The London Pulpit

THE REV. J. C. M. BELLEW, S.C.L

One of the wonders to us, looking back upon the middle ages, rich in all the experience they lacked, is their faith in heathenism as a fact, long after heathenism as a theology had given way to the victorious Cross. It seems not only as if many Christian churches were erected on what were once pagan temples, but as if, under new names, the old pagan superstitions still lingered, as if their hold on the heart of man were too firm to be driven out by any doctrine, however new or true. In the middle ages, before a Bacon had led forth the sciences from their house of bondage – before men had ceased to theorize, and to believe alone in facts, and the truths facts utter, what confidence, for instance, was given to that pagan science, or jargon, for it ought not to be called a science, named astrology. The old heathen gods still remained. Jupiter and Mars, Saturn, and Venus, and Mercury, were still the arbiters of human destinies. Take up the great philosopher of that age – Cardan for instance – and you shall read in him more of the mysterious influences of the heathen’s Jupiter than of the Christian’s God. Every educated man exclaimed in language as plain, though not, perhaps, so poetical, as that of Max Piccolomini, that —

Something like this in the Christian world prevails. Thus is it the Old Testament binds with iron grasp men who profess to take their religion from the New. They tell you the law was the schoolmaster – that it was the shadow of good things to come, and yet for all that they do and plan, the Old Testament is their perpetual precedent. Instead of the recognised version, ‘All Scripture is given for instruction,’ some of the good people we have referred to seemed as if they read confusion. The old Commonwealth men blundered terribly in this way; but every age has had men guilty of similar blunders. Poor Granville Sharpe had an interview with Mr. Pitt, to plead the cause of humanity, and wasted the golden opportunity by attempting to explain to that great Minister – to whom the explanation was all unintelligible – the meaning of the little horn in Daniel. In spite of Christianity, men still cling to Jewish rites and Jewish creeds, as if the Temple of Solomon still wore its ancient splendour, as if the seed of Abraham still enjoyed their sacred birthright, as if the sceptre had not departed from Judah, and Shiloh had never come. Go into the churches of the metropolis any time you like, and the probability is that in more than half the texts will be taken from the Old Testament, and the certainty is, that in almost all, all the arguments and illustrations will have a similar source. Thus we have a composite order of preaching. It seems as if the preacher knew not on which side to take his stand, under which king to speak or die. The hand is Esau’s, but the voice is Jacob’s. You hear as much of David as of Christ, as much of the ceremonial of a worship of form and ceremony, as of the simplicity introduced by Him who was born in a manger, and had not where to lay his head. To break free from all this – to act in the living present – to let the dead past bury its dead – to speak to the men of to-day in the language of to-day, is a great advantage to a preacher, even if it require, on his part, a little extra care in the composition of his sermons; and no one knows this better than the popular Assistant Minister of St. John’s, Waterloo Place, Regent Square, London – the Rev. Mr. Bellew, formerly of St. John’s Cathedral, Calcutta.

To give a man the position Mr. Bellew has acquired, however, something further is needed. Peculiar qualities of thought or utterance, especially the latter, are essential to a man if he would be talked of on all sides – run after by fine lords and ladies – in request all over London for charity sermons – and admitted to plead in the august presence of Lord Mayors and Princes of the blood. In the first place, then, it must be remembered that Mr. Bellew preaches with all the studied earnestness of the actor, and every syllable tells as distinctly as if it were Macready declaiming on the stage. Then he is an Irishman, and what Irishman is not fluent and born to drive in the pulpit; and what is wonderful, though an Irish Protestant, Mr. Bellew avoids the rôle, somewhat overdone, of a McNeile, or a McGee, or a Maguire, and does not commit the absurdity of making his every sermon a wearisome protest against Popery and the Pope. Why should Irish clergymen get wild on this head? It is not, says Goëthe, by attacking the false, but by proclaiming the true, that good is to be done. And it is the same in religion; the Irish Protestants have little to complain of – their history is written in the tears and blood of millions whom they have wronged for ages. By the violation of all right – by means that will ever stain the Irish Protestant Church with shame – by laws the most infamous the malice of man could devise, have they got to be where they are; let them take the goods the gods provide and be thankful. If anything could make a man sympathize with Roman Catholics, it would be the history of the Protestant Church since its first establishment there by the strong arm of law. On all other matters Mr. Bellew seems equally to avoid the errors of partisanship; he ignores the foolish ceremonial disputes of his own Church – the petty doctrinal discussions, which are the more fiercely agitated the more trivial and worthless they in reality are. His Christianity is something proud, and majestic, and divine, – a universal remedy for a universal disease, – not a skeleton of dead doctrine, or a bone of contention, or an obsolete word, but a living, healthy, beneficent power.

But Mr. Bellew has other attractions. Not only are his sermons broad and catholic in tone, – not only are they enunciated with oratorical effect, – not only are they heightened by the charm of a commanding presence, – but they are in themselves highly polished, full of passages of rare eloquence, and retain the attention of the hearers. They all open well, the exordium is always spirited, and its tone is maintained to the end of the discourse. Thus one commences as follows, “Eternity is the answer to life’s question – immortality is the hallowed reward of life’s holy works.” Another has, “Life is the expression of religion.” In another we get a quotation from Tacitus pregnant with meaning, “Truth is established by investigation and delay.” Then the circumstances of the text are well brought out. If Paul speaks at Corinth, we see that licentious city with its groves and temples; if on Mars’ hill he proclaims an Unknown God, the orator, with a lustre on his face brighter than any genius could bestow, is in our midst; around him are the 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

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 highly. His versification is correct – his sentiment is good. To the very large class of readers who will accept such substitutes for poetry as the real thing, our divine is a poet of no mean order. ‘What we want, sir,’ said a publisher to me the other day, ‘is a lively religious novel.’ Mr. Dale’s poetry answers to these conditions: hence its success.

His poetry was a great help to his popularity. When he was rector of the parish of St. Bride’s, and evening lecturer at St. Sepulchre, he was more intimately connected than at present with literary pursuits, and was much run after. About that time Annuals were the rage, and Mr. Dale edited a religious Annual called ‘The Iris,’ and young ladies learnt his verses by heart, or copied them into their albums. At one time Mr. Dale was Professor of English Language and Literature at the University College, in Gower Street. However, as a Tory and a Churchman, he seems to have found himself out of his element there, and left it for King’s College, Strand, at which place he held a similar appointment. It was thought that church preferment had something to do with this; that his chances were, in consequence, in danger; that in high quarters the University College was regarded with an unfavourable eye: so Mr. Dale threw it overboard. Such was the rumour at the time. Of course, to some men, such conduct may seem only wise – prudent; but if ministers of religion thus shape their conduct, with a view to worldly success, what chance have they of regenerating the world? If such things be done in the green tree, what may we not expect in the dry? A teacher of living Christianity surely should be the last to desert a cause, merely because it is weak, and unfashionable, and poor!

As a writer, Mr. Dale has been most untiring. His first poem came out in 1820. It was the ‘Widow of Nain,’ and was read with delight in religious circles. In 1822 he published another poem, called ‘Irad and Adah, a Tale of the Flood; with Specimens of a New Translation of the Psalms.’ About this time the poetic inspiration appears to have died, for since only a few occasional verses have appeared from Mr. Dale’s pen, and henceforth he seems to have betaken himself to prose. In 1830 he published a volume of ‘Sermons, Doctrinal and Practical;’ in 1835, ‘The Young Pastor’s Guide;’ in 1836, ‘A Companion to the Altar;’ in 1844, ‘The Sabbath Companion;’ in 1845, ‘The Good Shepherd: an Exposition of the 23rd Psalm;’ in 1847, ‘The Golden Psalm, being an Exposition, Practical, Experimental, and Prophetical, of Psalm xvi.’ Besides these publications, he has printed several occasional sermons. He has now attained a high position in the Establishment, which certainly can boast few more faithful or laborious men. Originally not intended for the Church, his subsequent success has justified his devotion of himself to her service. Altogether his lot has been cast in ‘pleasant ‘places,’ and he has had ‘a goodly heritage.’

THE HON. AND REV. R. LIDDELL

St. Paul’s, Knightsbridge, has done what it is a very hard thing to do, created a sensation in this our phlegmatic and eating and drinking and money-making and merry-making age. It professes to be a Puseyite, and not a Protestant, place of worship. Puseyism, says a red-haired Saxon, foaming with indignation, is next door to Roman Catholicism, and a Puseyite Church is half-way to Rome. True, my perturbed brother – true. But what of that? Some are inclined to think that Church of Englandism is akin to Roman Catholicism, and that all its churches are halfway to Rome. That brutal old tyrant, Henry the Eighth, was a Roman Catholic at heart, and had faith in himself as an infallible Pope. His genuine daughter did the same. Laud, who lacked the discretion of that strong-minded woman whose

is a splendid specimen of ingenious mystification on the vexata questio of transubstantiation, – I question whether Charles James Bloomfield, Bishop of London, could have returned a more confused and unmeaning response, – died for his Roman Catholic tendencies. To this day England remembers who it was, with red, swollen face, and brown apparel, and collar with a spot of blood on it, made his maiden speech in Parliament by indignantly informing the House that Dr. Alabaster had preached flat Popery at St. Paul’s, and in our own day Mr. Gorham has failed in obtaining a legal decision against the Roman Catholic doctrine of baptismal regeneration. The mistake is, in supposing that the Church as by law established is Low Church. If it were so, then, of course, out ought to go the whole crop of Puseyite priests, in spite of the tears and hysterics of female piety. On the contrary, the Church of England is like the happy family in Trafalgar-square. Beasts of the most opposite description there dwell together in peace and unity. Dogs and cats there sleep side by side. In the prospect of a common maintenance natural enmities are forgotten. Conformity is impossible. I cannot use my brother’s words with his exact meaning. I must put my own interpretation on the creeds and articles to which I subscribe, and so long as the State Church is a chaotic mass of heterogeneous materials – so long as it has no definite voice, nor law – so long as bishop clashes with bishop, and at times with himself, – for we may have here a Puseyite, there an Evangelical, here a fox-hunting divine, – there must be everywhere heart-burning and scandal, and the degradation of Christianity itself. But, exclaims my vehement red-faced Saxon friend, you are making Papists by letting the Puseyites remain. I don’t know that. Papacy is alien to human nature, or it is not. If it is not, you cannot get rid of it. If cut down to-day, it will sprout up again to-morrow. It springs from a tendency, I take it, in the human heart. In a mild form, that tendency gently blooms as Puseyism. A cold in one man may, by means of gruel, be removed in a week. In another man, it may deepen into deadly decline. Puseyism may retain as many in the English Church as it may send to Rome. Your Low Churchman may say the Puseyite has no business in the Church at all. Well, the other may say the same of him, and there is no one to decide as to who is right. King James II. said, Hooker’s Apology made him a Papist, but Hooker was not responsible for this, and is still rightly looked on as one of the brightest ornaments of the Church of England as by law established. Men make strange leaps. Many a convert to Rome has been won from the ranks of Methodism. Many an infidel has been born and bred in the very bosom of the Roman Church. A Puseyite may become a Papist, but he also may not, and so may other men. Some people say there is Popery everywhere. I listen to a Wesleyan Reformer, for instance, and he tells me that the Conference is Popish, and that the President is the Pope. If so, it is hard to blame the Puseyites for exhibiting the priestly tendency, more or less apparent, as some affirm, in all priests.

I imagine the crime of Puseyism, in the eyes of most churchmen, is the crime of a pretty woman in an assembly of haggard crones. The Puseyite place of worship is always neat and clean, and worth looking at, and it attracts when others fail to do so. The causes of it must be various. Why does one graceful woman robe herself in simple muslin, and another dazzle you with her gorgeous attire? You may be a philosopher. If that woman can be your companion, can feel as you feel, and love as you love, you care not for her attire. But she knows that the world has a different opinion. The Puseyite becomes an object of interest. On a small, very small scale, he is a hero. True, to fight about little ceremonials argues the possession of a brain of but limited power, but his opponents are in a similar position. If you deny worship to be the simple genuine feeling of the heart – if you make no provision for that – if you turn it into a form, why then, possibly, the more of a form it is the better. I confess the way in which they intone the service at St. Paul’s is pleasant to listen to. It is not worship, I grant. Neither is mumbling the thousandth time over a printed form of words worship. What a dull thing an opera would be, read, and not sung. It is true people do not make love, or do business, or address each other in music, in real life, but in an opera they do, and the effect is great. So it is with the Church of England service. Intoned it may be unintelligible or theatrical, but it is attractive nevertheless. It is not natural, but what of that? The soul bowed down with a sense of sin, yearning for peace and pardon, in its agony and despair will vent itself in broken sentences, and will turn away from all ceremony – from even the sublime liturgy of the Church of England, as poor, and cold, and vain, inadequate to the expression of its hopes and fears. But why those who go to church as a form find fault with the people of St. Paul’s because their form is a little more attractive than their own, I confess I cannot understand.