ie Maggie aaa Fa heats rem iz ag Finney nieahis ees ete ipa Poesia ; We eugene Peta Maltg on ig ew NL: A SNe cite Sard pits a ws ghar ok a Mans _ : Wilton Sah We et arty ret Dilip ee yer eee Lee ee rol eeging ot. pete ee K Pere? we ‘ eibrg fs va, Ts : eran pw ating mig - * bctdclg co ~ gee . ee ee a SENS: Satan arrears Pitan fet pier ee Tia Mal een Fast vg Reto. et » » SP wae MEY eer ae sc Fig Bats ie diimeln Bind Pats pe Bernat, elk wes es BAe iy cai es Sedat Se rte Hae ter tare tee, eran ied Mecha n reas piiikedice aoe at Se ghnaGat ce pdipthd tre ied we Beth Sthr the fo: Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2021 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/princesofchristi01 howa BUNCE S.Obe DIE CHRISEEAN EULER AND PASTORATE Peel ae pti lh Ae te ‘oo ae, ¥ rae a ~ a , ib . Or 2 -e ay. ar! ein eit A's Ths Ligeti + tw Ay Paw fs 3) Ld a hs ; eo r — - ¥ a a, (ten " ys ~ " m ; ‘ . 7 5 / , "4 : 1 € r 5 7 my 2 = ry ' } , A , 1 ; u, 4 * 1%, < . Ps i “4 . ¢ 7 : Je : ' *. bd ¥ ~ io } j | _- a : t] Pe ; rr : fe 7 pa iy ares 3 | | . ; - _ , > 1 7 Rhee : Bat eM ba EA) Seas ar te : hal . te 4 , > fs ‘rs mG < ‘ ‘ Z : , a lid hag P we a eae es r q : 7 A : Lar t be vd Bees Pin Wisse tae: ; nna ¥ it . _ > j a aye > con ; o > aN ent ie rer sie, ee heat tae ul”. se Po Ford ba a » Be \ ees 2 ter ‘ PRINCES of the CHRISTIAN PULPIT and PASTORATE By HARRY C. HOWARD PROFESSOR OF HOMILETICS AND PASTORAL THEOLOGY, EMORY UNIVERSITY A MEMBER OF THE NORTH ALABAMA CONFERENCE, METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH ‘Separated unto the gospel of God”’ NASHVILLE, TENN. COKESBURY PRESS 1927 COPYRIGHT, 1927 BY LAMAR & WHITMORE Printed in the United States of America Ta Lucia SmiTH HowarRD oe ~~ ay mse 4 be . 4 A ~ pa a ” a ions oa) a . Ye : rnd = é . ; tA dey oP _ 7H nd “ial? ; . : z ee Spee | >, } . L i mi a sass ; Ee Ate y ‘ ee is j 5 ™ ; - j s 5 : ; , * 3 “ad. . ~ a ‘eel as roe aoe Cae el it 5 oA ae owas eee t b as =, - i ae = ; 4 bis 68, ae Pe kA, 4 0a tS, 7 ' + = j ; +s te7 5 a ype ee ae EP ne Ie ine I FRANCIS OF ASSISI (1182-1226) ‘“THERE ARISETH LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS” A GENTLER and a holier life has not been projected from — a dark age through successive centuries than that of St. Francis of Assisi. The age was dark. To tell its story in ’ simple truth without the aid of exaggeration is to leave it dark enough. Clergy and Church alike, appointed in the providence of God to be bearers of light to mankind, lived themselves in darkness. Bishops battened on their own clergy and extorted money from the simpler priests as wolves demand flesh from lambs. Clerics by payment of the collagium obtained the right to keep a concubine. Simony was practiced as freely in the Church as were the buying and selling of material commodities in the markets. The Church existed for priests and not priests for the _ Church. No class of the clergy as a class escaped the con- tagion of the times. Corruption was not confined to the more highly beneficed. Inevitably it flows from higher to lower levels. ‘‘As to the priests,’ says Sabatier in his fascinating ‘‘Life of St. Francis of Assisi,’”’ ‘“‘they bent all their powers to accumulate benefices, and secure inherti- tances from the dying, stooping to the most despicable measures for providing for their bastards.’’ Not even the monastic orders came scatheless through the corrupt prac- tices of the time. Though of comparatively recent origin, evil customs had invaded their sanctuaries and greatly con- taminated their standards of conduct. Their early reputa- tion for sanctity had captured the popular imagination and (11) 12 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN correspondingly stimulated liberality toward monastic en- terprises. But a too lavish provision for their material comfort and advantage they were not able to withstand. It is as true of priests as of princes that their more-having is but as a sauce to make them hunger more. So ran the experience of a prince who might have admonished these priests: ‘‘With this there grows In my most ill-composed affection such A stanchless avarice that, were I king, I should cut off the nobles for their lands, Desire his jewels and this other’s house: And my more-having would be as a sauce To make me hunger more; that I should forge Quarrels unjust against the good and loyal, Destroying them for wealth.” This avarice eats out ‘the king-becoming graces, As justice, verity, temperance, stableness, Bounty, perseverance, mercy, lowliness, Devotion, patience, courage, fortitude.” And even more greedily does it devour the priest-becoming graces. Avarice, ambition, and luxury showed no respect to monastic retreats and priestly seclusion in the Middle Ages, but invaded them as ruthlessly as a butcher might invest his shambles. Indeed, avarice and lust have been but as the scavengers of polluted priestly character in more than one age of the Church. And when clerical character degenerates, clerical functions decay. It was very becoming that such priests should not preach. Preach- ing such as there was was confined almost entirely to the bishops, and their chief business was to be prelates and not preachers. The secular clergy, as distinguished from the clergy connected with the monasteries, took up preach- ing only when compelled to do so by the zeal and diligence PULPIT AND PASTORATE 13 of the mendicant monks. ‘‘Seldom,” says Dr. A. E. Garvie, “has the power of preaching been proved as it was by the friars.’’ Largely through the lack of preaching public worship was reduced from conscious and intelligent devotion to liturgical ceremonies, and these in their turn degenerated into a sort of self-acting formula of magic in which there was hardly intended to be any appeal to either mind or conscience. Relics conceived of as being able to perform miracles took the place in religion of the living God. A book which is said to give the best idea of the state of religious thought in the thirteenth century tells of a parrot being carried away by a kite which with a display of zeal befitting the circumstances repeated the in- vocation dear to its mistress, Sancte Thoma adjuva me, and was immediately released. When miracle descends to magic it is always grotesque and extravagant. And yet with just such superstitions the atmosphere of the thirteenth and adjacent centuries was pregnant. Not all the darkness of the Middle Ages is to be settled upon the thirteenth century. It was better than some others, and hardly worse than some others. The world is never wholly bad. It could not be and sur- vive. It could not so do despite to God’s grace and main- tain its course toward any distant destiny. It would too soon be cut off for that. It could only be engulfed in its present iniquities. And so there were saints in those dark ages. The faithful remnant is never entirely cut off. Were there no light anywhere how should men know that it was night? Creatures that are constitutionally blind have no night. The night and the day are both alike to them. But those who know that it is night know also that there is day, and for the day they long. And it is this longing that brings the day. These are they that wait for Jehovah. And it is the rustling of the wings of his angels of light 14 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN coming to them which kindles the hope of the day in their hearts. ‘‘I wait for Jehovah,” in concert they say; ‘‘my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope. My soul waiteth for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning; yea, more than watchmen for the morning.’’ A day so longed for will sooner or later thrust up the lines of its dawn out of the darkness. If it were not so, there had been no Francis of Assisi. And there had been no saints in any dark age. There was at this particular time a groping for some clearer sense of the unity of human consciousness and destiny, as if by some undeserved mercy of God the will of the race might move toward better things. It was a time of misgiving and of crisis, one of those times when the pressure of the world and the problems of its destiny weigh so heavily upon the mind of man that that mind is molded into a common impulse to seek after God and to find him, though he be not very far from any age. Europe was curiously parceled out politically, but passing sad it were if the intellectual and moral consciousness of man could not leap over the barriers of political division and come to a common consciousness of interest and need and destiny with the man on the other side. And so Sabatier thinks there was at the time “‘what might be called a state of European consciousness.’’ Something like this, of course, must ever lie back of the distinctive individual conscious- ness and form a seed plot for its development. No man can ever be entirely dissevered from his age. A great saint is first of all a product of God’s grace; but he must grow in his own age. He is a product of God’s grace and of his age. This was particularly true of Francis of Assisi. ‘‘He is the incarnation of the Italian soul at the beginning of the thirteenth century.’ In this time, which had both its PULPIT AND PASTORATE 15 saints and its heretics, he appeared as its preéminent saint. Out of such darkness was such a light to arise. In the little town of Assisi, in Umbria, which has been lifted by him to the pinnacle of a world fame, Francis was born in 1181 or 1182. The greater probability seems to incline to the latter date. His father, Pietro Bernardone, was a prosperous cloth merchant whose business called him much abroad where he would visit the famous fairs, meeting there other merchants from remote parts of Eu- rope and spending long seasons in the pursuit of his em- ployment. Merchants of this type were a main channel of communication among the peoples of the time and turned their occupation to account in other ways than those which were purely commercial. Religious news more especially was conveyed by them from place to place, for in this the people were more interested than in any other. Bernadone was away in France on one of these journeys when Francis was born, and on his return he said that the child should be called Francesco, or Francis, instead of John by which his mother had had him called at his baptism. This con- trariety of opinion between the father and mother ran much deeper than the mere naming of the child. They were disagreed with respect to much more vital matters. The father’s ill-considered indulgence of the child brought much sorrow to the mother’s heart. Bernadone’s wealth was placed rather too freely at the disposal of Francis, who was none too reluctant to have it so. He was of a decidedly convivial temperament, with an uncontrolled tendency toward self-indulgent pastimes. There are always flies ready to put their feet in this paste, and companions with a similar tendency to his own flocked about him, buzzing their approval continually in his willing ears. “He drew them after him like a tail of iniquity,” one of his biographers says. The cup of pleasure is first sweet, 16 PRINCES OF THE *CHRISTIAN then tart, then tasteless, and at last bitter, and Francis drained it through all these stages. In the meantime his education was much neglected. He learned a little Latin, which was spoken in Umbria until about the middle of the thirteenth century. It was still the language of sermons and of political deliberation. He learned to write, but not with any facility. He had the advantage of a knowledge of two languages, for he also learned French. This was the matter of most account in his education, both in the bent given to his mind and in influence upon his career. ‘* A GREAT SOUL IN WHICH THERE Is No ALTAR” Pica, wife of Bernadone and mother of Francis, described as a ‘“‘gentle and modest creature, concerning whom the biographers have been only too laconic,” saw the course her son was taking and suffered poignant grief. All her protests, if indeed she dared to protest at all, were inef- fectual against the more resolute will and easier conscience of Bernadone. He was bringing Francis up to follow him in business, having already associated him with himself in the business, and he had less strict ideas of life than he had of business. Yet Pica never despaired of the future of her son. On hearing of his wildest escapades she would quietly say: “‘I am very sure that, if it pleases God, he will become a good Christian.”’ Just how far he went in his follies is occasion of disagreement among his biographers. The earliest among them ‘‘agree in picturing him as going to the worst excesses.’’ Sabatier is not disposed to spare him. Bonaventura says: ‘God guarded him with special care. His flesh, which was afterwards to bear the sacred stigmata of our Saviour, was preserved virginal.’’ This evidently is propaganda. The wish is father to the thought. The theory is father to the supposititious fact. Le Monnier PULPIT AND PASTORATE 17 admits that he was addicted ‘‘to empty amusements and pleasures,” but doubts the truth of the accusation of grosser deeds. Even Mr. G. K. Chesterton, fresh from his own conversion to Romanism, agrees that Francis, though his reformation had already begun, not only sold his own horse in order to advance some of his earlier enterprises, but that he also sold ‘‘several bales of his father’s cloth, making the sign of the cross over them to indicate their pious and charitable destination.”” This was hardly less than worthy of the scoundrelly Mohammedan who divined over the goods of David Livingstone when they had come up from the coast ahead of their owner’s return from the wilds of the interior. Discovering by this process just what he had set out to discover—namely, that Livingstone was dead—he appropriated the goods, so that when at last Livingstone straggled in more dead than alive to the shores of Lake Tanganyika he found himself without sup- plies. Francis had entertained an ambition to be a great prince, and in pursuance of his aim had thrown himself into one or two military exploits. On the first of these he was cap- tured by the enemy and detained for a year as a prisoner. Returning to Assisi, he plunged forthwith into his former mode of life. A grave illness ensued which seems to have been due to the excesses in which he had indulged. For long weeks he lay near to the gates of death, and was thereby awakened to a state of self-realization. The empti- ness of his life appeared to him in startling and convincing colors. For him the world had not sufficed. ‘‘He was terrified at his solitude,’’ as Sabatier has said, ‘‘the solitude of a great soul in which there is no altar.’”’ Self-contempt and self-loathing seized him. He had tried to live without God and without religion. There was no central altar in his soul. He had sacrificed to vanity and pleasure, and 18 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN on his altar there lay only the ashes of a maudlin satiety stifling his soul. Yet again he plunged into pleasure and asked of it new delights. Until the soul builds itself a central altar and makes the supreme sacrifice any vaga- bond altar catering to mere wayside moods may command its devotion. It is a slave of its own passion and pride and luxury and lust. He entered now upon another military expedition for which he had made elaborate preparation; but on the evening of the very day that he set out he had a dream which determined him to return to Assisi. His sudden re- appearance made a great stir in the town. He was seeking a way the very direction of which was as yet uncertain to him. Charities to the poor, to which he had long been ac- customed to devote himself and to which the ardor of his nature zealously inclined him, were doubled, and the action indicated that some change was going on in his inner life. His old companions again thronged him bent upon utilizing him still as the prodigal purveyor to their leech-like ap- petites. But he had now set a cessation to the power of all these things to hold him. An unknown friend came to him and strongly assisted the return of his former more serious reflections. Religion seems now to have made its first conscious and decisive appeal to him. He began to see more clearly a new way of life, and to desire with characteristic impetuosity to enter it. BREAKING THROUGH THE BARRIERS He was entering the shadow which should deepen into midnight in his soul. An unseen but terribly felt Antag- onist whom he could hardly distinguish from the anguish of his own life appeared to wrestle with him in the dark- ness. Only in learning the darkness of his own nature does a man flee that darkness and turn toward the light. Only He bride I PASTORATE 19 when he has been down into the dungeons of his own character, as Dr. Alexander McLaren would say, does he begin to climb toward the light. Only in the lone wrestling which reveals the weakness of his own soul does he learn to cleave to the strength which stands sublime above his own. A grotto in the country near Assisi, a rocky cave con- cealed among the olives which have a habitat in Umbria, furnished Francis a retreat suited to the moods of his spirit. A pallor of countenance begotten of the intensity of his travail carried to observers the secrets of his solitude. But the demon of evil companionship was relentless, and he was continually enticed toward his old life again. One day he invited these leeches to a sumptuous banquet. They thought they had won him and proclaimed him once more the lord of their lawless and libidinous revels. Late into the night their carousals were protracted, until at last his guests were so inflamed that they ran with an uproar into the street. Suddenly they perceived that Francis was not with them. When after much searching they found him he seemed lost in reverie. Seeking to arouse his at- tention, one of them, when all else had failed, said: ‘‘ Don’t you see that he is thinking of taking a wife?” ‘‘Yes,” said Francis, answering them in a way which they had not asked, ‘‘I am thinking of taking a wife more beautiful, more rich, more pure than you could ever imagine.” This reply was the settling of one of the major decisions of his life. It was the first decisive break through the barriers. His reveling friends soon accepted the situation and left him to take his own course. He on his own part cut loose more and more effectually from his past, not without bitter grief over his dissipations, while still he found in solitude his greatest solace. He had made friends of the poor, and their gratitude and 20 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN affection built a very castle of comfort for his heart when all else that was human failed him. The abjectness and dependence of their condition only served to throw into stronger relief the graciousness and faithfulness of his friendship for them. And the greatest wonder of it all was their ability to appreciate the courage of his attitude toward them and their discernment of the fine qualities of the man himself. ‘‘All sorrows are sisters; a secret intelli- gence establishes itself between troubled hearts, however diverse their griefs. The poor people felt that their friend also suffered; they did not precisely know what, but they forgot their own sorrows in pitying their benefactor.”’ Going on a journey to Rome he found many beggars there. He borrowed the rags of one of them and stood all day thus arrayed, fasting, and with outstretched hand in the beggar’s characteristic pose. It was an act of sincere sympathy with the beggar’s lot; and a realistic effort to know what a mendicant felt. At another time he was riding alone on horseback, while he meditated deeply on the way he sought but had not yet found, when he was startled to find himself facing a leper in the road. The disease held for him an in- vincible repulsion, and, horror-stricken, he yielded to an impulse to turn his horse the other way and to escape. But immediately he began to reproach himself bitterly with the thought of the inconsistency between his devout meditations and his precipitate flight; and so, retracing quickly his course, he sprang from his horse, gave to the astonished outcast all the money he had, and kissed his hand as if he had been a priest. A few days later he visited the lazaretto and ministered in the most familiar way to the poor outcast creatures so wretchedly huddled together there. He had broken through the last barrier that could separate between himself and any other man whatsoever. PULPIT AND PASTORATE 21 He has to complete the action by breaking through all the barriers which separate between himself and God. THE First CHRISTIAN CENTURY TRANSPORTED INTO THE ‘THIRTEENTH Francis’s father now became seriously disaffected toward him. All his plans for the future were being frustrated. His pride in his son was turning to disgust. His paternal authority was being flouted. He regarded himself as being disgraced in the conduct of Francis. Such behavior on the part of a son of Bernadone was intolerable. Francis might gang with his spendthrifts and spend all the money he pleased, and his access to the coffers of his father was not restricted. But the line was drawn at his feeding every hungry beggar he met in the streets. These did not belong in the same class in which he counted himself, and in which he desired to keep Francis. The chasm of their differences only deepened. Francis could find none who could under- stand and help him. Better moods and higher desires were insistently seeking to have sway over him and to command all his future; but there was none to help him. No man seemed to care for his soul. There were times when he was as desolate as the Psalmist whose cry had entered into the travail of the centuries now long past, but not too distant to be echoed by the cry of his own soul. He even went to his bishop, but found no guidance there. The precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, had come to be esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter. He needed help from the sanctuary, but there was none there. To think that ever the Church of Christ could not guide a soul like Francis! He sought to find the way to lay help upon One that was Mighty, and the Church was as dumb in its guidance as a stone wall. He asked but little of men, for they had nothing to give. ay PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN Most of them possessed not so much as an ass’s knowledge of his master’s crib; and so he obtained nothing from them. He must beat out his own path to God and peace. And if he does not do it, then his own case shall be as hopeless as the rest. There lies the value of such men as he. They must give the world what the world cannot give them, else both they and the world must grope on in utter dark- ness. In the neighborhood of Assisi were many chapels, the most of them but poorly kept by very poor priests To one of these, that of St. Damian, Francis was drawn by a passionate devotion. The priest was so poor that he hardly had his necessary food. And the chapel was no better supported than the priest. One day Francis prayed there before the altar, pouring out the very depths of his desire in supplication: ‘‘Great and glorious God, and thou, Lord Jesus, I pray ye, shed abroad your light in the darkness of my mind. ... Be found of me, Lord, so that in all things I may act only in accordance with thy holy will.’ His gaze was fixed upon Jesus portrayed in the crucifix. The material substance of the image seemed to assume life, and the Victim of the Cross seemed in the silence to speak to him. The young Assisian had found the young Galilean. The young Galilean had found the young Assisian. The purity of their espousal was ever to wax, the glory of it never to wane. It was the first conscious contact of Francis with Jesus Christ, and he was conquered. Coming out of the chapel, he gave all the money he had to the priest to keep a lamp always burning, and returned over the stony path which led under the olives to Assisi. He would leave his father’s house and pledge himself to the restoration of the chapel which had not scorned the mean- ness of his coming to its altars. Riding off to the fair at Foligno, whither his father had often carried him, he PULPIT AND PASTORATE 23 sold his horse and a few pieces of other stuff he had, and set out again, not for Assisi, but for St. Damian, full of the joy of what he had done. All the money the disposal of his property had brought him he offered to the poor priest at the chapel, who refused to accept the money, but re- luctantly granted Francis permission to remain with him. Doubtless he feared trouble with Bernadone if he was too friendly with Francis. And well he might. For the cal- culating and implacable merchant, who knew more about matters of business than the concerns of conscience, was more and more outraged at Francis’s conduct and organized a hot pursuit of him. Francis, in great distress of mind and heart, remained hidden for many days, but finally could sustain the part no longer and presented himself before his father. He was subjected to ill usage of the vilest and most violent sort; and when he would not desist from his course he was left bound in his father’s house when the latter for purposes of business had for a while to absent himself. Pica importuned him with gentler measures, but neither did these avail, and she released him. Bernadone returned and was so far provoked with Pica as wantonly to strike her. He had Francis summoned to appear be- fore the civil magistrates, but he refused on the ground that his case did not come within their jurisdiction. He gladly obeyed, however, a citation to appear before the ecclesiastical tribunal. The bishop stated the case against him, in which the sale of his father’s goods was involved, and advised him to give up all his property. The court was quite taken off its composure when Francis immediate- ly retired to a room in the bishop’s palace where the sitting was held and, removing all his clothing, he returned to present himself naked before the astonished company. Holding in his hand the packet in which he had rolled his clothes, he laid it down before the bishop, with 24 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN the money which he still had, saying that he would no longer call Pietro Bernadone father, for henceforth he de- sired nothing else than to say, “‘Our Father, who art in heaven.’”’ Bernadone gathered up the money and clothing and coolly carried them off, while the bishop was moved with compassion toward Francis, and all who witnessed the scene were deeply impressed. Francis himself retreated into a wild and mountainous forest clad in nothing but an old mantle which the bishop’s gardener had given him at the bishop’s request. Here he encountered a band of ruffians who, when they had in- quired and he had told them that he was the herald of God, stripped him and threw him into a ditch filled with snow, suiting their word to their action, and saying: ‘There is your place, poor herald of God.’’ He succeeded with difficulty in extricating himself from the ditch; but having done so, he after a while reached a monastery in the mountains where his reception was none too cordial. He soon left the place, found a friend on the way who gave him a tunic, and returned to St. Damian. Going into the streets of Assisi he would beg stones of any who would hear him, for the restoration of the chapel, to which he had pledged himself, and receiving the stones he would bear them on his own shoulders to their destination. In the streets he also begged oil for the lamps of the chapel. In the spring of 1208 he completed the proposed repairs on St. Damian, and then turned his attention with a similar purpose to another chapel, Portiuncula, which also stood near Assisi. Here in the Portiuncula, when its re- pairs had been completed, on February 24, 1209, mass was being celebrated in the usual way when something quite unusual wrote itself in the calendar of an age which else had been forever darker. It was St. Matthew’s Day and the priest who ministered at the altar was reading from or oMeany PULPIT AND PASTORATE 25 the Gospel of Matthew the account of the sending out of the original apostles. The soul of Francis was enraptured. The priest read on: “As ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give. Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass, in your purses; nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves; for the workman is worthy of his meat.’’ The priest vanished from the vision of Francis and the Crucified One, who at the altar of St. Damian had become the center and the throne of his re- ligious life, appeared in his place; and Francis heard him speaking in tones which he alone can command. He felt the apostolic commission to be reénacted in his own consciousness of obligation to do the will of Christ, and himself called to the apostolic life. In a rapture of de- votion he received the summons. ‘Immediately throwing aside his stick, his scrip, his purse, his shoes, he determined immediately to obey, observing to the letter the precepts of the apostolic life.” The very next morning he went up to Assisi and began to preach. There was about the man and his action a simplicity, a sincerity, a spontaneity of purpose which admirably became the new endeavor upon which he had set himself. He reincarnated the first Chris- tian century in the thirteenth. Writing in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Rev. Edward Cuthbert Butler says: ‘‘It is probably true to say that no one has ever set himself so seriously to imitate the life of Christ and to carry out so literally Christ’s work in Christ’s own way.” Francis preached and the souls of men which were slum- bering in them but not dead leaped up at his call and found strength to walk, and to praise God, and to run in the way of his service. Soon the army of dry bones which 26 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN: filled the Italian valleys and lay scattered upon the hill- sides stood upon its feet as a host of the living God. The very rarity and fullness of the demands which he laid upon men attracted and won them. He offered them not only a cause, but a crusade as well. He made a sufficient demand to be heard. For, after all, the religions of most demands have most ruled the world. He was able to lay a holy constraint upon the consciences of men because he had first of all laid such a constraint ungrudgingly upon himself. There was not a single jar in his own nature when he made these lofty appeals. Not a single note did he strike dis- cordant with his own conscience, or with the Spirit-con- strained conscience of any other man. It was a new and yet ever-old preaching, and the apostolic days again came down to earth. A man of Assisi, so little known that his name has es- caped through the meshes of the history, joined himself to Francis. His arrival at the Portiuncula was the signal for the arrival of a new idea to the mind of Francis. Might he not find a few companions with whom he could carry on the apostolic mission in the neighborhood? Another citizen of Assisi, in this instance a man of prominence and wealth, Bernardo di Quintavalle, came into the slowly increasing circle. He first received Francis into his home and was kind to him. Then he sold all that he had and followed him. Accompanied by another neophyte named Pietro, Francis carried Bernardo up to a church in the early dawn of a day rendered ever after fit for the calendar, and solemnly read to them the passages which had fixed his own vocation. They needed no other initiation to a life of devotion and service. The New Testament was a sufficient social service program for the age. Perhaps if men got back to it, or moved forward to its simple and perpetual principles, they would find it sufficient for this age. PudeP le ANDM@ PASTORATE 2 There were now brought together the Three Companions of Francis, as they came to be designated in the history, and with them the Franciscan Order may be said to have begun. Its beginnings were laid in simplicity itself. Men came of their own will, without invitation or constraint. Francis called men to the evangelical life. If they fol- lowed him further than this, they must come of their own accord. Only those who felt the constraint in themselves and in their own consciences were called to the apostolic life after the fashion that he followed it. The Portiuncula was a center and a gathering place for them, but not a home. Home they had none. So little had they a fixed abode that an early convert wishing to join them did not know where to find them, and only came upon them at last by chance. Their calling was to be friars and not monks. Mr. Chesterton thus states the difference: ‘‘The whole point of a monk was that his economic affairs were settled for good; he knew where he would get his supper, though it was a very plain supper. There was always a possibility that he might get no supper. But the whole point of a friar was that he did not know where he would get his supper.’’ One version of the origin of their costume was that Francis had exchanged clothes with a beggar. Another was that he had received the cast-off tunic of a beggar, and, having rejected the girdle as an article of apparel, had “picked up a rope more or less at random, because it was lying near, and tied it round his waist.”’ Ten years later this ‘‘makeshift costume was the uniform of five thousand men; and a hundred years later, in that, for a pontifical panoply, they laid great Dante in the grave.” Whether, therefore, with respect to clothing, food, or shelter they were apostolically indifferent. At the first they put up shelters about the Portiuncula which were but booths rather than buildings; and when they left there 28 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN the only chart for their return was that they would meet there again. The Bishop of Assisi said to Francis one day: “ Your way of living without owning anything seems to me very harsh and difficult.”” He made the undaunted and unas- sailable reply that if he and his friars had property they should need weapons and laws to defend them. That reply is the clue to the policy he pursued; but it was policy rooted in principle, if ever policy was. ‘We are penitents, natives of the city of Assisi,” his early friars in simple truth would answer when asked by strangers whence they were, or to what order they belonged. At length, seeing that the number of his followers in- creased daily, Francis set out for Rome to procure the approval of the Rule of his Order by the Pope. Including Francis himself there were twelve of the brethren who went on this mission. According to Bonaventura, the Pope, Innocent III, was walking on the terrace of the St. John Lateran when there abruptly appeared before him a stran- ger in garments so rudely cast that he took him for some sort of shepherd and immediately sent him away. But a dream which invaded the papal night opened the door to Francis the next morning. This may be fancy. But it is no fancy that Francis had very little to ask of the Pope. He simply wished that his order might be authorized to exist without having any privilege at all, but only ‘‘to lead a life of absolute conformity to the precepts of the gospel.’’ There was really no rule to approve except the rule of Jesus himself. Through one of the cardinals the Pope informed himself more particularly of the case, but held up his de- cision from day to day, while Francis was advised to go into one of the already existing orders. But this would have been to defeat his whole purpose, and he promptly saw it to be so. Still admonishing them, though mainly PULPIT AND PASTORATE 29 through the cardinal who acted for him, that their rule was too severe, the Pope at last gave his verbal approval of the plans for the Order. THE PERILS OF PROSPERITY The mission of Francis was apostolic not in name only, but also in the swiftness and thoroughness of its effect. The Pope had required the appointment of a responsible superior of the Order to whom the ecclesiastical authorities might look in their dealings with it. Very naturally Francis was appointed. But it was his heart and not his hand that ruled the Order. The movement swept on with startling success. The contemporary preaching was not preaching, even what there was of it. But the preaching of Francis and his friars was preaching, preaching that seized the very heart and conscience of the willing multitudes, bringing them captive to the obedience of Christ. Francis set the example of open-air sermons, later so effectually followed, sermons given in the tongue of the people, at street corners, in public squares, and in the open fields. For the forms and precepts of the schools he cared not at all, caring, indeed, so little for them, and caring so much for what really mat- tered in his appeal to the people that he unconsciously con- formed to much of the best that the schools have ever had to say on the subject of preaching. He did not, of course, care as much for the schools as he ought, and he never cared as much for education as he ought. But who will say that the schools have not committed as serious errors in the opposite direction? Rules are derived from men, and not men from rules. This the wiser rhetoricians very well know; and they conform the precepts to the practice. Francis was simple enough for the village idiot, as Mr. Chesterton has said; and the village idiot does not have all preachers to thank for this considerate conformity to the 30 PRINCES OF THE GHRISTiIAT requirements of his condition. Francis cared for nothing but the conversion of souls. And he desired only genuine con- version which could give an immediate and a very practical and Christian account of itself. ‘‘Men must give up ill- gotten gains, renounce their enmities, be reconciled with their adversaries.”” It was only the account which genuine conversion must give of itself in any age. The man himself, through the singleness of his motive and the intensity of his concern, almost without speaking, possessed a power of conversion. When to this fact speech was added the effect was marvelous. ‘‘I, Brother Francis,” he would say, ‘‘the least of your servants, pray and conjure you by that love which is God himself, willing to throw myself at your feet and kiss them, to receive with humility and love these words and all others of our Lord Jesus Christ, to put them to profit and carry them out.” Sabatier testifies that ‘‘conversions multiplied with incredible rapidity.”’ Often a word or a look sufficed to draw and bind men inseparably to him. His recruits came mostly from the young men, the sons of farmers, and some of them from among the nobility, but few from the schools or the Church. Men of this character were naturally most serviceable to his mission. Could the Order have preserved its original simplicity of life and purity of purpose it might also have maintained its early record for influence and power. The first Fran- ciscan convent at Portiuncula was built and organized within three or four days. A few huts were built, and these inclosed with a quickset hedge. Of palaces and walls they took no thought. For ten years they asked no more than the hut and the hedge. They were content with the forest for a cloister and the sky for a canopy. So continuing their conspicuous spiritual success continued. In these heroic days Clara, who was herself born in Assisi, was con- PULPIT AND PASTORATE 31 verted through the influence of Francis, and an organiza- tion for women was attached to the Order. But how could ‘so vast a movement conserve its success without property? How could it live without houses? And where were the houses without land? Does not common sense say that even a spiritual movement has need of these things? The mustard seed and the leaven must work together. The Christian people must indeed seek first the kingdom of heaven. But all the time even God knows that they have need of food and raiment. ‘‘ Your heavenly Father know- eth that ye have need of all these things.’’ But somehow the Christian people seem ruinously prone to seek these things even as the Gentiles seek them. In the matter of the possession of property, even though some measure of it be needful, it is fatally easy for even good people to fall into a snare. This hazard the Order of Francis by reason of its very prosperity had to run. With him “gospel sim- plicity reappeared upon the earth.”” But it hardly remained with his Order. ‘ The Church of course had a hand in the change in the course of affairs. Here was too much power to be per- mitted to run unchecked, and to be left undirected toward those ends which the Church itself, and not the Order acting more or less independently, might choose. Mr. Chesterton makes a good argument for this point of view. But it is not everybody who will follow him entirely, either in his premises or his conclusion. If a Church cannot easily err, then of course it cannot easily err, and you must look at it that way. Then, too, it may as well be frankly said that Francis, spiritual genius though he was, had no hand for the management of affairs of a too largely material or too expressly ecclesiastical a character. Hesuffered much in his later life at seeing his order go from his grasp and decline from its original integrity. On his abdication of its official 32 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN leadership he told the story of his devotion to its interests in these revealing words: ‘‘Lord, I give thee back this family which thou didst intrust to me. Thou knowest, most sweet Jesus, that I have no more the power and the qualities to continue to take care of it. I intrust it, there- fore, to the ministers. Let them be responsible before thee at the Day of Judgment, if any brother by their negligence, or their bad example, or by a too severe punishment, shall go astray.” His tender heart beat out alike its grief and its joy when on Saturday, October 3, 1226, at nightfall, he died in the humility in which he had so steadfastly lived. THE PREROGATIVES OF THE SAINTS The saints do not argue their prerogatives; yet they have them. They have them just because they do not ask them. Francis asked of God no privilege unless it might be that he should have none. 1. The first prerogative of the saints is to be poor. They begin their career in poverty of spirit. This they have though they be well sprung in the wealth of this world. This they have and they are rich within. Poverty as a physical estate is not piety; nevertheless, it seems to have a congruity with piety which wealth does not so easily have. Poverty sets its own snares, but wealth sets more. Francis had this feeling to an extraordinary degree. Above all else he was an ascetic. He was by preéminence the Christian ascetic. Asceticism in him did not narrow nor harden Christian sentiment or charity. He literally es- poused himself to poverty. He loved poverty because he loved Christ, as witnessed in the fervor of this prayer: ‘Poverty was in the crib, and like a faithful squire she kept herself armed in the great combat thou didst wage for our redemption. During thy passion she alone did not forsake thee. Mary, thy mother, stopped at the foot of Peer iieAND PASTORATE 33 the Cross, but poverty mounted it with thee, and clasped thee in her embrace unto the end; and when thou wast dying with thirst, asa watchful spouse she prepared for thee the gall. Thou didst expire in the ardor of her embraces, nor did she leave thee when dead, O Lord Jesus, for she allowed not thy body to rest elsewhere than in a borrowed grave. O poorest Jesus, the grace I beg of thee is to bestow on me the treasure of the highest poverty. Grant that the distinctive mark of our Order may be never to possess anything as its own under the sun for the glory of thy name, and to have no other patrimony than beg- ging.’ He wished to be taken from his dying bed and to be laid unclothed upon the bare floor as a final act of de- votion to his Lady Poverty. Who ever won more fully the beatitude of the poor in spirit than this poor deacon of the Middle Ages? Truly, the kingdom of heaven was his. How strongly did its mightiest compulsions blend in the beauty of his character! ‘‘The life of Francis,” says John Richard Green, in his “‘ History of the English People,”’ “falls like a stream of tender light across the darkness of the time.” 2. The saints have their striving and their travail, too. They have the travail of their own continuance in the kingdom of God. And they have the travail of all those who will not enter with them into that kingdom. It is their prerogative to realize more sensitively their own sin, and to carry more sensitively the sins of others. They carry their own sorrows, and they carry the sorrows of the world. The very travail by which the kingdom of God comes in has its seat in their soul. Capacity for sainthood is in good part a capacity for suffering. Out of their sorrow and suffering the sympathy of the saints is born. Grace released a veritable fountain of sympathy when Francis was converted. His was a soul capable of solitude and of 3 34 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN torture. He passed whole nights in tortuous struggle and prayer, doubting sometimes the course he had taken, and regretting the exaggerated asceticism of his life; but out of it all winning those deeper resignations and more utter re- finements of spirit which the emptier life can never know. Once more Sabatier says: ‘‘Yes, St. Francis forever felt the travail of the transformation taking place in the womb of humanity, going forward to its divine destiny, and he offered himself a living oblation, that in him might take place the mysterious palingenesis.”’ He was the man of the stigma. Was it fiction or fact? Sabatier, who also gives credence to the miracles, at last accepted the report of it as fact, and records the following account of its reception, when Francis had fasted and prayed for many days in the solitudes of the Verna: “‘A seraph, with outspread wings, flew toward him from the edge of the horizon, and bathed his soul in raptures un- utterable. In the center of the vision appeared a cross, and the seraph was nailed upon it. When the vision disap- peared, he felt sharp sufferings mingling with the ecstacy of the first moments. Stirred to the very depths of his being, he was anxiously seeking the meaning of it all, when he perceived upon his body the stigmata of the Crucified.” The story of the stigmata may be a fiction; but Francis ~-was no fiction, and his devotion to Christ was as real as Francis himself. 3. Then, too, the saints have their disdain of privilege and of mere outward observance. Too often the saint has to be the antithesis of the priest. The priest is swallowed up in his observances. The saint swallows up observances in the ardor of his devotion. Francis had no rest until there was an access of grace to his heart. He found it beyond the priest, in Christ. In his experience it was that he learned his sole reliance upon God. He was of the race PULPIT AND PASTORATE 35 of mystics who know no intermediary between the soul and God. He whom they always find there is himself God. This gives a sane mysticism, a mysticism which does not resolve the moral law into a mist, nor substitute an overwrought imagination for the facts of experience. Francis kept his head and his heart among the spiritual mysteries, but he had his feet always on the earth. He was © an ascetic, but he was not gloomy. He was a mystic, but he was not morbid. The joy of the Lord was his strength, and an abounding joyousness was the stay of his heart. Wrung by indescribable pain he still sang hymns of praise, and when he saw the end coming he cried out a welcome to “Sister Death.” 4. The saints also have their fruit of the future. They are like a tree planted by the rivers of water, whose leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever they do shall prosper. Francis planted a seed of holiness in the earth by the power of his own holy life. “‘Are you Francis of Assisi?”’ asked a peasant whom he encountered in one of his jour- neys. ‘Yes,’ replied Francis. ‘‘Then have a care,’’ the peasant admonished, “‘that you be as good as men think you are.’ “I too have a favorite saint,’’ said Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “St. Francis of Assisi.’’ Ernest Renan joined his name with that of Jesus as the two whom he most aspired to comprehend. Less than two years after the death of Francis, Pope Gregory IX, who in his capacity as a cardinal had known him well, came to Assisi for the ceremony of his canoniza- tion. In twenty-four years after his death his Order em- braced 200,000 friars, distributed into twenty-three prov- inces, and occupying 8,000 monasteries. Seven hundred years after the event great and gracious companies of grateful Christian people gathered in Canter- bury, some in the Roman Catholic Church of St. Thomas, 36 PRINCES OF THE PULPIT and others in the Anglican Cathedral, to celebrate the coming of the friars of Francis, the Joculatores Domini, the Jesters of the Lord, to the shores of England. A vessel had put in at Dover on September 10, 1224, and disem- barked nine men—mostly young—whose fare had been paid by Benedictine monks on the other side the channel. “They were as queer looking a company as ever landed at Dover; bare alike as to head and foot, a long garment habited them, tied with a rope. They hadn’t a penny among them;... they didn’t possess as much as a walking stick in the way of baggage. They had no idea where their next meal would come from, but cheerily recalled that the ravens once fed Elijah. Coming to Canterbury they were banqueted for several days, the sole item on the menu being porridge mixed with thick, sour, small beer. If they could be either pious or joyous on that, the devil of misery might as well quit his job.” And that was just why they had come. And thus was the grace and joy of their coming, at the celebration of the event, as a cruse of ointment broken, and pouring forth its fragrance still in all England. By means such as these shall the Christian Church by God’s will come at last to the unity for which the Lord prayed. II SAVONAROLA (1452-1498) FRoM CouRT TO CLOISTER RARELY have the crudities and sublimities both of character and of action been more mixed in any man than in Fra Girolamo Savonarola. He was a man who raised favorable and unfavorable factions toward himself in all the great affairs of his life. But were there not factions within the man as well as without? Did he not find strange contradictions within himself and in his own nature? His grandfather, Michele Savonarola, an eminent physi- cian of excellent character, was professionally connected with the court of the Duke of Ferrara, and there Girolamo, son of Niccolo and Elena Savonarola, was bor on Sep- tember 21, 1452. His mother was of an illustrious family and sustained the part in her own person and character. To her he was tenderly devoted, as indeed he was to all his family, throughout all his career. The influence of his father upon him seems to have been negligible. But from his grandfather, whom he was intended to follow in the medical profession, he received a wise and tender care. All his early training was directed by the intention that he should be a doctor; and though this training failed of its real purpose it did serve to awaken in him a passion for study, and afforded another instance of the principle that a talent trained in faithful application to one task may be profitably employed in another. At any rate it was a dis- tinct gain to him to have become a student. The connection of the Savonarola family with the Court (37) 38 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN of Ferrara was not sufficiently close to draw its members into the full swell of the court life. It was sufficiently close, however, for young Girolamo to be repelled by its excesses. The festive proclivities of the court set the fashion for the whole city. Courtly opulence set the pace for courtly pride and prodigality. A corrupt court has a fatal power to corrupt a city and a people. All this glamour of extrava- gance and excess reacted powerfully upon the naturally melancholy mind of young Savonarola, and drove him toward the monastic life. His sad and solitary nature was wrought upon to the point of dejection, and thecloister was the only immediate means of escape which he knew. He spent long, lonely hours in church, and was much addicted to fasting. A beautiful young daughter of the Strozzi family arose like a star upon the pathway of his life. He had his day of beatific dreams and tender hopes, but the proud young girl strewed them all in ruins at his feet, and disdainfully declined to marry him. No Strozzi might stoop to wed a Savonarola. The shafts of melancholy sank deeper still into his soul; and his recurrent prayer became: ‘Lord, make known to me the path my soul should tread.” He spent a year of anguish while he contemplated the monastic life. Fearing to tell his parents lest he should weaken in his purpose, he sat alone amid the fierce conten- tions of his soul. ‘‘Had I made my mind known to them,” he said, “‘verily my heart would have broken, and I should have renounced my purpose.” April 24, 1475, was a festival day in Ferrara, and while his parents were away in attendance upon the celebration he fled from home and set out alone upon a journey to Bologna, where he immedtately presented himself for ad- mission to the Monastery of St. Dominic. He aspired to be neither a monk nor a priest, but asked only to be the convent drudge, while he remained among the lay brothers ; ee : PULPIT AND PASTORATE 39 and did penance in the lowliest service. He had fled to the cloister from the corruption of the world. ‘‘The misery of the world and the wickedness of men,” he said, ‘‘I cannot endure. Everywhere I see virtue despised and vice ‘hon- ored. Many times a day have I repeated to myself with tears: Away from this cruel land, this cruel shore, away.” Once within the monastery his thoughts turned back to his kindred whom he had so unceremoniously left, and he wrote to his father, concluding with the words: ‘‘ Dearest father, my sorrow is already so great, do not, I pray you, add to it by yours! Be strong, seek to comfort my mother, and join with her in granting me your blessing.” Ina later letter, slightly remonstrant in tone, reflecting no doubt the effect of some information he had had from home as to how his departure had been taken, and bearing at the same time some evidence of the beginnings of a conscious- ness of mission on his part, he says: ‘“‘If some temporal lord had girt me with a sword, and welcomed me among his followers, you would have regarded it as an honor to your house, and rejoiced; yet now that the Lord Jesus Christ has girt me with his sword, and dubbed me his knight, ye shed tears of mourning.”’ Villari, whose ‘‘ Life and Times of Savonarola”’ is a very fine piece of biographical literature, has the following description of his personal appearance: ‘‘ He was of middle height, of dark complexion. ... His dark grey eyes were very bright, and often flashed fire beneath his black brows; he had an aquiline nose and a large mouth. His thick lips were compressed in a manner denoting a stubborn firmness of purpose; his forehead, already marked with deep fur- rows, indicated a mind continually absorbed in meditation of serious things. But although his countenance had no beauty of line, it expressed a severe nobility of character, while a certain melancholy smile endued his harsh features 40 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN with so benevolent a charm as to inspire confidence at first sight. His manners were simple, if uncultured; his lan- guage rough and unadorned. But on occasion his homely words were animated by a potent fervor that convinced and subdued all hearers.” The convent consumed seven years of his life. Cloistral severity wore him down to hardly more than a fragment of what a proper care might have made him, through the ex- cess of his fasting and penance. ‘‘ When pacing the cloisters he seemed more like a specter than a living man.” He carried abstinence to an excess even on days not appointed for fasting, slept on a grating furnished with only a sack of straw and a blanket, wore the coarsest clothing, though he kept scrupulously clean, and “‘in modesty, humility, and obedience surpassed all the rest of the brethren.”’ He lost, however, his wish to be a drudge, and gained through his evident fitness and ability for the task an ap- pointment to be an instructor of the convent novitiates. A Corrupt AGE AND AN INCORRUPTIBLE MAN What determines a man’s life ultimately is not heredity but the reaction of his personality toward the forces of heredity. What forms his character is not his environ- ment, but his reaction to that environment. Savonarola might merely have floated on the current of his age as others did. He might have been merely a bishop, or a cardinal, or a pope, and have given a darker hue to the degradation of the age, as so many in these offices did. But hewasaman of a far different mold who reacted differently to the influences about him. Why did not the glitter of the court life at Ferrara attract and hold him? Why did he not fall into the categories of Aquinas and Aristotle and perish in a desert of metaphysical and scholastic disquisitions? There were plenty of men-around him who did this. He had been EOERIRSAND, PASTORATE 41 fascinated by Aquinas in his youth. And he did not escape Aristotle even in the cloister. ‘‘He had to be silent per- force for years, and to teach the novices, and lecture upon philosophy, as if there was no greater evil in the world than a defective syllogism; but the great discontent in his mind never ceased to smolder until the hour of conflagration came.” Ah! there was the difference: ‘the great discon- tent of his mind,’’ which could not by any means be forced into narrow and stifling monastic molds. The age was bred on softness and luxury and lust, revel- ing on the one hand in extreme self-indulgence, while it sank in misery on the other. Vice vaunted itself. Crime was prevalent in every circle, and was “‘set out in rampant breadth of color and shameless openness.’”’ Any man might dance when the spirit of the age did its piping, and profit by its corruption. But here was a man whom it could not corrupt. The age had its graces and its gifts, to be sure, which gilded its corruption; but it was evil at its heart, and sooner or later the heart carries all else with it. The time had begun to be touched by the Renaissance. It cared for thought, and for many things which compound for intellectual satisfaction. It cared for art in its varied forms, but had lost the supreme art of living. What ability had it to live up to the level of the art of such a man as Michelangelo, who was a contemporary of Savonarola? Did not this put it to a test almost as severe as that of the preaching of Savonarola? What kind of literary taste did an age have in which even such a man as Pico della Miran- dola could declare that the ‘ Divina Commedia”’ of Dante was inferior to the coarse carnival songs of Lorenzo de Medici? The world was morally so bad that even its own corrupt conscience ceased not to accuse it and seemed to set for it a deserved day of judgment. ‘A sense of approaching 42 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN judgment, terror, and punishment, the vengeance of God against a world full of iniquity, darkened the very air.” These were the times that beat this man’s mind into the shape it took and settled his soul in fixed antagonism to the evil that was in the world. Should that world beat his mind and conscience into conformity to its evil? Or should he set to himself the high task of transforming that world into the shape of his mind and conscience? Either the world will invade the man, or the man must invade the world. If aman cannot by any means make himself greater than the world, then both the man and the world are doomed. ‘‘Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.” Even his life inside the monastery in its deepest resolves was a reaction toward and a protest against the world outside. He was, in this cloistral seclusion, maturing those convictions which alone could have sustained him when in the course of events he was called forth to face that world in its fortified iniquities. His soul was most of all in revolt against the state of the Church. Its debasement and cor- ruption appalled him. Intolerably scandalous practices had invaded the papacy itself. And yet they were tol- erated. Its moral decline, which was to end in its utter degradation under Alexander VI, had set in at the death of Paul II in 1464. It was publicly asserted that Sixtus IV had carried his election by simony, and Rome resounded | with the names of those who had bought and sold in the papal markets and trafficked in tiaras and tassels, and turned spiritual offices into purchasable temporalities. What wonder if the very stones of the temple itself cried out to be cleansed! Why then should not this melancholy man in the monastery have accepted a cardinal’s hat when in the turn of events it was offered to him as a bribe? Surely offense’s gilded hand had by this time sufficiently BUPEL PeAND PASTORATE 43 shoved by justice to make the precedent clear. But this was just what he was preparing not to do. It was under the pressure of steadfast resistance to these very practices that his career was taking its shape. Official corruption always wants conformity, and this was just what Savona- rola could not offer. When he came out of the convent it was not to conform to the custom of the time, but to chal- lenge all its practice. FLORENCE No city could be counted wholly mean which had thrown the shield of its citizenship around Dante, Savonarola, and Michelangelo. These three were great enough to make the world great, and not alone the city of their habitation. In the credulity of the time it was said that the coming of Savonarola had been anticipated. A noble citizen of Florence passing one morning through the streets with some friends felt a stranger pluck him by the garment, and when they had turned aside into a church this stranger acting thus strangely told him that by the intercession of the Virgin a certain Fra Girolamo of Ferrara was coming to Florence to save the city from the destruction due to her sins. Savonarola while still serving within the convent had through the increased appreciation felt for him by his superiors been raised from the position of instructor to that of preacher. As was natural his preaching at first differed little from his lecturing. Gradually he drew away from Aristotle to the Bible, and under changed conditions his preaching began to improve. He was first sent out to preach at his native Ferrara, but only found himself a victim of the ancient saying that a prophet is not without honor save in his own country. The root of real eloquence was in him, but it had not yet sprung up. Political dis- 44 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN turbance scattered the monks from Ferrara, and Savona- rola was sent to Florence. But the fair city disdained the first glances of regard which he cast upon her. There was no form nor comeliness in him that he should be desired. He was plain; her people were proud. He was but an un- couth friar; she was a cultured city. He was bent on serious business; Florence was bent on pleasure. He sensed eter- nity in his soul; Florence sensed only the things of time. Florence would only hear if she were compelled to; and he was not yet able to compel her. In truth, he could not preach; and Florence liked preaching of the prevalent sort. He had not yet found his message. He had not yet found himself. When he finds himself he will also find Florence. His espousal to her in the fullness of his affection was stronger than death. Lorenzo de Medici, utterly abandoned to profligacy and prodigality, reigned in Florence at the height of his fame and power. Opposition to his rule had been either subdued or crushed, and Florence through her abandonment to material pleasures and pursuits had ceased to care for freedom. She was too deeply enslaved to the gratification of lesser desires to retain the power to love liberty. The morally profligate cease to care to be political- ly free. The city presented what, had it not so frequently happened to the contrary, would seem to be the unaccount- able antinomy of being cultured but corrupt. And so Savonarola did not commend himself to Florence. Even now his heart was warm enough. But his speech and his manner were rough, and Florence could not tolerate the uncouth. She could tolerate corruption if it were cul- tured; but she could not tolerate an offer of God’s own mercy if it came in a rough garb. His congregations went on diminishing until at the last there were only twenty- five persons to hear him. He went away, not being too BULPIESAND PASTORATE 45 much depressed, perhaps, by his failure. For he knew the causes of it, and would not pay the price others paid as a passport to popular favor. Nevertheless to be thus checked at a door which he could but feel should have ad- mitted him could but have elements of pain in it to a sen- sitive soul. THE POWER OF A PULPIT Savonarola came back to Florence in an unaccustomed way. He had gone under appointment of his superiors to attend a chapter of the monks of his order held at Reggio. He sat in silence in the assembly while dogma was dis- cussed, but was deeply aroused by a question of discipline which was introduced and spoke with such force and effect | as to amaze his audience, and in a special way to attract the favorable attention of young Giovanni Pico—known when he became a duke as Pico della Mirandola—who was already celebrated for his learning and his influence with persons of importance. He forthwith became a warm ad- mirer of Savonarola, and induced Lorenzo to invite him to return to Florence. So to Florence he came again, and re- sumed his studies and teaching in the Monastery of St. Mark’s, with which, since it was of his own order, he had naturally become connected on his first arrival. He had been advised on account of the earlier unhappy termination of his experience in preaching in Florence to desist from preaching entirely, and go back to teaching; and this he seems reluctantly to have resolved to do. Circumstances on his return to Florence did not tend to extricate him from the impasse which he has reached with respect to preaching. A monk of the Augustinian order was preaching to great audiences in one of the con- spicuous churches of the city, and was at the same time in high favor with the Medici. His was a style which Savona- 46 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN rola could not affect, and would not if he could. One of his own order said to him: ‘‘ Father, one cannot deny that your doctrine is true, useful, and necessary; but your manner of delivering it lacks grace, especially as it is daily compared with that of Fra Mariano.’”’ He was perhaps impatient of his own limitations; nevertheless he uttered a great truth when he said in reply: ‘‘These verbal elegancies and orna- ments will have to give way to sound doctrine simply preached.” Still, the verbal elegancies were carrying the day, and the man who was the natural rival of Savonarola if he should begin to preach again waxed daily in popularity, cultivating assiduously all the while those arts and devices which might swell the size of his audience. This was ir- ritating, no doubt; but it was not convincing to a man whose mind was soundly made up on this point. He waited, preaching meanwhile only to a small convent audience, seeming to entertain an expectation that there would be a revelation from God to guide him. In 1484 Sixtus IV died and the scandals of the papacy increased. In the spring of the same year, and also in the next spring, Savonarola was sent as Lenten preacher to the little republic of San Gemignano. This expedition was the real beginning of his preaching. Out there among the Sienese hills he lifted up his voice and his soul was in it, and the call of God to men was init. The sermons preached on this tour made him known to all Italy, divided though it was politically, and established him in his course. He retains his modest post as lecturer to the monks of St. Mark’s, but is sent out from time to time on these preaching excursions. From the Lenten season of 1486 te January, 1489, he preached in Lombardy, centering his at- tention more particularly upon the Province of Brescia, where his sermons achieved a notable success. Writing PULPIT AND PASTORATE 47 from here to his mother he begs her ‘‘to forgive him if he has nothing but prayers to offer his family, since his re- ligious profession precludes him from helping them in other ways; but he adds that in his heart he still shares their sorrows and their joys.’’ He writes also that he bears better fruit than he could have borne at Ferrara. Pico had again pressed for his return to Florence; and so under orders from his superiors, issued at the request of Lorenzo, he appears, in the summer of 1489, once more in Florence. Strange adventures attended him on the way, what he regarded as a vision having been among them. The city itself, however, he could only enter with misgiving. At first he occupied himself only with lectures to the friars. But since there were laymen who wished to attend he re- moved to the convent garden, where his audiences greatly increased; and almost without purpose on his part his lectures became sermons. The preacher in the man begins to find freer utterance. He was entreated to return to the pulpit, and on August 1, 1489, he faced an audience in the convent church which sat, and stood, and clung to the iron gratings in order to see and hear him. Murmurs of disapproval and discontent now began to be uttered over against the high favor he had already won. His preaching was a challenge to agree or disagree, and a brand of difference hurled into the midst of those who heard him, a complex of attitudes which was speedily ex- tended to many who had not heard him. Both he and his doctrine were dividers of the people. Neither had any commission to be neutral. Discussions of religious doc- trines and virtues which he prepared and issued in pamphlet form served to make both himself and his position better understood, especially among more thoughtful people who had the grace and the good sense to take a little time to think. More and more, too, he relied upon the Bible and 48 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN turned to it as an assured declaration of the will of God both in matters of doctrine and duty. From his youth he had found it the surest guide of his life and consoler of his griefs. His fanciful exegesis and elaborate method of ex- position cannot command our assent, but the honor he put upon the Book may well command our compliance. Congregations coming in their eagerness to hear him be- gan to crowd St. Mark’s entirely beyond its capacity, and in the last of 1491 Savonarola preached in the Duomo, the cathedral church of Florence. His preaching thereafter became more of a public function and Lorenzo became in- volved in it and concerned about it. No man is shrewder in forecasting the effect upon the public mind of a serious moral movement, particularly if it is a movement sus- tained and promoted by Christian preaching, than a crafty politician, who just because he depends on craft instead of character is never sure of his own position. Henceforth there is nothing else which Lorenzo had so much to fear as the pulpit of Savonarola, now elevated to cathedral heights. Savonarola himself at this time suffered some misgiving as to whether it might not be advisable to curb his ten- dency to rely upon visions, and also as to whether it might not be well to cease his frequent references in the pulpit to coming ills. ‘“‘I remember when I was preaching in the Duomo in 1491,” he says, “‘and had already composed my sermon upon these visions, I determined to omit all men- tion of them, and never recur to the subject again. God is my witness how I watched and prayed the whole of Saturday and throughout the night; but all other ways, all doctrines save this, were denied me. ‘Toward break of dawn, being weary and dejected by long vigil, I heard, as I prayed, a voice saying to me: ‘Fool, dost thou not see that it is God’s will thou shouldst continue in the same path?’ Wherefore I preached that day a terrible sermon.” wre PULPIT AND PASTORATE 49 This sermon, which he himself calls terrible, was directed to denunciation of the clergy and condemnation of the manners of the people. The whole series delivered at this time achieved an extraordinary success, and he wrote to Fra Domenico, then preaching at Pisa, one of the most trusted friends of his life, and afterwards executed with him, as follows: ‘‘Our work goes on well, for God helps us mar- velously, although the chief men of the city are against us, and many fear that we may meet with the fate of Fra Bernardino [who had been exiled]. But I have faith in the Lord; he gives me daily greater courage and perseverance, and I preach the regeneration of the Church, taking the Scriptures as my sole guide.” An invitation from the political authorities to preach at the palace followed the signal success of these latest ser- mons; and he preached there, but with a plainness which could only be displeasing to Lorenzo. His elevation to the office of Prior of St. Mark’s in July, 1491, gave him the leverage of a more prominent position, and at the same time increased his independence. Ac- cording to the custom of the time the new prior was due to pay a visit of respect to Lorenzo at the palace; but this Savonarola promptly declined to do, saying: ‘I consider that my election is owed to God alone, and to him alone will I vow obedience.’’ Lorenzo was displeased but diplomatic. He would not oppose the new convent official, but sought to win him by kindness. He came to mass at St. Mark’s, and afterwards walked in the convent garden. But Savonarola did not stir from his place. When the -young friars, stirred by the event, ran to tell him that Lorenzo was there, he replied: “If he does not ask for me, _ let him go or stay at his pleasure.” It was not that he would practice a cheap and superficial disdain toward the man, but the severity of his judgment of Lorenzo’s charac- 4 50 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN ter that governed his actions. Lorenzo followed up his previous amenities by sending gifts to the convent, but Savonarola promptly sent his gold, when he found that too among the peace offerings, to be distributed among a con- gregation of the poor, remarking that silver and copper sufficed for the convent; while his contempt for Lorenzo’s character could only be aggravated by the procedure. Burlamacchi observes that ‘‘Lorenzo was at last convinced that this was not the right soil in which to plant vines.” Somehow they would not grow. Nevertheless, Lorenzo did not desist from his purpose, but sent five citizens of renown in Florence to prevail, if possible, with Savonarola “‘to change his behavior and man- ner of preaching by pointing out to him the dangers he was incurring for himself and his convent.’’ But he heard the sound of their master’s feet behind them and said: ‘‘T know that you have not come of your own will, but at that of Lorenzo. Bid him to do penance for his sins, for the Lord is no respecter of persons, and spares not the princes of the earth.’ Veiled threats of banishment left him still unmoved. 3 Chafing under the effect of Savonarola’s increasing in- fluence Lorenzo changed his tactics and set up Genazzano, a monk and popular preacher of the Augustinian order, as a pulpit rival. It was understood that he was especially to attack the presumption of uttering prophecies and de- claring future events, of which Savonarola was particularly guilty; and in any other way that offered itself to discount his preaching and disparage the man himself. But his butterfly wings were not capable of such a flight. His zeal overbore his discretion. ‘‘He draweth the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument.” His effort ended in his own discomfiture, while the fame of Savonarola was relatively enhanced. BULLE LieaAND- PASTORATE Si Lorenzo was already seriously diseased and perforce left Savonarola and his preaching alone. The latter went on his eloquent and triumphant way. The pulpit verbosities, rhetoricals, scholasticisms, and theatricals which were the current practice he studiously eschewed, and spoke out of a heart hot with the passion of his desire for cleaner man- ners and a purer Church. There were moments of ecstacy which came upon him in his pulpit when his speech was sublime in its reach toward the heights of a divine inspira- tion. Burlamacchi thus describes the crowding of the people to hear him at the Duomo: “‘The people got up in the middle of the night to get places for the sermon, and came to the door of the cathedral, waiting outside till it should be opened, making no account of any inconvenience, neither of the cold, nor the wind, nor of standing in winter with their feet on the marble; and among them were young and old, women and children, of every sort, who came with such jubilee and rejoicing that it was bewildering to hear them, going to the sermon as to a wedding. Then the silence was great in the church, each one going to his place; and he who could read, with a taper in his hand, read the service and other prayers. And though many thousand people were thus collected together, no sound was to be heard, not even a ‘hush,’ until the arrival of the children, who sang hymns with so much sweetness that heaven seemed to have opened. Thus they waited three or four hours till the padre entered the pulpit. And the attention of so great a mass of people, all with eyes and ears intent upon the preacher, was wonderful; they listened so that when the sermon reached its end it seemed to them that it had scarcely begun.”’ It is one of the unaccountable contrasts of history that Savonarola and Lorenzo de Medici should have been brought into such close and almost unbreakable contact OZ PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN with each other. Lorenzo’s disease had now progressed to the point that he retired to his pleasant country house at Careggi to die. He craved, as he had sore need to do, the offices and comforts of religion in his last hours. The priests around him could bring him its offices, but not its comforts. He sent for Savonarola, saying, ‘I know of no honest friar save this one.’ The summons was so sur- prising that he doubted whether he should go, thinking that he had no word which Lorenzo would heed. However, he could but go. Lorenzo explained that there were three sins on his conscience which he especially wished to confess. According to Villari these were: “‘The sack of Volterra; the robbery of the Monte delle Fanctulle, whereby so many girls had been driven to a life of shame; and the bloody reprisals following the conspiracy of the Pazzi.’ The prince was shaken with terror, and the monk gently re- minded him of the mercy of God. Then the priest’s face grew stern and he solemnly announced the terms of ab- solution. Three things were needful: he must exercise a sound and living faith; he must make restitution of his ill- gotten gains; and he must restore the liberties of Florence. At the third, having given his assent to the other two de- mands, the death agony deepened, the man struggling in the terrible grip of it balked, was silent, and turned his face unyielding to the wall. The monk, too, was silent, and after a little he turned and quit the room, leaving the dying prince unabsolved upon his bed. Strip the scene of all its medieval and monkish accessories and it stands still as one of the most remarkable ever enacted in the dealings of a priest with the soul of a man in all the history of the sordidness of sin in human life. The prince could only get such terms from the monk as the monk could get from God. That at least must be taken as the monk’s understanding of the transaction. There on the steep edge of eternity BULLET AND: ‘PASTORATE 53 moral greatness, and conscience with a passion for God, towered majestically above the thrones of princes, and the petty splendors of this earth sank into vanity and nothing- ness. It was a greater tribute to the power of Savonarola’s pulpit than all the praises that encompassed and all the plaudits that reverberated about that pulpit in Florence, and stirred the whole of Italy into admiration, or else into censure. The next greatest tribute to the power of that pulpit was unwittingly paid by Pope Alexander VI; but we come to that later. RULING A CITY FROM A CONVENT Lorenzo possessed both political acumen and skill, and had exercised an influence throughout Italy. His death left the government of Florence in the hands of his son, Piero, who possessed scarcely any of his father’s gifts, while he was addicted to all his vices. Political factions immediately arose. The weakening of the government in- creased Savonarola’s popular hold. He began to be re- garded as the preacher of the party opposed to the rule of the Medici, and the very situation in which he was placed led many to look to him as the only hope of a free govern- ment. The very terror which in the circumstances was natural to the public mind magnified his fame, while at the same time he himself began once more to be obsessed by his belief in visions and his mission as a prophet. The tu- mult of political faction rolled on in Florence, disorders mul- tiplied, and the sense of public insecurity increased. The preaching of Savonarola fell like manna on that wilderness. He was the only man who was sure of anything. He was sure of too much, to be sure, but that was better than the alternative assumed by others of being sure of nothing. Around his pulpit alone did it seem possible that any con- fidence for the future could be built. He was absent from 54 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN Florence for a season, and returned only to find his position more complicated than ever. Piero wanted to be rid of him and undertook to arrange with the ecclesiastical au- thorities to send him elsewhere. The scheme failed, and Savonarola was reélected Prior of St. Mark’s, and made Provincial of the Tuscan congregations of his order. - His independence was thereby more definitely assured, and he could speak more freely. This involved, of course, the obligation to speak more wisely; and whether he uniformly did this will ever be the occasion of some debate. He bound the cords of discipline closer in his convent, but gained power with his monks by enforcing no rigidity of requirement which he did not first practice himself. In the Advent of 1493 he is again preaching in the Du- omo, giving this time a series of sermons—his expository method was admirably adapted to serial preaching—which Villari says are the most completely representative of all that he ever preached. Further reference will be made to them in another connection. In the autumn of 1494 he carried to a conclusion a famous series of sermons on Noah’s Ark which he had begun more than two years previously. ‘“‘So extraordinary was the effect produced by these sermons on the whole public that every day greater numbers thronged to the Duomo.” The pitch to which the excitement of the popular mind was raised at this time was intensified by the French invasion of Italy under Charles VIII. This event Gibbon regarded as ‘‘having changed the face of Europe.’’ Many welcomed the invaders, among them Savonarola, who believed that their presence in Italy would turn out to the advantage of the interests which were dear to his heart. As mixed as were the elements of political chaos he would often preach in the midst of it without any political allusion. Still so extraordinary were his gifts as exercised in the midst of an RUeEEE AND PASTORATE 55 extraordinary situation that he could hardly preach a sermon vithout acquiring additional ascendancy over the popular mind. The French departed, Piero was cast out, and the government of Florence fluctuated until at last it became a republic, and Savonarola was drawn into the arena of politics. The wisdom or unwisdom of his course has been the subject of protracted debate. The fact seems to be that he could not escape a contingency which his own action had largely created. His character and preaching had contributed largely to the creation of a situation which his mind alone could control. What else did he do but obey the pressure of events which were beyond all other con- ' trol? His political principle was “that no man should receive any benefit save by the will of the whole people, who must have the sole right of creating magistrates and enacting laws.’’ This must be admitted to be a sound principle. Whether it was so applied as to secure a sound administra- tion is another question. But this is just the practical question which always arises in connection with the gov- ernment of cities and states. Has nobody heard of it ex- cept in this instance? Savonarola preached on the prophe- cies of Haggai, as John Knox did in a similar situation, and thought he could secure the recognition of religious ideas and the operation of religious principles in the conduct of the affairs of the state. He scorned the sneering dictum that ‘‘states cannot be governed by paternosters,”’ and in the opinion of some whose pronouncement cannot be flouted gave Florence the best government she ever had. His pulpit swayed the city, and his little cell in the convent was more powerful than the palace. ‘Jesus is our King, Jesus only,’’ shouted the people. ‘‘The aspect of the city was completely changed,” says Villari. ‘‘The women threw aside their jewels and finery, dressed plainly, bore themselves demurely; licentious young Florentines .were 56 PRINCES ‘OF THE CHRISTIAN transformed, as by magic, into sober religious men; pious hymns took the place of Lorenzo’s carnival songs. The townsfolk passed their leisure hours seated quietly in their shops reading either the Bible or Savonarola’s works. All prayed frequently, flocked to the churches, and gave largely to the poor. Most wonderful of all, bankers and trades- men were impelled by scruples of conscience to restore ill- gotten gains, amounting to many thousand florins. All men were wonderstruck by this singular and almost miracu- lous change; and notwithstanding the shattered state of his health, Savonarola must have been deeply rejoiced to see his people converted to so Christian a mode of life.” A JUDGE OF PRINCES, PRIESTS, AND PONTIFFS The three thorns in Savonarola’s flesh and the three agonies of his spirit were princes, priests, and pontiffs. In so far as these shaped the times they shaped by reaction his preaching. He had some profiting by the Renaissance, which was just reaching Italy. Garvie, in “The Christian Preacher,’’ says this “‘helped him to understand the Scrip- tures better, and freed him from bondage to the traditions of the Church.” But the two great molding influences of his ministry, which as we know was so largely a ministry of preaching, were the corruption of the Church, abetted by the priests, and the profligacy of the times, led by the princes. Italy was divided into petty principalities, duke- doms, and kingdoms, and suffered greatly from the in- competence and evil character of her rulers; while in the Church the state of affairs was even worse. ‘‘Italy was the prey,’ says Mrs. Oliphant in her ‘‘Makers of Florence,” “of petty tyrants and wicked priests; dukes and popes vying with each other which could live most lewdly, most lavishly, most cruelly, their whole existence an exploita- tion of the helpless people they reigned over, or still more BULLET AND PASTORATE 57 helpless ‘flock’ of which these wolves, alas! had got the shepherding.” Savonarola was not a man born to look obliquely on that kind of a situation. In the Advent sermons to which ref- erence has already been made he thus probes the lairs of lust patronized by the princes: ‘‘ These wicked princes are sent to chastise the sins of their subjects; they are truly a sad snare for their souls; their courts and palaces are the refuge of all the beasts and monsters of the earth, for they give shelter to ribalds and malefactors. These wretches flock to their halls because it is there that they find ways and means to satisfy their evil passions and unbridled lusts.” With the priests he deals even more severely: “They speak against pride and ambition, yet are plunged in both up to the eyes; they preach chastity, and maintain concubines; they prescribe fasting, and feast splendidly themselves.’’ Let that suffice. His pulpit could establish no truce with such men. Still less could he condone the conduct of the contemporary popes. Let Sixtus IV pass with his simoniacal entrance into his office, while nothing whatever is said of others who between the beginning and the culmination of this era of corruption ascended for a wicked tenancy the debauched and lust-stained throne. In 1492 Roderigo Borgia, whose name has defiled every page of history on which it was ever written, bribed his way into the papacy, and took the title of Alexander VI. There were only twenty-three cardinals sitting in the con- clave, the election was simply a matter of traffic, and the prize went to the highest bidder. His election, though little was thought of it in Rome, carried dismay upon the wings of the event itself to men everywhere. He debauched all Italy, and was fit to contaminate the world. He used his office to extend the temporal power of the papacy; and he it was who issued the famous bull—for Christopher Colum- 58 PRINCES OF THE SCOR Tsim bus came along at this time—coolly dividing the New World between the two papal powers of Spain and Portugal. Two of his five illegitimate children—and these were not all the evil brood—by Rosa Vanozza were Cesare and Lucrezia, of unsurpassed evil fame, who if it were possible might very well have been vomited up out of the very contents of human history itself. This man it was who at last by vile and crafty machinations compassed the death of the great- est preacher who appeared in the Church in his time. You might as well ask John the Baptist to moderate his words to accommodate the lusts of Herod as ask this man to bow to the will of so profligate a pope. The very existence of such a man and his very presence in a Christian pulpit constitute him a judge of such profligates as were the princes, priests, and popes of his time. The pain would be greater than the profit were we to undertake to follow all the details of the tedious process by which the pope and the priests on the one hand and the princes on the other, for nearly all of them were at last combined against him, brought Savonarola finally into their clutches and haled him before their judgment seat. Factions multiplied and plots thickened around him. His principal opponents in Florence were the Arrabbiatt, or followers of the Medici. Ludovico, the powerful Duke of Milan, entered the lists against him on the side of the princes. There was a jealous rivalry between the Fran- ciscan and the Dominican monks, and Savonarola had to bear the brunt of the dislike of the former for his order. He had also many enemies of a lesser sort, both personal and factional, and both political and ecclesiastical. Of any or all of these the pope was ready to make the most unscrupulous use. He proceeded more warily at first, however, than to act upon the policy of open enmity, and complaisantly tried to entice Savonarola to come to Rome. Peitl i yAND PASTORATE 59 But in vain was this net spread in the sight of the bird he wished to capture. Savonarola himself, however, was diplomatic enough to evade this invitation without an open rupture. The acts of the drama now move back and forth between Rome and Florence, and involve many in Italy besides. The validity of the pope’s election was at- tacked, and Savonarola joined in. In the meantime on the initiative of some of the civil authorities in Florence he is nominated as Lenten preacher for 1496. It was hoped “that he would adopt a more temperate tone toward Rome.” So also hoped the pope, and quickly seizing the opportunity to foster such a disposition, if by any means it should exist, he offered to raise the troublesome monk to the dignity of a cardinal, ‘‘on condition that he would henceforth change the tone of his sermons.’ But cheap as it seemed, the thing was too costly. The seductiveness of the proposal could not conceal its cowardly and contemp- tible character, and the conscience of the man had rejected it before his ears heard it. ‘‘I tell ye,” said he in asermona little while after this abortive transaction, ‘‘that had I desired such things, I should not be wearing a tattered robe at this hour. . . . Neither miters nor cardinals’ hats would I have, but only the gift thou hast conferred on thy saints—death, a crimson hat, a hat reddened with blood; that is my desire.” In his address he had turned from the people to God. He was now so invested with danger on every hand that he was not safe in the streets, nor even in his pulpit in the cathedral. Nevertheless, he went promptly thither and fulfilled the Lenten engagement to which ref- erence has already been made, preaching a series of sermons on Amos and Zechariah which had such a setting as it has rarely been permitted to discourses from a Christian pulpit to have. 60 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN ARREST, TRIAL, AND EXECUTION The story of the arrest, trial, and execution is a long and involved one, and must be subjected to severe condensa- tion. The pope now followed Lorenzo in fearing nothing else so much as he feared the pulpit of Savonarola; and when all else had failed he struck at its freedom, and even at its very existence, with his ban of excommunication. His rage had broken all bounds when he had learned that Savonarola was fomenting the calling of a council to deal with ecclesiastical matters. The hope of the promoters of such a council, of course, was that the affairs of the papacy itself might be dealt with. The excommunication dragged the slow length of its execution along. It accomplished only in part its design of setting a seal upon the lips of the man at whom it was aimed. The burning of the vanities in Florence under the influence of the pulpit of the Duomo occurred after the ban was issued. Opportunity to accomplish the arrest was afforded by the failure of the ordeal of fire proposed by a Franciscan against any participating Dominican. The political au- thorities speedily became accomplices in the plot, the whole surreptitious aim of which was the discomfiture and possible destruction of Savonarola. If the test failed on his part, the immediate penalty was to be his banishment. He weakly and foolishly consented to a piece of superstition and folly which he really did not approve. Elaborate preparations were made. A maudlin and highly excited crowd assembled. Fra Domenico appeared on behalf of Savonarola, and submitted to be stripped of nearly every arrangement he had made for the test, these consisting for the most part of objects of devotion. The representative of the Franciscans upon various pretexts was detained at the palace until the day had worn away. A cloud and PULPIT AND PASTORATE 61 thunderstorm arose. The impatience of the crowd was exhausted and tended to violence. Word came from the palace that the ordeal could not come off. Savonarola and his people barely escaped to St. Mark’s. A tumult was raised, and before the night was far gone a riot ensued. Two entirely innocent and defenseless men were foully murdered as the mob made its way to the convent. The convent itself was assaulted and sacked in the most san- guinary manner. A demand came from the city authorities that Savonarola and two of his monks, Domenico and Sil- vestro, should submit to arrest. They were led away in the darkness to prison. The purpose of the whole nefarious scheme had unfolded itself, and had been all too success- fully accomplished. The charges against the accused turned in the main upon three points—his prophecies and visions, his religious at- titude, and his political action. The severity of his pro- longed examination and the cruelty of the torture to which he was subjected pass all temperate description. An eye- witness stated that he saw him submitted to fourteen turns of the rack in one day. Again in his cell, left for the time free of physical torture, while he only gained a little strength to be carried back to the rack, he would be tor- tured in his thoughts as he reflected on how he may have weakened under the stern behoof of his suffering. It might be wished that he had proved firmer in some ways— if, indeed, under the circumstances this was humanly possible—but nobody believes that in moments when he was himself he ever wavered. His trial itself, in spite of all the processes of cruelty and fraud which were instituted, proved him innocent. Domenico, too, had stood out brave- ly through all the course of the trial, but Silvestro had wavered. The verdict of the court turned out as it was destined to -- 62 PRINCES OF THE: CHRISting do. Then came commissioners from Rome to add the papal seal to the transaction. ‘‘I bear the sentence with me, al- ready prepared,”’ said one of them, before the trial under their jurisdiction began. The same refinements of torture, and prolongation of the agony of soul which had charac- terized the civil trial, were not wanting in the ecclesiastical procedure. Out of the swift mills of their justice the same verdict was ground. Efforts had been made to secure from Savonarola a confession which might bear the semblance of the lowest level of honesty, which were so crafty, cunning, and malicious that it might be supposed that they could hardly ever secure the forgiveness of either God or man. . The sentence of their condemnation was to the effect that they should be hung and then burned. When mes- sengers entered his cell to notify him of his fate they found Savonarola on his knees in prayer. This was his answer to all their malice. He asked to be allowed to see his companions, and the request was granted. They had their last communion and were led out as sheep to the slaughter. A long scaffold had been built from the palace toward the Piazza, or public square, with a gibbet at the end. Three platforms for distinguished spectators were erected along the way. The three friars were stripped of their robes, and were left clothed in only a coarse tunic, a cruel indignity for which they were not prepared because they had not expected it. At the first platform they paused while the Bishop of Vasona pronounced their degradation. At the second platform the Papal Commissioners and repre- sentatives of the civil government of Florence thrust their last daggers at them. But they were clad in an armor which human hate and contempt could no longer pierce. They moved on to the gibbet at the end of the platform. ‘‘Three halters and three chains hung from its arms, the first to hang the friars, the second to keep their corpses suspended PULPIT AND PASTORATE 63 over the fire in which they were to be consumed. Heaps of combustibles were piled at the foot of the stake, and the guards of the Signory found great difficulty in keeping back the surging multitude who pressed round the scaf- fold.”’ Silvestro suffered first, and then Domenico, the extremity of suffering having been reserved for Savonarola, in that he must witness the death of his companions. All of them met death with a courage and a calm which con- quered all its terrors. Their ashes and charred remains were gathered up and borne on a cart through the streets of the city and thrown into the Arno. How pathetic and impotent are our human attempts at the appraisal of the courage and contempt of the world, and of the undimmed and undiminishing moral worth of such a man as was this at the last friendless friar of a different and difficult age now long gone by. ‘Even in the city of Dante,” says Mrs. Oliphant, ‘‘no greater figure has its dwelling. The shadow of him lies still across those sunny squares and the streets through which in triumph and in agony he went upon his lofty way; and consecrates alike the little cell in San Marco and the little prison in the tower, and the great hall built for his great Council, which in a beautiful poetic justice received the first Italian parliament. . . . Thus, only four hundred years too late, his noble patriotism had its reward. Too late! though they do not count the golden years in that land where God’s great servants wait to see the fruit of their labors—and have it, sooner or later, as the centuries come and go.” The last descent in the degradation of a people is that they crucify their prophets and saviors. Lines recently written on Lincoln might very well have their application to Savonarola and his time: PRINCESS OF sTHE SPUR “Ve never knew him. All the trenchant years When the deep furrows of his pilgrim plow Turned the encumbered acres to the sun, It was a dread and solitary way. Upon his heart there was a burden lay Like that upon the carpenter’s young Son In Galilee ... There was a bitter cup Pressed to his silent, unrefraining lips. They never knew him. Lonely, on a height, Asking no man if this be wrong or right— No measure of expedience or thrift To stay his soul’s indentured elements— He was apprenticed of his own desire Unto the attribute of sacrifice, And counting all a righteous heritage.” ITI WILLIAM TYNDALE! (1490-1536) THE BEGINNINGS OF THE BIBLE IN ENGLISH THE flow of the Thames past London is not to be ac- counted more important commercially than the entrance of the Bible to the English language is important to the life, literature, and religion of the English people. The city came to the river, and the river built the city. Con- trariwise, the Bible came to the language and lenge built the language. There were attempts at translation in the Anglo-Saxon era of the language. These, however, covered only small portions of the Scriptures, and could hardly have been in- tended for other use than to be read in the churches. Ead- helm early in the eighth century is credited by some with a translation of the Psalms, and at his request, it is said, Egbert at the same time translated the Gospels. Surpass- ing both of these, however, alike in interest and importance was the work of Beda, or the Venerable Bede, as he came more familiarly to be called. An aged monk of Yarrow was he, the most famous scholar of Western Europe in his day, who in his “‘Ecclesiastical History”’ furnishes the chief source of our knowledge of ancient England. On the evening of Ascension Day in the year 735 he lay dying in his little monastic cell surrounded by a group of fair-haired Saxon youths to whom he dictated in a race with death his translation of the Gospel of John. ‘‘He began then to suffer much in his breath, and a swelling came in his feet, 1Reprinted from Methodist Quarterly Review, April, 1925. > . (65) 66 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN but he went on dictating to his scribe. ‘Go on quickly,’ he said; ‘I know not how long IJ shall hold out, or how soon my Master will call me hence.’ All night long he lay awake in thanksgiving; and when the Ascension Day dawned, he commanded us to write with all speed what he had begun.” The account has come down from one of the sorrowing group which stood about the dying man’s bed. “There remains but one chapter, master,’”’ said the anxious scribe; ‘but it seems very hard for you to speak.” ‘Nay, it is easy,’’ Bede replied; ‘‘take up thy pen and write quickly.” Through blinding tears the scribe wrote on. ‘“‘And now, father,’’ said he, ‘‘only one sentence remains.’ Bede dic- tated it. ‘‘It is finished, master!’’ cried the youth. “Ay, it is finished,” returned the dying saint; and he asked to be lifted up to the window of his cell where he had so often prayed, whence at the end of the long, hard day he was caught away to his everlasting rest. When King Alfred the Great in the tenth century laid his hand to the task of a firmer building of the English state, he incorporated the Ten Commandments in his own translation as a part of the organic law of the land. The instrument is headed ‘‘Alfred’s Dooms,”’ and begins in the following fashion: “‘The dooms which the Almighty . Himself spake to Moses, and gave him to keep, and after our Saviour Christ came to earth, he said he came not to break or forbid, but to keep them.’’ And then follow the Ten Commandments. Toward the end of the tenth century there were a few other translators, among them Archbishop A#lfric, but the work of none of them attained to any particular importance. There was then a long interval occupied by the Danish invasion and the Norman conquest. The higher Saxon clergy were removed and Norman priests with little sym- pathy for the people were put in their place, so that the BULPIC AND -PASTORATE 67 impulse to translate was stifled. For centuries the Scrip- tures remained in England “‘a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.”’ In the meantime the Saxon speech was going out and modern English beginning to come in. It has been roughly agreed that about the year 1150 A.D. should be fixed upon as marking the final decline of the pure Saxon, while the more clearly defined English came in about 1250, the lan- guage during the intervening century having been a sort of semi-Saxon. Then the dawn of the Reformation began to lighten the sky. Its morning star was John Wycliffe. While the Scrip- tures waited at the threshold to be admitted to their full rights in the English language, the language itself was de- veloping. Now again, as has so frequently recurred at epochal dates in the affairs of men and nations, a child was born who in the maturity of his powers should lift his hand to the task which history required. At the hands of Wyc- liffe England received for the first time the entire Word of God in the language of the people. But, alas! by a mon- strous perversion of the fine English liberty which had burned in the soul of Alfred, and which was to burst into a finer flame in millions that were yet to be, his deed had grown to be an ecclesiastical crime; and ecclesiastical hatred pursued his very bones to their burial, and having committed his body to the flames, gave his ashes to the wide waste of cold and heedless waters, as if with an insane desire to consign the man himself to an irretrievable obliv- ion. But every wave sprinkled with his dust did but bear his name to a brighter fame. Whatever men might do to him dead, living he had effected a threefold change with respect to the Bible in England: instead of in fragments, it should exist entire; instead of being buried in a dead lan- guage, it should now speak to Englishmen in the language Apabea ee PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN wherein they were born; and instead of exerting its in- fluence under the restraints and limitations of ecclesiastical sanction, it was to be open and accessible to clergy and laity alike. ENGLAND FouR HUNDRED YEARS AGO The England of four hundred years ago was on the other side of Shakespeare and Milton and the whole Elizabethan age. But more significant still, it was on the other side of the Protestant Reformation. The controversies these translators had to wage against priestly intolerance, the contests and conflicts in which they had to engage with their Bible-burning opponents, the exile they had to en- dure, the privations they had to suffer, the contumely they had to bear, the hate they had to encounter, the deaths so vengefully dealt out to them were all rooted in that pal- pable fact. Think of the time when it was a crime for an Englishman to sell, to purchase, or to read a copy of the New Testament in his native tongue, when it was a law of Convocation, if not of Parliament, that the Bible could not be translated into the English language except under se- vere and really prohibitive ecclesiastical restrictions—and all this in a day when Convocation was superior to Parlia- ment and the Pope superior to the King, even in the state. In Convocation at Oxford in 1408 the following action was taken: ‘‘We therefore decree and ordain that no man here- after by his own authority translate any text of the Scrip- ture into English, or any other tongue, by way of a book, pamphlet, or treatise; and that no man read any such book, pamphlet, or treatise, now lately composed in the time of John Wycliffe, .. . upon pain of greater excom- munication, until the said translation be approved by the ordinary of the place, or, if the case so require, by the coun- cil provincial.’’ Let no true Englishman in too great pride PULPIT AND. PASTORATE 69 of later liberty and achievement forget the hole of the pit whence he was digged. Neither need undue derision be cast upon Romish intolerance, superstition, and the pro- clivity to persecute; for Protestantism has had as large a share in all these as it need care to claim. But Protestant- ism in the real sources of its authority has not been in- tolerant toward the translation of the Scriptures into the tongue of the people, nor interdicted their free circulation. And it would be difficult to prove that this has not been a fixed difference between the two forms of religious belief and propaganda. It should be said, furthermore, as tending to modify the severity of our judgment of the Romish rule of the times, that the whole position of the Bible in the Middle Ages was an anomalous one. It existed for use even in the Church only in the Latin language, and outside the ritual of the Church it could hardly be said to have a use at all. And though it was in the ritual, it was there only as a subordinate part of the service. Employed in a tongue unknown to the people, it could only convey to them a distant and ritualistic and ineffectual impression. The Church held the Scriptures in trust for the instruction and edification of the people, only they were neither instructed nor edified. The state of the Church at this time, and the consequent state of the nation as dominated by the Church, has to be described first of all in terms of the ignorance of the clergy. The Latin language in which their services were rendered was unknown even to many of them, so that to hear them rendered by another profited them no more than it did the illiterate people. Their ignorance expressed in general terms was bad enough, but they seem to have specialized in ignorance of the Scriptures. “‘Alas!’’ said Tyndale in the preface to ‘‘'The Obedience of a Christian Man,” “‘the 70 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN curates themselves, for the most part, wot no more what the New or Old Testament meaneth than do the Turks— neither care they but to mumble so much every day as the pie and popinjay speak, they wot not what to fill their bellies withal. If they will not let layman have the Word of God in his mother tongue, yet let the priests have it, which for the great part of them do understand no Latin at all. but sing and patter all day with the lips only that which the heart understandeth not.’’ The study of the Bible did not even form a part of the preliminary prepara- tion of the priests; and if they were ignorant of the lan- guage in which it was written how could they acquire any knowledge of it afterwards, even if they were so minded? Not long after Tyndale’s time John Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, who later died for the principles of the Reforma- tion, made a visitation of his diocese, which included the county in which Tyndale was born, and reported to Cecil, then Secretary of State, that he had examined 311 clergy, and “found no less than 168 of them unable to repeat the Ten Commandments, 31 ignorant of whence the Decalogue came, 40 who could not repeat the Lord’s Prayer, and about the same number who did not even know to whom it should be ascirbed.”” And this ignorance only grows more dense when it is remembered that what they could not repeat many of them could not even read because of their ig- norance of the language in which the ritual was written. But ignorance was not the worst of it. The state of the times has to be further described in terms of the sloth and corruption of the clergy. ‘‘What man of real piety,” ex- claims Erasmus in a preface to his “Enchiridion,” ‘‘does not perceive, with sighs, that this is far the most corrupt of all ages? When did ever tyranny or avarice prevail more widely or with greater impunity? When was more impor- tance ever attached to mere ceremonies? When did PULPIT AND PASTORATE 71 iniquity abound with more licentiousness? When was charity more cold? What is read, what is said, what is heard, what is decreed, except that which savors of am- bition and gain?” Says Demaus: ‘A priest might be a gambler, a fighter, totally ignorant, entirely immersed in secular affairs, a sycophant, a liar, a calumniator, and yet might escape blame if only he were careful to observe that enforced law of celibacy, which, though a law of the Church only, and not an ordinance of God, was deemed of more consequence than any other qualification in the clergy.” But Hugh Latimer reaches the climax of trenchant accusa- tion against the clergy. Preaching to an assembly of bishops at Paul’s Cross, he said: ‘‘ Who is the most diligent prelate in all England? I will tell you: it is the devil. Of all the pack of them that have cure, the devil shall go for my money, for he ordereth his business. Wherefore, you unpreaching prelates, learn of the devil diligence. If you will not learn of God, for shame learn of the devil.’’ Ab- sentee bishops, who if they were not corrupt were covetous —and what can more corrupt a priest than covetousness?— did not much conduce to either the enlightenment or moral improvement of the lesser clergy. When Latimer came to Tyndale’s native county in 1535 as Bishop of Worcester there had not been a resident bishop of the diocese since PAD: Out of clerical ignorance and corruption only superstition and the bad brood of its attendant evils can issue. When rites and ceremonies are taken out of their proper place as aids to religion and made substitutes for it, superstition takes the field. Rites and ceremonies are not in themselves to be rejected; but when there is lost out of them all that moral meaning which led to their original institution, they become not merely negatively valueless, but positively cor- rupting in their observance. So it was in the age with 72 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN which we are dealing. ‘‘Religion had degenerated into an unprofitable round of superstitious customs and ceremonial observances. The service of the Church was so intricate that the study of years was necessary to enable either priests or people to perform it aright. The use and moral teaching of these ceremonies, moreover, had become entirely ob- solete; their original function in the Church was completely gone; they had ceased to be in any sense aids to devotion, and were impediments to all true religion.” If further testimony were required, we might obtain it from Cardinal Bellarmine. He writes as follows: ““Some years before the rise of the Lutheran heresy there was almost an entire abandonment of equity in ecclesiastical judgments, in morals no discipline, in sacred literature no erudition, in divine things no reverence: religion was almost extinct.” In such conditions nothing is so disturbing as the light. So Tyndale saw it. The service which he rendered to Eng- land, and ultimately to all the English-speaking world, consisted in his unerring ability to see that for his land and his people the one way out of all this ignorance, vanity, pretense, hypocrisy, superstition, and their related moral and religious corruption was to make the English plowboy able to read the Word of God in his own tongue. This was to strike down priestcraft and ignorance and false ritualism and superstition and corruption at one blow. TYNDALE AT OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE Foxe, in his “‘Acts and Monuments’’—popularly known as his ‘Book of Martyrs’’—which is our only source of knowledge for Tyndale’s early life, is content simply to state that, “‘touching the birth and parentage of this blessed martyr of Christ, he was born about the borders of Wales.” This parsimonious bit of information has been supple- mented from other sources until it has been pretty clearly PULPIT AND PASTORATE 73 made out that Gloucester was the county of his birth. The date of his birth is likewise obscure. Demaus thinks it must be fixed between 1490 and 1495. Paterson Smyth names 1483. Hoare thinks it could not have been later than 1490. Westcott says that ‘‘of the early life of Tyn- dale we know nothing,’ but goes on to say that ‘‘he was born about 1484, at an obscure village in Gloucestershire.” Of his attendance at the University of Oxford there is abundant evidence, both from the records of the University and from other sources. ‘‘ William Tyndale,’ says Foxe, “was... brought up from a child in the University of Oxford, where he grew and increased as well in the knowl- edge of tongues, and other liberal arts, as especially in the knowledge of the Scriptures, whereunto his mind was singular- ly addicted.’ His mind, in being singularly addicted to the Scriptures and in its aptitude for the acquisition of lan- guages, was stretching forward, whether consciously or not, toward the accomplishment of the great ends of his life. Later in life, arguing for the right to translate the Scriptures, he himself reproduced a prophetic page out of the book of his early recollections. ‘‘Except my memory fail me,’’ said he, “‘and that I have forgotten what I read when I was a child, thou shalt find in the English chronicle, how that King Athelstane caused the Holy Scripture to be translated into the tongue that then was in England, and how the prelates exhorted him thereto.”’ The new learning had already been released by the Renaissance when Tyndale came to Oxford. John Colet, a chief promoter of the spread of this learning in England, a distinguished theological and classical scholar, and a har- binger of the Reformation, had but recently quitted Oxford for the post of Dean of St. Paul’s, in London. While in the University he had rendered a notable service to the institution, and in part, at least, to the nation, through the 74 PRINCES OF THE CHRIS delivery of a very able and attractive course of lectures on the Epistles of St. Paul, by means of which he sought to revive the historical and devotional study of the Bible. Into an atmosphere charged with this influence Tyndale came to pursue his studies. He entered the University sometime in the course of the year 1510, and was graduated as a Master of Arts in 1515. Noconsiderable advancement, however, could he have received in the subjects and aims of a real education. The disappointment and indignation which he felt with respect to the provision made in the universities in the beginning of the sixteenth century for the training of men for the ministry found a vehement voice in one of his later books. Even the more moderate Eras- mus could say: ‘‘Theology, once venerable and full of majesty, had become almost dumb, poor, and in rags.” Tyndale left Oxford for Cambridge for reasons which have never been definitely assigned. But he had some profiting here also; for as Colet had sown the seeds of the new learning at Oxford, Erasmus had sown them at Cam- bridge. Erasmus had just left Cambridge, where he had not found the atmosphere conducive to a longer stay. He had only temperament where, fortunately, Tyndale had temper; for temper is more likely to change conditions than temperament. Nevertheless, Erasmus was himself a conspicuously noble and serviceable man, and “of the New Learning in its intellectual aspects he was the very incarnation.”’ Neither Colet nor Erasmus had in him the elements of a reformer, nor much sympathy with the popular desire for a change in England. Still what they did not do need not be suffered to discount too seriously what they did do. Thus much at least on the subject of the translation of the Scriptures Erasmus boldly said: “T totally dissent from those who are unwilling that the sacred Scriptures, translated into the vulgar tongue, should Buleeiie AND PASTORATE 75 be read by private individuals. I would wish even all women to read the Gospel, and the Epistles of Paul. I wish they were translated into all languages of the people. I wish that the husbandman might sing parts of them at his plow, and the weaver at his shuttle, and that the trav- eler might beguile with their narration the weariness of his way.” Tyndale would mature at Cambridge the knowledge of Greek and Latin which he had begun at Oxford; and he would eventually have access to the Greek New Testament of Erasmus, which was issued in 1516, shortly after he came to Cambridge. This act on the part of Erasmus was in itself a challenge to the sacrosanct order of things, for hitherto the inviolability of the Vulgate had been accepted without question. And yet this cultivated scholar avoided a break with the pope, and steadfastly held aloof from the Reformation. THE PRACTICE OF THE PRELATES PROVOKES PROTEST Once more the veil of uncertainty which hung about so many of the events and actions of Tyndale’s life intervenes. ‘The same uncertainty that we have so often had occasion to regret, rests upon the reasons which induced Tyndale to leave Cambridge,’ says Demaus. Whither he went, however, is well known. He became a tutor to the children of John Walsh, a knight of Gloucestershire, a man of character and ability, as well as of position, who was dis- posed to use the influence both of his character and his position in Tyndale’s interest. Here in the manor house of Little Sodbury, home of the Walshes, he remained for more than two years, in a situation which as surely matured and deepened his convictions in the direction which they had already begun to take as if he had chosen it for that end. There was not much tutoring to do, for the children were 76 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN too young. If he had been called chaplain to the Walshes instead of tutor to their children, it would perhaps more ap- propriately have described his position. He was again in his native county, one of the most priest-ridden in England, so that both the present and the past of his life tended to arouse reflection. He began to see the Church as it existed outside academic circles in its daily operation among the masses. Above all he had a realizing contact with the clergy which could but disclose to such a mind as his the inherent weakness of current priestly practice and dis- cipline. We have already seen in another connection that the bishop of the diocese who was responsible for the spir- itual oversight of the population into the midst of which Tyndale’s lot had now been cast lived a thousand miles away in Italy. Wolsey, also nonresident, was Cardinal, and Parker was Chancellor of the diocese, and between the two the duties of the diocese suffered worse things than episcopal neglect. Of the ignorance and arrogance of the resident clergy Tyndale now obtained direct knowledge. Sir John Walsh dispensed a liberal hospitality to the ec- clesiastical magnates of the neighborhood, and between these on the one side and Tyndale on the other there were warm disputations at Sir John’s table. ‘‘Wherein as those men and Master Tyndale did vary in opinions and judg- ments,” says Foxe, “‘then Master Tyndale would show them on the book the places by open and manifest Scrip- ture; the which continued for a certain season divers and sundry times, until in the continuance thereof those great beneficed doctors waxed weary and bore a secret grudge in their hearts again Master Tyndale.’’ Whereupon these same doctors had Master Walsh and his lady away to dine with them, a plate for Tyndale having been prudently omitted from the table. After their return from the ban- quet they called for Tyndale, and Mrs. Walsh, who, Foxe PULPIT AND PASTORATE 77 naively says, was a stout woman, asked him whether he thought it were better they should believe him before those who were “‘so great, learned, and beneficed men.” Tyn- dale himself was not much beneficed, to be sure, either ec- clesiastically or financially. Mrs. Walsh had reminded him that some of these great beneficed men had as much as three hundred pounds a year at their disposal; while he could scarcely escape the reflection that he had only a tutor’s allowance. But he was wise if not beneficed, and for the time refrained from an answer. Coming again to Mrs. Walsh he showed her that the great Erasmus, the most illustrious scholar in Europe, held opinions the same as his own. And so, though the opinions did not convince, Erasmus did. By his patience and discretion he won the Walshes, but only the more provoked the bitter resent- ment of the clergy. Tyndale also began to preach in the adjacent villages, and in the city of Bristol which lay not very far away. This brought the opposition of the clergy to an unwonted pitch, and they secretly accused him to the chancellor of the diocese, who, as we have seen, was the intolerant. and in- tolerable Parker. Tyndale, “in his going thitherwards, prayed in his mind heartily to God to strengthen him to stand fast in the truth of His Word.”’ He came uninjured out of this contest, but was more than ever convinced that the opposition of the clergy arose out of their ignorance— they were “a full ignorant sort’’—and also that these men _about him here in Gloucestershire were but too faithful representatives of the mind that was dominant in the rulers of the Church at large. In the state of perplexity which was thus raised in his mind he went to consult “‘a certain doctor that dwelt not very far off, and that had been an old chancellor before to a bishop.” Having fully divulged the contents of his mind, he heard this astonishing reply: 78 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN “Do you not know that the Pope is the very Antichrist which the Scripture speaketh of? But beware what you say; for if you shall be perceived to be of that opinion, it will cost you your life. J have been an officer of his, but I have given it up and defy him and all his works.” This statement, surprising as it was, seemed but a settling of the thoughts of Tyndale’s own mind, and it formed an epoch in his life. Under the influence of reflections such as these he began seriously to contemplate the translation of the New Testament into the English tongue as the one possible means of correcting the abuses which, unless something were done, could only abound more and more. Whatever may have been the particular processes by which his purposes were formed, he was at no pains to conceal them; for while disputing with a certain learned man who, under his merciless prodding, was brought to the limit and said, ‘‘We were better without God’s laws than without the Pope’s,’”’ he immediately and irrevocably joined the issue by saying: ‘‘I defy the Pope and all his laws. If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plow shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.” TYNDALE AND TUNSTALL Tyndale had now a purpose which he could count more important than his life. Still his life was bound up with this purpose, and he would no longer be safe in Little Sod- bury. However, he would not go out seeking safety alone. He would go out seeking primarily the accomplishment of his purpose. He could not translate and print the Scrip- tures anywhere without episcopal sanction. Besides he needed a shelter, and some scanty means of support, if he could not find what was more liberal. Hewas concerned about these things only as means to an end. Cuthbert PUEETT AND’ PASTORATE 79 Tunstall was then Bishop of London. He was reputed to be a friend of learning. He had a great house and ample means as things went in those days. He could easily af- ford Tyndale the assistance he needed, whether of material support or official sanction. Surely so goodly a design as his could not knock in vain at episcopal gates. He came, there- fore, to London, and waited until he couldseethe bishop. In the meantime he had precarious employment as a preacher at St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West. Hither chanced to come at preaching time Humphrey Monmouth, a rich London merchant, who resided in another parish; and his soul was knit to Tyndale. “I heard,’ he afterwards wrote to Wol- sey out of the prison into which he had been thrown for protecting Tyndale—‘‘I heard the foresaid preach two or three sermons, and after that I chanced to meet him and examined what living he had. He said he had none at all.”’ Tunstall at last received Tyndale, but gave him neither sanction nor encouragement. His house was full. He had as many around him as he could feed. Doubtless there were places to be found in London. Tyndale at first was bitterly disappointed. But afterwards he thought better of the wisdom of the Lord’s way and wrote: “‘God saw that I was beguiled, and that that counsel was not the nearest way to my purpose; and, therefore, he gat me no favor in my lord’s sight.”’ Tyndale now turned to Monmouth. ‘The priest came again to me,’’ says the latter, ‘‘and besought me to help him, and so I took him into my house half a year, and there he lived like a good priest, as methought. He studied most part of the day and of the night at his book. I did promise him ten pounds sterling to pray for my father and mother, their souls, and all Christian souls. I did pay it him when he made exchange to Hamburg. Afterwards he got off some other men some ten pounds more, the which 80 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN he left with me.” Thus it was that he found board, and shelter, and a generous friend, at whose table he met mer- chants of London and of the country towns, and others from abroad. If the hierarchy in London will not help, God and the merchants will. If England will not shelter him, he has learned that there are lands abroad which will perchance prove more hospitable. At length he says pathetically: “T understood that not only was there no room in my lord of London’s palace to translate the New Testament, but also that there was no place to do tt 1n all England.” AN EXILE FOR THE WorRD OF GoD ‘“T . .. was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus,”’ said an earlier exile. Though Tyndale’s exile was voluntary, he was as really a sufferer for his fidelity to the Word of God as was John upon Patmos. He had learned from the merchants he met in Monmouth’s house of the possibilities of trade and printing abroad. He could both print his translation there and get it back to England. Forth he went, there- fore, beyond the reach of Tunstall’s or any other English bishop’s jurisdiction. How much of his translation he had completed when he left London for Hamburg is not known. Where he spent the time from his arrival in Hamburg till April, 1525, is also uncertain. Perhaps it were better to follow his contemporaries than his later biographers and to conclude that he was in Wittenberg, where he would see much of Luther. In the spring of 1525, having received the ten pounds he had left on deposit with Monmouth, he went to Cologne to print his New Testament. He had contracted for 3,000 copies of a small quarto edition with a prologue, references, marginal notes, and divisions into chapters, and the print- ing was well under way when his design was discovered, and mecbll AND PASTORATE 81 he and his amanuensis, William Roye, had a bare chance to escape with the sheets which had been already printed. John Cochleeus, who had fled from Frankfort to escape the peasants’ insurrection, was sojourning in Cologne, and bringing out from the same press which Tyndale employed a book of his own. He was a good hater of Luther and all the principles of reform, and enjoyed a proportionate es- teem among the Roman Catholics. He chanced to hear Tyndale’s printers boasting over their cups that before long all England would become Lutheran. Here was a cue not be lost. Inviting the printers to his lodging, he drugged them with wine until one of them was induced to divulge the full secret of Tyndale’s purpose to print the New Testament and circulate it in England. The informa- tion thus elicited Cochlzeus promptly laid before the Senate of Cologne, and the authorities of Church and State in England were warned. From Cologne Tyndale proceeded with Roye to Worms, now strongly Lutheran, and changed his plans for printing. He chose an octavo form as being easier to conceal, and cut out everything except the text of the Scripture itself. In truth, the marginal glosses were particularly offensive to the opposition in that they were decidedly anti-Romish. It was proposed again to print 3,000 copies, and an edition of the same number of copies in the quarto form was also printed at about the same time. The vigilance of the op- position to Bible printing and distribution in England, which was carried on for the most part under the direction of Cardinal Wolsey, is certified in the fact that of 15,000 (some say 18,000) copies of Tyndale’s New Testament printed between 1525 and 1528 only a mutilated fragment of the quarto edition and two copies of the octavo edition are now in existence. The books were secretly conveyed to England bound up 82 PRINCES: OF THE CHRIsGiar with other forms of merchandise. Some went in bales of cloth, some in barrels, and some even in sacks of flour. A system of colportage organized in England diligently dis- tributed them. Efforts were made to buy them up before they were shipped. An interesting chronicle of the time tells about this. The merchants, of course, were friendly to Tyndale, or he could hardly have proceeded at all. One of them, Augustine Pakington, who traded at Antwerp, a secret friend of Tyndale’s, was approached by the Bishop of London and asked his opinion about buying up all the books on the other side. ‘‘My lord,” replied Pakington, “if it be your pleasure, I could do in this matter probably more than any merchant in England; so if it be your lord- ship’s pleasure to pay for them—for I must disburse money for them—I will insure you to have every book that re- mains unsold.” ‘‘Gentle Master Pakington,’’ continued the bishop, ‘do your diligence and get them for me, and I will gladly give you whatever they may cost, for the books are naughty, and I intend surely to destroy them all, and to burn them at Paul’s Cross.” A little while after Pakington came to Tyndale and said: ‘‘Master Tyndale, I have found you a good purchaser for your books.”’ ‘‘Who is he?” Tyndale promptly asked. ‘‘My lord of London,’ came the answer. ‘‘But if the bishop wants the books it must be only to burn them,” protested Tyndale. ‘Well, what of that?” Pakington re- joined. “The bishop will burn them anyhow, and it is best that you should have the money for to enable you to imprint others instead.” When the books came still faster into England, the bishop sent for Pakington and asked how it was that they were still so abundant. ‘‘My lord,” replied the shrewd merchant, ‘it were best for your lord- ship to buy up the stamps too by the which ek are printed.” Purl AND: PASTORATE 83 A conclave of bishops under the presidency of the cardinal met and condemned the books to be burned; and Tunstall was appointed to preach at Paul’s Cross in London and to denounce the translation as full of all manner of errors and heresies. A written episcopal injunction was issued charging that the maintainers of Luther’s sect had “craftily translated the New Testament into our English tongue, .. . seducing the simple people, attempting by their wicked and perverse interpretations to profane the majesty of the Scripture, which hitherto had remained undefiled, and craftily to abuse the most holy Word of God.” As if to make the pile of obloquy cast upon the Word of God complete, Henry VIII lent the royal seal to the demand that Tyndale’s translation should be burnt. But the Bible had gotten into the English language, and had found a habitat there from which it was never to be cast out, wheth- er by buying it up or burning it. In this connection it should be remembered that ‘before the end of the fif- teenth century Bibles were printed in Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch, German, and Bohemian; while England had as yet only the few manuscripts of the Wycliffe ver- sions.” Some time in the year 1527 Tyndale came to Marburg, where reforming influences were in the ascendancy, and published two of his most important books, ‘‘The Parable of the Wicked Mammon” and ‘‘The Obedience of a Chris- tian Man.” Each of these in its own way advanced the interests of the Reformation. The former was really a treatise on the doctrine of justification by faith, while the latter dealt with some of the important political principles of the movement. It was an especial service of ‘‘The Obedience”’ that it made the issue clearer between medi- zvalism and reform. ‘‘From this time forward,’ says Demaus, ‘‘the Reformers in England had a definite aim 84 PRINCES OF THE CHRIS Ei and purpose; and the goal being once placed before them, their progress became steady and rapid.” By the end of 1529 Tyndale’s translation of the Penta- teuch was ready for the printer. This work has been ad- judged to be hardly less important than his New Testa- ment. He has thus moved on as steadily as he might toward the completion of his project of rendering the whole Bible into the English language. Prelates were a continual provocation to Tyndale. Noth- ing was more irksome to him than their practices. What could be more natural, therefore, than that in the course of events he should write a book on “‘The Practice of Prel- ates’? It was natural also that this should be the most severely controversial of all his books. He here gives vent to an indignation which might have been expressed in language more restrained. Or shall it be said that, if provo- cation is in anywise to be the measure of indignation, he has a sound plea in extenuation? The book was too severe, and withal too true, to be allowed to pass unnoticed by Tyndale’s opponents, and the challenge was taken up by Sir Thomas More, one of the most accomplished English- men of his time, and a man not without many marked ex- cellencies of character. He was instigated by Tunstall, but was easily capable on his own account, if he so willed, to proceed to the attack upon Tyndale and his book. His rejoinder was not without wit, nor yet without worth; but it must pass here without further comment. Tyndale in reply hardly did justice either to himself or his cause. CASTING THE NETOF A CRAFTY AND MALEVOLENT PURSUIT Attempts began now to be made to induce Tyndale to return to England. But he might well doubt the sincerity of any profession of kindly intention toward himself; and all the more so as measures against the Reformers became PULPIT AND PASTORATE 85 more stringent. Vaughan, who came as envoy to Antwerp, with this object as a special charge, found Tyndale again there, but could not move him. He did, however, utter these noble words: ‘“‘I assure you if it would stand with the King’s most gracious pleasure to grant only a bare text of the Scripture to be put forth among his people, ... be it the translation of what person soever shall please his Majesty, I shall immediately make faithful promise never to write more, nor abide two days in these parts after the same; but immediately to repair into his realm, and there most humbly submit myself at the feet of his Royal Majesty, offering my body to suffer what pain or torture, yea, what death his Grace will, so that this be obtained.” A change in both men and methods was now introduced into the design to bring Tyndale back to England. Vaughan was one of those men whose principles do not readily stoop to a mean undertaking. The possession of such principles renders a man inconvenient and undesirable to the con- trivers of dark designs. A man more to their purpose, a man more practicable because less principled, was now found by the originators of the plot in the person of Sir Thomas Elyot. The plot becomes more ignoble both in design and execution. Tyndale is no longer to be per- suaded, but to be apprehended. But by the strategy of wandering from place to place, clothing his movements the while with all possible secrecy, he managed still to escape detection. | At this juncture John Frith, closest and dearest and most comforting of all Tyndale’s personal friends, was treach- erously seized on account of his reforming opinions, and committed to the Tower in London. Without knowing of his arrest Tyndale had written a letter of caution to Frith, but it came too late. The temper of Frith’s mind and the mold of the man, with his friendship for Tyndale, are seen 86 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN in his response to a wish expressed by More that the Re- formers would keep their opinions secret: ‘Until we see some means found by the which a reasonable Reformation may be had, and sufficient instruction for the poor com- moners, I assure you IJ neither will nor can cease to speak; for the Word of God boileth in my body like a fervent fire, and will needs have issue, and breaketh out when occasion ts given. But this hath been offered you, ts offered, and shall be offered: Grant that the Word of God, I mean the text of Scripture, may go abroad in our English tongue, as other nations have it 1 their tongues, and my brother William Tyndale and I have done, and we will promise you to writeno more. If you will not grant this condition, then will we be doing while we have breath, and show in few words what the Scripture doth in many, and so at the least save some.’’ Such a man was too _ brave to live in the suspicious and accusing atmosphere of his time. Foxe describes Tyndale in his later life at Antwerp as “‘a man very frugal and spare of body, a great student, an earnest laborer in setting forth the Scriptures of God.” Two days in the week he gave to the visitation of distressed and neglected people of whatever sort—exiles from England driven forth by persecution, aged and poor people, un- cared-for children, and the needy of every condition. On Sundays he ‘“‘went to some one merchant’s chamber or other, whither came many other merchants, and unto them would he read some one parcel of Scripture: the which pro- ceeded so fruitfully, sweetly, and gently from him, much like to the writing of John the Evangelist, that it was a heavenly comfort and joy to the audience to hear-him read the Scriptures; likewise after dinner he spent an hour in the same manner.” These English merchants bent upon their business in Antwerp were to Tyndale as the ravens sent to feed Elijah PULPIT AND PASTORATE 87 in the wilderness. The house of one of them in particular where he had a fixed domicile, that of Thomas Poyntz, was a haven of refuge to him. But not even here was he to be left unmolested. Things had greatly changed in England, particularly in the matter of the establishment of the royal supremacy over the papal. But this did not turn out to Tyndale’s advantage, for neither king nor pope had been friendly to him. On the other hand his immediate situation had now grown worse, for the Inquisition had reached the Netherlands, and it would fare ill with him if he fell into the hands of the authorities there. These au- thorities, however, were not likely to take the initiative in proceeding againsthim. His real danger lay still in England. The whole despicable plot against him originated there. Henry Philips, himself a priest, came over as the latest agent of the plotters. Tyndale was accustomed to go out to dine with merchants other than his host, and this gave Philips a means of contact with him. Poyntz doubted and mistrusted Philips from the first, and warned Tyndale. But he appeared to be very favorable to Protestant views, and finally deceived Poyntz himself. Procuring the at- tendance of officers from Brussels, and choosing a time when Poyntz was away from home, he vilely consummated his plot. Having completely deceived Tyndale as to the minor details of the plot, he proceeded with him from the house of Poyntz as if they would go out to dine together. Foxe, who had the story from Poyntz, continues his ac- count as follows: “‘At the going out of Poyntz’ house was a long narrow entry, so that two could not go in a front. Master Tyndale would have put Philips before him, but Philips would in nowise, but put Master Tyndale afore; for that he pretended to show great humanity. So Master Tyndale, being a man of no great stature, went before; and Philips, a tall comely person, followed behind him, who 88 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN had set officers on either side of the door upon two seats (which, being there, might see who came into the entry); and coming through the entry Philips pointed over Master Tyndale’s head down to him, that the officers, which sat at the door, might see that it was he whom they should take.”’ Tyndale lay for sixteen months in the Castle of Vilvorde, awaiting the fatal issue. Out of his comfortless prison he made a pathetic appeal for a warmer cap, to be found in his own scanty supply of goods, for the relief of a perpetual catarrh in his head; for a warmer coat, for the one he had was very thin; and that he might be permitted to have a candle to light the cheerless gloom of the evening while he sat alone before the accustomed hours of sleep. Poyntz nobly adventured his own life if by any means he might be of assistance to Tyndale, but at length was thrown into prison himself. Vaughan would gladly have seen him released, but could do nothing. His case seemed to go on as if it were in the hands of a pitiless fate. But there are those who know that there are great acts of God done within the shadows which for the time shut out our seeing. There was special provision for the trial of a heretic, and the case of Tyndale was put upon this process. No record of the trial has been preserved. It would not be difficult for the Romanists to make out from his own printed words a strong case against him from their standpoint, and this they were diligent to do. Prominent among his accusers, and one of the most relentless in his opposition to him, was the Chancellor of the University of Louvain. On October 6, 1536, he was bound and strangled at the stake, and his body, still in the posture in which it was strangled, was immediately burned. ‘‘He cried out at the stake,’’ as Foxe says, who preserves this detail alone of PUpPit AND PASTORATE 89 his death, ‘‘with a fervent zeal and a loud voice, ‘Lord, open the King of England’s eyes!’”’ TYNDALE AS A TRANSLATOR “With Tyndale the history of our present English Bible begins,’ says Westcott. He was the first to take the original languages of the Scriptures as the basis of his work; and his translation was the first to have the ad- vantage of the printing press for its reoroduction and dis- tribution. The slender apparatus with which he labored tends toward tenuity contrasted with the elaborate equipment of more modern translators. Grammars and _ lexicons were few, inferior, and difficult to obtain. - He had the Greek New Testament of Erasmus, but the great manu- scripts employed in more recent translations were not then known to exist. He had the Vulgate, and would have also the Latin New Testament of Erasmus, and Luther’s German Bible. But what else worth while could he have had? In the matter of the scholarship required he was capable, as the event proves; but he was compelled to rely on his sole ability and skill as a translator. No august company of revisers under royal pleasure and sanction sat in state around a table. There sat this lone man alone save for the presence of William Roye, his amanuensis, helping, but also hindering in some ways, as Tyndale himself testifies: ‘“‘As long as he had no money, somewhat I could rule him; but as soon as he had gotten him money, he became like himself again. Nevertheless, I suffered all things till that was ended which I could not do alone without one, both to write and to help me compare the texts together.” Somehow the man got the purity of his motive and the loftiness of his own high purpose into his translation. He he 90 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN had his delicate sense of language, and his sound scholar- ship in the languages; but above all else he had a heart singularly devoted to the Word which he handled. He was of the high company of those who have washed their hands in innocency because they fain would compass the altars of God. Writing out of his exile to John Frith, then in jeop- ardy of his life, he said: ‘‘For I call God to record against the day we shall appear before our Lord Jesus, to give a record of our doings, that I never altered one syllable of God’s Word against my conscience, nor would this day, if all that is in the earth, whether it be pleasure, honor, or riches, might be given me.’ His total translation covered the New Testament and half the Old; and in the same spirit would he have finished the whole Bible had he lived. He aimed to bring the knowledge of God through his Word down to the level of the plowboy’s comprehension, but he descended to nothing low, or coarse, or trivial in doing so. As Westcott has finely said: “Instead of lowering his trans- lation to a vulgar dialect, he lifted up the common language to the grand simplicity of his own idiom.” In pursuance of his high endeavor he labored assiduously at the revision of his translation, which he might have left alone once it had been made and printed, and left as the crowning achievement of his toil, and his manifold disap- pointments, and his exile, and the sublimity of his self- effacement, his revised New Testament. His permanent impress upon the English Bible is his lasting monument. ‘“‘Of the translation itself,’’ writes Froude in his “‘History of England,” ‘‘though since that time it has been many times revised and altered, we may say that it is substantially the Bible with which we are familiar. The peculiar genius—if such a word may be permitted—which breathes through it, the mingled tender- ness and majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the preternatural Peer it AND PASTORATE 91 grandeur, unequaled, unapproached, in the attempted im- provements of modern scholars—all are here, and bear the impress of the mind of one man—William Tyndale.” No other individual trace is so deeply fixed upon it. None of the other versions, from Coverdale to King James, says Dr. E. J. Goodspeed, ‘‘is any more than a cautious re- vision of Tyndale; he is rightly called the Father of the King James Version, for in nine-tenths of its New Testa- ment his translation is copied; and his stamp remains on the modern revisions of 1881 and 1901. To the familiar forms of the New Testament Tyndale has contributed not only more than any other man, but more than all others com- bined. He has shaped the religious vocabulary of the English-speaking world.” Lift up any sheet of the English New Testament in any of its important versions and it bears the watermark Tyndale. A metre epochal event espoused by a single man has seldom if ever issued in English history than when William Tyndale translated and published his English Bible and risked the very breath which was at last strangled out of his nostrils to do it. Some will think it extravagant, but all who have truly appraised the higher values of English law and liberty and literature and life will think it but sober truth to say that whether it were from her literature or her religion England could as well afford to expunge Shakespeare or Milton as Tyndale from her annals. IV JOHN KNOX! (1505-1572) THERE are men who refuse to go down into the demure annals of history and to rest idly and forgotten there. They have still their task to do, and still their call to our consideration. Among these John Knox, whose living task was to make Scotland Protestant, is not the least. It was said that ‘‘ Knox made Scotland Protestant, but Melville made it Presbyterian.”” Certain it is that Knox made it Protestant. Probably it should have become Protestant anyway, but not so soon nor after so thoroughgoing a fashion as Knox made it. No other man of the time could have made the Scotland he made. And probably no other country of the time could have made him the man he was, for he was a genuine Scotsman. BECOMING PROTESTANT AND A PREACHER His career up to the time that he entered the Protestant ministry at forty-two years of age (or was it thirty-two?) was not conspicuously eventful. He was born in the county > of East Lothian, near Haddington, in the year 1505. He entered the University of Glasgow in 1522—or at any rate a person of that name appears among the incorporated students of the university for that year. Whether he was graduated from the institution is doubtful. Doubt, in- | deed, is thrown upon the whole matter of his university attendance by the uncertainty which attaches to the knowl- edge of certain incidents of his early life. The date even 1Reprinted from Methodist Quarterly Review, January, 1923. (92) PENG ESOP THE, PUEPEL 93 of his birth is not definitely known, some authorities placing it as late as 1515. Heseems to have entered the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church, though this point admits some doubt. However, it is clear that his proper vocation at this time was that of a private tutor of youth. His first attachment to the cause of Protestantism was shown through his connection with George Wishart, one of the early Scotch martyrs to that cause. Wishart, indeed, was Knox’s forerunner, Knox having accompanied him closely for a time on his missionary tours, carrying a two- handed sword with which he held himself in readiness to strike down any Romish assailant of the intrepid Wishart. When Wishart was arrested and carried before Cardinal Beaton for trial, Knox would have gone with him, but Wishart dissuaded him, saying: ‘‘Nay, return to your bairns [his pupils]; one is sufficient for a sacrifice.” Wishart at length was slain, and three months afterwards a small band of men broke into the Castle of St. Andrew’s and slew Cardinal Beaton, who was domiciled there both in his personal and in his official capacity. The stronghold was held and became a refuge for the Protestants, though not all of them approved the method of the taking away of the Cardinal. Knox himself had nothing to do with the murder of Beaton, though there is no evidence that he was much grieved by his removal. For his own and his pupils’ safety he entered with them into the Castle about Easter of 1557. This Castle presented an anomalous situation, though it was but a reflection of the state of the times. ‘‘Here was an unorganized assembly of reformers, not formally out of the old Church, gathered about a nucleus of armed men, who had upon them the guilt of Beaton’s assassination; and were maintaining themselves by force against the government; and they had called as their preachers an ex-monk, John Rough, and an ex-priest, John Knox. But 94 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN irregularities were not of much weight to men who felt sure of the truth they held, and believed they were doing God’s will.” It was this Castle that became a retreat to Knox and a school to him and his pupils. As a part of his curriculum he gave daily in the chapel at a certain hour a lecture in a series on the Gospel of John. ‘This public exercise was freely attended by a large number of those who had taken refuge in the Castle. Very promptly certain leaders among them recognized Knox’s fitness for the work of the ministry, and they urged him to take it up. But he as promptly re- fused. ‘‘He would not run where God had not called him.” Their conviction, however, that he should preach was not to be so easily brought to naught. Hence they arranged that on a certain day John Rough, who was pastor of the Castle Church, should make a public appeal to him. Ac- cordingly, on the appointed day, Rough, having preached a sermon on the election of ministers, turned to Knox in the presence of them all, and thus addressed him: “Brother, ye shall not be offended albeit that I speak unto you that which I have in charge, even from all those that are here present, which is this: In the name of God and of his Son Jesus Christ, and in the name of those that presently call you by my mouth, I charge you that ye refuse not this holy vocation, but that, as ye tender the glory of God, the increase of Christ’s kingdom, the edification of your brethen, and the comfort of me, whom you understand well enough to be oppressed by the multitude of labors, that ye take upon you the public office and charge of preaching, even as ye look to avoid God’s heavy displeasure, and desire that he shall multiply his graces with you.” Then turning to the congregation he said: ‘‘Was not this your charge to me?”’ They answered: “It was, and we approve it.’ Knox was overwhelmed by this unexpected PULPIT AND PASTORATE 95 proceeding. He burst into a flood of tears, left the as- sembled company, and retired to his closet. Thus Knox was called, and thus he came into the min- istry. It was quite an unusual entrance for a man to make even to the office and work of a preacher of the gospel. Nothing could be lacking in the depth of his persuasion that he followed, not his own will, nor the will of man, but the will of God. And there could be no doubt of the in- fluence it would exercise upon the whole course and charac- ter of his ministry. His first sermon placed him at once in the foremost rank of Scottish Reformers, and men began freely to predict that he would follow Wishart to the martyr’s stake. “‘Master George Wishart spake never so plainly,’ they said, “‘and yet he was burnt: even so will he be.”’ IN THE GALLEYS AND EXILED IN ENGLAND After a very brief exercise of his new commission in the Castle and in the town of St. Andrew’s Knox’s work was in- terrupted by the arrival of a French fleet, which quickly compelled the surrender of the Castle with all its inmates. According to the terms of their surrender their lives were to be spared and they were to be deported to France, from which, if they were not satisfied with the terms offered by the French king, they were to be allowed to depart to any country except Scotland. But faith was not kept with heretics in those days, and Knox and his companions were made galley slaves. The tortures of this unspeakable servitude he endured for nineteen months. ‘He had to sit chained with four or six others to the rowing benches, which were set at right angles to the side of the ship, without change of posture by day, and compelled to sleep, still chained, under the benches by night; exposed to the ele- ments day and night alike; enduring the lash of the over- 96 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN seer, who paced up and down the gangway which ran be- tween the two lines of benches; feeding on the insufficient meals of coarse biscuit and porridge of oil and beans; chained along with the vilest malefactors.’”’ This was the method the French invented for bringing under those who differed from them in religion. It was hardly a suitable means to effect the conversion of a man like John Knox. One hope he kept alive in his heart through all the torment he suffered in the galleys and that was that he might return to Scotland to preach again before he de- parted this life. Release of the prisoners from the galleys was secured through the instrumentality of the English government early in the year 1549, and Knox spent five years in Eng- land under the reign of King Edward. He was among the greatest preachers of England at the time and exerted an influence which endured for generations. Much of the powerful Puritan sentiment which appeared in the Church of England has been ascribed to the influence he exercised within the space of his brief ministry there. The vigor of his ministry and his courageous activity brought him into conflict with the Bishop of Durham, Tunstall, but Knox so clearly had the better of the controversy that episcopal op- position subsided. He was offered the bishopric of Roches- ter, and again an important vicarage, but declined both, and was actually brought before the Privy Council to ex- plain why he would not accept preferment. But through it all, whether quite consciously to himself or not, he was refusing to be bound. He was keeping his great spirit free to exercise the ministry of the Lord. The Council told him they were “sorry he was of a contrary mind to the common order.” He replied that he was even more sorry that ‘‘the common order’’ was contrary to the institution Peer PANDY PASTORATE 97 of Christ. He could not accept episcopacy and other Angli- can arrangements as scriptural. Knox had accepted an appointment as a royal chaplain, and it is reported that when he came in his turn to dis- charge the functions of that office he discharged his duties as well. High officials about the king were known to be notoriously corrupt. Knox said in his sermon: ‘‘What wonder is it that a young and innocent king be deceived by crafty, covetous, wicked, and ungodly councilors? I am greatly afraid that Ahithophel is councilor, that Judas bears the purse, and that Shebna is scribe, controller, and treasurer.” The accession of Mary Tudor, an intense and persecuting Roman Catholic, to the throne closed his career in England, though he remained on the field when others quit it. He was present in London when Mary entered the capital, and had the courage, when none other did have, to rebuke the rejoicings of the crowd at her appearance. CONTINENTAL CONTACTS Since Knox could not yet return to Scotland, his course now led him across the English Channel, and by unknown ways through France until he came to Geneva. He spent some time with Calvin, and, with the exception of several months occupied with a visit to Scotland in 1555, he so- journed for about five years on the Continent. They were years fruitful in preparation for his future work in Scot- land. He formed the acquaintance and had opportunity to study the character of the leading Protestants of France and of Switzerland, and obtained a knowledge of the inner political condition of the nations of Europe. Above all, these years taught him, as Lindsay says, that the fate of the whole Reformation movement was bound up with the formation of an alliance between Protestant England and 7 98 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN Protestant Scotland. In the midst of these years on the Continent he spent a part of his time as the pasta of the English congregation at Geneva. It came to pass in the course of events that women were reigning both in Scotland and England, and in France as well. Knox did not look very favorably upon these fem- inine monarchs. He had made such a favorable impression in the beginning of his ministry in Scotland that influential leaders of the Reformation there had been constantly seek- ing to make an opportunity to have him return. In pur- suance of their plans Knox came to Dieppe in October, 1557, on his return to Scotland. There he was intercepted by letters telling him that the time was not yet ripe for his return. Chafing at this delay, he wrote his tart pamphlet on ‘‘The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.” It was the worse for Knox and for Scotland that the reign of women had begun. Nevertheless his pamphlet was very ill-timed. Naturally it would alien- ate still further both Mary Stuart and Mary Tudor. But worse still for Knox, Elizabeth soon came to the throne in England, and there could be none whom Knox would more wish to conciliate than the Protestant Queen of England. This the pamphlet did not tend todo. Rather she resented it as having been intended for her. She never forgave either ' Knox or the pamphlet, and the latter was a continual obstacle to a complete understanding between Knox and his English allies. Knox himself said, though never pub- licly or to either of the queens more directly involved, but only to a personal friend, that his ‘‘rude vehemence and unconsidered affirmations, which may rather appear to proceed from choler than of zeal and reason,’’ he did not excuse. The time had now drawn on to the eve of Knox’s return to Scotland. He perhaps had lost less time than he thought PeLblLbPAND PASTORATE 99 he had. He had all along been making better time than he thought he had. No time is better spent than that absorbed in wise preparation. And if Providence prepares the instrument, time is still necessary. Knox came back to Scotland with an untried equipment to be sure, but nevertheless with a preparation most wisely made. And it was a preparation which had its bearing not only upon the work of the Reformation, but also upon his pulpit work. “With him everything he had and learned was made to contribute to his pulpit. That was the throne of his peculiar and preéminent power, and the treasures of travel, as well as the accumulations of study and observation, were made to contribute to his efficiency therein.”” And these aids to pulpit power he had acquired on the Con- tinent. SCOTLAND ONCE MORE AND THE REFORMATION STRENGTHENED Knox landed at Leith on his final return to Scotland in May, 1559. In all his exile, whether in the galleys of France or in the midst of his sojourn in Geneva, Scotland had been on his heart. When a prisoner in the galleys he had predicted that he would one day preach again in St. Andrew’s, where he had been so reluctantly drawn into that ministry which he now so zealously discharged. The good results of his last visit to Scotland had conspicuously ap- peared, and the leaders there had longed for his return. On his arrival he found that the Queen had altered her policy, and that now instead of tolerating the Reformers she had joined hands with the authorities of the Roman Church to suppress them. What with the opposition of the Romanists and certain indiscretions and excesses of the Reformers themselves the task of gaining for the Protestant cause a secure footing in the land was one of tremendous difficulty. 100 PRINCES (OR THE CHES ia There ensued, in truth, a state of civil warfare, and the lines on the one side and on the other were sharply drawn. After a sermon by Knox in Perth a priest had insolently undertaken to celebrate the mass in the church when the reformed services were concluded, thereby so incensing the crowd that they rushed upon the church, destroying the altars and images there, and turning thence they sacked the monasteries of the town. This of course provoked Romanist anger and reprisals. Shortly after this affair at Perth, Knox was called to St. Andrew’s to preach and to institute reforms there. The archbishop strenuously objected to the intrusion, and de- clared he would send a force and have Knox shot if he entered the pulpit. As the reformers had but few men on the ground and were poorly prepared to withstand such an assault they advised Knox to desist for the time from the attempt. But he declared himself unafraid and said: ‘‘As for fear of danger that may come to me, let no man be solicitous, for my life is in the custody of Him whose glory I seek. I desire the hand nor weapon of no man to defend me. I only crave audience, which, if it be denied me at this time, I must seek where I may have it.’’ On the next day he preached without interference to a great congrega- tion on the driving of the traders and money-changers out of the Temple, a subject which yielded itself without wresting to forcible application to the circumstances of the time. Other sermons followed and as a result the Romish worship was abolished, the images and pictures were re- moved from the churches, and the monasteries were de- stroyed. And this was accomplished, not by the action of a mob, but by the orderly exercise of the authority of the rulers of the town. Other towns followed the example set by St. Andrew’s and the reformed cause advanced apace. Simultaneously with the return of Knox to Scotland Ped | eAND PAS PORATE 101 there set in the most critical stage in the whole history of the Reformation. The whole issue of the movement hung upon the outcome of the struggle in Scotland. ‘The exist- ence of the Protestantism of all Europe,’ says Lindsay, ‘‘“was involved in the struggle in Scotland.’”’ This was par- ticularly true of the period embraced within the years 1559 to 1567. There was a sense then in which it was true that the most conspicuous figure on the stage of action for the whole movement was John Knox. The British nation was in its birth throes. England and Scotland, for a long time hereditary foes, were drawing closer together. What shall be the immediate issue of their union? —The Romanists of England already recognized Mary Queen of Scots as their legitimate sovereign. If Mary triumphs in Scotland, the new nation is born Romanist. If Knox and the Lords of the Congregation, as the organized Protestants had come to be called, triumph in Scotland, and if William Cecil, stanch Protestant Secretary of State for England, guides the national destinies there as he designs, then he and Knox, necessary to each other as each understands, shall stand sponsors at the institution of a Protestant na- tion. How momentous, then, was the issue: ‘‘ Would the new nation accept the Reformed religion, or would the re- action triumph?’’ On how slender a thread of difference do great decisions often hang! For if Scotland can be made secure to France and the Roman religion, and the Romanist Queen of Scotland make good her claim to the English throne, then there accrues such prestige and power to Romanism that Protestantism will be crushed, not in England and Scotland only, but also in the other countries where it had taken hold. Into the details of the further process of the struggle it is not necessary to go. Suffice it to say that there was more or less reluctance felt in the matter of the relief of the 102 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN Protestants of Scotland by the head of both the State and the Church in England. Elizabeth held the memory of the “ Blast’’ against Knox, and did not like his appealing to the commonalty of his country. She did not like Calvin, and had a particular objection to his theology. Archbishop Parker at a time of great straits in the struggle wrote to Cecil: ‘‘God keep us from such visitations as Knox hath attempted in Scotland: the people to be orderers of things.” But Cecil had good understanding of what Israel ought to do; and he was firmly resolved. He knew “that if the Lords of the Congregation failed there was little hope of a Protestant England, and that Elizabeth’s crown and Dr. Parker’s miter depended on the victory of Knox in Scot- land.’ In due time the assistance of money went forward. And then an English army crossed the border and com- pelled France to release her hold on Scotland. The blood spilt by this English army on Scottish soil entered in good- ly part to form the cement that fixes still the stability of the British nation. The liturgy of the Scottish Church was immediately enriched by the following addition: ‘‘And seeing that when we by our own power were altogether unable to have freed ourselves from the tyranny of stran- gers, and from the bondage and thraldom intended against us, Thou of thine especial goodness didst move the hearts of our neighbors (of whom we deserved no such favor) to take upon them the common burden with us, and for our deliverance not only to spend the lives of many, but also to hazard the estate and tranquillity of their Realm and commonwealth: Grant unto us, O Lord, that with such reverence we may remember thy benefits received that after this in our default we never enter into hostility against the Realm and nation of England.” The time was propitious and measures were taken by the Protestant leaders for intrenching their cause in the ad- PULPIT AND PASTORATE 103 vantages already gained and for making more secure the interests of the future. There must be prepared a fixed form in which the faith of Protestantism might be avowed, and provision must be made for the government of the Church. The Confession answered one of these ends and the Book of Discipline the other. Great attention was paid to education, and in the main the interests of the movement were ordered with a wisdom above the ordinary. The presence of the French on Scotch soil had had the effect of consolidating all ranks and classes of the people in the conviction that “their only deliverance lay in the English alliance and the triumph of the Reformation.” Barely a year had elapsed after the return of Knox to Scot- land before the Reformed religion had been established by the Estates. But a complete victory was yet very far from being won. The sovereigns had not ratified the Acts of the Estates. Mary of Guise, mother of Mary Stuart, had been reigning in Scotland as regent. Francis II, the French husband of Mary Stuart, shared in the sovereignty. Mary of Guise had been suspended from the regency in 1559. Mary and Francis had ruled Scotland from France. They, of course, had not ratified the Acts which would make Protestantism a religion recognized by the statutes of the land. JouHn Knox AND MARY STUART Francis IT died in 1560, and Mary returned to Scotland in the following year. Her coming might well cause alarm to the Protestant leaders, to whom her unscrupulous char- acter was already too well known. The ultimate decisions were now inevitably joined. Her coming at once threw the. gains and the prestige of Protestantism into the balances to go up or down, to prevail or not to prevail. Brave as he was, Knox could but dread her coming. But there he was, 104 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN and his being there must offset her coming. Then ensued the memorable contest, one of the most memorable of history, brave on the one side and brilliant on the other, between the sturdy Reformer and the fascinating Queen. There was hardly ever another such matching of character and charm, with such a manifest lack in either contestant of what the other had. Mary had none of Knox’s charac- ter, and Knox had none of Mary’s charm. Nature had ex- hausted all the secret arts of her laboratory to make Mary a lovely creature. All about her was beautiful, even to her hands, and her voice was sweet and caressing. On the other hand grace had gripped the soul of John Knox to make him as sturdy as an oak. He alone in Scotland un- erringly read Mary’s character when many even of the Reforming nobles had been all but persuaded of her sin- cerity in professing that she would have some regard to the rights and interests of her Protestant subjects. When there were some who even thought that by judicious man- agement Mary might be won over to the side of the Refor- mation, Knox was still undeceived. Knox had been accused of rudeness in dealing with Mary, whether in the public or the private aspects of the pro- longed contest. But it should be remembered, as Lindsay has pointed out, that Mary deliberately sought to ply her arts against the interest and advantages of Knox, that he never asked for an audience at court, but only came when he was sent for. Only when he was compelled by the lead of Mary herself to speak upon matters that were in ir- reconcilable dispute between them did he display that sternness which monarchs do not like. He was deferential, as a subject should be, when he stood in his character as a subject. But when Mary trenched upon that ground on which he stood as a prophet of God he could do no other- wise than as he did. “‘As Jehovah liveth, before whom I PULPIT AND PASTORATE 105 stand,’’ was an ancient formula of the prophets of which Knox could not have been ignorant. His greatest dis- tinction was that even in Mary’s entrancing and royal presence he could not forget the presence of a higher Royalty. “‘What have ye to do with my marriage?” Mary demanded of him, “‘or what are you within this com- monwealth?” “‘A subject born within the same, madam,”’’ coolly answered Knox. “And albeit I neither be Earl, Lord, nor Baron within it, yet has God made me (how ab- ject that ever I be in your eyes) a profitable member within the same.” It was language to which the ears of royalty were unaccustomed, and for which royal ethics recognized no pardon. ‘“‘Modern democracy came into being in that answer.” In the end Mary was imprisoned and deposed, and her infant son, James VI, was placed on the throne, with James Stuart, Earl of Moray, as regent. The Parliament completed the work of giving to the Reformed Church legal recognition in Scotland. THE PROPHET AND THE PREACHER PREDOMINATE But no adequate study of the career of John Knox can end with regarding him merely as a reformer. Nor is it sufficient to say that he was one of the great leaders of the Protestant Reformation. First of all, and above all else, he was a Christian preacher, an unconquerable prophet of God. He was a reformer because he was a preacher, and not a preacher because he was a reformer. When the preacher is lost in the reformer, both the reformer and the preacher suffer. When the reformer is lost in the preacher, both the preacher and the reformer gain. This estimation, of course, puts preaching at its best, but John Knox is just the man who put it at its best. Let any man say what the preaching of Luther was, what the preaching of Latimer 106 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN was, what the preaching of Calvin was, what the preaching of Zwingli was, what the preaching of Knox was to the Reformation. For the greater portion of the time between his return to Scotland in 1559 and his death in 1572 Knox was pastor of the St. Giles Church in Edinburgh. His stated preaching services here consisted in two sermons on Sunday and three sermons during the week besides. He did a great deal of preaching throughout the kingdom, particularly at a time early in his ministry at the St. Giles Church when the city had been captured by the forces of the regent and it was prudent for Knox to give place temporarily to a less ob- noxious man. Opposition thus tended to the wider diffu- sion of his ministry. Only one complete specimen of his sermons remains in printed form, but his letters give some insight into his method of preparation. He had not so much a particular method of preparation as a fixed habit of study. On this habit his preparation was based and through the constant application of his diligence as a student to the needs of his pulpit his preparation was secured. He describes himself as ‘‘sitting at his books”’ and studying the Gospel of Mat- thew with the help of “‘some most godly expositions, and among the rest Chrysostom.” “This day,” he says again, ‘“‘ye know to be the day of my study and prayer.’”’ When Queen Mary was disposed to upbraid him for not coming to her privately when he had occasion to condemn her policy, he replied that he could not tell what other men should judge of him “that at this time of day am absent from my book and waiting upon the court.”’ He did not write his sermons in full, but spoke from brief notes made on the margin of his Bible. These constitute the sole written remains of his pulpit preparation. That he thought his subjects through, even to the including to PULPIT- AND PASTORATE 107 some extent of the very words in which they were uttered, appears from the fact that he could repeat his sermons al- most verbatim for a long time afterwards. He did this on one notable occasion when he claimed that the contents of a sermon had been misreported to Mary. He went over the entire sermon before the Queen and the members of her court, and his repetition was pronounced accurate by those who had heard the sermon at church. His sermons as to their homiletical structure were ex- pository. He set himself first of all to give the meaning of the passage which he employed for his text according to its original intention. He then sought to show its applica- tion to the occasion on which it was first employed. Then the sermon began: he applied the principles and teachings of his text to his hearers and to the times. That he did not flinch in the application is one of the plainest facts of his preaching. If he saw an evil, whether in great or small, whether in the court or out of it, which the principle of his text condemned, he allowed his ax to fall at the root of that very tree. He did not bother with clearing away the underbrush when the monarchs of the forest were decaying. When the famous Parliament of 1560, which had to shape the political issues in which the Protestant movement was involved, was in session, he was lecturing through the prophecies of Haggai on the building of the temple. This - procedure furnished him indeed ‘‘a doctrine proper for the time,’ and gave him an opportunity to adduce as of divine authority many of the principles which were pertinent to the reorganization of both the Scottish Church and State. There is evidence, says Dr. W. M. Taylor, ‘‘that he favored as a general thing the practice of continuous exposition, as being fraught with profit both to preacher and hearer.” He is discoursing of the ‘‘wafer-god,’’ as he conceives the Romish idea of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and 108 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN comparing this process of idol-making with that sarcastical- ly described by Isaiah in the ancient time. ‘‘If the mice eat the wafer, what becomes of the God? If the mice eat the wafer, then what becomes of Christ’s natural body? By miracle it flies to heaven again, if the papists teach truly, for how soon soever the mouse takes hold, so soon flieth Christ away and letteth her gnaw the bread. A bold and puissant mouse, but a feeble and miserable god! Yet would I ask a question: ‘Whether hath the priest or the mouse greater power?’ By his words it is made a god; by her teeth it ceaseth to be a god. Let them advise and answer!” Very plain he was in this, and in all other matters of doc- trine and morals. He “had learned, plainly and boldly, to call wickedness by its own terms.’ He has been credited with being the originator of the now proverbial saying, “Call a fig a fig, a spade a spade.”’ Though frail in body, he was vigorous and even vehement in delivery. The following description of him in his last days by James Melville, who at the time was a student in St. Andrew’s, has been preserved: “‘I heard him teach there the prophecies of Daniel that summer and the winter fol- lowing. I had my pen and my little book, and took away such things as I could comprehend. In the opening up of his text he was moderate for the space of half an hour; but when he entered on application he made me so to shiver and tremble that I could not hold my pen to write. He was very weak. I saw him every day of his teaching go slowly and wearily, with a fur of marten about his neck, a staff in the one hand and good, godly Richard Ballantyne, his servant, holding up the other armpit, from the abbey to the parish kirk, and by the said Robert and another servant lifted up the pulpit, where he behooved to lean at his first entrance, but before he had done with his sermon PULPIT AND PASTORATE 109 he was so active and vigorous that it seemed as if he would knock the pulpit in pieces and fly out of it.” His pulpit had the happy effect upon him of stimulating all his powers and of drawing them to a focus. Here he was moved to an intensity which kindled into a flame every- thing that it touched. ‘‘It brightened his intellect, enliv- ened his imagination, clarified his judgment, inflamed his courage, and gave fiery energy to his utterance.” He was never elsewhere so great as in his pulpit. His force and power were such as literally to set his pulpit in action. There are men who possess force, but have little power. There are men who have power, but possess little force. John Knox had both in a preéminent degree. He had force of intellect, of conscience, and of utterance. And in his preaching there was realized both by himself and his hearers the impress and the direct action of supernatural power. In this access of power to his pulpit he was lifted entirely out of himself, and he spoke because he could not but speak. None could hear him “without being moved either to an- tagonism or to agreement.” “Out of the pulpit,” he said to Mary in one of their memorable interviews, ‘he be- lieved few had occasion to complain of him; but there he was not his own master, but was bound to obey Him who commanded him to speak plainly, and to flatter no flesh on the face of the earth.” Such a man was he that he built his character and his endeavor as avery corner stone into the life of the Scottish nation, and left a permanent and preéminent impress upon the Scottish pulpit. “‘His one absorbing aim in life was to establish the Reformation in Scotland, and to this purpose he brought a disinterestedness, a courage, a hopefulness, a diligence, and a faith in God and truth which keep his name safe amid the truly great of history.” V JOHN WESLEY (1703-1791) WESLEY AND His CENTURY Joun WESLEY’s name adorns any page on which it is written and dedicates it to edification. His shadow but lengthens as the centuries expand. Eighty-eight years of the eighteenth century were spanned by his life. But this unusual extension of his life along the lines of the calendar constitutes one of the least of the reasons why his name has been so indelibly associated with the century. He wrought his deeds into its quiet annals, gave a new im- pulse to its larger affairs, and influenced the far-flung future of the English-speaking peoples as did no other man of the century, and, indeed, as hardly any other man of any other century has ever done. That century, so strange in its mixture-of the mean and the mighty, held in its galaxy of the great no figure more serene, calmer, more courageous, more commanding in his personal influence and character than the masterful little man who was only five feet and scarcely six inches tall and weighed only one hundred and twenty-two pounds. The time, however, was not without its other great and notable men. That century in England issued to the world a no mean list of illustrious names. Great men and great events were astir both at home and abroad. Two of the greatest military captains of all English history, Marlborough and Wellington, had their lives partly cast within the century; and Nelson ap- peared ere its close, and Trafalgar was not far off when Wesley died. On the very day that Clive won at Plassey (110) pro Neh s.OR “THE PULPIC 111 the battle which secured the establishment of the British power in India Wesley was on a preaching tour in England and records in his Journal that God was with them “‘at Sunderland in the evening in an uncommon manner.” While Wolfe was struggling up the Heights of Abraham and winning Canada from France to the English crown, and sealing with his death the great attempt, Wesley was on horseback seeking the lost sheep of the English commons and winning the begrimed masses of the English mines. While Burke was telling the English Parliament that they “could never falsify the pedigree”’ of the American people, and that an Englishman was “‘the unfittest person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery,’’ Wesley was quietly opening a new church at Northwich, whence he proceeded, not to London where such mighty events were astir, but to Liverpool where his congregations were so large and deeply attentive that he did not regret the con- trary winds which detained him from an intended journey to Ireland. The elder Pitt, the central figure of a brilliant epoch of English history, and only five years Wesley’s junior, was in that England, too. He had the distinction of having it said of him that he was the first Englishman who in politics thought outside of England, and embraced the continent of Europe and beyond in his imperial mind. But Wesley had already said: ‘I look upon all the world as _ my parish.” And there, too, upon the contemporary scene were Sir Isaac Newton, though he died before Wesley was converted, and Edward Gibbon, and Pope, and Byron, and Burns, and Goldsmith, and Swift, and Addison, and Coleridge, and Wordsworth. Dr. Samuel Johnson was there, who, it was said, made the year 1709 ‘‘ ponderous and illustrious in English biography by his birth.’ But it fell to Wesley’s lot to render the century illustrious by his birth. Joseph Butler, taking an easy intellectual prece- 112 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN dence over the time in which he lived, and made bishop of Bristol in the year of Wesley’s conversion, was there, too, having the great ‘‘Analogy”’ to his credit; but having it to his unforgettable discredit that he forbade Whitefield and the Wesleys to preach in his diocese, though “‘all around his cathedral city lay the most degraded and hopeless class in England—the coal miners of Kingswood, as untouched by any of the forces of Christianity as if they had been savages in Central Africa.” Nearer to Wesley’s own line of action were John Howard, philanthropist of the prisons, and William Wilberforce, valiant in the battle for the abolition of slavery, to whom Wesley addressed the last trembling but courageous letter he ever wrote. ‘That century,’ says Winchester in his “Life of John Wesley,”’ ‘‘was rich in names the world calls great... ; but run over the whole brilliant list, and where among them all is the man whose motives were so pure, whose life was so unself- ish, whose character was so spotless? And where among them all is the man whose influence—social, moral, re- ligious—was productive of such vast good and of so little evil, as that exerted by this plain man who exemplified himself, and taught thousands of his fellow men to know, what the religion of Jesus Christ really means?”’ A WoMAN OF EpworRTH There were rich ancestral values lying beyond Susanna Annesley, but there is no use in exploring the distant past in order to find the most prolifie source of the greatness and achievement of John Wesley. Samuel Wesley married Susanna Annesley and to them there were born nineteen children, of whom John was the fifteenth. Isaac Taylor, pronounced by Dr. Alexander Whyte to be ‘‘thus far the best writer we have on Wesley,”’ refers thus to the ancestral advantages of the Wesleys as they lay on the side of the PULPIT AND PASTORATE 113 mother: ‘‘Mind is from the mother. Such we conclude to be a law of nature, on the evidence of many bright instances. Now, the Wesleys had the advantage of this law; and their mother, a woman of quite extraordinary in- telligence, force of mind, correct judgment, and vivid apprehension of truth, conferred also upon her sons what- ever advantage they might derive from her composite ex- cellence as a zealous Churchwoman; yet rich in a dowry of nonconforming virtues.” Mr. Augustine Birrell accounts her to have been a re- markable woman, but thinks she was ‘‘cast in a mold not much to our mind nowadays.’ But for all his disesteem of what he deems to have been severe in her she seems to have been fairly well justified of her children. At any rate there is not much further to go in explanation of the es- sential elements of John Wesley’s character and influence when it has been said that Susanna Wesley was his mother. Whether with respect to his entering the ministry, or his going away to America, or the beginning of lay preaching, or his breaking away from Calvinism and his attitude toward other questions of theoretical and practical divinity, or any other of the graver interests of his life and action, she was the ablest and most faithful monitor he ever had. To the sturdiness of his father’s character and the real worth of the man, notwithstanding some patent defects, he owed a not inconsiderable debt. But he was in a conspicuous sense his mother’s son. He was born at Epworth, in Lin- colnshire, on June 17, 1703. Reckoning by new style it would be June 28. He was brought up in a lean and re- stricted English rectory, but he took the mean name of Epworth and set it as a sign of honor around the earth. He first emerges into distinctness out of the large family group on the occasion of the fire which destroyed the rectory on the night of February 9, 1709, when he was 3 . 114 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN scarcely six years of age. The fire was of incendiary origin, and was no more anticipated than fires usually are. The rector had enemies, but hardly supposed they would go to such lengths as this. There was a howling wind from the northeast, and none of the family was awakened until the flames had crept far up the roof and some sparks fell on the bed of one of the girls. Mrs. Wesley was ill, and this could but add to the distress and confusion of the occasion. When it was thought that all had been gotten safely out the cry of a child was heard from the burning building, and little John appeared at an upper window. Scarcely could one man mount upon the shoulders of another and snatch the child from the flames before the roof fell in. This event deeply impressed itself upon the mind of John, young as he was, and he saw himself ever afterwards as ‘‘a brand plucked from the burning.’’ And his ministry, too, took from the circumstance a tone of peculiar earnestness. He saw men as if perishing in a burning building, and he was constrained to make haste to rescue them. His mother too now received him as the child of a particular providence, and resolved to devote to him more than her usual care. Poverty invaded this Epworth household and there were many mouths to feel the pinch of it. The good rector lay three months in jail for debt, not being much exercised thereby, if, indeed, he did not experience a certain relief in finding the jail more tolerable than his creditors; and Mrs. Wesley was left to wrestle alone with the want that hungered her children. She told the Archbishop of York that while she had never really wanted bread she had been so hard pressed to get it that it was the next degree of wretchedness to not having any at all. But out of that poverty there came a wealth of trained character which many finer houses have coveted in vain. Has there ever been such another home school as this MULPli> AND: PASTORATE 115 in the Epworth Rectory with Mrs. Wesley for its master? Whatever else may have been lacking among the group - composed of the little Wesleys it could not have been will, from whichever side of the house the matter might be re- garded. Mrs. Wesley must have known this, for the first point in her pedagogy was to conquer the will of each child and subdue it to her control. When they were still babes the children were taught ‘‘to fear the rod and cry softly.”’ Fitchett says that, “although the rectory was as full of children as a hive is of bees, it was as quiet as a Quaker meetinghouse.”’ Eating, drinking, dressing, playing, work- ing, and all else they did were regulated by strict rule, and instant obedience was required. The children were put to school the day they were five years old, and the alphabet had to be learned the first day. The next day there was a reading lesson from the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis. ‘‘Sukey,’’ said the rector, ‘‘I wonder at your patience. You have told that child twenty times the same thing.”’ ‘Had I not told him the twentieth,” she said, “I should have lost the nineteen.’’ Above all she took each child apart for an hour each week for intimate prayer and | special religious instruction. Long afterwards when John was a fellow of Lincoln College he wrote to his mother and asked her for the hour she used to give him on Thurs- days when he was a boy. And he never ceased to be the boy who steadied his mind on her counsels. How could he forget the calm wisdom and courage with which she had more than once overborne the weakness or rashness of his own decisions? What should he do about the serious mat- ter of going to America? Her instant and conclusive an- swer was: “Had I twenty sons I should rejoice that they were all so employed, though I never saw them more.” She checked the rashness of his procedure when on hearing that Thomas Maxfield, a layman, had in his absence taken 116 PRINCES OF (QB E +CHR > Hin to preaching in the society he hastened to London bent on suppressing so impudent an irregularity. “John,” she said, ‘‘take care what you do with respect to that young man, for he is as surely called by God to preach as you are. Examine what have been the fruits of his preaching and hear him for yourself.’’ Again, she stood by his side when he preached at Kennington Common to twenty thousand people and confirmed him in his purpose to forsake if need be all the regularities in order to reach the multitudes. At last standing beside an open grave in Bunhill Fields, that great ‘‘Necropolis of Dissenters,” he said with broken voice over her remains: ‘‘I commit the body of my mother to the earth.” A YOUTH OF OXFORD Wesley would hardly be called a scholar in the technical sense. How could he have been, or any other man in his circumstances? But he was a man of superior scholarly tastes and habits, and one of the truest university men who ever lived. His training did not cease with the famous school in the Epworth rectory. Through the influence of the Duke of Buckingham he obtained a scholarship in the famous Charterhouse School in London, and thither he proceeded when, he was not yet eleven years old. Here he thought were laid the foundations of his lasting health from the circumstance that he had no meat to eat, it being the custom of the school that the larger boys robbed the smaller ones of the portion that fell to them. A surer health régime, however, must be found in another circumstance—namely, that, in obedience to a wise father’s direction, a boyish figure was to be seen running three times around the Char- terhouse garden every morning. From the Charterhouse Wesley passed to Christ Church College, Oxford University, and was graduated a Bachelor PULPIT AND PASTORATE 117 of Arts four years later at the age of twenty-one. Two years later he was elected to a fellowship in Lincoln College, and at twenty-four was a Master of Arts. He had the special advantage of being appointed Greek lecturer and moderator of the classes in which capacity he presided over the class disputations, weighed the arguments, and then decided with whom the victory lay. ‘I could not avoid,” he said, ‘acquiring thereby some degree of expertness in arguing, and especially in discovering and pointing out well-covered and plausible fallacies. I have since found abundant reason to praise God for giving me this honest art.”’ It was in his Oxford days that there came into his hands several still famous books which were destined to play a large part in his life. These were 4 Kempis’s ‘‘ Imitation,” Taylor’s “‘Holy Living and Holy Dying,” and Law’s “Serious Call’’ and ‘‘Christian Perfection.’’ All of them influenced him greatly, if not always favorably. Law’s two books he later owned sowed the seed of Methodism. It was in these Oxford days, too, that the name ‘“‘ Meth- odist”’ originated. When John returned from a period of two years’ service as his father’s curate, the village of Wroote having been attached to Epworth so that an as- sistant to the rector was required, he found his brother Charles at the head of a few young men who had banded themselves together for stricter religious exercises and ob- servances than were customary amid the looseness of the life of the University at the time. Their very singularity was their offense. They constituted the Holy Club so famous in early Methodist history. It was supposed that the name Methodist first fell as a badge of scorn from the lips of a young man of Christ Church, Wesley’s own col- lege. The Holy Club, the headship of which John Wesley assumed as by natural right, engaged zealously in the visitation of the poor, the sick, and prisoners; but its first 118 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN business was Bible study. These young men opened their meetings with prayer, and studied the Greek New Testa- ment. Their object was scriptural, spiritual, humanitarian, but first of all scriptural that it might be the rest. Wesley’s studies did not cease when the gates of the University closed behind him. He carried all that was best in the University life with him and made even that best better. He was a surpassingly diligent student to the end of his days. The extent and variety of his reading, and the wide*range of his acquaintance with Greek, Latin, and English authors, together with his acquisition of a knowl- edge of the German and Spanish languages, as revealed in his Journal, is truly astonishing. And the work he did himself as editor and author is more astonishing still. He was the creator and distributor of libraries for his people. on all sorts of useful subjects. Walking or riding as he went forth intent upon the accomplishment of his great task, he read books and mastered knowledge. He could travel on foot twenty-five miles a day, reading as he walked. ‘He turned the saddle,’’ says Fitchett, ‘“‘and the open road, and the changing English skies into a permanent study.’”’ When he was above sixty he records that he traveled one hundred and ten miles in a single day, and that he was reading two books on the road. He had now finished the University, and had chosen his life calling. But he had not found his work. There was a great waste period in his life. He had all the natural qualifications of a Christian minister, but he failed. He went to Georgia, and that was a failure. His discipline was too severe for his Georgia parishioners, though he never asked other people to carry burdens he would not carry himself. When the boys in Delamotte’s school in Savannah who wore shoes and stockings affected to despise those who came barefooted Wesley went down barefooted BOLPEEPAND ‘PASTORATE 119 and taught the school himself. But he was a High-Church- man, and ordinarily his ways were beyond the people. A particularly candid person said to him: ‘‘The people say they are Protestants, but as for you they cannot tell what religion you are of; they never heard of such a religion before, and they do not know what to make of it.’” Speak- ing of his own High-Church bigotry at this time he later exclaimed: “‘How well since I have been beaten with mine own staff.”” It has been well said of this period of his life that he ‘‘who reads the secret of Wesley’s failure has got to the very heart of Christianity.’ He returned to Eng- land on the eve of the great crisis of his religious life and entered speedily on his great career. ‘‘AnN EpocH IN ENGLISH HIsToRY’”’ Wesley himself vacillated between two opinions as to whether or not he was a Christian before the epochal ex- perience in Aldersgate Street. He had early had an un- designed reproof from the porter of his college at Oxford. Late at night they had talked and Wesley had told the porter to go home and get another coat. The porter replied that he had on the only coat he had in the world, and he thanked God for it. ‘‘Go home and get your supper, then,”’ said Wesley. The porter had had nothing that day but a drink of water, and yet he was thankful to God for that. Wesley then said that it was late and he would be locked out, and asked what he would then have to thank God for. ‘That I should have the dry stones to lie upon,’’ replied the porter. Finding the porter thus persistent in thanking God for everything in his penurious lot Wesley felt sharply rebuked and that there was something in religion to which he had not attained. Again Spangenberg, a Moravian pastor he met in Georgia, probed him mercilessly though kindly on the 120 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN subject of personal religion. Wesley had sought his advice, and Spangenberg said: ‘‘My brother, I must ask you one or two questions: Have you the witness within yourself? Does the Spirit of God witness with your spirit that you are a child of God?”’ Wesley hesitated to answer. Span- genberg continued: ‘‘Do you know Jesus Christ?” ‘TI know he is the Saviour of the world,’’ said Wesley. ‘True, but do you know he has saved you?”’ persisted his inter- locutor. ‘‘I hope he has died to save me,’’ was all that Wesley could say. ‘‘Do you know yourself?” asked Span- genberg again. “I do,’’ Wesley now replied; but after- wards, committing the matter to the privacy of his Journal, he said reflectively: ‘I fear they were vain words.” These episodes are hardly creditable to a man of Wes- ley’s intelligence and training if he was already a Christian. He is compelled to testify against himself. In short, he is not able to bear any of the tests of a vital faith, or a conscious Christian experience. The whole case so far as Wesley himself is concerned might be made to rest upon his own precise and seemingly determinative statement explanatory of his spiritual state before the crisis of his conversion given in connection with a reference he has made to the evangelical truths which had changed his own life and through the preaching of which he was now bringing so many others to salvation. The statement dates six years after his conversion, and runs as follows: ‘‘It was many years after I was ordained deacon before I was con- vinced of the great truths above recited; during all that time I was utterly ignorant of the nature and condition of justification. Sometimes I confounded it with sanctifica- tion, particularly when I was in Georgia. At other times I had some confused notion about the forgiveness of sins; but then I took it for granted the time of this must be either the hour of death or the day of judgment. I was equally PULPIT AND PASTORATE 121 ignorant of the nature of saving faith, apprehending it to mean no more than a firm assent to all the propositions con- tained in the Old and New Testaments.” He might change his own mind from time to time, but this could not alter the facts of his experience. The question is not what he was by nature, nor by his own attempts at a conscientious direction of his life, but what the grace of God did for him. Perhaps the deepest test of evangelical Christianity after all is what it has to do and what it can do for just such a man as John Wesley. Does it not in any complete and final estimate of the matter do as much for a John Wesley as for a John Bunyan, for a William E. Gladstone as for a Billy Bray? Wesley was an educated, refined, moral, up- right gentleman, but had the grace of God nothing left to do for him? What is it after all but a lingering legalism which causes us to hesitate to attribute such a man’s salva- tion to God’s grace? After searching conversations with Peter Bohler and other close contact with the Moravians, together with the hearing of the clear testimony to their consciousness of salvation which Bohler contrived to have a number of them give in his presence, Wesley was led on to seek the more assured peace of his own soul. From before its dawn the day of his conversion drew on toward a crisis. At five o'clock in the morning he opened his Testament at the words: ‘‘There are given unto us exceeding great and pre- cious promises.”” As he was about to leave the house he opened to the words: ‘Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.” He attended a service at St. Paul’s in the after- noon and heard the bitter cry of his own heart translated into the stormy music of an anthem: ‘‘Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Jehovah!”’ In the evening he went, very unwillingly as he says, into a meeting of an Anglican Society in Nettleton Court just off Aldersgate 122 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN Street in London. The leader was reading Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. What followed can never be told so well as in Wesley’s own words: ‘‘ About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.”” There, says Dr. J. H. Jowett, is where the Methodist river was born. This is the conversion that renovated a nation and created a Church. Three other conversions, and three only, since Pentecost, in their ef- fect upon Christian progress, can rank with Wesley’s: St. Paul’s, Augustine’s, and Martin Luther’s. To the first Christianity in its universality as wrought out to embrace the Gentiles was due; to the second much of the force and effectiveness of Latin Christianity was due; to the third Protestant Christianity was due; to John Wesley Meth- odism was due. Two of these in particular, Paul and Lu- ther, like Wesley, had wrestled with legalistic conceptions of religion and for long had missed the way of grace. Au- gustine found a more direct way to grace. But each of the others had to find it to break the zmpasse he had reached. And in each case it was the principle of salvation by grace as over against the method of salvation by works that precipitated the crisis. The effect of Wesley’s conversion on his own life and ministry was immediate and decisive. The date was May 24, 1738. Lecky says it ‘‘forms an epoch in English his- tory.” It was the turning point in Wesley’s career. With legalism and ritualism he had done. From that time his “‘sacerdotalism withered away.’ There was still discipline, but no more of ‘‘the physic of an intolerable discipline.” The waste period of his life was at an end. On June 11, PULPIT AND PASTORATE 123 1738, eighteen days after his conversion, he preached his famous sermon at Oxford University on the text, “‘ By grace are ye saved through faith,’’ and sounded forth the keynote of that marvelous ministry and prodigious preaching career upon which he was now fairly launched. Remarkable energies and capacities for religious service were released by John Wesley’s conversion. Before that he could do nothing. After that he could do all things. As a part of his religious equipment he had a profound trust in a superintending providence. He has been credited by one of his biographers with ‘“‘a genius for administra- tion.” Macaulay said he had ‘‘a genius for government.”’ Henry Thomas Buckle said he was ‘‘one of the greatest of ecclesiastical legislators.’’ But the real secret of his leader- ship lies rather outside these suggestions. He led so well because he first allowed God to lead him. He did not try to elaborate any ecclesiastical system at all. He did his work and left the system to develop as need might require. He believed that ‘‘Providence legislated the system of Methodism.” The class meeting was “not a device, but a fortunate suggestion.’ It arose through an arrangement for paying a debt on the chapel at Bristol, the first that the Methodists ever owned in the warld. When groups had been provided with leaders to collect small sums of money from them weekly a report was incidentally made to Wes- ley that some were walking disorderly. ‘It struck me im- mediately,” he said: “‘this is the very thing we have wanted so long’’; and the leaders were directed to assume a spir- itual oversight toward the members of their group. In the same undesigned way lay preaching arose. And the same was true of field preaching. Whitefield, being denied. the churches, had taken to preaching in the open air at Bristol. Having great crowds upon his hands and wishing to leave for other parts, he sent for Wesley, who was then in Lon- 124 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN don. Wesley hesitated, but went. He had once thought it all but a crime to save a man outside a church. But the scene at Bristol conquered all his reluctance. The next day after hearing Whitefield, and seeing the tears stream down the miners’ cheeks, leaving white trails after them, he himself stood beneath the overarching skies, and outside the church and its chancels gave the gospel to the poor. As a further part of his religious equipment he had an eye single to the essentials and cared for naught else. Those who knew him best counted him singularly free from the ordinary frailties of human nature, such as pride, ambition, or the desire for mere power or personal ease. Ease, time, life, all he had devoted to God. He refused no labor; he selected none; all work that came to his hands was his. ‘‘T am as ready,” he said, “‘to embark for America as for Ireland. All places are alike tome. I am attached to none in particular. Wherever the work of the Lord is to be carried on, that is my place for to-day.”’ THE RENOVATION OF A NATION What Wesley did for England only increases through the perspective of the years. On the occasion several years ago of the reopening after repairs and enlargement of Wesley’s Chapel, City Road, London, renewed attention was at- tracted to Wesley’s achievement and to Methodism. Many able and appreciative opinions were evoked with respect to the man and his work. Notable among them was an editorial utterance of The Spectator, London. Copying the article into its own columns The Methodist Times said: ‘‘Greater praise than this has never been uttered, but we believe that there is no exaggeration in it whatever.” The Spectator thought that England as a whole was ‘‘as truly interested in Wesley as in Shakespeare’’; and that it might ‘‘well be doubted whether in the long course of Berl AND PASTORATE sas. her history anyone has ever influenced her life in so direct, palpable, and powerful a way as has John Wesley.”’ Others had wrought: ‘‘But when all is said and done John Wesley remains the one supreme and towering figure, a charac- teristic product of England, and one of the noblest and most saintly of her sons.’’ His supreme title to fame was “‘that he arrested the moral and spiritual decline of England, and that he was the chief agent in the renewal of her inward and spiritual life.’ From what had Wesley saved England? The Spectator continues: ‘‘Though the story has often been told, we doubt whether any person who has either no vivid imagination or no very intimate acquaintance with the history of the time can realize how rotten was the condition of England in the middle of the last century. There seemed to be scarcely a healthy piece of social tissue. An ag- nostic Whiggism had degraded the Church from a spiritual organization into a mere political mechanism. . . . The hungry sheep looked up and were not fed; half the parishes in England were void of spiritual life, many were sunk in the lowest vice without restraint or reproof. The governing classes were perhaps even feebler and more corrupt than in the reign of the second Charles. Sir George Trevelyan in his admirable work on the American Revolution has shown how England’s failure in her struggle with her col- onies was in no small degree due to her immorality and corruption; and that was when a distinct movement up- ward had begun. What must have been the condition,a quarter of a century before? ... It seemed as though Eng- lish society were doomed to decadence. Humanly speak- ing, we may say that such a decadence would have ensued had it not been for the new movement of which Wesley was the leading religious and moral expression. ... What the mechanical morals of sleepy Anglican rectors could not do for England this holy man with his soul aflame with a 126 PRINCES OF THE CHRISEIARN sacred zeal and love accomplished. . . . We owe it largely to the Methodist movement that, while the French could only renew their outworn structure by violent revolution, the English could transform theirs by peaceable means.” When a man’s work has borne for a hundred years the beating of the tides which sweep evermore out of eternity upon the salient shores of time and yet provokes such a tribute as this he is perhaps prepared to endure calmly any further ravages of time. | He won the multitudes of England by the greatness of his compassion. The compassion of a great Christian heart moved and remade the masses. He was utterly without respect of persons, unless indeed like his Master he had a genius for finding the poor and neglected. Bishops and magistrates might rant, and either slur or incite the rabble he gathered to be his hearers; and even Samuel Wesley, his older brother, might speak contemptuously of White- field’s ‘‘tatterdemalions on the common’’; but none of these things moved John Wesley. He took a cast-off building, the old Foundry in London, and gathered a cast-off people, a people cast-off from re- ligion and the Church, and from morals, and decency, and good manners, and made of them a people prepared for the Lord. Forth from this Foundry, foundry now of human character and conduct, and no more of the implements of war—forth from this Foundry, as Bishop John P. New- man has said, there proceeded the ‘‘seven spirits of modern benevolence.” The Foundry, the first settled preach- ing place of the Methodists in London, was a Christian Church, a Christian school, a Christian home, a house of mercy for poor and destitute widows, a dispensary for the distribution of medicines to the poor, a book room for pro- viding cheap but approved literature, a bank for the savings of the thrifty, and for the relief of the temporarily dis- Peeri lo AND PASTORATE 127 tressed. Truly he never forgot a word he received from a serious man in hise arlier life, that ‘‘the Bible knows nothing of solitary religion.’”’ But the Foundry, ‘in streaming London’s central roar,’’ was not yet the full expression of his compassion for the poor. Miners, and colliers, and weavers, and spinners, and artisans, and laborers in various trades formed the bulk of the membership in the societies. At Kingswood among the colliers many of the noblest scenes of Wesley’s ministry were laid. When the Meth- odists had spoken of saving the American Indians, they had been challenged to go to Kingswood: ‘‘If you wish to convert heathens, go to Kingswood.” Right bravely did they accept the challenge. There at the age of eighty-one Wesley preached in the open air under the shade of trees which he himself had planted, and surrounded by the chil- dren of two generations of his own people who had passed away. Dr. J. H. Jowett used to say that he always read with great and tender interest that part of Wesley’s Journal where he records his first visit to Newcastle. The wicked- ness he finds there exceeds any he has seen elsewhere. There was vice, and the wretchedness which accompanies it, drunkenness, cursing, swearing even from the mouths of little children. He was shocked but not dismayed. This was his sublime conclusion: ‘Surely this place is ripe for the Master.’’ And when he had preached to them on that almost the tenderest of all texts, ‘‘I will heal their back- slidings, I will love them freely,’ they came about him, plucked him by the garments, and took him by the hand, till he was ‘‘almost trodden under foot out of pure love and kindness.’’ He started an orphanage at Newcastle, and a Quaker sent him one hundred pounds toward its needs. This man said that in a dream he had seen Wesley 128 PRINCES. OF THE-CHRIS#ias surrounded by so large a flock of sheep that he could not shelter them and he wanted to help him. He first gave himself to the people, and then gave them all he had. He was a man of a prodigal philanthropy. None ever cared less for money on his own account or knew better how to use it for the advantage of others. At Oxford when his income was thirty pounds he lived on twenty-eight, and gave away the rest. And still as his income was doubled and trebled he lived on the twenty- eight pounds and gave away the rest. But the sovereign expression of Wesley’s philanthropy was in his passion for souls. He cared so little for money because he cared so much for men. The crown of all his work was that the poor had the gospel again preached to them. This was what lifted England. This was what made Methodism. He revived what Bishop Lightfoot has called ‘‘that lost secret of Christianity, the compulsion of human souls.”’ He was set apart, as Farrar says, ‘“‘by the hands of an invisible consecration, to the task which even an archangel might have envied him of awakening a mighty revival of religious life’’ in pulpits that were dead, and in a slumbering Church, and in a corrupt society. He had a penchant for the poor. But he was not a par- tisan of the poor. He had access to the best life of the nation, intellectually, politically, socially. He conducted himself with a tireless patience toward the ecclesiastical authorities, and other forms of opposition to himself and his work. One of his high and conspicuous virtues was “‘a sovereign religious tolerance.”’ He desired ‘‘a league of- fensive and defensive with every soldier of Jesus Christ.”’ “Then think, and let think,’’ he remonstrated with the Bishop of Lincoln when he found in him a most unworthy narrowness of view. He knew England better than any other man in it, and PULPIT AND PASTORATE 129 his interest in men was as wide as his knowledge of their condition. As Winchester says: ‘‘He examines a society of colliers in some grimy little Yorkshire village on the state of their souls, and then he goes to his room and writes a letter to Lord Dartmouth or Lord North on the state of the nation.”’ Riding one day he overtook a stranger who persisted in an effort to draw him into an argument on the decrees involved in the Calvinistic belief of the time. Waxing wrathful in debate the man at length said: ‘‘ You are rotten at heart; and I take you for one of John Wesley’s followers.”’ ‘‘No,’’ was the calm reply, ‘‘I am John Wesley himself.’’ And then there was a rare trial of the legs of two horses. ‘‘He would gladly have run away outright,’’ says Wesley, ‘‘but being the better mounted of the two I kept close to his side, and endeavored to show him his heart until we came into the streets of Northampton.” The in- cident is a fine application of the advice of Archbishop Potter offered to Wesley early in his career: ‘‘If you desire to be extensively useful, do not spend your time and strength in contending for or against such things as areofa disputable nature, but in testifying against open and notorious vice, and in promoting real spiritual holiness.”’ THE CREATION OF A CHURCH Wesley lived and died a member and a minister of the Church of England. For a long time he kept his people as close as might be to its services and ordinances. He did not design a separate movement nor the creation of a Church. Had he so designed, doubtless the end could never have been so well accomplished. Speaking of the consum- mate work of the evangelists achieved in the writing of the Gospels, Dr. A. M. Fairbairn says they ‘‘did not know how great a thing they were doing: if they had known, they could not have done it, for that would have meant that they 9 eee 130 PRINCES: OF THE |CHRIS@iams conceived themselves as working, with the whole world looking on, at a model for all men to copy. If an author at- tempted to compose a history with a vision of all the ages standing at his elbow and reading his words, he would lose the serene eye which reflects the truth and would see double.’”’ So Wesley did not signal the world to see him build a Church. He labored on with a prodigious power of endurance, displaying under every trial, and despite all constraint, an indefatigable courage, and preaching with an unexampled effectiveness; but with an eye single to the immediate task. The end was inevitable as affairs stood in the Church of England at the time. But Provi- dence designed the separation, and not Wesley. Out of the spiritual loins of this man was to issue a progeny like to that of Abraham in numbers; and never- failing, never-tiring was his labor toward an end which mortal mind could scarcely have designed. He had a phenomenal capacity for work, and in his work he was methodical almost to a fault. If his people are to be like him, they could not have a better name than Methodists. ‘‘Leisure and I,” he wrote his mother from Oxford, ‘‘have parted company.”’ It was a perpetual dissolution. ‘‘They never met again.’’ When he was fairly fixed in his course, no danger, and hardly any disaster, could swerve him in the least. Though always in haste, he made the fine dis- tinction that he never permitted himself to be in a hurry. Dr. Samuel Johnson was very fond of his society. Said he to Boswell: “John Wesley’s conversation is good, but he is never at leisure. He is always obliged to go at a certain hour.’ That the old Doctor himself was never obliged to do. Speaking still more strongly at another time, he said: “I hate to meet John Wesley. The dog en- chants you with his conversation, and then breaks away to go and visit some old woman,” PUEPIU AND PASTORATE 131 He had a tough little body that could endure like leather. Fitchett says that he was ‘‘as insensible to vicissitudes of weather as a North Sea pilot.”” He preached his first open- air sermon just outside the city of Bristol on April 2, 1739, and his last at Winchelsea on October 7, 1790. Here lie fifty-one years “filled with a strain of toil almost without parallel in human experience.’”’ He came to Bristol when he had reached eighty-five years to keep a preaching en- gagement six miles out, and when offered a horse and urged to ride he replied: ‘‘I am ashamed that any Meth- odist preacher in tolerable health should make a difficulty of this’’; and he was off at once on foot. When he was still a year older he finds that he cannot write more than fifteen hours a day without injury to his eyes. In May, 1742, at the invitation of John Nelson, the most noted of his early lay preachers, Wesley went to the North of England and visited Newcastle. This visit was the beginning of his itinerant career. There is no following him after this. In the last fifty years of his life, which spanned the itinerant period, he traveled more than 250,000 miles, and preached over 40,000 sermons. He crossed the Irish Channel often enough to have carried him ten times around the globe, and visited remote mining towns and fishing villages which yet lie off the common ways of travel. From Newcastle-upon- Tyne to Gwennap Pit in Cornwall, where 10,000 people came to his early morning preaching, all England echoed to the tramp of his horse’s feet and wakened its ear to the constraint of his mighty voice. Between the two Octobers of his Journal, says Birrell, “‘there lies the most amazing record of human exertion ever penned or endured.’”’ When he was beyond seventy 30,000 people gathered at a time to hear him in Gwennap Pit. In his Journal he writes: ‘“T have entered the eighty-third year of my age. Tama wonder to myself. I am never tired, either with preaching, 132 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN writing, or traveling.’ Mr. John Morley counts Glad- stone’s speech at Gravesend in 1871 when he spoke for two hours to an audience of 20,000 as both physically and in- tellectually the greatest achievement of Gladstone’s career. But aside from the intellectual greatness of Gladstone’s ef- fort such a performance would hardly count in Wesley’s career. But it was not endurance alone which was needed in Wesley, for without his masterful courage endurance itself would have failed. Amid all the tumult into which he was repeatedly cast he was steadfast, immovable, serene, the one ‘‘unshakable soul who never doubted, never faltered, never grew discouraged.”’” He was “censured by bishops, cursed by High-Church clergy, and slandered by a host of pamphleteers,’”’ but no storm shook his soul. His ex- perience with mobs is one of the strangest chapters in English Church history. The Methodists were not in favor with magistrates and ministers. Squires and parsons sometimes led the mobs, and oftener incited them to their wild and violent actions. In justice to the masses among whom for the most part Wesley did his work this fact de- serves to be remembered. But he was a master of assemblies even among these turbulent masses. His rule, confirmed as he says by ex- perience, was ‘‘always to look a mob in the face.”’ It would almost seem that his firm and piercing and clear-glancing hazel eye had been made for that very purpose. Anyway these two good eyes glancing undaunted into the face of the mob served him a better purpose than guns or swords could have done, and were more effective than the some- times reluctant interference of a magistrate in his behalf. ‘“‘At Newcastle,” he says, ‘‘there was a great mob. I spent an hour in taming them, and then exhorted them for two hours more.” He records after the Wednesbury riots, the - PULPIT AND PASTORATE 133 fiercest he ever encountered, where he was pulled about and assaulted for hours, and brought in repeated danger of his life, that he was as calm through it all as if he had been at home in his study. Out of the mob strange defenders sometimes arose. In a rowdy London meeting a big Thames waterman squared his brawny front to the crowd, and said with an emphasis which compelled assent: ‘‘That gentleman says nothing but what is good. I say so; and there is not a man here shall say otherwise.’”? The captain of that same Wednes- bury riot, a burly prize fighter from the beer garden, sud- denly turned about, faced his own crowd, and said to Wesley: “Sir, I will spend my life for you. Follow me, and not a soul here shall touch a hair of your head.” And thus in these strange ways One who had counted the hairs of that noble gray head conveyed him safely away. But it was not the mob alone which called out his courage. Coming once to Hayle on the way to preach at St. Ives he encountered great difficulty in making the journey. “The sands between the towns,”’ says Cadman in his ‘‘ Three Re- ligious Leaders of Oxford,’”’ ‘“‘were covered with a rising tide, and a sea captain begged the old hero to wait until it had receded. But he had to be at St. Ives by a given time, and he called to his coachman, ‘Take the sea! Take the sea!’ At first the horses waded; ere long they were swimming, and the man on the box feared that all would be drowned. Wesley put his head out of the carriage to encourage him. ‘What is your name, driver?’ he inquired. ‘Peter, sir,’ was the reply. ‘Peter, fear not; thou shalt not sink,’ exclaimed the patriarch. When they reached St. Ives, after attending to Peter’s comfort, he went into the pulpit, drenched as he was, and preached. The philosophi- cal coolness and brevity with which he recorded these and similar adventures show that he regarded them as merely 134 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN incidental to that cause he had assigned as the sole purpose of his existence, and to which he had consecrated all his gifts.” What though these be the gifts and qualities with which he was so highly endowed, and though this be the measure of the zeal with which he employed them, still he could not have come to his goal except he had possessed extraordinary power as a preacher. His possession of such exceptional power cannot be easily disputed; though the full expression of it does not appear in his printed sermons. When does it ever so appear? Much of the power and effect of the preaching of Phillips Brooks, Alexander McLaren, R. W. Dale, H. P. Liddon, J. B. Mozley, C. H. Spurgeon, and H. S. Holland appears in their printed sermons. But even in these instances to read the sermon is not to hear the man. Every preacher who is great in his pulpit utterance has some secret which is not readily committed to paper. Wesley’s printed sermons are not by any means without value. They are biblical and religious, logical, are expressed with unusual clearness, and they search the conscience. At least one Methodist preacher remembers well this last ef- fect upon himself as he read them when going through his Conference Course of Study. Bishop Watts-Dichfield, of the Church of England, has recently stated that every year he goes back to the sermons of Wesley and Spurgeon, for, says he, wherever either one of them begins he always ends by telling a man how to be saved. And perhaps there are still a good many who need to be told this very thing. Natural gifts never fully explain great preaching. White- field’s lips were more eloquent, and his heart more emotion- al; but Wesley was the greater preacher. It was not merely that he made the fields his auditorium and the skies his sounding board. ‘‘As a field preacher,’’ says Taylor, ‘‘the courage, the self-possession, the temper, the tact which PULPIT AND PASTORATE 135 John Wesley displayed place him in a very high position. When encountering the ruffianism of mobs and magistrates, he showed a firmness, as well as a guileless skill, combined with the dignity and courtesy of a gentleman.’ These are great aids to preaching, and all preachers might covet their possession. But they do not suffice. When John Wesley preached, the luster of eternity itself shone upon English hill and moor, and the solemn dread of God and his will, and yet the sweet assurance of his mercy bowed the hearts of the multitude in awe. The hearts of men were melted under his preaching as by the demonstrable power of the Spirit of God. John Nelson had first heard Whitefield, but this had not prepared him for Wesley. ““My heart,’ he says, ‘‘beat like the pendulum of a clock; I thought he spoke to no one but me. This man can tell the secrets of my heart; but he hath not left me there, for he hath shown me the remedy, even the blood of Jesus.” It is estimated that he preached five hundred sermons in the last nine months of the year 1739, and only five of them in churches. Five years later he was turned away from Oxford after preaching in St. Mary’s. Strange to say here was one of the plainest proofs of his power. The spiritual religion he preached was resisted in these circles. He was denied the churches and turned to the open fields. He found no more place among the heads of colleges, and turned to the humbler people, who gladly crowded his societies. He was even denied the church at Epworth, and so taking his stand upon his father’s tombstone he preached in the churchyard to the largest congregation ever seen in the place. These services were continued for several days, and were attended with amazing spiritual power, the cries of penitents often interrupting the voice of the preacher. One evening a gentleman of the vicinity who had not been inside a church for thirty years alighted 136 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN from his carriage and stood on the edge of the crowd listen- ing, motionless as a statue. Wesley approached and asked him, “Sir, are you a sinner?” “Sinner enough,” replied the man in a broken voice, and stood, still staring upward until his wife and servants came and led him away. Ten years later Wesley met him again, a happy old man awaiting his release. Wesley was wise, too, in the substance and ordering of his preaching. He preserved in his own preaching the balance of a splendid sanity which often must have been sorely tested, and yet kept close to the evangelical essen- tials. A still more difficult task was to hold his untrained helpers to sanity and sense, and yet to preserve in them the savor of a vigorous evangelism. But in this also he was eminently successful, proving himself to be an admirable and a fatherly guide and governor of his helpers in their untried endeavors. As a principal guide to his sanity in the conduct of such enormous and delicate affairs he had at his hands the Holy Scriptures which he knew so well and on which he relied so firmly. ‘‘Intentionally or not,” says Bishop Handley Moule, “‘his directions follow the lines of the Epistle to the Romans.”’ Wesley’s preaching, together with his wisdom in the ordering of the great affairs which were providentially committed to his hands, was as fit for the ends to be accomplished as the Church has rarely seen. “‘By no preconcerted scheme,’ says Dr. Cadman, ‘“‘nor under the impulse of the moment, but calmly, de- liberately, and with the love that endures to the end, Wes- ley became the most devoted, laborious, and successful evangelist the Christian Church has known since apostolic days.” Step by step Methodism moved toward consolidation into a separate Church. His movement, masterful as his management was, outgrew Wesley’s hands, as indeed such PULPIT AND PASTORATE 137 a movement outgrows the hands of any man. The lay preaching, the organization of classes, the field-preaching, the break with Calvinism, the building of separate houses, the administration of the sacraments apart from the Church of England services, the fixing of the Poll Deed for the safe holding of the houses, above all the ordination of Coke, Whatcoat, and Vasey for the work in America—all these but drew the movement out into greater distinctness, and were stones in the foundation of a new and separate Church. Wesley till the end maintained a deep and tender con- cern for his people, and particularly for their unity and spiritual prosperity. In his last letter to the Methodists in America he wrote: ‘‘ Lose no opportunity of declaring to all men that the Methodists are one people in all the world, and that it is their full determination so to continue.” At the first Conference after his death Joseph Brad- ford produced a letter written in 1785 in which he en- joined them that no spirit of a false or injurious in- equality should ever exist among them. Here he had the preachers especially in mind. For some who were not named among the hundred who were to give validity to the Deed of Declaration, or Poll Deed, had feared that those who were so named might after Wesley’s death take occasion of this advantage to oppress them. ‘‘I beseech you,” he says, ‘“‘by the mercies of God, that you never avail yourselves of the Deed of Declaration to assume any superiority over your brethren, but let all things go on among those itinerants who choose to remain together exactly in the same manner as when I was with you, so far as circumstances will permit. In particular, I beseech you, if ever you loved me, and if you now love God and your brethren, to have no respect for persons in stationing the preachers, in choosing children for the Kingswood School, in disposing of the yearly contribution and the 138 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN preachers’ fund, or any other public money. But do all things with a single eye, as I have done from the beginning. Go on thus, doing all things without prejudice or partiality, and God will be with you even to the end.” “WHEN THAT WuicH DREW FROM OUT THE BOUNDLESS DEEP TurRNS AGAIN HOME” On Wednesday evening, February 23, 1791, Wesley preached his last sermon in a magistrate’s house at Leather- head. The next day he wrote his famous letter to Wilber- force on slavery, and sent his busy pen before him to its last rest. On Wednesday morning, March 2, 1791, he died in triumph in his house in City Road, London, bequeathing a last benediction to the latest generation of the multitudes of Methodists around the world: ‘‘The best of all is, God is with us.’’ His body lay in state in City Road Chapel, and ten thousand people came through in a day to look for the last time upon his face. In order to avoid a vast crowd and a crush at the funeral he was buried in the early morn- ing of Wednesday, March 9. Of all the briefer tributes to Wesley, that of Charles H. Spurgeon, though he lived long afterwards, is the most com- manding and the most eloquent. Said he: ‘‘When John Wesley died he left behind him four silver teaspoons, a teapot, and the Methodist Church.”’ Some of his furniture is still on exhibition in the City Road Chapel; but Spurgeon did not much underestimate the material content of his last will and testament. But he left more than the Meth- odist Church. ‘The Methodists themselves,’ says John Richard Green in his ‘History of the English People,” ‘‘were the least result of the Methodist revival.’’ ‘‘Wes- ley’s true monument,” says Fitchett, ‘is the England of the twentieth century, and the whole changed temper of the modern world.” ‘‘He not only founded the Wesleyan PUGET AND PASTORATE 139 community,” says Farrar, ‘“‘but, working through the heart of the very Church which had despised him, he flashed fire into her whitening embers’”’ and redeemed her altars from decay. ‘“‘It is no exaggeration,” Lecky has declared, “‘to say that Wesley has had a wider constructive influence in the sphere of practical religion than any other man who has appeared since the sixteenth century.” Wesley was buried in the grounds of the City Road Chap- el, London, and his sepulcher has become a shrine. Dean Stanley once came there, wishing for a closer contact with the departed than he found in the memorial tablet which his good offices procured to the Wesleys in the Great Abbey. He asked the old man who kept the grounds, asked as if by the constraint of the custom of his own Church, by whom the cemetery was consecrated. The old man’s brave and quiet and sufficient answer was: ‘‘It was consecrated by the bones of that holy man, that holy servant of God, John Wesley.” This is a part of the human side of the story of how a great Christian movement arose in the earth and outgrew the hands of the man who started it and issued in the creation of a great branch of the Christian Church. What a power for God and humanity was bound up in that in- vincible little body, in that alert mind, in that eager heart! ‘‘Let not that image fade Ever, O God, from out the minds of men, Of him thy messenger and stainless priest, In a brute, sodden, and unfaithful time, Early and late, o’er land and sea, on-driven; In youth, in eager manhood, age extreme— Driven on forever back and forth the world, By that divine, omnipotent desire— The hunger and the passion for men’s souls. ...oend us again, O Spirit of all truth! High messengers of dauntless faith and power Like him whose memory this day we praise.... 140 | PRINCES OF THE PULPIT Let kindle, as before, from his bright torch, Myriads of messengers aflame with thee To darkest places bearing light divine: ... So shall the world, That ever surely climbs to thy desire, Grow swifter to thy purpose and intent.” V if HORACE BUSHNELL (1802-1876) ANCESTRAL AND ACADEMIC ADVANTAGE His mother, Bushnell said in a late autobiographic frag- ment, deeply as she loved him and tenderly as she cared for him, had vanished long years ago; but God stayed by him still. No violence would be done to any of the im- portant facts or considerable circumstances of his life if this reflection were taken as a biographic clue. What God and his mother were to him accounted above all the other influences which shaped his life for what he was and what he accomplished. In a multitude of instances this will of course be true, but not always so recognizably true as in the case of Horace Bushnell. His devotion to his mother never wavered, and his trust in God never faltered. He was the oldest of six children, and was born at Litch- field, Conn., on April 14, 1802. His early lot was cast among a thrifty and an enterprising people in one of the most pleasant and attractive parts of New England. The removal of the family in his childhood to New Preston, about fourteen miles away, did not alter either of these circumstances. The surroundings of the homestead were still most picturesque and attractive. Nature seems almost to have been aware of the presence of the young mind which drew so eagerly upon the depths of her calm and majesty, and elicited the action of her sublimity upon itself, (141) 142 PRINCES OF “THE CHRIS Tis ‘‘Nor less I deem that there are Powers Which of themselves our minds impress; That we can feed this mind of ours In a wise passiveness. Think you, ’mid all this mighty sum Of things forever speaking, That nothing of itself will come, But we must still be seeking:”’ His deepest impressions Dr. Munger thinks did not come from contact with men nor from books, but from nature; wherein there lies the record of a circumstance which did not fail in its effect upon the tender and responsive sus- ceptibilities of the boy who was destined at length to move in spheres so much wider than the circuit of the Con- necticut hills. Unconsciously his mind and imagination were in training for the sweep of those wider distances which were not yet present to either his eye or ear. His description of his paternal grandmother, written at the request of friends in his old age, is in Bushnell’s best form. And it has points of interest beyond the limits of the Bushnell family. ‘‘Her height was less than five feet,” he says. ‘‘Her form was slight and perfectly erect. Her step was elastic, as if she had something to do and was doing it. Her sharp black eye seemed to smite intelligence into people and almost into things about her. She was a very decided Methodist in her religion, yet given more to ways of sound perception than to rhapsodies and frames of experience. She had been a member for many years of the Calvinistic Church at South Canaan, but had been so dread- fully swamped in getting her experience through the five- point subtleties that she nearly went distracted. But a Methodist preacher happened to come that way, and she went to hear him. His word brought light. She came out of all her troubles into a large place, where the joy of the Buell eAND PASTORATE 143 Lord lifted her burdens and took away the horror under which she lay. Henceforth she could only be a Methodist; and she went out in the emigration carrying a large stock of Methodist books with her to do what she could in laying foundations. As yet there was no public worship in the settlement. But as soon as the new log house was ready, she undertook to make it a place for Sunday worship. She put it on her husband, a very modest, plain man, to offer prayer. And she selected a young man about twenty years of age, whose family she knew in Connecticut, to read the sermon. She had no thought of his being a Christian, and he had as little of being such himself. She only knew him as a jovial, hearty youth, with enough of the constitutional fervors in him, as she thought, to make a good reader, and that determined her choice. He read well, and continually better, as he had more experience, till finally her prayers began to find large expectation in him. ‘Advancing in this manner, she by and by selected a sermon in which she hoped he might preach to himself. He read with a fervor and unction which showed that he was fulfilling her hope. When the little assembly broke up, she accosted him, asking him to remain a few minutes after they were gone. Then she said to him, having him by himself, ‘Do you know, my dear young friend, that you have God’s call upon you to be a Methodist preacher?’ ‘No,’ he answered promptly, ‘I am not even a Christian; how ean I be called to be a preacher?’ ‘No matter for that,’ she replied, ‘you are called both to be a Christian and a preacher; and one for the sake of the other, even as Paul himself was! I think I say this by direction. And now let me request of you, on your way home, to go aside from the path into some quiet place in the woods, where you will not be interrupted, and there let this matter be settled before God, as he will help you.’” The subject of 144 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN this wise and effective constraint was none other than Elijah Hedding, afterwards a talented and distinguished bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. On being asked by a friend in his later life when he first became conscious of his own powers Bushnell’s reply was: “In a little old schoolhouse that stood in your pasture lot, when I was sitting on a slab with legs in it so long that my feet did not touch the floor, then I first got the idea that I was a power.”’ The slab on which he sat when this im- pression came to him was a part of the rude furniture of his first schoolroom, and his age was about five years. Ina later school he appeared defensively in a pugilistic rdle. His good nature was mistaken for weakness and subjected him to a good deal of ill treatment. When forbearance ceased to be a virtue he challenged one of the roughest and meanest of his oppressors, a boy much above his own size, and gave him a sound thrashing. There were no further mistakes about his good nature. He passed on from school to school, having had in the process fine training in public speech through the exercises of a debating society of which he became a very active member when only a boy. He was educated to hard work. And he had the dupli- cate advantage of being educated by hard work. Mrs. Cheney, his daughter, in her ‘Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell,’’ says that he did the full work of a man for at least five years before he came to the age of a man, being engaged at his tasks oftentimes from thirteen to fourteen hours a day. His father was a farmer and also a manu- facturer on a small scale, his product in the latter capacity having been cloth goods. Horace Bushnell spent the first twenty-one years of his life on the farm and in the factory. He had his winters in school, but the school was rather an interval from work than the work an interval from school. At fourteen he began in the mill, working there in the EULCEIT “AND PASTORATE 145 summer, and having at the same time turns upon the farm, plowing or harvesting as the season required. He thus had opportunity for education in the realism of nature as well as in those more poetic and philosophical aspects in which he came so to delight. His father was a Methodist, but it is evident that Horace, though he was to be a preacher, received more benefit from the discipline of his father’s farm and factory than from the tenets of his religion. The elder Bushnell was also an administrator of the law in the minor form of a justice of the peace. When he had heard cases on the bench he would go over them with Horace and ask his advice upon the final decision of them. It was perhaps in this way that the younger man acquired that taste for the law which afterwards inclined him to enter that profession. The mother of this brood of Bushnells was a homekeeper and an Episcopalian. Horace received much from her in religious ways and otherwise, but nothing from her de- nominational connections. Both the father and the mother on their removal to New Preston became members of the Congregational Church. This change came at a time early enough to lead the children in the same direction. His younger brother, Dr. George Bushnell, who was him- self a minister, referring to the home training with special regard to its effect upon Horace, said: “If ever there was a child of Christian nurture, he was one; nurtured, I will not say, in the formulas of theology as sternly as some; for though he had to learn the Westminster Catechism, its formulas were not held as of equal or superior authority to that of the Scriptures; not nurtured in what might be called the emotional elements of religion as fervently as some, but nurtured in the facts and principles of the Chris- tian faith in their bearing upon the life and character; and if ever a man was true to the fundamental principles and 10 146 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN the customs which prevailed in his early home, even to his latest years, he was.’’ His school life itself had its springs in the home through the earnest and intelligent attention of the mother to the interests and work of the school. In the account he gave of the dealings of his mother with him, and the influence of her character upon him, he has written one of the most intimate and revealing chapters of his life. Concluding the great tribute, he says: “‘And in all these points—my education; my exchange, without upbraiding, of the ministry for the law; my return to New Haven, which was to be my exchange from the law to the ministry, especially the two occasions last named—I acknowledge my sole indebtedness, not so much to my mother simply, as to the very remarkable something hidden in her charac- ter. Other women are motherly enough, tender, self- sacrificing, faithful; but what I owe to her I owe to her wonderful insight and discretion. By pushing with too much argument; by words of upbraiding and blame; by a teasing, over-affected manner; or by requiring me to stand to my engagements, she could have easily thrown me out of range and kept me back from self-recovery—nay, she might have thrown me quite off the hinge of good nature, and so far have battered the conceit of home as to leave it no longer a bond of virtue. But she went to her mark instead, sure and still as the heavens, and said just nothing, save when it was given her. Such wisdom, as I look upon it, marks a truly great character; and it is a character not common, whether to men or women’ I have only to add that she lived long enough to see some pleasant fruits of her life and to hope for more.’ WRESTED FROM THE MINISTRY TO THE LAW When Bushnell was nineteen years of age he united with the Church. He felt that God in his tender mercy had led PULPIT AND PASTORATE 147 him to Jesus, but there had been as yet no settling of his life and conduct upon the basis of a definite and fixed re- ligious conviction. Nevertheless he was now sufficiently established in his course to wish for the college education which earlier he had felt he could not accept out of the limited resources of the family exchequer. Further prepa- ration was made in private ways for college entrance and he was admitted to Yale in 1823. No particular distinction seems to have attached to his career in college; though Munger says that ‘“‘his college life was marked by intel- lectual earnestness, and ‘a wonderful consciousness of power.’’’ He was graduated in regular course in 1827. On quitting college he began to teach school, but was shortly offered an editorial position on the staff of the Journal of Commerce in New York. The genesis of this engagement was the impression made by his address on his graduation from Yale. He remained with the paper for ten months, but found it ‘‘a terrible life,’ and was con- strained to return to New Haven, where he spent six months in the law school. His intention was to settle in some West- ern city and make his way into the practice of law. But the even flow of his own purpose was to suffer a decisive interruption. His mother had made a prenatal dedication of him to the Christian ministry. He had so far yielded himself to her desire as to feel on his own account that he ought to enter the ministry, though he hardly could have known all that had passed in her heart. She had studiously thrown her will for him upon the practice of a wise reti- cence. But he knew well enough what her expectation was, and he had given it support. One of the crises of his life was upon him. There were hindrances in his way and reasons why he was reluctant to take up at all the work of the ministry. Indeed, in his particular circumstances there seemed to be insurmountable obstacles to his doing 148 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN so. He had his own plans and ambitions, and these were not to be easily laid aside. The ministry did not seem to him to offer a congenial sphere for the exercise of his gifts. There was in him a deep temperamental disinclination to the appeal which the ministry made. In truth, he was in such a state of unsettlement with respect to his own re- ligious experience that he could make no proper approach to the questions involved in his entering the ministry. He failed to understand the true position and place of the Church in society, and as a consequence misapprehended the position of the minister himself. All this he saw clearly enough when he had made trial of the matter. But for the time he did not and, indeed, could not see clearly. ‘‘He had,” says Brastow, “‘something like the same struggle with respect to entering the ministry that Robertson had. With Robertson the difficulty was largely a sense of spir- itual unfitness and the attractions of a more active life that appealed to his imagination. With Bushnell it seems to have been the attractions of the legal profession. .. . Both of these princely men entered the ministry oppressed with a certain sense of unfitness. It is a very noteworthy fact that many men, who have proved themselves to be, as we say, ‘born preachers,’ men who in all ways were fitted for the work of the ministry, men most devoutly conscien- tious and spiritually minded, and who have exerted a most powerful influence in their day, have had this shrinking sense of unfitness. The instances are numerous. It is noteworthy, too, that in every case—and in these two cases preéminently—they have risen superior to it, and the very shrinking seems to have been a condition of greater power.” So the will of Bushnell struggled against the inclinations of his conscience. But there was his mother’s deep desire, and her solemn dedication of his unissued life to God, PULPIT AND PASTORATE 149 Whatever he might do, how could he recall that dedica- tion, how could he take himself off the altar on which she had so trustfully laid him? She might have been mistaken; but he was afraid she was not. All this he seems to have felt, whatever she may have or may not have told him about the secret transaction between herself and God. There, too, was her wise management of the matter, her silent and unobtrusive insistence upon her certainty of the course he ought to take. Her influence over him was profound and decisive, and all the more so because of the wisdom of her method and the singular spiritual insight which governed all her action. It was the constraint of his mother’s desire which under God made him a minister. Moreover, there was underneath his reluctance a remarkable fitness for the work of Christian preaching. He was preéminently a preacher. His outstanding gifts marked him for the pulpit and designated him to its ministry. Brastow thinks he certainly had in him the making of a philosopher. This may be doubted. He had in him a certain aptitude for philosophy no doubt; but that the fullness of the gifts of the philosopher resided in him does not so readily appear. His supreme aptitude was for preaching. His very genius fitted him for it. Eminent success attained in a particular calling cannot safely be taken as a warrant that any man would have succeeded equally well in another. While at home on a farewell visit en route to his proposed settlement in the West, Bushnell received a notice of his appointment as a tutor in Yale College. He wrote a letter to President Day declining the appointment. But his mother intervened. ‘‘As I was going out of the door,” he says, ‘‘putting the wafer in my letter, | encountered my mother and told her what I was doing. Remonstrating now very gently, but seriously, she told me that she could not think I was doing my duty. ‘You have settled this 150 PRINCES OF CTHE CHRIS) Eas question without any consideration at all that I have seen. Now, let me ask it of you to suspend your decision till you have at least put your mind to it. This you certainly ought to do, and my opinion still further is [she was not apt to make her decision heavy in this manner] that you had best accept the place.’ I saw at a glance where her heart was, and I could not refuse the postponement suggested. The result was that I was taken back to New Haven, where, partly by reason of a better atmosphere in religion, I was to think myself out of my overthinking, and discover how far above reason is trust.’’ He had tried to dig out a re- ligion by his head, and found that all the while he was pushing it practically away. He entered upon his service as tutor at Yale in the au- tumn of 1829, continuing at the same time his study of law and intending still to enter upon the practice of that pro- fession. Then there came a great revival in the college, sweeping almost the entire community into a new and more profound religious experience. Munger quotes the follow- ing account of the revival and Bushnell’s relation to it from Dr. Robert McEwen, who himself was at the time a tutor in the college: ‘‘ What, then, in this great revival was this man to do, and what was to become of him? Here he was, ... ready to be admitted to the bar, successful and popular as a college instructor, but all at sea in doubt, and default religiously. That baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire compassed him all about. When the work was at its height, he and his division of students, who fairly wor- shiped him, stood unmoved apparently when all beside were ina glow. The band of tutors had established a daily meeting of their own, and all were now united in it but Bush- nell. What days of travail and wondering those were over him! None dare approach him. He stood far more than primus inter pares among all. Only Henry Durant tried PULPIT AND PASTORATE 151 carefully and cautiously to hit some joint in his armor. But even he, though free in his confidence, seemed to make no advance, when, all at once, the advance came boldly and voluntarily from Bushnell himself. Said he to Durant: ‘I must get out of this woe. Here am I what I am, and all these young men hanging to me in their indifference amidst this universal earnestness on every side.’ And we were told what he said he was going to do—to invite these young men to meet him some evening in the week, when he would lay bare his position and their own, and declare to them his determination and the decision they ought to make with him for themselves. Perhaps there never was pride more lofty laid down voluntarily in the dust than when Horace Bushnell thus met those worshipers of his. The result was overwhelming.’’ When he had been beaten about for many days in darkness and tempest and had not been able to find the land, the greatest crisis of his life reached its crest as he tossed upon the flood one day alone in his room. Coming back to the college after years had tested the experience in the stern issues of life and the ministry, he adverted to the circumstance of his conversion by way of illus- trating a point in his well-known sermon “On _ the Dissolving of Doubts” preached in the chapel. Going on to say that in the crisis of his experience he had asked him- self whether there was any truth which he really did be- lieve, and whether he had acted up to the requirements of what he believed, he continues: ‘‘‘ Here, then, will I begin. If there is a God, as I rather hope there is, and very dimly believe, he is a right God. If I have lost him in wrong, perhaps I shall find him in right. Will he not help me, or, perchance, even be discovered to me?’ Now the decisive moment is come. He drops on his knees, and there he prays to the dim God, dimly felt, confessing the dimness for honesty’s sake, and asking for help that he may begin 1o2 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN a right life. He bows himself on it as he prays, choosing it to be his unalterable, eternal endeavor. It is an awfully dark prayer, in the look of it; but the truest and best he can make, the better and the more true that he puts no orthodox colors on it; and the prayer and the vow are so profoundly meant that his soul is borne up into God’s_ help, as it were, by some unseen chariot, and permitted to see the opening of heaven even sooner than he opens his eyes. He rises, and it is as if he had gotten wings. The whole sky is luminous about him... . After this all trouble- some doubt of God’s reality is gone, for he has found him!”’ He was loath not to disclose, more definitely than hitherto the sermon had done, the identity of the subject of this experience and he feelingly remarked: ‘‘There is a story lodged in the little bedroom of one of these dormitories, which I pray God his recording angel may note, allowing it never to be lost.” It was an experience hardly less poignant than that which Frederick W. Robertson had in the biting solitudes of the Tyrol. And the effect was the same in each case: it settled one man and the other unwaveringly in the con- trolling convictions of his life. Bushnell’s experience in the revival opened to him the door into the ministry. He entered the Yale Divinity School in 1831. Dr. N. W. Taylor was his ablest and most influential teacher in theology. Neither of them, however, was ever able greatly to appreciate the other, and much less came of their contact in its influence upon Bushnell than might otherwise have been the case. There were certain theological questions, pertaining mostly to Cal- vinism, which were in a state of agitation at the time; and there were some questions of casuistry pertaining to the treatment of slavery; and Taylor and Bushnell were at the opposite poles on these questions. Both men were at fault PULPIT AND PASTORATE 153 in the matter; and yet there was a sense in which neither of them was at fault: for it must be conceded that each of them was thoroughly honest in his opinion and perfectly straightforward in his action. Bushnell was much in- fluenced from his college life onward by Coleridge’s ‘‘ Aids to Reflection,’’ owing more to it, he said, than any other book except the Bible. But with all his powers of reflection he seems to have been drawn more and more to the idea that ‘‘the heart makes the theologian.” He obtained his license to preach and had expected then to leave New Haven. But a tender attraction which he had found in a Bible class of young ladies he had-begun to teach held him, and he returned for another winter, occu- pying the time in writing sermons and in preaching occa- sionally. ENTHRONED IN HARTFORD—PREACHER AND PASTOR Nobody would write it the other way; he was preacher and pastor, and not pastor and preacher. Nevertheless, there need be no inference here that he was neglectful of his pastoral obligations. He acknowledged this to be a difficult and defective side of his service. Still he strove to perform it and wished to know personally all his people. He visited them all around once a year, and more frequently as occasion required. He went to Hartford in the first instance merely as a pulpit supply under the terms of an engagement which bound him for only a short time. He confessed afterwards with some mortification that at the time he had not expected to remain long in the ministry. ,, “T thought if I could sometime be called to a professorship ~ of moral philosophy,’ he said, “‘it would be a more satis- factory and higher field of exertion.’”’ By the time he was moved to make this admission, however, he was able to go on and say: ‘‘ Now all other employments, even the highest 154 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAR and most honorable, appear to me petty and dry compared with the ministry of Jesus Christ, and it seems an offense to be repented of that I should have ever have allowed any- thing else to come into comparison with this.”’ Happily his course ran on contrary to his own designs and soon the Hartford Church called him by a unanimous vote to its regular pastorate. Shortly afterwards he received his or- dination. Already he is writing out in full two sermons a week for his pulpit. These he read. At this time he never extemporized. Later he was driven to the extemporaneous method by ill health. Whether his earlier method had anything to do with his ill health does not clearly appear. The years ran on in Hartford with their usual quota of events. In the year of his settlement there Bushnell was married to Miss Mary Apthorp, of New Haven. Their wedlock was ennobled by the purity of the character of each of them and by the singleness of the devotion of each to the other. There was an early appearance of ill health on his part from which he was never afterwards wholly freed. He was offered a college presidency and declined. Wes- leyan College, of Middletown, Conn., conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Divinity. He lost a child by death and found himself sorely smitten. But by this death he said he had learned more of experimental religion than in all his life before. Early in 1845 there was a complete breakdown in his health, and he spent ayear in Europe. Two or three years after his return, at the end of an earnest quest, he found his life flowing in a deeper, steadier current of religious faith and devotion than ever before. The effect of this fresh and fuller experience upon his preaching was natural and noticeable. In the meantime he was delivering addresses, theological and literary, on various occasions with both open and subtle effectiveness and power. ‘In his writing PULPIT AND; PASTORATE 155 y and speaking,’ says Dr. C. A. Bartol, an intimate friend and admirer, a minister of the Unitarian Church, “was transcendent and consummate, though unconscious, art. He was cast in the rarest mold of the great Sculptor’s fashion and design; but his unblemished deportment was his wedding garment, and his transport of devotion his daily assumption into the skies.”’ At the end of twenty years of service in the pastorate of the North Church, Hartford, he reviewed his ministry there, expressing especial satisfaction in the fact that he could feel that providence had put him there. ‘‘My con- viction has been more and more confirmed,” he said, “that I am placed among you by the call of God, here and nowhere else to fulfill the particular errand for which I was sent into the world.” There were still marked alternations in the state of his health, every variation toward the unfavorable side causing him more serious apprehension than the one which had gone before. He returned from a long sojourn in California in January, 1857, apparently in perfect health. But the comforting expectations thereby aroused were doomed to a speedy dissipation. The great revival of 1857-58 swept into Hartford, and Bushnell threw himself very heartily into the demands which this made upon him. He resorted to extemporaneous preaching and found himself more effective in the attempt than he had dared to hope. One of his deacons remarked upon this and thought he should never preach any more written sermons. Failing health compelled him at the end of twenty-six years to resign his pastorate, the only one he ever held. His people generously made him a gift of $10,000, and he went out in quest of the health he was never to find. He struggled on, a part of the time on only one lung, for seven- 156 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN teen years longer, writing much and preaching occasional- ly, and then laid down his withered body in the city of his adoption in the early morning of February 17, 1876. He had taken an active interest in the civic as well as the re- ligious life of the city which he had rendered proud of his citizenship, and the spacious public park there was changed in his honor to bear his name. As the death twilight had begun to draw him within its somber folds he was visited by a dear friend, the Rev. Joseph Twichell. They had talked of the last inexplicable things until the consciousness of a silent Presence made them silent. Then Bushnell said: ‘“‘Pray, my brother, pray.” ‘‘You pray,” returned the other. So Bushnell began, and burying his face in his hands, he poured out such a rapture of trust in the living God that Twichell said: ‘‘I was afraid to put out my hand lest I should touch God.” THEOLOGICAL ENTANGLEMENTS Theological dissent began in Bushnell in his seminary days. One of his instructors of the time said he was a ‘‘t’other side man.’’ The saying can hardly be without some foundation in truth. Still it must be said that, though he did sit with the opposition, he did not differ from prev- alent orthodox opinion merely for the sake of the difference. He had a strong bent toward independence of mind; and he had some of the defects of this quality. He had but the slightest capacity for receiving from others, and this of necessity restricted his own viewpoint. Both Brastow and Munger, each of whom has given a valuable study of the man, his method, and his ministry, have noted this. Bras- tow has said that his neglect of what others had done and thought and said was the serious fault of his life. When this inability to profit by the thinking of others was joined PULPIT AND PASTORATE 157 to his confidence in his ability to do his own thinking and to shape his own opinions, the result could not always be either an advantage to himself or tend to bring him into amicable relations with those from whom he differed. He was a brilliant but not a balanced thinker. He loved the truth with an undivided mind. He was willing to pay any price for its possession. And he was willing to obey without parley or palaver at once its least and its highest behests. But his subjective prepossessions outweighed in the scales of his thinking what was sometimes the saner thinking of others. But his solitariness was, as Dr. Austin Phelps has said, not an affectation of independence. ‘It was in the original make of the man. He was by nature a solitaire in his thinking.’’ But even so, the defects of the quality were inescapable. Almost from the beginning of his ministry in Hartford there were murmurs of disapprobation of certain opinions he expressed. This grew on the part of many into settled opposition to the position he occupied. He did not mean to be heretical. Some men like it for its own sake. But Bushnell was too big for that. He did not mean to be a heretic; nor did he think he was. He believed that on the controverted points he differed from prevailing opinion only in that he had gone back to original orthodoxy. His peculiar views on the limitations of language only compli- cated the situation. Language manifestly has its limita- tions, particularly as a means of expressing spiritual truth. But it cannot bear such limitations as Bushnell imposed - upon it and be still a trustworthy medium of communicating religious truth from man to man. From causes such as these the theological entanglements in which he was involved resulted. His views on the Trinity and the Atonement were vigorously challenged; and there was an even more serious dispute over his views 158 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN with regard to the fall of man and his depravity and re- generation. He had his opponents and his defenders, and there were long-continued efforts to bring him to trial for heresy. A committee to consider charges against him was appointed by the General Association of the Congregational Churches of Connecticut. A majority report exonerated him, and this report by a considerable majority was adopted by the Association. Ineffectual efforts to force a trial persisted for a long time. At length his Church withdrew from the Consociation of which it was a member, and a trial after that action, though not impossible, was much more difficult. Indeed the whole matter of the trial of a minister for heresy under the form of organization of the Congregational Churches is beset with many difficulties. The mother of Phillips Brooks once wrote him a letter in which she warned him against certain of the sermons of Bushnell as being no better than the Unitarianism under which she had suffered all her young life. When he had passed beyond the reach of human trials of whatever sort, Dr. Phelps wrote that, while he had often been provoked to dissent from Bushnell’s theological views, he found the inner spirit of the man when he came near him to be beauti- fully and profoundly Christlike, if that of uninspired man ever was, and that whatever the forms of his belief may have been he was eminently a man of God. PRESTIGE AS A PREACHER Bushnell began his ministry—save for occasional preach- ing which went before and some after his active ministry— in the pulpit in which he ended it. What did that pulpit mean the first time he ascended it? And what did it mean when he left it to his successor? By how much did he in- crease the measure and meaning of it? Did he take a mere pedestal and build a great figure in the history of preaching BULELE AND: PASTORATE 159 upon it? or did both pedestal and figure vanish when he was gone? Did he take that pulpit and establish it like a city set upon a hill? or did he leave the city around him in darkness? It is easy to write extravagantly of a.man like Bushnell. But must not a frankly affirmative answer to all these questions command a ready assent? The develop- ment of life, the growth of a man, is a process which is still girt round with ineffaceable lines of mystery, as in every case we must recognize. But the very mystery contributes a certain increase of interest to the study. There were notable ways in the case of Bushnell in which both his mind and the man were fashioned for the business of Christian preaching: 1. He had to begin with an intuitional order of intellect as distinguished from that character of mind which is more severely logical and scientific in its processes. It is not the safest nor always the sanest order of mind. It may too much disregard those processes which, though they must go on foot and require much plodding and patience, are nevertheless requisite means of tutoring the mind in its search for knowledge and truth. ‘‘ Perhaps if he had been more of a plodder,” says the then Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Rhode Island, writing a chapter for Mrs. Cheney’s life of her father, ‘‘and had taken time to familiarize him- self with other men’s thoughts, he might have saved himself some trouble.’’ The plodding and the patience seem almost to enter in as a part of the discipline of the truth itself once they have formed a part of the process by which it is acquired. But Bushnell sought it by swifter means, and secured thereby, not a firmer grasp of it, to be sure, and yet a sort of rapture of acquaintance with it and a fervor of trust in it which have a peculiar value in preaching. ‘‘He was emphatically a seer and not a reasoner,” said Dr. Phelps. And the seer, wrapt in his vision, though less 160 PRINCES OF, THE CHRISTIAN critical, is also less cold; is more impassioned, though less didactic; and is therefore by not an inconsiderable measure a better preacher. The truth, if it is to be preached with passion, must be seen as well as known, must be vivified to the imagination as well as certified to the reason, and must first warm the heart which in turn warms it. Bush- nell believed that the sermon should kindle worship, and in his hands it did. But to do this kind of preaching the preacher’s own heart must become an altar and his lips must become a censer. 2. Bushnell had also a philosophical trend of mind. Theology can never complete its concepts without the aid of those ideas and principles which are the ultimates for both theology and philosophy. Bushnell was not a the- ologian in any technical sense. He exerted a marked in- fluence upon the theology of his own and the immediately succeeding time. But it was more by the impact of his pulpit and of his trenchant thinking upon the theological situation that he exerted his influence than by any system- atic results of his work. Theology as a science or a system is not intuitionally discerned. But Bushnell had a philo- sophical bent of mind, and such a mind if it be religious has a strong affinity for religious truth. He obeyed the order of his own mind and was a more effective preacher than if he had ‘‘thought too precisely on the event.’’ This is not to say that the systematic mind cannot preach. Robertson, Liddon, Dale, Magee, and McLaren are the sufficient answer to any such inference as that. But Bushnell, able as he was intellectually, had his point of difference. He did not believe that truth could be too se- verely systematized. He loved ultimate truth—that was the philosopher in him—and he sought it as it was given him to see it. This again was the preacher in him. The ee mor AND PASTORATE 161 —but systematic theology is not preaching. The philoso- pher may be a preacher—a grand preacher—but systems of philosophy do not constitute preaching. Preaching is a freer, more searching and appealing thing than any system can be. And in this freer and more vital realm Bushnell lived and thought and had his being. This led him, as Brastow has suggested, to the more determined ‘‘cultiva- tion of the preacher’s habit of mind, and the aggregate result for the world was doubtless more and better than it would have been had he been a more consistent philo- sophical thinker.” 3. He had by both endowment and cultivation a keenly incisive mind. By the propulsion both of nature and of grace there issued in him a decided homiletic habit and cast of mind. Such a mind is put upon no strain to find homiletic values in the Bible, in life, history, poetry, science, theology, philosophy, nature, and in all the mind’s contact with what is within or without. When the ener- gizing of his heart and mind and conscience was turned to the task of preaching there was no lost motion, no mis- direction of energy, or aim, or motive. There have been many such men, though still all too few, in the Christian pulpit. It is not blind paths they follow. They do not alone come to their goal. “A God Marshall’d them, gave them their goal.”’ One feels all of this concerning Bushnell. His rank is among the princes of the Christian pulpit and pastorate. There were those who counted him the ablest preacher of his day. Dr. S. Parkes Cadman places him alongside Lyman Beecher, William Ellery Channing, Charles G. Finney, Matthew Simpson, Henry Ward Beecher, and Phillips Brooks as ‘‘the seven American clergymen whose 1 162 PRINCES OF THE VCHRISiiAas preéminent service swept beyond sectarian boundaries,”’ and justly obtained the wider distinction. 4, He was singularly trenchant and effective in his power of expression. His utterance rose easily and naturally from notes of tender sympathy and comfort to an un- wonted level of majesty and splendor. Preaching along evenly one Sunday evening on heaven soon after the loss of his only boy by death, he clutched the very heartstrings of his audience at a single stroke when he quietly but earnestly asked: ‘‘Have not I a harper there?’’ Passages that add a splendor to the very page on which they are printed abound in his sermons. Preaching on ‘‘The Lost Purity Restored,’ he points out how tremendous is the divine undertaking for the purification of souls; ‘‘It is curious to observe, when we read the Scripture, what an apparatus of cleansing God appears to have set in array for the purification of souls; sprinklings, washings, bap- tisms of water, and, what are more searching and more terribly energetic purifiers, baptisms of fire; fierce meltings also of silver in the refiner’s crucible; purifyings of the flesh and purgings of the conscience; lustrations of blood, even of Christ’s own blood; washings of the word, and washings of regeneration by the Holy Ghost. It would seem, on looking at the manifold array of cleansing ele- ments, applications, gifts, and sacraments, as if God had undertaken it as the great object and crowning mercy of his reign, to effect a solemn purgation of the world.” THE PRopUcTs OF His PEN Much of his published work was the product of his pulpit, particularly as this appeared in sermonic form. But there was a distinct literary achievement besides. The years after he resigned his pastorate and was preaching only ir- regularly were given to literary labors. This naturally fol- PULPIT AND PASTORATE 163 lowed in the wake of what he had done in his more active life. And yet it was also natural that it should assume some special phases which were possible only to his new and less strenuous situation. His principal publications, aside from his sermons, were several treatises on literary subjects and on theological subjects under the titles, ‘‘God in Christ,’ ‘‘Nature and the Supernatural,” ‘Christian Nurture,’’ ‘‘ The Vicarious Sacrifice,” and ‘‘ Forgiveness and Law.’ The last named was later published as a second volume of ‘The Vicarious Sacrifice.’”’ That he reacted from his own views as originally expressed in this volume is a well-known fact. ‘‘He became conscious of a limitation in his former view, as having regarded too exclusively the manward relations of that great subject, whose two sides he saw to be essential to each other and vitally connected.” Prof. Herbert T. Andrews, writing in The Expositor, London, issue of March, 1924, urges that the instinct to which the evangelical faith appeals is ineradicable, and in that connection refers to this very matter of Bushnell’s modification of his earlier views with respect to the Atone- ment. Bushnell, he says, ‘after writing two volumes to prove the folly and perversity of all the theories which at- tach objective value to the Atonement, is driven, in spite of himself, at last to admit ‘that though in the facts of our Lord’s passion, outwardly regarded, there is no sacrifice, or oblation, or atonement, or propitiation, yet if we ask, How shall we come to God by the aid of this martyrdom? the facts must be put into the molds of the altar, and with- out these forms of the altar we should be utterly at a loss in making any use of the Christian facts which would set us in a condition of practical reconciliation with God. Christ is good, beautiful, wonderful. His disinterested love is a picture by itself. His forgiving patience melts into my feeling. His passion rends my heart. But what is 164 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN he for? And how shall he be made to me the salvation that I want? One word—he is my sacrifice—opens all to me, and beholding him with all my sin upon him, I count him my offering. I come unto God by him and enter into the Holiest by his blood.’”’ “Christian Nurture’’ was one of the most stimulating and thought-provoking volumes he ever produced. It is not until this day by any means devoid of these qualities. On the one side he contended that “‘character can be transmitted, and thus Christianity can be organized into the race and the trend of nature be made to set in that direction.’”’ But it was objected that this ‘‘resolved the whole matter into organic laws, explaining away both depravity and grace.”’ On the other hand he insisted “that as Christ is the Saviour of children, they have an inherent right to a place in his Church, which is to give character to their nurture.’’ He had the difficulty, which has not yet disappeared from this field of thought, of properly balancing two sides of a great truth. His volume on ‘‘Nature and the Supernatural’’ contains the famous chapter on ‘“‘The Character of Jesus Forbids His Possible Classification with Men.” It is a superb piece of work both in thinking and in literary expression. Scarcely has he begun when he has this incisive and eloquent statement of the grounds of the discussion: ‘‘We take up the account of Christ, in the New Testament, just as we would any other ancient writing, or as if it were a manuscript just brought to light in some ancient library. We open the book, and discover in it four distinct biographies of a certain remarkable character, called Jesus Christ. He is miraculously born of Mary, a virgin of Galilee, and de- clares, himself, without scruple, that he came out from God. Finding the supposed history made up, in great part, of his mighty acts, and not being disposed to believe in Perit AND (PASTORATE 165 miracles and marvels, we should soon dismiss the book as a tissue of absurdities too extravagant for belief were we not struck with the sense of something very peculiar in the character of this remarkable person. Having our attention arrested thus by the impression made on our respect, we are put on inquiry, and the more we study it the more wonderful, as a character, it appears. And before we have done it becomes, in fact, the chief wonder of the story; lifting all the other wonders into order and intelligent proportion round it, and making one compact and glorious wonder of the whole picture—a picture shining in its own clear sunlight upon us, as the truest of all truths—Jesus, the Divine Word, coming out from God, to be incarnate with us, and be the vehicle of God and salvation to the race.” That Bushnell’s work in printed form has had the power to fertilize many minds which did not accept all his con- clusions is incontestably true; and at the same time the fact is not at all anomalous. Were it not for the friction of mind upon mind at points of earnest difference, where were the stimulating effect and mental sharpening and balancing due to the fact? His printed distinctively homiletic product is preserved in three volumes of sermons—‘‘Sermons for the New Life,”’ “Christ and His Salvation,’”’ and ‘Sermons on Living Sub- jects.’ These sermons bear the attest of very high homi- letic value. Phillips Brooks and Henry Ward Beecher are usually accounted to be the greatest American preachers, some according the palm of precedence to the one, while others accord it to the other. But the question may be seriously raised whether Bushnell has not a higher con- structive homiletic value than either of them. They had each of them his own superb gifts, but he has his distinct ability too. Perhaps he surpassed both of them in sheer 166 PRINCES ‘OR* THE CHRiSs Bias intellectual force. But we are thinking more particularly of distinctive homiletical qualities. Principal George Adam Smith said once in conversation that Bushnell is the preacher’s preacher as Spenser is the poet’s poet, and that his sermons were on the shelf of every manse in Scot- land. The sermons as a whole, and certain of them conspicu- ously, possess a marked structural quality. They are constructed and are not merely a mass of material, how- ever valuable in itself, heaped together in unrelated parts and left to struggle aimlessly and hopelessly through the auditor’s unrewarded half hour, or perchance to drag on to a conclusion which never concludes. Sermons, of course, cannot be compact unless they have structure. Bushnell’s sermons are built, not thrown together. A great building may have been brought together out of a thousand forests and mines, but it is not a building until it is constructed. There are ten thousand sources of sermons, but they become sermons only through a structural process. And the wider the variety of sources from which they come the greater is the need of a structural unity and design. California red- wood and Georgia marble may go together into the same building, but they require to be directed to their respective places in the plan by the science of the architect and the skill of the builder. Bushnell was a builder. He thought out his theme until it became as clear as a proposition in logic. His sermon on ‘“‘Every Man’s Life a Plan of God”’ has this statement of its theme: That God has a definite life plan for every human person, girding him, visibly or in- visibly, for some exact thing, which 1t will be the true sig- nificance and glory of his life to have accomplished. A sermon with its theme thus stated has already passed the most im- portant and the most difficult stage of its construction. With a skill none the less admirable he derives his themes BULELIP CAND PASTORATE 167 from his text, exhibiting them in a true and, if the fact be so, an organic connection. His text is, Give ye them to eat, in its connection with the feeding of the five thousand on the shore of the Galilean Sea, when the disciples had wished to disburden themselves of the people’s presence. Jesus answers them in the words of the text, and Bushnell’s theme is, “‘Duty Not Measured by Our Own Ability.” When the main thought lines of a sermon have been laid out as he does it, the sermon is bound to succeed, so far as intellectual considerations are concerned, in any but the hands of a bungler. And a bungler can never lay them out like that. On the text, Take, therefore, the talent from him, the theme is, ‘The Capacity for Religion Extirpated by Disuse.”’ The text, Then went in also that other disciple, has for its theme, ‘‘Unconscious Influence.’’ These ser- mons—and there are many others like them—in their texts and titles constitute a consummate study in homi- letics. Some of the sermons have a several and distinctive fame of their own. The sermon on “Every Man’s Life a Plan of God’’ made a very deep and wide impression. The New York Tribune classed it as one of the three greatest ever preached in the English language, naming Canon Mozley’s on ‘The Reversal of Human Judgment”’ and Phillips Brooks’s on ‘“‘The Gold and the Calf’’ as the other two. The remarkable fact is recorded of the sermon on ‘‘Duty Not Measured by Our Own Ability’’ that it was preached in the first year of his ministry. The sermon on “Unconscious Influence,’’ with its theme and variations of it, has perhaps been reproduced in more pulpits than any other sermon ever preached in America or England. Bushnell delivered an address at Andover Theological Seminary in 1860 on “Pulpit Talent’’ which was afterwards incorporated in his book called “Building Eras.” It is 168 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN replete with fine suggestions, as, for instance: “‘ An immense overdoing in the way of analysis often kills a sermon.” ‘A great many preachers die of style; that is, of trying to soar; when, if they would only consent to go afoot as their ideas do, they might succeed and live.” ‘The artistic air kills everything.”” ‘‘The greatest fault possible to a preach- er is to be absolutely faultless.”’ But the highest value of the lecture lies, not in seques- trated passages, but in its main contentions. He men- tions first the ‘‘canonical talents,’ as he styles them— scholarship; a metaphysical and theological thinking tal- ent; style or talent for expression; and a talent of manner and voice for speaking. These he regards as “‘cultivatable talents,’ but would set a limit upon their possession and use. Proceeding to what he calls the ‘‘ preéminent preach- ing talents,’’ he is more urgent in his contention, and is evidently self-revealing. He names first among talents of this order ‘‘a great conscience or a firmly accentuated moral nature,’ holding that “‘no great and high authority is possible in a movement on souls without a great con- science.’ His analysis of the weak and insufficient con- science is as keen as a whetted blade. His denunciation of the preacher who subjects himself to a control so mean and low is all but pitiless: ‘‘No matter what, or how great, his promise on the score of his other gifts and acquire- ments, he cannot be impressive, because there is no ring of authority in his moral nature.’”’ He next names ‘“‘a man’s atmosphere.’ Some atmospheres, good in themselves, he thinks are “‘disqualifications in the preacher”: ‘‘One carries about with him, for example, the inevitable literary atmosphere, and a shower bath on his audience could not more effectually kill the sermon.” He speaks of ‘‘ad- ministrative, organizing capacity’’ as requiring a very high and firm tone of character for its efficient employment, and PULPIT AND PASTORATE 169 closes with a reference to the law of talents as requiring to be wakened into power. In an autobiographic fragment intended probably as the beginning of a full account of his life he has these frankly personal words: ‘‘My figure in this world has not been great, but I have had a great experience. I have never been a great agitator, never pulled a wire to get the will of men, never did a politic thing. It was not for this reason, but because I was looked upon as a singularity— not exactly sane, perhaps, in many things—that I was almost never a president or vice president of any society, and almost never on a committee. Take the report of my doings on the platform of the world’s business, and it is naught. I have filled no place at all.’’ Nevertheless, for all that he lacked of perfection, whether in his thinking or his character—and in this he was scarcely alone—he filled a place which was large, and all the larger because in the fear of God he was able to care so little whether it was large. VII DAVID LIVINGSTONE! (1813-1873) A Lap AT A Loom Out of the Scottish Highlands there came a lad who through the high and heroic endeavor of his life has moved the world to a deeper devotion to Christ and stirred it to an intenser zeal for the cause of Christian missions. That lad was David Livingstone, born at Blantyre, on the Clyde, March 19, 1813. He came into the home of “poor and pious parents,’ as he himself insisted on saying on the tombstone erected to their memory; and both their poverty and their piety conferred their blessings on this their chosen child. He had the benefit of such schools as the village could furnish until at the still tender age of ten he was put to work in the cotton mills. In the mills he mingled study with his toils, snatching such brief intervals of time for application to the book which he spread before him on the machinery as might be secured from the heavy de- mands of his task. In the evenings at home, and in a night school which he attended for a while, his books were still his pursuit. Often at midnight, and later, his mother would be obliged to force his books from his hands, and send him off to bed; for she could not forget that again at six in the morning a boyish shadow must fall across the threshold of the factory door. The hard and monotonous toil of the mills Livingstone never regretted. He reckoned it rather as a valued part of his education. At the height of his greatness he was still a simple-minded man, and re- joiced in his fellowship with the common people. 1Reprinted from Methodist Quarterly Review, April, 1913. (170) Powe @ hoe) ber VEE PUL REE 171 Thou dost look back on what hath been, As some divinely gifted man, Whose life in low estate began, And on a simple village green. “OPEN A PATH ....OR PERISH” When Livingstone’s life began to broaden, it broadened in the missionary direction. As a child he had earnest thoughts on religion. But he was not converted until about his twentieth year, when, on reading Dick’s “ Philoso- phy of a Future State,” he saw “‘the duty and the ines- timable privilege immediately to accept salvation by Christ.’’ In this, as in all the other great affairs of his life, he acted with promptness and decision. He had not yet thought of being a missionary himself; but had resolved to give to the support of missions all he could earn above his necessary subsistence. Then there fell into his hands a German missionary’s appeal for China, and he laid his life on the altar, not for China’s redemption, as he thought, but for Africa’s. There now began that struggle for an education and for the necessary missionary preparation which only poverty can impose, and which only those who have fought with poverty over every step of the ground know how to estimate. First at Glasgow, seven miles away, whence he returned on Saturday evenings to the family at Blantyre, and then in London, he pursued his studies, mainly medical, until the London Missionary So- ciety, which had accepted him for service, judged him to be ready to go out. In 1839 Robert Moffat, himself a Scotchman of the straitest sect, came to England from heroic missionary service in Africa, and he and Livingstone met, their spirits never afterwards to be severed. England’s opium war was on with China, and Livingstone, through Moffat’s in- fluence, was turned aside from China to Africa. © 172 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN Acting under the direction of the Society that sent him out, he sailed from England on the eighth day of Decem- ber, 1840. He was to proceed to Kuruman, the home of the Moffats in South Africa, and there await further orders. He could wait for orders, but he could not wait for work. He arrived at Kuruman, after the journey up from the south coast, on July 31, 1841, having before him an almost wholly undetermined sphere of labor. He was to have a station somewhere to the north. Not even the angels of God knew whither his course should lie. At that time the red lines now seen on the maps of Africa indicating his journeys could be traced only by that Eye which sees the end from the beginning. Two wasted years pass away, and he is still waiting for instructions from the Directors in London as to his per- manent quarters. But the hesitation and delay are theirs, not his. He has put himself at their disposal “‘to go any- where—provided 1t be forward.’’ And yet the years are not wasted, for he labors about Kuruman. And before the end of his first year on the field, a journey of seven hundred miles, taken on his own responsibility, was performed, lead- ing to a fuller knowledge of the country, a better knowledge of the natives, and to the selection of what he hoped would be the site for a station. Early the next year he goes again among these natives of the interior, in fulfillment of a promise he had made them on his first journey. On a third journey he traveled more than four hundred miles on oxback. Coming again to Kuruman, he found a letter from the Directors of the Society authorizing the formation of a settlement in the regions beyond. And those very terms, ‘“‘regions beyond,” had the sound of a trumpet in Livingstone’s ears. Give him that commission, and he will go. Mabotsa became his first station. Here he had the PULPIT AND PASTORATE , 173 memorable encounter with the lion which came near to ending his career, and which gave him a limp and weakened arm for the rest of his life. And yet it was the marks of this encounter which led to the indisputable identification of his body when his last journey out of Africa ended in Eng- land. He had gone out with the natives to chase a lion which had that morning been destroying their sheep. The lion had been wounded, and sprang furiously upon him out of a thicket, throwing him to the ground and breaking a bone in his shoulder. When in a moment more a blow from the lion’s paw, which was already on his head, must have left him dead, a shot from the rifle of Livingstone’s native attendant drew the lion away to an attack upon this native himself, and then upon another, until, the previous shots having taken effect, he fell down dead. Another event of his Mabotsa life was to him of more deeply surpassing interest than even his encounter with the lion. Thither in the sweet autumn days of 1844 he brought Mary Moffat, a blushing bride. It was a romance in the forest, and as sweet a love story as ever was told. Amid all these experiences, grave and gay, perilous and felicitous, his work engaged his diligent and unremitting effort. Mabotsa, however, he felt obliged to leave, at a great sacrifice to himself, because of a disagreeable and unreasonable associate in the work. He settled next at Chonuane, about forty miles from Mabotsa, where his stay was of short continuance because the want of rain made both agriculture and the mission impossible. His third station was Kolobeng, situated on a river of the same name, where again he failed in making a per- manent settlement because of the lack of rain. This time the river itself dried up. At Kolobeng they left their first dead in a lonely African grave, a little blue-eyed baby 174 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN girl who had been seized by a dread disease and carried away at the age of six weeks. It was the first grave in all the dark country around them on which there shone the light of a confessed hope in the resurrection of the dead. Livingstone now set out for the country of Sebituane, an influential chief of whom he had heard, toward the north. On this journey he discovered the large lake "Ngami and the river Zouga, and his fame as an explorer began to be secure. Already his success as an explorer was attributed to his influence as a missionary; for this very journey had baffled the best-equipped travelers before him. He failed at this time, however, to accomplish the direct object of his journey. Holding Kolobeng still as his base, he made his third attempt, and reached the country of Sebituane in 1851. He and Oswell, an English hunter and traveler, who proved in many ways a most valued friend of Livingstone’s, pro- ceeded still farther northward, passed through the town of Linyanti, and on the third of August discovered the Zambesi River. This great river was of course known at the coast where it emptied into the sea; but its existence in this locality was not known, and its discovery by Liv- ingstone was one of the greatest geographical feats with which his name is connected. Still no suitable locality for a station was found. There must be further journeying; and he turned back again toward the south, though not to rest there. The interior of Africa had lifted up her voice in his ears, and it never died out. ‘‘Providence,”’ said he, ‘‘seems to call me to the regions beyond.” There is in Jack London’s ‘‘Call of the Wild” the story of the great dog, Buck. This noble dog had many adventures with his master until at last they came to the edge of the great and lonely forests where the wolves have their habitat. With these wild creatures of meivielaeAN DesPASTORVEE 175 the wilderness the dog became more and more familiar, and his aboriginal kinship to them more and more as- serted itself. For days at a time his master would miss him. At last the clear and overmastering call of the wild asserted itself, and the great dog galloped away with the wolves into the wilderness. Out of the far-away darkness of Africa David Livingstone heard calling him the deep voice of the aboriginal kinsmanship of mankind, and he went to help his enslaved and benighted brother. He had resolved to ‘open a path through the country, or perish.” At this time the slave trade in its unspeakable horrors had begun to take a relentless grasp on his soul. Through these deep forests he met gangs of slaves being driven like beasts to the coasts. He traveled through great valleys strewn with their bones. Their skulls, all the more for the want of eyes, stared upon him from the hillsides. Their dead bodies floated past him in the rivers. When they anchored their boats overnight in the streams, they had to disengage their oars from the dead before they could proceed on their way in the morning. Nineteen thousand slaves from the Nyassa region alone passed under the cus- toms in Zanzibar in a single year. He would rather see the ‘“‘Nyassa’’—intended for the navigation of the lake of the same name, but which he could never bring to the place— ‘so down to the depths of the Indian Ocean,” than sell her for a slaver, much as he needed the money. Well might there have been preserved in memorial marble in West- minster Abbey his words to the New York Herald: “ All I can say in my solitude is, May heaven’s richest blessing come down on every one—American, English, Turk—who will help to heal this open sore of the world!”’ “IN JOURNEYINGS OFTEN” In the spring of 1852 Livingstone came down to Cape 176 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN Town and sent Mrs. Livingstone and the children, now numbering four, for the better care of all of them, and es- pecially for the education of the children, to England. A year later Livingstone had returned far into the interior; and having searched in vain for a suitable location for permanent work, he began to prepare for his famous journey from Linyanti, in the central portion of the coun- try he had been traveling, to Loanda on the west coast. This journey occupied him from November 11, 1853, to May 31, 1854, and afforded the characteristic accompani- ments and incidents of his African traveling. He was ac- companied by none but natives. Oxen were his means of travel. They must ford many rivers, these often swollen to a flood, and wade innumerable marshes. Their food supply, and other equipment for comfort and safety, was pitifully insufficient. They must pass through savage tribes and encounter many a hostile frown when they came to where white traders had been before them. The temperature was above ninety degrees in the shade; Liv- ingstone was often ill with a burning fever; and there were scenes of savagery, slavery, and death on every hand. He brought his twenty-seven followers to Loanda and rested on an English bed after six months on the fever-breeding ground, but found not what he most longed for—letters from the loved ones beyond the seas. They wanted him to go to England. An English ship was in the harbor. Beyond the waves that washed these shores were wife and children, and the greetings of the nation that folded in her flag his devoted life. How often he had been ill! What tongueless sufferings he had borne! But the men who had come with him had to return, and they could not make the journey alone. Without knowing it, he sets them the example that shall bring his own body down to the sea on the other side of the continent when he Pao ee N Doe PASTORATE eis is dead. He goes with these black men back to Linyanti. He left Loanda in September of the year he had reached it, having tarried beyond his time, as he said in a letter to his wife, “‘in longing expectation of a letter from you.” He was not satisfied with the results this journey had yielded in prospective trade routes, and otherwise; and he resolves, on his return to Linyanti, which he does not reach until nearly a year after leaving Loanda, that he will try the direction toward the east coast. He sets out and reaches Quilimane, not far from the mouth of the Zambesi, May 20, 1856. On this journey he discovered the famous falls of the Zambesi River, and named them after England’s great Queen, Victoria. This is one of the grandest water- falls in the world. From Quilimane he returned to England, after an absence of sixteen years. There his renown, grown up unosten- tatiously and in simple fidelity in Africa, rose up with a universal voice to greet him. But no éclat could spoil his simplicity. Great dinners he despised. He got through them with more difficulty than he found in some of his African journeys. On the details of his multiplied welcome we cannot dwell. He wrote and published his “‘ Missionary Travels,’ which had a great sale. He went up to the Uni- versity of Glasgow to receive the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. On these occasions the undergraduates had their sport at the expense of the great. Our own Lowell and Holmes had to run this gantlet when they re- ceived the University’s honors. The boys tried their raillery on Livingstone. They brought in their popguns and pea shooters. But the Doctor came down the aisle wasted and gaunt. He stood before them, his brow burned black by scorching African suns, his veins carrying the torture of twenty-seven African fevers, and the shoulder torn by the lion dropping a limp arm by his side, One or 12 | 178 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN two jokes were cracked, but they ‘‘flashed in the pan”; and the pea shooters went away into the depths of the boys’ pockets. The man before them was to speak; his lips parted and gave him utterance. He should soon go back to Africa, he said; and in going he should have three objects: ‘‘to open fresh fields for British commerce, to suppress the slave trade, and to propagate the gospel of Christ.” That great climax fell like the peal of a trumpet on the audience. The meanest boy in the galleries appre- ciated the relative values expressed, and ‘‘caught the con- tagion of the manly missionary’s earnestness.”’ And then he asked: ‘‘Shall I tell you what sustained me in my exiled life, among strangers whose language I could not under- stand?’’ In the moment’s pause that followed the-ques- tion, there was a deathlike silence, and every heart lifted itself in high expectancy. And then there came, with an effect which could scarcely have been surpassed since they were first uttered in Galilee, the unexpected words of Jesus: ‘‘Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” A GRAVE BESIDE THE ZAMBESI Livingstone now severed his connection with the Mis- sionary Society, and went back to Africa with a govern- ment appointment and a moderate government aid. The Directors had some doubt about supporting as a missionary a man who was doing Livingstone’s kind of work. As for himself, he would eat no doubtful bread. Besides, the government was interested in many ways in his labors and would profit in all the outcome of his effort. He was made consul at Quilimane, and commander of an expedition for exploring Eastern and Central Africa. This brought him into the country of the Zambesi and Shiré rivers, and led to the discovery of the great Lake Nyassa, around which PULPIT AND PASTORATE 179 many of his aims afterwards clung. He beat up and down the rivers and traversed the unknown country for five years with infinite patience and courage. He had no end of trouble with his boats, which had been built for use on the lakes; and early in 1862 he came down the Zambesi to receive the ‘‘Lady Nyassa,” built in England and shipped out in sections, for use on Lake Nyassa, and to meet Mrs. Livingstone, coming up by sea from the south, whither she had gone when she came back with him from England, to be with the Moffats at Kuruman. Just beyond the shore line in the river those at sea saw in the early morning a little cloud of smoke rising, and very soon, ap- proaching in the smaller boat, they recognized Dr. Living- stone, and the famous gold-laced cap of his African travels. When he landed, a baby girl, who had been in the world almost a year before he learned by letter of her existence, was laid in his arms. Before three short months could come and go, Mrs. Livingstone was dead at the age of forty-one. But the blight of the African climate had fallen heavily upon her and had sapped away her life thus early. And the loneliness of her separated life in England had been heavier than the vicissitudes of any climate. She went to her grave by the great Zambesi, and forever it sings its mighty requiem of peace to her ashes. That deathbed consisted of only rough boxes covered with a soft mattress—that deathbed scene it were sacrilege to describe. More than four years afterwards in his journal, and, as if the tenderness of his thoughts carried him back to his childhood home among the Scottish hills, in the Scottish dialect he wrote: ‘‘ Poor Mary lies on Shupanga brae, ‘and beeks fornent the sun.’”’ He hears that the expedition is to be recalled, and won- ders if he is to go on the shelf. ‘“‘If I do,’ he says, ‘‘I make Africa the shelf.”” The expedition was recalled, and it was 180 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTA a time of terrible discouragement, bereft as he was now of the aid both of the government and the Society. But he will not go back to England until his going can be connected with the prospect of a return to Africa. DARK AND BLOODY MANYUEMA But England lies once more in the path of his journey- ing. He made a trip in the ‘‘Lady Nyassa’’ across the Indian Ocean to Bombay, which was such an unparalleled performance that it might almost have justified the remark of Charles Francis Adams, that ‘Livingstone eclipsed Columbus.”’ | In England again, all his plans looked back to Africa. The proposition that he should return to do geographical work brings the answer that he would only go “‘as a mis-. sionary, and do geography by the way.” “The end of the geographical feat is only the beginning of the missionary enterprise,’ he had said long before. And he had not wavered. He wanted to make Africa known and “‘to bring it into the circuit of commerce and Christianity.” He wrote and published his books with this end in view. On this visit to England he wrote and published ‘“‘The Zambesi and Its Tributaries.”’ On August 8, 1866, he was again at Lake Nyassa. His object in this, his third and last great African journey, was in its comprehensive aspects the same that he had had all along. He would make “‘another attempt to open Africa to civilizing influences.”’ At the same time, accepting a suggestion made by Sir Roderick Murchison, who had been to him such a steadfast friend, he was taken captive by the idea that he might discover the sources of the Nile in the very country where he was going. The government again affords him aid; so does the Royal Geographical Society. And there were also considerable private gifts. PULPIT AND PASTORATE 181 He left Nyassa and pressed on toward Tanganyika, a larger and more interior lake. Some of his men left him and went to Zanzibar and told a most circumstantial story that he was dead. Meanwhile Livingstone, entirely ig- norant of this report and of the commotion it was about to raise in the world, was pushing on, half-starved, into the deeper distance and darkness of the interior. He lost the few goats he had for milk and was reduced to a diet of African maize, as poor and insufficient a means of sub- sistence as well could be imagined. ‘‘His food often con- sisted of bird seed, manioc roots, and meal.’’ To complete his miseries, he lost his medicine chest, and felt that the sentence of death had been pronounced against him. Toward the end of the year—it is now 1867—he dis- covers Lake Moero, and hears of Lake Bangweolo, on the southern shores of which he was to die. On the eighteenth of July, in the next year, he quietly records the discovery of this lake. From Bangweolo he at last reached Ujiji, far up on Tanganyika, but only to be met there by the bitter dis- appointment that the goods he expected had been stolen and wasted, and that his medicines and other indispensable supplies were thirteen days distant at Unyanyembe. At this period the extreme dreg of the bitter cup he was obliged to drain was the loss of his letters. Nearly all of them were lost. Difficulties and darkness seemed only to thicken around him. Nevertheless, he turns his face again toward the wilder- ness—a wilderness not for the want of inhabitants and a rich and prodigal output of nature, but a wilderness for the want of civilization. He went now into the dark and troubled Manyuema country, and thought his work might be finished in four or five months. But here he met the most unexampled hardships and difficulties of his life. In 182 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN making his arrangements for the journey, and in the mat- ter of keeping up any remote sort of connection with civilization, ‘‘he was dependent on men who were not only knaves of the first magnitude, but who had a special ani- mosity against him, and a special motive to deceive, rob, and obstruct him in every possible way.’ The slave traders of Ujiji were the most abominable of that abomina- ble craft. Livingstone said he quite agreed with the sailor who on seeing them said: “If the devil doesn’t catch these fellows, we might as well have no devil at all.” In February, 1870, he was obliged to go into winter quarters in the woods about one hundred and fifty miles northwest of Ujiji; and when he set out again on the twen- ty-sixth of June, there were with him only the three faithful attendants, Susi, Chuma, and Gardner. The difficulties of the way were terrible. His feet, though often bruised and sore, were now in a worse condition than ever before; and he was at last compelled to desist, and to limp back tc Bambarré, the village of the chief of the Manyuema country, which he did not leave until February, 1871. How tediously, and yet how quickly, a year had gone by! ‘‘Probably no human being,’’ says Dr. Blaikie in his noble biography, ‘‘was ever in circumstances parallel tc those in which Livingstone now stood.”’ Years had passed while his letters from home had been scattered as so much . waste in the wilderness. His mother tongue came to his lonely ears only in the broken speech of the humble natives who attended him. Or again perchance it reached him in the sound of his own voice as some irrepressible cry of homesickness burst from his aching heart. He was in hunger, in sickness, in pain, In weariness; in journeyings often; in perils of rivers; in perils of robbers; in perils among the heathen; in perils among false brethren; in perils in the wilderness; in watchings often, in cold and BUEPIT AND. PASTORATE 183 nakedness, in deaths often; baffled beyond description in his immediate effort; and in grave anxiety as to the fruit of his past labors. What could have sustained him through it all? A year afterwards we find this backward-glancing line in his journal: ‘I read the whole Bible thrcugh four times whilst I was in Manyuema.”’ He tries once more, and reaches his farthest point west- ward, Nyangwe, on the Lualaba River. This river he earnestly desires to explore, for he thinks it may leave the continent through the Nile, and not through the Congo, as we now know to be the case. He would fain go farther, and makes his plans; but he witnesses a horrible massacre in a village by the river, and in the slaughter he sees his own plans struck down. This scene of slaughter gave him a feeling ‘‘as if he had been in hell.” A wretched journey, marked by three deliverances from impending death in a single day, brought him back to Ujiji, “‘a mere ruckle of bones, to find himself destitute.” A scoundrelly Mohammedan to whom they had been consigned, coveting the goods, had divined on the Koran and had obtained the result, to which he had of course conspired, that Livingstone was dead; and so once more, having struggled to Ujiji, he met dire want instead of the expected abundance of supplies. THE COMING OF STANLEY Could any man’s situation have been more desperate? If ever ‘‘man’s extremity’’ proved to be ‘‘God’s oppor- tunity,’ surely it was here. As Livingstone came up from the west another white man was approaching from the east. Five days after he had dragged himself, half-dead, into Ujiji, a large caravan appeared, and the sight of it created an extraordinary excitement. One of Livingstone’s men ran to him and shouted that an Englishman was coming, 184 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN and looking out he saw an American flag borne at the head of the approaching company. Then going out himself, the stranger walked deliberately toward him and said: ‘“‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume.” Two years before, James Gordon Bennett, proprietor of the New York Herald, had telegraphed Henry M. Stanley, a trusted traveling correspondent of the paper, then in Madrid, to ‘‘come to Paris on important business.” ‘“‘Where do you think Livingstone is?”’ said Bennett. Stanley did not know; did not even know whether he was alive, as indeed the world did not know. “I think he is alive,’ said Bennett, ‘‘and I am going to send you to find him.” ‘‘Take what you want, but find Livingstone,’’ were the simple, ample terms of his commission. And now this trained traveler and correspondent, just up out of the great capitals of the world, sat down to talk to this simple man out of the forest. There were many things to tell. Livingstone had been two full years without any tidings from Europe. Stanley was the only white man with whom he had talked for six years. These were the things that Stanley had to tell Livingstone: Queen Victoria’s government had voted him $5,000 for supplies; his constant friend, Lord Clarendon, was dead; General Grant had been elected President of the United States; the Atlantic cables had been successfully laid; the French Empire had gone down before the genius of Bismarck at Sedan. And more wonderful still were the things that Livingstone had to tell Stanley. ‘‘His lips gave me the details; lips that never lie,’ said Stanley. But Stanley confessed he could not tell it. All the while he talked to Livingstone his notebook was in his pocket. Trained to his work as he was, frequenter of the world’s capitals as he was, this man out of his loneliness, and out of as deep solitudes as the human spirit ever knew, mastered him, and PULPIT AND PASTORATE 185 he forgot to be a reporter, and sat down for once to the high employment of “‘just being a man.’’ I think it is the highest of all the unconscious tributes ever paid to Livingstone. What would Livingstone do now? One thing was fixed and certain from the beginning: he would not go home with Stanley. Stanley stayed for four months, and they trav- eled together as far as Unyanyembe, and there was a pathetic parting. Stanley was to arrange at the coast for another trip into the interior, and Livingstone waited some time on these arrangements. A Hut In ILALA In January, 1873, he was again far away in the west, near Lake Bangweolo, drenched with the incessant rains, numbed by the unnatural cold of the climate, hunger gnawing his vitals away, and sickness, insatiate, preying upon his wasted frame. It did not take long, in such a situation, for the strength gained on Stanley’s supplies to become but a distant memory. His path lay across flooded rivers, the old dangers and difficulties encompassed him on every side, and his sufferings were beyond all previous example. His last birthday found him in much the same circumstances. In the beginning of April the bleeding from the bowels, from which he had so seriously suffered, grew worse, and his weakness was pitiful. Still he longs for strength to finish his work; and still the Sunday serv- ices are held. He becomes too weak even to ride, and a kitanda, a rude kind of stretcher, has to be made for carry- ing him. The twenty-ninth of April was the last day of his travels. He directed Susi to take down the side of the hut that the kitanda, which could not enter by the door, might be brought to his bed; for he could not walk. They came to the crossing of a river, and moved on through swamps and 186 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN marshes—Livingstone begging them when they came to a good piece of ground to lay him down to rest—until at last they reached Chitambo’s villagein Ilala. Here they sheltered him under the eaves of a house from the drizzling rain while they built a hut. He was laid on a rough bed for the night, and lay undisturbed the next day. His people were in awe and very anxious. The earlier and middle part of the next night passed quietly, save for a call or two from the suf- ferer; but at four in the morning the boy who lay inside his door to keep watch called in alarm for Susi. By the candle still burning, fit light for the humble hut, they saw him kneeling at the side of his bed, his face buried in his hands on the pillow. They were hushed and reverent, lest they should disturb him at his prayers. While they waited it was as if the silence of the mighty shadow had taken a tongue to tell them that he was dead. Did ever prayer have a better right to go up from this earth into the ears of God than that which those pitying lips, touched already by the chill of death, poured out amidst heathen darkness by the rude bedside in Ilala? If angels had built the altar, and if archangels had stood as priests to minister beside it, there could not have been a nobler sacrifice than this. ‘‘Tebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering,’ but this is ‘‘a sacrifice ac- ceptable, well-pleasing to God.”’ In that deep and solitary interior where he died, David Livingstone erected an altar devoted to Africa’s redemption, and gave himself a willing victim into the hands of God. He was touched with:the feeling of Africa’s infirmities; and he was obedient unto death. ‘He had passed away on the farthest of all his journeys, and without a single attendant.’’ There’were about him only the few black people whom he had gathered out of the wilderness. They carried his body down to the sea, fifteen aa PULPIT AND PASTORATE 187 hundred miles distant—Susi and Chuma, his old attend- ants, at their head. It was a task of tremendous difficulty. The very body was an occasion of superstitious dread and offense to the tribes about them and on the way whither their steps would tend. And yet, though they could but dimly have known him, the God of Livingstone girded them for the undertaking. Fourteen days the body was dried in the sun, the delicate inward parts having been removed, and preparations were made for the long and tedious march to Zanzibar. The heart was buried under a great tree in Ilala—a quiet and peaceful place in which to rest in the bosom of the continent for which it had so often ached. Once they had to pretend to turn back upon their journey as if to bury the body, in order to get through a hostile village. Nine months after Livingstone’s death they reached the coast and delivered their charge into English hands. In England the body was identified by the arm the lion had broken. Sir William Fergusson, the noted surgeon, was ‘‘as positive as to the identification of these remains as that there has been among us in modern times one of the greatest men of the human race.”’ A HoME IN THE ABBEY On Saturday, April 18, 1874, he was buried in West- minster Abbey. Probably he would not have wished to have itso. Once in a deep African forest he had come upon a lonely grave, and said he would wish such a last resting place for himself. But the Abbey and fellowship with the great dead of the earth were his due. Open the Abbey doors and bear him in To sleep with king and statesman, chief and sage, The missionary, come of weaver kin, But great by work that brooks no lower wage. 188 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN Dr. John Henry Jowett, the great preacher whose spirit follows so hard after the spirit of Livingstone, tells us that when he went as a special guest to attend the coronation of King George in Westminster Abbey, his mind, amid all the pomp and glitter of royal circumstance, ‘‘left all the impressive splendor about him and traveled to that quiet spot where lie the ashes of David Livingstone.”’ His PRIESTLIKE TASK His body was taken to England, but redeemed Africa shall yet be his monument. That lonely death in the hut in Ilala made its appeal to the world. That wasted body brought back out of the heart of Africa, in which Afri- can fevers had kindled their torturing fires, upon which African suns had poured their pitiless heat, which African rivers had laved with their swelling floods, upon which African rains had poured out their drenching torrents, and through which African horrors and darkness had sent a thousand chills—that worn-out body, victim at last to the terrors which had long threatened it, made its mute appeal to the world. It was that mystery of muteness which speaks with more eloquence than any voice. We may well say with Dr. Blaikie that the statesman heard that appeal, and statecraft began to acknowledge a brother- hood as broad as mankind. The merchant heard it, and the currents of commerce heaved with a purer tide, as though the moving waters were At their priest-like task Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores. The explorer heard it, and the opening up of a new country to the sympathies of Christendom was raised to the rank of a noble and a proper missionary task. The missionary heard it, and girt his loins about him for a plunge into the PUbril AND PASTORATE 189 deeper darkness and depravity of the heathenism of the world. The Christian world heard it, and there were deep resolves—as though in a silent parliament of man—that Livingstone’s work should not die. To lift the somber fringes of the night, To open lands long darkened to the light, To heal grim wounds, to give the blind new sight, Right mightily he wrought. Such a life is a hostage God gives to his Church that Chris- tianity cannot fail in the earth. The dust to which his heart has withered away, in the midst of the aboriginal dust of the African continent, shall not hear the judgment trumpet till redemption’s work is done. He climbed the steep ascent of heaven, Through peril, toil, and pain; O God, to us may grace be given To follow in his train: VIII FREDERICK W. ROBERTSON (1816-1853) A RELUCTANT AND REGRETFUL ENTRANCE INTO THE MINISTRY NoNE who has any tolerable appreciation of the motive and aim of Christian preaching will doubt that Frederick W. Robertson was called to this ministry. Nevertheless, his own inclination ran quite to the contrary. His father was a captain in the Royal Artillery. His grandfather, Colonel Robertson, in whose house in London he was born on February 3, 1816, won distinction and received a wound in military service. Three of his brothers entered the army, and the whole bent of his own early life was in the same direction. He spent the first five years of his life at Leith Fort, near Edinburgh, and breathed a military atmosphere before he could know what it meant, though not before it could have some influence in the shaping of his desires. His father then retired on half pay in order to devote his time to the education of his children. This particular child he taught himself for four years and carefully guided his instruction afterwards, having sent him first to the grammar school of the town of Beverly in Yorkshire, whither he had moved on leaving Leith. The family spent a year at Tours, in France, where Frederick had an English tutor in the classics and laid the foundations of an accurate knowledge of the French language. When he was nearly sixteen years old his father returned to England and placed him in a private school in Edinburgh. At the end of a session spent in this school he attended the various classes at the University of Edinburgh under the direction of a special instructor. (190) PRINCES OF THE PULPIT 191 He was able to look with grateful recollections and warm appreciation back to his childhood, counting it as an es- pecial mercy from God that his parents had shielded him from evil influences and had given him a home which he still could honor when maturity had cast a revealing light upon its days and its deeds. His mother said she never knew him to tell a lie. In the childhood of his life, at least, there was more of light than of shadow, more of love than of calumny. “Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny.” The bitterness of this truth he had to taste in later life without any alleviating potion save the indefeasible sense of his own soul’s in- tegrity; but his childhood at least was secure in the radiance of its memories. He describes himself in boyhood as “‘iron in strength, broad and stout.’’ Perhaps the secret facts of his constitution did not even at this time warrant so op- timistic a deduction, but it was worth something to believe it anyway. Already he had begun to display a marked self-mistrust and an intense sensitiveness to his own least fault. ae He took very high rank in his classes in the Edinburgh Academy, and early developed a habit of studying ex- haustively subjects to which he applied himself. His memory was so retentive that in later life he could recall with ease page after page of books which he had not read since his boyhood. But in nothing else was he so eager as in his inclination to a military life. His early life at Leith had made an in- effaceable impression upon him. All the seeds of military desire and ambition which had ever fallen into his soul lodged there and germinated there. ‘“‘I was rocked and cradled,” he says, ‘“‘to the roar of artillery, and the very name of such things sounds to me like home. A review, suggesting the conception of a real battle, impresses me 192 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAS to tears; I cannot see a regiment maneuver, nor artillery in motion, without a choking sensation.’’ At the time of his leaving Edinburgh his desire to enter the army had be- come a fixed purpose. But his discerning father had read more deeply into his character and proposed that he should enter the ministry. His unhesitating answer was: ‘‘Any- thing but that; I am not fit for it.”’ Trial was made for a year in the office of a solicitor wheth- er he might make his way into the practice of law; but with his utter lack of taste for a lawyer’ life the attempt palled upon him, and what with his sedentary habits be- sides, his health was very unfavorably affected. His father was now disposed to allow him to follow what seemed to be the insuperable bent of his nature, and ap- plication was made for a military commission. He devoted himself at once to military preparation, training himself as a horseman, in shooting, and as a draughtsman. Two years were occupied in these pursuits without any report from his application. His father, thinking that the ap- plication had been forgotten, or that at any rate it would come to naught, again proposed to him that he should enter the Church, pointing out to him at the same time the seriousness of the temptations of a soldier’s life. But he thought he could be “the Cornelius of his regiment,” again refused, and continued his preparation for military service. At the same time, strange as it may seem, he kept up his reading in religious and theological subjects. There seems hardly to be any doubt that there were fluc- tuations in his mind between the army and the Church which have never been disclosed. There must be a Provi- dence which seeks to direct our lives, ‘“‘rough hew them how we will.’’ Robertson’s escape from a soldier’s life on which his heart was so all but inescapably set seems almost too narrow to be comfortable to one who is interested in his Peerlio AND PASTORATE 193 remarkable career as a preacher. He met, ere the tide of circumstance had borne him too far beyond the reach of better purpose, a Mr. Davies with whom a close and in- fluential friendship was formed, who coveted his service for the Christian ministry, and sought to draw him into it. Robertson replied to the endeavor to dissuade him from entering the army “‘that the matter had been already set- tled, that application had been made long ago, and in- terest employed to obtain a commission.’’ He was careful also to say: “‘I do not become a soldier to Win laurels; my object is to do good.”” He would only give a promise to allow the whole matter to be reconsidered. Then again his father said to him: “I think you had better reconsider your plans and enter the Church.’’ But again he an- swered: “No, never!’’ The next day he met another minister, Mr. Daly, at the house of the same neighbor where he had first met Mr. Davies, and again was asked what seemed to him the singular question as to “‘whether it were definitely settled that he should go into the army.” After further conversation with Mr. Daly, who knew noth- ing of what had gone just before, Robertson asked: “‘ What would you advise me to do?” Mr. Daly, who had un- knowingly joined Davies and_his father in wishing to see him go into the Church, replied: ‘‘Do as your father likes, and pray God to direct your father aright.’ Other friends were urging the same course upon him. This conspiracy of circumstance acquired additional cumulative effect from the fact that all these things occurred within the brief space of three weeks of time. Robertson at length spoke to his father and ‘‘left the final decision in his hands.’’ Though his father had so long desired to see him go into the ministry, he now gave the matter further and anxious consideration and determined at length to send him up at once to Oxford. With some difficulty an opening was found in Brazenose 13 . een 194 PRINCES OF .THE CHRISTIAR College, and on May 4, 1837, he was examined and matricu- lated to become a resident in October. He was now twen- ty-one years of age. Five days after his admission to Oxford he received notice of an offer of a cavalry commission, with an option of ex- change to troops just setting out for India, the very direc- tion in which his mind had been turned. A difference of three weeks of time in its arrival would in all probability have set it up as a permanent barrier to his entrance into the ministry. In a sermon in after years in which he was giving expression to his belief that God’s providence shapes our lives, he said: “If I had not met a certain person, ! should not have changed my profession; if I had not known a certain lady I should not probably have met this person; if that lady had not had a delicate daughter who was disturbed by the barking of my dog, I should not have met that lady; if my dog had not barked that night, I should now have been in the dragoons or fertilizing the soil of India.”’ He was deeply submissive to the will of God and suf- fered himself, even if we may suppose that he was tempted to do so, to entertain no positive regret that he had entered the ministry. Still there was a lifelong regret, secret, though at times all but expressed, that he had been denied the gratification of a career as a soldier. His biographer, the Rev. Stopford A. Brooke, says that ‘‘all his life long he was a soldier at heart.’’ But all the best that he aimed to be as a soldier he became as a minister of Jesus Christ. The very effort to subdue the flame of soldierly aspiration could but kindle in him a more ardent flame for service in a nobler warfare. ‘‘The strength of character which made him feel so keenly the surrender of one profession made him adopt another with fervor.” The Tractarian Movement, under the leadership of John Peer b AND PASTORATE 195 Henry Newman, was in the full tide of its influence while Robertson was at Oxford. He was deeply impressed by Newman’s preaching, but could not be won over to sym- pathy with the movement. The clash of religious con- troversy convinced him of the necessity of a deeper and more accurate acquaintance with the Bible. While in the University he learned by heart the New Testament, both in English and in Greek. This he accomplished while dressing in the morning, taking a certain number of verses each day, going thus twice over the English and once and a half over the Greek version. He studied Plato, Aristotle, and Jonathan Edwards until these had passed like the “iron atoms of the blood into his mental constitution.” Bishop Butler, both in his sermons and in the “ Analogy,” he seems also completely to have mastered. Among the poets he seems chiefly to have read Tennyson and Dante. There are indications that he read the latter every day. The entire “Inferno’’ he seems to have committed to memory. Wordsworth also acquired a permanent and most wholesome ascendancy over his mind. His university life, of course, did not form the end, but only the beginning, of most of these studies. His admiration for great and heroic qualities in human character was early awakened and continuously active, and in proportion as he was capable of admiration for that which was noble in others did he possess the power to become noble himself. He participated freely in the exercises of the Oxford de- bating union, but displayed at this time only argumenta- tive and not oratorical powers. He was drawn into much discursive reading, in part through the influence of the Tractarian controversy as over against the more concen- trated reading of the college curriculum, which had for its design not only the more effective training of the mind, but also the possible winning of honors. This he afterwards 196 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN very much regretted, not because of the honors he did not win, but because of the lost discipline of the mind. Ten or twelve years after he left the University he said: “‘I now feel that I was utterly, mournfully, irreparably wrong. I would now give £200 a year to have read on a bad plan, chosen for me, but steadily.”’ All through his youth he preserved without contamina- tion through any coarse contact or indulgence that fine chastity of spirit which ultimately fixed chastity upon him as one of the finest attributes of his character. A PAINFUL STRUGGLE FOR A POSITION IN THE MINISTRY Position in the ministry, so far as externalities go, Robert- son never had. He preached butva little more than thirteen years, and during this time he had only four Churches— Winchester, two years; Cheltenham, five years; Oxford, three months; Brighton, six years; and in every one of these he was in but a subordinate or inferior position. He might have had preferment in the Church if he had been more plastic in the hands of those who had the preferment to bestow, as was intimated in the matter of his attitude on the Sabbath; but that it was not given him to be. The Lord Chancellor might give him many things, a bishopric or what not, but one thing he could not give him, and that was peace of conscience. And there he stood as tireless in his devotion to high principle as the multitudinous seas were tireless in their ceaseless task of encompassing the beaches of Brighton. Upon the pricelessness of peace of conscience to himself he insisted with a most impracticable persistence. He had the swift and unerring insight to dis- cern that a man might lose the power to be a bishop in the act of gaining the office. ‘‘They have bowed down to Satan to win the kingdom, and therefore the kingdom is value- less.’ He would not sacrifice the interiorities of his life PULPIT AND PASTORATE 197 in order to save the exteriorities. It would seem all too often to be the fate of the high and prophet-toned men to be bound up in the bundle of the affairs of life with the servile or inferior sort and to be in subjection under them. Notwithstanding these seeming untoward eventualities, the righteous have their reward. Who knows now without going to the pains to look it up so much as what the name of Robertson’s spiteful vicar at Brighton was? When he leaves the University and embarks upon the wider stages of his ministry there is still a tone of sadness and regret which clings to all his serious action. His biography, Hoppin says, “‘is a sad book to read.’’ Still in this very shrinking on the threshold of a great task, a shrinking which even later he could never entirely shake off, we may undoubtedly find some of the finest elements of his fitness to be just what he felt he could not be. The man who can thus measure the greatness of the task to which he is called and can at the same time sound the depths and search out the secrets of his own mind and conscience to know how unfit he is, is just the man who in the final test of the issues of life will force himself up in mind and character to the greatness of his task. There is recorded here too the first chapter in the history of that capacity for suffering through which Robertson entered into the greatness of his achievement as a Christian preacher. What he suffered is as nearly as could be the measure of what he achieved. Had he suffered less, he would have preached Christ less effectively. Out of the depths of an inexpressible loneliness of soul there started fountains of tears cleansing and sacrificial in their flow, and the tears of other men were swallowed up in their flood. Upon the whole it cannot be said that Robertson’s time at Winchester made any appreciable contribution to either the deepening or expansion of his character. Brooke thinks 198 PRINCES OF THE CHRIST EAS bc that his sermons here were ‘“‘startlingly inferior’’ to those produced at Brighton. His secluded and severe regimen of life impaired his health; and acting under medical advice he relinquished his charge and traveled abroad, having first passed his examination for priest’s orders. In the retrospect of his ministry at Winchester he was haunted by a disheartening sense of failure which settled upon him as one of the plagues of his life. In his travels on the Continent he came into contact with the illustrious Ceasar Malan, who after several in- timate interviews said to him: ‘‘My dear brother, you will have a sad life, a sad ministry.”’ It was on this adventure also that he met and married Helen Denys, a daughter of a distinguished English family sojourning for a while in Geneva. In the summer of 1842 he became curate at Cheltenham. His rector was the Rev. Archibald Boyd, who proved him- self to be.a generous and valued friend. For this reason among others Robertson was more advantageously situated than hitherto had been his lot. But he held extreme views of propriety as applied to ministerial conduct and refrained from recreations which the state both of his mind and his body really required. He sorely needed human sympathy, and yet was largely denied it, not so much because others were unwilling that he should have it as that he himself did not know how to receive it. Without so much as know- ing that he did it, he posted a notice that there was ‘‘No admission.”’ His attitude toward others was reflected upon himself as if it were their own toward him, and yet he did not know it. “‘Sad and dispirited’’ was his comment upon himself as he contemplated the results of his ministry at Cheltenham. Nevertheless, he grew. He read Carlyle, and did not slacken in his devotion to Tennyson and Dante. He kept himself usefully and intelligently informed on PULCPID AND. PASTORATE 199 questions of the day, and the effect of this was reflected in hissermons. His method of sermon preparation changed, and ‘his sermons changed in character. Instead of writing them out in one morning as he had done at Winchester, he now studied for them on Thursday and Friday and wrote them on Saturday. In respect of this matter also Mr. Boyd exercised a wholesome influence upon him. It was while at Cheltenham that he reacted rather vi- olently from what he conceived to be the excesses of the evangelicalism in which he had been brought up. This had been the atmosphere of his home and the substance of his early training, and from it he could not break wholly away, as, indeed, from its essential content, he would not wish to do. But this section of the Church of England had retrograded as he thought from a sound and genuine piety into a pietistic narrowness, and from sincere and genuinely Christian devotion into moral unreality, so that their pro- fession outran their experience, and his soul revolted. To allow himself to be any longer reckoned among them he considered would place him in a false position. Whatever harbor he may have had within any group in the Church he now lost. He occupied a singularly isolated position, being neither High Church, Broad Church, nor Evan- gelical in the full sense in which either term described a class. ‘“‘Opposed to the High Church movement,” says Garvie, “in revolt against the narrow evangelicalism in which he had been brought up, too ardently positive in his own faith in Christ to be at home among Broad Church- men, he stood alone.” His health again became seriously affected, and he started for the Continent in another effort to restore his physical strength and balance, in September, 1846. Leaving Chel- tenham he entered the Tyrol and wandered there alone. Here he had a lone struggle of the soul comparable to that 200 PRINCES OF THE CHRISPiAm® which he so eloquently describes in his sermon on ‘‘ Jacob's Wrestling.’’ Out of the stern struggles of his own soul he learned the secret of Jacob’s wrestling. In that great ser- mon given as a confirmation address about three years after this crisis in the Tyrol he says: “It was one of those moments in existence when a crisis is before us, to which great and pregnant issues are linked—when all has been done that foresight can devise, and, the hour of action being past, the instant of reaction has come. Then the soul is left passive and helpless, gazing face to face upon the an- ticipated and dreadful moment which is slowly moving on. It is in these hours that, having gone through in imagina- tion the whole circle of resources, and found them nothing, and ourselves powerless, as in the hands of a destiny, there comes a strange and nameless dread, a horrible feel- ing of insecurity, which gives the consciousness of a want, and forces us to feel out into the abyss for something that is mightier than flesh and blood to lean upon... . And this is our struggle—the struggle. Let any true man go down into the depths of his own being, and answer us—what is the cry that comes from the most real part of his nature? Is it the cry for daily bread? Jacob had asked for that in his first communing with God—preservation, safety. Is it even this—to be forgiven our sins? Jacob had a sin to be forgiven, and in that most solemn moment of his existence he did not say a syllable about it. Or is it this— ‘Hallowed be thy name’? No, my brethren. Out of our frail and yet sublime humanity, the demand that rises in the earthlier hours of our religion may be this—Save my soul; but in the most unearthly moments it is this—‘ Tell me thy Name.’ We move through a world of mystery, and the deepest question is, What is the being that is ever near, sometimes felt, never seen; that which has haunted us from childhood with a dream of something surpassingly PULPIT AND: PASTORATE 201 fair, which has never yet been realized; that which sweeps through the soul at times as a desolation, like the blast from the wings of the Angel of Death, leaving us stricken and silent in our loneliness; that which has touched us in our tenderest point, and the flesh has quivered with agony, and our mortal affections have shriveled up with pain; that which comes to us in aspirations of nobleness and con- ceptions of superhuman excellence? Shall we say It or He? Whatisit? Whois He? Those anticipations of Immortality and God—what are they? Are they the mere throbbings of my own heart, heard and mistaken for a living something beside me? Are they the sound of my own wishes, echoing through the vast void of nothingness? or shall I call them God, Father, Spirit, Love? A living Being within me or outside me? Tellme Thy Name, thou awful mystery of Loveliness! This is the struggle of all earnest life... . The effect of this revelation was to change Jacob’s character. His name was changed from Jacob to Israel, because himself was an al- tered man. Hitherto there had been something subtle in his character—a certain cunning and craft—a want of breadth, as if he had no firm footing upon reality. The forgiveness of God twenty years before had not altered this. He remained Jacob, the subtle supplanter still. For, indeed, a man whose religion is chiefly the sense of forgive- ness does not thereby rise into integrity or firmness of character—a certain tenderness of character may very easily go along with a great deal of subtlety. Jacob was tender and devout, and grateful for God’s pardon, and only half honest still. But this half insincere man is brought into contact with the awful God, and his subtlety falls from him. He becomes real at once. Every insincere habit of mind shrivels in the face of God. One clear, true glance into the depths of Being, and the whole man is al- tered. The name changes because the character is changed. 202 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN No longer Jacob, The Supplanter, but Israel, The Prince of God—the champion of the Lord, who had fought with God and conquered; and who, henceforth, will fight for God, and be his true, loyal soldier: a larger, more unselfish name—a larger and more unselfish man—honest and true at last. No man becomes honest till he has got face to face with God. There is a certain insincerity about us all —a something dramatic. One of those dreadful moments which throw us upon ourselves, and strip off the hollowness of our outside show, must come before the insincere is true.” This is speech in the language of experience wherein all men were born, and wherein in a preéminent degree the soul of Frederick W. Robertson was nurtured. This is the mystic sign by which all wrestlers with God know each other. Across the chasm of the centuries they call to each other, and they are one in all ages. Even more poignantly autobiographical and self-revealing is the following passage from an address to workingmen of Brighton delivered when the crisis in the Tyrolese solitudes had still further deepened its significance in his soul: “‘It is an awful moment when the soul begins to feel that the props on which it has blindly rested so long are, many of them, rotten, and begins to suspect them all; when it begins to feel the nothingness of many of the traditionary opinions which have been re- ceived with implicit confidence, and in that horrible in- security begins also to doubt whether there be anything to believe at all. It is an awful hour—let him who has passed through it say how awful—when this life has lost its mean- ing, and seems shriveled into a span; when the grave ap- pears to be the end of all, human goodness nothing but a name, and the sky above this universe a dead expanse, black with the void from which God himself has disap- peared. In that fearful loneliness of spirit, when those who should have been his friends and counselors only PULPIT AND PASTORATE 203 frown upon his misgivings, and profanely bid him stifle doubts which, for aught he knows, may arise trom the fountain of truth itself; to extinguish, as a glare from hell, that which, for aught he knows, may be light from heaven, and everything seems wrapped in hideous uncertainty, I know but one way in which a man may come forth from his agony scathless; it is by holding fast to those things which are certain still—the grand, simple landmarks of morality. In the darkest hour through which a human soul can pass, whatever else is doubtful, this at least is certain. If there be no God and no future state, yet even then it is better to be generous than selfish, better to be chaste than licentious, better to be true than false, better to be brave than to be a coward. Blessed beyond all earthly blessing is the man who, in the tempestuous dark- ness of his soul, has dared to hold fast to these venerable landmarks. Thrice blessed is he who—when all is drear and cheerless within and without, when his teachers ter- rify him, and his friends shrink from him-—has obstinately clung to moral good; thrice blessed, because his night shall pass into clear, bright day. I appeal to the recollection of any man who has passed through that hour of agony, and stood upon the rock at last, the surges stilled below him, and the last cloud drifted from the sky above, with a faith, and hope, and trust no longer traditional, but of hisown—a trust which neither earth nor hell shall shake thenceforth for- ever.’ Through contests such as these did he win the clearer knowledge of God and the secret of a sure trust in him. Before returning to Cheltenham he had given up the curacy of the Church there and wanted employment. He wrote to Bishop Wilberforce and stated his case with the result that he was offered the weak and struggling Church at St. Ebbe’s at Oxford. Knowing the bishop’s views on the subject, he hesitated to accept without telling him that 204 PRINCES OF THE: CHRISEIAw he could not preach the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. The bishop replied that he allowed rather large latitude to his clergy and asked to hear Robertson state his position. When this had been done he said: ‘‘ Well, Mr. Robertson, you have well maintained your position, and I renew my offer.’ The offer was immediately accepted. Looking backward to Cheltenham and forward to St. Ebbe’s, he wrote to a friend: “‘I have lately, as I told you, given up Christ Church here with feelings of inexpressible pain. A ministry of twilight, at the best, and difficulty, has closed. Every effort has been crowned with the most signal failure, and I shrink sometimes almost in torture from the idea of beginning work again with the possibility of five such years once more before me. This is not an encouraging tone of mind to begin a ministry with, so beset with difficulties as St. Ebbe’s. However, as I certainly have no earthly inducement to take it, perhaps the work may be blest, even though mine.’’ This unfortunately became his characteristic mood. How far, being constitut- ed as he was, he could have ordered otherwise no man can say. That he fought his moods we very well know. After two months at Oxford he was offered Trinity Chapel, Brighton, and declined, thinking it to be his duty to stay where he was; and also doubting whether he could be sure of his motive in leaving a stipend of £115 for one of £300. But Brighton pressed its claims, and his bishop when consulted advised him to go. BUILDING A WORLD PULPIT AT BRIGHTON Anwoth, and Kidderminster, and Eversley, and Brighton have been the Nazareths out of which have come some of the world’s greatest and most permanent ministries. Brighton would hardly be called the least likely of them all, but had a prospector gone out to find the place where PULPIT AND PASTORATE 205 a great English pulpit was to be built in the nineteenth century he probably would not have surveyed Brighton. And yet it was there “in a shabby little chapel holding some five hundred people” that such a pulpit was built. Brighton was a popular seaside resort and had its own fashions, foibles, and follies, industrial, social, intellectual, and religious. But it is not out of mere places that pulpits are built. In this place, and in this little chapel, insignifi- cant in its appointments though it was, Robertson exercised a ministry which has sent out its lines into all the earth, and whose voice has been heard to the ends of the world. The misgiving which all his life shadowed his soul fol- lowed him in its darkest hues to Brighton. He lived with a presentiment that his life was to be short. He thought his work would kill him. His preaching at Brighton quick- ly attracted attention, not a little of it of a critical sort. He was anonymously accused to the bishop of the diocese of preaching on political subjects in a way to provoke un- rest among workingmen. There was a general feeling of disturbance in the air,—this was in 1848—an importation to England from the Continent, more particularly from France. Robertson had preached a series of expository sermons from the first book of Samuel which furnished the ground of the complaint against him. But if he had only expounded the plain principles of the Scriptures as he found them and they had been discovered to be applicable to human government and the relation of those who gov- erned and those who were the subjects of the government, how was he to be blamed? In that case, as it seemed to him, the complaint lay not against him, but against the Scriptures. In a letter to the bishop he stoutly defended his course: “I spoke of the faults of those above me, and they complain that they should not be so taught in the presence of their servants and inferiors. ... I feel that, in 206 PRINCES” OF “THE? CHRIS GEA dealing with God’s truth, a minister of Christ is clear from the charge of presumption if he speaks strongly, yet af- fectionately, of evils or faults in his social superiors. It brings no pleasure with it. It makes him personal enemies. It is ruin to his worldly interests; and worse than all to a sensitive heart, it makes coldness where there was cor- diality. Yet through life I am ready to bear this, if need be. An earnest searching ministry among the rich is very, very saddening work.”’ A Workingman’s Institute was established in Brighton, and Robertson had given his aid to the movement. He was asked to make the address at its opening. He became more and more involved in the clash of interests between the rich and the poor. He had been bred in the tastes of the aristocracy, but his principles were with the democracy. He himself thought ‘‘this discord in him marred his use- fulness.’ It is no doubt truer to the facts to think other- wise; for what he conceived to be a discord only drew his soul out to finer issues. At any rate he went with his prin- ciples and not with his tastes. Even he is aware that he has come to better things in Brighton. But he begins to suffer extreme exhaustion after effort. Sunday night, Monday, and all Tuesday were “days of wretched exhaustion—not despondency, but actual nervous pain.” He finds himself driven in upon the deepest sources of spiritual comfort: ‘‘My experience is closing into this, that I turn with disgust from everything to Christ. I think I get glimpses into his mind, and I am sure that I love him more and more... . A sublime feeling of a Presence comes upon me at times, which makes inward solitariness a trifle to talk about.” | That a man so tensely strung to the note of self-conscious- ness as Robertson was should ever be able to shake himself free of his bondage is a noble tribute to his devotion to the PUEriIT AND PASTORATE 207 highest things whether within or without himself. But in public speech it was so. In his pulpit his haunting self- hood did not intrude. “His self-consciousness vanished. He did not choose his words or think about his thoughts. He not only possessed, but was possessed by his idea; and when all was over, and the reaction came, he had forgotten, like a dream, words, illustrations, almost everything.” He laid the power of his resolute will upon his own passion and brought it under a sure control. His complete mastery over himself gave him the mastery over others. By the measure of the restraint which he laid upon his own emo- tions he was able to stir the emotions of others. Perhaps nothing else quite so subdues a public audience as the spectacle in a speaker of supreme self-command. Nothing else so gives him a title to command others as a wise self- command. But this effort at self-mastery was to Robert- son terribly self-consuming.. ‘‘He spoke,’ says Brooke, ‘under tremendous excitement, but it was excitement reined in by will. He held in his hand, when he began his sermon, a small slip of paper, with a few notes upon it. He referred to it now and then; but before ten minutes had gone by, it was crushed to uselessness in his grasp; for he knit his fingers together over it, as he knit his words over his thought. His gesture was subdued: sometimes a slow motion of his hand upwards; sometimes bending forward, his hand drooping over the pulpit; sometimes erecting him- self to his full height with a sudden motion, as if upraised by the power of the thought he spoke. His voice—a musical, low, clear, penetrative voice—seldom rose; and when it did, it was in a deep volume of sound, which was not loud, but toned like a great bell. It thrilled, also, but that was not so much from feeling as from the repression of feeling. ... Brain and heart were on fire. He was being self-consumed.” 208 } PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN The Brighton days ran brilliantly, but for him heavily, on. The brilliance of his own achievement seems to have been entirely concealed from himself. He was never to know in this world how nobly he had lived, nor with what splendor his pulpit had been crowned. He asked for a curate, but was not allowed to have one, his vicar inter- vening with an objection based on a previous personal difference with Robertson’s nominee. Under the circum- stances he declined to propose another. In the meantime disease ran on its merciless course, and with the advance of the disease there was increased and all but intolerable suffering. He himself described his pain as being like ‘‘stabs in the brain.’’ It was a disease of the brain, and the medical practice of the time could afford him no relief. What he suffered no one really ever knew. His biographer remembers that he saw on the manuscript of one of his lectures on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, that on ‘‘The Thorn in the Flesh,” the mark of a tear. Strange record of a tear was that; but the full record of our tears is kept in another land. He preached his last sermon on Sunday, June 5, 1853, and died on the fifteenth of August following, being at the time thirty-seven years, six months, and twelve days old. LASTING INFLUENCE OF THE MAN AND His MINISTRY When Robertson died only one of his sermons had ever been printed, that on the death of Queen Adelaide, under the title, ‘‘The Israelite’s Grave in a Foreign Land.’ The wealth of homiletic material wrapped up in his sermons to be discovered when they were printed had not been re- motely conceived of, and least of all by Robertson himself. His own hands, however, in the form in which we have them, had preserved them. He had formed the habit of writing them out from memory on the day of their delivery PULPIT AND PASTORATE | 209 for the use of a friend and members of his family. The persistence with which he clung to the discharge of a task so disagreeable and irksome as this could but have been to one of his temperament would seem almost to have had in it some unconscious cerebration of what was to come of it. And yet so little did he think of what he had done in the preservation of this incomparable material that he left no direction whatever concerning any disposition to be made of it. 1. The most valuable lesson of his life for the preacher must be the inescapable way in which the man himself was bound up in the bundle of life with the preacher. In the proportion that any man fancies that he can detach his manhood from his ministry will both his manhood and his ministry deteriorate. In going about to explain the unique interest which Robertson has excited and the lasting influence which he has exercised upon Christian preaching the last word lies here—that he built his pulpit into an altar and bound himself to it and consumed himself on it, God’s grace sanctifying the gift. Whatever may have been the tinge, or taint, if any please to call it so, of reluctance and regret which attached to the very temperament of the man, there will be none to question that he burnt all of himself on the altar he built at the center of his ministry. He first disciplined and trained the man and then the training of the preacher came easy. The last problem of homiletics is the sermon. The first problem is the preacher himself, and never a mere matter of method or technique. Robertson’s sermons burned like a fire in his brain, every one of them, and throbbed in his heart, and ran in his very blood. A man may have many opinions and never make a preacher. But if he has a few convictions, mixed with the moral tissue of the man as Robertson’s were, he has gotten fairly into the way of making a preacher. His theology, 14 7 % 210 PRINCES (OF DHE, CHRIS TEA though he hammered it out himself, never amounted to much, either while he lived or since. But he had convictions to count, not so much numerically as in their tremendous moral force and effect. ‘‘I could not tell you,” he said in one of his illuminating letters, “‘my own deep and deepen- ing conviction that the truths which I teach are true.” Every great preacher has his own Gethsemane, aye, and his own Calvary too; and Robertson did not escape his. He had gone into his Gethsemane and stained with his blood the stones over which his head had bowed. He had gone into the solitudes of the Tyrolese mountains and had climbed his Calvary and had died to self. He was made the captain of their salvation to many through the things which he suffered. Sufferers, and doubters, and any who carried heavily the strain of life heard him gladly and with ereat profit. The very extremity of his suffering, though -it was produced in part by his morbid sensitiveness, has exercised a profound selective influence upon the minds of many, and has made him by preéminence their minister. Perhaps no other man ever paid a greater price to be a preacher. ‘‘The most valuable book I possess,’ he said, ‘fis the remembrance of trials at which I repined, but which I now find were sent in answer to my prayer to be made a preacher.”’ The very bitterness with which he received the word gave it a tone of wondrous comfort to others as it came forth again from his mouth. ‘“‘It is not so much the utterance as the reception of the Word which is the condi- tion of its utterance,’ says Dr. R. F. Horton, in “‘Verbum Det,” “that makes the great demand upon the man’s en- durance and faithfulness.’”’ Perhaps the heights of joy and the depths of sorrow and suffering lie closer together in the secret monitions of our nature than we are wont to think; and he who cannot descend to the one cannot ascend to the other. PULPIT AND PASTORATE Ad “Who would dare the choice, neither or both to know, The finest quiver of joy or the agony-thrill of woe? Never the exquisite pain, then never the exquisite bliss, For the heart that is dull to that can never be strung to this.” 2. Robertson’s sermons are renowned for the closeness of their application of the Bible to the ends of preaching. No man could know the Bible as he knew it, and devote himself to the continued study of it as he did, never as- suming that he sufficiently knew it, and apply such proc- esses of the mind to the understanding of it as he did, without noteworthy results. He demanded of himself first of all that he should know just what the Bible said and what it meant as it stood there on the printed page in its original historical setting and intent. He felt that in the first instance it must be allowed to speak for itself, and its content be approached not only without preconceived opinions, but with a tractable and sincere desire to know the truth. In the next place he committed himself to the immitigable task, for he resolutely imposed it on himself, of knowing what permanent truth his text enshrined. If there were no such truth, then it was not the text he sought. And last of all he bent himself to the application of that truth to his own time. If the sermons on Samuel bore down on the conditions in the midst of which he was called to labor, instead of the conditions in the midst of which Samual lived, then it was so much the worse for the later time. What else shall sermons fit if they do not fit the times? It is no use to cut out homiletical garments to fit the angels. Let sermons be shaped in secret places, to be sure; but let them fit their wearers in public places. Every sermon begins with a close and conscientious analysis of the text. He digs the ground down to the depths and through all the space around until he finds the treasure hidden there. It is a work that makes remorseless demand 212 PRINCES OF “THE: CHRIST IA on mind and nerve, and that is why so many preachers shirk it. But Robertson was no shirker. He would spend the last atom of his strength in doing this work. What does this text mean? What did this writer mean to con- vey? What does it mean to men to-day? “Nearly every one of the one hundred sermons,” says Dr. Frederick Lynch, ‘‘furnishes about the most thorough analysis of texts to be found anywhere in literature.’’ “‘He demonstrates,” says Dr. Brastow, ‘‘ the fruitfulness of Biblical study for homiletic use. . . . His preaching shows how thoroughly he had grasped the homiletic significance and value of the Bible.” 3. As any master of preaching who exercises a wide in- fluence is bound to do, whether consciously or unconscious- ly, Robertson was careful of homiletic form and practice. He would be instinctively if not otherwise aware that the arrangement of the material of a sermon has much to do with the effectiveness of its presentation. He had at his command both through his natural gifts and through their cultivation ‘‘an extraordinary power of expression and ar- rangement.’’ Let anyone who cares to do so take his matchless sermon on ‘‘The Loneliness of Christ’’ and con- sider whether he can add, or remove, or substitute a single word, or change a single turn in the expression, or alter the arrangement to the advantage of either the expression or the arrangement. Introduction, discussion, and conclusion are as admirable in conception and execution as-if he had fashioned the whole as a model of homiletical instructiom, and guidance. : He had in a conspicuous degree the gifts which go to the making of a topical preacher. Nevertheless, he was a textual preacher, and a study of his homiletics brings us back again to his Biblical method. The text was his point of departure. The process to which he subjected his text was so vital that the sermon was a growth and not a struc- PULPIT AND PASTORATE 213 ture, or such a structure as is the result of a vital and nota mechanical procedure. Thus he secured one of the highest ends of preaching wherein it serves as an exposition of the Word of God. His lectures on Corinthians are not only noble examples of exposition, but it will also be noted that they sustain a distinct sermonic form. When he had matured his method of preparation as ap- plied to the particular sermon in distinction from the gen- eral preparation which every effective preacher must make, he described it as follows: ‘‘I should say that the word ‘extempore’ does not exactly describe the way I preach. I first make copious notes; then draw out a form; afterwards write copiously, sometimes twice, or thrice, the thoughts, to disentangle them, into a connected whole, then make a syllabus; and, lastly, a skeleton, which I take into the pulpit.”’ Any preacher who reads that and compares it with his own method may consult his own conscience as to what confession he should make. 4. He held in well-balanced combination a rare degree of courage and tenderness. Scarcely could any man be more wholesomely masculine; scarcely could any woman be more genuinely tender. He was equally strong in logic and in emotion. Strong thought and a deep and pene- trating tenderness had equal place in his preaching. He could stimulate and instruct the intellect, and he could comfort and strengthen the heart. He had the courage to take the consequences, and not to count the cost. He could not consult for his own preference or safety. He - could not trim his sails to the breezes that blew from either the popular or the royal will. The Lord Chancellor might give him the richest preferment in the land, but must leave him still to the care of his own conscience, as he intimated in the case of his being desired to moderate his position on the Sabbath. He very broadly intimated that the world 214 PRINCES OF DHE @PULEEIs had nothing to give him for which he cared; that he held the true thing to be ever the safe thing in the long run; and that he could not turn one hair’s-breadth out of his own path for royalty itself. He lowered his banner to no man. And yet the whole British Cabinet came down on one Sunday to Brighton to hear him preach. _5. Sinking the shaft of his steadfast purpose through all other considerations and past all other depths, he anchored at last himself and his ministry in Christ as central both in Christian experience and Christian preaching. In these great depths he found the only calm he ever had; and ‘it is because of this experience that Robertson became the most comprehensive, forceful, and persuasive interpreter of Christ and of all human life in the light of his person, character, and work in his century.” ‘Of one thing I have become distinctly conscious,’ he himself said; ‘that my motto for life, my whole heart’s expression is, ‘None but Christ’; to have the mind of Christ; to feel as he felt; to judge the world and to estimate the world’s maxims as he judged and estimated, that is the thing worth living for.” This devotion to Christ was the root of his life and the spring of all his effort. “‘A nobler Christian gentleman never appeared among us,” said Sir William Robertson Nicoll, writing on the one hundredth anniversary of his birth. We may well take it as the standard of his own attain- ment in Christian greatness when he expresses himself as follows in one of the most penetrating utterances in one of the most profound of his sermons: ‘“‘It is not difficult to get away into retirement, and there live upon your own convictions; nor is it difficult to mix with men, and follow their convictions; but to enter into the world, and there live out firmly and fearlessly according to your own conscience, that is Christian greatness.”’ IX CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON (1834-1892) ‘‘A Root Out oF A Dry GROUND” HuMAN conditions, whether of heredity or environment, can scarcely prognosticate such a man as Charles H. Spurgeon. Digging in the ancestral soil hardly discovers even the roots of the greatness to which he grew. That ancestry was not without real and considerable worth. But it gave no intimation of the greatness that was to come in this particular piece of its progeny. His own personal appearance was disappointing. To look on him was to find both his face and his form almost entirely without at- tractiveness. He was born at Kelvedon, in Essex, June 19, 1834. But neither the soil nor the skies of Essex are suf- ficient to account for the man. His father was employed as a business man on week days, and ministered on Sundays for sixteen years to a congregation of Independents not faraway. When about eighteen months old baby Spurgeon was transferred, for reasons which have never yet become clearly known, to his grandfather’s manse at Stambourne. There in a minister’s home and with a devoted unmarried aunt to mother him he spent several years. He turned even thus early to serious things, and afterwards said of those days that to be alone was “his boyish heaven.” His grandmother employed him on the hymns of Isaac Watts, offering him a penny for every one he committed to memory. But he so depleted her purse that she reduced his wages to a halfpenny a hymn. The grandfather inter- fered with the arrangement by offering the boy a shilling (215) 216 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN a dozen for all the rats he would kill, since the place was grievously infested with them. For the time the rat-catch- ing was the better paying business, but he said that in the long run hymn-learning paid better, particularly if a boy were going to be a preacher. An observation of these days he afterwards used with telling effect. He saw an apple inside a narrow-necked bottle, and greatly wondered why the bottle was not broken when the apple was inserted, until in the orchard one day he saw a bottle attached to the limb of an apple tree and a young apple growing on the inside. He returned to the house of his father, who was now living in Colchester, and had rather irregular schooling, though it was the best the circumstances permitted, until he was about fourteen years of age, when he was sent to an Anglican school at Maidstone. He quickly mastered his studies, showing a particular proficiency in mathematics. And he had begun already to think independently, for when he had had a debate with a clerical examiner on baptism he determined that if ever he was converted he would become a Baptist, notwithstanding his family were Congregationalists. EARLY RELIGIOUS QUEST Through his later childhood and early teens he struggled against God, and resisted the call of conscience to a re- ligious life. That one so circumstanced and so trained and still so young should have had such bitter exercises of soul is inexplicable. Who can say but that it was God’s way of training him that he might be a guide to others? For in after years he was a master physician in the troubles of the soul. ‘I must confess,” he says, speaking of these ex- periences, ‘‘that I never would have been saved if I could have helped it. As long as ever I could I revolted, and re- PebePrryAND “PASTORATE 217 belled, and struggled against God.’ But the Lord and his mother’s prayers never left him alone. ‘‘Long before I began with Christ, he began with me,” said he. To his mother he owed his first religious awakening. Her very prayers stirred his soul to self-concern. Once his father, on the way to a preaching engagement, had his heart smite him with the thought that he was caring for others and neglecting his own family. He was so impressed that he turned and retraced his steps to his home, and finding all quiet in the lower rooms he ascended the stairs, and heard a voice in prayer. Listening outside the door he heard his wife pleading for the children, with an especial earnestness in the plea for Charles, her firstborn and strong- willed son. ‘‘My father,’ said Charles, who tells the story, ‘felt that he might safely go about his Master’s business while the dear wife was caring so well for the spiritual in- terests of the boys and girls at home, so he did not disturb her, but proceeded at once to fulfill his preaching engage- ment.” When his struggle for peace had become so intense as to be all but unbearable the memorable day of his conver- sion came. The very date was ever after written down in his calendar, January 6, 1850, when he was not yet sixteen. A storm prevented his reaching his intended place of wor- ship for the day, and he turned aside into the Primitive Methodist Chapel, in Artillery Street, Colchester. The appointed preacher did not arrive, and a humble and still unknown man took his place. From the pulpit he an- nounced the text, “‘Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.’”’ ‘‘My dear friends,” said he, ‘‘this is a simple text. It says, Look. Now lookin’ don’t take a deal of pains. It ain’t liftin’ your foot or your finger. It is just ‘Look.’ Well, a man needn’t go to college to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool and yet you can look. 218 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN You needn’t be worth a thousand a year to be able to look. Anyone can look: even a child can look. But then the text says, ‘Look unto me.’ Ay!” said he in broad Essex, “many on ye are lookin’ to yourselves, but it’s no use lookin’ there. You'll never find any comfort in yourselves. Some look to God the Father. No, look to him by-and-by. Jesus Christ says, ‘Look unto me.’ Some on ye say, ‘We must wait for the Spirit’s workin’.” You have no business with that just now. Look to Christ. The text says, ‘Look unto me.’’’ ‘Then he turned to the young stranger, who was easily distinguishable among his small group of twelve or fifteen auditors, and addressing him directly, he said: “Young man, you look very miserable. You always will be miserable—miserable in life and miserable in death— if you don’t obey my text; but if you obey now, this mo- ment you will be saved.’’ Young Spurgeon looked and was saved. “‘I thought,” said he, “‘I could dance all the way home. I could understand what John Bunyan meant when he declared that he wanted to tell the crows on the ploughed land all about his conversion.” BEGINS TO PREACH His first impulse toward the ministry came from Richard Knill, who came to his grandfather’s house on a missionary deputation when Spurgeon himself, then only ten years old, was on a visit there. For the three days of his stay he devoted himself with all the ardor of his soul to the winning of this child to the love of Christ, and predicted that he would one day preach the gospel. In pursuance of his promptly formed purpose to devote all his powers to Christian service Spurgeon began to teach in a Sunday school. There was committed to his tutelage a class of very restless boys. When he had lost control of them he would regain it by telling a story. Here he learned BUCPEL SAND PASTORATE - 219 one of his first lessons in homiletics, for a boy would say very frankly, ‘This is very dull, teacher. Can’t you pitch us a yarn?’ He preached his first sermon unexpectedly and all but unawares, for he had gone out with another ex- pecting him to preach while from the first this other had intended to inveigle Spurgeon into doing the preaching. The sermon was delivered on a Lord’s day evening, in a thatched cottage, from the text, ‘‘Unto you that believe he is precious.’ In the meantime he had been employed as a teacher, and was preaching on the side. He did more preaching on the side, however, than most men do by main intention. For besides the Sunday services he had now begun to preach on the week days. After a few months of irregular preaching he was engaged to supply the pulpit in the village of Waterbeach. The original agreement upon the length of the term of his service was for but a few Sun- days, but he continued for more than two years. The little chapel was soon filled. Among the rest the vagabonds of the village came to his services and were transformed into moral assets of the community. Already his form of ut- terance is original and daring. There must be an utter change of the moral nature, he said, for if a thief went un- changed to heaven he would be only a thief still and would go around the place picking the angels’ pockets. He was criticized for this, and was reminded that the angels had no pockets. He said he had not known this and would set the matter right. So on the next Sunday he told his people he was sorry he had made this mistake, that the mayor of Cambridge, which was only six miles away, had told him that the angels had no pockets, so he would now _ say that if a thief got among the angels he would go around stealing the feathers out of their wings. It is presumable that the mayor of Cambridge gave up trying to bring him around to proper and precise form. 220 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN An idea of the extent of his labors at this time is afforded in the fact that he had preached six hundred and seventy sermons before his call to London came. He had not yet found the threshold of his great career, and while he labored and waited the question of entering a theological college for more thorough preparation had several times presented itself to his mind. He had at length definite thoughts of going to Stepney College, now Regent’s Park, and had an engagement to meet Dr. Angus, who at the time was its principal. Through a stupid misadventure. on the part of a servant girl they failed to meet, though for a considerable time they sat in separate rooms in the same house. Spurgeon was much disappointed, but as he was walking the same afternoon to an appointment a loud voice seemed to say to him: ‘‘Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not.’’ He took this as a veritable word of the Lord, and then and there renounced all thought of college and college studies. He did not by any means, however, renounce personal habits of study, for in these he was very diligent and accomplished almost prodigious results. But he had really never cared very much about the college and what he thought it could do for him. THE LonG LEAP TO LONDON From the fens of Essex to a metropolitan pulpit which he created by his own might and ability, and where he became one of the most potent pulpit influences of nineteen Chris- tian centuries, was indeed a long leap. He came to London in rather a roundabout way. A deacon of the New Park Street Church was told by an out-of-town deacon, who had heard Spurgeon at a Sunday school meeting in Cambridge, that he ought to be invited to preach at New Park Street. When the invitation came Spurgeon was disposed to doubt the genuineness of it. But a second letter came, he ac- Peer AND) ‘PASEORATE , peusk cepted, was asked to come again, and was then asked to take the pulpit for six months. But he was still diffident about the matter and would venture to agree to a term of only three months. He was not yet wholly wise, nor very cultured, but he fell into wise and good hands, for the most part. He had appeared on the occasion of his first visit displaying in the pulpit a blue handkerchief with large white dots. Conse- quently the first gift of his deacons to him was a dozen white handkerchiefs. The hint was too obvious for so shrewd a man as Spurgeon to miss. There have been deacons and other boards of Church officials who have: been far less wise and courteous and tactful in dealing with unsophisti- cated young preachers than this, and thereby much harm has been done. There were those in the London Churches when Spurgeon came there who were not without the power to discern large possibilities of development in him, and they were disposed to help and not to hinder. He had not been long installed in his new pastorate when a devastating scourge of Asiatic cholera swept the city, taking its merciless toll of his own people. He did not falter in the least in his task. But when nature was exhausted and he had grown inexpressibly weary in body and sick at heart with the persistent horror of it all, he saw on returning from a funeral a sign in a tradesman’s shop which read: ‘‘Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwell- ing.’’ He felt immediate comfort and relief, and went on unharmed to the end. Success waited instantly on his labors in London. His church was crowded and in every way inadequate to his uses. The ventilation was very poor, and he applied to the deacons to let him have more air. They dallied and delayed Maas PRINCES OF THE CHRIS Tia until they were surprised one morning to find that some one had gone about the building in the night and broken out many of the window lights. When they proposed in their official meeting to offer a reward for the detection of the culprit Spurgeon dissuaded them. He did not care under the circumstances to win the reward. Finally his desire for a larger building was to be gratified through the alteration of the old one. While this work was in progress the congregation repaired for the preaching services to Exeter Hall, which, though it was of unusual size, was crowded from the beginning. The extension of his fame, however, brought also its disadvantages. He began to be severely criticized and was coarsely caricatured. The Saturday Review, which had been called by John Bright the Saturday Reviler, was foremost in these attacks. “A true Christian,’’ Spurgeon was driven under the excess of its abuse to say, ‘‘is one who fears God, and is hated by the Saturday Review.’ Superficially he was no doubt more or less open to these attacks, though the event proved that down at the heart of the matter he was too big for them. And they really helped him more than they hindered him. They were not only the occasion of the increase of his in- fluence and his fame, but they caused him deep searchings of heart, which are good for any man, and more especially for a man leaping and bounding into prominence as Spur- geon was. He was sane enough to know that these things could not hurt him if he faced them out in the right way. One so much praised as he was could but be well served by some blame. ‘This I hope I can say from my heart,” he said, ‘if to be made as the mire of the street again, if to be the laughingstock of fools and the song of the drunkard once more, will make me more serviceable to my Master and more useful to his cause, I will prefer it to all this multi- tude, or to all the applause man can give.”’ By his very Pept? SAND EASTORATE Maes temperament he provoked two attitudes toward himself, with a tendency to excess in each: he was likely to be rather too highly praised or to be too severely blamed. He en- countered the danger which, according to a later suggestion of Dr. C. E. Jefferson in his “Building of the Church,”’ is one of the disadvantages of the very position of the preach- er—namely, that if he is too much praised he is likely to develop ‘‘self-consciousness in the major key,’”’ whereas if if he is too much blamed he is likely to develop “‘self- consciousness in the minor key.’’ And neither is a happy condition, either for the preacher or for his people. Not even Bishop Wilberforce was free from the disposi- tion to pour a little vitriol on Spurgeon’s growing fame, for when he was asked whether he did not envy the Non- conformists their possession of him, he replied: “‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s ass.’’ Nevertheless this young stripling of a Nonconformist, when but twenty-one years of age, was the talk of the town and a surpassingly pupular preacher. He sometimes took from ten to twelve services a week, and everywhere there were crowded con- gregations. The enlarged church at New Park Street proved to be too small, and there was a return to Exeter Hall. But this now was found also to be too small, so some steps must be taken to secure a building adequate to the demands. Surrey Music Hall, where he remained for three years, and the Crystal Palace, which he used for a very brief time, were the scenes of his preaching in the interval. Con- cerning his first service in the former, attended by ten thousand people, while as many more had gathered in the gardens on the outside unable to gain admittance, the fol- lowing lines were written: ‘‘Ecclesiastically viewed, Sun- day last was one of the most eventful nights that have descended on the metropolis for generations. On that oc- casion the largest, most commodious, and most beautiful 224 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN building erected for public amusement in this mighty city was taken possession of for the purpose of proclaiming the gospel of salvation. There, where for a long period wild beasts had been exhibited, and wilder men had been ac- customed to congregate, in countless multitudes, for idle — pastime, was gathered together the largest audience that ever met in any edifice in these British Isles to listen to the voice of a Nonconformist minister.’’ In the Crystal Palace he preached by actual count at the turnstiles to more than twenty-three thousand people. On March 21, 1861, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, built for Spurgeon’s own congregation, and destined to be the scene of his further triumphant ministry, was opened for the first preaching service. It was said that more than a million people had contributed to the cost of its erection. Here for more than thirty years, and until he was able no longer to preach at all, he swayed such an audience as hardly ever sat so long and so continuously under the min- istry of a single man in all the history of Christian preach- ing. ‘‘My congregation got my congregation,” he said. And they were gotten from all over the English-speaking world. ‘‘Here,” said a man found at the service who was known not to attend elsewhere, ‘‘every man has his own tale told.” Here Spurgeon said he could whisper and be heard in every part of the building, while he could shout and be heard nowhere. And one wonders why preachers still will not take this simple lesson in acoustics to heart. During the thirty-eight years of his London pastorate there were baptized and added to his Church 14,460 per- sons. It was estimated that by all methods there came into the Church under his ministry nearly twenty thousand persons. He thought there was not a seat in the Taber- nacle in which some one had not been converted. The total membership there shortly before his death was 5,311, PULPIT AND PASTORATE 225 It was no wonder that at the head of this vast Christian enterprise he could found and maintain a successful Pas- tor’s College, and establish an orphanage, which, considered in themselves, constituted an immense achievement. In London alone there were opened thirty-six chapels the pastors of which were trained at the college founded and directed by him. His orphanage received applicants for admission without reference to denominational affiliations and sheltered as many as five hundred children at a time. His UNACCUSTOMED AND UNACCOUNTABLE ACHIEVEMENT Great achievement excites human inquisitiveness. Valor and ability on the battle field, great exploits in exploration and discovery, mastery in fields of science and philosophy, and in the spheres of business and government, great in- tellect, great character, a great poet, a great preacher— great achievement, in whatever sphere displayed or won, not only incites to admiration, but arouses inquiry as to the source and secret of it all. The world is forever measur- ing and remeasuring its great men to know on what meat they have fed that they have grown so great. This laudable inquisitiveness the life, character, and career of Spurgeon incite to an unusual degree. How is he to be accounted for? Well, no process of the sort, as a matter of course, can ever be final or complete. Life is a force too significant and too elusive ever to be subjected to exact and final analysis. Much more is this true as life expresses itself in great Christian character and achievement. We only judge what we can judge and leave the rest to God who is Judge of all. The more distinctly defined gifts and qualities of Mr. Spurgeon, however, it will not be difficult to judge. 1. We may well begin with his convinced religious and theological belief. Christianity was to him a supernatural tS 226 PRINCES OF THE’ CHRISTI creation and Christian character a process in which the action of the grace of God is just as supernatural as is the being of God himself. He preached the gospel of the grace of God. Indeed, he conceived the gospel he preached to be the grace of God itself in action for the redemption of man. He preached it with power because he preached it with this conviction. It convinced others because it had first convinced him. Others were made certain of it because he had first been made certain of it himself. Religion was to him more than a belief; it was a conviction. It was more than a habit; it was an experience. It was more than a code of conduct; it was a character. When Dr. Joseph Parker had gone once and preached there he came back and spoke warmly of the climate of the Tabernacle. ‘‘I do not know that I was ever in such a climate,”’ said he, ‘‘during the whole course of my ministry; every one seemed to be aflame with sacred zeal and love.” (1) He was a pronounced Calvinist. ‘“‘He apparently had not the slightest doubt,’ as Dr. Brastow has said, “that Calvinism was identical with Christianity.” But his Calvinism was not of the reserved or esoteric sort that is kept in books and laid away on shelves. His was a very _ practical sort, and from it he extracted first of all a strong sense of vocation. ‘‘What was the power which launched this grim projectile through his times?”’ asks Principal George Adam Smith in his recent volume on “ Jeremiah,” as he writes the story of the soul of that most valiant of all the prophets. ‘‘Part at least,’’ he continues, ‘‘was his faith in his predestination, the bare sense that God Al- mighty meant him from before his beginning for the work, and was gripping him to it till the close. This alone pre- vailed over his reluctant nature, his protesting affections, and his adverse circumstance. Peel AND PASTORATE jpell ‘Before in the body I built thee, I knew thee, ; Before thou wast from the womb, I had put thee apart, I have set thee a prophet to the nations.’ From the first and all through it was God’s choice of him, the knowledge of himself as a thought of the Deity and a consecrated instrument of the Divine Will, which grasped this unbraced and sensitive creature, this alternately dis- couraged and impulsive man, and turned him, as we have seen, into the opposite of himself.’’ This was not pre- cisely what Spurgeon got from his Calvinism. But he did get the sense of vocation as leading him in his own peculiar direction, along with his acceptance of the Calvinistic idea of election, not to mission and service merely, but to sal- vation. This total conviction was wrought in him to an unusual degree. ‘‘I am as much called,” he says, ‘“‘to preach the gospel as Paul was.’’ None need doubt it; but what concerns us here is the strength of his conviction of the fact. Strange to say, his Calvinism, rigid as it was, constituted a sort of democracy which was better for practical religious uses than a weak and undefined universalism. For one thing, it left him entirely without respect of persons. This was a thing which God did, and not man, and whoever came to his Tabernacle heard the one gospel he had to preach. Whether, as Mr. P. W. Wilson has said, it were ‘‘ Ruskin, or Gladstone, or an Archbishop of Canterbury, Spurgeon did not swerve one hair’s breadth from his ultimatum. However illustrious the worshiper, the choice, even for him, still lay between heaven and hell.’”’ Sir William Robertson Nicoll thought it could not be doubted that his theology was a main element in his lasting attraction. He has admirably stated the point as follows: ‘‘Mr. Spurgeon always made salvation a wonderful, a supernatural thing— won through battle and agony and garments rolled in blood. 228 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN That the blood of God should be one of the ordinary forces of the universe was to him a thing incredible. This great and hard-won salvation was sure—that is, ‘it did not stand in the creature’; it rested absolutely with God. It was not of man, nor of the will of the flesh. Mr. Spurgeon’s hearers had many of them missed all the prizes of life; but God did not choose for reasons that move man’s preference, else their case were hopeless. Their election was of grace. And as he chose them, he would keep them. The perseverance of the saints is a doctrine without meaning to the majority of Christians. But many a poor girl with the love of Christ and goodness in her heart, working her fingers to the bone for a pittance that just keeps her alive, with the tempta- tions of the streets around her, and the river beside her, listened with all her soul when she heard that Christ’s sheep could never perish. Many a struggling tradesman tempted to dishonesty, many a widow with penury and loneliness before her, were lifted above all, taught to look through and over the years coming thick with sorrow and conflict, and anticipate a place in the Church Triumphant.”’ Surely there is a lesson here for Arminians. It is not this or that aspect or interpretation of the gospel which saves, whether it be Arminianism or Calvinism, but the gospel down at the heart of it as it centers in Christ and his will to redeem, preached in the power and demonstration of the Holy Spirit, that saves. How else will you account for the equal success in evangelism of Wesley and Whitefield, the one a convinced Calvinist and the other a steadfast Ar- minian, as they go out side by side in all England and into the world? Spurgeon steadfastly believed that Christian preaching could only be done in the power of the Holy Spirit. And he made good that belief by doing his own preaching in conscious and constant reliance upon that power. It was Beer beAND PASTORATE 229 as much his experience to preach in the power of the Spirit as it was his experience to live in obedience to the principles of the Christian life in the power of the Spirit. He used to say that as he stood preaching in the great Tabernacle he would be saying to himself even as he preached: “‘I wonder who is being converted now.’’ Conversions were expected as an instant and a continual transaction of his preaching. When a great Nonconformist Christian leader was once asked what he considered to be the secret of Spurgeon’s success he answered instantly, as if his mind had already matured the matter: ‘‘The Holy Ghost.” (2) He had very definite beliefs about man’s sin and the process of his salvation. There was perfect agreement between his understanding of the Scriptures in their bearing upon the moral state of man and his own knowledge of human nature. He accepted quite literally and faithfully that saying of Jesus that “‘they that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick’’; and he conceived that he himself had come to call not the righteous, but sinners to repentance. There could scarcely be found in the English language a more effective statement of the simple gospel than in his sermon on ‘‘Lifting up the Brazen Ser- pent.’’ In that sermon he has this passage: ‘‘ We are not in doubt as to what sin will do, for we are told by the in- fallible word that ‘the wages of sin is death,’ and, yet again, ‘Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.’ We know also that this death is endless misery, for the Scripture describes the lost as being cast into outer darkness, ‘where their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched.’ Our Lord speaks of the condemned going away into everlasting punishment, where there shall be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth. We ought to have no doubt about this, and the most of those who profess to doubt it are those who fear that it will be their own portion, who know that 230 PRINCES OF THE GHRISTIaAT they are going down to eternal woe themselves, and there- fore they try to shut their eyes to their inevitable doom. Alas, that there should be flatterers in the pulpit who pander to their love of sin by piping to the same tune. We are not of their order. We believe in what the Lord has said in all its solemnity of dread, and, knowing the terrors of the Lord, we persuade men to escape therefrom.”’ On the other hand, he diagnosed the human conscience and found there disease and all the dread damage from which there was no escape except by way of the cross. “‘He handled the casualties.’’ Other men might find lighter work to do, but he preferred this. He did not believe in ‘paring down depravity.” And he recorded his objection to this procedure in the following graphic language: ‘‘ When a man gets to cutting down sin, paring down depravity, and making little of future punishment, let him no longer preach to you. Some modern divines whittle away the gospel to the small edge of nothing. They make our divine Lord to be a sort of blessed nobody; they bring down salva- tion to mere salvability, making certainties into probabili- ties, and treat verities as mere opinions. When you see a preacher making the gospel small by degrees and miserably less, until there is not enough of it left to make soup for a sick grasshopper, get you gone. ... As for me, I believe in the colossal; a need deep as hell and grace as high as heaven. I believe in a pit that is bottomless and a heaven that is topless. I believe in an infinite God and infinite atonement, infinite love and mercy, an everlasting cove- nant ordered in all things and sure, of which the substance and the reality is an infinite Christ.’’. There was néver any mistaking what the man meant. Dr. John Brown, in his ‘‘ Puritan Preaching in England,” quotes what an early reviewer had to say of Spurgeon and adds that the same thing might still be said of him at a date forty years later. FUEPIT AND: PASTORATE on And this is what the reviewer had said: ‘‘ The philosophical precision, the literary refinements, the nice discriminations between what we may know of a doctrine and what we may not, leaving us, in the end, perhaps scarcely anything to know about—all this, which, according to some, is so much needed by the age, is Mr. Spurgeon’s utter scorn. He is the direct dogmatic enunciator of the old Pauline truth, without the slightest attempt to soften its outline, its substance, or its results—and what has followed? Truly, Providence would seem to have made foolish once more the wisdom of this world. While the gentlemen who know so well how people ought to preach are left to ex- emplify their profound lessons before empty benches and in obscure corners, this young man can point to six thou- sand hearers every Sunday and ask: ‘Who, with such a sight before him, dares despair of making the gospel—the good old gospel—a power in the great heart of humanity?’”’ 2. There was never a ministry more marked by insistence on conversion. This was a necessity of his theology and of his total religious conviction. But it was also a necessity of the ardor of his soul. Over his first convert—a laborer’s wife at Waterbeach—he rejoiced as over the first sheaf of a great harvest. “If anybody had said to me,” he said, ‘Somebody has left you twenty thousand pounds,’ I should not have given a snap of my fingers for it compared with the joy which I felt when I was told that God had saved a soul through my ministry.’ It was incomparably more to him than his first sermon, for his sermons were made for souls, and not souls for his sermons. He rejoiced more than any doctor who had brought his first patient back from the gates of death, more than any lawyer who had saved his first client from the condemnation of the law. Dr. Theodore Cuyler said of him that ‘‘he sowed the gospel with one hand and reaped conversions with the (232 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN other. His Church was like the orange trees I saw in California; there were white blossoms on some limbs and ripe golden fruit on some other limbs.’’ He preached, he prayed, he toiled, he administered affairs for the con- version of men. Here is the record of a single day in his early ministry: ‘‘Leaving home early in the morning, I went to the chapel, and sat there all day long, seeing those who had been brought to Christ by the preaching of the. word. Their stories were so interesting to me that the hours flew by without my noticing how fast they were going. I may have seen some thirty or more persons during the day, one after the other, and I was so delighted with the tales of mercy they had to tell me, and the wonders of grace God had wrought in them, that I did not know any- thing about how the time passed. At seven o’clock we had our prayer meeting. I went in and prayed with the breth- ren. After that came the Church meeting. A little before ten I felt faint, and I began to think at what hour I had my dinner, and then for the first time remembered that I had not had any! I never thought of it. I never even felt hungry, because God had made me so glad.” Certain sermons were notable for their converting power. The sermon to which the greatest testimony has been borne for this effect was that on the text, “‘Compel them to come in.” It was said that some hundreds came into the Church as a result of this sermon when it was preached, and that many others came in through its effect when it had gone out in printed form. For his printed sermons also had a remarkable converting power. In this form they had a vast circulation and exercised an incalculable in- fluence. In this Spurgeon has reached a farther goal than any other. Here he holds the world’s record. Dr. A. E. Garvie, in “The Christian Preacher,’’ makes the statement that “about two thousand five hundred of his sermons have PULPIT AND PASTORATE 233 been published, and the average sale of each was 25,000 copies.” They have been distributed, too, in other lan- guages besides the English. Thus his power has been diffused to an unexampled degree and exercised upon a very wide diversity of persons. A gentleman heard him- self accosted by a stranger on the streets of San Francisco as a preacher. ‘‘I am not a preacher, my friend,” he re- plied. The explanation of the false identification was that on board a steamer coasting to Oregon some one had pro- duced a volume of Spurgeon’s sermons, and this gentleman had been induced to read one of them aloud to as many of the ship’s company and crew as would gather for a religious service, and the stranger speaking to him had been one of his hearers. And so in unprecedented ways like this his voice went out to the ends of the earth. The most amazing thing about these sermons, in what- ever form you take them, is the volume of their evangelistic content. Everywhere he explains the way of salvation in simple terms. He would have nothing else. A man came to the Tabernacle and offered him seven thousand pounds for any use to which he might be disposed to put it on condition that as a consideration the offerer of the sum might be received as a member. He pressed his claim when Spurgeon refused, but received the firm reply: “‘ No; nor if you offered me seventy times seven thousand pounds.” According to his own word he was “‘always in training for text-getting and sermon-making.” But neither was an end in itself. He was always for getting men. He had a great array of Bible commentaries around the shelves of his study and consulted all of them to see what each had to say on his text when he was preparing a sermon; but he used the commentaries and did not permit them to use him. Preachers may dispute about some of his homiletical methods, but all of them may follow his homiletical aim. 234 PRINCES ORY DEE GER IS For his desire to win men shaped his ministry and gave law to his homiletics. 3. He possessed remarkable powers of delivery, in com- bination with other gifts the power of which is greatly en- hanced through effective delivery. He combined in an eminent degree powers of observation, insight, and ut- terance. He saw, he understood, he spoke. (1) He possessed a voice of unparalleled strength and penetration, and he had unusual command of it. Dr. J. M. Buckley, who heard him frequently and studied him critically, speaks of his voice as being unparalleled in both its strength and its melody. ‘‘Two orators of the first rank,’ says Dr. Nicoll, “have appeared in our time—Mr. Bright and Mr. Spurgeon.” He is writing specially of Spurgeon and continues: “‘Spurgeon’s marvelous voice, clear as a silver bell’s and winning as a woman’s, rose up against the surging multitude and without effort entered every ear.’ He spoke in that natural tone of voice which at its base is conversational. He had no thought of play- ing the orator, and that was one of the reasons why he was so good an orator. It was said that the auditor was pre- possessed in his favor because he ‘‘had no Sunday voice.” He used only his natural voice whether he appeared in the pulpit, on the platform, or anywhere else. And the main secret of this for any man is sincerity. Dr. Brown says he was ‘‘as natural in the pulpit as John Bright was on the platform, and often more ‘racy.’’ Once when a series of meetings was being held in London in a large and difficult hall several speakers had appeared in their turn who had met insurmountable obstacles to being heard. Then Spur- geon came and mounted the platform and opened his lips and without the least difficulty sent the sound of his voice distinctly through every part of the building. (2) The force and directness of his Anglo-Saxon speech Burd AND PAS LORATE Do was one of his most notable possessions. He was “‘a speaker of superb English, a master of that Saxon speech which somehow goes warm to the hearts of men.’ This speech was native to him; and it was also cultivated. He formed his speech on the model of the English Bible, over which he pored as a bride over her jewels; and on John Bunyan, whose ‘‘ Pilgrim’s Progress’’ he read a hundred times; and on the Puritan and other masters of English prose and poetry. His style may be seen even in a brief extract, which will at the same time exhibit his effectiveness in the use of illustration. ‘‘Have you ever read Coleridge’s ‘Ancient Mariner’?”’ he asks. “‘I dare say you have thought it one of the strangest imaginations ever put to- gether, especially that part of it where the old mariner represents the corpses of all the dead men rising up—all of them dead, yet rising up to manage the ship; dead men pulling the ropes, dead men steering, dead men spreading the sails. I thought what a strange idea that was. But do you know I have lived to see that true: I have seen it done. I have gone into churches, and I have seen a dead man in the pulpit, and a dead man as a deacon, and a dead man holding the plate at the door, and dead men sit- ting to hear. ‘No!’ says one, “you cannot mean it.’ Yes, I do; the men were spiritually dead. I have seen the minister preaching, without a particle of life, a sermon which is fresh only in the sense in which a fish is fresh when it has been packed in ice. I have seen the people sit, and they listened as if they had been a group of statues—the chiseled marble would have been as much affected by the sermon as they. I have seen the deacons go about their business just as orderly, and with as much precision as if they had been mere automatons, and not men with hearts and souls at all. Do you think God will ever bless a Church like that? Are we ever to take the kingdom of 236 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN heaven with a troop of dead men? Never! We want living ministers, living hearers, living deacons, living elders; and until we have such men who have got the very fire of life burning in their souls, who have got tongues of life and souls of life, we shall never see the kingdom of heaven taken by storm. ‘For the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.’”’ The directness of his speech was greatly assisted by his keenness of observation and his almost uncanny knowl- edge of human nature. At one time he could sit on the Tabernacle platform and name every one of his five thou- sand members. Even those with whom he had but a chance acquaintance were recognized as they sat in his congregation. He had shrewd ways of letting them know that they were recognized; and the uncanniness of his art was displayed in surprising designations of unknown individuals in the audience. Instances of this have been | preserved. He once said that there was a man in the gal- lery listening to him with a bottle of gin in his pocket. There was actually such a man, and he was so startled by the remark that it led to his conversion. ‘‘ Young man,” said he, pointing one Sunday evening toward the gallery, ‘the gloves you have in your pocket are not paid for.” After the service a young man came and begged him not to say anything more about it. The incident led to his con- version. Pointing in a given direction at another time, he said: ‘‘There is a man sitting there who is a shoemaker; he keeps his shop open on Sundays; it was open last Sab- bath morning. He took in ninepence, and there was four- pence profit on it; his soul is sold to Satan for fourpence.” There sat such a man sure enough. He was afraid to go to hear Spurgeon any more lest he should tell the people more about him; but after a time he did go again, and he, too, was converted. A woman intent upon suicide came into PULPIL AND PASTORATE 237 his service, as if somehow that would ease her conscience of the dread issue of the transaction. The text, ‘‘Seest thou this woman?’’ seemed strangely directed to her, and the sermon saved both her life and her soul. All this sounds like Sherlock Holmes; only it is fact, not fiction. (3) Pathos and humor moved as two willing handmaidens duteously attendant upon his speech. He could be as pungent as when he said: ‘‘The way to defend a lion is to let him out of his cage.’’ He possessed the key to the human heart and could be as tender and delicate in his approach to it as if he had been an angel revealing to the Virgin the coming of her Holy Child. When he would say that grace is sufficient for all our need, this is how he puts it: ‘‘The other evening I was riding home after a day’s work; I felt very wearied and sore depressed, when swiftly, and suddenly as a lightning flash, that text came to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee.’ I reached home and looked it up in the original, and at last it came to me in this way, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee,’ and I said, ‘I should think it is, Lord,’ and burst out laughing. I never fully understood what the holy laughter of Abraham was until then. It seemed to make unbelief so absurd. It was as though some little fish, being very thirsty, was troubled about drinking the river dry, and Father Thames said: ‘Drink away, little fish; my stream is sufficient for thee.’ Or it seemed like a little mouse in the granaries of Egypt, after the seven years of plenty, fearing it might die of famine. Joseph might say: ‘Cheer up, little mouse; my granaries are sufficient for thee.’ Again I imagined a man away up yonder in a lofty mountain, saying to himself: ‘I breathe so many cubic feet of air every year I fear I shall exhaust the oxygen in the atmosphere.’ But the earth might say: ‘Breathe away, O man, and fill thy lungs ever; my atmosphere is sufficient for thee.’ O brethren, be 238 PRINCES 7OF “DHE BU EEE great believers! Such faith will bring your souls to heaven and heaven to your souls.”’ Early in the year 1891 he began to be ill, and it soon ap- peared that he could never be well again. He died at Men- tone, in France, whither he had gone for his health, on January 31, 1892. Mrs. Spurgeon and two sons were left in the inner circle of the bereaved. Countless thousands mourned besides. Some sixty thousand passed along the aisles of the Tabernacle to view his remains lying in state there. He was buried in Norwood Cemetery, London. ‘“‘England’s greatest contribution to the spread of the gospel in the nineteenth century was Charles Haddon Spurgeon,’ said Dr. J. C. Carlile at the Berlin Congress of Baptist Churches. The great American Methodist, Dr. James M. Buckley, said of him: “‘From the point of view of a man whose work was done in one city and with the exception of a few years in one Church and one congrega- tion we consider him the greatest and most effective preach- er that has arisen in the history of Christianity.” Neither his exegesis nor his homiletics was faultless; there were some faults of character, as well as of manner and method, no doubt—as the not too much restrained conceit which he had of himself; but his noble simplicity of style and of speech, his fine scorn of pretense and of sham, his high and unfaltering courage in the pulpit, his abounding humor and deep and pathetic sense of human frailty and man’s need of God, his unaffected and unfailing interest in men and sympathy for them in all their sorrow and sin, his love of the Bible and fidelity to his understand- ing of it, his zeal for souls, his power of the compulsion of the human will, his total devotion to the cause of Christ— in all these English-speaking preachers may follow him, as God may give them grace and ability, until the gospel they preach is uttered in another tongue. x PHICELES BROOKS (1835-1893) BOSTON AND THE BEGINNINGS PHILLIPS BROOKS maintained with Boston an intimate relation for the full length of his life. He was born there on December 13, 1835. His home was there until he had finished his course in the theological seminary and went to Philadelphia, where he spent nine years in two pastorates. He returned to Boston for a pastorate of twenty-two years in Trinity Church. He lived there for one and a quar- ter years as Bishop of Massachusetts. He died there on January 23, 1893, and three days later was buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery. The connection is thus perpetually preserved, and Boston is ever more radiant through the ra- diance of his memory. Both lines of his ancestry are indicated in his name. He was a Phillips, and he was a Brooks; and both names had attained a certain distinction before they coalesced and won a wider fame in him. On a basis, therefore, of good blood and sturdy ancestral traits this family began to build; and it brought forth its capstone in the person of this anointed child. He was rich in ancestral culture, ‘“‘the consummate flower of nine generations of cultured Puritan stock.”’ The family life was brought under con- straint to a certain degree of social reserve because of the limitation of its material resources. But none of them complained of this, and least of all the mother, of whom it was said that “‘she never accepted an invitation from home for any social function until her youngest child was grown (239) 240 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN up and no longer needed her care.’’ The household turned upon the education of the children and their training in religion. Family worship was rigidly observed both morning and evening. For the first six years of their wedded life William Gray Brooks and Mary Ann Phillips were Uni- tarians. They had come to Boston when the liberal move- ment in religion and theology had become dominant there. But Mrs. Brooks was a very thoughtful woman and very ardent in her religious life. She was not satisfied with her religious connections, and when their third child, Phillips, was four years old the family removed to St. Paul’s Episco- pal Church, where the pastor was a foremost champion of evangelical Christianity. The father had been rather reluctant to leave the Unitarians, but eight years after changing his Church attendance to an Episcopal Church he received the rite of confirmation as a communicant in the same. In the meantime there had come a new pastor to the church, Dr. Alex H. Vinton, a very able and earnest man, who exercised a profound and most wholesome in- fluence upon the congregation, and particularly upon the Brooks family. The family went to church twice on Sun- day, and at home the children were required to learn a hymn to be recited at the gathering of the family in the evening. The father kept a careful record of the hymns each child learned. When Phillips went away to college there were some two hundred hymns learned in this way which he could repeat. When Phillips was four years of age he was sent to a private school, thence to a grammar school at eight, and finally to the Boston Latin School, where he remained for five years until he was ready for college. He had not proved to be a particularly diligent student and at twelve years of age endeavored to support a determination to do better things by the following vow: ‘‘I, Phillips Brooks, PULPIT AND PASTORATE 241 do hereby promise and pledge myself to study, hence- forward, to the best of my ability.”” Training in the classics received in the Latin School proved a permanent element in his education. Harvard College had by this time become a family tradi- tion, and there Phillips Brooks went in his sixteenth year. He was not without enthusiasm for college life, though he won no special distinction as a student except in composi- tion. His pen already gave unmistakable intimations of the skill he was to acquire as a writer. In athletics he took no interest at all. That he too much neglected physical culture was one of the minor mistakes of his life, if indeed it may be called minor. Later in life he admitted to a friend that it had been the mistake of his life not to have married. | He was graduated from Harvard in the class of 1855, while his twentieth birthday was still six months in the future. At this time the direction which the future course of his life should take was wholly undetermined. Just what he himself thought and felt about it nobody knows. He was characterized by a profound reserve of nature, and it is not possible to speak always with confidence con- cerning the things which he did not care to disclose to others. The Church and its ministry do not seem as yet to have attracted him. It is even possible that he enter- tained at least for a time a feeling of greater or less aversion toward the ministry. His first employment after graduation was as a teacher in the Boston Latin School. He probably designed that teaching should be his life work. But as a teacher he made a failure, a complete and humiliating failure. He was compelled to resign before the year was out. There is little use in seeking to assign all the causes. He was young and reserved and inexperienced and was given the charge 242 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN of a very unruly class of older boys. There was in this fact some modification and softening of the fact of failure. Nevertheless, there stood the unalterable fact, and he felt it deeply and keenly. He was humiliated and discouraged by a failure so conspicuous and complete falling thus upon the very threshold of his life. A trial so bitter, a defeat so distressing, to a soul so sensitive and fine can but carry in it the seeds of a permanent sifting of the character. It would hardly be rash to say that the providence of God had barred his entrance here. GETTING INTO THE MINISTRY Getting into the ministry was not easy for Phillips Brooks. It was said of Lacordaire that ‘‘on the day of his conversion he was already a priest.’ Of whom might this be more fittingly said than of Phillips Brooks? Neverthe- less he has to grope his way to the open door. In the period of depression and misgiving which ensued upon his resigna- tion of his position as a teacher, which extended from Feb- ruary to October, 1856, he went to Dr. Walker, the Presi- dent of Harvard College, whose character both as a man and a preacher he greatly revered, to confer with him on the subject of his own future. Dr. Walker advised him to study for the ministry. ‘‘He did not tell me,” says Brooks, ‘that I could not preach because of my stammering, for I never did stammer, you know.”’ Having proceeded thus far, he then went to Dr. Vinton to know what steps one should take who proposed to study for the ministry. He was told that this step usually came after confirmation and was reminded of the importance of conversion. To this he replied that he did not know what conversion meant. Back of all these transactions, in the shadows, stood the figure of his beloved mother. Above all things else she had PULPIT AND PASTORATE 243 desired that he should be a minister. Next to his conver- sion this was the summit of all her desire for him. At the time of his confirmation, which occurred when he had been a year in the Seminary, and when he was nearly twenty- two years old, she wrote: “I will thank God forever that he has answered my lifelong prayers in making him a Chris- tian and his servant in the ministry.’ Still later, after he had entered upon his active ministry, she wrote directly to him: ‘Thank you, my dear child, for the joy you have given me in devoting your life to the service of Christ. It was the desire of my heart from your birth, and I gave you up to him, and I thank him for accepting my offering.” Who but such a mother could hide such things in her heart? In this mother’s character the character of Phillips Brooks was molded. Dr. Vinton said of him that “‘he was made by his mother.”’ There also grew within him the con- viction that God was making common cause with his mother and that he must enter the ministry. ‘‘The spirit of an act,” said he afterwards in a passage of unmistakable autobiographic significance in one of his sermons, ‘comes from its motive. There must be a larger motive, then. And the largest of all motives is the sending of God.” AT THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY With the Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church at Alexandria, Va., which he entered when he was scarcely twenty-one years of age, he was not pleased. “It is the most shiftless, slipshod place I ever saw,” he said in a letter to his father soon after his arrival. ‘‘The instruction here is very poor. All that we get in the lecture and recitation rooms I consider worth just nothing.”’ This was not all he said; but it was enough. Many of the students sawed their own wood, made their own fires, and did their own 244 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN chores. He was of this number; but he was of better mettle than to chafe under this regimen. The curriculum and the instruction were his chief concern, and these were so un- satisfactory that he thought of going to Andover after his first year at Alexandria. Three famous teachers of theolo- gy—Edward A. Park, Austin Phelps, and W. G. T. Shedd— were then on the Andover faculty; and any one of the three easily excelled any one of the three men who then consti- tuted the entire faculty at Alexandria. But neither Dr. Vinton, who was still his pastor, nor his father approved the proposed change, and he stayed at Alexandria. Doubt- less even a poor theological seminary has its advantages, for it throws the student more upon his own resources, and forces him to take the fashioning of his theology into his own hands. Some of the wits will say that surely this is a fine thing, since there are so many such seminaries. Anyway Phillips Brooks learned at Alexandria to do his own thinking, and whether this was by the help he did or did not receive from his teachers does not now matter so much. Here again as at Harvard he shows a marked pre- dilection for the use of his pen. A system of notebook keeping which he now began reveals what came to be some of the permanent processes of his mind. These notes contain reflections upon what he read and observed and were especially full of the record of the thoughts of his own mind. There is manifest in them at times the conscious- ness of an invisible audience and an anticipation of the work of his pulpit, toward which even now his earnest thoughts are turning. Some kind of notebook became his inseparable companion. Here he garnered the stores which so enriched his ministry when under the strain of the demands of a busy pastorate he could not find full time for his pulpit preparation. In his second year at the seminary he did his stated work, PULPIT AND PASTORATE 245 but at the same time lived in another world all his own. The amount and range of his reading, as indicated in his notebooks, was hardly short of prodigious and leaves no place for surprise at the wideness of his literary and human sympathies as revealed in his preaching. It was one of the most prolific years in all his development. In theology, outside the curriculum requirements, he was reading Hook- er and Butler, Bushnell’s ‘‘Sermons for the New Life,” and Maurice’s ‘‘Theological Essays.’’ His third year at Alexandria brought him to the headship of a department which was just being organized in the seminary for the preparation of young men for the study of theology. His second essay at teaching was far more successful than his first. His first preaching also dates from this time. There was a small mission station not far from the seminary which constituted the especial preserve of the students. It seems to have been created for their exploitation. The patience of the people who endure the dissertations of homiletic neophytes and in spite of all appearances to the contrary bid them to go on is very much to their credit. These particular people called the young preachers practicers. Clinical practice is hard on the patient, but good for the doctor. The patient must endure in order that doctors may exist, otherwise he himself may not exist. In this matter preachers are not unlike doctors. And so the little mission station existed and endured, and Phillips Brooks had his turn there. His first attempt was rumored to have been a total failure. But as usual there was somebody who was considerate enough to advise him to try again. THE COURSE OF His ACTIVE MINISTRY At the end of a service one Sunday at the mission two strangers who had sat in the congregation while he preached 246 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN came forward and offered him the Church of the Advent in Philadelphia. This offer he promptly accepted. He obtained the consent of the Bishop of Massachusetts to leave the diocese, an arrangement made necessary by the fact that he was only in deacon’s orders, and began his active ministry in Philadelphia on Sunday, July 10, 1859. So hesitant was he of the responsibility that he accepted the charge in the first instance for only three months, subject to renewal at the will of the two parties to the con- tract. Walking away from the church one Sunday evening with one of the vestrymen, he remarked that perhaps he would better leave at once without waiting till the three months were out. The vestryman had not much mind to dissuade him, but replied that since he had begun he would better stay out the time for which he was hired. The con- tract was renewed, and he remained for nearly two and a half years. He went over to the important Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia in the beginning of his twenty- seventh year and attained an immediate and conspicuous success, the more obvious foundations of which had been laid in his preceding pastorate at the Church of the Advent in the same city. He now attained to a marked civic prominence, entered zestfully into an attractive and stimu- lating social life, and began to speak, particularly on Thanksgiving and other semicivic occasions, to a wide and appreciative audience. The Civil War, which was now in progress, raised issues which greatly excited both his interest and his energy and contributed not a little to both his intellectual and moral growth. Great occasions dwarf little men and exalt great men. Phillips Brooks so met the issues of the Civil War, whether so as always to command complete approval or not, that out of it he } EUEPIT AND: PASTORATE 247 with a more masterful attitude toward all the possible issues of his life. He became a pronounced advocate of Negro suffrage, though not without a clear appreciation of the necessity of providing for those directly concerned the means of acquiring the qualifications needful to the just exercise of the function. His father’s protest may have affected, but did not change his attitude. He continued for nearly seven years in the Church of the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia, and came to Boston to assume the rectorship of Trinity Church on October 31, 1869, when he was not quite thirty-four years old. Here he remained for twenty-two years. As in the case of Holy Trinity, Philadelphia, he had declined a first call and only accepted the second. All has gone well thus far. What shall the issue be in Boston? Unitarianism was intrenched there. When the Congregational Chuches had divided earlier in the century, the intellectual culture, the social prestige, the wealth of Boston had gone with the liberal side. The liberal move- ment had gained Harvard College and numbered among its adherents Emerson, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Holmes, and Lowell. Unitarianism had produced two great preach- ers—Channing and Theodore Parker. The latter had been preaching in Boston Music Hall nearly ten years when Phillips Brooks entered Harvard College. And now nearly twenty years more have gone by, and his prestige has not abated. He had promulgated the essence of the Unitarian position that divine revelation must be submitted to the tribunal of human reason. Reason and not revelation was the final arbiter. And now what course is Brooks going to take? The Unitarians are ready to claim him. Had he not been born and baptized a Unitarian? Was not his fine culture a Unitarian product? Might not his fine gifts be captured, if not ecclesiastically at least potentially, for the 248 PRINCES OF THE ‘CHRISTIAN cause of Unitarianism? Even the Orthodox were a little anxious. ‘‘The Unitarians watched him to see whether he were Orthodox, and the Orthodox were curious to see whether he were a Unitarian in disguise.”’ But everybody went to hear him preach, Unitarians and all. The Uni- tarian paper published in the city protested, but to no pur- pose. The popular verdict was decidedly in his favor, and that verdict is not always wrong. But it is more important to know on what foundation he is going to build his Boston ministry. Gloriously did he afterwards give the answer, but that answer is not yet known. Is he going to conquer Boston, or is Boston going to conquer him? It was an hour in the history of Christianity as well as in the history of Christian preaching in Boston, and in wider circles far beyond. And Christ and Brooks were to conquer. His conquest of Boston, and it came to be complete, may be regarded as the greatest achievement of his public ministry. For the man who could do this would be equal to any of the other tasks which even such a ministry as his might impose upon him. There was a wiser ordering of the course of his ministry on his coming to Boston. Something of the reformer and agitator had appeared in his Philadelphia ministry. But now he held closer to his pulpit, and there he built him a throne from which he ruled the city. He did not forego his interest in great public questions, nor cease to declare his convictions concerning them, but with something of the genius which always marks a great preacher he recog- nized the supremacy of the claims of Christian preaching. The holy city must come down from God out of heaven, and only the Christian evangel can create it upon the earth. More than this, his very temperament constrained him to a constructive concentration upon the work of his pulpit. There, and nowhere else, did he utter himself to the full PeLEY AND PASTORATE 249 and without reserve. The cloak of reserve which he wore’ elsewhere he there cast off and gave up the secrets of his soul. Even so he did it not so much by the detailed recital of personal experiences as by communicating him- self through his speech. ‘“‘It may be doubted,” says Dr. A. V. G. Allen, his approved biographer, ‘‘if in this respect he was ever surpassed in the history of preaching.”’ A great achievement of his Boston ministry was the erection of the magnificent new Trinity Church, and of the acquisition through the augmented opportunity thus af- forded of a still wider and more permanent influence. For four years during the construction of this church the services of the congregation were held in Huntington Hall; but his presence and preaching there transformed a place of secular assembly into a cathedral, and his ministry in surmounting the natural disadvantages of his surround- ings became at once broader and more deeply spiritual. Here Principal Tulloch, of the University of Aberdeen, heard him and wrote home to his wife: ‘I never heard preaching like it. So much thought and so much life com- bined; such a reach of mind and such a depth and insight of soul. I was electrified. I could have got up and shouted.” Closing an account of the effect of one of a series of mid- day addresses to business men in the old Trinity Church, New York, during the Lenten season of 1890, which came near the end of his Boston pastorate, one of the great news- papers of the city said: ‘‘As he finished his address he stopped for a moment and looked over the pulpit at that vast throng crowding the aisle beneath with upturned faces, listening for every word which came from his lips. When he turned to descend from the pulpit, the throng still stood there as though controlled by his presence and power, even after he had departed from the place where he 250 PRINCES OF “THE CHRIS iis had uttered these words of wisdom in a manner which seemed almost inspired.’’ What most impressed his New York audiences seems to have been the torrential power of his utterance, a burning passion of delivery, as if born of the consuming convictions of his heart. Likewise a new power of utterance was noted by his Boston audiences at this stage of his ministry. No account of his Boston pastorate could claim to be complete if there were an omission of his ministry to the students of Harvard College. They came to him in large numbers in his church in Boston, and he reached them through his services in the Episcopal Theological Seminary in Cambridge and in Appleton Chapel at the college itself. It was as if he had gathered all students into a school of high purpose and resolve and had by their choice become their head. The theological seminaries of Boston and vicinity felt his influence profoundly. This was notably true of Andover, of Cambridge, of the Divinity School of Boston University, of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Through the character of the man and his preaching the status of the Christian ministry was raised to a distinctly higher level in the minds of all thoughtful young men who came within the range of his influence. Speaking on a stated occasion to the students of Harvard College on the claims of the ministry, he went on calmly for a while, and then burst forth into his true tone and said: ‘‘I can’t come here and talk to you of the ministry as one of the profes- sions. I must tell you that it is the noblest and most glorious calling to which a man can give himself.’’ ‘‘One was almost afraid,’’ remarked one of his auditors, ‘‘that the whole body of young men would rise on the impulse and cry: ‘Here am I, send me!’”’ His profound and unfailing interest in young men and the ministry was once most graciously testified to the EUEPI TT OAN DmPASTORATE 251 author of these lines. When I had scarcely begun my own ministry I read his ‘‘Yale Lectures on Preaching.’’ How the book was brought to my attention I cannot now recall. I knew very little of Phillips Brooks. But I procured that book, my own new copy of it, and sat down to read it. I never read another book with such glad surprise in my life. No other book ever so stirred the depths of my nature. When I had finished it I could not contain myself, but arose from my seat and walked the floor. At length I calmed myself and yielded to an impulse to endeavor to express my appreciation to the author. I wrote him a simple note telling him that I was a young man just be- ginning my work in the ministry of the Methodist Episco- pal Church, South, and that I could not refrain from tell- ing him how deeply grateful I was to him for the inspira- tion his book had brought me. I did not once think that I should hear from him. He was then Bishop of Massachu- setts, and I had addressed him at Boston. He wastravel- ing in Europe, and I did not know it. My letter reached him there, and this was his answer: My Dear Brother: Your note has followed me across the ocean, and I have just received it here. I am thankful indeed if any of my words have seemed to you to be wise or helpful. There can be no greater privilege than to lend any inspiration to those who are to be the inspirers of men. May every blessing come to your ministry and will you believe me always, Your sincere friend, PHILLIPS BROOKS. The letter was written in his own hand and was post- marked Interlaken, Switzerland, August 21, 1892. More and more, as time drew on, the greatness of the ministry grasped the man, and the man in his greatness grasped the ministry. Momentarily he felt theattraction of other pursuits. But he was never drawn away until his life was nearly done, and then only to the bishopric. He felt keenly the need of more time for study than he could 252 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTA find in the pastorate and thought he might find it else- where; and this inclined him to turn aside when without his seeking the opportunity came. But in the end the pas- torate would win. He was invited to a chair in the Phila- delphia Divinity School and declined. He was asked to become the head of the new Episcopal Theological Semi- nary at Cambridge and declined. He was invited to ac- cept the position of preacher to Harvard University and professor of Christian Ethics and declined. He was elected Assistant Bishop of Pennsylvania and declined. Many important offers which involved no permanent or even temporary relinquishment of his pulpit were likewise de- clined. This was to him the pearl of great price, and he sold all else that he might buy it. PREEMINENCE AS A PREACHER Phillips Brooks has been preéminently a quickener of preachers and a prolific source of homiletic stimulus. 1. Both in the fashioning of his character and in the accomplishment of his career he was distinctively a preach- er. The Master Craftsman who fashions the tools of his- tory made him to be a preacher. Many have variously found their distinguishing talents and achievements to lie in different fields of endeavor. MHistory itself finds a true law of economy and of design here and here alone. By preéminence both of endowment and achievement Homer and Shakespeare, Milton and Tennyson were poets. Thucydides was a historian. Newton was a natural philoso- pher. Faraday was a scientist. Macaulay was a literary genius. Washington was both soldier and statesman just at that needful epoch in history when a new species of state was coming into existence. Woodrow Wilson was a political seer. In all these distinctive spheres a man may serve God and mankind if he will. In so doing both he i oa PULPIT AND PASTORATE 253 and his service make a distinct contribution to the progress of history. Now, Phillips Brooks was distinctively a preacher, as distinctively a preacher as Alfred Tennyson was distinc- tively a poet. All that poetry gains by such a man as Ten- nyson Christian preaching gains by such a man as Brooks. The contribution is so distinct that the thing itself stands out as more distinct ever after. All the possibilities of Christian preaching as a career are concentrated and crystallized in such a man. No higher service can any man render to the progress of the highest life on this planet. Matthew Arnold said John Wesley had ‘‘a genius for godli- ness.’ So he had, if ever man had. Phillips Brooks had it too. And he had a genius for preaching. That accounts for our being unable to throw all his qualities into the scales and get their exact relative weight. He possessed that rare combination of qualities which defies a too strict analysis. Who could ever analyze a perfect peach? Its highest qualities are elusive. It has bulk and color and flavor. But who can assign the precise measure and sources of these qualities? One speaks of “‘the magnificent presence”’ of Phillips Brooks, ‘the commanding stature, the flashing eye, the sympathetic voice vibrant with emotion, the swift imagination, and the wonderful faculty of massing words till their very volume became the fit vehicle of the rushing thoughts.’’ He had all these. But when you take them to pieces they are not Phillips Brooks. It was the way God put them together and the way he himself took and used them that made him what he was. And yet there were in him qualities and gifts which, whether taken separately or in their rare combination, lie open to our observation and study. If we may not grasp at least the skirts of the great, how shall we ourselves ever be great? 254 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN 2. Both the qualities and gifts of his mind and heart designated him under God to the work of the Christian ministry. He possessed preéminent pastoral and preaching qualities and gifts. (1) His apprehension of Christ was a gift both of his mind and his heart and made a great contribution to both the quality and capacity of the man. Or should we say Christ’s apprehension of him? He could not otherwise have thought of it himself. ‘‘To know that long before I cared for him,”’ said he in his sermon on ‘‘The Priority of God,’ from the text, We love him because he first loved us— ‘“‘to know that long before I cared for him, he cared for me; that while I wandered up and down in carelessness, perhaps while I was plunging deep in flagrant sin, God’s eye was never off me fora moment. He was always watch- ing for the instant when his hand might touch me and his voice might speak to me—there is nothing which can ap- _ peal to a man like that. . . . When, touched by the knowledge of that untiring love, a man gives himself at last to God, every act of loving service which he does after- wards is fired and colored by the power of gratitude, sur- prised gratitude, out of which it springs. How shall he overtake this love which has so much the start of him?”’ He was not given to speaking of his personal religious experience. But in the maturity of his years and power there came to him from a young clergyman a letter asking to know the secret of his life. For once at least he lifted the veil of the most secret orisons of his soul and replied as follows: ‘“‘I am sure you will not think that I dream that I have any secret totell. . . . Indeed, the more 1 have thought it over, the less in some sense I have seemed to have to say. And yet the more sure it has seemed to me that these last years have had a peace and fullness which there did not use to be. I say it in deep reverence and BevEir vAND PASTORATE 255 humility. I do not think it is the mere quietness of ad- vancing age. I am sure it is not indifference to anything which I used to care for. I am sure that it is a deeper knowledge and truer love of Christ. . . . All experi- ence comes to be but more and more a pressure of his life on ours. It cannot come by one flash of light or one great convulsive event. It comes without haste and without rest in this perpetual living of our life with him. ‘ I cannot tell you how personal this grows to me. He is here. He knows me and I know him. It is no figure of speech. It is the realest thing in the world. And every day makes it realer. And one wonders with delight what it will grow to as the years go on. Less and less, I think, grows the consciousness of seeking God. Greater and greater grows the certainty that he is seeking us and giving himself to us to the complete measure of our present capaci- ty. That is Love—not that we loved him but that he loved us.” He almost repents that he has thus spoken, and concludes: ‘‘I have written fully and will not even read over what I have written, lest I should be led to repent that I have written so much about myself. I am not in the habit of doing so. But your letter moves me, and you will understand.’”” Any man’s apprehension of Christ is at its best but Christ’s apprehension of him. (2) The loftiness of the integrity of his soul was at once a quality and a gift, a basic quality on which he built and a gift of his soul in its undiscouraged outreach for yet loftier things. This gave altitude and loftiness both to the man and his ministry. The great and singular thing about his preaching was that he first went up to God in his own high quest and then lifted the people up with him. Dr. Lyman Abbott, who knew them both well, was asked the difference between Henry Ward Beecher and Phillips Brooks as preachers. Beecher, he said, was the greater 256 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN preacher; but Brooks was the greater prophet. ‘It always seemed to me,” he said, ‘‘as I listened to Phillips Brooks that he had his head in the clouds, he was seeing a vision, and I felt the strong impulse lifting me to his great alti- tude.’”’ He came down in his sympathies to the people and took all their infirmities for his own; but there was no descent in the sublimity of his principles or even in the loftiness of his utterance. There is too much talk of adapt- ing the gospel when it is only meant. that preaching is accommodating itself to lower demands. Men after all do not so much want preaching that lowers itself as preaching that lifts them. Blessed is the man, then, who gives lofti- ness and altitude to preaching as Phillips Brooks was so conspicuously able todo. It was clear enough in his preach- ing that ‘‘he was making some mighty effort of the will to lift his hearers to his own high attitude, even while he re- sorted to no sensational efforts, and seemed to trust entirely to the spoken word of truth.” He made his conquest of Boston, and that not by sensa- tion, claptrap, or compromise, but by the sheer force and power of the man and his preaching. Compare his printed sermons with some of the popular sermons put out to-day. Does not the comparison issue in a contrast? What was in his sermons? and what is in these? How long can men go in the strength of his meat? and how long in the strength of these? Must not a preacher at last be judged as a poet has been wisely said to be judged—in three dimensions? Has he length—how long is he remembered? Has he breadth—how widely is he read? Has he depth—how © vitally is he felt? (3) There attended upon the loftiness of the integrity of his soul, as an admirable counterpart, the lowliness of the attitudes of his soul. There was in him the power of broad and tender sympathies. He had convictions, but was in- ee mEeULPIT AND PASTORATE 200 tolerant only of wrong and compromise. He had pride, _ but no arrogance. He would not seclude himself from any. -It was a rule of his ministry that the man who wanted to see him was the man he wanted to see. He went to men who wanted him, and men who wanted him came to him. A workingman who lived in one of the suburbs of Boston learned at the hospital that he must undergo a dangerous operation. He went home to tell his wife. The operation was scheduled for the next day. Forebodings with respect to the outcome burdened their hearts, and they resolved to go to see Phillips Brooks, whom they did not know and on whom they had not the slightest formal claim. He received them most graciously, greatly comforted their hearts, and promised to be with them at the hospital the next day. Chancellor James R. Day, of Syracuse University, writing of him, said: “‘The scholar said, ‘He is of us,’ and the unlettered said, ‘He is of us.’ The poor said, ‘He is of us,’ and the rich said, ‘He is of us.’ To the young he was full of mirth and buoyancy; to the troubled he was a man deeply acquainted with grief. All men, of all classes and conditions, claimed him, because in his magnificent heart and sympathy he seemed to be all men, and to enter into their disappointments and into their successes, and to make them his own. This was rare genius. This was large ca- pacity.” It is related that two Roman Catholic women lived in Salem. While one of them bemoaned the fact that her boy was falling into evil ways, the other confidently proposed to her that she should carry the boy to Phillips Brooks. A poor woman who scrubbed the floors of Trinity church came to him about the marriage of her daughter and wanted to know if they might have the chapel for the ceremony. ‘‘Why not take the church?” said he. “But 17 258 PRINCES: OF (THE (CHRISETAmS that is not for the likes of me,” said the woman. ‘‘O yes, but it zs for the likes of you,”’ he said. His attitude toward children was childlike in its sim- plicity and effectiveness. When Bishop Lawrence followed him in the diocese of Massachusetts, one of the most insistent questions he encountered was from the children when they asked him: ‘‘Why do you not talk to us as Bishop Brooks did?’’ It seems but natural to have expected that he should be an effective pastor and preacher to children. A memora- ble incident of his ministry was his guidance of Helen Keller, the noted Alabama girl, whose gifts of patience and courage and natural ability so signally triumphed over the seeming- ly insurmountable obstacles of blinded eyes and a speech- less tongue into the light of the knowledge of God. “I knew about God before you told me,” she said, ‘‘only I did not know his name.” To youth no less than to children he possessed this fine gift of ministry. Speaking on the text, ‘Thou makest me to possess the iniquities of my youth,” he utters this striking passage: “‘It is when some great trouble comes to you—the death of your friend, the failure of your business, the prospect of your death—then it is that you are dismayed to find that under the changed habits of your life you are the same man still, and that the sins of your college days are in you even now. This is what makes men dread any great event in life so strangely. It brings back the past which they want to forget, or rather it compels them to see that the past is still there in the present. It is when you fire a cannon over the pond that the dead body which is sunk there rises.” | (4) There wasin the man and his ministry a superlatively effective combination of passionate and contagious con- viction and passionate and courageous utterance. He had great depth of conviction and the ability to enforce his PULPIT AND: PASTORATE 259 convictions through the power of his utterance. ‘‘ Physical- ly, mentally, spiritually, he is colossal, we know,” said Dr. Charles Parkhurst, the great editor of Zion’s Herald, Boston, ‘but there are lines of easy characterization, which every clergyman, intently aspiring to do his best, should note. With great strength there are great infirmities. Such is usually the case. We mean as a preacher. He has none of the arts or finish of the modern pulpiteer. He would have a hard time candidating before the esthetic standards of modern congregations. He is a cruel iconoclast of cleri- cal elegance, style, and regularity. Evidently he does not think much of these collaterals, of which so much is usually made. He is too intent upon giving expression to a great, overmastering purpose to tarry and become artificial on these incidentals. He is great in spite of his infirmities, for such they are. Voice is not resonant, enunciation is not clear, his speech has the rapidity of the mountain torrent. He frequently misses the word wanted, and sometimes flounders in his rhetoric in going back for it. He seldom looks his audience in the eye, but most of his time turns his gaze toward the sounding board above his head. Look- ing at him close, it seems as if his eyes were turned back in upon himself in his agonized quest to give you the best he could reach in his reflective soul. Gestures are infre- quent and usually awkward. Often he stood with both hands clinched within his surplice upon his breast, as men sometimes take hold of the lapels of their coats. Nay, Phillips Brooks would not be satisfactory to the fastidious and exacting congregations who look microscopically for the man who is just so regular, finished, and ‘nice.’”” In a similar strain Archdeacon Farrar wrote of him in the Independent: “As a preacher, he is marked by a certain fervid impetuosity, which reminds the hearer of an express train sweeping all minor obstacles out of its path in its 260 PRINCES "OF THE CHRis REA headlong rush. His utterance is exceptionally rapid. He speaks many more words in a minute than our most rapid orators, and reduces reporters to absolute despair. This is so far a defect that it is exceedingly difficult for the hearer to keep pace with the sequence of his thoughts, conveyed, as they often are, in language of great beauty. He is thoughtful, plain-spoken, fearless, essential- ly manful, and entirely alien from the petty tricks and intrigues which are too often visible in the favorites and fuglemen of parties.’’ Two critics more capable than these could scarcely be called to testify as to the manner of the man and his preaching. Dr. Farrar suggested to him that he should be more deliberate in speech, but he replied that it was not possible. The conclusion can hardly be escaped that he had all along attached too little importance to the manner of delivery. But the power of excitation which he had over an audience none was ever found to dispute. His power of stirring and lifting an audience was hardly less noticeable in prayer than in preaching. At a service held at Harvard in 1865 commemorative of the men of Harvard who had died in the war, he was on the program for the prayer. He was still young, and comparatively un- known to many in the audience. At least one distinguished man afterwards confessed that he was surprised to see his name on the program, for he had never heard of him. But that prayer lifted the audience and bore it away from all the bitter memories of war to anticipations of the everlasting peace which dwells in the land where war shall be no more. Dr. William R. Huntington, rector of Grace Church, New York, afterwards said that all the circum- stances of the occasion had faded from his memory except the prayer. “All that I discern,” said he, ‘‘is the image of Brooks, standing in his black gown in the pulpit of the old Harvard Square Church where commencement exer- PUGET EP OANDGPASTORATE 261 cises were wont in those days to be held, his great head thrown back, his face looking as if it might be Stephen’s while there went forth from his lips a fiery stream of thanks- giving and supplication the like of which I never knew.” His expenditure of emotion in the pulpit was tremendous, and this, along with the fervor of his utterance and com- bining with it, subjected him to a great strain. Preaching came to him at a very high cost. His very life went out of him in the effort. The strain was so great upon himself that it imposed a strain upon both the attention and sym- pathy of the hearer, but neither minded it if only the great ends of his ministry might be accomplished. He greatly admired men of courage and great adventure and cultivated courage in himself by the courage which he admired in others. His own soul grew and was nurtured by his admirations. Martin Luther, Oliver Cromwell, Abraham Lincoln, and even Mohammed, greatly interested him. Carlyle’s ‘Heroes and Hero Worship” was, says Dr. Allen, one of his manuals. In this matter he was doubt- less moved by conscious or unconscious hunger for a cour- age which was not altogether native to his disposition. He was naturally subject to serious depressions of spirit. “The difficulty he surmounted in overcoming his natural reserve contributed to the development of his courage.” This was one of the ways in which he learned to abound. He overcame reserve, so far as the great demands of his ministry were concerned, and he overcame depression and became a great cheerer of others. “It was a dull rainy day,’ said a Boston paper, “‘when things looked dark and lowering, but Phillips Brooks came down through News- paper Row and all was bright.’”’ Into the experience of how many lives through the wide range of his ministry of sympathy and courage he translated the lines of Shake- speare’s fine sonnet who can tell? 262 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN ‘“‘When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d, Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate.” (5) A profound sense of the value of the human soul constituted the central and commanding motive of his ministry. This is but to say that his Yale Lectures on Preaching are an exhibition of the motives and method of his own ministry. That great series reaches its climax in the last lecture on ‘‘The Value of the Human Soul.” The realization of that value he says is a power which lies at the center of all success in preaching. It is the central motive around which all others stand. It rescues the preaching of the gospel from a certain feeling of incon- gruity which might otherwise attach to it and gives an object worthy of the transcendent facts of Christ’s incarna- tion and atonement. It constitutes a deep reserve of pleas- ure in the ministry and is the secret of fellowship therein. As it lies the deepest as a motive, so it lasts the longest. It is difficult to win and to keep in our time because of the tendency of philosophy to emphasize the natural order and of philanthropy to emphasize man’s material well- being. But it must be acquired and preserved, and there are methods of doing so. It is learned, first of all, through the preacher’s experience of God’s grace in his own soul. All the preacher’s theology should be colored with this sense of the soul’s value. And it 1s in particular to be learned by working for the soul. “If ever in your ministry '; iN th eel AND PASTORATE 263 the souls of those committed to your care grow dull before you, and you doubt whether they have any such value that you should give your life for them, go out and work for them; and as you work their value shall grow clear to you. Go and try to save a soul and you will see how well it is worth saving, how capable it is of the most complete salva- tion. Not by pondering upon it, nor by talking of it, but by serving it you learn its preciousness. . . . And so the Christian, living and dying for his brethren’s souls, learns the value of those souls for which Christ lived and died.’’ One can but wonder what he himself learned of the preciousness of the soul in saving the soul of Helen Keller. (6) We may pass over his homiletic method without a too closely detailed consideration, interesting and instruc- tive as that undoubtedly would be. The genesis of the sermon was almost invariably found in his notebook. Dr. Arthur S. Hoyt regards his use of notebooks as “‘ proba- bly the most striking revelation of his biography.’ Cer- tainly in his hands it proved to be an unusually fruitful - homiletic method. The mornings of Monday and Tuesday he devoted to the gathering of his material, though he seems to have worked rather casually on Monday and to have avoided putting himself under any strain. Wednesday morning he gave to the writing out of the plan of the ser- mon. He considered that the hardest part of his work had been done when he had completed the plan. On Thursday and Friday mornings he wrote out the sermon in full. As a matter of course he did not do all this every week, nor for the full length of his ministerial life. But this was his approved and tested method. He was not a prolific sermon writer, but accomplished his work by pro- longed effort. ‘‘Tried to finish sermon, but with no suc- cess.’’ It is both a comfort and an instruction to find this put down in the handwriting of Phillips Brooks. | 264 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN His extemporaneous sermons were prepared in the same way, up to the point where the writing in full began. ‘‘Al- ways there was the plan elaborated and written out and afterwards filed for future reference.’’ From the begin- ning he had practiced this mode of speech. He had em- ployed it usually at his Wednesday evening service in Philadelphia, and infrequently on other occasions. It would necessarily come into more frequent use in his later life. And never was he more effective than in this form of speech. Dr. Weir Mitchell, a personal friend, and a parishioner in Philadelphia, said that ‘‘as an extemporane- ous speaker he was simply matchless.’’ It is recorded that in the year 1890 he wrote but six sermons. What we may not pass over without due consideration is the fact that he had a method, a method which he had carefully wrought out according to the requirements of his own mind and habit; and that in the use of this method he worked with a diligence and a constancy of application which has proved itself to be beyond either the aim or the accomplishment of many a lesser man. ‘‘Make your own methods,” said he. ‘Be truly independent. Do what is best for you. . . . Besure that your methods come out of your own nature and are not the result of mere accident. Let them be noble, for large ideals and sacred purposes, and not minute conveniences. . . . Let them be broad, not narrow and minute, with plenty of room to fill out and grow.’’ Both the method and the man must grow. For what after all are homiletic aptitudes and homiletic method without concentration upon the homiletic task? ‘‘A good poet’s made, as well as born.”’ A good preacher is made, as well as born. No gift or power must be allowed to ‘‘fust in him unused.” “Phillips Brooks was always thinking of his work, always preparing to preach.’”’ His preaching had its altitudes in his profound PULPIT AND: PASTORATE 265 apprehension of Christ, in the loftiness of the integrity of his own soul, in the magnitude of his appreciation of the value of the human soul, in the masterful courage, which first conquered his own selfhood, and thence easily passed to the conquest of others. It had its breadth in the universally beneficent attitudes of his own soul, in the wideness of his human sympathies and literary culture, in the kinship of his soul with the human soul in all the height and breadth and depth of its need and its sorrow here, in his profound belief in the nearness of God to that soul. It had much of its timeliness, its finish and effectiveness, in the care and diligence with which he devoted himself to the preparation of his sermons. Last Days On April 30, 1891, the diocesan convention of the Epis- copal Church in Massachussetts elected Phillips Brooks a bishop. His election, according to the fixed procedure, re- quired to be confirmed by a majority of the standing com- mittees of the several dioceses and then by a majority of the bishops. It seems strange, and yet not so strange, that there should have been difficulty in this matter in the case of Phillips Brooks. He had expressed strong dis- belief in the idea of apostolic succession in its use as a theory to support what is called the historic episcopate. ‘‘Have you read Lightfoot’s ‘Commentary on Philippians’?”’ he said in a letter. ‘Do get it and read the ‘Essay on the Christian Ministry.’ It does seem to me to finish the Apos- tolic Succession Theory completely.”” When Bishop Cum- mins of Kentucky went out to lead in the formation of the Reformed Episcopal Church he wrote: ‘‘And what do you think about Cummins? What a panic it must make among the bishops to know that a stray parson is round with a true bit of their genuine succession, perfectly and 266 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN indisputably the thing, which he can give to anybody that he pleases! Nothing like it since the powwow among the gods when Prometheus stole the fire.’”’ Again, when the conflict waxed over his confirmation, he wrote: ‘‘I do not believe the doctrine of apostolical succession, and I am sure that Lyman Abbott has the right to preach the gospel.’’ It must be admitted that this attitude did make it a little hard for the bishops who did believe strongly in what the bishop-elect had called a fiction. There was also some question raised about his doctrinal soundness. He had never disdained dogma; and he certainly was not shy of miracles. Nevertheless the charge was vaguely and ir- responsibly made that ‘“‘he deemed the miracle to be un- important and in the life of Christ unessential.’’ Dr. Brooks would say nothing himself; nor would he authorize anybody else to say anything on his behalf. His high- toned and self-respecting manliness hardly ever appeared to better advantage than when he refused so much as to crook his finger to be made a bishop. The opposition, so far as it was entitled to any notice at all, had been made “thoroughly upon the ground of admitted facts,’ and he would let it take its course. Every effort to induce him either to apologize or to explain utterly failed, and he stood unmoved. A procedure which usually consumes six weeks required in his case ten; but at length the confirmation of his election was made known. Such a man as Phillips Brooks could hardly gain greatly in either power or influence by being made a bishop. There was a greater probability that he would decline in power if not in influence. The danger in such a change of status as was involved is a well-known fortuity of human char- acter. James Bryce, afterwards British Ambassador to America, was glad of his election, but sounded a warning: ‘“‘T hope the duties of an active kind may not, as happens -PULPIT AND PASTORATE 267 with bishops here, trench too heavily on the time you have hitherto given to reading and thinking; for even the au- thority the office gives to guide Church deliberations might be ill purchased by the loss of quiet times.’”’ He was crowned with felicitations and lavishly furnished with advice; but sat very tranquilly to both the one and the other. The work of a parish minister had become very burdensome to him, and for relief from this, at least, he was thankful. He proved to be a better administrator than many had supposed he would ever be; and he was diligent and devoted in the discharge of the duties of the diocese. But he had only a little more than fifteen months in the office. He had an illness in January of the year before he died from which he made but an indifferent recovery. On the Saturday morning of January 14, 1893, he caught cold at a Church service where he preached, and on this account should have stayed in on Sunday; but he kept his engage- ments for the day and suffered a good deal of exposure and fatigue. He was out again on Tuesday evening and made an official visit toa Church in Boston, where he preached his last sermon. He was out again on Wednesday, and in the evening made his last speech, though with great dif- ficulty. He was suffering from a severe sore throat, but the doctor who attended him took a favorable view of the case. He did not get out again and his throat became greatly swollen. Other doctors were called in, but still there was no alarm. He did not seem so well on Sunday, but as late as eight o’clock in the evening the doctor thought he would have a good night and expected to find him better in the morning. But late at night the doctors were called. They examined his lungs and found them sound, but suspected diptheretic trouble. A closer examination of his throat 68 PRINCES OF THE PULPIT | was appointed for nine o’clock in the morning, but about three hours earlier he suddenly died. His faithful and devoted servant gave this account of his last hours: ‘‘Last night Mr. William (his brother) and the doctor came, and the doctor said Mr. Brooks would be better in the morning; but by the looks of him I thought he wouldn’t. After they left him I went to his room at about eleven o’clock to see if he wanted anything. He told me to leave some lemonade near him and go to bed. I told him I meant to sit up. He looked at his watch on the table by his bed and said: ‘No, Katie, I won’t need you. It’s late, and you must go to bed.’ But it wasn’t to bed I was going and he looking like that. So I sat in a chair outside his door. Some time after I heard him walking about and talking to himself. I opened the door, and there he was walking about in his room, and saying over and over: ‘Take me home; I must go home!’ I was that frightened that I sent a messenger for Mr. William. Ina little while he came with the doctor and a nurse, and they stayed with him till he died in the morning.”’ Many great tributes of admiration and devotion were paid to the man and his memory from round the ample ranges of the world; but I doubt not that Phillips Brooks himself preferred these unaffected words tothemall. This kind of devotion, evoked by the power of Christ’s redeeming grace, is what the angels desire to look into. alia XI JOSEPH PARKER (1830-1902) A CONSTELLATION OF CONTEMPORARIES JosEPH PARKER had his own place in a conspicuously brilliant British pulpit. His more eminent contemporaries were Canon Liddon, Canon Farrar, Dean Stanley, Dean Vaughan, Bishop Lightfoot, and Dean Church among the Church of England preachers; Dr. Henry Allon, Dr. Thomas Binney, and Dr. R. W. Dale among the Congre- gationalists; Charles H. Spurgeon, Dr. Alexander McLaren, and Dr. John Clifford among the Baptists; Morley Punshon and Hugh Price Hughes among the Methodists; Donald Fraser among the Presbyterians; and last, but by no means least, John Henry Newman among the Roman Catholics. One is almost constrained to ask, What has become of the great preachers? Where are the occupants of pulpit thrones? Where are the preachers who speak to the na- tion? When Dr. J. H. Jowett, under pressure of the con- viction that he ought to be in his own land while the world was under the terrific strain of war, returned from the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York to a Church in London Prime Minister David Lloyd George made the principal address at a dinner party given in Dr. Jowett’s honor by Sir Joseph Compton-Rickett and Sir Albert Spicer at the House of Commons. To the distinguished company gathered for the occasion he gave this remarkable reminiscence: “‘I remember when I came up, as a young man, to London a great many years ago—I dare not think how many. On Sunday morning I went to hear Mr. (269) 270 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTA Spurgeon, in the afternoon I went to hear Canon Liddon, and in the evening I heard Dr. Parker. Those were the days when you could have heard Dean Stanley, Canon Farrar, Morley Punshon, and Hugh Price Hughes. You might also have heard Dr. Dale and Dr. McLaren. Just think of that! What a race of giants! They have all passed away. There have been very serious gaps in the ranks of our great preachers, and we cannot afford that one of them should leave our shores. The loss of a great preach- er is almost an irreparable loss, and I feel that we have achieved something that was worth a great effort in get- ting one of the greatest of them back amongst us.’”’ When Dean Church died, the eminent English essayist, Mr. Richard Holt Hutton, wrote in a similar strain: ‘‘One after another, the great men of our Church disappear, and their places are not filled. Within a single year the Bishop of Durham, Canon Liddon, and Dean Church have all passed away, and we hardly know to which of the three the Church has owed the most.’’ Not a great while before his death Sir William Robertson Nicoll expressed in the British Weekly the opinion that hardly importance enough was attached to the possession by the Church of preachers of dominant character and ability. He doubted whether the Church of England possessed at the time many such men as Canon Liddon and Father Stanton. And among the Nonconformists he did not find easy successors ‘to Spurgeon and Parker, one of whom he had found speaking on each side of the river when he himself came to London. Still he was just enough to say that it had to be remem- bered ‘‘that we never have had many great preachers at one time.’”’ ‘‘It has to be remembered also,” he continued, ‘that many preachers not known to every one are doing magnificent and successful work.” It is, of course, not by great preachers alone that the world is to be saved. But ; r i Pee bel N De PASTORATE Zit it is rather a commonplace, if not degenerate, time when great preachers in the truly Christian sense are not recog- nized as one of the greatest assets of the Church. This is one of the gifts of God to her which surely the Church should covet. And she does well to cherish the memory of such as she has had. A STUDY IN ADVERSITY Joseph Parker did not come into this goodly company of his contemporaries by any preordained or inherited right. He won his position by stern contention. His early career constitutes a study in adversity. He was born at Hexham-on-Tyne on April 9, 1830. There he lived for twenty-two years, until he broke through his limitations and found himself in London. His father was a stonemason and was such a character as to extort from his.son the fol- lowing description: “A strange figure, that old stone squarer, both as man and master; with the strength of two men and the will of ten; fierce and gentle, with passionate- ness burning to madness, yet with deepest love of prayer; no namby-pamby speaker weighing words in Troy scales and mincing syllables as if afraid of them; hating lies as he hated hell itselfi—with him every known man was an angel or a fiend—a lie was no slip of the tongue, it was notorious, scandalous, diabolical, infamous, and infernal —adjectives going for nothing in the swell and rush of his fierce emphasis. A terrible man to people who lived in another zone and spoke a soft and milky language; but a very Hercules and hero to those who could play with tigers and hunt with wolves. I see him now with his sloe- black eyes, fist of iron, chest that needed no smith-made mail, and with a gait that might have suggested the pro- prietorship of the entire solar system.’’ If he had the will of ten men, and the son had some will of his own, it may Ib PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN be surmised that times between them were not always as quiet as a summer sea. Happily his mother was another sort of person. The value of the father’s contribution to the son’s breeding and character does not need to be discounted unduly; but evidently some of his qualities required balancing if not counteracting. The mother was ‘‘a character of extraor- dinary depth and religiousness.”’ ‘“‘She was ‘so quiet,’”’ says the son, “‘so patient, so full of hope; seeing everything without looking, praying much, and teaching her son to pray.’ And again he says: “‘Sweet mother! A sort of superstitious woman withal, and not indisposed to believe in ghosts. She was never quite comfortable without a twig of rowan tree in the house and could never comforta- bly begin anything new on Friday. How glad, too, the dear soul was when she had a good ‘first foot’ on New Year’s morning, for that ‘foot’ mysteriously hinted at the character and fortune of the whole year.’”’ Some measure of this superstition passed to the son himself. Later in his life he said: “‘J like a little superstition; I have a good deal of it; I owe a good deal to it. I got it all from my mother. . . . It wasno use sending a whole acade- my down to talk to her; she would admit every word the academy said and then go to see that the rowan tree was still on the edge of the clock—to keep the bogies away. It was all right. Nor would she have a peacock feather in the house; all peacock feathers were with her associated with some kind of doom, distress, sudden death, and marvelous ministries not to be named. But she could pray; but for that superstitious side of her nature she could not have prayed as she did, taking a square hold of God and saying: ‘I will not let thee go, though the morning is light- ening on the hills, until thou bless me.’’”’ There was an uncommon affection between mother and son, which re- PULEPIT AND’ PASTORATE 213 dounded greatly to the comfort and credit of both of them. There was little that was affluent in his early life except this mother’s love and her religion. ‘‘Perhaps, Joseph, you don’t mind not having any milk in your tea, for I have not got any,”’ she would say to him when he came in from one of his speaking engagements, which he undertook regularly when he was scarcely midway in his teens, and which could but have subjected him to no little weariness and discouragement under all the circumstances. Cheer- fully he would reply: ‘‘ Not a bit; what do I care for milk? Why, to have this tea given as you have given it, it is rich with the richest cream, sweet with the sweetest sugar.” Such encouragement he had from her without stint; but for the rest he had a continual struggle with adversity. “The full tale of what he has endured, overcome, and accomplished is a secret that will die with him,” said one who when he spoke had particular reference to this part of his life. His school life was irregular and otherwise not wholly prosperous and advantageous, though he could say that he had several worthy and capable teachers. But the time and regularity which are such necessary elements in an education were so seriously lacking as largely to cancel such opportunities as he might otherwise have had. At fourteen it was determined that he should follow his father’s trade; but the effort proved abortive, and at the end of a year thus passed he was at school again. Again there was some thought of his becoming an architect; but this plan also failed. There was to be a higher disposal of his life, a sovereign investment of his talents. A Stupy IN PREPARATION Adversity has its own advantages, and the adverse cir- cumstances which Joseph Parker encountered and over- 18 | 274 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN came in his earlier life constituted an undesigned prepara- tion for meeting the strenuous demands which were made upon him in so many ways in his later life. In spite of adverse circumstances, too, there had been planted in him the seeds of that religious devotion which deeply marked his later life. The Bible was the book most diligently read in the home, and on this he was nurtured from a child. On Sundays no other reading was allowed except the Bible, Watts’s Psalms and Hymns, and such works as Hervey’s ‘“‘Meditations among the Tombs.’’ Whoever will may deride such religious rigidity, but perhaps it is better after all than the funny section of the modern Sun- day newspaper. People who have got to go to the tombs may as well become somewhat accustomed beforehand to the somberness of the prospect. There is no definite crisis of conversion that can be fixed upon in his experience. There was a time, however, when as he walked on a Sunday evening with his father and Sunday school teacher his reaching after God came to a culmination, and he definitely declared his love to Christ and asked him to take his child heart into his own gracious keeping. Time does not wait on human decisions. The father had thought for some time that the boy’s future must be decided upon. When he was about sixteen years old the Rev. Thomas Rogers, the father of Dr. Guinness Rogers, came to Hexham on a visit. The revered minister and the deeply interested father sought jointly to find a solution of the problem of the boy’s career. He himself sat within hearing distance while they discussed his case. But they could make no satisfactory disposition of the matter. All this while the boy himself has cherished in his heart a secret desire that he might become a preacher. And so earnest and fixed is the desire that in his crude way he sets about preparing himself for the high vocation. BRULEE ET AND: PASTORATE 275 He eagerly appropriated to his use all the books that by any honest means he could lay his hands on. He had a triangular arrangement fixed to the wall which it seemed almost ridiculous to call a bookcase, and yet he remembered it most gratefully. He had Zimmermann on “Solitude,” his favorite book, Borrow’s “Bible in Spain,’’ “‘and two or three or half a dozen more books, more to me than ever the British Museum Library was or is likely to be.”” At any rate he made more of his rude triangular bookshelf and its contents than many a man has made of the British Museum Library and its contents. The contents of libra- ries have to be gotten out of the libraries and into men in order to be effective in the Christian ministry. This future oratorical athlete, with commendable as- siduity, studied the art of speaking. He diligently prac- ticed elocution, and it does not seem to have turned him into a specimen of artificial inefficiency or in any other way to have hurt him. Long before he had left his teens he procured the speeches of Charles James Fox and recited them aloud going down the quiet roads of Hexham, much to the alarm of certain ladies frequenting the open ways of the adjacent fields. He studied the speeches of the attorneys delivered in the Irish sedition trials, then pinned the newspaper slips to the walls of his room and made vehement arguments to imaginary juries, winning no doubt the most of the cases. Reading aloud he also practiced, striving to use his voice as if to make it reach a thousand people. The whole of “‘ Paradise Lost”’ he subjected to this exercise. Large portions of the Bible he would commit to memory and recite them in his solitary walks as if he were reading them in a large public assembly. All these exercises were next door to public speaking and to preaching in the open air. ‘‘ Wanting in my soul to preach,” he said, “I boldly stood up and preached! I 276 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN asked no permission; I made no bow of homage to custom or authority; but being moved to preach, I stood up on a high stone and preached Jesus and the resurrection.” Of a piece with this performance of his own was his later advice to some young men who came to see him, stating that they felt called to preach. He was glad to hear it, and recommended to them that they at once set about the good work. “But, Doctor, we were hoping you would give us advice as to studies,” they said, ‘‘and, possibly, a suitable college.’’ ‘‘No,” said he, ‘if you feel that you are called to preach, just go to that street corner where the men are loafing about, take a three-legged stool, stand upon it, and begin. You will soon discover whether you are called to preach. The public will give you your certificate.” This may seem a very summary way in which to deal with a call to preach. But it has virtue in it anyway. In his early teens he engaged actively in addressing boys’ meetings, and made a prominent figure in local debating societies. In his eighteenth year he preémpted a saw pit and preached his first sermon. It was on a Sunday after- noon in June. He had accompanied two local preachers from Hexham to the place, which was four miles away. First one of the local preachers preached, and then the other. Young Parker had gone to the meeting without any intention of preaching. But he caught fire while the second preacher preached. Borrowing a Bible, he kept a keen eye on his opportunity. As soon as the second preach- er sat down he mounted a crossbeam of the saw pit, and, uninvited and unannounced, gave the astonished people their third sermon. His text possessed just the sternness and authority which his purpose required. He announced it in the following terms: ‘‘It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you.” Describ- ing the occasion and his own precipitate action long after- em —s i ~s PULPIT AND. PASTORATE 277 wards, he said: ‘‘ Not one word of the sermon can I remem- ber. As for ideas, probably there were none to recollect. I do remember, however, the tone of denunciation. I did not spare the iniquities of the age; I loosed all the thunders I could command, and delivered my soul with audacious frankness. The sermon was necessarily extem- poraneous. Neither thought nor word had I prepared. I simply knew that the age was corrupt, and, taking the hundred rustics as representatives of the total iniquity, I hurled upon them the thunderbolts of outraged heaven. Some persons are kind enough to think that even now I am not wholly destitute of energy, but I can assure them that at eighteen, volcanoes, tornadoes, whirlwinds, and other energetics cut a very secondary figure when I was on the saw pit.” His second sermon, preached also in the open air, had a not less minatory text than the first: “‘If I whet my glit- tering sword, and mine hand take hold on. judgment; I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward them that hate me.”’ (Deut. 32:41.) His third sermon brought him, as he said, his call to the ministry. He delivered it in the evening twilight at a wheelwright’s door. In the ab- sence of anyone else to do it, he had to undertake to lead the singing himself, and this part of the service was not a conspicuous success. But ‘the sermon went like an equi- noctial gale.’’ Afterwards the villagers crowded around him and implored him to come again. He went on diligent- ly, preaching anywhere in the open spaces round about, and in the neighboring villages, walking oftentimes four- teen miles to his appointments. He engaged in teaching for a time; but all the while he had his major eye on the ministry, and labored indefatigably to qualify himself for it. He studied his Greek Testament; and arose at six o’clock in the morning, before his school began, to read 278 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN theology with a minister who kindly assisted him. Whether under the circumstances it was an extremely foolish or instead a very bold step for him to take, no council, ecclesi- astical or otherwise, has ever determined, but when he was not yet twenty-two years old he married. It was not so much a question of age as of circumstances. ‘There could be no question, however, of the excellence of the choice he made. Until her death dissolved their union twelve years later Ann Nesbitt was to him all that he could desire in a wife. THE ADVANCING MATURITY OF H1Is POWERS Maturity in a man is not a fixed estate. Maturity may advance. If it be too severely arrested in its progress, it ceases to be a real maturity and becomes degeneration. The character and the career of Joseph Parker constitute a study in the advancing maturity of his powers. He could not grow to his proper stature in roving about Hexham, valuable as the discipline of those days was to all his later years. He could hardly escape the consciousness of both an inward and an outward constraint. He could but heed the call, whether it came audibly and through visible signs or not, to embark upon wider seas. His course had not widened, and it had not become clear before him. He was now in the near neighborhood of his twenty-second birthday, he had the responsibility of caring for a wife, and he had long made up his mind that he must devote his life to the Christian ministry. In these circumstances he wrote to Dr. John Campbell, a pastor in London and an influential figure in religious circles there. He made a very frank statement about himself, told what his aspirations were, and asked to be advised as to his future. The result Was an invitation to London. He traveled thither on his twenty-second birthday. Dr. Campbell invited him to BUEE LAND PASTORATE 279 preach in his pulpit, and became his tutor and friend, criticizing his sermons and guiding him in his theological studies. While he tarried in London, assisting Dr. Camp- bell and supplying the pulpit of a vacant chapel, a stage of his life which occupied about a year and a half, he made his first appearance in print. Since he became so volumi- nous an author it is interesting to see how he made his start. He had written a series of articles addressed to young people and sought a publisher for them. Let him tell the rest of the story: “I was just a raw youth. I went with them in my hand to Cassell’s office, but I hadn’t the courage to take them in myself, so I paid a boy, who was standing outside, twopence to take them for me. When I saw him coming out of the shop without them I took to my heels and fled, expecting that the editor and all the staff would be after me for my impertinence. But when John Cassell sent me six guineas, and I read my sketches in the Popular Educator, I felt that my fortune was made.”’ London has been kind to him, still he finds no permanent settlement in the work of the ministry. This he obtained, however, in the fact of his ordination as the minister of the Congregational Church at Banbury, in Oxfordshire, on November 8, 1853. He started on a salary of two pounds and ten shillings a week. This did not suffice for any ex- tended excursions outside the necessities of a living, not even in the direction of book-buying; but one day a man came and handed him a package and said, “‘I want you to take this as a present from me.’’ He found it to be a six- volumed commentary, and withal was very happy. He prospered even on a small salary, worked very hard in the preparation of his sermons, which at this time he wrote out in full, resumed his favorite exercise of preaching in the open air, and sought out the roughest characters of the town, rebuked them for their profligacy, and reasoned 280 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN with them of righteousness, and temperance, and judgment to come. He remained at Banbury for four years and eight months, and here as elsewhere he created interesting and exciting incidents, if they did not naturally exist. He de- bated publicly with the secular opponents of Christianity, who at that time were very aggressive, and published the substance of his side of the debate in book form. He wrote a prize essay for which he obtained about as much as forty weeks of his earliest salary was worth. Here he learned the routine of a Congregational minister’s life and work, found time for study and thought, and for further self- equipment for the unknown tasks which lay before him. From Banbury he passed to the pastorate of the Caven- dish Street Chapel, Manchester. The pastor of this Church occupied a very important position, both in the city of Manchester and throughout the denomination. Parker’s position was a very trying one. He was only twenty- eight years old. He had not been to college. He had had no systematic training in theology. He had no academic degree whatever. And all these things counted for much to a man in his position. But he was made of sterling stuff, he had been in training, if he had not been academically educated, and he possessed a strength of personality which knew only to conquer. The almost five quiet years—as far as he permitted them to be quiet—spent in the country town of Banbury prepared him for bustling Manchester; and the eleven active years spent in busy Manchester pre- pared him for London. Dawson, in his biography, says: *‘Had Joseph Parker known from the first what his destiny was to be, and had had the mapping out of his life, he could hardly have wished things to be much different from what they were; and herein he would be the first to recognize the working of that Providence belief in which was the mainspring of his life.’’, While in Manchester he published Por. ft) AND (PASTORATE 281 his first volume of sermons, and also issued ‘‘Ecce Deus,”’ which, at least as to its reserved intentions, was a reply to Seeley’s ‘‘Ecce Homo,’ which itself had just been issued. At the early age of thirty-two he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity from the University of Chica- go. It was also while at Manchester that he married again and entered into that happy union the breaking of which by his beloved’s death broke his heart in his old age and hastened his own death. Thus far has run the outward, and also the inward, course of his life, the one intensely calling and as intensely an- swering to the other. He was in his singularity an amazing man, and his life and character present a striking study in contrasts. Sir William Robertson Nicoll, than whom _ there could not be a better judge, nor one who knew him more intimately in his later days, wrote of him in the British Weekly: “‘I have met men more clever and more accomplished, and even men more alert, but never a man, with perhaps one exception, more plainly possessed of the indefinable quality called genius.”” And yet there were sharp contrasts. He was extremely distrustful of himself, and would crave some visible sign or token that he was do- ing good; still “‘he was often taken for an enormous egoist; and in a sense that was true.”’ He “lived in the constant need of encouragement.” He would thrust forward as boldly as a lion in a good cause; and yet was as shy asa mouse. His very appearance of an aggravated egoism was explained by some who knew and loved him as but a mask of his shyness. He gave the impression of being overbear- ing in his boldness; and yet he was lacking in self-con- fidence. He might have been thought callous to criticism; and yet he was extremely sensitive. His sensitiveness, Dr. Nicoll thought, was caused by “‘the hardness of his child- hood and youth. He said once that his life had been a 282 PRINCES TORT THES GHRISTi continual fight and a frequent pain. It was true that his career was hewn out by stress of will. Every sixpence he possessed was earned. He won and kept his own position against hosts of adversaries. His impulsiveness and his sensitiveness cost him much.” If we could only know how hard the battle goes with the man at our side, how much deeper and more constant would be the flow of our charity. He had little genius for friendship, and yet he was a man full of human and Christian devotion. When the wife and companion of his later life died, he felt it as the thrust of a sword blade through his heart. He misses her ‘‘with a dull agony that sometimes sinks into despair.” ‘I dwell in a tent of misery pitched by the river of sorrow,”’ said he. He, of course, was not without the consolation which every Christian man has, but he deeply suffered. He suffered so deeply that he lost the very words of prayer. At the serv- ice at the City Temple on Thursday two days after the funeral he said: ‘I asked God—though I have not prayed for several days—to send her to be near me this morning that I might get through this service without a quaver or a tear. That prayer has been happily realized.”’ His sympathies and his feelings were deep, but he gave them scant social expression. ‘‘Few men have cared less for general society. . . . When he did accept an invitation to a dinner party, he was always miserable be- fore he went, and often miserable after. He would imagine that he had said something or done something that should not have been said or done.”’ A fear of unintentional mis- doing seemed almost to haunt him. At the celebration in the City Temple of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the be- ginning of his ministry in London, he said: “If I have wronged any man, I humble myself before him. If I have done any man any injustice, I can say before high heaven I have done it unconsciously and unintentionally.” Bur eax N De PASTORATE 283 A man constitutionally possessed of such contrasts of temperament has his stern contests with himself. It is self-mastery or self-defeat after a very decisive fashion. If he does not attain to some good degree of self-mastery, he is self-defeated. And if he suffers defeat within, he is de- feated without. Joseph Parker, then, could but have won a prime secret of self-mastery. He had periods of such serious depression that he would talk of giving up his work and of secreting himself in obscurity until he should be called away from an unprofitable life. Great and cos- mopolitan congregations faced him in the City Temple without diminution of numbers or of interest. Yet he had strange misgivings about it all, and a frequent fear of fail- ure; and often said to Dr. Nicoll that when he would go down to preach at the Temple he would say to himself: ‘What if nobody is in the Temple to-day!’’ And yet with all this constraint to discouragement and to defeat he mastered himself and bent his powers daily to their task. He never suffered himself to be in a hurry, as surely his temperament would have constrained him to be, and kept himself in advance of his work. Nor did he ever for- get anything he desired to remember. A man who thus lays the lash to such a temperament as he had and brings it under control and subjects it to the higher dictates of his will, has shown himself to be a hero in the strife. The capacity for growth through the mastery of oneself and the control and direction of one’s powers to the desired end is one of the vital and final determinants of character. And so it was with this man. It was found that he had grown tremendously as time went on, and his work had grown with him. It was a long leap from the saw pit to the City Temple, from a hundred village rustics to a crowded and cultured and cosmopolitan city congregation. And he gave himself whole-heartedly to them both. This was 284 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN the secret of his growth. He appropriated the principle of the Parable of the Talents that he that is faithful in that which is least shall be given command in that which is much. If he had slighted his rustics, he would never have been fit to face culture. And thus he grew. ‘No preacher,” says Dr. Nicoll again, ‘‘more visibly grew than Parker. To compare his early sermons with his last is a lesson never to be forgotten.’”’ Many men ‘are born with fine capacity and fine talents, but not all of them grow. His GREAT ACHIEVEMENT His great achievement was his London ministry. It was an achievement worthy of all the talents he possessed. There are two principal aspects of this achievement, the administrative and the homiletical. I. His Administrative Achievement 1. His ministry in this aspect of it constitutes a study in the courage that attempts the incredible. He himself had a notable sermon on “The Incredible Things of Life.” His text was: ‘The kings of the earth and all the inhabit- ants of the world would not have believed that the adversa- ry and the enemy should have entered into the gates of Jerusalem.” ‘“‘He discoursed on the incredible things of life, on the victories gained over what seemed to be in- vincible, on the entrance into gates that were meant to resist the world. These things happened not only to the amazement of the people, the inhabitants of the world, but also to the complete confounding of the experts and the kings of the earth, who knew the weight and value of each stone in the fortress and could tell how the gates had been welded and locked.’”’ Such a sermon evidently contains autobiographic reflections. He himself had attempted the incredible. It was almost an incredible thing that he PULPIT AND PASTORATE 285 had come to London at all. It required great courage to come. He was prosperously placed in Manchester. He had a great Church, and a great congregation, and all his affairs were prosperous. Things were not prosperous at the Poultry Chapel to which he came. It was an old and a distinguished Church; the renowned Thomas Goodwin, a noble Christian man, a rare expositor of Paul, and an able preacher, had been its founder. But its affairs had languished. It had been left in the position of a stranded down-town Church, and that in a rather obscure corner. But there were those who loved it and believed it ought to be saved; and they were persuaded that Joseph Parker was the man to do it. He did save it and brought forth out of the ashes of its apparent ruin the City Temple. 2. A study in the faith that attempts the invisible. The text of his first sermon in his new situation was: “I will go before thee, and make the crooked places straight.’ There were crooked places, but he saw them made straight. There were rough places, but he saw them made smooth. He had ‘‘ventured to look at London itself,’’ he said, ‘‘to look on young men, on strangers, on poor forlorn castaways, that would be glad to hear a word of Divine hope.’”’ He thought there must be some people left in his part of the town on Sunday in spite of all reports to the contrary. Even when he had been to America and had seen New York, he still was of the opinion that London offered the finest field in the world for ministerial usefulness. The site chosen for the new City Temple was encom- passed by scenes of historic interest. Not far away was Smithfield, where Anne Askew’s soul had ascended to heav- en in a flame of fire while she had died with the golden word on her lips: “‘I came not hither to deny my Lord.” And she had had her companions in the great tribulation. It was not a bad place for a heroic undertaking. Deliver- 286 PRINCES OF THE “CHRISTE ing the address at the laying of the memorial stone Dr. Parker ‘‘touched on the resolve of the Church to remain in the city and seek a constituency among young men, housekeepers, travelers, strangers, and poor people who could not afford to go into the suburbs; and its decision not to hide in a back street, but to occupy a conspicuous position, putting ‘our trust in the might and love of God.’”’ The quick success which came in increased congregations and in the prosperity of all his new London undertaking was only such as he had seen coming through the might and love of God. 3. A study in intensive leadership. The leadership which Dr. Parker naturally assumed when he came to the tottering Poultry Chapel in London saved the situation there and enabled that enterprise to expand to the propor- tions realized in the new situation at the City Temple. Within a limited circle he had a distinct power to impress and to dominate. He communicated his own courage and faith to others. He had the power to create an atmosphere of confidence in the success of a great undertaking. His people came to regard his pastorate and the success of their enterprise as inseparably bound together. And the City Temple, built at a cost of £70,000 and constructed to seat more than 3,000 persons, was the fruit of their combined confidence and courage and determination. Only within this limited field, however, was he a successful leader. In wider spheres he was hindered from attaining to the position of a great leader by his impulsiveness and undue sensitiveness. He could take up the fight for a great cause, but he did not have the patience and the constancy of purpose required to see it through; and he could not easily brook a difference from those who fought with him. Nevertheless he was a time or two the president of his own mE ULPIT AND: PASTORATE 287 _ Congregational Union, and he was once elected to the presidency of the National Free Church Council. IIT. His Homuiletic Achievement 1. In its larger aspects his ministry was a devotion to the Word of God, a championship of evangelical Chris- tianity. His preaching had its roots deeply set in the Bible. Says Dr. Nicoll: ‘‘He read much in the Bible, and texts started out of its pages. When he found a text, he brooded over it in his solitary walks, in his study, and in his garden till he reached the heart of it. Once that was discovered, illustrations crowded upon him, and his work was prac- tically done. There lie before me as I write many of his sermon notes used in the pulpit. They are written in pen- cil, and each text is followed by about a dozen lines. This was quite enough for him. His preaching was never at any time a burden to him, but always a joy. He was very rarely in need of a text; 1n fact, he had almost always a few texts in hand.”’ A preacher who lives in his Bible and whose Bible lives in him cannot be lacking in texts. Almost the whole of “‘The People’s Bible,” published afterwards in twenty-five volumes, was spoken first from his pulpit. He began the colossal undertaking with the following state- ment: ‘‘ This is a very important occasion to me; it may be an occasion of some importance to you and to many others in the providence of God in years to come. I am just about to open the Bible and to ask you to fix your eyes year by year, God willing, upon the miracle of books. This is the determination to which I have been led, and I trust divinely and humbly, just to begin at the very beginning of the book and, so far as life and energy hold out, to set down in order what thoughts may be given to me about the reve- lation asa whole. Some parts of the day I shall preach here and there in the Book, but generally I trust one part of the 288 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN | day to keep on the steady line of comment and exposition. It will take years to do this.” How many years he did not | know, but at the end of seven the task was complete. From 1884 to 1891 the Sunday morning, the Sunday even- — ing, and the Thursday morning sermons went into ‘The — People’s Bible.’”’ There were twenty-nine consecutive — sermons on the book of Numbers, and every one of them ~ is said to have been listened to by a large congregation. The principle of substitution as forming a part of the © essence of the gospel he firmly believed. ‘“‘Is there not a : sense,” says he in a sermon on Paul’s Letter to Philemon, — “never to be explained, because never to be comprehended, ( in which Christ is making up to justice, and truth, and — honor, and divinity, all that we have done that has been ~ wrong, untrue, impure, false, mischievous? Jesus Christ — stood in the sinner’s stead.. Jesus Christ received the blow — which would have destroyed the world. Argue about it © as you please, refine and contend with much skill of lan- © guage and persistence of tenacity, but you come around again to some principle of substitution in connection with the work of Christ. ‘He was wounded for our transgres- sions; he was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon him. He was delivered for our of- fenses.. He was the Lamb of God that took away the sins of the world. Granted that there may be many little refinements upon these words, and many different ways of — explaining them, yet, under all the explanation, you must > get at some principle of substitution—Christ standing in man’s stead—or, where you explain one difficulty you in- vite a thousand.’”’ And then he imagines Onesimus going back without the letter: ‘Think of Onesimus without the | letter. He is going back to Philemon, and has no letter! He is puzzling his brain as he goes along to know how to begin when he sees Philemon—what to say—how to make PULPIT AND PASTORATE 289 a beginning, to put the case into anything like shape; and he does not know. He says: ‘I think I shall run away again. I really can’t tell how to put this case. What can I say but that I am ashamed of myself, and that I am sorry for myself, and that I beg his pardon?’ He’ll say: ‘Yes, you beg my pardon now! When you find you can’t do better elsewhere, you come back here, do you, with your fine apologies and long explanations, and your hypocritical tears and canting sobs! That’s the way you do, is it?’ He says: ‘I think I shan’t go! I can’t go!’ That is Onesi- mus without the letter. But Onesimus with the letter! He says: ‘This is the letter; I shall say nothing to him; I shall just put this into his hand; he’ll know Paul’s writing; he’ll wonder how I ever got hold of this letter, and he’ll read the letter before he says anything to me.’ He says: ‘O, I mustn’t lose the ietter; I mustn’t lose the letter! This letter is my life; it is pleading forme. . . . The letter saves him. Think of a sinner without Christ! How he is reasoning; how he is beating his brains; how he is goading his mind to suggest plans, and shapes, and argu- ments, and defenses! And it all comes to nothing. Then think of the sinner with Christ! He says: ‘O, it is this Cross that I am going with; I shall hide myself behind the Cross! I shall not open my lips at all until I have been found behind the Cross; and then, when I do open them, I shall only say: ‘“‘God be merciful to me a sinner!’’’ No man ever went to God in that way that was not instantly called in and set down to the hospitality of infinite love. ‘There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.’”’ 2. He possessed qualities of utterance which gave him a wide and commanding power of appeal. (1) The quality of directness or straightforwardness of utterance he possessed in a peculiar degree. There was no 19 290 PRINCES OF THE GHRISTIAM vacuity, no ambiguity in his speech. Strikingly rhetorical as he was, he suffered no redundance of rhetoric to obscure his meaning. Of all magniloquent phrases and phraseology he had a very poor opinion. ‘Particularly,’ he says, especially to preachers, “‘strike out such words as ‘me- thinks I see,’ ‘cherubim and seraphim,’ ‘the glinting stars,’ ‘the stellar heavens,’ ‘the circumambient air,’ ‘the rustling wings,’ ‘the pearly gates,’ ‘the glistening dew,’ ‘the meandering rills,’ and ‘the crystal battlements of heaven.’ I know how pretty they look to the young eye, and how sweetly they sound in the young ear; but let them go without a sigh.”’ Pulpit eloquence he considered to be conversational at its base. At any rate it must be sane. ‘“The eloquence,’ he says, ‘‘which meanders with the rills, floats with butterflies, languishes in pale moonlight, plashes in crested foam on the golden sands, bathes itself in crim- son sunshine, and generally makes a fool of itself, has van- ished into the nothingness out of which it came.” Again, pursuing the same subject, he said: “If anyone would excel in useful public speaking, he must, first, have some- thing to say; second, say it audibly and tersely; third, say it as if he meant it; and, fourth, not care one button for pedants, critics, and purists.’”’ In all this, of course, he is but giving counsel in conformity to the aims and standards of his own style. He did not himself ‘meander with the rills,’’ nor too much aspire to ‘the pearly gates.” Moreover, this quality of directness in speech was sharp- ened by wit. Speaking before the British Wesleyan Con- ference in 1899, he said that when the previous speaker, Dr. McEwan, had spoken of himself as ‘‘a humble Presby- terian,’’ he had said to himself: ‘‘I will turn aside and see this great sight, what it may mean.” “At this,” said the Methodist Recorder, ‘‘the Conference was simply con- vulsed.”” That such a man should possess a wide power 3) : is | : : } y Pu bie AN DPASTORATE 291 of appeal is only the answer to a natural expectation. An evangelist who labored at a place called the Heath brought one of the brickmakers of which his population was in part composed to London on a holiday and carried him up to hear Dr. Parker preach. When the service was over the evangelist said: ‘‘Well, Sam, what do you think of Dr. Parker?’”’ ‘‘I tell ’e what it is, sir,’’ was the reply; ‘that’s just the sort of preaching as we wants up at the Heath?” ‘Is it, Sam?” said his friend, not knowing what else to say. ‘Yes, sir,’’ was the answer, ‘“‘what we want there is a man as has got summat to say, and as knows how to say it.” (2) He possessed a highly cultivated power of extem- . poraneous utterance. His self-imposed and self-directed drills in elocution in his roving days when he uncertainly aspired to better things enabled him bravely to bear the brunt of the better days when they did come. For they were not merely lessons in elocution, but finished exercises in extemporaneous speech. The language of his sermons was forged in the pulpit. His utterance came at length to be wholly extemporaneous. His work was finished in the act of utterance. Verbatim transcripts of the reporter’s notes on his sermons for ‘‘The People’s Bible’? were sent direct to the printer. He could not be prévailed upon to read the proof of one of his sermons. He seemed to have an aversion to going over again in the printed form any considerable part of his own sermons. This created in him, whether consciously to himself or not, a striving for a finished and final form of extemporaneous speech. He preached to his reporter, and this kindled his imagination to the measure and to the inaudible response of the in- visible audiences stretching into the far distance, and it touched with flame his utterance. He was hampered by a manuscript and crippled by too 292 PRINCES OF THE] CHRIS Tia much preparation. The farther he got away from a manu- script the better he preached. ‘On the rare occasions when he wrote and read a sermon,’ says Dr. Nicoll, ‘‘he was much less effective, and as a rule his appearances on great occasions were much below his average. Of this he was very well aware. The only time I ever knew him de- cidedly fail was his speech at the Union of the Churches in Scotland. He failed simply because he had prepared too much. For months the speech ran in his mind until at last he lost confidence in himself.’’ Verbal repetition was so difficult to him as to be practically impossible; and so he was shut up on every hand to the cultivation of the con- genial art of extemporaneous speech. The power, fresh- ness, and attraction which he held to the end were largely attributable to this fact. 3. ‘‘Dr. Joseph Parker, most brilliant of rhetoricians,”’ is the characterization of Dr. Brastow, made in ‘‘The Modern Pulpit.’”’ He possessed a brilliance of rhetorical expression and delineation which added a touch of wonder to his speech. ‘“‘By one touch of the magic wand of your kindness,’’ said he in response to the presentation of a gift from friends on the occasion of the celebration of his silver wedding, ‘‘that which was silver has been turned into gold.” And so he himself turned the silver of speech into gold. His fertility of rhetorical resource gave an element of the unexpected and of surprise to his speech. ‘‘His fertility of mind was amazing,’”’ Dr. Garvie has said in ‘‘The Chris- tian Preacher,’ and certainly it was not the least of all in this respect that it was amazing. Let him but be taken in a moment of tender appeal and this quality of his preach- ing will appear. In a sermon on a ‘‘ Word to the Weary”’ he thus concludes: “‘ Did we but know the name of our pain we should call it Sin. What do we need, then, but Christ the Son of God, the Heart of God, the Love of God? He PULPIT AND PASTORATE 293 will in very deed give us rest. He will not add to the great weight which bears down our poor strength. He will give us grace, and in his power all our faintness shall be thought of no more. Some of us know how dark it is when the full shadow of our sin falls upon our life, and how all the help of earth and time and man does but mock the pain it can- not reach. . . . Christ is calling for thee: I heard his sweet voice lift itself up in the wild wind and ask whither thou hadst fled, that he might save thee from death and bring thee home. . . . Let him but see thee sad for sin, full of grief because of the wrong thou hast done, and he will raise thee out of the deep pit and set thy feet upon the rock.” 4. He paid the price of an undivided devotion to his task of preaching. First and last he had much directly to do with the training of preachers, and he held here, as in the ordering of his own course, that the first duty of preach- ers is to preach. The sphere of his pastoral labors he did not anywise depreciate or neglect; but he knew how to put the emphasis on preaching. He attended to the main things of his ministry, and did not suffer his time and energy to be too much diverted to minor interests. A man of his gifts has a strong temptation to this and has to set himself resolutely against it. ‘“‘He was too deeply pledged to preaching to win any real triumph in other fields. That is the word—he was pledged to preaching. Those five words uncover the secret of his supremacy as a preacher. Writ- ing at this time and distance from the man and the scene of his labors one who never saw nor heard him must turn time and time again to Sir William Robertson Nicoll, who knew him so well and was so capable a judge in such mat- ters. ‘‘It was as a preacher,” says he, ‘‘that he made his great mark and exerted his mighty influence. For multi- tudes there was no preacher like him. He showed power 294 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN from the first, but he took bad models, and his taste was imperfect. It is wonderful to trace his progress, to see how he toiled and how he ascended. To other preachers he owed almost nothing. The one preacher whose influence is traceable in his later work is Newman, and Newman was almost the only sermon writer whom he read for many years. I make no attempt to analyze his preaching or to discover the secret of his power. It is a spiritual wonder. About it there was the touch of miracle. Apparently free from rule, it was unconsciously obedient to the great princi- ples of art. As you listened you saw deeper meanings. The horizon lifted, widened, broadened; the preacher had thrust his hand among your heartstrings. You heard the cry of life, and the Christ preached as the answer to that cry. The preacher had every gift. He was mystical, ‘ poetical, ironical, consoling, rebuking by turns. Some- times ‘“*As from an infinitely distant land, Come airs and floating echoes that convey A melancholy into all our day.’ The next moment you could not help smiling at some keen witticism. Then he was ironical, and you' remem- bered Heine, and saw that he knew how much irony is mingled by God in the order of his creation. Then tears sprang to your eyes as he pictured the failure of success, and told of the long, triumphant struggle and the victory turned into mourning by the death of the only child. But what description can render, or what analysis explain, the visible inspiration, the touch of fire from heaven?” When he had gone in and out of his pulpit for fifty years he said: “‘God has enabled me to see that there is nothing under heaven like preaching the gospel.’’ Dr. Monro Gibson said that the greatest, best, and most inspiring thing in that whole fifty years of ministry was that at the 5 LE Sa (LE OLED META IO PULPIT AND PASTORATE 295 end he was not only not tired of his task, but more in love with it than ever. He believed in the permanence of the institution of preaching and made his own great contribu- tion toward the proof of his position. 5. The Thursday service, which he began immediately on his arrival in London and continued without abate- ment of either interest or success down to the end of his days, constitutes a distinct chapter in the history of the pulpit. “‘London is a hard city to conquer.’”’ But he had thought that he might conquer it and command a hearing for the gospel even on Thursday morning. This had been a reason he had for leaving Manchester. He had thought that he might do thisin London. And here he did command a cosmopolitan audience, mainly masculine, Thursday after Thursday, for more than thirty years, with.unflagging interest and without diminution of attendance while the tides of the great city rolled past. The service extended its renown to the ends of the English-speaking world and augmented its attendance from every clime. And the breadth of its intellectual and human appeal was not less than its geographical. Running down the list of signatures in the City Temple pulpit Bible, the most of whom at- tended on Thursday mornings, the following names appear: Frances E. Willard, Robert Moffatt, W. E. Gladstone, C. H. Spurgeon, Lord Shaftesbury, Lord Mount-Temple, Lord Mayor Fowler, Henry Ward Beecher, James Chal- mers of New Guinea, Lady Henry Somerset, Rev. W. C. Willoughby of Bechuanaland, with the strange names of African chiefs accompanying him, Herbert H. Asquith, Mr. Hall Caine, Hugh Price Hughes, Dr. Alfred Momerie, and W. H. Milburn, the blind chaplain of the United States Senate. Testimonies to the public value and personal benefit of these services came to Dr. Parker from a wide variety 296 PRINCES OF THE PULPIT of sources—from Dean Vaughan, from Father Stanton, from an unnamed London vicar, voicing a deep personal benefit, from a zealous group of Salvationists, from a man traveling in the Desert of Sahara, who had “gained palm trees, a deep-blue sky, a balmy air,’”’ but had lost his Thurs- day morning service in the City Temple and wished that he had wings that he might transport himself thither for the service of the particular morning on which he was writing. The deeper significance of these services lies in the fact that they were purely religious. Preparation was made for them precisely as for the services on Sunday, and there was never injected into them anything of the sensational or of the mere passing day. Dr. Parker him- self observed that ‘‘he had never preached upon collisions, earthquakes, great railway accidents, or even general elec- tions.’”’ In this he gave a heroic exhibition of his confidence in the pure and simple gospel to exercise its sway over the minds, the hearts, and the consciences of men. To these services in particular the preachers gathered. Here he exercised his gifts as preéminently a preacher to preachers, as pastor pastorum. Dr. Parker remained at his best until he was seventy- one, and then began to fail. He had possessed a magnifi- cent constitution and had wisely conserved his strength. An eminent specialist whom he had consulted in a time of great strain had carefully examined him and had then told him what Sir Andrew Clark said to Gladstone—“‘ that he did not know at what chink of his frame death could enter in.’”’ But the end is inevitable, and Dr. Parker died on November 28, 1902, when he had gone just a little past midway his seventy-second and seventy-third birthdays. XII ALEXANDER McLAREN (1826-1910) A PREACHING EPOCH THE English pulpit of the latter half of the nineteenth century burst into unusual ability. This space in its history may well be denominated a preaching epoch. Within the time there appeared within the narrow circuit of the British Isles, indeed, within the narrower circuit of England alone, though two of the preachers—Robertson and McLaren—were of Scotch descent, not less than six pulpits which had a lasting fame conferred upon them by the distinguished ability of their incumbents. In every case the fame of the pulpit in the main was built by the ability of the man who at the particular time occupied it. Three of these in a peculiar way linked their names perma- nently with their pulpits—Parker of the City Temple, Spurgeon of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, and McLaren of Manchester. No less distinguished was the connection of Robertson with the Brighton pulpit, of Dr. R. W. Dale with the Carr’s Lane Congregational pulpit of Birming- ham, and of Canon H. P. Liddon with the pulpit of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. It is said that Bishop Blom- field once remarked to Bishop Wilberforce as they were pass- ing St. Paul’s: “I wonder what that great building has ever done for the cause of Christ.”’ Liddon came and lifted the reproach and afterwards none could ever charge the build- _ ing with any such default toward its intention. All this is not to say that there were not other preachers of distinction who were produced in the same epoch; but (297) 298 PRINGES OP KHE CHRIS TRAN it is to say that these men were connected in a peculiar way with particular pulpits, and that it was the man who made the pulpit and not the pulpit that made the man. AN ANTECHAMBER TO THE CHURCH Alexander McLaren was brought up in a home which was an antechamber to the Church. In truth, that home was in its own way a Church. It was the Church of God in the house of David McLaren. ‘This father had himself been intended for the pulpit of the Church of Scotland, for he was the eldest son of the house, and hence the subject of the accustomed desire of many devout Scottish homes that the eldest son should enter the ministry. But while in Glasgow College (afterwards the university) he was brought into the grip of a deeper evangelical religion and abandoned all thought of becoming a parish minister. Circumstances led him to examine the subject of baptism, and he became a Baptist. Perhaps out of all this there wrought upon the mind of Alexander McLaren some silent accumulation of desire toward the ministry. At any rate, when the time came he entered upon the great undertaking from which so many noble souls have shrunk and on the threshold of which they have faltered, without hesitation or mis- giving, as if there were a natural progress, though not with- out God’s grace, to be sure, but rather by it, from the home to the Church. It was as though the path he walked led directly from the altar of the home to the altar of the Church. There was no breaking away from the one in order to pass to the other, but the door of the one opened into the other. There was nothing in the Church to dis- turb the foundations which had been laid in the home. This easy and unreluctant entrance into the ministry will seem the more surprising when the aloofness of his disposi- ) | meLPIT AND PASTORATE 299 tion and his natural shrinking from contact with men is considered. David McLaren was a business man who was also a preacher. ‘‘He had many business anxieties, but his chil- dren remember to have heard him say,”’ writes Alexander McLaren, ‘‘that when he began preparations for the Sab- bath on the Saturday afternoon, all his troubles passed from his mind and left him undisturbed till Monday morning, when the fight was renewed.” ‘“‘The writer was too young,’ he continues, “‘to form a judgment of his father’s sermons, but not too young to receive an impres- sion which has powerfully influenced him in his own work, and abides with him still.” Alexander McLaren, the youngest of a family of six children, was born in Glasgow on February 11, 1826. From his earliest reflective years, and even before, he was sensitively impressible by objects and events in both the natural and the artificial world and lived at the cost which this sensitiveness entails. His sensitiveness made him shy and cut him off from any very close intimacy with his fellows, even though it was those who might have proved most congenial to him; and this was a trait which was fixed upon him for life. He was brought up after the fashion of the most rigid Puritan ritual, if the Puritans will pardon one for saying they had a ritual; but neither at the time he was subjected to it nor afterwards did he experience any feeling of revolt from its strictness. On the contrary, he counted its discipline as having been highly salutary and treasured its influence upon him with grati- tude. He was taken regularly to two services on Sunday long before he was old enough to listen attentively to the sermon, but had no remembrance of wishing the service to be over. The Bible lesson at home in the evening left 300 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN him no recollection of dreary Sundays, the fame for which some have tried to fix upon the Scotland of the time. He attended the Glasgow High School, and his promi- nence at the prize giving on his finishing there was long remembered. He was seated far back in one of the city churches where the prizes were awarded. When his name was called the first time the delay in the proceedings caused by the time required for him to reach the front led the mas- ter of the school to remark to the Lord Provost who pre- sided over the exercises: “‘This young gentleman has to appear before us so often that he had better be accom- modated with a seat nearer the table.’’ His prize winning was a proof that already he had shown himself a thorough learner. It was only the removal of the family to London that prevented his completing his course at the University of Glasgow upon which he had entered before he was fifteen years old. His early religious quickening he owed to the Rev. David Russell, a Congregational minister of Glasgow, whose Bible class he attended during an absence of his father in Australia for four years on business, while the family perforce was left at home. According to his own account it was a sermon by Dr. Lindsay Alexander which first led him to think seriously of his actual religious condi- tion. At the same time Doddridge’s ‘‘Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul”’ fell into his hands. He took this to be just what he wanted until he came to a place where he began to reflect that if he rejected this another offer of mercy also his condemnation would be all the greater, and he laid the book down. Thoughts about God’s election of those who should be saved gave him trouble. If this were true, noth- ing he could do could affect the result. Still he somehow could not feel that he was absolved of responsibility in the matter. The crisis finally came when he attended revival | ) | PULPIT AND PASTORATE 301 meetings conducted by Mr. Russell. “‘The sermon went -on,” he said in a written statement made afterwards to Mr. Russell himself and at his request, “‘and when you quoted the passage in John as to making ‘God a liar’ all my sin rushed upon me as | had never seen it before. I sat trembling. Then when you said that before we rose off our seats we might be saved for time and eternity, I felt hope beginning to rise in my mind. . . . My sins appeared in all their enormity, and I found peace and pardon in believing that Christ is the Saviour.”’ That this experience was a requisite after his careful upbringing will not escape the attention of any serious reader. The removal of the family to London had brought Stepney Baptist College (now Regent’s Park) within an accessible distance, and young McLaren entered this in- stitution at the fall term of 1842. He owed much to the principal of the time, Dr. Benjamin Davies, especially with respect to his acquisition of his “‘lifelong habit of patient, minute study of the original, not only in the prepa- ration of each sermon, but in his daily reading of the Scrip- tures as he sought for the strengthening of his own spirit- ual life.”’ Before finishing at the college he was invited to accept a three months’ engagement with the Portland Chapel, Southampton. The situation was not a promising one. ‘“‘If the worst comes to the worst,’’ he said concerning it, ‘“‘T shall at all events not have to reflect that I have killed a flourishing plant, but only assisted at the funeral of a withered one.” THE ART OF CULTIVATING A CORNER The trial of his powers at Southampton led to his settle- ment there as regular pastor. He remained for twelve years and diligently cultivated the corner into which he had been 302 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN thrust. Warning young preachers afterwards against an unseasoned progress in the ministry, he said of these South- ampton days: “I thank God that I was stuck down in a quiet, little obscure place to begin my ministry; for that © is what spoils half of you young fellows. You get pitch- forked into prominent positions at once and then fritter yourselves away in all manner of little engagements that you call duties, going to this tea meeting, and that anni- versary, and the other breakfast celebration, instead of stopping at home and reading your Bibles and getting near to God. I thank God for the early days of struggle and obscurity.’’ What a pity it is that young preachers are not more generally wise enough and also willing to lay this counsel to heart. A poplar outgrows a hickory, but has not the same seasoning. A poplar is very good for a quick blaze, but a hickory will burn all day. It is said that a bishop wisely saved Bossuet from premature popularity. Prematurity of popularity will generally mean immaturity of gifts and a superficial development. Besides, an untime- ly taste of popularity may indispose the palate toward that sterner diet on which alone a great preacher can grow. There has been a certain tang of adversity about the men who in the long run have been most appreciated. At Southampton McLaren was faithful in that which was least. In this sense there was to him no least in the kingdom of God. He worked steadily, and he worked hard. He so applied himself as to increase his capacity for work. He so systematized his labors as to increase his facility in | work. Here in the beginning of his ministry he buckled on that armor of painstaking preparation which he never suffered to sit loose upon him as long as he lived. He had the wisdom to keep to his own corner and intensively to cultivate that. There might be wider and more inviting fields in England, but this corner had, in the providence of rf PULPIT AND- PASTORATE 303 God, been allotted to him. He put in the seed and there was a harvest. He sowed the seed of a resolute purpose and it grew secretly in himself. Larger spheres of useful- ness, including London, thrust out the power of their at- traction toward him, but he kept steadily to his orbit. He ‘‘had continually to decline urgent requests to preach all up and down Hampshire on Sundays, and deliver lectures on weekdays, ‘here, there, and everywhere.’ But decline them he did.’’ He thrust his roots downward and cast them out toward the seas and came in due time to a fruit- ful fullness of his powers. It was pertinently remarked concerning the course he pursued that ‘‘there is no better way of turning a small place into a large one than that of making the most of it and doing your best to it while you are in it.” Dr. Binney came down to see him, preached for him while there, and gave him wise advice about preaching. He was afterwards constrained to say: “It was Binney taught me to preach.’”’ One man cannot teach another to preach. One man can teach another to preach. And there you are. If a man has a good seed about preaching and a good soil to plant it in, it will bear fruit, sometimes, as in this case, a hundredfold. The most radiant event of his personal life, as he him- self would have counted it, occurred at Southampton when Marion McLaren, his brilliant and beautiful cousin, became his wife. This event was celebrated on March 27, 1856. Fifty years afterwards, lacking but a little while, when the subject of these tender memories had been nearly twenty-one years dead, he wrote to a confi- dential friend: “In 1856 Marion McLaren became my wife. God allowed us to be together till the dark Decem- ' ber of 1884. Others could speak of her charm, her beauty, her gifts and goodness. Most of what she was to me is 304 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN forever locked in my heart. But I would fain that, in any notices of what I am, or have been able to do, it should be told that the best part of it all came and comes from her. We read and thought together, and her clear, bright intellect illumined obscurities and ‘rejoiced in the truth.’ We worked and bore together, and her courage and deft- ness made toil easy and charmed away difficulties. Of all human formative influences on my character and life hers is the strongest and best.” McLAREN OF MANCHESTER In 1858 McLaren came to Manchester and began to forge the links of steel which bound indissolubly the name of the great preacher and the great city together. He had the inestimable advantage of coming under the clear con- viction that he was acting according to the will of God. Notwithstanding this conviction the transition was not easy. Writing to a friend at the time he said: “So I have been shifted like the fish in the Hindoo version of the deluge into a bigger tank, I dare say big enough for the growth of a great many years yet. It came to be a dreadful wrench at last. The cruel tenderness of the last week was agony and would have been intolerable if I had not felt that the change was not of my seeking and was ventured upon with the clearest conviction that it was God’s will.”’ Most of the notes of his prophet-toned ministry he had already struck at Southampton. He came to Manchester bound to the people who had been grounded in the essen- tials of the Christian experience and caring for naught else than to build all Christian character upon this principle. In point of fact he knew no other way to build. He was not a man to act without having thought the principles of his action through. And so he says: “‘I have learned, I shall never unlearn, lessons that, after all, our sole power lies PULPIT AND PASTORATE 305 in the true, simple, sincere setting forth the living Christ, and I have abjured forever all the rubbish of ‘intellectual preaching.’ I would rather serve out slops for people to live upon than lumps of stone cut into the form of loaves. It is my ambition gradually to lead my hearers to some broader and more masculine type of Christian life and thought than they have had. I feel that the narrowest and least cultivated of them is nearer to me than the best man that ever stepped who has not ‘the root of the matter’ in him: and I should feel that I had done a great work in my small way, if I could bring these two classes of old- fashioned Christians and new-fashioned ones face to face in some instances and teach them to honor one another and love one another.’ The great desideratum was that | both classes should be Christians. And that he might make men Christians he would adjure “‘the rubbish of intellectual preaching.’’ The phrase may perchance point to some ill- considered effort of his own. Or it may be that Carlyle, by whom he was largely influenced at this time, had un- wittingly admonished him against too great intimacy with the undisciplined ‘‘immensities,” ‘‘eternities,’’ ‘‘humani- ties,’ and so forth, of which Carlyle himself was so fond. Southampton had not made McLaren widely known, partly owing to his dislike of superficial popularity. But Manchester was to give him a world fame. The Church to which he came, Union Chapel, was in reality a union Church in its constitution, but it was predominantly Bap- tist. And McLaren himself was so strictly a Baptist as almost to be so in a sectarian sense; though in truth this disposition was not in him. It was simply his nature to be intensely what he was. He began his ministry in Manchester on the first Sunday in July, preaching at both the morning and the evening services on great central themes of the Scriptures. He was 20 | 306 PRINCES OF (THE CHORis tigi accustomed to enter his pulpit without flourish or parade or any precursors of his approach. He felt all his life long the ‘‘awfully conspicuous position of a pulpit,’’ and it be- came him to enter it with dignity, and yet with a chastened and severely humbled spirit. The strain of a service wrought upon him fearfully. He was impatient of elaborate musical preludes and interludes, and his organist knew that after he appeared in his pulpit serious work must soon begin. Every part of the service must be bent toward the proper ends of worship. The whole of the service he pre- ferred to take himself, believing that this assisted his preaching. Preparing beforehand for the prayer he said he could not understand. Though it is evident that he meant what seemed to him mechanical preparation. Preparation of the spirit for prayer he was profoundly constrained to make. ‘“‘The hymn and the chapter read help me much, and then I try to remember nothing but that I am speaking to God for others and for myself and that he ts listening’—that was his preparation. The Scriptures he read most impressively and many were glad to come just to hear this part of the service. His biographer, Miss E. T. McLaren, a sister to his wife and a cousin of his own, justly says, as many others have also said, that it is as a preacher that he will be re- membered. He felt that he was not fit to be a pastor. It would no doubt have been difficult for him to be a pastor. But to say that he could not is granting too much to his reluctance. He simply shrank too much from contact with his fellows and allowed himself to do it even here. A member of his Church in Manchester, an ungifted and uneducated man, as affairs of the world go, came to him and asked him: ‘Are you aware that your housemaid is under serious conviction regarding the state of her soul?”’ ‘“No,”’ he answered, ‘‘I did not know; but I commend her BULPIT AND: PASTORATE 307 to your care. I am able, with God’s help, to teach his truth to hundreds; you can bring it home better to one or two.”’ This may have been very good for the maid, but it was not good for McLaren. Still there is no denying the peculiari- ties of his temperament; though these might very well to some extent at least have been overcome. Still less may it be forgotten that he had his own clear conviction of what was God’s will for him; and this was that he was, first of all, to be a preacher. Very soon the new voice speaking in Union Chapel pul- pit began to be heard throughout the city. His situation was a rather inconvenient suburban one. But this dis- advantage ceased to count, and the people made a beaten path to his door. A great preacher is really a very difficult person to conceal. Attendants upon his services began to appear from all parts of the city and from beyond its limits. Many a young clerk or student who had endured a toilsome week trudged his way on foot across the city and back for the uplift and encouragement he got from this pulpit on Sunday. Eventually he had a very wide variety of hearers—‘‘men of all classes and creeds, rich and prosperous merchants, men distinguished in profes- sional life, and others working their way toward success. Young men from the offices and warehouses in the city sat side by side with artisans. Strangers were attracted in large numbers, among them clergymen and dignitaries of the Established Church, Nonconformist ministers, literary men, artists, and students from the theological colleges.” Naturally household arrangements centered around the man and the ministry upon which he was so intent. Break- _ fast was early, and while it progressed there was a glance at letters, and at the Manchester Guardian, which, though 308 PRINCES OF (THE GHRISTEAN it was one of the great newspapers of the world, was never permitted to be seen in the study until the afternoon. He resembled John Wesley in being able to command sleep practically at will and was enabled thereby to con- serve his none too abundant supply of energy. ‘‘He could say that, notwithstanding lifelong perturbation before each sermon and public engagement of any kind, he had never lost a night’s sleep either before or after even those he dreaded most.”’ Very early in his ministry he had resolved to establish himself'in this habit. A practice in which he delighted of reading aloud in the home not only ministered to the pleasure and edification of all the family, but doubtless also made its contribution to the fine and serviceable qualities of his voice. Ruskin, Browning, Shakespeare, Dickens, and others occupied these hours. , In the course of events a new and larger church was re- quired for his congregation. But he rather regretfully saw the enterprise taken in hand, for he had a dread all the while it was in building lest it should be half empty when done. Notwithstanding the difficulty in securing his services for outside engagements, he was drawn first and last into a good deal of this form of work. One of his notable outside appearances was on the occasion of a sermon delivered for the London Missionary Society at one of its important anniversaries. His.great friend and preaching mentor, Dr. Binney, met him in the vestry at the close of the serv- ice, but at first could not speak and later went home to weep. The sermon, the title of which was ‘The Secret of Power,’ was a great intellectual and spiritual triumph, and Binney had his own share in it. In 1877, when he was full fifty-one years old, he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity from Edinburgh, PULPIT AND PASTORATE 309 and the same from Glasgow in 1907. He was no fledgling doctor, but honored the institutions as they honored him. He had never more than a scant reserve of strength, and in his fifty-fifth year had an enforced rest of almost a year. After this he had an assistant and preached only once on the Sunday. In 1884 Mrs. McLaren died and his heart never ceased to stagger under the blow. He tried on the following Sun- day to preach on those “‘who walk in white,’”’ but had to give it up. He declined the offer of a professorship in his Alma Mater, displaying no doubt sound sense in doing so. For twenty years he wrote weekly on the current lesson for the Sunday School Times, Philadelphia, and testified that he found great profit in the discipline of condensation which he was obliged to practice. These papers were les- sons in sound knowledge and accurate interpretation, and greatly extended the understanding and appreciation of those parts of the Bible which he treated. He had a pressing invitation, supported in private by Dr. R. W. Dale, to deliver the Lyman Beecher Lectures on Preaching at Yale University, but declined. He proba- bly never missed another such opportunity to render a conspicuous service to the great cause to which he had so unstintedly consecrated his own eminent powers. His ministerial jubilee was celebrated in 1896. The oc- casion was fragrant with the cordial admiration felt for him on every side. Bishop Moorhouse, of the diocese of Manchester, Church of England, paid him publicly the following unrestrained tribute: ‘‘Thirty years ago I was studying with great profit the sermons of the gentleman we honor to-day; and I will say this, that in an age which has been charmed and inspired by the sermons of Newman and Robertson of Brighton, there are no public discourses 310 PRINCES’ OF “THE CHRIS TEAN which for profundity of thought, logical arrangement, eloquence of appeal, and power over the human heart, exceed in merit those of Dr. McLaren.”’ In his own splen- did style he replied in part as follows: ‘‘ You will not won- der, I am sure, if what has been said and done this after- noon robs me of the power of adequate acknowledgment. It is never easy to speak about oneself. One may shift to defend oneself from unfavorable criticism, but after such overindulgent estimate of one’s qualities and such kindly reticence about their accompanying defects as has marked the addresses of preceding speakers, I am embar- rassed and cannot find words to satisfy myself.”’ From time to time, though he had long had the relief afforded by an assistant, he had been impelled to consider whether he had not better resign his pastorate. But he does not have and cannot afford to have any will of his own in a matter which at the same time so deeply involves the will of God. He has reflected upon words of John Wool- man and wished to make them his own: ‘‘There was a care on my mind so to pass my time that nothing might hinder me from the most steady attention to the voice of the true Shepherd.” As for himself, he said concerning the same matter at another time: ‘‘ My life has taught me that fore- casting is vain. The greatest blessings and sorrows have been pushed into my passive hands, and so it will be, I expect, to the end. I hope I am learning to leave all in God’s hands, and to live by the day. But it is hard to strike the right mean between trust and negligence, and I am sometimes afraid that | may shirk responsibility and omit doing my part on the plea of leaving God to order our ways.” Between the first Sunday in July, 1858, and the last Sunday in June, 1903, there lay a space of full forty-five years filled by the continuous pastorate of Alexander BOP WAND =PASTORATE ok McLaren at the Union Chapel in Manchester. On the latter date he said farewell to his pastorate, but seven years more of ministry, wide and rich and fruitful, he was to exercise ere he died. The text for his farewell sermon was 1 Corinthians 15: 1-4: ‘Christ died for our sins ac- cording to the Scriptures; . . . he hath been raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.’’ Upon these principles, principles rooted in the great doctrines of human redemption, his whole unsurpassed ministry had been based; and on the day of his exit from active pulpit service he rejoiced in them for Manchester as Paul had rejoiced in them for Corinth. On the afternoon of May 5, 1910, he died very quietly at the end of a life of eighty-four years’ duration and a ministry of nearly sixty-five. CARDINAL CHARACTERISTICS Dr. McLaren possessed extraordinary natural gifts. Sir William Robertson Nicoll regarded him as “out of sight the most brilliant all-round man” he ever knew. ‘‘In any company where he sat,’’ he continues, ‘‘was the head of the table. Before you knew he was a prophet you were sure he was a king. Who can forget that wonderful face, tender and stern, more beautiful and more saintly as the years went on, with the lights and shadows sweep- ing over it? Who can forget the flash of those magnetic, dominating eyes? There was a kind of regal effulgence about him in his great moments. He might have been anything—soldier, politician, man of letters, man of science, and in any profession he would have taken the head.” He had a most incisive and discriminating intellect and possessed the power of most effective mental application. He possessed these powers, but did not lean on them. He toiled as terribly as any one-talent man. He brought 312 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN his manifold gifts into subjection to the law of increased capacity to be achieved through the most unremitting ap- plication. He never ceased to commit his talents to their appointed task. Once when he had to preach in the even- ing on shipboard, though he had been in the ministry then for more than forty years, he records the fact that he had been in his cabin all day long getting ready for the service. He could not preach an old sermon. Every old sermon he preached became in the process a new one. The quintessence of his qualities it is not difficult to define: 1. He was one of the finest examples of the power of culture in Christian preaching which the recent pulpit has had. Christianity does not directly aim to produce culture, but character. Nevertheless, there is in Christian char- acter itself an element and a tone of culture. Christianity inevitably works toward the higher and finer things in character, and this in itself is a process and a means of culture. And Christianity should have the power to com- mand the culture which it has itself created: but there are circles in which due attention has not been paid to this. The mere veneer and superficialities of culture, to be sure, are not to be allowed and not to be esteemed. But Alex- ander McLaren showed the right way. The whole action © of his ministry demonstrated that not a man’s body only, not alone the qualities of his character, not the gifts of his intellect only, but that the highest and finest gifts of culture also may be laid on God’s altar and brought into preéminent service in the Christian pulpit. A low culture in the pulpit should not offend a finer culture in the pew when the latter is itself a truly Christian culture, and the product it may be of generations of integrity of Christian sentiment and devotion. Christianity at its best shrinks from the coarse and the vulgar and the bizarre as well as PULPIT. AND PASTORATE 313 from the impure, and the pulpit must be able to build on! as high a level as the pew. And this Dr. McLaren was’ conspicuously able to do. He was so cultured in manner and character as to shrink from vulgarity and ostentation as from things unclean. And such in truth they are to the culture which is really Christian. Who has not had occasion from his own contact with Christian ministers sometimes to wish that they were more considerate, if not indeed more cultured, in their speech? 2. Culture he did not leave to do its own work, but his culture itself was consecrated to ends beyond its own. It is a subtle temptation to the Christian minister to de- pend upon his gifts and his graces and not upon grace for the accomplishment of the high tasks of his ministry. But the tasks have ceased to be high and have already become low when this specious but inert paganism invades his soul. All a man’s gifts and graces, and his culture too, may assume a purely naturalistic level, thereby ceasing in any real sense to be employed in a ministry of Christ and of the Holy Spirit, but only a ministry of the flesh and of human endeavor. Such men must cease to say: “‘By the grace of God I am what I am.” But McLaren counted his culture, too, and the highest refinement of his gifts as subject to the will of God through Christ for the service of his ministry. He was accustomed to address on notable occasions great audiences in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester. It was a custom of the audience to receive him standing on those occasions, and with prolonged applause. Leaving the Hall with him after one such occasion a companion ventured to ask him whether he could recall what his thoughts were as he stood waiting for the applause to subside that he might begin his speech. ' “Yes, perfectly,’ he promptly replied; ‘‘I all but heard the words, ‘It is a very small thing that I should be judged 314 PRINCES OF THE: GHRisiias of you, or of man’s judgment; he that judgeth me is the Lord.’’’ A man who can thus take the finest achievements of such a ministry as McLaren’s and humbly and resolutely lay them at the feet of Christ need never be afraid that his gifts will betray him into foolish pride or vainglory, or that he will ever offer incense to self. 3. Concentration Gladstone gave as the word which conveyed the master secret of his life. Dr. McLaren might have done the same. He concentrated his life upon his ministry; and he concentrated his ministry upon his pulpit. ‘‘T began my ministry,” he said, ‘‘with the determination of concentrating all my available strength on the work, the proper work of the Christian ministry, the pulpit. I believe that the secret of success for all our ministers lies very largely in the simple charm of concentrating their intellectual force on the one work of preaching.” Even in his Southampton days he kept close to his own vineyard; and in later years it did not grow easier to hale him forth to other fields. All other service which he could render he thought he might best render through his pulpit. Speak- ing in response to the addresses given at his jubilee, he said with reference to his relation to the civic life of Manchester: ‘‘While I have sought—and I can honestly say I have sought—to do my. work here, as a citizen of no mean city, I should be untrue to my deepest convictions if I did not take this opportunity of emphasizing that I have volun- tarily limited myself, as some of my kind friends have thought far too rigidly, to my own proper work as a Chris- tian teacher. I have been so convinced that I was best serving all the varied social, economical, and, if I may use a tabooed word here, political interests that are dear to me by preaching what I conceived to be the gospel of Jesus Christ that I have limited myself to that work. And I am sure with a growing conviction day by day—and I BULPIT VANDs PASTORATE js would take this meeting as no small demonstration of the truth of the conviction—that so we Christian ministers best serve our generation.’’ Further demonstration of the truth of his conviction has been furnished in the fact of the extension of the influence of his ministry over a wider field and through a longer time. No lecture hall or platform could at all compete with his pulpit. ‘‘First of all, and above all things else, he was a preacher of the Eternal Word.”’ The subjects of the day did not invade his pulpit. He was not unaware of the application of the Christian gospel to the multifarious interests of human society. But he saw that it was, first of all, in the faithful preaching of that gospel in the clear affirmation of its permanent principles that it found its surest application to all needs, and this gave him the clue to his course. It was just because his preaching was timeless that it had so sure an application to his own time. It was just so that the preaching of Jesus and Paul applied to slavery and the other enormous evils of their time. Nothing is transformed until men are transformed. ‘He created his own place by the sheer power of his preaching. People had to come to him; he did not go to them. Such was his attractive power that he ministered to one of the greatest and most influential congregations in Manchester. But he did not bow his proud head one inch to win any hearing.”’ 4. To abide in his own and pay no price for a spurious publicity, to consecrate the fullness of his varied ability to the will of God and to care not for any other will save as that too was made righteous, to concentrate upon the major interests of his ministry and to walk in that narrow path undisturbed by the voices that called him to less important, though perchance to more popular tasks—all this required a maturity in the quality of his courage which not every man in his position is able to command. He had 316 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN already effectually effaced self and self-interest, and after that there was nothing for which he needed to care. Per- haps it was this more than anything else which gave him courage to abide so steadfastly in his course. The man who is ever squinting his eye for an opportunity to cast an anchor to the windward of self-advantage is always uneasy and is never really brave. That a man should effectively efface himself requires courage. But the very act of self-effacement rebounds upon the courage which gave it effect and improves its quality. ‘‘To efface oneself is one of a preacher’s first duties,’ he had said to his people in closing his official ministry at Manchester; and few ministers ever uttered such words with a clearer certifica- tion of their truth and sincerity, facing, as he did, those who, above all others, could best know the authority where- with he spoke. He has been credited with always saying no; but he had the courage to say yes or no as the occasion required. ‘‘The calm, unsolicitous endeavor after the per- fection of our nature, and the committal to God of the instrument when it has been tempered, to use where and when he pleases,” a discerning writer has said, ‘‘is a noble achievement of faith.’’ And it is a noble achievement of courage too. And this was McLaren, whether his achieve- ment is to be credited to faith or to courage or to the two in their conjoint and intimate action. HOMILETICAL VALUES Few men have acquired as has Dr. McLaren the character of a preacher to preachers. This is another of the rewards he won without seeking. In making himself a preacher of the gospel he made himself'a preacher to preachers. Testi- monies to his value to preachers read like a list prepared by a skilled advertiser: ‘‘I am constrained to say that Alex- ander McLaren is the greatest preacher and the greatest sagt et Reid AN De PASTORATE Subyy writer of sermons for preachers and people alive to-day in the English-speaking world.’’ ‘Alexander McLaren stands in the front rank of living preachers. His discourses should be read by young ministers as masterpieces of homiletic oratory.’ ‘‘Nosermons I know are better worthy a preach- er’s steady study than those of Dr. McLaren of Man- chester.’’ “‘I regard the sermons of Dr. McLaren the best models for the pulpit of any in our generation.” ‘‘Dr. Alexander McLaren’s sermons contain the complete round of Christian doctrine and precept and would be invaluable to teachers, theological students, and preachers.” ‘‘I have not the slightest doubt that Dr. McLaren is the fore- most sermonizer in the world. . . . He is a model for all preachers in his textual treatment of the Scriptures and his evangelical appeal to men.”’ ‘‘ More than any other preacher, except Robertson, he has altered the whole manner of preaching in England and America, and that immensely for the better.”’ In terms ‘such as these have spoken such men as S. Parkes Cadman, David J. Burrell, Wayland Hoyt, J. B. Remensnyder, N. D. Hillis, R. S. McArthur, and others. They spoke in warm admiration of a still living man; but it may be doubted whether a single one of them would now modify his estimate. The causes of his success, for the most part, lie open to easy discovery. 1. ‘‘The whole pith of homiletics,” as he himself ex- pressed it, he found in a familiar utterance of one of the Psalms: ‘‘While I was musing the fire burned, then spake I with my tongue.” This to him was the very genesis of the sermon. The homiletical freshness and suggestiveness . of the Scriptures he appreciated and appropriated to an unusual degree. The Bible was the fountain which kept his homiletical streams running to the full. When asked once whether he would tell the secret of his success in the 318 PRINCES (OF THE CHRIS iia ministry he reluctantly replied—for it seemed to him like bringing the secret things out to the public gaze—that it must be counted as above all else due to the fact that he had for at least one hour every day sat, Bible in hand, quietly in his study intent upon finding what was the will of God concerning him and his ministry. At this altar he had kindled afresh the burning of his spirit every morn- ing. His preaching may be defined as having, first of all, a broad and accurately determined Scriptural basis. He was a careful and diligent student of the original languages of Scripture, and the knowledge he gained of these he em- ployed as the groundwork of his homiletics. He laid his foundation in the verities of revelation. ‘‘The sermon is an exact exposition of the text.” If one took a text, it was said, and went to see what McLaren said on it, he would either have to take McLaren’s outline or get him another text. ‘‘He had an extraordinary gift of analyzing a text.” He had the courage to stand up in a Christian pulpit in the nineteenth century with a ‘‘Thus saith the Lord’”’ upon his lips. Furthermore, he accepted the Bible not only in its doctrinal integrity, but also with a firm reliance upon its historic credibility. His doctrine of the death of Christ was firmly based on the fact of Christ’s death. It was the death that made the doctrine and not the doctrine that contrived the death. His doctrine of the resurrection of Christ was firmly based on the fact of Christ’s resurrection. It was the fact that made the doctrine and not the doctrine that made the fact. The Atonement was to him not only a doctrine, but a fact, a fact deliberately and designedly accomplished through the death of Christ, so that without the death there would have been no atonement. Propitia- tion for the sins of the world is a fact signed and sealed by Pe otra N DD PASTORATE 319 the fact of the cross. There was something which the life and teachings of Jesus without his death could not accom- plish, yet something which most indubitably needed to be accomplished and could only be accomplished through his death and resurrection. He has no confidence in the triumph and continuance of a Church which does not go back and root itself in a sepulcher left empty by One who himself had the power over death. He has no confidence in a Christian salvation which does not require the whole sacrifice of the cross. So he believed, and so he unfalter- ingly preached 2. Again, he preached for the total reconstruction of the moral life of man, for the building up of the Christian man ‘‘unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” - He reénacted in his own ministry that great statute of the apostolic ministry that the ministry itself is given ‘‘for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ: till we all at- tain unto the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.’”’ This, as Dr. John Brown, in his “Puritan Preaching in England,”’ has so admirably pointed out, is the true practical preaching. A more acute and discriminating estimate of McLaren than that which Dr. Brown gives in this connection has nowhere appeared. “I am not able to recall,’ he says, “any other preacher of either Puritan or modern times so clearly constructive in his teachings on the new life Christ came to give us. There is surely what may be called a science of the spiritual life, dealing with the facts and forces of the inner world as revealed from God and verified and confirmed by the experience of man. What is this life? How do we get it? In what way is it related to the already existing life? Along what lines is it developed, and by what 320 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN® supernatural forces? . . . Some kind of teaching is called for which shall be equally removed from the shallow, — easy-going platitudes of the mere revivalist on the one hand, and the too vague, commonplace utterances of many ordinary preachers on the other. And it is here, as it seems to me, that Dr. McLaren’s distinctive excellence as a preacher shows itself. Through a long public life he has been a continuous, profound, accurate, and prayerful student of God’s revelation and, at the same time, a close observer of the actual facts of religious experience as found — in the living men and women who make up the Church of God to-day. In this way, so far as the nature of the sub- ject permits, he has attained to something like a clear and coherent science of that spiritual life which is derived from Christ and maintained in the soul by the Spirit of God; and, as we might expect, this science underlies all his teachings.”’ of practical preaching. 3. Valuable concomitants to his preaching, if indeed they are not to be counted as integral in their value, were his style of speech and the manner of his delivery. He was reckoned, though entirely without any such design on his part, as a chief literary influence of Manchester and as the John Ruskin of the English pulpit. When he first began to preach he would sometimes hesitate in his speech, All the devout may wish for more of this kind — so intent was he upon finding just the right word. And — he sometimes ceased to speak at the end of about twelve minutes, frankly stating to his audience that he had no ~ more to say. Happily he had no gift of going on when © there was no more to say. But when he had trained him- self and had sought and found, he used the English language with a perspicuity, a precision, an energy, and oftentimes with an elegance which were truly admirable. Intellect, imagination, taste, as they appeared among his gifts, Mw lie ANOS PASTORATE Spl! appeared also in his speech. ‘‘He acquired the rare faculty of speaking better English than he could write.” Run through a few of his sermons—it might as well be the seven on the Beatitudes—for brief extracts as examples of his expression: ‘‘The man who has been down into the! . dungeons of his own character”’; “All the song birds of the} spring are silent in the winter of the soul”; “‘That one: encyclopedia of blessings, the possession of the kingdom’ of heaven”’; ‘‘Grace is attracted by the sense of need, just | as the lifted finger of the lightning rod brings down fire | from heaven’’; ‘‘Men may betake themselves to trivial, or false, unworthy, low alleviations, and fancy that they are comforted when they are only diverted’’; ‘‘The water) of the cataract would not flash into rainbow tints against the sunshine unless it had been dashed into spray against black rocks’’; ‘‘The one thing which ought to move a man to sadness is his own character’’; ‘“‘If we reflect upon the history of our own feelings and realization of God’s presence with us, we shall see that impurity always drew a mem- brane over the eye of our souls or cast a mist of invisibility over the heavens.”’ Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst, of New York, fell unawares upon a volume of McLaren’s sermons and was captivated. He tells of reading one of the sermons and continues with an account of the preacher’s action in the pulpit when he heard him: ‘‘That sermon wrought a revolution in our apprehension of Christianity and in our preaching. When we planned to cross the Atlantic, we said, ‘We will see and hear McLaren,’ and we did it, going two hundred miles for the purpose. ‘The Union Chapel’ was a brick building seating fifteen hundred people. Two thousand were packed into it that day, the people crowding in chairs close up to and back of the pulpit. The preacher then was in his sixty-first year. In personal appearance he was thin, 21 Se PRINCES OF -THE CHR Eat tall, spare, with an attractive face. . . He did not look clerical. He wore no pulpit gown, not even the minis- terial white cravat. In preaching he had no manuscript or notes before him. In the introduction he clearly an- nounced his subject, and told his hearers how—. e., in what order—he proposed to present it. Soon his subject possesses him and he takes fire. His thought transforms him. His voice becomes resonant, tender, impressive. It seems as if God is speaking to you. Every person in the house is held in solemn and impressive awe of the truth. ‘That is preaching,’ I said, ‘and we have not heard the like in Europe.’”’ 4. His method of preparation was that of a man who might have had to make up for a lack of gifts through painstaking effort. His striving after perfection in the preacher’s art began with his ministry and failed only when he ceased to preach. His sermons are models both in content and form, and unprepared sermons are not of that sort. He held fast to the certainties, eschewed sub- jects of the day, and his desire for souls simplified his speech. All this lies in the preparation of the man himself and precedes all immediate homiletic preparation. In the beginning of his ministry he formed a resolution that he would not write his sermons, but would think and feel them. What he did write consisted of a few compressed notes. He liked to write a few sentences of introduction. If he had heads, he worded them carefully. The closing sentences he preferred to write. He did not adhere to what he did write. ‘I make no attempt,”’ he said, “‘to reproduce more than the general course of thought and constantly find that the best bits of my sermon make themselves in preaching. I do adhere to my introductory sentences, which serve to shove me off into deep water; beyond that I let the moment shape the thing. Expressions I do not t ’ ba ——— PULPID AND, PASTORATE 323 prepare; if I can get the fire alight, that is what I care for most.’”’ This was not chosen as an easy method, as he himself testifies: ‘‘It costs quite as much time in prepara- tion as writing, and a far greater expenditure of nervous energy in delivery; but I am sure that it is best for me, and equally sure that everybody has to find out his own way.” 5. There will probably be no more lasting result of his ministry than his conspicuous achievement as an expository preacher. He made himself one of the great exemplars of the power and effectiveness of expository preaching through a long stretch of recent time, and the end of that time is not yet. It is interesting to know how his work in Biblical exposition in the broader and more distinctive sense began. He used often to find it difficult to choose a text that suited him, and he would sigh for the old Scottish pulpit habit of lecturing through one of the books of the Bible. On one such occasion Mrs. McLaren advised that he try the ex- periment and suggested the Epistle to the Colossians as suitable for the purpose. The sermons thus prepared formed the nucleus of the volume on Colossians in the ‘‘Expositor’s Bible,’ one of the finest pieces of work on the exposition of a book of the Bible to be found in the English language. He prepared the three volumes on the Psalms in the same series. He made his treatment truly expository, leaving questions of date and authorship all but untouched, not because he was not capable of handling critical questions, but because he “‘ventured to think that: the deepest and most precious elements in the Psalms are very slightly affected by the answers to these questions, and that expository treatment of the bulk of the Psalter may be separated from the critical, without condemning the former to incompleteness.’”’ His later and wider series, the general title of which was ‘“‘Expositions of Holy Scrip- ture,’’ was undertaken at the suggestion of Dr. Nicoll, the 324 PRINCES OF THE PUEPIT general editor of the ‘‘Expositor’s Bible,’’ by whom, as he himself says, McLaren’s first volume of printed sermons had been literally dragged from him. This series he had nearly completed when he died. The silent emphases of a man’s life are often greater than those which are spoken. Without saying much about it or in any way obtruding the matter, Dr. McLaren em- phasized the power for holiness and for character as pre- ceding the power for service. Addressing the Baptist World Congress meeting in London in the summer of 1905, he said, referring particularly to the desire for a general religious revival: ‘‘ Power for service is second. Power for holiness and character is first, and only the man who has let the Spirit of God work his will upon him, and do what he will, has a right to expect that he will be filled with the Holy Ghost and with power.’ Great acts of Christian consecration and service must proceed from their true source in a single-minded desire for the perfecting of the will of God in ourselves, and after that our service will take care of itself. Here, as elsewhere, the man speaks out of the secret places of his own life. | ‘Perhaps no preacher,” says Dr. Nicoll, speaking still of McLaren, “‘has ever plowed so straight and sharp a furrow across the field of life, never looking aside, never turning back, maintaining his power and his freshness through all the long years that stretch between his early beginning and the last day.’”’ And many a plowman in the same fields, else weary and discouraged, takes heart from the shining track McLaren has made and goes more cheerily to his task. XII WILLIAM BOOTH? (1829-1902) APPRENTICED TO POVERTY AND PREACHING WILLIAM Bootu, as the London Times said at his death, was born of “unrecorded parentage.’ His ancestry has never been traced beyond his grandfather. At thirteen he was left the only son of ‘‘a widowed and impoverished mother.’”’ Thus in his childhood he was condemned to wrestle with the poverty which it was his mission in life so greatly to alleviate. He was not born to fortune, nor was he cradled among the great, but he lifted himself on lowly foundations to the heights of the truly great. He had so good a mother that, though he accepted in general the doctrine of human depravity, her patience and self- sacrificing devotion seemed to constitute her an exception to the rule. A lad rescued from the ‘General Slocumb”’ disaster in Chicago River said: ‘‘My mother gave me a life preserver; that’s how I got saved. I guess she didn’t have none for herself, ’cause they can’t find her.”’ ‘‘ Never mind me,’’ was the constant refrain of the mother of Wil- liam Booth, whatever the time, the place, or the circum- stances. But all her unselfishness and devotion could not relieve him of the full burden of his apprenticeship to hardship and poverty. From his thirteenth to his nine- teenth year he served a slavish and unprofitable apprentice- ship to which his father had bound him before he died. At the end of this service he not only found himself without remuneration for his toil and weakened in character by the hurtful influences which had been thrown about him, iReprinted from Methodist Quarterly Review, July, 1917. (325) 326 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN but he was as unfitted for any special trade as if he had never been apprenticed. It was this state of his case that first brought him to London. The place of his birth was Nottingham, and the date was April 10, 1829. His father was an Anglican Churchman, and William was baptized a member of the Establishment. He early abandoned this connection, however, and began to attend a Wesleyan chapel, where he was converted at the age of fifteen. He'was wrought upon quite independent- ly of human effort by the direct agency of the Holy Spirit, and there was created in him a great thirst for a new life. The decisiveness, the distinctness, and the attendant circumstances of his conversion he remembered all through his life as if it had been a transaction of yesterday. Within six hours, as he afterwards told a representative of The Christian World, he was going in and out of the cottages in the back streets, preaching the gospel of that grace which in the freshness and wonder of its saving power rested upon him. He not only began thus at once to preach, but he made an immediate and complete separation from the godless world, and soon began to despise everything the world had to offer him. These were the initial certainties and decisions of his religious life, and they were his con- fidence and his support to the end of his days. Academic criticism of Christian documents and institutions had for him no existence. He knew for himself, and waited on the voice of no man or school. From the first he had a genius for discerning opportuni- ties and improvising pulpits. Standing on a box or a barrel in the poorest quarters of Nottingham while still a mere youth, he proclaimed to the motley assembly in all its moral vileness and imbecility the gospel of a clean life. While bound as an apprentice, although his hours of labor extended from 7 A.M. to 7 P.M., he would leave his toil as RUE RL EEAN De PAS DORA DE 327 soon as the hour permitted and take up the new toil of visiting the sick, conducting street and cottage meetings, and comforting the dying, until it was near the stroke of midnight before he reached his bed, from which he must hasten again in the morning so as to be at his work at the appointed time. He would rush along the streets, return- ing to his employment from his forty minutes of dinner time, reading his Bible or Finney’s ‘‘ Revival Lectures.” In the midst of all this he received, as he says, from the leading men of the Church of which he was a member ‘plenty of cautions,” for they quailed at his every new departure, but not one word of encouragement. Yet this Society was at the time literally his heaven on earth. “Truly, I thought then there was one God, that John Wesley was his prophet, and that the Methodists were his special people.’’ His conversion, however, had, as he himself expressed it, in a moment made him a preacher of the gospel, and the qualms of leading members in their easy- going complacence could not deter him. The liberty of his action and his freedom from any one set of plans were largely determined by the influence of James Caughey, an American Methodist evangelist, who visited Notting- ham. This was one of those unsought interventions of providence which so often come to the man who is willing to have God: use him to the uttermost and in his own way. But truly Booth was beset with difficulty both before and behind. His master ordered him to work on Sunday, in spite of his declared resolution that he would not. He was discharged and set adrift in the streets, but at the end of a week was restored, his master having wisely concluded that this same obstinate conscientiousness might prove to be a good quality in a servant. And so he was not only restored to his position, but advanced in responsibility. In 1849 he went to London, being at the time an ac- 328 PRINCES ‘OF THE CHRISFEAN credited local preacher in the Wesleyan Church. Heie, in an old tent set up in a disused burial ground, he found an opportunity to preach to the outcasts of the ill-famed and neglected Whitechapel district. He continued in this place for twelve years, and then, finding himself in need of ampler accommodations, he removed to a chapel in Gates- head. Criticism of his methods only aroused him to more resolute measures. Being unwilling to subordinate his work to the control of the Wesleyan body, there was a severance of his connection with them, and he united with the Methodist New Connection and was ordained to their ministry in 1858. In three years more he threw off all denominational bonds and entered on his world-wide mission. The break occurred in a final scene in a session of Conference held in Liverpool. The climax of the scene came when Mrs. Booth cried out in the meeting an em- phatic ‘‘Never!”’ in confirmation of her husband’s publicly expressed resolution not to continue even for one year more in submission to the regulations of the body. The break was made, but it was one of the most perplexing steps of his life. Every avenue seemed to be closed against him, and he only knew to trust in God and to wait till he should see his salvation. Really, neither he nor the Church could scarcely be censured for what had occurred. It is now very clear that God had plans which neither party to the pain- ful transaction could at that time have known. LISTING FOR THE WAR Having broken his Church connections, he now found employment as an independent evangelist. He still had a lonely path to follow, for the Churches were unsympa- thetic toward his methods, and even to some extent toward his ideas of revivalism. He protested that his only desire was tolead the lost ones to the great Shepherd who, through PULPIT AND PASTORATE 529 him, was seeking them, and questioned why he should find it so difficult ‘“‘to get or remain within any existing fold.” The Booths had settled in London in order to have some fixed resting place for their children and in the expecta- tion that they would find there a field for the service they so eagerly desired to render. Mrs. Booth had joined so heartily and courageously in all her husband’s plans and desires that she deserves henceforth to be counted a full partner in all his endeavor. Booth himself was ‘waiting upon God and wondering what would happen,”’ but yearn- ing above all else over the unchurched masses. While he waited he received an invitation to undertake some services in a tent in an old burial ground in Whitechapel, the expected missioner having been detained by an illness. That night the Salvation Army was born, though it was not named and set upon its full career until later. When he had seen those masses of poor people and had labored successfully for the salvation of many of them in that first service, his whole heart went out to them. He walked back to his West End home and said to his wife: ‘‘O Kate, I have found my destiny! These are the people for whose salvation I have been longing all these years. As I passed by the doors of the flaming gin palaces to-night I seemed to hear a voice sounding in my ears: ‘Where can you go and find such heathen as these, and where is there so great a need for your labors?’ And there and then in my soul I offered myself and you and the children up to this great work. Those people shall be our people, and they shall have our God for their God.” These early meetings in Whitechapel assumed many of the characteristics of the more fully developed Salvation Army methods. After six years of hard work, he still had a very meager outfit. For the Sunday-night meetings he had nothing better than ‘‘a small covered alley attached 330 PRINCES: OF THE (CHRIST iA to a drinking saloon,”’ and for the week nights ‘‘some old discarded chapels and a tumble-down penny theater.” After a while he secured the ground where a famous drink- ing saloon had burned out, and rebuilt and fitted the place as a center for his work. Later his headquarters were established for ten years in a large covered market in Whitechapel Road. He finally got a firm and permanent footing with the establishment of a headquarters that cost three thousand five hundred pounds, located in one of the main thoroughfares of East London. But there was no intention to forsake the Whitechapel flotsam and jetsam. And what a district that Whitechapel was! It was one of those great and pitiful city scenes of humanity sunk to the dregs. “Just look here,”’ said the General to his oldest son, then a boy of thirteen, as he led him late one Sunday evening through the swinging doors of a typical public-house into the crowded bar, where there was the usual aggregation of toughs, with a congrega- tion of women besides, and mothers with their babes and little children. ‘‘These are the people I want you to live and labor for,”’ said he to the boy. This was Whitechapel; but it was a fit ground for the training of soldiers. Here they learned both aggression and restraint. Here they learned to give and take. Here they acquired courage and learned self-control. Here they felt the extreme down- ward pull of the roaring and insatiate tides of evil. And here they felt the upward swell and lift of the mightier tides of grace. ‘‘Stop, Charles, and learn how to preach,” said John Wesley to his brother Charles as they passed - where a fishwoman had unloosed her irate and voluble tongue. It is a training that many a preacher needs, and the Salvation Army preachers do not fail to get it. In Whitechapel the Army had at first the opposition even of the police, but they fought with the weapons that al- 4 a x f 5 a ; { *y fy i % { { i | 5 POC RMG AN DEP AS TORA TE Bide ways win. And now the Salvation lad or lassie has no firmer friend than the policeman on his beat. Booth’s first thought as his work developed was not to form a separate or permanent organization, but to con- stitute an evangelistic agency, and to send his converts to the Churches. But he said that to this there were three main obstacles: “‘(1) They would not go where they were sent; (2) they were not wanted when they did go; (3) I soon found that I wanted them myself.’’ What effect the last reason, consciously or unconsciously, had on the other two remains an unsolved problem. It is not our business to say how his life and work should have been ordered, but to find how they were ordered. THE MILITANCY OF THE MOVEMENT At this stage there were two lines of development which the work must follow if it was to be extensive and permanent: there must be provided leaders for new centers, and there must be found a better basis of financial support. The development of leaders was secured by means of three considerations: (1) Through William Booth’s fine judgment of the quality of his converts; (2) through his strong trust in them; (3) through his thrusting of responsibility upon them. After all, what more than this could be desired for the compassing of the ends that were sought. In a way equally simple and cardinal the problem of financial sup- port was solved. It was found that the small gifts of the common people, the working people, would suffice if proper- ly attended to. And until this day the Salvation Army values and stresses this means of support. The Christian Mission, as the movement had hitherto been called, became the Salvation Army in 1878. Some of the evangelists, as the work prospered, began to show a desire to form a Church, and to settle down to more quiet 332 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN and regular ways. But this was not according to their leader’s wish. He wanted to go forward at all costs. So he called them together and said: ‘My comrades, the formation of another Church is not my aim. There are plenty of Churches. I want to make an Army. Those among you who are willing to help me to realize my purpose can stay with me; those who do not, must separate from me, and I will help them to find situations elsewhere.” All of them went with him. This was in the beginning of the year 1877. In July of the same year the last Chris- tian Mission Conference was held, when the entire Con- ference system was abandoned and the organization as- sumed more and more the military form. Toward the end of the next year the name “Salvation Army” was finally adopted. So to designate the movement was a stroke of genius. Christianity itself is militant in spirit, and Christian activity is aptly described in military terms. The very idea of a ‘‘Salvation Army” was popular and commanding, and the army organization was admirably adapted to the effectiveness of the movement in its chosen field of service. The army uniform was an advantage, and drum and tambourine added their acclaim to the general note of attack and triumph. It is related that once amid the din of tambourines and the shriek of cornets the old General noticed in one of his meetings a Quaker sitting quietly in his place. The humor of the situation struck him immediately, and above the general clamor he shouted out, addressing himself to the Quaker: ‘‘ Your people and mine have much in common. You add a little quiet; we add a little noise!’ Many have not liked the noise, but multitudes have found in it the shaking of the torpor of their forgotten souls. The whole military fashion of the movement has been amply justified in the developments which have followed those uncalculated beginnings. FULPIT AND “PASTORATE 503 The Wesleyan Methodist Conference, sitting in London, in 1880, invited General Booth to appear before the body for an address. He stated two significant things at the outset. » “‘I was told,” he said, “‘that ninety-five in every hundred in the population of our larger towns and cities never crossed the threshold of any place of worship, and I thought, ‘Cannot something be done to reach these peo- ple with the gospel?’’’ And his next statement gives you the dynamic of his great endeavor. ‘I resolved to try,” he said, ‘‘and the ‘Salvation Army’ is the outcome of that res- olution.”’ The two statements taken together give the con- densed history of the beginning of the whole movement. Proceeding, he explained the methods of the Army. First, he said: ‘‘We do not fish in other people’s waters or try to set up a rival sect.”’ He proclaimed that he and his helpers were moral scavengers; that they wanted to rescue all, but most of all the lowest of the low. They got a man, and then his wife got his coat from the pawnshop; and if she could not get him a shirt, she bought him a paper front; and he got his head up, and perhaps was inclined to be a little proud and to want to convert into a chapel the rough quarters where he was rescued. But the significant thing was that the man rose at once to a higher level. In the second place, he said: ‘‘We get at these people by adapting our measures.’’ He found bitter prejudice among the lower classes against churches and chapels. He was sorry for this, but he did not create it; it was a fact. He would go into any place, a theater or warehouse or any other, if the people would come there. In one village they used the pawnshop, and the place received a new name and was called ‘‘The Salvation Pawnshop’’; and many souls were saved there. He was not the inventor of all the strange terms in use in the Army. He did not invent the term ‘“‘Halleluiah Lassies,” and was somewhat shocked when 334 PRINCES OF THE. CHRIS DEAN he first heard it; but he had telegram after telegram telling that no building would contain the crowds that came to hear the Lassies. One came because he had a lassie at home, another came because he used to call his wife ‘‘ Lassie’’ before they were married. And so they came, his end was gained, and he did not trouble too much about the proprieties. In the third place, he said: “‘We set the converts to work.’ At this, after the English fashion, there were cries of ‘‘Hear!”’ “‘Hear!’? This point he made very plain: ‘‘As soon as a man gets saved, we put him up to say so; and in his testimony lies much of the power of our work.” He related the case of one of the Lassies who was holding a meeting in one of the large towns when she was accosted by a conceited rough, who said: ‘What does an ignorant girl like you know about religion? I know more than you do... I can’ sdy the Iord’s' Prayer in’ Latin.” “OP but, she replied, ‘‘I can say more than that. I can say the Lord has saved my soul in English.’”’ Then the Conference laughed and cheered. Lastly, he said: ‘‘We succeed by dint of hard work.”’ He was accustomed to tell his people that hard work and holiness would succeed anywhere. These were two cardinal points in Salvation Army practice and experience. In such work as they had undertaken one could not succeed without the other, neither the work without the holiness nor the holiness without the work. THE STRATEGY OF SERVICE Articles of War were drawn up for the enlistment of soldiers and for their guidance in the goodly warfare. These articles constituted a potent document. They embodied a creed which definitely committed the Army to the fun- damentals of Christian belief. There was a promise to abstain from drink and from all evil habits, resorts, com- Ruger oAND PASTORATE leis, pany, language, etc. And there was a solemn promise to obey the lawful orders of all officers, and never on any consideration to oppose the interests of the Army. While all these plans were in earnest operation within the Army, opposition was equally earnest from without. The impact of public opinion, silent or expressed, was felt against the movement on almost every side as crude, ill- considered, and unworthy. The methods of John the Baptist were not approved by the public opinion of the time, and neither were those of Jesus. John Wesley and his Methodists were not at first the favorites of magistrates and ministers, and neither were William Booth and his Salvationists. Those who subsisted on the vices of the poor whom Booth was reclaiming of course opposed. This is their fixed attitude toward any reform. If men reform, their business goes; and they must have business. Press and pulpit, bulwarks of conservatism and opponents of radical change, were critical of method and movement, and were in the ranks of the opposition. Culture was of- fended, and social rank, for the most part, passed by on the other side. And, as is usually the case in such circum- stances, some respectable citizens were drawn into the camp of those who felt constrained to oppose such rude ways of accomplishing questionable results. But the Army’s only answer was: We’re marching on to war, we are, we are, we are: We care not what the people think, nor what they say we are. Booth himself: met it all with patience, self-control, and courage. Persecution and opposition made them friends. John Bright, brave and good always, wrote to Mrs. Booth: The people who mob you would doubtless have mobbed the apostles. Your faith and patience will prevail. The ‘‘craftsmen”’ who find ‘their craft in danger,’’ ‘‘the high priests and elders of the people,’’ who seold- fashioned counsels are disregarded by newly arrived stirrers-up of men, 336 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN always complain; and then the governors and magistrates, who may ‘‘care for none of these things,’’ but who always act ‘‘in the interests of the public peace,’’ think it best to ‘‘straightly charge these men to speak no more” of Christ. Prosecutions by the police brought them legal advantages at last and high official recognition both in Church and State. In the House of Lords and elsewhere the Lord Chancellor, Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, Archbishop Tait of Canterbury, Bishop Lightfoot of Durham, and others spoke in their behalf. At any rate, their critics found it easier to criticize than to take their place in the slums and do their work. As Mr. Harold Begbie has remarked: It will not do to say that by adopting vulgar methods and appealing to vulgar people, General Booth established his universal kingdom of emotional religion. Let the person inclined to think in this way dress himself in fantastic garments, take a drum, and march through the streets shouting ‘“‘Halleluiah.’’ There is no shorter cut to humility. Most of the reformers of the world might have invited their critics to take this same short cut to humility. Mr. Begbie has spoken further to the same effect in this matter: Let us be generous and acknowledge, now that it is too late to cheer his heart, that General Booth accomplished a work quite wonderful and quite splendid, a work unique in the records of the human race. Let us be frank, and say that we ourselves could have done nothing like it. Let us forget our intellectual superiority, and, instead of criticizing, endeavor to see as it stands before us, and as it really is, the immense marvel of his achievement. Our canons of taste, our notions of propriety, will change and cease to be. The saved souls of humanity will persist forever. The remarkable development of the Army in America, in Australia, in India, in Scandinavia, in Africa, in Japan, and elsewhere, is a matter of fact open to the knowledge of any man who will take a little pains. The achievements of the Salvationists in India alone, where they became the able and valued assistants of the British Government, constitute a romance which is worthy of that weird land of romance and of dream. An ardent supporter of their PULPIT AND PASTORATE 337 endeavor, though not himself one of them, has said: ‘I have seen in India whole tribes of criminal races, num- bering millions, and once the despair of the Indian Govern- ment, living happy, contented, and industrial lives under the flag of the Salvation Army.’’ When General Booth died, the Army had been organized in fifty countries, and through its operations was binding the nations together; and the bond of their union was their outcasts. And wars will not cease until the nations are bound together by human cords, and not by those which are merely political, or constitutional, or military, or commercial, or intellectual, or diplomatic. ‘‘How much is a man better than a sheep!”’ The nations will persist in the effort to write their history on ’Change; but the destiny of nations is determined at last in closest connection with the interests of the poor. Not until ‘“‘the poor have the gospel preached to them”’ will the kingdom of God fully come; and until the kingdom comes, the governments of this world are not established. The so- cial work of the Salvation Army is better than the Civic Improvement Society for the improvement of the town. THE LEGACY OF AN ILLUSTRIOUS LIFE William Booth died on August 20, 1912. Kings and queens mourned in the shadow which his death cast upon their thrones, and the struggling masses of mankind, from the slummy purlieus of Nottingham to the sunny plains of India, poured out their tears to his memory. Queen Alexandra telegraphed: “‘I beg you and your family to accept my deepest and most heartfelt sympathy in the ir- reparable loss you and the nation have sustained in the death of your great, good, and never-to-be-forgotten father, a loss which will be felt throughout the whole civilized world. But, thank God, his work will live forever!’’ Messages of similar import came to Bramwell Booth, as 22 | 338 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN his father’s successor at the head of the Army, from the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Mayor of London, the King of Denmark, the President of the United States, and others. Mr. Harold Begbie says that it was ‘‘ perhaps the most universal grief ever known in the history of man- kind.’ What were the special qualities of the man who thus bereaved mankind when he died? | 1. He was a man who lived in the power of the de- monstrable realities of the spiritual world. William Booth was not one of those semiagnostics who will allow that God exists, but you cannot prove his existence. To him nothing else was so demonstrably real as the fundamental verities of the Christian faith. If anything in this world is real, it is the moral nature of man; and if anything is real to the conscience and to the total moral nature of man, it is the saving grace of Jesus Christ. The profoundest change that goes on in this world is the transformation of the corrupt moral nature, the cleansing of the defiled con- science, of man. British kings and queens might change, and they do change, but the government of God does not change. And it was the firmness of the grasp of his ex- perience and his faith upon this fact that enabled William Booth to do for the masses what government without his aid could not do. For these high realities of the spiritual world he brought down to the level of the need of the masses. He got a firm hold on the great truth which lives through every generation in its soddenness, that any force which is to move mankind must regard man’s nature as spiritual as well as material; and that this sign of the predominant spirituality of human nature attaches to the poor, the humble, the ignorant, and the submerged, as truly as to those who live in the sunshine of worldly pros- perity. Booth himself was converted at fifteen, and at sixty the time and place of the great transaction are glorious EUELPIT ANDY PASTORATE 339 still. ‘‘Out of this idea of conversion, as not only the most powerful motive force in life, but as a force which was, so to speak, waiting to be applied to all, arose the whole Salva- tion Army movement.” The center of life was the heart, and the heart needed renewal. He was insistent upon the necessity for a cleansed heart, and for a will wholly devoted © to God. He laid tremendous emphasis on his demand for conversion. Augustine, or Paul, or Wesley could not have been clearer on this point than was he. On this prime neces- sity all the saints have based their supreme claim for the new life in Jesus Christ. ‘‘Wherefore if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: the old things are passed away; behold, they are become new.” 2. He was a man of prodigious personal force. A chief factor of Salvation Army achievement was the extraordina- ry personality of its founder and chief. Through his per- sonal force it was brought into being, and by his strong hand it was guided while he lived, and from his grave he exerts a strong force upon it still. He impressed himself upon the Army, and he impressed himself upon the un- shepherded multitudes, and he impressed himself upon the public at large. He was not a man to awaken a neutral attitude toward himself or his movement. Till this day, all who trouble themselves to think or act about the matter have rather a positive opinion, favorable or unfavorable, of William Booth and the Salvation Army. It was the heart of the man, in the moral and not in the physical sense, his invincible faith and indomitable courage, that kept him going so long past sixty; for he had but a frail body, and scarcely nourished that, his meals for a number of years consisting of a slice or two of toast, or bread and butter, or rice pudding and a roasted apple. But though so frailly housed while here, his deeds outlast his time; and we may accept the estimate freely expressed by an 340 PRINCES .OF ‘THE (CHRISTIAN intimate admirer, that “to the end of time the spirit of William Booth will be a part of our religious progress.”’ 3. The natural forcefulness of his personality was greatly heightened by the intensity and singleness of his religious consecration. However conspicuous or inconspicuous his place finally may be in the world’s hall of fame, he will sit forever in the company of the saints, he will be numbered among the apostles of the Lamb. An eminent American evangelist, being once in London when General Booth was about to leave for the Continent, hastened to the Salva- tion Army headquarters, having been told that he might meet the General if he were there promptly at the ap- pointed time. Very tender and very beautiful was the incident there. He ventured to ask the secret of this old man’s success all the way through. He hesitated a second, and I saw the tears come into his eyes and steal down his cheeks. And then he said: ‘‘I will tell you the secret. God has had all there was of me. There have been men with greater brains than I, men with greater opportunities; but from the day I got the poor of Lon- don on my heart, and a vision of what Jesus Christ could do with the poor of London, I made up my mind, that God would have all of William Booth there was. And if there is anything of power in the Salvation Army to-day, it is because God has had all the adoration of my heart, all the power of my will, and all the influence of my life. Turning then upon his visitor, he asked: ‘‘When do you go?’’ “In five minutes,’ was the answer. ‘Then let us pray.’’ And this was the way they prayed: I dropped on my knees with General Booth by my side and prayed a stammering and stuttering prayer. Then he talked with God about the outcasts of London, the poor of New York, the lost of China, the great world lying in wickedness; and then he opened his eyes as if he were look- ing into the very face of Jesus, and with sobs he prayed God’s blessing upon every mission worker, every evangelist, every minister, every Chris- tian. With his eyes still overflowing with tears, he bade me good-by and started away, past eighty years of age, to preach on the Continent. Think you, was this a consecrated man? Pinot beenuN ie PASTORAIE 341 4. There was in him a surpassing human tenderness and compassion. He was deeply touched with the feeling of human infirmity and degradation. The “enthusiasm of humanity”’ infused his spirit and his conscience. All the sorrows of the world knocked at his door. He realized the sorrows of others in a surpassing degree: in their affliction he was afflicted; in their hunger he was hungered; in their poverty he was distressed; with their diseases he was strick- en; by their stripes he was beaten and tormented; in their wanderings his own great spirit wandered through the earth. ‘“‘He was afflicted by the sins of the whole world. They hurt him, tore him, wounded him, and broke his heart.”’” ‘‘The sad, wretched women; the little, trembling, frightened children’’—their cry was always in his ears. The drunkard’s children, the harlot’s babe—these were his special care. The root idea of rescue was worked into the whole Salva- tion Army system. Its work constituted the religious rescue department of the Church of the Living God. Booth had his great idea of conversion, and he carried it out into the highways and hedges and down into the alleys and slums of towns and great cities where the woeful human tides swept by. Human derelicts, borne hither and thither by the storms of their own passion and preyed upon by the injustice and wrought upon by the oppression of their supposed superiors, he regarded as his peculiar charge. Those whom other agencies passed by were left for him, and he was a great gleaner in the fields where grace is sown for the salvation of men. He was the world’s greatest mis- sionary evangelist of his day, and the poor are still reaping harvests of good where his diligent hands sowed the fields of their need, morning, noon, and night. Through tem- perament, time, and circumstance, he was obviously set apart to his task. Through the great compassion of his 342 PRINCES” OF “THE PUT Riss soul he was providentially summoned to his great endeavor. He was brought in in a way strangely similar to that of the apostles of the earlier Christian times whom Jesus taught to pray the night before they were chosen: “‘ Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth laborers into his harvest.’’ Surely the Lord of the harvest sent this laborer into the fields. 5. Another chief factor in Salvation Army achievement has, of course, been found in compact and effective organi- zation. William Booth organized the Army and gave it its original cast. He was its chief inspiration throughout his life. But the business administrator of the movement doubtless has been his son and successor, Bramwell Booth. However this may be, organization has been a factor which the movement could not at all have dispensed with. To the ends of this organization the whole Booth family was devoted. Through the consecrated action of the head of this house it became a sort of “Headquarters Staff of the Salvation Army,’ and Catherine Mumford Booth, Bram- well Booth, Emma Booth, and Evangeline Booth can never be forgotten while the General himself is remembered. By the common consent of mankind William Booth and John Wesley are put in a class together. It was not for naught that William Booth spent his early days among the Methodists, and nowhere outside the Army is he more honored to-day than among the followers of Wesley. ‘Plutarch would have put William Booth and John Wesley together in his ‘Parallel Lives,’’”’ said The Christian World of London, when the second member of the great duumvi- rate died. And Dr. James M. Buckley, in an editorial tribute at the time, said: “The Salvation Army is what William Booth made it, and he succeeded in forming it into the happiest blend of spiritual fervor and social en- thusiasm known to the world since the days of Wesley.” Se eee ai XIV ALEXANDER WHYTE (1836-1921) SCOTLAND has been a nursery of preachers. It is a land where valor is native and where religion has been accepted as supernatural. A great preacher is rarely produced on the pabulum of a superficial religious belief, and even so he is the exception which proves that the rule lies on the contrary part. A land less devout than Scotland would have produced fewer preachers, and they of a smaller cali- ber. There was a time, according to Dr. David Smith, when ‘‘the summit of desire”’ in well-nigh every Christian and piously ordered Scottish home was that there might be a son of the house, preferably the eldest, to enter the Christian ministry. This goodly desire, without doubt, has been the mustard seed which has sprung up in many a broad-spreading and truly gospel ministry. The Scottish pulpit is a phrase which possesses a distinc- tion far above the measure of most lands of the size of Scotland. Dr. W. M. Taylor, of New York, himself a Scotchman loaned to America, took this for the title of a series of the Yale Lectures on Preaching delivered by him in the college year of 1885-86, the scope of the lectures covering the period from the Reformation to the date of their delivery. Even within these limits the list of preach- ers is an illustrious one. It begins with John Knox, who made Scotland Protestant and laid broad and deep the foundations of the preaching of his land. The list continues with Andrew Melville, in whom there is suffered no loss either of distinction or grace, the man who said to the (343) 344 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN recalcitrant James: ‘‘Now I must tell you again, there are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland; there is King James, the head of this Commonwealth, and there is Christ Jesus, the King of the Church, whose subject James the Sixth is, and of whose kingdom he is not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a member. . . . We will yield to you your place, and give you all due obedience, but again I say, you are not the head of the Church; you cannot give us that eternal life which we seek for even in this world, and you cannot deprive us of it. Permit us, then, freely to meet in the name of Christ and to attend to the interests of that Church of which you are the chief member.” It is men like Knox and Melville whose courage and manhood have won the freedom of the pulpit from overbearing kings and lords and have bequeathed it as the greatest natural heritage the pulpit has. The continuators of this great bequest in Scotland were men such as Alexander Henderson, Samuel Rutherford, David Dickson, John Livingstone, the saintly Archbishop Robert Leighton, Thomas Boston of Ettric, Dr. John Erskine, Andrew Thomson, who preceded Alexander Whyte in Edinburgh, Thomas Chalmers, too big to be called by any title, Dr. Thomas McCrie, the biographer of Knox, Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh, Dr. John Eadie, Norman Macleod, Robert Smith Candlish, and Thomas Guthrie, who went to take up his long service as a pastor in Edinburgh when Alexander Whyte was less than two years old. SHADOW AND STRUGGLE The outward course of Alexander Whyte’s life is sus- ceptible of a statement so brief as to seem almost bare. So that we shall be the less concerned with this, but more with the inward strivings in which his history really con- sists. PULPIT AND PASTORATE 345 He was born on January 13, 1836, in Kirriemuir, in the Thrums District, afterwards made famous by Sir James Barrie through his books. ‘‘In God’s providence,” said Dr. Whyte later in life, “‘I was born in a poor rank of life.”’ Worse than this, if in spite of his own view of the case we may regard his poverty as having been in any sense bad, he was born under a dark shadow. His parents, John Whyte and Janet Thomson, were never married. His home, therefore, was only the shadowed home of his mother. A child’s intimacies with his father his childhood never knew. John Whyte would gladly have married the mother of his child, but she refused, seeming to feel that to do so would only be to add pretense to shame, and thus to in- tensify the grief her soul already poignantly felt. But she did not shrink from clear duty, her duty to her child. She labored at weaving, and then turned to the heavier toil of the harvest field, because it was more remunerative, if by any means she might properly provide for the child whose infant brow she had stained with her own sin. But the finest things she wrought were not with her hands, but with her soul, by God’s help. She recovered the purity of her conscience and restored the moral balance of her life, acquiring strength of purpose and maturity of character through suffering, and brought up her child in the fear of God. She dared the public gaze, and defied the Pharisaic scorn of those not as good as she, for always in such cir- cumstances there are such people, and carried her child to the Sunday school and to church, so that besides her own influence there wrought graciously upon his expanding life the influence of both Sunday school teacher and pastor. Next to her own influence that of David White, pastor of the neighboring Church of Airlie, was the best thing the child had in his upbringing. John Whyte went away to America, and won an honor- 346 PRINCES"0OF “THE GHRIST ia able name there, and obtained a moderate degree of tem- poral prosperity. He enlisted for service in the Civil War on the Union side, and suffered some of the worst hard- ships of prison life. He married and had a lovely daughter, who, when her mother had been some time dead, went to Scotland on the urgent invitation of her half-brother, who was truly devoted to her, and made her home with him until she herself was happily married. One of her daughters became in turn the wife of a devoted friend of Alexander Whyte himself. Such are the triumphs of grace in human life and character. Little Alec Whyte’s first employment beyond the im- mediate direction of his mother was as a keeper of cattle, at which he would serve for a brief space in the summer season, as occasion offered. He received little education at this time of his life. ‘‘I did not get much education,” said he, ‘‘any more than John Bunyan, in my young days.’’ He was hampered also by a defect of verbal mem- ory which attended him all through life. He did, however, develop early in life a passionate devotion to reading, which increased as his powers matured till it became one of the consuming ardors of his soul. He worked for a while at weaving, but in course of time was apprenticed to a shoemaker. But his soul was not pledged where his body was bound. He would read while at his task, by one means or another, resorting even to the expedient of employing a younger lad, at the cost of a few of his hard-earned pennies, to read aloud to him. He formed an agreement with several other youths to meet together out of work hours three times a week for study. — Or he would repair to the house of some neighboring — weaver who loved and kept a few books, and he would sit and read while the weaver wrought at his loom. ‘‘ During these arduous years,” says Dr. G. F. Barbour, his accredited PULCPITVAND “PASTORATE 347 biographer, ‘‘Whyte was not only laying up stores of in- formation or growing in knowledge of the world of books. He was not less steadily advancing, through unremitting effort and discipline of will, toward that power of ceaseless, concentrated work, and that jealous watchfulness over the passing moments which were among the greatest sources of his strength in later life.” The shadow and the struggle of these early years thus advanced him toward two at least of the great estates of his life—his passion for learning, and his thirst for right- eousness. ‘‘The summons to work, and the summons to purity’’—these came to constitute a pervading note of his preaching. That students and young preachers should work “‘was his theme morning, noon, and night, and the prospect of an inquisition about what one had been read- ing and how many hours one had been studying acted as a second conscience to keep up the level of diligence’’ among these same young preachers. Already the boy at the shoemaker’s bench was begin- ning to hear his summons to higher service. His mother had begun to have some anxiety about his fidelity to his engagement as an apprentice, and he long remembered how earnestly he was saying to her one afternoon, ‘‘ Don’t cry, mother; don’t be afraid, for I will go and serve out my time; but, mind you, I am going to be a minister.” COLLEGE AND SEMINARY By dint of hard work, and close application, and the most diligent use of his time, and the persistence of his struggle to obtain books, and three years of experience in teaching at Airlie, and the intelligent and devoted guidance of David White, who was his pastor there, and some welcome finan- cial assistance from his father, he came at last to King’s College, Aberdeen, and entered as a student. But priva- 348 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN tions and a necessary severity of self-discipline hardly grew less. Sir James Barrie afterwards said that “there were among Dr. Whyte’s class-fellows men who endured greater hardships to get an education than a traveler suf- fers in Central Africa.’’ Whyte himself hardly suffered to this extent, but he was not yet exempt from the need to endure. He relieved his situation in one way and increased the tension of it in another way by teaching evening classes at an Aberdeen factory. Nor did he yet completely ab- solve himself from financial strain; for it is related that he and a classmate who were able to own only one of a certain textbook between them took alternate turns at sleep and at study for the entire night before an important examina- tion. On his first appearance in Aberdeen, according to his own testimony, he had passed up King Street to the college bearing his entire outfit of earthly possessions in his portmanteau. The great revival which culminated i in 1859, and which exerted such a wide and lasting influence in the north of Scotland, was at this time in progress. It came without any particular human design, and ere it had passed multi- tudes, both inside and outside the Churches, had been mightily moved toward God and a more decisive religious life. It was largely a layman’s movement and was char- acterized by much greater freedom in religious worship and action than the Presbyterian Churches had been ac- customed to. Whyte was drawn actively into the work of the revival and received large and lasting benefit from it. His work in college brought him intellectual difficulties as well as those which were without; but for all that he lacked in ability in the languages and mathematics he finished his course in the prescribed four years and came off with honors in philosophy. He said that at any rate FUCRIT: AND PASTORATE 349 college had taught him to think; and he had formed that first acquaintance with Goodwin and with Bishop Butler which was to ripen into a passion. And he had otherwise greatly extended the range of his reading. There was a debating society, too, from which he derived good both calculable and incalculable. Toward the end of his time at Aberdeen his roommate burst in upon him toiling at his midnight studies and an- nounced that he had just seen a notice in the Witness that a presentation bursary had been established at New Col- lege, Edinburgh, for the benefit of a student whose name should be Whyte, and that the preference was to be given to one using the “‘y’’ in hisname. This benefit he obtained. A year later, as he himself relates, when he was again at his books, now in his little garret in Scotland Street, Edinburgh, his old landlady knocked at his door and told him that Dr. Moody Stuart, distinguished pastor of one of the Edinburgh Churches, was waiting to see him. He said if the angel Gabriel had been announced he could not have been more surprised. But it proved to be an an- gel’s visit anyway, as he was happily to learn, for he was to become an assistant to Dr. Stuart. His work in theology occupied him for four winters, the sessions being shortened in order to afford the students opportunity for other employment for a considerable part of the year. Dr. Robert Candlish was principal of the College, and Robert Rainy, A. B. Davidson, and Dr. John Duncan were on the faculty. But for all this array of scholarly names Whyte said he learned more from his fellow students than he did from professors. Marcus Dods he also found in Edinburgh waiting to find a perma- nent settlement as pastor. Altogether his seminary days passed most profitably. 350 PRINCES: OF “THE CURIS nia EARLY PREACHING AND FIRST PASTORATE He had preached his first sermon in a village school- house when he was a college student. A good deal of ir- regular preaching he had done in the revival of 1859. He had also served a brief time as regular preacher for a Con- gregational Church in Aberdeen. Then he was asked to take temporarily an important Free Church mission sta~- tion where he had unrestrained contact with many of his own former people of ‘‘a poor rank in life.’ The revival was still in progress and his evangelistic activities assumed rather a wide range. In 1866 he became assistant pastor at Free St. John’s Church, Glasgow, where he remained for four years. A part of this time he served not as assistant, but as colleague to the pastor. This was also the year in which he finished his college work, for the institution at which he took his theology was called, as we have seen, not a seminary, but a college. He was now thirty years old, but was only eighteen years from a cobbler’s bench. He had marked another stone in his intellectual pilgrimage by becoming a regular reader of the Spectator under Richard Holt Hut- ton’s literary editorship. And who is the young preacher who ever got his hands on the essays of Richard Holt Hutton who could ever pay the debt he thereby con- tracted? FREE ST. GEORGE’S, EDINBURGH - The Scottish Church which had been established under the Presbyterian form of government at the time of the union between England and Scotland in 1707 was disrupted in 1843 and the Free Church was formed. The Disruption proceeded mainly on the ground of the patronage act which came into force under Queen Anne. In 1814 St. George’s Church in Edinburgh had been established with Dr. meULPIT AND ‘PASTORATE Stow Andrew Thomson as its first pastor. At the time of the Disruption Dr. Robert Smith Candlish was its pastor. The Church was hopelessly divided by the prevailing dis- turbance, and Dr. Candlish, followed by a large number of his people, went out and founded Free St. George’s. It was to this Church that Alexander Whyte came in 1870 as colleague to Dr. Candlish. His active service there was to continue for forty-seven years; and for more than twenty-two years of this time he was to be the Church’s sole minister. Dr. Candlish, who also served as principal of New Col- lege, died in the autumn of 1873, leaving the Church to the sole care of his younger colleague. As he lay in calm an- ticipation of his last moments he had called to his bedside the two men on whom his twofold mantle must fall, and, speaking more particularly to Dr. Rainy, he had said: ‘‘T leave the congregation to Whyte and I leave New Col- lege and the Assembly to you.’ There could not be a more solemn will and testament, and right faithfully did the two men receive it. And neither could there be a more magnanimous mentor and friend than Candlish had been to Whyte; and that prophetic deathbed scene lingered as a mountain-top memory in the mind of the youngest of the three men who had been gathered within its unearthly glories. Alexander Whyte had in his turn his own col- leagues (Hugh Black for ten years, and John Kelman for almost as great a length of time) and his own assistants as well—among them being two young Americans, during the Great War, who were in Edinburgh for theological work—and he could only strive to be to them what Dr. Candlish had been to him. And in genuine nobleness did ‘he succeed. In his memorial address at Dr. Whyte’s death Dr. Kelman said: ‘‘We would have laid down our lives for him, Hugh Black and I. The only difference we 352 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN®@ ever had with him was that by all sorts of subtle ways he q thrust us forward into any prominent or desirable position _ which he himself was expected to take, and we had to watch him for this and circumvent his too great generosi- ty.’’ Soon after he assumed the sole pastorate of Free St. George’s Moody and Sankey came to Edinburgh, and there ensued the revival of 1874, in which Dr. Whyte en- thusiastically shared. There entered next into the field of his activities and interest the famous Robertson Smith case with all its sharp- ly drawn theological issues and attendant clash of opinion; and the heat of a trial for heresy. He boldly declared his own opinion, but he asserted it, not on the ground that he agreed with the position of the accused, but that he be- . lieved that the Church of Christ should be “‘the most catholic minded, the most hopeful, the most courageous, the most generous of all bodies of men on the earth, sure that every movement of the human mind is ordered and overruled for her ultimate establishment, extension, and enriching.” In 1881 he was married to Jane Elizabeth Barbour, and a happy wife, and then children, came to bless his heart and his home. There was in that home, says Dr. James Stalker, “such an atmosphere of grace and refine- ment as made the manse of St. George’s a center of traffic for all the culture of the time.” In the spring of 1882 he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity from the University of Edinburgh and henceforward bore what became him as his most familiar title, ‘Dr. Whyte of Free St. George’s.’”’ Later he received the Doctor of Laws degree from his Alma Mater. The highest honor within the gift of his Church came to Dr. Whyte when he was called in 1909 to the principalship of New College. This position he held for nearly nine years, PULPIT AND PASTORATE 393 but in conjunction with the pastorate of his Church. It gave him an unprecedented opportunity to translate into forms of practical helpfulness his inexhaustible interest in young preachers. The great World Missionary Conference came to Edin- burgh in 1910, and Dr. Whyte offered the opening prayer of the occasion. He mentioned by name many of them and thanked God in his prayer for all the saints of all the Churches of all the ages, as was suitable to the personnel and objects of the conference. It was in speaking of this prayer that an eminent woman of the Anglican Church said that it had never occurred to her before to thank God for John Knox. The unaffected devotion of his heart and the broad and genuine catholicity of his mind as evoked in the prayer impressed every thoughtful mind in the great assembly. The Chapman-Alexander meetings came early in 1914, and the presence of Dr. Whyte, who was in constant at- tendance, notwithstanding the many responsibilities he had otherwise, served to link these meetings with those of Moody and Sankey which had passed forty years before. Then came the Great War as if a bolt of hell had been discharged out of the clear blue. For so it came, though everybody can now see that it had long been coming. Dr. Whyte received all its sorrows into his heart and all its wounds in his soul. Such a man as he could not be alive and do otherwise. Four of his children went into one form or anotner of the service. On the morning of September 25, 1915, while at the head of his battalion which he led in the battle of Loos, his son, brave young Robert Whyte, met instant death. Earlier in the same advance, and only a few hundred yards from where young Whyte fell, his friend, George Smith, Sir George Adam Smith’s eldest son, 29 354 PRINCES OF “THE CHRIST EAN had had a similar swift and fatal encounter with death. Such is the inevitable cost of war. And so the course of his historic ministry ran on at Free St. George’s, where for so long a time he kept the most distinguished pulpit of his Church and served its largest and most influential congregation. PULPIT AND PASTORATE The main lines of ministerial activity are prescribed by custom and the requirements of the case. Any minister may take down his manual and see how it is all to be done. The singularity of Alexander Whyte was that he did not do the things that ought to be done in the prescribed way. He did not do them according to manual—but according to Alexander Whyte. And therein he is a lesson for all ministers who aspire to be and to do their best. 1. He was first of all a preacher. Others might elect to be just ministers; but the burden of being a preacher lay as a first charge upon his soul. If we are to be ministers only and not preachers, then why should we not dispense with prophets and have only priests? Only it will be priests in the full sacerdotal sense that we shall soon have, and not priests according to the sound scriptural idea of the priest- hood of believers. (1) First of all, then, Alexander Whyte wrought at the business of being a preacher. He literally yoked himself to that task. He studied toilsomely. He studied until he knew that he had studied. Many preachers never do this. But he did. His acute biographer says that there might well be applied to him his own frequently quoted remark of Lord Morley about Gladstone that “‘his industry was more than half his genius.”’ His patiently, and painfully, and toilfully accumulated notes diligently and carefully made as he read and studied; his interleaved Bible, which ; PULPIT AND PASTORATE M385 was one of his priceless possessions, marked beyond the _ decipherment of anybody but himself—these were veritable and all but inexhaustible treasuries of homiletical ma- terial. Some men say they grow their sermons. And this is very well. Only sermons are like plants: they do not - grow without some process of cultivation. Sermons grown indolently are worth about as much as plants growing wild. Many will think Dr. Whyte was too much bound to method when he confined himself so rigidly to his manu- script in his preaching at St. George’s as rarely to depart from it, though elsewhere he was freer. But none who knows the facts of the case will ever doubt that he had a method which exacted severe toil of him. He writes to a friend on Friday afternoon that he is resolved to tear up the second draft of his sermon for the following Sunday, and to write a third. ‘‘This,’ he continues, ‘will nail me down to my desk all day to-morrow.”’ When he was in his seventieth year he said to one of his children whom he had undertaken to guide in some literary work: ‘‘I wrote my last forenoon sermon three times over.”’ He was systematic to the point of severity. Dr. Bar- bour says that for more than forty years his weekly round of work scarcely varied by an hour. What with this kind of system, and application, and diligence, and prayer, and severity with himself might not many another minister accomplish? ‘Prayer and work,’’ said he; ‘‘all great and true and eminently successful ministers from Paul’s day downward bear the same testimony: prayer and work.”’ He had no patience with preachers who said they had no time for study. In an address to preachers from the mod- _erator’s chair of the Free Church Assembly when he oc- cupied that office, he said: ‘‘We cannot look seriously in one another’s faces and say it is want of time. It is want 356 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN of intention. It is want of determination. It is want of method. It is want of motive. It is want of conscience. It is want of heart. It is want of anything and everything but time.”’ His homiletical habit was so strong upon him that it persisted in extreme old age when he was out of the pas- torate and did not need sermons. Ever and anon—and perhaps it is more frequently ever than anon—there appears a preacher who says he cannot make sermons. And he has no difficulty in finding people who agree with him. But here was a preacher who got so in the habit of making sermons that he could never quit. Speaking once after his retirement from the pastorate to preachers at the Edin- © burgh Presbytery, he said: “‘I select the most home-coming of these texts, and I write upon it every forenoon, even though I have nowadays no pulpit use for what I write; no pulpit use, only my own paramount and pressing use.” (2) The emphasis upon sin in Dr. Whyte’s preaching drew marked attention. His lifelong aim was to be a preacher of righteousness, and the preacher of righteous- ness cannot escape rigorous dealing with sin. The truest friend of sinners is the deepest hater of sin. When he was resigning his pastorate at St. George’s to be taken over by Dr. Kelman the latter said of him: ‘‘He has been the most scathing prophet of sin in our generation and the tenderest friend of sinners.” His own consciousness of sin gave poignancy to his preaching. One Sabbath morning at an Edinburgh mis- sion where a free breakfast was served to the poor, the au- dience had just sung Cowper’s familiar hymn, ‘‘There is a fountain filled with blood,’’ when Dr. Whyte arose and with profound conviction said, reverting to the stanza on the dying thief: “My name is Alexander Whyte, and I can put my name in that verse alongside the name of the BV ro rieAND PASTORATE 357 dying thief, and of William Cowper. Can you put your name there?’’ Again addressing an audience of his familiar poor he solemnly said to them that he had found out the name of the wickedest man in Edinburgh. Then bending forward over his desk he whispered: ‘“‘His name is Alex- ander Whyte.”’ In these unusual declarations of a sense of personal sin and in his solemn counsel to ‘‘Forefancy your deathbed,’’ as he expressed it, he was not always under- stood; as indeed he will not be until this day by a certain self-sufficient type of mind. Mr. W. E. Henley, editor of the National Observer, once took him rather severely to task, and at considerable length, for his morbid ‘‘coquetting with death.”’ ‘‘No healthy man believes he is going to die,”’ and so on. But here was one of the deepest secrets of the purity of Dr. Whyte’s character, and of the power of his preaching. Mr. Henley and his “bloody but unbowed”’ type, utter strangers to the deeper evangelical experiences and convictions, could no more understand Alexander Whyte denouncing himself as the chief of sinners than they could understand Paul doing the same. They do not under- stand Paul because they have little, if anything, to do with Paul’s gospel. But here was a man who did understand both Paul and his gospel; and there was a sense in which he uttered a profound truth when he said he was the wicked- est man in Edinburgh. Dr. Dinsdale T. Young well understood him when he said that ‘“‘he was one of the great evangelical penitents of the modern Church.” But there are people who can no more understand penitents than Mr. Cotter Morison could understand saints, desiring, as he did, to keep the saints but deny the grace they lived on. This gave him, too, a sure insight into the evangelical needs of others, and could but profoundly influence his preaching. He possessed a deep and searching knowledge of human character, and preached constantly for the re- 358 PRINCES (OF THE CHRIST EAI building of that character in Christ. He became ‘“‘the most searching and powerful preacher of personality in the Church to which he belonged’’; and his own conscious- ness of sin in himself and his knowledge of sin in others were the very roots of this power: for so he learned to rely on God’s grace, and to teach others to do the same. Where his sense of sin abounded his sense of grace did much more abound. The saintly Dr. John Carment in his old age had a visit from Dr. Whyte on business. After their business had been completed, as Dr. Barbour relates, ‘‘the noble old lawyer thrust his papers and writing materials on one side, and, looking straight across the cleared desk at his visitor, said with great intensity: ‘Have ye any word for an old sinner?’’’ ‘Two great Christians faced each other across that desk because, first of all, two great sinners had faced God. Principal George Adam Smith, speaking from Dr. Whyte’s own pulpit three days after his death, said: ‘In Scottish preaching of the seventies, sin had either with the more evangelical preachers tended to become something abstract and formal, or with others was elegantly left alone. But Dr. Whyte faced it, and made us face it, as fact, ugly, fatal fact; made us feel its reality and hideousness, and follow its course to its wages in death. He did this not only by his rich use of the realism of poetry, and fiction, and biography, but as we could feel, through his experi- mental treatment of it, out of his own experience of its temptations and insidiousness, and of the warfare with it to which every honest man is conscript.” (3) Dr. Whyte possessed a brooding imagination; or a sustained power of meditation on great themes. He deep- ly and protractedly meditated the subjects and the char- acters of his discourse. For he preached much on Bible characters. The word ‘“‘character’’ is in the title of two- PULPITEAND PASTORATE 359 thirds of the volumes of sermons that he published. He knew better how to brood than bustle, how to pray than to prate. Out of this mood there came to him a vivid and dramatic realization of the things he preached. Most of us are so obsessed by the material, so obtusely obsessed, that it becomes the real to us, and we do not see the things we ought to see. We do not sufficiently realize that ‘‘the seen is transient, the unseen eternal.’’ It was not so with him. He kept companionship constantly with the unseen; and carried ever in mind and heart the great themes of his pulpit and study. The times when he was most dramatic were the times when his imagination had done its best work. He had preached one evening in Edinburgh to a great men’s meet- ing on the terrible topic—it was sure to be terrible in his hands—"‘If I make my bed in hell.’”’ He had told his audience very plainly that if a man made his bed in hell he would have to lie upon it. He passed out into a bitter night, and as he came to a wind-swept corner of Princes Street a cloaked figure moved stealthily toward him out of the darkness, a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and the husky voice of a young man said, “‘O, sir, I have made my bed in hell’’; and into the dread yet friendly darkness the figure vanished as if it were a phantom. 2. Dr. Whyte was not less a pastor because he sum- moned all the powers he possessed to the service of his pulpit. There can be no conflict between a properly ordered pulpit and a properly disposed pastorate. They who so conceive it have the fault in themselves. The defect or limitation is in the man and not in the system. Pulpit and pastorate truly conceived can only be mutually concordant and assistant to each other. At every point of his relation to his people Dr. Whyte was a shepherd and not a hireling. He was early resolved, as he says, to put his visiting in the 360 PRINGES OFy DHE*GHRIsi tas front rank and beside his pulpit. His elders at St. George’s had said to him that they were never accustomed to much visiting. ‘‘Only appear in your own pulpit twice on the Sabbath: keep as much at home as possible,’”’ they said. ‘‘Well, that was most kindly intended,” said he after ex- perience had been his teacher; ‘“‘but it was much more kind than wise. For I have lived to learn that no congregation will prosper, or, if other more consolidated and less exact- ing congregations, at any rate not this congregation, with- out constant pastoral attention. . . . Iam assure as I am of anything connected with a minister’s life, that a minister’s own soul will prosper largely in the measure that the souls of his people prosper through his pastoral work.” He kept a pastor’s visitation book, and out of his ex- perience with it counseled his brother ministers to read their own such books, and as name after name looked out of its pages and accused them of neglect, to learn in deep humilia- tion of soul to be more faithful, more diligent, more prayer- ful, more devoted. Many books and other furnishings were in his study. ‘‘But the chief objects in that study, after all, were the two deep armchairs that rested, one on each side, by the spacious fireplace. In one of them sat this great specialist in sin, in the other a long succession of men who believed that no other doctor could understand their case. Here broken hearts were mended, here despairing souls got their glimpse of a new hope, here the chief of sinners saw the prospect of his final triumph through grace. The stories told in that sacred chamber are buried now with the physician.”’ Late in life, when his own experience had given the acid test to the whole matter, he said: “‘ Nothing will make up for a bad pastorate. The blood of Christ itself does not speak peace in my conscience in respect of a bad pastorate. ePULPIT: AND PASTORATE 361 Set every invitation and opportunity aside in the interest _ of a good conscience toward the homes of your people.”’ There was a certain inescapable remoteness about the man; nevertheless, he cultivated and acquired power of sympathy, and effected in his own character and conduct an unusual combination of conviction and charity. And where can all this better be done than in a true and diligent exercise of the Christian pastorate? 3. Dr. Whyte’s best gifts, both as preacher and pastor, appeared to fine advantage in his work for young people. In an especial way this was true of his classes for their instruction in the Bible, and in theology, and at length in literature, and the main principles of philosophy. In none of these was the practical aim ever lost sight of, and first and last attendants upon his classes received invaluable instruction upon the conduct of the Christian life. The young men and the young women met in separate classes, the former on Sunday evening after the preaching service, and the latter on Wednesday afternoon. Many were gathered into these classes from outside his own congrega- tion, and not all of them were young people, the total number amounting oftentimes, particularly in the men’s class, to as many as five hundred. His preparation for his classes was as diligent and pains- taking as his own thoroughness of method required, the better part of his long vacations being given to it. He refused once at least to come to America for a series of lectures on the ground that he could not spare the time from the work of his classes. A series of “‘Handbooks for Bible Classes’’ for use by ‘the Church at large, prepared under the joint editorship of himself and Dr. Marcus Dods, was one of the larger outcomes of this work for young people. Several volumes 362 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN of this series, as Stalker’s ‘‘Life of Christ’? and ‘‘Life of Paul,” obtained a wide and permanent circulation. AUTHORS AND AUTHORSHIP 1. Dr. Whyte had a mind too discriminative of values not to have his favorite authors, a mind too eager and responsive not to find the minds able to exert a formative influence upon his own life and character. He made a systematic study of the mystics, and his mind became saturated with much of the best that was in them. Wil- liam Law, Jacob Behmen, Teresa, Brother Lawrence, Dante, Thomas Boston, and Thomas Goodwin were among those who most deeply marked his mind and chastened his heart. The master influence of his life, however, was Goodwin. Newman and Butler drew him very strongly, too. ‘‘Bunyan Characters’”’ was the title of three of his books. But even this scarcely expressed the full measure of his interest in the tinker himself, or in the characters the tinker created out of his fertile imagination. Hanna’s ‘Life of Chalmers”’ he thought he had read at least a dozen times; and Marshall’s classic on ‘‘Sanctification’’ not less often. Dr. James Denney’s “‘Christian Doctrine of Reconcilia- tion’? he is reading when he has reached an age at which the minds of most men have atrophied in the power of their attention to books. Within just a little while of his death he is recommending the new “‘Life of Andrew Mur- ray of South Africa,’”’ and the “Life of Spurgeon,”’ which was just off the press. 2. He attained to authorship only through his pulpit and his work for his classes. He prepared and published no book through a direct literary intention or a direct aim at authorship. Such books as he produced were born of PULPIT AND PASTORATE 363 his passion for his pulpit and for all the work God had given him to do. For more than twenty years all his Sunday evening ser- mons appeared in the British Weekly, and were afterwards brought out in book form. ‘“‘The British Weekly has ren- dered no greater service to English religion,’ Dr. D. T. Young has written, “‘than it accomplished in introducing Dr. Whyte to the multitude of the English Churches nearly forty years ago.”’ The “Bible Characters’? were the fruit of his pulpit, and his books other than his sermons came, nearly all of them, from his classes. His great series of sermons on prayer, published under the title, ‘‘Lord, Teach Us to Pray,’ was delivered at the Sunday morning service at Free St. George’s. The editor of this volume, Rev. J. M. E.. Ross, successor to Sir William Robertson Nicoll as editor of the British Weekly, says of these sermons: ‘‘Ti- tanic, colossal; nothing like it in the whole literature of the subject.” A still later volume of sermons has the title, ‘‘ With Mercy and with Judgment.” Dr. Dinsdale T. Young, reviewing the volume, says: “All the great attributes of preaching are here—style, grasp of truth, knowledge of the heart of man, passionate love of the Redeemer, ardent longing for the salvation of the hearer. This and much more that built up the great renown of Alexander Whyte will be discovered to the awed and thankful reader as he passes through the entrancing paths of this volume of sermons.” The ‘‘Thirteen Appreciations’’ will appeal to many as nobler even than the sermons. Here are thirteen papers written in terms of ardent appreciation of Bishop Andrewes, Samuel Rutherford, Thomas Goodwin, Bishop Butler, Cardinal Newman, John Wesley, and others. Going to 364 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN this volume for a quotation is like going to an opulent granary for a grain of wheat. One or two must suffice. “It was in my first year at the University,” says he, ‘“‘that I first became acquainted with Thomas Goodwin. On opening the Witness newspaper one propitious morn- ing my eye fell on the announcement of a new edition of Thomas Goodwin’s works. I entered my name at once as a subscriber to the series, and not long after the first volume of Goodwin’s Works came into my hands. And I will here say with simple truth that his Works have never been out of my hands down to this day. In those far- off years I read my Goodwin every Sabbath morning and every Sabbath night. Goodwin was my every Sabbath day meat and my every Sabbath day drink. And during my succeeding years as a student, and as a young minister, I carried about a volume of Goodwin with me wherever I went. I read him in railway carriages and on steamboats. I read him at home and abroad. I read him on my holi- days among the Scottish Grampians and among the Swiss Alps. I carried his volumes about with me till they fell out of their original cloth binding, and till I got my book- binder to put them in his best morocco. I have read no other author so much and so often. And I continue to read him to this day, as if I had never read him before. Now, if I were to say such things as these about some of the Greek or Latin or English classics, you would receive it as a matter of course. But why should I not say the simple truth about the greatest pulpit master of Pauline exegesis and homiletic that has ever lived, and who has been far more to me than all those recognized classics taken together?’’ On Cardinal Newman he says: “‘All students of the English language give their days and nights to the Authorized Version of the Bible, to Shakespeare, to Hook- er, to Taylor, to Milton, to Bunyan, to Johnson, to Swift, = — PULPIT AND PASTORATE 365 to Ruskin. But if they overlook Newman, they will make a great mistake and will miss both thinking and writing of the very first order. The strength, the richness, the pliabili- ty, the acuteness, the subtlety, the spiritualness, the beauty, the manifold resources of the English language are all brought out under Newman’s hand as under the hand of no other English author. ‘Athanasius is a great writer,’ says Newman, ‘simple in his diction, clear, unstudied, direct, vigorous, elastic, and, above all, characteristic.’ All of which I will repeat of Newman himself, and especial- ly this—he is, above all, characteristic. If the English language has an angel residing in it, and presiding over it, surely Newman is that angel. Or, at the least, the angel who has the guardianship of the English language com- mitted to him must surely have handed his own pen to Newman as often as that master has sat down to write English. No other writer in the English language has ever written it quite like Newman. Every preface of his, every title-page of his, every dedication and advertisement of his, every footnote, every parenthesis of his, has a stamp upon it that at once makes you say: ‘This is Newman!’”’ Dr. Whyte died in his sleep on Thursday morning, January 6, 1921, when he lacked but a week of having reached his eighty-fifth birthday, honorably loved and lamented by multitudes of the best Christian people of his own and of other lands. Thus passed his long and luminous life away. Right well had he “wrestled toward heaven ’xainst storm and wind and tide” during the long season of his years. What long life of mortal man so shadowed at its beginning was ever more luminous at its end? XV JOHN HENRY JOWETT (1863-1923) Is It SUNSET ON THE PINNACLES OF PREACHING? ‘“‘OnE after another,” says Mr. Richard Holt Hutton in a striking sentence introducing in the Spectator his essay on the death of Dean Church, ‘‘the great men of our Church disappear, and their places are not filled.’””’ Perhaps the statement startles. It contradicts that indolent and com- placent philosophy which says that the workmen die, but the Lord carries on his work. To be sure he does, but at the frequent hazard of employing unfit instruments, and in default of the striving of men for the higher fitness for his service. Bishop Lightfoot, Canon Liddon, and Dean Church had all died within a single year. Hutton goes on: ‘‘Bishop Lightfoot was by far the most learned and saga- cious Englishman amongst the historical critics of the New Testament and of the apostolic Fathers; Canon Liddon was our most eloquent and stately preacher; Dean Church, our wisest and most accomplished man.’ How, indeed, could such a breach in the ranks of the ministry be healed? The Archbishop of Canterbury, in his foreword to Por- ritt’s ‘“‘Life of Jowett,” all but echoes this observation of Hutton’s: ‘‘ Preachers belonging to the front rank are rare in the England of to-day; rarer, I am afraid, than they used to be. Of that small number Dr. Jowett was preéminently one.’ Neither Dr. Davison nor Mr. Hutton has any dis- position to discount other preachers of distinction. Jowett was not the last of the line of noble and illustrious preach- ers in the English pulpit. Still it may fairly be said that (366) PRINCES OF THE PULPIT 367 it is doubtful whether there is left another who can quite fill the place he filled or who possesses the particular preaching gifts with which he was so rarely endowed. A YORKSHIRE YOUTH Into their humble home in Halifax, in Yorkshire, on -August 25, 1863, Josiah and Hannah Jowett received a baby boy who was their fourth child and third son. They called the child John Henry, a name which, when coupled with his patronymic, the child was to make a sign of radiance and of hope to the ends of the English-speaking world. The house in which he was born was about a mile out of the center of the town. On an upper floor Josiah Jowett, who was a tailor and a draper, carried on his busi- ness. When John Henry was still a small boy the family removed to another place which provided ampler accom- modations for both the family which was still growing, and the business which was expanding. Otherwise the home was narrow and confined in its material appoint- ments, possessing not so much as a garden as an open out- let to the world. But this impediment applied only to the house. Within there was a home. Josiah Jowett, though an humble man, was in the solid qualities of his character a worthy father. The mother, however, rises on the hum- ble scene as the real foundation of the family, and as the tutor of the great preacher who was as yet concealed in the child. These things, in truth, are never wholly con- cealed from a true mother. They are all Marys who “‘keep all these things in their hearts.’’ They may be ever and anon rebuffed, but they will still say: ‘‘Whatsoever he saith unto you, doit.” “Jowett went through life singing the praises of his mother.’”’ She had the wisdom and tact- fulness with her children which come of a quiet but con- fident fellowship with God. She could teach because she 368 PRINCES, OF sPHE «CHRIS Tia had first been taught. Her home and her chapel with her children for each and each for her children formed the central interests of her life. Her tears were more potent as reproof than any severity of punishment. Those tears one of her boys at least could never forget: ‘‘ Punishment might have been bearable, but I could have faced it. But tears, they vanquished me. A mother’s suffering for a son’s disloyalty to truth—that was something that made my act repulsive and at the same time revealed to me a heart of love and reconciliation and peace.’ Jowett’s first school was not able to constrain his will- ing attendance. But at his second he was happy and made rapid progress. When just under fourteen he be- came a pupil teacher at a boarding school where he had a worthy headmaster who aided his young assistant ‘‘in warring a way through the intellectual difficulties of youth.” He won a prize offered by a local committee of the school and selected a well-known one-volume Bible Commentary. The whole period of his childhood and youth passed without special adventure, though he does relate that he fought over the battles of the Russo-Turkish War as he could gather their main incidents from the newspapers, with tin soldiers set in array in a room in the house. He brought the war, and the tin soldiers, and some of the furniture in the room to an end by undertaking to fire a real cannon charged with real powder, and therefore capa- ble of larger results than he anticipated. The Mechanics’ Institute of the town opened to him at once its own doors and the way into the wider world of literature. Hours which he saved from his other work as a miser might do he spent there evening after evening poring over the books. An elderly gentleman, observing him to be thus occupied in the library one evening, passed near him and, touching him gently on the back, remarked: PULPIT AND PASTORATE 369 “‘My boy, you must make your way to the university.” The act planted a desire and kindled a hope in the soul of the boy which were to bear incalculable fruitage in the time to come. His contiguity to the mechanics taught him another lesson, too. The sound of their iron clogs beating on the pavement as they passed in the early morning on the way to their work called him out of bed to his own tasks and fixed upon him a habit of matutinal toil from which he never departed as long as he could toil at all. Dr. Enoch Mellor, a man of real power and distinction, a fine natural orator, with an imposing presence and an impressive voice, who exercised an influence far beyond the borders of his immediate community, was Jowett’s boyhood pastor. Through some inadvertence they never met. Whether it was through the natural hesitation of a humble family to press themselves forward or some unin- tentional oversight on the part of the pastor, none could ever say. The influence of the pastor upon the boy, never- theless, was very marked. ‘“‘Square Church was to me,”’ he said, ‘‘a very fountain of life, and I owe to its spiritual training more than I can ever express.’” He remembered to have heard Dr. Mellor more than once lament that the Church had sent no young men into the Christian ministry. ‘Thirty-five years after Dr. Mellor’s death,” says his biographer, ‘Jowett confided to a fellow voyager on an Atlantic liner that he had always modeled himself as a preacher upon Dr. Enoch Mellor.” Of the beneficent influences which bore upon his early life these three were longest to abide—his mother, Dr. Mellor, and two of his Sunday school teachers. One of his teachers in particular, Mr. J. W. T. Dewhirst, had made the Sabbath the sunniest day of the week, “a day looked for, longed for, loved.” A Young Men’s Society organized in the Square Church 24 370 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN for discussion and debates also exercised a highly beneficent -influence upon the formative stage of his life. He became one of the best speakers in the society and acquired a facility in extemporaneous speech which doubtless he would have been wiser to have retained. Through the exercises of the society he was led to religious address and even to the preaching of his first sermon when as yet he had not begun to turn toward the ministry as his life work. He was greatly interested in politics and heard all the notable political speakers who came within fifty miles of Halifax. In this he was greatly encouraged by his father. While serving as a pupil teacher he found a companion and traveled to London to be present at a great debate in Parliament in the course of which he had the good fortune to hear John Bright speaking at his best. These tastes of political debate but strengthened an inclination which he already had toward the law and a political career. Upon the approval and with the assistance of his father, he had entered into an arrangement to take service with a firm of Halifax solicitors as an articled clerk. Only the day be- fore the papers were to be signed he met his Sunday school teacher on the street and told him what he had planned to do. Mr. Dewhirst could ill conceal his disappointment, and remarked: ‘‘I had always hoped that you would go into the ministry.”’ Jowett was quite taken aback and im- mediately began seriously to reconsider his whole course for the future. He had been strongly drawn to the ministry, but had not felt that he was called. Later in his Yale Lectures on Preaching, which he delivered under an engagement which he had before he accepted the pastorate of the New York Church, he said: “‘It is of momentous importance how a man enters the ministry. . . . I hold with profound conviction that before a man selects the Christian ministry as his vocation he must have the PULPIT AND PASTORATE 371 assurance that the selection has been imperatively con- strained by the eternal God. . . . I would affirm my own conviction that in all genuine callings to the ministry there is a sense of the divine initiative, a solemn communi- cation of the divine will, a mysterious feeling of commis- -sion, which leaves a man no alternative, but which sets him in the road of this vocation bearing the ambassage of a servant and instrument of the eternal God. ‘How shall they preach except they be sent?’ ‘The assurance of being sent is the vital part of our commission.’”’ He is but describing the way in which he himself was ‘‘set in the road of this vocation.’ The papers were left unsigned on a prospective lawyer’s desk, and he went into the minis- Lry:. THE MANIFOLD INTERESTS AND AGENCIES OF COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY | Both parents cordially approved his decision to preach. Within a few weeks arrangements were completed for his entrance to Airedale College as a candidate for the Con- gregational ministry. The college was located at Brad- ford, only a few miles away from Halifax. Dr. A. M. Fair- bairn, already clothed with great distinction, was its prin- cipal. It was almost an education to come in sight of him. He had great capacity both in theology and philosophy, and was every way ‘‘a massive personality.’”’ He exercised a great influence upon Jowett, though the arrangement of the curriculum was such as not to bring the two into much direct contact. Dr. Archibald Duff, then one of the few other professors in the college, a man with a passion for Old Testament studies and for hard study in general, really influenced Jowett more than Dr. Fairbairn. Much of his incentive to hard and open-minded study he could distinctly trace to Dr, Duff, O12 PRINCES “OP THE: CHRIS (iti At the end of a year at Airedale Jowett had won a scholar- ship and went up to the University of Edinburgh. Edin- burgh is a great place to go to, in whatever capacity one may go; but perhaps it is more particularly advantageous to one who goes in the capacity of a student. There is a fine educative effect in the city itself, and its atmosphere is congenial to scholarly pursuits. And the Edinburgh pulpit was in itself at the time that Jowett went there a school of homiletics. ‘‘Edinburgh has always been a sermon taster’s paradise.’’ And Jowett had the taste. Some who were with him there in his student days recalled how he already bent all his interests and energies toward the pulpit. Perhaps the preachers in the Edinburgh pul- pits did not know what an apt pupil they had in their pews. Dr. Alexander Whyte was there at Free St. George’s, and ministered “in his majestic prime.” Dr. George Matheson, sightless yet seeing, was preaching comfort to others out of the travail of a radiantly lighted soul, while he felt that it was joy itself which sought him through pain. Dr. John Pulsford was at Albany Street Congrega- tional Chapel, and Dr. Landels was having great crowds at the Dublin Street Baptist Church. And if these did not suffice, there were yet others. Jowett gave the most of his time to Dr. Pulsford, but had the freedom of all the rest. Dr. Alexander Whyte, however, was and remained his favorite. Preaching, next to mothers and God’s grace, is the greatest agency for making preachers, and this eager Yorkshire youth was in the making. There is a beatitude for those who make much of preaching, especial- ly if they be themselves preachers, and this was done on a magnificent scale in Edinburgh. Jowett entered for a four-year course in philosophy and general arts. Dr. Henry Calderwood, who had then been long in the University and was to be there for a long time PULP EG AND PASTORATE SHS: afterwards until death terminated his labors, gave him his lifelong bent in philosophy. But Dr. David Masson, great master and teacher of the English classics and famous as a biographer of Milton, was his chief University distinction. Masson drank at the fountains himself and led others to them where they were taught to drink for them- selves. And this is the greatest distinction of any teacher next to the impact of his own character upon the character of those whom he teaches. Jowett still spent a good deal of time upon the newspapers, and still took a lively interest in political questions. Henry Drummond, intent upon his unique mission to college students, came to Edinburgh while Jowett was there and left perhaps no deeper mark upon any other than upon him. ‘‘Many and many a time,” said he, ‘‘ Drummond sent me home to my knees. . . . His influence re- mains in my life as a bright impulse to purity and truth. I thank God that I ever met and communed with Henry Drummond.” He obtained his Master of Arts, Edinburgh, in 1887, and returned to his old college for further work. Conditions there were in a process of change which temporarily oper- ated to the disadvantage of the students. But he had his own way of finding a way, and he and a fellow student studied the speeches of Bright and Burke, and talked of texts and sermons, and style and delivery, rather to the neglect of more regularly prescribed studies which were not offered upon attractive terms. Village pastorates were offered theological students in the long summer vacations, and Jowett served several of these. Cotherstone was one of them. Here he found the attendance terribly depleted, and so he went out into the streets with a hymn and a procession, halting here and there for a short talk to any standing by, until he had augmented 374 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN his procession to the dimensions of his building, when he would return for his service. This course of procedure was repeated for both services of the day, and Sunday by Sun- day, throughout his pastorate. ‘‘He won a double victory: he created an organization and he learned how to do it.” Porritt says that ‘‘at this period he had a distinct gift for extempore speaking, but he declined to rely on it.” He seems to have had the idea that this kind of preaching did not cost enough to achieve anything. But Alexander McLaren found that this was the kind that did cost. Jowett spent six years in Airedale and Edinburgh together, and then two terms at Oxford, whither Dr. Fairbairn had gone to found Mansfield College. NEWCASTLE-ON- TYNE Visitors from Newcastle at Barnard Castle in the sum- mer of 1887 where Jowett was preaching heard him and reported their impressions to the St. James Congregational Church, which was then without a pastor. The result was that he was invited to fill the vacancy. He accepted, and remained for six years. His success was immediate. Crowds attended upon his preaching from the first. ‘‘ From that first Sunday at Newcastle in October, 1889, until his last Sunday at Westminster Chapel in December, 1922, he never knew what it was to preach save to crowds.”’ The membership of his Church steadily increased and all its activities prospered. It was especially noted that his influence upon young men was remarkable. When he had been six months at Newcastle he was mar- ried to Miss Winpenny, of Barnard Castle, the daughter of Mr. Francis Winpenny, who had been for fifty years a trusted office bearer in his Church. The marriage was a rarely prosperous and happy one. No children were the PUEPCE AND* PASTORATE 3/5 issue of it, but the pair adopted a daughter, and this action also proved to be happy in its results. A preacher’s first pastorate, if it be of any length at all, must profoundly affect him, if indeed he is a man who is ever to be very greatly affected, whether favorably or other- wise. At Newcastle Jowett gave himself especially to the study of Isaiah, the Gospels, and the Epistles of Paul. On the pastoral side of his labors he devoted himself more particu- larly to the interests of children and young people, in whom he greatly delighted. But he did not fail to seek for re- sults in whatever direction an opportunity was offered to his ministry. He preached for a verdict. And he labored expecting results. His fame went forth throughout his own denomination and among the Free Churches general- ly. Though always in peril of a breakdown in his health, he began to assume some outside responsibilities. The sum of his Newcastle ministry he stated as follows on leav- ing there: ‘‘I have learned this lesson—that sin is mighty, but that God is mightier; I have learned that man is im- potent to redeem himself; I have learned that no man need be regarded as beyond redemption; I have learned that for the ruined life there is a power and a peace and a joy unspeakable; I have learned that the care and the misery of this Churcn are in the homes where Christ is absent; I have learned that the happiest and most beautiful homes connected with this congregation are the homes of the redeemed. These are the lessons of my ministry, and, standing upon the experience of these severe years of labor, I declare with a glad and a confident heart that Jesus has power and willingness to redeem everybody.” THE BUILDING POWER OF A GREAT PULPIT Dr. R. W. Dale, pastor of Carr’s Lane Congregational Church, Birmingham, England, died on March 13, 1895. 376 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN The Church was the most conspicuous and influential with- in the limits of English Congregationalism. It was one of the great Churches of English Nonconformity. It oc- | cupied an unique position in the city of Birmingham, and had a distinguished history. An eminent American minis- ter declared it to be at the time the greatest Church in the world. Dr. Dale himself had given the Church its final lift to this great height. His ministry there had been cast along masterful lines. There was not an abler man among the Nonconformists. He was one of the great Eng- lish preachers of the nineteenth century; for the lines of his measurement comprehended the century, and have not shortened since. Who could ascend the Carr’s Lane pulpit and stand in Dale’s place there? The Church im- mediately turned to Jowett. It was the consensus of Opinion among the Congregationalists of the country, who had certain great denominational rights and interests there, that he was the man who ought to go there. On no other shoulders could the mantle of Dale so appropriately fall. If it did not already rest there, then the hands of no other man were more worthy to rescue it from the place where it had fallen and bear it back to the same pulpit There had been some doubt whether the Church could survive the passing of Dr. Dale without loss of prestige. Indeed, Dale himself in the days which lay nearer to his callow youth had predicted that the Church would go to pieces when John, Angell James, then its pastor, went to heaven. Under circumstances such as these, circumstances sufficiently impressive and important, yet mixed with misgiving, the call came to Jowett at Newcastle. It came with a significance which bade him put off his shoes from off his feet and turn aside to see what it all meant. It seemed to him that a door had been opened which no man PULPIT AND PASTORATE 344 could shut, and he was steadfast to set his feet upon its threshold. He had not reached a decision without a con- flict, but once a decision had been reached there was no looking back. He went to Carr’s Lane, not to be another Dale, but to be himself and to do his own work. He “‘did not attempt to imitate Dale’s stride.’ The difference between the two men was well expressed in the saying that ‘‘ Dale’s congre- gation could pass an examination in the doctrines and Jowett’s congregation could pass an examination in the Scriptures.’’ This fine resolution that he would build with his own trowel, coupled with the prestige of the pulpit to which he had come, braced him to do his best and confirmed him in the exercise of those fine preaching gifts which, per- chance, had never come to their fullest flower under less propitious conditions. Preachers have, first of all, to make pulpits, but once an eminent pulpit is made it greatly as- sists in making preachers. This was what Carr’s Lane did for Jowett. He himself confessed to a friend that ‘‘he had been in peril of mere prettiness in preaching, but carry- ing on Dr. Dale’s work had proved his deliverance.”” He was wise enough to see that mere prettiness of speech could not sustain a great pulpit. It may temporarily catch a superficial crowd, but no Christian minister can build on that sand. It may please, but it cannot project great enter- prises. He who is going to labor at the task of removing mountains and building temples must clothe himself in sterner armor. All that Jowett found at Carr’s Lane helped him in the right course. The composition and organiza- tion of the Church greatly assisted him. He found a fine people in its membership and a body of high-minded and capable business men at the head of its affairs. He did not find himself bound to tasks from which the minister ought to be set free. His own fine gift in selecting men for par- 378 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN ticular tasks enabled him to maintain the organization at the level of the standards already set. He had wondered when he came whether he should inherit ‘‘multitudinous rules or liberalizing principles,’ whether he should be ‘‘op- pressed with fixity of method or inspired with freedom of spirit.”” ‘‘I knew,” he said, ‘‘that the Church had been great for one hundred years, and I wondered whether its traditions would fit me like an easy and familiar garment or whether they would bind me like a coat of mail.” He found all things ordered for the better part. The very effort to meet the issue in a manly way, and any thought of any other would have been repugnant to him, put his powers on the stretch toward the highest limit of achievement. The legs of the runner grow strong and fleet in running; and so it is with even the higher faculties in men. Suffering, sorrow, temptation, responsibility well and wisely borne are great developers of strength and capac- ity. When Jowett felt laid on him the demand that he grow to the measure of the Carr’s Lane pulpit, he grew to . that measure. The demand, the opportunity, the responsi- - bility strained him, stretched him, built him, established him in the consciousness and in the exercise of all the finest and best that was in him. He had rich experience of the building power of a great pulpit, an experience which he might justly have coveted, and which any Christian preach- er might covet after him, and for which many had been thankful before him. We may well concur in the judgment that ‘‘as a preacher he reached his zenith at Carr’s Lane.” Sir William Robertson Nicoll on hearing him toward the end of his ministry there recorded the following impres- sions of his preaching: ‘‘Of the startling wealth and beauty of Dr. Jowett’s diction, the incisiveness of his contrasts, the overwhelming power of his appeals it is impossible for me to write adequately. Excellent and inspiring as are BUEELIIPAND PASTORATE 379 his published sermons, one has to hear him in order to understand the greatness, and, I had almost said, the uniqueness, of his influence. In Dr. Jowett everything preaches. The voice preaches, and it is a voice of great range and compass, always sweet and clear through every variety of intonation. The eyes preach, for though Dr. Jowett apparently writes every word of his sermons, he is extraordinarily independent of his manuscript. The body preaches, for Dr. Jowett has many gestures, and not one ungraceful. But, above all, the heart preaches. I have heard many great sermons, but never one at any time which so completely seized and held from start to finish a great audience. . . . Above all preachers I have heard, Dr. Jowett has the power of appeal. That the ap- peal very deeply moved many who were listening was obvious, and no doubt it moved many who gave no sign. At times the tension of listening, the silence, and the eager- ness of the crowd were almost oppressive. It was all very wonderful and very uplifting.” His pulpit, however, did not by any means exhaust his interest in his Church. He was zealous to promote all its activities and to advance all its interests. He revised the hymnal, which had been long in use in the congregation, and brought it closer to the life and experience of the peo- ple. He denied the apathetic dictum that the week- night service is either useless or out of date and made good his denial in a city like Birmingham. He organized and conducted a Sunday school teachers’ preparation class and attracted the attendance of many from outside his own Church. The Digbeth Institute, a great social and religious center set up not far from Carr’s Lane in one of the most neglected districts of the city, remains until now as one of the conspicuous achievements of his Birmingham pastorate. ‘‘The prosperity and power of the Church grew 380 PRINCES? OF >THE] CHRISPIAN and solidified with the years.’’ He was one of the recog- nized ‘‘intellectual and moral assets of the city.”’ Notwithstanding the limitations imposed upon him by his lack of physical strength, he rendered from Birming- ham a lavish service at large. He obtained the honor of preaching the stated sermon for the Congregational Union, of which he was a member, and was elected to the presi- dency of the Union at forty-two years of age, being at the time the youngest man ever so elected. He was elected to the presidency of the Free Church Council, and in that capacity rendered a service which was notable for the breadth of its conception and the efficiency of its execution. He was especially warm toward the Methodists, delighting in their fellowship and rejoicing to share their labors. In 1910 he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Edinburgh. In connection with all this fine achievement it is worthy of note that he never exploited his popularity. He made no ‘‘copy”’ for sensational newspapers. He was doing too great a work to come down to this. On the midnight that he arrived on the ‘“‘ Mauretania’”’ in New York to take up his ministry there the wharves were thronged with report- ers. They were surprised to find a spare-looking, modest, reticent man very ill adapted to headlines or front pages. THE MINISTRY OF A METROPOLITAN PULPIT Dr. Jowett visited America in 1909, primarily to speak at the Northfield Conferences, but en route he preached in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, in Fifth Avenue Presby- terian Church, New York, and in one or two other churches. Almost immediately there were intimations that he would be called to the New York Church. A little later a definite call came. He declined. Then Dr. J. D. Jones, of Bourne- PULPIT AND’ PASTORATE 381 mouth, England, was called. He also declined. Then Dr. Jowett was called again, and accepted. One of the stipulations of his acceptance was that his salary at the Fifth Avenue Church should not more than equal in purchasing value his salary at Carr’s Lane, so ear- nestly did he desire to keep his motives clear of all contami- nating complications. It was, of course, very difficult for him to leave Carr’s Lane. It was difficult to leave Birming- ham; and to leave England. He was transplanting his ministry, not only from Church to Church, but from one continent to another. And changes that have in them the sweep and breadth of continents are not easily made. But he was convinced again that a door was opened which no man could shut, and he came. His farewells and the regrets expressed at his departure included everybody from King George to the devoted peo- ple of his own pastorate. He declared on quitting Carr’s Lane after sixteen years of ministry there that ‘‘not a single word has ever fallen in the deacons’ vestry that I would wish recalled.”’ Dr. J. D. Jones had encouraged his coming to New York, giving it as his opinion that ‘the Fifth Avenue Church presented the greatest opportunity in the whole non-Episcopal Protestant world.”’ He began his ministry in New York on Sunday, April 2, 1911. To the distinguished, and cultured, and rich con- gregation then and there assembled he preached on the compassion of Jesus for the multitude. He made no at- tempt to capitalize his coming, but entered seriously and as became a true Christian minister upon the arduous labors which were to prove to be so beneficent and far- reaching and truly evangelical in their effect. First of all, he had to learn to resist calls which, though in themselves of unquestioned importance, could but divide his energies and distract his aim, If he was going to do anything, he 382 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN could not do everything. ‘“‘I am learning,’ he said in a letter to a friend in England, ‘“‘to resist almost every hour of the day the tremendous forces that would push me here and there. I do not know what time ministers here spend in their studies.’”’ Again he says: ‘One of the things I have had to do since I came is steadily to resist the enor- mous number of invitations to do all kinds of things in all parts of the United States and Canada. . . . I sim- ply will not doit. . . . Iam perfectly sure that what is needed here is concentration upon one’s own particular work.’’ Having thus laid out a straitened way for himself, he walked in it. The Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York came to see him and told him the people were starv- ing ‘‘on merely social topics and essays on remote themes,”’ that he believed there was ‘‘a tremendous opening for evangelical preaching,’ and graciously assured him that he thought that he should find a place in the ministry of the great city. He expressed it as his own desire to see ‘‘the evidence that the Holy Spirit 1s at work in the Church, and that we have a witness in conversions and in the en- riched lives of the people.” He found the city even more cosmopolitan than he had anticipated. Entering a street car one morning, he was struck with amazement to find only one of his fellow pas- sengers reading a paper printed in English. At a news- stand he counted papers printed in eleven different lan- guages. ‘‘The cosmopolitanism of New York glared at him and profoundly affected all his subsequent thinking.” He sat in his vestry one day to see people who wished to join the Church. Among them there came “‘two Swiss, a German, a Scotchman, and several Americans.” At the © end of an afternoon service the last four men who spoke to him were ‘‘an American, a Spaniard, a Greek, and an Italian.” Peer oAND 7 PASTORATE 383 Dr. James Palmer, his assistant in the Fifth Avenue - Church, has said that the effect of his preaching upon the great congregations gathered at every service in the church was beyond description. There they were, gathered, as he himself said, from the ends of the earth and composed of all the races of the world. When he came the morning attendance had dropped down to seven hundred or less. Soon the house was full, and in a little while signs had to be posted on the outside that no more could be admitted. The second service in the church is held at four o’clock in the afternoon. Attendance upon this quickly increased from four hundred or less to fifteen hundred. The mid- week service, which had been practically given up when he came, stood steadily at between four hundred and five hundred in attendance. To the second Sunday service large numbers of ministers came, since they were freed from attendance at their own churches at that hour. Dr. Palmer said he had seen four bishops of the Protestant Epis- copal Church at a single service, and a total of all ministers of as many as three hundred. ‘Priests of the Roman Catholic Church and rabbis of the Hebrew people were in . constant attendance.” All this while he was proceeding upon his own resolution that he would make his preaching and teaching to consist in “‘the immediate exposition of the Word of God,’’ and that his pulpit should be an evan- gelical landmark in the city. And so his ministry ran along these triumphant lines till the end came in New York. THE CALL OF THE HOMELAND He felt the tug of the World War desperately from the first. He wished to be in England. He felt ‘‘awfully out of it,’ he said. He regretted that America did not go in. But he kept his poise and his patience. He had laid his 384 PRINCES OF THE: CHRISTEAS hand up against the true American heart and assured Eng- land of our sympathy with the Allied Cause. Two important calls to English Churches had already reached him in New York—to Free St. George’s in Edin- burgh, as successor to Dr. Whyte, and to the Richmond Hill Congregational Church, Bournemouth, England, as successor to Dr. J. D. Jones when it was anticipated that the latter would go elsewhere. He had also been asked to consider the pastorate of the City Temple, London, but a definite call did not materialize. Then came the call to Westminster Chapel, London, as successor to Dr. G. Camp- bell Morgan. He was pressed to stay in America. His Church employed every possible means to retain him. President Wilson, Secretary of State Lansing, and other eminent Americans joined in the appeal. Even the British Ambassador in Washington urged him to consider whether he ought not to remain here. But the call from the other side was too imperious; and the constraint of the home- land was in it. Both Mr. David Lloyd George, then Prime Minister, and Dr. J. H. Shakespeare, President of the Free Church Council, earnestly entreated him to re- turn to his stricken country in the hour of her crisis and calamity. He delayed. But at length he accepted. Remaining still for a short season in New York, he re- turned to England to take up his ministry at Westminster Congregational Chapel on May 19, 1918. Leaving New York, he said: “‘I return as the ambassador of your affec- tions.”’ Arriving in London he had an unprecedented welcome. At the House of Commons a dinner in his honor, attended by more than sixty members of Parliament, was given by Sir Joseph Compton-Rickett and Sir Albert Spicer of the Westminster Chapel. Mr. Lloyd George made the principal speech. ‘‘England needed,” he said, ‘‘all her great preachers and moral and religious teachers RUE AND PASTORATE 385 in view of coming events. The loss of a great preacher was an irreparable loss, and he felt they had achieved some- thing worth while in recovering Dr. Jowett, one of the greatest of them. He had been almost overwhelmed by protests from America when it became known that he was taking a hand in inducing Dr. Jowett to return—protests from official sources even, made on the ground that Dr. Jowett’s presence in America was of infinite value to the United States in its hour of crisis. But it was a national service to England to get Dr. Jowett here. . . . No country in the world owed so much to great preachers as Great Britain, and there had never been a time in our history when our future depended so much on the strength, the penetrating power, the influence, and the spiritual ap- peal that would be made to the multitude.” To listen and to respond to such a speech is one of the severest ordeals to which a finely tempered man can be subjected, but Jowett came out of it unscathed, contenting himself simply to say, along with a few remarks in lighter vein, that in obeying the call of his country he had only done what countless thousands of Englishmen had done. No man could go from New York to London in those days, least of all a man of Jowett’s mold and temperament, without all the horrors of war rolling like a day of doom through his soul. London gathered into her own bosom the fullness of the distress of a terror-haunted world. Dr. Jowett’s very position exposed his heart to the full sweep of the flood of iniquities which had thrown the whole world into an unprecedented upheaval. He could not stand upon the periphery and see it goon. Into the thick of it he must enter. He had obtained a commission not only to comfort and to cheer, but his later ministry took a distinct turn toward the broader social and international aspects of the gospel. He was constrained to espouse the cause of a closer Zo 386 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN and more vital Christian unity and to endeavor to build more securely the peace of the world. This change America and the Great War had wrought in him. Dean Weldon invited him to preach in Durham Cathedral, and despite the storm of ecclesiastical intolerance which the invitation - raised in some quarters he went quietly on and made the occasion notable by the dignity of his bearing and the force of his preaching. At the Copenhagen Conference, called in the interest of world peace, and later through the columns of the British Weekly, he made a plea for peace which re- sounded throughout the nations. Some could not approve his plans, but the passion of his Christian patriotism all could share. The exacting climate of London, after New York, and the strain of the World War were too much for his strength, and when four years had gone by, intermitting between loss and gain, weakness and strength, fear and hope, he was obliged to give up his pulpit. ‘‘His ministry at West- minster. . . was destined to be short, chequered by ill health, and closed by a complete breakdown.” In the autumn of 1920 he was in a state of serious ill health and was compelled to six months of silence. There were recurring crises in his condition, and he offered his resigna- tion. It was agreed that he should still take the pulpit once on a Sunday for a few months. He still had invita- tions to take Churches in all parts of Great Britain, but realized only too painfully that he could not do it. Yet he did not complain. He had had a splendid run, as he said, for thirty-five years, and did not “‘feel inclined to murmur if the pace has to be slackened.’”’ He preached his last sermon at Westminster, and, indeed, the last sermon he ever preached, on Sunday, December 17, 1922. The last year of his life was spent “in the very valley of the shadow of death.’’ His disease, which long baffled the physi- B@ee ion ND SPAS LORATE 387 cians, was at last diagnosed as anemia. On Wednesday morning, December 19, 1923, he laid down his disease with his life. He had heard the call of another Homeland and had gone this time without debate. PRINCIPLES AND PRECEPTS OF PREACHING The main principles and precepts of his preaching appear with unusual distinctness. 1. His preaching in the very substance and purport of it was an evangel, and the central word of that evangel was grace. ‘‘Grace,’’ says his biographer, ‘‘was Jowett’s sovereign word.” Grace was the idea and principle around which he gathered the deeper desires of his ministry, whether for himself or for others. The gospel is a product of grace. The gospel is a provision of grace. The gospel is an offer of grace. The preaching of the gospel is an act of grace. “The supreme note of his preaching was the proclamation of the all-sufficiency of redeeming grace in its relationship to the worst.’’ He was a great wrestler with words. He would have only the best word, and then that word must yield to him its best. He was never satis- fied that he had gotten all that was connoted in the word “grace.” ‘“There is no word I have wrestled so much with as grace,’ he said. And so there was throughout his ministry ‘“‘his tireless emphasis on grace.”’ 2. His doctrine of grace he naturally preached in definite relation to the reality of sin. Only the fact of grace in God could suffice for the fact of sin in man. But for the fact of sin in man the fact of grace in God does suffice. A gospel issuing to man through God’s grace is directed to ends which are as clearly defined as the grace itself. So he conceived it, and so in explicit ways he preached it. Christ’s coming had shaped the gospel in terms of human need and there was a definite message to be delivered. 388 PRINCES: OF THE CHRIS Figas To preach the gospel was to bring a definite offer of salva- tion to men. He believed that the gospel could be so preached and, as a consequent duty and privilege of the preacher, should be so preached as to win men to the obedience of Christ. For him to preach was to be an evangelist. ‘‘Preéminently the Evangel is needed: and I am giving my full strength to its proclamation,” said he, describing his preaching in New York. His action was amply justified. Here are some paragraphs extracted from the calendar of his marvelous ministry in the great Ameri- can metropolis: ‘‘Last Sunday at the communion service we received forty new members, some of them with testi- monies like romances. Three of them came to us from Roman Catholicism; others came right out of the world. I think the final impulse with many of them was a sermon on ‘The Friend of Publicans and Sinners.’ I felt the place was swept with holy power.” ‘‘I have been preaching a short course of morning sermons on Christ’s commission as described by himself—‘He hath sent me to give liberty to the captives,’ etc. I have been greatly helped in them, and there are abundant signs that lasting work has been done. I finished the course this morning, preaching to 2,200 people on ‘The acceptable year of the Lord.’ I took it to mean the Jubilee year, the year when any slave can gain his freedom in the Lord. I deliberately sought to bring things to an issue, and so I had decision forms printed on our calendars. I am quietly and confidently expecting that a large number have to-day ‘crossed the line.’”’ ‘‘Sometimes I am overwhelmed at the most evident move- ment of the Spirit of God.” ‘I have continued evidence of changed lives every week.”’ 3. He had a pathetic appreciation of the need of comfort for the wearied and thwarted life of man. In uncounted human hearts there struggled, either for utterance or PULPIT AND PASTORATE 389 against utterance, unsated cries for that comfort which the grace of God alone could supply. Grace and comfort, therefore, and man’s instant and constant need of these, were correlative principles of his preaching. He was a healer of broken hearts. No smoking flax did he quench. No bruised reed did he break. He lifted up the hands that hung down. He made straight paths for the feet of the lame that they should “‘be not turned out of the way, but rather be healed.’’ He made eminently effective even in the crash and swell of the modern world’s tumult the ancient prophetic precept: “‘Comfort ye, comfort ye my people.” To bea teller of good news, a bringer of comfort was written in the very terms of his commission. ‘‘It is to be good news,” he declared, ‘‘about the vanquishing of guilt and the forgiveness of sins. It is to be good news about the subjection of the world and the flesh and the devil. It is to be good news about the transfiguration of sorrow and the withering of a thousand bitter roots of anxiety and care. It is to be good news about the stingless death and the spoiled and beaten grave. . . . We preachers are to go about our ways finding men and women shattered and broken, with care upon them and sorrow upon them and death upon them, wrinkled in body and mind and with the light flickering out of their soul. And we are to bring them the news which will be as vitalizing air to those who faint, which will be like the power of new wings to birds that have been broken in flight.” ‘‘ Never shall we forget,’’ said an editor-preacher who heard him, “how on that Sunday morning in Fifth Avenue Presby- terian Church this mystic prophet of God uttered quietly the one sentence: ‘He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted.’ He put the magic touch of Christ into these words.”’ 4, It was an emphasized precept of preaching with him that it should take its range within the great themes. He 390 PRINCES OF THE CHRISTIAN took the great texts and left trivialities to the trivial. The great themes expanded and ennobled and elevated preaching. The trivial themes impoverished it. There were other causes of the impoverishment of preaching, but this he especially emphasized. At the session of the Free Church Council held at Hull in 1910 he took as the theme of his presidential address, “‘The Ministry of the Word.” He had particularly in mind the possible causes of the impoverishment of preaching. Many of these he regarded as quite actual already. What was to be the pre- vailing atmosphere of preaching? Was it to be that of a public meeting or of a serious commission? ‘‘We may be very busy, but we are not impressive.’”’ And he pleads for the great themes. ‘“‘I say, this has been the mood and the manner of all great and effective preaching.” This had been true of apostolic preaching. It had been true of Spur- geon, of Newman, of Binney. ‘‘What is the general char- acter of our preaching to-day? Is it characterized by this apostolic vastness of theme, this unfolding of arresting spiritual wealth and glory? . . . How does it fare with our familiar themes? Are they always in the village shop, or is there always a suggestion of the mountains about them? Are they thin, and small, and of the dwarfed varie- ty? . . . Itis this note of vastitude, this ever-present sense and suggestion of the infinite, which I think we need to recover in our modern preaching. . .*% All this means that we must preach more upon the great texts of the Scriptures, the tremendous passages whose vastnesses almost terrify us as we approach them. .. . Yes, we must grapple with the big things, the things about which our people will hear nowhere else, the things which permanently matter. We are not appointed merely to give good advice, but to proclaim good news. Therefore must the apostolic themes be our themes: The holiness of ee PULPIT AND PASTORATE 391 God; the love of God; the grace of the Lord Jesus; the solemn wonders of the Cross; the ministry of the Divine forgiveness; the fellowship of his sufferings; the power of the Resurrection; the blessedness of Divine communion; the heavenly places in Christ Jesus; the mystical indwell- ing of the Holy Ghost; the abolition of the deadliness of death; the ageless life; our Father’s house; the liberty of the glory of the children of God. Themes like these are to be our power and distinction.”’ He is against a fierce sensationalism: ‘‘ There is a certain reserved and reticent dig- nity which will always be an essential element in our power among men.” Hé wasagainst a cold officialism, and he quotes Emerson on hearing a preacher who was so distant from what he did and deadly unreal in his whole attitude that he was tempted to say he would never go to church again. Another peril of preaching against which he set himself was dictatorialism: ‘‘There is a world of difference between the authoritative and the dictatorial.”’ He was dead against all ‘the low expediency which usurps the hills of God.” 5. His method of preparation and delivery was a full manuscript which he had to have before him in the pulpit. He was dependent on his manuscript, yet singularly in- dependent of it. He was lost without it, yet followed it without difficulty. He would read it over three or four times beforehand, and then follow it in the pulpit with hardly more than a glance at the top of the page. His preparation, which he made with the most scrupulous and unremitting care, was begun on Tuesday, and he gave two days to thinking out and writing each sermon. The hard- est, most exacting, and most fruitful part of his prepara- tion he found to be the shaping of his theme. He could not proceed without this. His theme, his proposition, he must find expression for ‘‘in a short, pregnant sentence as clear as crystal.” He cultivated his capacity for taking 392 PRINCES OF THE PUEPTS pains until it became not only a habit but a faculty. His style was shaped largely by his consummate use of words. He sought and wooed words with a passion, and the very wooing of words, as well as great soul passions, was in his preaching. And his voice was as wooing as his words. In truth, the two were beautifully blended. Mr. Hugh Sinclair, in his ‘‘ Voices of To-Day,” speaks of him as fol- lows: ‘‘He literally gave himself to preaching with a dedica- tion that knew no reserves or relaxations, and he reaped a rich reward. He is a master craftsman of the pulpit as well as a supreme artist. Along certain lines of natural endowment he has genius, along other less inherently con- genial lines he has achieved excellence by dint of the mi- nutest application and the most unwearying patience. His elocution is perfect, his enunciation clear-cut and precise to a degree, without being in the least unnatural. He has striven not for the fine, the beautiful, or the exotic, but for the apt word, the telling phrase, the simile that is understood by the average man and goes to his heart. Take his preaching at what angle you will, examine thought, manner, word, or voice, at every point there is abundant evidence of purposeful craftsmanship working upon a fine natural endowment.” He did have a fine natural endowment; but he also paid the price of the mastery of the art of Christian preaching. In a delicately wrought devotional article on ‘‘The Mystic Scales’’ based on the text, ‘‘By him actions are weighed,”’ which was printed in one of the religious news- papers to which he was a frequent contributor, he refers to the ordinary human inclination to measure things and take them by their bulk, while God weighs actions and takes them at their worth. 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