The Religious Life of London Part 5

A Church, according to them, is a society of believers meeting voluntarily together to observe religious ordinances; to promote mutual edification and holiness; to perpetuate and promulgate the Gospel in the world; and to advance the glory and wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d through Jesus Christ.

The New Testament exclusively is their authority for Church customs, and Christ is their only head; they elect their own officers, whether bishops or pastors, and deacons. They believe that no person should be received as members of Christian Churches but such as make a credible profession of Christianity; are living according to its precepts, and attest a willingness to be subject to its discipline. They believe that the power of a Christian is purely spiritual, and should in no way be corrupted by union with temporal or spiritual power.

In London there are 220 Congregational churches and 210 Baptist; some of the latter being very small, and the ministers illiterate and narrow-minded more than is usually the case. The Congregationalists are chiefly incorporated in a body known as the Congregational Union, which meets twice a year to deliberate; once in London, and once in such provincial city or town as shall previously have been resolved on.

In London the Congregationalists have two or three Colleges for educating young men for the work of the Ministry-the princ.i.p.al one being the New College, St. John's Wood. This College is in connexion with the London University, where some of the students graduate. The Baptists also have a fine College in the Regent's Park, the students of which also occasionally are in the cla.s.s lists of the London University. But the real fact is that in all the Dissenting Colleges the men who take university honours are the exception, not the rule; the reason is the course extends over but four or five years-and so much of that time is devoted to theological study and pulpit preparation that there is not the time to attain to the high standard prescribed by the London University.

The student has often had but an average middle-cla.s.s education. He feels an impulse, or, as it is technically termed, "a call" to the Ministry. He has been found acceptable as a Sunday School teacher, or in other ways has demonstrated his ability and religious character and zeal.

With the sanction of his Minister and the Church with which he is connected, he is sent to College, where he remains till his professional education is complete. Occasionally young men seek to enter the Ministry with very humble views. Recently I heard of such a one. His pastor having indicated his doubt as to the possession of the requisite ability, the reply was: "Oh, sir, I know I never could be a learned man like you, but I thought I might make a hignorant Minister like Mr. ---," naming a well-known and popular Minister of another denomination.

The Baptists have also their Baptist Union sitting in London, and occasionally in the Provinces. The first General (Arminian) Baptist Church is said to have been formed in London in 1607. The first Particular (Calvinistic) Church in 1616. I fancy that in some of the Baptist Bethels and Cave Adullams, an Antinomian, or, at any rate, a more decided Calvinism exists than prevails in the Independent Churches. As regards Church government, their ideas are the same. One necessity of this state of things is that their ministers must have some preaching ability, a thing which is quite an accident in the Church of England; another advantage is, that there are few pecuniary attractions to tempt men to undertake duties for which they are unqualified.

The leading bodies connected with Church work in London are as follows:-1. The Congregational Chapel Building Society, of which the twentieth anniversary was held last year. We gather from the facts laid before the meeting that during the 21 years (including 1869) of the Society's existence it has materially a.s.sisted in the erection or purchase of 87 chapels-representing a contribution from it in grants and free loans of 110,000_l._ towards an aggregate outlay of 360,000_l._, and providing (exclusive of intended galleries) nearly 80,000 sittings for adults. Dividing the 21 years of the Society's history into three periods of seven years each, in the first period its list comprises 17 chapels, in the second 26, and in the third 44. The Society is at present engaged, with Mr. S. Morley, M.P., in the erection of 24 chapels, to each of which Mr. Morley contributes 500_l._, and the Society 500_l._, half of the last being free loans. The success of the Society is largely owing to its loan fund, now amounting to 11,006_l._ 19_s._, from which loans are made free of interest to committees engaged in the erection of chapels. This fund remains intact, and will be carefully preserved for the object. The grant fund is, however, just now nearly exhausted, while the liabilities of the Society on this account reach 2000_l._ Among other particulars, it may be stated that the Society has been instrumental in saving from extinction the two metropolitan chapels of George Whitefield-Tottenham Court Road Chapel, and the Tabernacle, Moorfields. Indeed, with the exception of Spa Fields Chapel, the Countess of Huntingdon's followers may be said to be absorbed in the Congregational body.

The London Congregational a.s.sociation has four District Missions. It has aided in planting and sustaining eight Churches and Missions in four districts. They ask 1000_l._ a year, with which, aided by local support, they undertake to plant ten new district Missions in spiritually dest.i.tute localities, and sustain them until they are enabled to support themselves. As an ill.u.s.tration of what may be done in this way I give the following account of the District Mission established by the Church and Congregation under the care of the Rev. Dr. Raleigh, of Hare Court Chapel, Canonbury, as drawn up by the Rev. J. H. Wilson, of the Home Missionary Society.

The parent Church selected necessitous districts, in which they have opened schools and mission-rooms; in these a number of the congregation begin to labour as teachers, visitors, evangelists, &c. The result is the early formation of a branch Church, where the poor people secure all the privileges of Christian fellows.h.i.+p, and the fine feeling of a Church-home, a place which they call "our Chapel," and where they look up to some one whom they call "our pastor," and soon those so gathered together become co-workers with the parent Church in extending its influence in the locality-rising out of these movements, the Church at Hare Court Chapel have now five branch Churches. From the last report (1868) it appears that there are now three rooms for religious service for the young, and several others for meetings with the poor and ignorant; three day schools, and five Sunday or ragged schools; two large week evening schools, and several smaller ones; seven mothers' meetings; a district nursery for children and infants, whose mothers require to leave them during the day; coal clubs; home for little boys, where thirty are fed and clothed; three paid ministers; six lay evangelists or pastors; two Bible-women; six paid teachers, and seven paid monitors for day schools; and to aid them, there are from 300 to 400 members of the Church and congregation earnestly engaged as evangelists, pastors, teachers, helps, visitors, Scripture readers, &c. During the year about 120 had joined the Church. The Sunday and ragged schools are attended by 1300 children; the day schools by 900, and the evening schools by upwards of 400. Besides, there are temperance societies and Bands of Hope, and in the summer months out-door services.

Another society worked by the Congregationalists is the Christian Instruction Society, founded in the year 1825, to aid in evangelizing London. House-to-house visitation was from the beginning and still is its main characteristic. Its other agencies are lay-preaching in and out of doors; the Sunday afternoon opening of places of wors.h.i.+p; lectures on prevailing immorality and vice, and united quarterly prayer meetings.

This society, however, is by no means sectarian. At its united quarterly prayer meetings ministers of the Baptist, Presbyterian, and Independent denominations join.

THE SEVENTH-DAY BAPTISTS.

As you go down Leman Street, Whitechapel, on your left, nearly at the bottom, stand two public-houses-one the Shamrock, the other, if I mistake not, the Brown Bear. Between them is a narrow little pa.s.sage; on the right is a Gospel Hall, facing you is a plain brick-built Meeting-house, with a door which at certain times opens in vain, and with a window which is covered with wire of a very suggestive character. Above the window is an inscription, stating that it was rebuilt in 1790, but that it was founded more than a century before that. A side door leads you into a gra.s.s-grown and quiet enclosure. There are a few gravestones there, recording, in illegible characters, the piety and virtues of those who have gone before. At the back of the Meeting-house is the minister's residence. In the same square resides the pew-opener, with her little family, who seem fresher and livelier than you would expect in such a place. Outside rush along the Fenchurch Street trains to and fro, sometimes with a scream which, as you will by-and-by find, will drown the preacher's voice. Outside there are factories and warehouses darkening the air; outside there are heathens-baptized I daresay, but nevertheless heathens-as complete and entire as any discovered by Captain Cook; outside go up and down all day the sailors of every country under heaven, at all times when on sh.o.r.e a disorderly lot, with a strong tendency to get drunk and quarrel; outside are the lodging-house keepers, and Jew slop-sellers, and foul women and crimps, who lie in wait for poor Jack; outside, nightly and daily, on Sundays and week-days, once a week and all the year round, is the ever-deafening and ever-growing roar of London life.

On Sat.u.r.days this little old-fas.h.i.+oned meeting-house is opened twice a day. Of sects, as we all know, there are many Lilliputian varieties.

One of the smallest of these is that of the Seventh-day Baptists. In this country there are two congregations of them; one in Mill Yard, and one far away in Gloucesters.h.i.+re, where, according to the common proverb, "G.o.d is." At one time they were a sect, as they are I believe at this time in America. Here, in England, they have dwindled down to two skeleton congregations, an endowment, and a Chancery suit. As there is money a form of wors.h.i.+p is kept up, though for all practical purposes the cause is dead. There may be four grown-up persons besides the pew-opener to form the morning service: there are just as many in the afternoon.

There is no week-evening service. At one time, many, many years ago, there was a Sunday-school, but the scholars have grown up and moved away, and none have come to take their vacant places. Inside the door you are informed there are no pew-rents, no collections. Nevertheless, the people keep away. In the pulpit is a learned man of an old-fas.h.i.+oned and almost extinct type, and no one regards him; and yet I must confess there was to me a fascination in the place. It was the ghost of what I knew in youth. Long, long ago, there were just such old-fas.h.i.+oned meetings, with just such sounding-boards over the pulpit, just such plain and high pews, just such learned divines, just as deficient in all practical appeal. Up in the window before me buzzed the very same bluebottle fly, only a little more elderly and less active in consequence, which, in younger and happier days, distracted the writer's attention, and interfered sadly with what would have been otherwise a profitable opportunity. There are no meeting-houses now. If you want to see one as they were, in all their original nakedness and want of grace, go to Mill Yard, Whitechapel. We, of course, have wonderfully improved, and yet I have a tenderness for the old meeting-house. How learned were their ministers, how awful and orthodox their deacons! With what fear did I eye the man who gave out the hymn, and with what greater fear the watchful individual who poked up with his long stick inattentive or sleepy boys!

But I return to Mill Yard. The Christian Church in our day has pretty well agreed to get rid of or, at any rate, ignore what is read in the Bible about the seventh day being "the Sabbath of the Lord your G.o.d." At one time this was not so. Now the tide has receded and left the Seventh-day Baptists stranded on the mud. In doing so, the Church, of course, has increased the difficulty some feel about the Divine origin and perpetual obligation of the Christian Sabbath. Archbishop Whately, for instance, could reason with the Christian who had exchanged, in spite of the literal command of G.o.d, the Christian for the Jewish Sabbath, but his arguments would fail to touch the Seventh-day Baptist, who would contend that he was doing that which G.o.d had commanded. But the fear of this has not led Christians to abandon what, in the opinion of most of them, is the apostolic plan of meeting on the first day of the week. It is to be hoped the fund left for the benefit of the Seventh-day Baptists is not a large one. The mouldy appearance of Mill Yard Meeting-house indicates that it is not. But it is enough to retain at his post a gentleman who, perhaps, would be more profitably engaged elsewhere.

Certainly it does seem like a waste of power to have a chapel and a service lasting nearly a couple of hours for one grown-up adult male and three adult females, excluding the chapel pew-opener. I must say, with the exception of a young gentleman in knickerbockers, who was so astonished at the apparition of a real stranger that he kept staring at me all the time of singing, all seemed to do their duty. The singing-and there was plenty of it-was really and truly Congregational. Five or six parts of the Bible were read, and the congregation followed with open Bibles. The preacher laboured at his discourse, and quoted Hebrew and Latin as if we had all been learned divinity students. Nor could he have prayed with more fulness and power had the benches been filled with living souls waiting to draw near to the Father of spirits and live. One could not but respect the preacher, however useless seemed his learning and misdirected his research. Yet I would be sorry to stand in his shoes. He had hearers once-Where are they? Dead, or moved away, is the reply. He says in 1840 he began "to officiate as afternoon preacher in the ancient Sabbath-keeping congregation in Mill Yard." He talks of "nearly sixty years of close critical, philological, and exegetical study of the sacred Scriptures;" of "more than thirty years of constant and laborious exposition of them;" of his having fully, freely, fearlessly, and repeatedly discoursed upon every part of natural and revealed religion. In spite of his age, physically he is not unequal to his work.

He has a good voice, yet practically he beats the air. There are few to listen to his words and respond to his appeal. I wonder-as in his quiet study he reads the ancient versions of the Bible and laboriously constructs his argument:-whether it ever occurs to him that there is something better and grander than seventh-day baptism, or systematic theology, and that is everyday Christianity. I wonder, too, while looking on the dead graves and the long gra.s.s, whether it occurs to him that in that region of all unclean and deadly sin it especially behoves the preacher, in preference to ingenious speculation or antiquarian research, to impress on the heart and consciences of men the yearning, living love of G.o.d. It is not in the calm retreat, the silent shade, that vice and irreligion can be confronted and changed into purity and piety. One would fancy at Mill Yard the contrary opinion was held, as the preacher goes on, expounding the Proverbs or the Book of Job to empty benches, while close by the harlot plies her unhallowed calling, the publican retails his vitriol gin, and mothers, with eyes artificially black, knock about their little ones or cover them with kisses, as they themselves are alcoholically stimulated into maudlin tenderness or demoniac rage! If you want to see what an endowment can do for religion, go to Mill Yard. No doubt those who left money for the place thought they were doing G.o.d service. In reality, an endowment can but preserve a corpse which had better be put away. We bury our dead out of our sight.

As it is in the material world so it is in the spiritual world. We love to look on life; we shrink with abhorrence from the sight of death, when Time's decaying fingers have dimmed the l.u.s.tre of eyes once bright as stars, and plucked from beauty's cheek the blus.h.i.+ng rose.

A more curious spot in all London is not than Mill Yard Meeting-house.

The day I was there, after a service of nearly two hours, it was established by the learned minister, who is an F.S.A., and calls himself elder of the congregation (he must often stand a good chance of being junior as well), that the t.i.tle of the Book of Proverbs was only to be applied to the first part, that it consisted of divers distinct sections, and that generally the book was found in the Bible after the Psalms.

Evidently the preacher is a learned, painstaking student of the Dryasdust school-full of crotchets; but the biggest crotchet of all is that he should go on preaching year after year in Mill Yard.

Mr. Spurgeon's works and essays are so constantly before the public that the briefest notice of them is all that is necessary here. In his great Tabernacle near the Elephant and Castle, which is one of the sights of London, he has a church alone consisting of 4700 members, and such is the orderly arrangement that, as he said, if one of his members were to get tipsy he should know of it before the week was out-a statement perhaps true in reality if not literally. Enormous as his place of wors.h.i.+p is, it is always filled; but it represents, not so much a Christian Church as a Christian community on a gigantic scale. In his Orphanage at Stockwell some 135 boys are boarded, clothed, and taught. Then at Newington he has established an Orphanage and School, and under his great Tabernacle is a Pastors' College, which in a couple of years takes the raw student from the shop or the counting-house and sends him forth into the world a ready-made divine, occasionally not a little to the dismay of those who consider a good training and a careful preparation great helps to ministerial usefulness. The students are lodged in families around, and on the Sunday are princ.i.p.ally employed in preaching in various districts near London. Some of the Baptist places are very small indeed, and very badly attended. It were better, one would think, that they were shut up and merged with other churches or denominations. There is something inexpressibly melancholy in the long lists of Zions, and Bethels, and Mount Sions, where the pastor and the people scarcely live. Amongst some of the Baptists there are some of Antinomian tendencies, and the preachers of such doctrines have very large congregations. They are the elect of G.o.d, and can never sin. As to their doctrine and its results, one ill.u.s.tration will suffice. A member of one of the largest of these Antinomian places unfortunately got tipsy, fell out of the cart in which he was riding, and broke his leg. "Ah!" said his sympathizing pastor when he heard of it, "what a blessed thing he can't fall out of the covenant." The Antinomian believes that Christ paid, with his death, the price of the pardon of a certain number. These are in the covenant, and out of that covenant they cannot fall. There are in the Church of England those who preach this doctrine, but their number is rare. Up in Notting Hill is a Tabernacle built up and carried on by Mr. Varley, an humble imitator of Mr. Spurgeon. Originally Mr. Varley was a butcher, but he took to preaching; and finding that people came to hear him, and that he did them good, he now devotes himself entirely to ministerial work. At his Tabernacle, in St. James's Square, there is accommodation for 1200 hearers, and for the education of more than 500 children. This history of these Tabernacles shows what may be done when suitable agency is employed. Mr. Spurgeon's subscriptions are really wonderful. Twenty thousand pounds were given him by one lady for the purpose of founding his orphanage. More than once 2000_l._ have been dropped into his letter-box, as he told the writer of an article in the _Daily Telegraph_, where, ludicrously enough, he appeared under the head of "Unorthodox London." "When recently attacked by illness, he began to despair; but that same evening a lady left 100_l._ at his door, and 1000_l._ came in immediately afterwards."

CHRISTMAS MORNING WITH THE YOUNGSTERS.

Amongst the most unpleasant recollections of an otherwise not unpleasant childhood are those connected with attendance at chapel on the evenings of Christmas Days. On such occasions there were circ.u.mstances, needless to explain, and in which the reader would take no interest were they explained, which compelled the writer to leave the pleasant fire and the games and mirth of the season, and, putting on his coat, trudge manfully in the dark and through the snow to s.h.i.+ver for an hour and a half at least at meeting. Other people the writer well knew were enjoying themselves. Father Christmas was not the rage then that he is now; Christmas-trees were a later invention, and so were Christmas tales; but still even in those far-away and benighted times there were cakes and ale, and homely Christmas carols and a little fun on a Christmas night, when blind-man's-buff was in fas.h.i.+on, and snapdragon was to the little ones a wonder and a joy. The writer felt, as he sat in the comfortless square box of green baize and deal, and surveyed the scattered congregation, how much more agreeable it would have been had the old meeting been shut up on such a night, had the old minister saved his sermon, had the old ladies and gentlemen who formed the congregation dozed comfortably in their old arm-chairs at home. He arrived at the conclusion then which he has ever since retained-a conclusion the correctness of which no subsequent consideration has induced him to modify-that services at church or chapel on Christmas nights are an immense mistake. Christmas morning special services, however, are quite a different thing, and especially where children are concerned. They at any rate realize Christmas more fully than their elders, and a.s.suredly it is by them the religious aspect of the day may be most vividly felt.

This is not a question for argument. More than forty years ago the late Dr. Fletcher, of Finsbury Chapel, inst.i.tuted a special morning service at his own place of wors.h.i.+p for Sunday-school children from the Sunday-schools of the district. The avowed object of that service was the benefit of the young. In time past it has been found to have had a salutary effect. It has been continued by Dr. Fletcher's successor, the Rev. A. M'Auslane, a minister whose manner, and personal appearance, and mode of speaking qualify him especially for so delicate and difficult a task. Mr. M'Auslane hails from the land where Christmas is unknown. He was a student under Dr. Wardlaw at Glasgow. He commenced his pastoral duties in Dunfermline, but he has travelled south, and at Newport, in Wales, where he stayed a short while, and latterly at Finsbury Chapel, where he has now been eight years, he has caught something of the English regard for Christmas Day, and preaches accordingly. I scarce think London has a prettier sight to show than that of Finsbury Chapel on a Christmas morning. It is full in every part. On the ground floor and the first gallery are ranged the children and their teachers, and up above there is another gallery full of adult spectators. As they sing some of the finest of our hymns, such as-

"Brightest and best of the sons of the morning,"

the swell of their young voices is beautiful to hear. Their faces, full of joy, were equally beautiful to see. To be preached to by a learned man in a gown in a big chapel is something indeed for a little ragged urchin to think of. Then what pains must have been taken to master the tunes and sing them so well. Nor is this all by which the event of the year-as it must be for some of them-is characterized. At some of the schools the children, I believe, have a breakfast given them by the teachers previous to starting. At all of them there is a distribution of something satisfactory in the shape of buns. The muster is considerable.

The schools represented at the service I attended, in addition to that belonging to the place, were Mile End, King Edward Street, Wood Street, Spitalfields, Willow Walk, Ark Street, Paradise Street, the Weigh House, the New Tabernacle, Bell Alley; Red Lion Street, Clerkenwell; Andrew Street Ragged-schools, Union Walk, Jewin Street, James Street, City Road, Ropemakers Street. The service commenced with singing-

"Another year has pa.s.sed away, Time swiftly glides along, We come again to praise and pray, And sing our festive song; We come with song to greet you, We come with song again."

The Rev. W. Tyler then read a part of the fifth chapter of Matthew, and offered up an appropriate prayer, in which a special reference was made to the evangelistic work carried on in the City. Another hymn was sung, and then came the sermon, the subject of which was Christ blessing children, and the text of which was in Mark x. 14 and 16. Mr. M'Auslane described how a painter had portrayed the scene; not having the picture there to show them, he would attempt a description of it in words. Some might have thought Jesus too busy or children too insignificant. In reality it was not so, and he believed that if Jesus came in this year into London, He would act now as He did then. Sometimes people forget-the butler forgot Joseph. Jesus Christ never changes. The preacher endeavoured to bring out what the text teaches about Jesus and children:-1. It taught that Jesus is attractive to children. Some men and women children don't like at all; others they go to cheerfully and willingly. Jesus Christ draws them to Him just as the sun the flowers.

He is spoken of as the Sun of Righteousness. Why is a child not afraid to walk through the valley of the shadow of death? It is because he sees Jesus, and when he has pa.s.sed through on the other side there is Jesus, the most attractive in all that land. 2. The text taught that Christ takes a deep interest in children. It was clear the Apostles did not, or they would not have tried to prevent them from coming forward. He takes the same interest now. It was to Him children had to be grateful for bodies and souls, for kind friends, and the comforts of life. All power is given to Him in heaven and on earth. Salvation is the gift of Christ, and that is another proof of the interest He takes in children. If any boy there had no father or mother, sister or brother, or friend, if he stood in this cold world alone, let him take this thought with him-in the morning as he rose from his humble cot, in the evening as he retired to rest-Jesus cares for me. Here the preacher paused while the children refreshed themselves by singing "The Pilgrims," the boys asking, the girls replying, and all joining in the chorus, the last verse of which is-

"Come, oh, come! and do not leave us; Christ is waiting to receive us, Christ is waiting to receive us, In that bright, that better land."

Mr. M'Auslane resumed. The text taught (3), Jesus prays for children.

It is true we have not the prayer, but, nevertheless, he believed that Jesus prayed. The account in Matthew implies that He did. His prayer would, in all probability, be that G.o.d would be the protector of these children, and guide them all through life to the heavenly, happy land.

There was a young man once condemned to die. His brother, who had lost an arm in the service of his country, went and pleaded for him. The judges were overcome, not by his eloquence, but by the sight of the stump of the amputated arm, and spared his brother's life. Christ, in the same way, might plead with the Father the five wounds received on Calvary. "I have often heard an old man pray for children," said the preacher, "and have heard him ask for things which I am sure were not proper to ask for for children. It was so long since he had been a child that he had quite forgotten what children's feelings were. It was not so with Jesus. But you must remember also to pray for yourselves. Jesus prayed for Peter that his faith might not fail, but it did, because Peter did not pray for himself. 4. Christ wishes children to be happy, and they could not be that without the pardon of sin and hope of heaven. 5. The text taught that there are a great many children indeed in heaven. It is true there were there Jesus, and the patriarchs, and prophets, and angels, and apostles, but there were more children there, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. That last text meant that the glory of heaven was open to children, but it also meant that the population of heaven was made up of children. They would be there of every colour,-from every quarter of the globe. Last Christmas morning one little child was in that chapel who is in heaven now. "Shall we go there when we die?" was the question which concluded and enforced the preacher's appeal, which was plain and simple and thoroughly adapted to its end. Of course there were some little ones who could not follow the preacher, but it seemed to me that evidently the majority did. It is to be hoped they did, for none but those who live in London can tell what are its trials and sorrows for such as they, or what are their needs. From the Sunday-school even many a lad and girl has gone astray. It was only a few weeks before that, at a midnight meeting in the Euston Road of some eighty or thereabouts-I cannot speak within one or two-some seventy fallen, weeping women confessed that they had been Sunday scholars, and amongst them even there were Sunday-school teachers! Of the hundreds who trooped joyously into Finsbury Chapel on our last bright, joyous Christmas morning, who can say what may be the end? Of this one thing, however, we may rest a.s.sured, it will be long before some forget the wise, kindly words listened to then, the songs in which they then took a part, or the prayers that then went up to heaven for them.

DR. PARKER AT THE POULTRY.

"What are you doing?" said lately one of London's biggest D.D.'s to a visitor from the country. "Oh, sir, I am in the ministry now," was the somewhat exulting reply. "Ah, but, my brother," said the querist again, "is the ministry in you?" Rather an important question that, and a question to which, alas! many ministers would be unable to give a very satisfactory reply. When I see a nervous, timid, feeble, hesitating, wavering brother in the pulpit, I think of the Doctor's question as one from which such a man would instinctively shrink.

Dr. Parker belongs to another and a rarer cla.s.s. The ministry is in him as a divine call, and not as an accidental profession. He speaks as one having authority. In an age of negation, and mistrust, and little faith, he is as positive as if spiritual truths had been audible to his bodily ear and seen with the bodily eye. Amidst the perplexities of a theology ever s.h.i.+fting in external phraseology, where man's wisdom has darkened G.o.d's light as revealed in His Word, where the miasma of doubt has repressed and stinted Christian life, he walks with a masculine tread, and he does so not from ignorance but from knowledge, because he knows how difficult is the way, how dark the path, how easily error comes to us in the form of truth, how the devil himself can a.s.sume the shape and borrow the language of an angel of light. He has got good standing ground, but he knows how treacherous is the soil, and what pitfalls lie open to catch the rash, and reckless, and overconfident. His is the strength of the athlete who has become what he is by years of careful training, protracted conflicts, and painful discipline, and in all his words, and they are many, you can hear as it were the ring of victory and a.s.sured success. Physically he looks and speaks like a man. What he says he means, and what he means he believes. He is not the kind of man to write an apology for Christianity; he would laugh to scorn the idea.

He can laugh at much, because, as Hobbes says, to do so implies superiority, and Dr. Parker, strong in his faith in the everlasting Gospel, has an immense feeling of superiority; and as you listen he takes you up with him into his coign of vantage, and you laugh too. It is good to see wit as well as logic and learning in the pulpit; to feel up in that serene height, where the preacher has it all himself, and none may gainsay him, there is humanity there, a flesh and blood reality, and not a respectable academic ghost in whose brain there is hollowness and in whose eye there is no fire of speculation. What a head the man has-ample, well formed, well and fairly developed. What a voice the man has-strong as a mountain torrent, impetuous, irresistible, mastering all, carrying like a Niagara all before it. Dr. Parker is better off than Paul. Apparently the earthen vessel in which he has his treasure is of admirable adaptation and utility.

London has gained and Manchester has lost Dr. Parker. Already he has made himself no stranger in London. To many his "Ecce Deus" has commended itself as the work of a vigorous thinker, and all have confessed that his "Springdale Abbey" was full of very clever talk. No ordinary preacher could have written such books, that was clear. In Manchester he had become a success. How came he to be such? Partly I have explained the reason. In the first place, in an age of doubt, of negative theology, of blinding and bewildering speculation-when between the so-called Christian and the Cross in all its eternal l.u.s.tre has risen up a fog of gloom-when the Gospel of unbelief and despair has come into fas.h.i.+on, so that when we listen for the shout of psalm or the holy exultation of prayer, we hear instead

"An agony Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills All night in a waste land, where no one comes, Or hath come since the making of the world."

Dr. Parker has a living faith. And then again he has a deep sense of what the pulpit requires, and an unmitigated scorn of that kind of preaching which is too common there. "Almighty G.o.d has to tolerate more puerility in His service than any monarch on earth. If Christianity had not been Divine it would have been ruined by many of its own preachers long ere this. The wonder is, not that it has escaped the cruel hand of the infidel (it can double up a whole array of crazy atheists), but that it has survived the cruel kindness of its shallow expositors." Whose language, you ask, is this? Why, Dr. Parker's own. The preacher who can thus censure his fellows is bound to guard sacredly and constantly against that which he condemns, and to come to his pulpit with every feeling attuned and with every energy aroused for its gigantic work.

Give to such a man the requisite brain and tongue, let him have the requisite delivery, let his lips be touched by that spirit which

"Touched Isaiah's lips with hallowed fire,"

and you have a Dr. Parker. He has come to London-a difficult thing for any man to do, but in this case the step has been undertaken under peculiarly difficult circ.u.mstances. Time was when the City was the home of citizens, and many of the wealthiest and most influential of them went to the Poultry. That time has long gone by. It was when deacons shook their heads at Mr. Binney as not quite sound. Of all places on the earth the most deadly on a Sunday is the City of London, and especially that part of it in which the Poultry stands. At St. Mildred's, close by, it is impossible, or seems to be so, to collect a decent congregation. Will Dr. Parker succeed better? Some sort of answer was given to the question, when to a crowded and attentive congregation he preached what I may term his inaugural discourse. If I say it was an eloquent display I shall excite the Doctor's indignation, as he contemned the use of such phraseology in his sternest and most indignant manner. Nor indeed with regard to the discourse in question would the phrase be literally correct. No one can doubt the Doctor's eloquence, but in speaking of himself and his hopes and purposes in connexion with the Poultry-in showing the grand principles upon which he took his stand, and by means of which he was placed beyond the fear of failure, he aimed at something more than eloquent display. "I am preaching to myself as well as to you," said the Doctor in the course of his sermon; and such was in reality the case. For the work which he has to do, for the programme which he trusts to work out, truly indeed does the Doctor need the guidance of that Providence which shall go before, and which shall make the crooked places straight. This, indeed, was the Doctor's text. You will find it in Isaiah xlv. 2. From the beginning to the end of the service this was the leading and appropriate idea. He commenced with Cowper's magnificent hymn, "G.o.d moves in a mysterious way." The portion of Scripture read was Christ's commission to the seventy to go and preach the Gospel all over the world; the prayer was an acknowledgment that the human will should be subordinated to the Divine; and it was "Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah," which formed the closing song.

As Dr. Parker told us he was going to publish his sermon (his sermons now appear weekly, under the t.i.tle of "The City Temple"), I need say little of the discourse, of which I have already given the text. It began with a reference to the triumph and danger of liberty-that man might go whether with G.o.d or without Him. Man was free, nor was his religion one of slavery. To those who considered such a statement to be a grand contradiction of what we know of eternal decrees, it was sufficient to reply that it could only be harmonized in the ecstasy of light and love.

G.o.d will not make everything straight, but only in proportion as we trust Him and live with Him will our difficulties diminish. As to his text in particular, remarked Dr. Parker, it was first a warning-there are crooked places. It was a promise-the crooked places G.o.d would make straight: all that we required was patience. Also it was a plan-G.o.d would go before us. Say some, that is G.o.d's sovereignty-that is the omnipotent Jehovah.

No, it indicated His love, His tenderness, His care. In such an idea we do not dwarf G.o.d, but exalt Him. Then came the limitation of the promise. This going before was a question of character. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. That, however, was no motive for carelessness, but the reverse. The Doctor, in conclusion, spoke of himself. He had been told that in leaving Manchester and coming to the Poultry he was moving into a crooked place. In explanation he stated he did not look for the ordinary course of a minister. He looked at London, that immeasurable centre; he thought of the young men who come strangers to the metropolis, and with no friends to guide and guard them; and if he did not get people to come and hear him on the Sunday, he trusted they would do so on the Thursday, when there would be a service from twelve to one, when he would aim simply to touch the heart with a sense of sin and forgiveness. He also intended to use the printing-press. He had great faith in the printed page. It remained to be read at spare moments when a man had nothing to do. Finally, said Dr. Parker, he spoke with fear and trembling, but he came there with a strong determination to succeed, and he appealed to all around to do their duty-not to carp, or criticise, or say unkind words, but to resolve to labour and to be guided by heavenly power and wisdom. At the close of the service there was a collection. After this the immense congregation streamed out into the open air, much to the astonishment of casual pa.s.sengers, who did not understand what was the matter. The Poultry has a prosperous look, and they have got a new pulpit there almost as rotund, and bright, and buoyant as Dr. Parker himself.

I know not how the Sunday service succeeds, but the Thursday morning service is wonderfully well filled. In this busy age it is scarcely credible that in the busiest part of London, and at the busiest hour of the day, a chapel as large as the Poultry can be crowded, and is regularly crowded, with merchants and men of business and others. Yet such is the case, and Dr. Parker has succeeded in an attempt which, until he tried it, certainly seemed hazardous in the extreme. If the Doctor seems a little bombastic, it may well be forgiven him under these circ.u.mstances, especially when we remember that no preacher can succeed in convincing others that he is worth hearing till he has become firmly convinced of that fact himself. A modest man I fear is out of place anywhere, but most of all so in the pulpit. It was in wisdom that Dr.

Parker was selected for his post. I should think he is a preacher pre-eminently adapted to the young. Judged not by what he has done, but by years, the Doctor is almost a young man himself. There is youthful vigour in his full round face, in his small dark eyes; and certainly there is no small store of youthful enthusiasm in his heart. In his black hair and beard there is no suggestive tinge of grey. If he has pa.s.sed through and left the golden portals of youth behind, it can only be but recently that he has done so, and there is still in him somewhat of its grace and glory. In another respect also the choice of Dr. Parker was appropriate. The Poultry Chapel is in the very heart of London; the chances were that most of the young men present-and, I might add, of the old ones too-were more or less engaged in some secular avocations. In like manner, so the writer has always understood, the Doctor's youthful years were pa.s.sed. Hence it came to pa.s.s the old Poultry Chapel is in a flouris.h.i.+ng state. The Doctor seemed in his right place, and, if we may judge from appearances, the people seemed to think so.