The London Pulpit. James Ewing Ritchie

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СКАЧАТЬ restless Athenians, and in the background, the marble statues of their deities – of silver-eyed Minerva, and Apollo, lord of the silver bow. If some divine word of the Great Teacher himself is the subject of discourse, then the Hebrew landscape is painted as only those can paint who have trod the steps – as Mr. Bellew has done – where, more than eighteen centuries ago, the Christ and his sorrowing disciples trod. Occasionally a little pompous verbosity may be detected; instead of simply telling us how the earth’s great ones are despised too often by the world, Mr. Bellew says, ‘My experience of life, and the more I read from all history, sacred and profane, modern and ancient, is this – the veritable heroes of humanity have generally been decorated with the epithets of popular insult.’ This is a little too much in the mouthing vein, and reminds us of the singular encomium on Mr. Bellew in the Morning Herald, to the effect that our preacher ‘unveils the plan of salvation in the most graceful and attractive manner’ – as if Mr. Bellew was a Madame Mantilini, and the plan of salvation was the last new fashion. Perhaps for this singular criticism Mr. Bellew is in some part accountable. Our readers may have seen a caricature of two popular preachers, under the title of Brimstone and Treacle. Brimstone is supposed to represent the youthful hero of the Surrey Music Hall: the pulpit Adonis, curled and scented and lack-a-daisical, called Treacle, is supposed, though very wrongly, for Mr. Bellew is no man-milliner, to typify the subject of this sketch. In spite of grey hair and sallow cheeks, Mr. Bellew has somewhat too much the appearance of a lady’s man, and his Christianity is evidently that which will do credit to the best society; nor is this to be wondered at. Has he not an uncle a Bishop, and has he not the élite of the beau-monde to hear him?

      THE REV. THOMAS DALE, M.A

      In the good old times, before the Reform Bill was carried and the Constitution destroyed, at a period long prior to the introduction of cheap ’busses and penny steamers and the new police, stood an old church in the north of London, in which the parishioners of St. Pancras were accustomed to meet for public worship. In spite of its unadorned appearance, it was a venerable pile. According to some, it was the last church in England where the bell tolled for mass, and in which any rites of the Roman Catholic religion were celebrated. In its burying-ground twenty generations now sleep the sleep of death. Grimaldi the clown, Woollet the engraver, William Godwin, Mary Wolstonecraft, Walker, immortalized by his Pronouncing Dictionary, Woodhead, the reputed author of the ‘Whole Duty of Man,’ Jeremy Collier, the writer against stage plays and the successful combatant of Dryden, Ned Ward, author of the ‘London Spy,’ Theobald, the hero of the early editions of the ‘Dunciad’ and the editor of ‘Shakspeare,’ Boswell’s friend, the Corsican Paoli, here await the resurrection morn. What passions, what hopes, what virtue and vice, what loved and loving forms, what withered anatomies, have here been laid down! Tread gently! – every bit of dust you tread on was once a man and a brother. Tread reverently! for here human hearts bursting with agony – the mother weeping for her children, the lover for his bride – have seen the last of all they hoped for under the sun. You may hear a good sermon here from the old text: ‘Vanity of vanities,’ saith the preacher, ‘all is vanity.’ Such is the lesson we learn here – that all the shows of the world are poor and little worth – that false is

      ‘ – the light on glory’s plume,

      As fading hues of even.

      And love, and hope, and beauty’s bloom,

      Are blossoms gather’d for the tomb —

      There’s nothing true but heaven!’

      But we may not linger here. Time came and went, and, as usual, wrought wonders. St. Pancras ceased to be St. Pancras in the fields. It was laid out in broad streets and handsome squares. It was lit up with gas. It echoed to the roll of carriages. It witnessed the introduction of flunkies, with glaring livery and tremendous calf. Upon its broad pavements flaunted, in all their bravery, city lords and city ladies. Of course, the old church would not do for such as they. Early Christians might worship God in a barn, but modern ones, rich and respectable – of course, if they are rich they must be respectable – would not for the life of them do anything so ungenteel. So a new place – the first stone of which was laid by a Royal Duke, notorious for his debts and his connexion with Mrs. Clarke, – was built, with a pulpit made out of the old well-known Fairlop oak, on the model of a certain great heathen edifice, and the St. Pancras new church reared its would-be aristocratic head. Alas! alas! it was on the unfashionable side of Russell-square. That difficulty was insurmountable, and so the church has to stand where it does. However, the frequenters try to forget the unpleasant fact, and to make themselves as genteel as they can.

      Take your stand there at eleven on the Sabbath morning. What a glare of silks and satins – of feathers – of jewels – of what cynics would call the pomps and vanities of the world! With what an air does that delicate young female – I beg her pardon, I mean young lady – foot it, with Jeames behind carrying her Book of Common Prayer! United Belgravia could hardly do the thing in better style. Enter the church, and you will see the same delightful air of fashionable repose. If the grace that is divine be as common there as the grace that is earthly, Mr. Dale’s charge must be a happy flock indeed. With what an air does it bow at the name of Jesus! with what a grace does it confess itself to consist of ‘miserable sinners!’ One would hardly mind, in the midst of such rich city merchants and their charming daughters, being a miserable sinner himself. Such opulent misery and fashionable sin seem rather enviable than otherwise. At any rate, the burden of such misery and such sin seems one easily to be borne.

      But prayers are over, and yon immense congregation has quietly settled into an attitude of attention. All eyes are turned in the direction of the pulpit. We look there as well, and see a man rather below the average height, with fresh complexion, mild grey eyes beneath light-coloured eyebrows, with a common-place forehead, and a figure presenting altogether rather a pedantic appearance. This is the Rev. Thomas Dale, M.A. He looks as if the world had gone easy with him; and truly it has, for he is a popular Evangelical preacher – perhaps, next to Mr. Melville, the most popular preacher in the English Church. He is a popular poet – he is Vicar of St. Pancras, and Canon of St. Paul’s.

      Mr. Dale reads, and reads rapidly; his enunciation is perfectly distinct; his voice is somewhat monotonous, but musical; his action is very slight. You are not carried away by his physical appearance, nor, as you listen, does the preacher bear you irresistibly aloft. His sermons are highly polished, but they are too invariably the same. There are no depths nor heights in them. They are all calm, subdued, toned down. They do not take you by storm: you miss the thunder and the lightning of such men as Melville and Binney. Mr. Dale’s sermons are, like himself and like his poetry, polished and pleasing. All that man can do by careful study Mr. Dale has done; but he lacks inspiration, the vis vivida, the vision and the faculty divine, which, if a man have not, ‘This brave overhanging firmament – this majestical roof fretted with golden fire’ – ‘is but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.’ Yet Mr. Dale has an immense congregation. I take it that he suits the level of the city magnates that crowd his pews. Philosophy, poetry, passion are quite out of the reach of such men, whose real god is the Stock Exchange, and whose real heaven is the three per cents.

      Another and a better reason of Mr. Dale’s immense congregation is, that his charity is unremitting – given in the best way, in the shape of work instead of alms – and irrespective of the religious sect of the recipient. I have heard of several such cases that do him much honour. And, after all, in the pulpit as well as elsewhere, conduct tells more than character in the long run. Hence his personal influence is great; and, of course, that helps to fill the church. Nor can we much wonder. What eloquence is stronger than that of a holy, a useful, a devoted life? Acts speak stronger than words. I see more power in an act of charity, done in the name of religion and of God, than in the passionate and fascinating gorgeous rhetoric of an hour.

      Mr. Dale is a good Greek scholar, and has translated Sophocles. It is easy to see why Sophocles should better suit him than Æschylus or Euripides – the polish of the one would please him better than the wild grandeur of the others. Of him, as a poet, I cannot speak very СКАЧАТЬ