeded, had they tried other professions-who have something more to distinguish them than a sleek appearance or a fluent voice. To this cla.s.s does the Reverend Baldwin Brown belong.

Some years back Clayland's Chapel was erected in the Clapham-road. A dissenting D.D., famed for his eloquence and wit-for his book against the theatre-for his encounter with Sidney Smith-for the strict orthodoxy of his reviews in the _Evangelical Magazine_-and for sundry indiscretions not quite so orthodox, became its minister. The reverend gentleman failed to gather around him a flock. He preached and none came to hear him. The pews were unoccupied, and the quarterly returns were small. He abandoned the chapel, and with dubious fame, and an appearance somewhat too much that of a _bon vivant_ for the minister of a religion of self-denial and mortification of the flesh, went down to Warwicks.h.i.+re to become the pastor of a village congregation, and in time to die.

Clayland's chapel then was placed under the care of the Rev. Baldwin Brown, then a young man fresh from Highbury College, to which place he had gone after completing his education at University College, becoming a graduate of the London University, and having been, I believe, called to the bar. Mr. Brown is now in the prime of life. He cannot be much above thirty. He attained his position earlier than ministers generally do.

His father was a man of some standing in the world, as well as in his own denomination. His uncles were no less distinguished personages than Drs.

Liefchild and Raffles, and last, and not least, he had that easy confidence in his own powers, which are great, and his attainments, which are greater, without which you may have the eloquence of Paul, or the piety of John, and yet no more move the world or the most insignificant portion of it than a child can arrest a steam engine, or than a lady's parasol can still a storm.

Mr. Brown's settlement at Clayland's Chapel has been successful. The cause-to borrow the conventional phrase-has prospered; the chapel has been filled, and the church has considerably increased. His fame has grown. He has become a man of note. At Exeter Hall his voice is often heard. Undoubtedly some of his success is due to the circ.u.mstances I have already mentioned, but undoubtedly the greater part of it is due to himself alone. It is something for a man to find a position already made for him. It saves him many a year of herculean and unregarded toil; but to keep a position is almost as difficult as to make it, and this Mr.

Brown has succeeded in doing. The reason of this must be sought for in Mr. Brown himself. The man must have some speciality to fit him for his work, or he cannot be successful in it. That Mr. Brown has this is, I take it, beyond a doubt; nor can you long attend upon his ministry without finding such is the case. Mr. Brown's distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic is freshness. There is nothing stale or conventional about him. He evidently preaches what he thinks. His speech is a living speech, not a monotonous repet.i.tion of old divinity. He has wandered out of the conventional circle. He has come in contact with great minds. He has had a richer experience than generally falls to the lot of the divine. He views things broadly and in a manly manner, not from the narrow platform of a sect. His faith is a living one. His Christianity is practical-that by which men may shape their life as well as square their creed. Instead of wandering weakly and sentimentally in other lands and in other ages, he brings his mind and heart to bear upon the realities of the present day. The questions of our age, not of past ages, he discusses in his pulpit. The day that pa.s.ses over him is the day to which he devotes his energies. He gives you an idea of earnestness and activity and independence-of a mind well educated and drawn out-filled with Christian truth, and earnest in the application of that truth. He is not a great rhetorician-his strength seems to be in his common sense. If the Bible be true, the sooner man gets that idea into his head and acts according to it, the better. If man have to obey the Divine law, the sooner he submits himself to it the happier he will be in this life as well as in that which is to come. I know there is nothing new in this,-that other men attempt to teach the same thing,-that all divines are saying it one way or another every Sunday; but the merit of Mr. Brown is that he says it as a man of common-sense would say it to men possessed of common-sense-that he does not wrap his meaning in the unreal verbiage of a mystic and unreal theology-that he takes his teachings, and arguments, and ill.u.s.trations from real life-and that he talks of religion as men of the world of consols and railways; and no man can do this, to whom religion is not the business of his life. In personal appearance there is nothing particularly remarkable about Mr.

Brown. He is tall-thin-of light complexion, a very different style of man to the fat, indolent-looking old gentlemen that figure in the picture gallery of a certain popular religious magazine, but with an appearance of intellectual activity and readiness for his work and age, to which few of the good old conventional divines now happily gathered to their fathers ever seem to have had an idea.

THE REV. JOHN CAMPBELL, D.D.

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 ma.s.s, dest.i.tute 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 cla.s.s 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 dest.i.tute alike of faith and heart and hope-you will see a big c.u.mbrous 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 fas.h.i.+onable 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 wors.h.i.+p, 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 d.a.m.ns 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 publis.h.i.+ng 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 p.r.i.c.ks, 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.