01.05. Lecture V. The English Pulpit

Lecture V. The English Pulpit In this brief course of lectures yon have seen that the periods embraced are far too vast for satisfactory treatment; and yet some important departments in the History of Preaching have to be left entirely out of view. Besides the Greek preachers of medieval and modern times, the Spanish and Portuguese and later Italian preachers and others, we have taken no account of the German pulpit since Luther. It seemed better, for various reasons, to treat of the French rather than the German preachers. And for this final lecture I choose the English pulpit, which, even if we should not glance at Scotland or America, presents a field of immense extent and sufficiently embarrassing in its richness. The History of Preaching in England comprises five specially noteworthy periods: (1) Wyclif, (2) The Reformation, (3) The Puritan and Anglican preachers of the seventeenth century, (4) The Age of Whitefield and Wesley, (5) The nineteenth Century, of which there is an earlier and a later division. *

Before Wyclif, we find little in English preaching that is particularly instructive. The missionaries Augustine and Paullinus, who converted the heathen English in the seventh century, must have spoken with power, but their eloquence is not preserved. Let us frequently remind ourselves that the history of recorded preaching is but a small part of the history of preaching. The venerable Bede has left us some very brief discourses, supposed to have been imperfectly written down by his hearers, which show life and spirit, but would have been forgotten but for his famous History.

Wyclif (1324–82), the first great Protestant, the first who not merely condemned some evils in the Catholic church, but struck at the very heart of the Papal system, was a preacher of great power. He does not exhibit much imagination, and so is not in the full sense eloquent. But he is singularly vigorous and acute in argument, and has the talent for “putting things” which belongs to a great teacher of men. His bold antagonisms, hard hits and unsparing sarcasms, his shrewd use of the dilemma and the reductio ad absurdum, show the master of popular argumentation. In his development from a scholastic divine, a student and teacher of dry philosophical theology, into a pungent, stirring preacher and popular leader, he is a representative man; for these two sides of character and life must in some measure be combined in every man who is to achieve great usefulness as a preacher of the gospel. Yet with all this popular power and skill, Wyclif did his chief work not by his own preaching, but through others. He gathered around him plain and devout men, filled with his ideas and his spirit, and sent them forth as home missionaries, and it was chiefly by their humble and zealous preaching, publicly and from, house to house, together with the circulation of Wyclif’s tracts, written in the language of the people, that the new doctrines spread like wild-fire through all England, till a hostile contemporary complained that “a man could scarcely meet two people on the same road but one of them was a disciple of Wyclif.” These “simple priests,” as they were called, corresponded to the Dominican order of preaching friars—as it was when first constituted—also to Wesley’s circuit riders, and to the often illiterate but devoted men who have done so much in the establishment of Baptist churches throughout the United States. We see in this work of Wyclif and his friends an example of the fact that a professor may sometimes do more through his pupils than he could have done by personal labor as pastor and preacher. In fact, every gospel worker should strive to infuse the spirit of work into others. The wisest and most useful pastor is not he who accomplishes most by his individual exertions, but rather he who can gather the largest number of true helpers,being himself the nucleus around which their labors may crystallize into a compact and effective whole.

Wyclif’s reformation contained the germs of that which one hundred and fifty years later proved so grandly successful; and yet in a few years after his death it was crushed, leaving of manifest results only his translation of the Bible, and the marked influence of his writings upon John Huss, in distant Bohemia, which at that time was connected with England by a royal marriage. England’s first great reformer, and her first great poet, Chaucer—who was Wyclif’s younger contemporary and friend—bad no successors for many weary generations, during which the nation was enfeebled and demoralized by the hundred years’ struggle with France, and afterward by the Wars of the Roses at home. When all this had passed, and there was again peace and orderly government and returning prosperity, then again the English were ready to think of curing the dreadful evils which disgraced the clergy and the church, and just then came the spread of the New Learning, with Erasmus’ Greek Testament and Tyndale’s English Bible, the stirring ideas of Luther, and the political and connubial schemes of Henry VIII., all of which concurring forces produced the English Reformation.

There is no doubt that the Revival of Letters formed one leading occasion of the Reformation, both in Germany and in England. And already before the Reformation began, this revived study of Greek literature was producing some wholesome effect upon preaching. As early as 1510 we read of Colet, Dean of St. Paul’s, as “the great preacher of his day, and the predecessor of Latimer in his simplicity, directness and force.” He had gone to Italy to study Greek, and then for several years had taught Greek at Oxford, awakening the enthusiastic admiration of Erasmus, who said, “When I heard him speak, methought I heard Plato himself talk.” Notice then that this earliest of the great Greek scholars of England was as a preacher remarkable for “simplicity, directness and force.” It is another significant fact that Colet, who had lectured at Oxford on the Greek Testament, with all the other professors of the University taking notes, was perhaps the first preacher of the time that regularly expounded the Scriptures on Sundays. Good popular exposition always rests on loving study of the Scriptures, and usually upon study of the original.

Everybody knows that the most notable preacher of the English Reformation was Latimer (about 1490 to 1555). The superficial reader of his sermons would probably at first regard Latimer as a sort of oddity, with his homely humor, queer stories and quaint phrases, his frank egotism and general familiarity. But read on carefully, and you soon become convinced that you are dealing with a powerful mind and an elevated character. He was well educated at Oxford, but never forgot his experiences as the son of an humble yeoman, and while brought into relation to the great and learned, never lost sympathy with common life and the common mind. A student of books, you see that he has been still more a keen observer of men and things. He does not speak of life as one who has seen it dimly mirrored in literature, but as one who has eagerly looked upon the vivid original. His utterances are as fresh as morning air, or the morning song of the birds. He grasps truth with vigor, handles it with ease, holds it up before you in startling reality. It is pleasant to say that some of his best sermons have recently been made accessible to all, in one of the small volumes of “English Reprints,” sold for a trifle. I thick that persons who occupy themselves much with the study of pulpit eloquence, who are hunting in every age for “Masterpieces,” and setting up lofty standards of homiletical art, would find it most wholesome to read several sermons of Latimer, to feel the power of his careless vigor and intense vitality, and remind themselves that not quite all the great preachers of the world have been perpetually engaged in the production of masterpieces of eloquence.

How many of the most influential Reformers were men of much the same stamp. Luther, Zwingle, Wyclif, Latimer, Knox—all intellectual and educated, but all men of the people, in full mental sympathy with the people, and thus able to command popular sympathy, and to send great electric thrills through the community, the nation, the age. Some of our American Baptist ministers of a hundred years ago had all these qualities, except education. If John Leland had been thoroughly educated in his youth, he might have shaken the continent. Great is refined culture and literary taste, but greater far is shrewd mother-wit, and racy humor, and wide and varied sympathy, and close, personal observation of the strangely mingled life we men are living in this strange world.

Two years after Latimer preached the “Seven Sermons before Edward VI.” which remain to us, there was added to the number of the king’s chaplains (1551) the other most remarkable English preacher of the time, John Knox (1505–1572). Professor Lorimer, in his “John Knox and the Church of England,” published last year from newly discovered materials, has conclusively shown that the great Scotchman exerted a powerful influence in England, and did more than Bishop Hooper to develop and shape that Puritan sentiment which a century later became so powerful. In his preaching, as already intimated, he somewhat resembled Latimer, being an educated man but quite superior to pedantry and formality, and remarkable for force of thought and stirring earnestness. Like Latimer too, he usually preached without written preparation; and as he seldom wrote out his sermons afterwards, we have to judge of his powers as a preacher mainly from his other works. I think you will best get the impress of his character and catch his spirit by reading his “History of the Reformation in Scotland.” His was “the martial or do-battle style of pulpit oratory,” in fact he was particularly fond of martial figures. This was natural in those stormy times, and in a preacher whose life was often in sore peril, but at whose grave the Regent Murray pronounced the now well known eulogium, “There lies he, who never feared the face of man.” Fearlessness is a quality scarcely less needful for preachers in the “piping time of peace,” than in time of persecution, scarcely less needed by us, for example, than by our fathers of a century ago. How many now are afraid of social influence, or afraid of being stigmatized as wanting in “culture,” or ignorant of “science,” or—worst of all—as lacking in “charity.” While eschewing bitterness, let us covet boldness.

Knox is a notable example of entering upon the ministry late in life. Educated for the Catholic priesthood, but early deposed because of Protestant heresy, he meant to spend his time as professor and public lecturer, but was pressed into the ministry at the age of forty-two. There is a further lesson in the fact that about this time he learned Greek, and at the age of forty-nine we find him at Geneva, busily studying Hebrew. Let it not be forgotten amid our elaborate processes of ministerial education that a man of competent intelligence may begin to preach when he is growing old, and be very useful; but also that such a preacher, if he has the right spirit, will be eager to supply, as far as may be, his educational deficiencies. The martial style of thought and expression which characterized Knox, was fitly attended by a most impassioned delivery. One who often heard him in his old age, afterwards described him as lifted by two servants up to the pulpit, “whar he behovit to lean, at his first entrie; but er he haid done with his sermone, he was sae active and vigorous, that he was lyk to ding the pulpit in blads, and flie out of it.” One of the pulpits he pounded is still preserved in Stirling; I remember standing in it, and while not presuming to aspire after an imitation of his delivery, yet longing to catch something of his bold and zealous spirit. It is a fact which might be worth some reflection, that the Scotch preachers, though living farther North, have as a rule been more fiery and impassioned than the English. As to other preachers of the Reformation period, we can say but a word. Bishop Hooper, the martyr, and the first Englishman who distinctly represented the Puritan tendency, was very zealous in preaching, for we are told by Burnet that at one period he preached four, or at least three times every day. Cranmer’s sermons show force of argument, and an agreeable style, but little of the imagination and passion which are necessary to eloquence. Bishop Jewell was a learned man, and sometimes eloquent, but with little that was characteristic or very highly impressive. Archbishop Sandys was hot enough in his numerous quarrels, but not warm in preaching.

Between the Reformation and the time of Cromwell, including about a century, there were many able ecclesiastics, many learned divines, and some striking preachers, but none of the highest eminence. Hooker is immortal for his philosophical work on Ecclesiastical Polity, but was not attractive as a preacher. Dr. Donne is said to have been a man of learning and remarkable for brilliant imagination and tender sentiment; but his sermons are spoiled by those conceits, which abound in his poetry also. Let all fanciful and brilliant men remember that perpetual efforts to strike and dazzle soon weary and fail of their end. Bishop Andrewes was a learned and able man, worthy of his position as one of King James’ translators of the Bible, but his sermons are so laden with learned quotation and discussion that they lack movement, and I cannot read them with profit or patience. Bishop Hall is seen to best advantage in his justly celebrated “Contemplations on the Old and New Testaments,” which every preacher will find exceedingly instructive and suggestive, and from which I have observed that some recent German preachers borrow striking remarks, sometimes giving them verbatim without acknowledgment. No preacher of the highest power or of lasting reputation for three-quarters of a century, and yet this was precisely the age of Shakspeare and Bacon. The fact certainly calls for explanation. It will not do to say that the national mind was too much occupied with the Armada and the new trade with the Indies. These did not prevent the grand literary outburst, represented by Raleigh and Sidney, Spenser, Shakspeare and the other great dramatists, and Bacon. The comparative inferiority of preaching must be referred mainly to two causes. (1) There was in all Europe a reaction, more or less marked, from the excitement which had accompanied the early stages of the Reformation; and as a natural consequence of this reaction, preaching would become less intensely earnest. (2) There was in England at this time a great lack of religious freedom, and without this we can hardly anywhere find examples of the highest pulpit eloquence. The more radical reformers, nicknamed “Puritans,” who insisted that church government, ceremonies, and religious life mast all be strictly conformed to the “pure Word of God,” and not controlled by the crown or by old Catholic usage, were from the time of Edward VI. numerous and earnest, but by no means agreed among themselves as to the length to which they would carry their opposition to Episcopacy, Catholic ceremonies, and Royal supremacy over the church. These unorganized and varying radical tendencies were sternly repressed by Elizabeth, and with no small success, both because of her immense personal popularity and by reason of her comparative moderation and regal tact. Still, while the reaction from the early zeal of the Reformation was lessening the zeal of the dominant churchmen, these Puritan tendencies continually, though slowly, gathered strength. Under James I., who was unpopular and unwise, the persecution grew much more harsh and irritating, and therefore the Puritans became stronger. It began to appear to them that both political and religious freedom depended on the maintenance and triumph of their Puritan principles. Under Charles the two parties became more and more antagonistic and embittered, each party hating whatever doctrines and customs the others maintained, and the Puritans gradually became willing to die for their tenets, fearless of persecution and because fearless, free in heart. Meantime the Royalists had taken up the new theory that Episcopacy was Scriptural, of Divine appointment, like the Divine right of kings, and so their civil and religious loyalty mingled and strengthened each other. Now again there was burning religious earnestness and zeal, and thus it became possible that there should be intensely earnest and truly eloquent preaching.

Meanwhile, the thoughts of men were aroused and widened, as the seventeenth century went on. Voltaire thinks the French Calvinistic refugees carried eloquence into foreign countries. But this is nonsense as regards England, for the first Huguenot refugees found the great age of English pulpit eloquence almost at an end. In fact, every one of the great English preachers, Puritan and Anglican, with the single exception of South, was older than Bourdaloue, and several of them were twelve or fourteen years older than Bossuet. 1 Clearly they did not learn eloquence from the French. The truth is that both English and French were stirred and moved by the spirit of the age, as I tried to describe it in the last lecture. And in England this spirit of the age combined with the fierce conflict between Puritan and Churchman, to quicken religious thought and kindle religious zeal, and thus to create the noble English eloquence of the seventeenth century. The great preachers of that age are so well known that a brief reference to each of them may be at once intelligible and sufficient.

Jeremy Taylor (1613–77), a graduate of Cambridge and always a zealous loyalist, was silenced during the Protectorate of Cromwell, and twice imprisoned, just as Bunyan was afterwards imprisoned by the other side. Supported by a nobleman as private chaplain, he spent those stormy years in diligent study and writing, and Charles II. made him a bishop. The “poet preacher,” as he is often called, would be intolerable now were it not for his fervent piety. His style is almost unrivalled among orators for its affluence of elegant diction, and its wealth of charming imagery. It is the very perfection of that species of eloquence which so many Sophomores are disappointed at not finding in Demosthenes, which they so fondly admire in Society speeches that go forever curling like blue smoke towards the skies. With the modern love for directness and downrightness of expression, we are apt utterly to condemn this high-wrought splendor of ornamentation, even as we should consider one of Sir Walter Raleigh’s doublets of bright-hued velvet, slashed with lace, to be very pretty no doubt but a trifle ridiculous. Even Dr. South already ridiculed Taylor’s poetic imagery with merciless severity; and at the present day I think few persons of mature age can read long in his glittering pages without weariness. And yet if one’s style is naturally dry, he would find it a very profitable thing to interest himself in Jeremy Taylor, not only the Sermons (which may be had in a single volume), but still more the famous treatises on Holy Living and Holy Dying.

Similar to Taylor in fervor and sweetness, even surpassing him in unction, and at the same time remarkable for his clear and engaging style, is Archbishop Leighton (1613–84). Learned, deeply devout, and of kindly and loving nature, his pages reflect his character. If you ask why he is so much praised and so little read, the answer would be, I think, that his writings, like his character, are lacking in force. He was not a man of decided nature and positive convictions. He consented to leave the Scotch Presbyterian ministry and become a bishop, with the sincere hope that he might mingle the fire and water of the two great religious parties, and sadly mourned over his failure to overcome stubborn convictions which he was constitutionally unfitted to comprehend. Now there is a corresponding want of decision, positiveness, power, in his works, and this is a want for which nothing can make amends.

Leighton was fifty years old when he changed his denomination, and the credit of his eloquence might be claimed by both sides. But exactly contemporary with him and Jeremy Taylor were two Puritan preachers of great eminence, Baxter and Owen.

Baxter (1615–91) was not regularly educated, as were nearly all the distinguished preachers of that age, but from youth was a great reader, and through life a voluminous writer. His controversial works are said to show great metaphysical subtlety, and a good deal of hot-headed unfairness. His schemes for ecclesiastical union or “comprehension” were spoken of last summer by Dean Stanley with enthusiastic admiration, as might have been expected, but to ordinary mortals they seem much more creditable to his heart than his head. But as preacher, and as pastor, Baxter’s powers have seldom been equalled. The general reader cannot be advised to study his sermons, for with all their power they are to our taste very wearisome by their great length and their immense and confused multiplication of divisions and particulars. The scholastic method of dividing and subdividing without end reappears in these great Puritan preachers as nowhere else. Besides the demand which high Calvinism always makes for close thinking and careful distinctions, these interpreters were influenced by the desire to find everything in Scripture, and to draw out from every passage the whole of its possible contents; and they were restrained in their analytical extravagances by no such sense of artistic propriety as marked the French Calvinistic preachers, and in a less degree the Anglican preachers of the same age. It may be added that none of the Puritan divines seem to have given the slightest attention to finish of style, caring only for copiousness and force—a torrent of speech. These facts may help to account for the immense extent of their writings. Every possible question, of religion and of politics, was then hotly discussed with fresh and present interest; each of these questions the writer would treat under every possible aspect and with a studious multiplication of particulars; and not a moment’s thought was bestowed on elegance of expression or artistic symmetry of arrangement. No wonder they wrote so much. But while the great mass of Baxter’s works have lost their interest, and his sermons are unattractive, every minister ought carefully to read his practical treatises which have gained so wide a fame, the Call to the Unconverted, Saints’ Rest, Narrative of his own Life, Dying Thoughts, and Reformed Pastor. These exhibit the great and singularly profitable characteristic of Baxter’s preaching and writing, viz., his burning, earth-shaking, tremendous earnestness. In this high quality of preaching he has hardly anywhere an equal. Read these volumes, again and again, and let them kindle anew in your soul the zeal of the gospel. John Angell James tells of an “Earnest Ministry” in such a way as to make one desire earnestness; but far more will Baxter do towards making us really earnest.

Owen (1616–83) was a scholar in both classical and Rabbinical learning, worthy to be the contemporary of Lightfoot and Walton, ambitious as a boy student at Oxford, prodigious in life-long study and authorship, and at the same time a simple, earnest, and highly impressive preacher. His great exegetical and theological works were the favorite study of Andrew Fuller, who regarded his character also with admiring reverence. Fuller was a very noble example of the “self-made” theologian and preacher, but he made himself with the help of the great scholars who had preceded him—as selfmade men commonly must do. A conveniently accessible and good specimen of Owen’s sermons may be found in the volume on Forgiveness, which is a series of discourses on the 130th Psalm. A dozen years younger than Baxter and Owen was Flavel (1627–91). He also was educated at Oxford, and a good scholar. While not equal to Owen in vigor and depth of thought, or to Baxter in overwhelming earnestness, he is pre-eminent for tenderness, unction, and also excels in clearness, both of arrangement and of style. He constructs discourses after the fashion of the time, but in striking contrast to those of Baxter and Howe, his plans are lucid, and even to our altered taste are not unpleasing. It was by hearing a pious lady read Flavel that young Archibald Alexander, a schoolmaster in the Wilderness, near Fredericksburg, Va., was brought to Christian faith and hope.

Bunyan (1628–88) was not only without regular education, but was not even a great reader like Baxter. Yet his sermons are quite à la mode, full of divisions and subdivisions, and their tone of thought shows intellectual sympathy with the best minds of the age. Even in those few cases in which really great “self-made” men have not learned much from books, they are always educated by the thought of their time, the ideas and aspirations which fill the intellectual atmosphere. When Bunyan began to preach, at the age of twenty-eight, Owen and Baxter were forty years old, Milton forty-eight, and it was only two years before the death of Cromwell. How much there was to stimulate and educate the susceptible and vigorous mind of the young tinker. Bunyan’s sermons, though often wearisome in length and in minute analysis, yet show clearness of arrangement and great fulness of thought, with singular practical point and consuming earnestness. His language in preaching cannot be expected to exhibit that high poetic grace, that exalted and charming simplicity into which his fancy was lifted amid the inspiring dreams of Bedford jail, but it is language not unworthy of the immortal dreamer. He abounds in lively turns and racy phrases, in a vivid dramatism that no preacher has surpassed, and his homeliest expressions are redeemed from vulgarity by a native elegance, an instinctive good taste. The brief story of his early life and conversion given in the treatise called “Grace Abounding” is worthy to be placed beside Augustine’s Confessions, and his allegory of the Holy War has been unjustly obscured by the lustre of its great rival. But the “Solomon’s Temple Spiritualized” shows the same creative imagination gone crazy with wild allegorizing, because unrestrained by any just principles of interpretation. Only a great genius could produce such nonsense.

It remains to mention, among the foremost Puritan preachers, John Howe (1630–1705). The Life of Howe, by that admirable writer, Henry Rogers, is of late accessible in a cheap form. As there was very little of incident to relate, the biographer has made his work all the more valuable to us by discussing many related matters in the religious history of the time.

Howe was graduated both at Cambridge and at Oxford. It is to be noticed that in that age men who held to Calvinistic doctrine and non-episcopal church government could have the benefit of the English Universities; and that most of the great Puritan divines were graduates, as were Henry Dunster, and others of those who established the civilization and culture of New England. This fact is suggestive, and yet we are warned not to push too far our inferences from it by the cases of Baxter and Bunyan. At Cambridge, Howe was intimate with Cudworth, More, and other famous Platonists, and became a devoted and appreciative student of Plato. He was a great philosophic theologian, and at the same time a very earnest and eloquent preacher. With extraordinary power of intellect he had also remarkable power of imagination. Robert Hall said to a friend: “I have learned far more from John Howe than from any other author I ever read.” Henry Rogers states that in conversation with him Hall once went so far as to say, “as a minister, he had derived more benefit from Howe than from all other divines put together.” This fervid admiration is in part accounted for from the fact that Howe ably wrought out and powerfully stated, as in his treatise on “The Divine Prescience,” precisely that scheme of moderate Calvinism which alone suited Mr. Hall’s mind. But notice that Hall added, to the friend first mentioned: “There is an astonishing magnificence in his conceptions.” Of this “magnificence” no one could better judge than Robert Hall. For two reasons mere cursory readers are in danger of not appreciating Howe’s eloquence. He is so addicted to metaphysical thinking that we often have difficulty in following him, and so are apt to be engrossed with his philosophical theology. The other reason is the ruggedness of his style. Mr. Hall says: “There was, I think, an innate inaptitude in Howe’s mind for discerning minute graces and proprieties, and hence his sentences are often long and cumbersome. Still he was unquestionably the greatest of the Puritan divines.” Both the obscurity and the awkwardness of style must have been partially relieved for his hearers by the delivery. But for us it is necessary in approaching the study of Howe to expect difficulty, and the consequent careful reading will bring us into acquaintance with many of the noblest thoughts the human mind can conceive. The changes since Howe’s time have in no respect been greater than in regard to the length of religious services. His contemporary Calamy says, with reference to the public fast days which were common during the Protectorate: Mr. Howe “told me it was upon those occasions his common way, to begin about nine in the morning, with a prayer for about a quarter of an hour, in which he begged a blessing on the work of the day; and afterwards read and expounded a chapter or psalm, in which he spent about three-quarters of an hour; then prayed for about an hour, preached for another hour, and prayed for about half an hour. After this, he retired and took some little refreshment for about a quarter of an hour (the people singing all the while), and then came again into the pulpit and prayed for another hour, and gave them another sermon of about an hour’s length; and so concluded the services of the day, at about four of the clock in the evening, with about half an hour or more in prayer.” Seven hours of continuous services, with an intermission of fifteen minutes for the poor preacher, and none at all for the poor people! But in our restless age, have we not gone quite to the opposite extreme? In the same year with Howe were born Barrow and Tillotson. Barrow (1630–77) was not only a very great man, but in many respects peculiar. His extraordinary physical strength and his force of character led to a youthful fondness for fighting, and in general he was so wayward and violent as to extort from his despairing father the singular wish, that “if it pleased God to take away any of his children, it might be his son Isaac.” This famous saying ought to be repeated on all occasions, as it is such a comfort to all young men who were bad boys. The physical strength deserves special notice, for great literary achievements require uncommon power of bodily endurance, and this is usually attended by corresponding bodily strength. Few men have produced numerous and able works who were not strong in body. But trusting in his bodily strength, Barrow indulged excessively in the use of tobaco—a species of indulgence which (I venture to suggest) is particularly injurious to persons of sedentary, studious and anxious life, unsafe even for healthy ministers, and inevitably hurtful to those who are at all feeble and nervous. Imprudent in various respects, he lived to the age of only forty-seven. His early attainments were wonderful. He was made Fellow of Trinity at nineteen, and would have been appointed Greek Professor at twenty-four, but for the unpopularity, at that time, of his Arminianism. He then spent five years in continental travel, practicing rigorous economy, and engaged in diligent study and intercourse with learned men. Do our American youth of to-day possess quite enough of that spirit which for sweet learning’s sake has so often faced the most serious difficulties and practiced the sternest self-denial? I think Barrow and his contemporary Bourdaloue were the first great preachers of modern times who had been careful students of mathematics, and Barrow of the physical sciences also. There is something inspiring in the bare mention of the fact that Isaac Barrow resigned a mathematical chair at Cambridge to his pupil, Isaac Newton. But with all his devotion to these subjects he also laboriously studied the Classics and the Fathers, reading, for instance, the entire works of Chrysostom during a year’s sojourn at Constantinople. As your examinations are approaching, I will tell the story of Barrow’s examination for orders. The aged bishop, wishing but little trouble, placed the candidates in a row, and asked three questions. First, Quid est fides? Barrow, near the end of the row, had time to think, and when it came to his turn answered, Quod non vides. Excellenter, said the bishop. To the second question, Quid eat spes? he answered, Nondum res, and the old man cried Excellentius. The third was Quid est caritas? and Barrow answered, Ah! magister, id est raritas. Excellentissime, shouted the bishop, aut Erasmus est, aut diabolus. But while really a prodigy of attainments and intellectual achievements, Barrow was never a working pastor, and most of the sermons he left were in fact never preached. Hence he was lacking in practical point and directness, in the tact of the experienced preacher. His sermons are really disquisitions on some topic, written to satisfy his own mind, and designed to be read to others if he should find occasion. As disquisitions they are wonderfully comprehensive and complete, fully unfolding the subject proposed, and accumulating a wealth of interesting particulars. These particulars are sometimes wearisomely numerous, but, unlike the Puritan discourses we spoke of, they are in general naturally arranged, and each of them really adds something to the train of thought. His style is ill described by Doddridge as “laconic,” for it is in the highest degree copious, but it is condensed, compact. Every paragraph seems a treatise, each long sentence is crowded with ideas. And yet the whole has movement, vigorous and majestic movement, with the energy of profuseness, like a broadly rolling torrent.

Barrow is decidedly Arminian. The church of England was at first Calvinistic in doctrine, as the Articles show, but royalist hostility to the Puritans had gradually extended to a rejection of the doctrinal views especially associated with them, and Churchmen were by this time generally foes to Calvinism. Barrow however shows little enthusiasm for doctrine. His best sermons are on moral subjects, embracing all the leading topics of Christian morality. I know not where else in our language there can be found sermons on this important class of subjects so complete, forcible, satisfactory as those of Barrow. We have heretofore noticed the fact that he and Bourdaloue, both excelling in this respect, were both loving students of the early master on moral topics, Chrysostom. Read Jeremy Taylor to enrich the fancy, but Barrow to enrich the intellect and to show how the greatest copiousness may unite with great compactness and great energy of movement. Of two other Anglican preachers in that age I shall speak but briefly.

Dr. South (1638–1716) cannot be recommended for doctrine, nor yet for spirit, as he is unloving, harsh in his polemics, and delights in a savage style of sarcasm. But he shows great vigor of thought, and skill in argument, particularly in refutation. The discussions are relieved by racy wit, the plan of discussion is simple and clear, for that age, and the style is condensed, direct and pungent. Mr. Beecher speaks of having found special pleasure and profit in an early study of South.

Archbishop Tillotson (1630–94), on the other hand, was a kindly and loving man, kind even to Nonconformists—which is much to say for a Churchman of that period. Like Barrow and South, he does not preach the “doctrines of grace,” but his polemics against Popery, and against the growing infidelity, are models of manly vigor, unstained by bitterness. Tillotson was by many of his contemporaries considered the foremost preacher of the age, and yet at the present day is far less admired than Jeremy Taylor and Barrow. I think this can be accounted for. As to the fact itself, Saurin, the French Protestant, who came to London six years after the good Archbishop’s death, and was doubtless all the more attracted to his works by hearing of his kindness to the Huguenot Refugees, speaks with great enthusiasm of his writings, calling him ‘my master,’ as Cyprian used to call Tertullian. Bishop Burnet, who survived Tillotson only twenty years, says: “He was not only the best preacher of the age, but seemed to have brought preaching to perfection; his sermons were so well liked, that all the nation proposed him as a pattern, and studied to copy after him.” The explanation is, I think, that Tillotson satisfied the yearning of the age for greater clearness and simplicity, both in arrangement of discourse and in style, a yearning doubtless strengthened, though not caused, by the French taste that prevailed in the court of Charles II. From the quirks and conceits of the Elizabethan prose, the involved, elaborate, sometimes stupendous sentences found even in Milton and Barrow, and the wearisome divisions and subdivisions of the Puritan preachers, and their contemporary Anglicans, to the easy and careless grace of the Addisonian period, the transition is made by Tillotson. Macaulay relates that Dryden was frequently heard to “own with pleasure that, if he had any talent for English prose, it was owing to his having often read the writings of the great Archbishop Tillotson.” But of this simplicity in arrangement and style we have long had numerous examples, some of them comparatively free from the faults of negligence which are noted in Tillotson and in Addison. As to topics, Tillotson’s arguments against infidelity are of course superseded now, and his able polemics against the Papacy have no general interest. Thus it comes to pass that we find little profit, and little ground for special admiration, in works which were long considered the noblest models of composition.

Much depends on peculiarities of taste, and on felt personal need, but if I were required to recommend two of the great English preachers of the seventeenth century as likely most richly to reward thorough study at the present time, I should name Barrow among the Churchmen, and among the Puritans John Howe. When this splendid group of preachers, with their contemporaries whom we have not been able to notice, had passed away, there threatened to be as complete a collapse of the English pulpit as was at the same time occurring in France. The Puritans, who formed the vital element of the preceding century, had fallen into popular disfavor, and the Act of Toleration under William and Mary took away the stimulus of persecution. What was worse, they were cut off from the universities, an unjust deprivation to which all Nonconformists were condemned until within the last few years. Their opportunities of education during the eighteenth century were confined to inferior “Academies,” and the Scotch Universities. Many an aspiring youth, as for example, Joseph Butler, was tempted into conformity by the prospect, sometimes even the offer, of an education at Oxford or Cambridge. And it was only as the Dissenters’ Colleges in England, and the Scottish Universities began to do vigorous teaching at the close of the century, that there was again a Nonconformist ministry of great power. As to the Churchmen, they had lost the stimulus of Puritan rivalry in preaching, and were now engaged in a life and death struggle for the truth of Christianity with that rising infidelity which had sprung on the one hand from the rationalizing philosophy of Descartes and Hobbes, and on the other from the reaction into immorality which ensued upon the fall of the Commonwealth. This struggle for the truth of Revelation was powerfully maintained by Bishop Butler and others, while Richard Bentley was carrying classical learning to a height never surpassed in English history. In this state of things, during the first half of the eighteenth century, English preaching did not rise above mediocrity. Bishop Atterbury, learned and elegant, but not strong, was the leading preacher of the day in the Establishment. Among the Dissenters, Watts had considerable ability and some eloquence, but would now be utterly forgotten were it not for his hymns. And Doddridge, worked to death with his Academy, his pastorate, his correspondence and authorship, has left good sermons and good books, but nothing of the highest excellence. In Scotland there was Maclaurin, whose sermon on “Glorying in the Cross” is truly one of the “Masterpieces of Pulpit Eloquence.” And in far New England lived the foremost preacher of the age, one of the very noblest in all history for intellect, imagination, and passion, for true and high eloquence, Jonathan Edwards.

Towards the middle of the century two men became known who have made illustrious the English preaching of their day. Whitefield and Wesley were both Oxford men, and used their cultivation in that preaching to the masses which had been the glory of the Puritan period. While Bolingbroke assailed Revelation, and Chesterfield politely sneered at everything unselfish and good, and Christian Apologists vainly strove to convince the intellect of the upper classes, Whitefield and Wesley began to preach to the consciences of men, and thus felt no need of confining their discourse to the cultivated and refined. In this preaching to the conscience must always begin, I think, the reaction from an age of skepticism. The biographies of Whitefield (1714–70) are full of instruction. The sermons we have were mere preparations, which in free delivery were so filled out with the thoughts suggested in the course of living speech, and so transfigured and glorified by enkindled imagination, as to be utterly different from the dull, cold. thing that here lies before us —more different than the blazing meteor from this dark, metallic stone that lies half buried in the earth. The sermons of Wesley (1703–91) require study, and will reward it. As printed, they were commonly written out after frequent delivery. They are too condensed to have been spoken, in this form, to the colliers and the servant girls at five o’clock in the morning. But they must be in substance the same that he habitually preached, and they present a problem. Wesley had nothing of Whitefield’s impassioned oratory. He spoke with simple earnestness, and remained quiet while his hearers grew wild with excitement. What was the secret? Where the hidden power? We can only say that it was undoubting faith and extraordinary force of character, together with a peculiarity seen also in some generals on the field of battle, that their most intense excitement makes little outward noise or show and yet subtly communicates itself to others. No man can repeatedly make others feel deeply who does not feel deeply himself; it is only a difference in the way of showing it. Of course this subtle electricity resides in the soul of the speaker much more than in the recorded discourse. But read carefully these condensed and calm-looking sermons, and see if you do not feel the power of the man, and find yourself sometimes strangely moved.

Late in the century, and dying just before Wesley, was Robert Robinson (1735–90), who has left numerous sermons that are full of life, with flashes of genius. His erratic and uncertain course as to doctrine has caused him to be neglected. But a volume of his selected sermons, with a statement on the title-page that he was the author of the hymn, “Come, thou fount of every blessing,” ought to find sale, and would be interesting and useful.

We come now to the nineteenth century, in which English pulpit literature is not only abundant but shows real power, and which must be divided, for our purpose, into an earlier and a later portion. It is obvious that we can only mention the principal names, and that very briefly. In the early part of the century the leading preachers were Hall, Chalmers, and Jay. The deeply interesting history of Robert Hall (1764–1831) is generally familiar, and remains as a choice morsel for those who have not read it. His precocity in childhood, his education, his inner life and character, and the origin of his works, are all topics full of interest. He was equally studious of thought and of style, and in both he reached the highest excellence. Take any one of his greatest sermons and you will see an exhibition of the noblest powers. There is a thorough acquaintance with his subject, and a vigorous grasp of it. There is great knowledge of human nature, and this not in the way of mere crude observation but of profound reflection. He who at nine years of age delighted in Edwards on the Will and Butler’s Analogy, has ever since been a profound student of metaphysics, ethics, and philosophical theology like that of Howe, and in this deep sense has studied human nature. He shows great analytical power, dissecting every part of the subject, and laying it open; and at the same time adequate power of construction, giving the discourse a clear, simple and complete plan. We also perceive singular power of argument. The whole sermon is often an argument, and upon a view of the subject well chosen for general effect; and the arguments, though usually profound, are made level to the capacity of all intelligent hearers. His imagination is exalted, imperial, but constantly subordinated to the purposes of the argument. Nowhere is there imagery that appears to be introduced for its own sake. The most splendid bursts, the loftiest flights, seem to come just where they are natural and needful. And the style—well, it is a model of perspicuity, energy, and elegance. The terms are chosen with singular felicity. The sentences are never very long, nor in the slightest degree involved, and longer and shorter sentences are agreeably mingled, while the rhythm is greatly varied, and always harmonious. Do we mean to say that Mr. Hall’s style is perfect? No, there are palpable, though slight defects, in his most finished productions, as there are in every work of every writer. And in one important respect Mr. Hall’s style is, if not faulty, yet quite opposed to the taste of our own time. It has a dignity that is too uniformly sustained. Though not at all pompous, it is never familiar, and thus its range is restricted. There is the same difference with regard to style, between that age and this, as with regard to dress and manners. And while we are sometimes too free and easy, in all these directions, yet upon the whole we have gained. If Robert Hall lived in our time, he would have greater flexibility, and thereby his noble sermons would be sensibly improved. Whether he would not, if reared in our age, have been lacking in more important respects, is another question.

Christmas Evans, the Welshman (1766–1838), is a notable example of untutored eloquence. His undisciplined imagination rioted in splendors, his descriptive powers captivated the enthusiastic Keltic mountaineers, and the whirlwinds of his passion bore them aloft to the skies. For such a man, thorough education might have hampered the wings of soaring fancy, and made him really less effective—a Pegasus harnessed to the plough.

William Jay (1769–1853) was not a man of shining gifts, but is an excellent model of sermonizing, in respect to his fresh, ingenious and yet natural plans, and in his copious, often strikingly felicitous quotations from the Bible. Read his sermons, and also his admirable Morning and Evening Exercises, which are sermons on a small scale.

Robert Hall’s most gifted contemporary in the pulpit was Chalmers (1780–1847), whose rare genius and unique method in preaching one would find pleasure, if there were opportunity, in attempting to depict. No student of English preaching must fail to read the magnificent Astronomical Sermons, nor at least a part of the expository Lectures on Romans. He will find that the one thought of each discourse is not merely presented in ever varying beauty, like the kaleidoscope to which Hall compared Chalmers’ preaching, but as in our stereoscope it is made to stand out in solid form and full proportions. His religious philosophy is elevated and satisfying. His style is beautiful, but any imitation of it would be unpleasing if not ridiculous.

I could wish to speak at some length of the English preachers who have attained distinction in the last thirty or forty years. I should want to commend Melvill for his numerous and suggestive examples of rich discourses drawn by legitimate process from the most unlikely texts; and to tell of John Henry Newman, with his deep, magnetic nature, whose plain and intensely vital discourses make the soul quiver with solemn awe. To recommend Frederick Robertson would be a work of supererogation, for everybody has been reading him, but there might be profit in attempting to discriminate, as he himself could not, between the true and false elements which had grown up together in his thought, and between the strength and the weakness of his so attractive discourses. I should direct special attention to Canon Liddon, now the leading preacher in the Church of England, whose elaborate sermons show us how the most difficult fundamental questions of religion, questions of Providence and prayer, of sin and atonement, of the soul and immortality, may be treated with reference to the ablest attacks of disbelief and doubt, and yet without making the sermon unintelligible, in general, to any hearers of fair capacity and cultivation. And there is a whole class of recent preachers in England and Scotland, who have given new power and interest to expository preaching, bringing to bear the methods and results of modern Biblical learning, and not disregarding, as did Chrysostom and in a less degree Luther, the absolute need, in order to the most effective discourse, of unity and plan. Alford’s other sermons are not of great power; but his Sunday afternoon lectures in London, with many hearers holding their Greek Testaments, were, according to the testimony of Bishop Ellicott * and others, surpassingly instructive and engaging. Dr. Vaughan’s expository sermons on the Book of Revelation are quite good. Johnstone on James and on Philippians meets exactly the wants of a highly educated but gospel-loving congregation. And Candlish, the foremost Scottish preacher of the century except Chalmers, has in his Genesis, First Epistle of John, and fifteenth chapter of Corinthians, taught a new and high lesson in pulpit exposition. The time would fail to speak of strong Dr. Binney and Newman Hall and Joseph Parker, all deservedly famous; of Bishop Wilberforce and Bishop Magee, whom one of his colleagues on the Episcopal bench described to me as the finest extemporaneous speaker in England; of Guthrie and Caird, Cumming and Ker; of Landells and Maclaren, whose little volumes of brief, fresh and spirited discourses are very suggestive to city pastors; and of Spurgeon, a model in several respects, but whose greatest distinction, to my mind, is the fact that he has so long gathered and held vast congregations, and kept the ear of the reading world, without ever forsaking the gospel in search of variety, or weakening his doctrine to suit the tastes of the age. But I have purposely spoken chiefly of both the English and the French preachers who lived before our own time. I think that young men should be specially exhorted to read old books. If you have a friend in the ministry who is growing old, urge him to read mainly new books, that he may freshen his mind, and keep in sympathy with his surroundings. “But must not young men keep abreast of the age?” Certainly, only the first thing is to get abreast of the age, and in order to this they must go back to where the age came from, and join there the great procession of its moving thought. Can I suggest anything, in conclusion, with reference to the character and demands, as to preaching, of the time to which you will belong, the coming third or half of a century? I shall barely touch a few points, without any expansion.

(1) It becomes every day more important to draw a firm line of demarkation between Physical Science and Theology, and to insist that each party shall work on its own side the line in peace. Even where there appears to be ground of antagonism, it will commonly be best not to court conflict, but to work quietly on in the assurance that we have truth, and that as new scientific theories pass out of speculation into matured truth also, it will then become plain enough in what way the two departments of truth are to be reconciled.

(2) As the past generation has witnessed a painfully rapid growth of religious skepticism in England and America, so it is to be expected that your generation will see a great and blessed reaction. Unless I am mistaken, that reaction has already in some directions begun to show itself. You will promote the healthier tendencies by preaching the definite doctrines of the Bible, and by abundant exposition of the Bible text. Men grow weary of mere philosophical speculation and vague sentiment, and will listen again to the sweet and solemn voice of the Word of God.

(3) Our age has made remarkable progress as to one great doctrine of Christianity—progress, not in apprehending the doctrine, but in realizing its truth. As the fourth century made clear the Divinity of Christ, so the nineteenth century has brought out his Humanity. The most destructive criticism has unconsciously contributed to this result. It will henceforth be possible to present more complete and symmetrical views of the Lord Jesus Christ and his work of salvation than the pulpit has generally exhibited in any past age. Picture vividly before your hearers Jesus the man, while not allowing them to forget that he was Christ the Son of God, and you will mightily win them to love and serve him.

(4) It will be important to sympathize with and use the humanitarian tendencies which have become so strongly developed. Show in a thousand ways what Christianity has done and can do for all the noblest interests of humanity, and how all this is possible only because Christianity is itself divine. The one true gospel of humanity is the gospel of the Son of God.

(5) You must know how to unite breadth of view, and charity in feeling, with fidelity to truth. The age is in love with liberality, and allows that word to cover many a falsehood and many a folly. But the age will feel more and more its need of truth, and “speaking truth in love” will meet its double want.

(6) As to methods of preaching, you are entered upon a time of great freedom in composition, a time in which men are little restrained by classical models or current usage, whether as to the structure or the style of discourse. This is true in general literature, and also in preaching. You may freely adopt any of the methods which have been found useful in any age of the past, or by varied experiment may learn for yourselves how best to meet the wants of the present. Freedom is always a blessing and a power, when it is used with wise self-control.

(7) It is scarcely necessary to caution you against the love of sensation which marks our excitable age. We see this in many writers of history and romance, even in some writers nn science, to say nothing of numerous politicians and periodicals. A few preachers, some of them weak but some really strong men, have fallen in with this tendency of the time. Where they have done much real good, it has been rather in spite of this practice, than by means of it, and they should be instructive as a warning.

(8) In your time, as in all times, the thing needed will be not oratorical display but genuine eloquence, the eloquence which springs from vigorous thinking, strong convictions, fervid imagination and passionate earnestness; and true spiritual success will be attained only in proportion as you gain, in humble prayer, the blessing of the Holy Spirit.

I trust, brethren, that these observations on the History of Preaching—for the abounding imperfections of which I shall not stop to apologize—may by God’s blessing be of some use in preparing you for the difficult and responsible, yet sweet and blessed work to which your lives are devoted. I trust you will feel incited to study the instructive history and inspiring discourses of the great preachers who have gone before you, and will be stimulated by their example to develop every particle of your native power, and to fill your whole life with zealous usefulness. Themistocles said the trophies of Marathon would not let him sleep. May the thought of all the noble preachers and their blessed work kindle in you a noble emulation. And when weary and worn, stir vourselves to fresh zeal by remembering the rest that remaineth and the rewards that cannot fail. “ o to shine,” said Whitefield one night as he stood preaching in the open air and looked up to the brilliant heavens, “ o to shine as the brightness of the firmament, as yonder stars forever and ever.”

End Notes

^* Although English pulpit literature is so rich, it is remarkable that we have no treatise whatever on its history. The well known aversion of the English to rhetorical art might in this case have been overcome by their love of history. Of late years America has greatly surpassed the mother-country in the production of numerous and valuable works on Homiletics, and in like manner it may be that Americans will take the lead in writing the history of the English Pulpit. Corresponding works exist already among the French, and are somewhat numerous in Germany. But even the German writers confine themselves almost entirely to their own country, being apparently quite unacquainted with the English preachers.

¹ Examine the following table:

^* See the Bishop’s excellent paper in the Life of Alford.