Chapter 14: The Old Style And The New

Chapter 14.
The Old Style And The New The Work in London commenced—The Older Pulpit Models—Characteristics of a "Great" Sermon—Other Ministers of the Time—"The Gold-headed Cane Era"—Professor Everett's Reminiscences—The Situation in London—Mr. W. Ford's Recollections—Lord Shaftesbury's Work.

Mr. Spurgeon's great work in London was commenced before either the preacher himself or his friends were well aware of the fact. Certainly no one as yet understood that a new era in the history of the English pulpit had been opened, and that in time the style of ornate oratory which had been in fashion since the days of Dr. Johnson would give place to a more natural method of public speaking, of which the young preacher from Waterbeach was to become the chief model. Of course, persons were able to see at once that there was something strikingly novel about the young pastor at New Park Street; but it was not to be expected that they would all at once realise that one of the most far-reaching innovations of modern times was being introduced. There were superfine critics who detected what they called "Saxon" as the leading characteristic of the discourses given at the Southwark meetinghouse, and that might be a merit in one who was incapable of soaring higher. The Latinised style of Johnson and Gibbon was still their standard of excellence. To observers of to-day it will appear sufficiently strange that such a standard should have been in favour, while in Addison and Gold-smith, as well as in Matthew Henry and Cowper, models existed which were so infinitely superior. As regarded the common people, who knew little or nothing about either style or Saxon, Mr. Spurgeon spoke a language they could understand without being obliged to refer to a dictionary, and they heard him gladly. No doubt it looked something like presumption in so young a man when he thus deliberately set his face against the fashion which had prevailed for generations, and set up a method of his own. Indeed, this appears to have been one of the charges brought against him; and very early in his London career Mr. Spurgeon found it necessary to say something in reply. He did the best thing possible under the circumstances, by acknowledging that the new method of preaching had been introduced; but he explained that he had acted as he had done because he judged the new method to be better than the old. The reader can best understand the importance of the innovation of which Mr. Spurgeon was one of the pioneers, by reminding himself of the style of preaching exemplified by the leading pulpit orators of those days. There was John Angell James (1785-1859), for instance, whom Mr. Spurgeon himself greatly admired. In a sketch of James's life, Dr. E. W. Dale tells us that "his sermon in May, 1819, for the London Missionary Society, was long remembered and spoken of as one of the most remarkable of the 'great efforts' which in those times made the annual sermon at Surrey Chapel the chief attraction of the May week.... Like all his great sermons preached in his earlier years, it was delivered memoriter, and his brother, who sat in the pulpit with the manuscript in his hand, to 'prompt' the preacher if for a moment he faltered, has told me that hardly an epithet, a conjunction, or a preposition was forgotten." A sermon of this kind, with its introduction, divisions, subdivisions, transitions, application, and peroration, was an exceedingly elaborate production, to which people might listen in wondering admiration, but which was not calculated to answer the chief end of preaching; and we can well believe that Dr. Dale is right when he says of the estimable colleague of his younger days, "I think that he was at his best when he did not feel himself under any obligation to make a great effort." Dr. Stoughton, too, speaks of James's rhetoric as being "too ornate and ambitious," although it drew forth encomiums from Lord Holland.

Another pulpit celebrity of those days was Henry Melvill, of whom the late E. Paxton Hood remarks:—"Fine preaching, we say, this of Mr. Melvill's; and the labour bestowed upon it was said to have been immense. During the time that he preached at Camden Chapel in London, the reports in circulation respecting the solicitude manifested by him during the composition of a discourse were many and ludicrous. We heard that he was quite inaccessible for about eight hours of every day in the week, closely locked, it was said, in his study. He, at that time, was said to bestow pains upon his discourses as if, instead of being delivered to two thousand persons, they were to be models for all future ages. We have sometimes doubted this, and are still prepared to believe that they are exaggerators who assure us that at these times he invariably wrote his discourses twice and sometimes thrice; after which they were transcribed by his wife in a clear and legible hand for the pulpit. Suppose the case not to be so bad as this, still is it not dreadful thus to misunderstand the intentions of the Gospel ministry?" The introduction of a simpler, more natural style of preaching is not to be traced to Mr. Spurgeon alone, although his was doubtless the chief share in it. We find the Rev. Edward White claiming some share of the work for the late pastor of the Weigh House Chapel:—"He was an epoch-making man, though marking an epoch perhaps as much as making it. Providence seems to have given this eminent person to the Congregational Dissenters just when such an influence was needed to lift them out of the somewhat cramped formulas of the Georgian era.... The age of silk and lavender, and of successful suppression of inquiry under devious phrases, was coming to an end. It was inevitable that much of the ancient style of thought, handed down since the age of Charles II., should pass away, and no single person did so much to promote the reform as Mr. Binney." In the course of an address to his old students, given just twenty years after he first came to London, I overheard Mr. Spurgeon characterise the old times as the "Gold-headed Cane Era." He would also occasionally refer to those antique ornaments of the London pulpit who, in the first place, took care to be gentlemen, whatever they might be, or might not be, besides. When such portrayals were carefully examined, they were found not to be so charged with exaggeration as some may have been disposed to think.

Mr. R. J. Curtis, of the Ragged School Union, communicates the following concerning Mr. Spurgeon and the "Gold-headed Cane Era":—

"An early impression of his was that of want of contact between the people and the pulpit. The ministers, with a sort of kingly or priestly dignity, awed the people into a sort of slavish timidity of anything approaching familiarity with such dignified personages. He determined to smite this, and he did it with a blow of a giant, and this smaller dignity soon gasped itself away. A friend of mine, a great admirer of Mr. Spurgeon, relates the following:—'Mr. Spurgeon had been preaching during the week, I think, at Bexley. After the service a great many persons remained to see him, and, if practicable, to shake hands with him. When apprised of the same he said, 'I will come and shake hands with them like one o'clock'!"

What Mr. Spurgeon was at the opening of his London career, and what kind of world seemed to be opening before him, we have well depicted in the reminiscences of Professor J. D. Everett, from which I have already quoted. Mr. Everett visited his old Newmarket comrade soon after his settlement at New Park Street.

"I spent half a day with him," he says, "and he poured forth to me, without reserve, the full tale of his successes, telling me of the distinguished men who continually came to hear him, and of the encomiums pronounced on his delivery by elocutionists like Sheridan Knowles.

"He showed me the small manuscript books in which he wrote his morning sermons, in a plain round-hand (his evening sermons being less carefully prepared), and read me one of the sermons as thus written. It did not consist of notes and jottings, but was complete in itself, and occupied about a quarter of an hour in the reading. I estimated that it must have been amplified about threefold in actual delivery. He told me that he could always say exactly what he intended, and in exactly the time which he intended.

"His fame was not then known to the general public, and it was only from himself that I learned it. There was something ludicrous in the idea of a man talking so big about his own performances, but it was the simple truth, and he told it with the simplicity of a child. His great power was to him a simple matter of fact, of which he had no more reason to be proud than a bird of its power to fly, or a fish of its power to swim.

"One of his most marked characteristics was the consummate ease with which he did his work, and he was fully conscious of this strong point. He certainly was a thorough believer in himself from the time that he first went to London. He knew what he meant to do, and he did it in his own way, without troubling himself about adverse criticism. He did not break his heart at being scorned or misrepresented.

"This characteristic of being always at his ease was at the root of what was called his irreverence. I remember suggesting to him, in this connection, that a man ought to feel and show some sense of awe in the presence of his Maker; and his reply was to the effect that awe was foreign to his nature—that he felt perfectly at home with his Heavenly Father." At this time the outlook in London was sufficiently gloomy to discourage and even alarm anyone whose nerves were not of the strongest. In certain parts of the town something like a panic actually prevailed, while the sights and sounds must have reminded some observers of the time of plague in the seventeenth century. Thus in and around Golden Square on Saturday morning, the 9th of September, the scene is thus described:—"There was scarcely a street free from hearses and mourning-coaches. A number of the tradespeople left their shops and fled, the closed shutters bearing the announcement that business had been suspended for a few days. Messrs. Huggins, the brewers, have issued an announcement that the poor inhabitants may obtain any quantity of hot water for cleaning their dwellings, or other purposes, at any hour of the day or night." The official report at this time was as follows:—"In the seven days extending from the 3rd to the 9th of September, the deaths of 3,413 persons were recorded, and 2,050 of the number were caused by cholera; which had, in partial eruptions all over London, destroyed in nine weeks, 5, 26, 133, 399, 644, 729, 817, 1,287, 2,050, or in the aggregate 6,120 lives. The outbreak began later than the corresponding outbreak of 1849, which by the same date had, in sixteen weeks, been fatal to 10,143 persons. Will the epidemic pursue its ravages? Will it observe its own times, disregard the seasons, and exact its full tale of victims? Such were the questions that were asked, with no little anxiety, by those who watched over the public health during the last week." It is then added that "no exertion should be spared to save the thousands whose lives are still threatened; and the dread lesson, before regarded so little, should never be forgotten—that men can no longer drink polluted water, breathe impure air, neglect sanitary measures year after year, with impunity."

Like others whose lot was cast in the thickly inhabited part of the town, Mr. Spurgeon was much affected by this terrible visitation; but the young pastor had an encouraging experience which is thus referred to by Mr. W. Ford, of Westminster:—

"In the year 1854, the first year of Mr. Spurgeon in London, the cholera raged in the locality of his church, and the neighbourhood where he resided. The parochial authorities were very thoughtful for the poor, and caused bills to be placed at the corners of the streets, headed 'Cholera,' in large type, informing the public where advice and medicines would be supplied gratis. At that time I lived in the Great Dover Road, and Mr. Spurgeon lived a little further towards Greenwich, in Virginia Terrace. Seeing the bills above named at every, turning, I was forcibly impressed that they were very much calculated to terrify the people. With the concurrence of a friend I procured one, and wrote in the centre these words:—'Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the Most High, thy habitation, there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.' This bill I placed in my shop window, hundreds read it, and I am not aware of one jeer or improper remark—so subdued and solemnised were people by the awful visitation. Among the readers of the bill was Mr. Spurgeon, and he graphically describes the incident in his work entitled 'The Treasury of David.'" In his notes on Psalm xci., Mr. Spurgeon refers to this incident, and tells how he was refreshed and strengthened by reading the inspired words which the Christian tradesman exhibited in his window.

We do not find any mention of the name of Mr. Spurgeon at the Baptist Union meetings in 1854, and this may perhaps be accounted for by the general distrust with which he was regarded by the more elderly ministers. The following general resolution passed by the members of the Union, shows that the prospect before the churches was not so very cheering at that time:—

"That the Union learn with unfeigned regret that the rate of increase in the churches, as shown by the Association Returns of 1853, is smaller than in preceding years, and smaller than it has been in any year since 1834, the limit of the Union records, it being only at an average of 1¹/₃ per church per annum; that while the impression made by this numerical statement might be somewhat modified by a regard to the temporary causes—such as emigration, for example—which have operated to the diminution of the churches (and the statement cannot alone be taken as a satisfactory basis on which to form an estimate of the spiritual state of the churches) in the judgment of the Union it presents at once an occasion for humiliation and a loud call to united activity and prayer: the former in every department of the work of the Lord, the latter for the gracious outpouring of His Holy Spirit."

While the future seemed gloomy, we find complaint in regard to the inadequate supply of able preachers. "At no period since the Reformation from Popery was there so much need for a constantly increasing supply of competent ministers, both for home and foreign service," one authority declared. "The outcry is very great of the deficiency, both in Great Britain and in America. It is stated that the reasons are to be found partly in the extremely straitened circumstances in which large numbers of ministers, both in and out of the Established Church, are placed, and the temptations which commerce, in its varied walks, holds forth to men of ability." In its social aspect, London itself was probably in a transition state. The town was beginning outwardly to improve in appearance; but those earnest Christian people who headed the Ragged School crusade needed all the heroism which they could command, and all the perseverance of which human nature was capable, to ensure success in their self-imposed tasks. The late Lord Shaftesbury and his colleague Judge Payne devoted a large part of their time to the encouragement of such service. The office of the Ragged School teacher had not ceased to be a service of peril. The slums were in the condition in which they had been for generations, and large areas which have since been cleared to have large and imposing buildings erected on their sites were then an eyesore as well as a common danger. Lord Shaftesbury explored the most notorious districts, and what he saw inspired him with sentiments akin to despair. It was just about the time of Mr. Spurgeon's coming to London that this great philanthropist passed his Bill for the control of common lodging-houses, which till this time had been the inferni of poverty wherein tens of thousands of miserable beings languished or rotted "in lairs fitter to be the habitation of hogs than of human beings." Crime and pauperism were extending their domain; and in view of the great increase of offences among children and young persons, the authorities had to face the alternative of more schools or more prisons. In the course of a year, "according to a return, there were 3,098 children under fourteen years of age found in London, living either as mendicants or thieves. Of these, 1,782 were living in lodging-houses, and 1,316 'at large,' as the return says. There were 148 of them parentless, 336 of whom the parents appeared to be in a condition of life to educate and maintain them, and 844 whose parents sent them to beg and lived, at least, partly on their earnings. Captain W. Hay, the Commissioner of Police, states that there are 20,641 children under fifteen living in idleness, without education, and apparently neglected by their parents, and of these 941 have been charged with other offences than as mendicants and thieves." Altogether, there must have been at least 100,000 children growing up in London without education. Temperance was in its infancy, and an enormous number of persons were arrested every year on account of drunkenness. For a youth of nineteen to leave the congenial sphere of Waterbeach to enter upon work in an already overgrown metropolis, with characteristics such as have been depicted, was a trial in more senses than can well be comprehended. At the very outset, when cholera was working havoc among the members of his church, young Spurgeon was brought face to face with death in its worst form; but he never shrank from duty, though at times he was tempted to think that his first year in London would be his last.