01.00.4. Life of the Author

CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. Adam Clarke (Parte 2) LIFE OF ADAM CLARKE, LL.D., F.A.S.

Before I make any remarks on the doctor’s preaching or writing, I will gratify my readers with a valuable letter of his to a young preacher, who had written to him for advice on the subjects of which it speaks — "My Dear Brother,—I have given many general and particular advices to my younger brethren in ’A Letter to a Preacher on his first Entrance into the Work of the Ministry.’ If you have not read this little tract, you should get it without delay. I would lay down two maxims for your conduct: 1. Never forget any thing you have learned, especially in language, science, history, chronology, antiquities, and theology. 2. Improve in every thing you have learned, and acquire what you never had, especially whatever may be useful to you in the work of the ministry. As to your making or composing sermons, I have no good opinion of it. Get a thorough knowledge of your subject: understand your text in all its connection and bearings, and then go into the pulpit depending on the Spirit of God to give you power to explain and illustrate to the people those general and particular views which you have already taken of your subject, and which you conscientiously believe to be correct and according to the word of God. But get nothing by heart to speak there, else even your memory will contribute to keep you in perpetual bondage. No man was ever a successful preacher who did not discuss his subject from his own judgment and experience. The reciters of sermons may be popular; but God scarcely ever employs them to convert sinners, or build up saints in their most holy faith. I do not recommend in this case a blind reliance upon God; taking a text which you do not know how to handle, and depending upon God to give you something to say. He will not be thus employed. Go into the pulpit with your understanding full of light, and your heart full of God; and his Spirit will help you, and then you will find a wonderful assemblage of ideas coming in to your assistance; and you will feel the benefit of the doctrine of association, of which the reciters and memory men can make no use. The finest, the best, and the most impressive thoughts are obtained in the pulpit when the preacher enters it with the preparation mentioned above.

"As to Hebrew, I advise you to learn it with the points. Dr. C. Bayley’s Hebrew Grammar is one of the best; as it has several analyzed portions of the Hebrew text in it, which are a great help to learners. And Parkhurst’s Hebrew Lexicon exceeds all that ever went before it. It gives the ideal meaning of the roots without which who can understand the Hebrew language? Get your verbs and nouns so well fixed in your memory that you shall be able to tell the conjugation, mood, tense, person, and number of every word; and thus you will feel that you tread on sure ground as you proceed. Genesis is the simplest book to begin with; and although the Psalms are highly poetic, and it is not well for a man to begin to acquire a knowledge of any language by beginning with the highest poetic production in it; yet the short hemistich form of the verses, and the powerful experimental religion which the Psalms inculcate, render them comparatively easy to him who has the life of God in his soul. Bythner’s Lyra-Prophetica, in which all the Psalms are analyzed, is a great help; but the roots should be sought for in Parkhurst. Mr. Bell has published a good Greek grammar in English; so have several others. The Greek, like the Hebrew, depends so much on its verbs, their formation and power, that, to make any thing successfully out, you must thoroughly acquaint yourself with them in all their conjugations, &c. It is no mean labour to acquire these; for, in the above, even one regular verb will occur up ward of eight hundred different times! Mr. Dawson has published a lexicon for the Greek Testament, in which you may find any word that occurs, with the mood, tense, &c. Any of the later editions of Schrevelius will answer your end. Read carefully Prideaux’ History. The editions prior to 1725 are good for little; none since that period has been much improved, if any thing. Acquaint yourself with British history. Read few sermons, they will do you little good; those of Mr. Wesley excepted. The Lives of holy men will be profitable to you. Live in the divine life; walk in the divine life, Live for the salvation of men." In this letter the doctor has given his own method of preparing for the pulpit, and of announcing the words of eternal life. In the year 1825 I had the pleasure to travel, in company with my venerable friend, from London to Liverpool, for the purpose of preaching in behalf of the Wesleyan Methodist Sunday schools. We lodged under the hospitable roof of W. Comer, Esq. On Sunday morning the doctor called me into his room, and, with his wonted affection, said, "Sammy, tell me what subject I shall take this forenoon." "Why, doctor, what sermons or skeletons have you brought with you?" "Skeletons!" said he, "I never write skeletons, nor have I one line of any kind with me." At this I expressed my surprise, knowing that he had to preach in Liverpool on the Sunday and Monday; at the opening of Brunswick chapel, Leeds, and another new chapel in Bradford, in the following week; and a missionary sermon in Lincoln, in his way homeward. He then said, "Read me a chapter." I took the Bible and read.—When I had got partly through the chapter, he interrupted me by saying, "Read that verse again; I think it will do." This was done, and in a short time we went down to breakfast. At half past ten I proceeded to Mount Pleasant chapel, and he to Leeds-street, where he delivered, from the text I had read to him, a sermon, as no mean judge informed me, of the highest order. Now this will help to put the matter on its proper basis; and unless the doctor’s preaching be judged by the circumstances under which he appeared in the pulpit, justice is not done to him. The question is not, whether some preachers, by bending the whole of their strength for weeks or months to get up a sermon, and then preaching it again and again for many years, have not produced as finished a discourse as what the doctor in general gave; but it is, whether we have known any preachers, who, without having written a word, could go into the pulpit on the shortest notice, and pour forth such a torrent of important matter, and all flowing out of the text, as Dr. Clarke frequently did? I trow not. He might not in every instance please the admirers of "elaborate, artificial eloquence, of studied grace and euphony, of methodical exactness and imaginative brilliancy;" yet he possessed, beyond all doubt,—even if the unbounded popularity and success of fifty years, from the Norman Isles in the south, to the Shetlands in the north, were the only proof—the essentials of a great preacher. His matter was rich and various; his heart was fervid; and he excelled in the power of selecting from his stores, almost at once, the suitable materials for the instant occasion, which he poured forth with energy and freedom. His plan was to prepare his mind, rather than his paper of particular arrangements; to keep the fountain full, and he knew that at his bidding it would flow; and by his commanding genius he gave the proper measure and direction of the streams; while God accompanied his word with an extraordinary unction of the Holy Spirit. Dr. Clarke’s preaching was chiefly expository. He endeavoured to explain the terms in his text; to ascertain the precise meaning of the Holy Ghost; and then to apply to the understandings and consciences of his hearers the hallowing truths thus discovered. His preaching, though argumentative, was decidedly evangelical. No minister ever lived, who gave a greater prominence in his discourses to the vital truths of Christianity, or who contended for them with more consistency and zeal. In all his ministrations, there was a constant reference to the divinity and atonement of Christ, to the doctrines of justification through faith in his blood, and sanctification through the all-pervading and all-purifying energy of the Spirit. The "illimitable mercy of Heaven," the universal redemption of mankind, and especially the witness of the Spirit to the fact of the believer’s adoption into the family of God, and Christian perfection, were his favourite topics, those on which he laid the greatest stress; and he frequently said, that, if the Methodists gave up these doctrines, they would soon lose their glory. He had also a peculiarly happy method of describing the simple, adapted, expeditions terms of salvation; and was the honoured instrument of leading many a penitent sinner immediately to the Saviour. The religion which he recommended to his hearers was eminently of an experimental, practical, and happy kind; such as is felt in the heart, exemplified in the life, and causes its possessor to "rejoice in the Lord alway, and again to rejoice." And all his subjects he applied with peculiar faithfulness, point, and expressiveness. He was once preaching on the love of God to man, and toward the conclusion of his discourse he gave a sweep to his arm, drawing it toward himself, and grasping his hand, as though he had collected in it several objects of value, and then, throwing them, like alms, in the full bounty of his soul, among the people. "Here," he said, "take the arguments among you—make the best of them for your salvation—I will vouch for their solidity—I will stake my credit for intellect upon them. Yes, if it were possible to collect them into one, and suspend them, as you would suspend a weight, on a single hair of this gray head, that very hair would be found to be so firmly fastened to the throne of the all-merciful and ever loving God, that all the devils in hell might be defied to cut it in two." Nor was he ever "hard to be understood." A poor woman in Shetland unintentionally paid the following compliment to him. She had heard of his celebrity, and went to hear him at Lerwick. On her return home, she remarked, with great simplicity: "They say that Dr. Clarke is a learned man, and I expected to find him such; but he is only like another man; for I could understand every word he said."In prayer Dr. Clarke was simple, spiritual, and sometimes singularly ardent. He approached the throne of grace with a holy and reverential boldness, as if he were speaking to One with whom he was familiar, to One of whom he had an inexpressible estimation. His prayers "were literally collects, in which the whole collected meaning and ardour of his soul, for the time being, were darted forth at once." Nor did the fervour of his love to Christ, and to the souls of perishing sinners, cool in the least, "as days and months increased." When he had passed his threescore years, he wrote: "O Sammy! how highly has God favoured you, to employ you in this work! How glad I should be to be your companion! When I could, I was a missionary; and many hardships have I suffered: and I feel the same spirit still. Chasms, and bogs, and voes, and men, and devils would be nothing to me: I have met all such in the name of Jesus, and have suffered, and have conquered." And in another letter:—"Were God to restore me to youth again, I would glory to be your companion,—to go through your thick and thin,—to lie on the ground, herd with the oxen, or lie down on a bottle of straw, as I have been obliged to do in former times. I do envy you. Where duty is concerned, winds, waves, and hyperborean regions are nothing to me. I can eat even the meanest things—I can dine heartily on a few potatoes, and some salt, or half a pint of milk. I can wear a sack, if necessary; for fine clothing I never affected. The S. P. are all gentlemen. I thank God I bore the yoke in my youth. You do not take too much upon you. Somebody must work; the burthen is laid on you. If God spare life, I will stand by you: and he will, should he be pleased to take me." The writings of Dr. Clarke are very voluminous; and for simplicity, perspicuity, and energy of style,—for various, extensive, and important information,—are, perhaps, not surpassed in this or in any other language. Few writers have more successfully conveyed "thoughts that breathe in words that burn." The measure of syllables, and the dance of periods, were beneath his notice. He never sacrificed sense to sound; but communicated, and that without laborious effort, the treasures of his mind to others, in words best adapted to convey his meaning and most likely to be understood. The same great truths on which he laid such stress in his preaching, are equally prominent in his writings. On the "five points," all his readers know that his views were similar to those of the celebrated Arminius, of whom he entertained a high opinion, and once said to me that "the British public was greatly indebted to Mr. Nichols for his excellent translation of the Works of that eminent divine," which he warmly recommended to his friends, at every convenient opportunity. On the leading subjects of revelation, the doctor spoke and wrote as one having authority. "For comprehension of thought, clear and forcible argumentation, and profound views of divine truth, some of his sermons," says an able reviewer, "are equal to the best of Farindon, Barrow, or South; but, on the subject of personal godliness, incomparably superior.

We know of no sermons in which so much learning is brought to bear upon the all- important subject of experimental religion." His "Bibliographical Dictionary," and "The Succession of Sacred Literature," display most extraordinary research and application, and form a cyclopaedia on bibliographical subjects, worthy the attention of every student in divinity. An uninteresting or unimportant volume, or even pamphlet, Dr. Clarke never wrote. But his chief work, that on which he spent a laborious life, and on which his name will descend to posterity with greatest lustre, is his "C OMMENTARY ON THE H OLY S CRIPTURES ." It is undoubtedly the most critical and literary, and at the same time the most spiritual and practical, of any work of the kind, that was ever published in any living language. The author had an indescribable method of simplifying his learning; and hence it is difficult to say whether the Commentary is most read and valued by the learned or by the unlearned, by the prince or by the peasant. It is a river in which an elephant may swim and a lamb may wade. He has not, like too many commentators, "each dark passage shunned;" but has routed the enemies of revelation from every text in which they had endeavoured to trench themselves, and fairly met and satisfactorily answered their strongest objections. The late Rev. John Newton, calling one day upon the Rev. Eli Bates, and seeing the first part of Dr. Clarke’s Commentary lying upon the table, happened to open it in the place where the doctor makes several calculations in reference to the size of Noah’s ark. When Mr. N. had finished reading the criticism, he closed the book, exclaiming, "Thank God! I never found these difficulties in the sacred record:" to which Mr. Bates replied, "Yes, sir, you have found them as well as Dr. Clarke; but the difference is, you always leap over them, while he goes through them."

Dr. Clarke ever gave his opinion on what he conscientiously believed to be the mind of the Spirit, with "unflinching, uncompromising, unprevaricating honesty and faithfulness;" and when he has differed from commonly received notions, he has done it in the most modest, candid, and Christian manner. The following are the terms in which he speaks of himself: "Though perfectly satisfied of the purity of my motives and the simplicity of my intention, I am far from being pleased with the work itself. Whatever errors may be observed, must be attributed to my scantiness of knowledge. I do not pretend to write for the learned; I look up to them myself for instruction. All the pretensions of my work are included in the sentence that stands in the title: it is ’designed as a help to a better understanding of the sacred Writings.’" To the numerous pamphleteering and magazine writers that took up pen against him while his Commentary was in course of publication, his constant reply was: "I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, while I leave it, and come down to you?" In a letter to the late Rev. Joseph Hughes he says, "I never wrote a controversial tract in my life; I have seen with great grief the provokings of many, and a thousand times has my heart said, Semper ego auditor TANTUM, nunauamque reponam, Vexatus toties? But my love of peace, and detestation of religious disputes, induced me to keep within my shell, and never to cross the waters of strife. I had hoped, as I was living at least an inoffensive life, not without the most cordial and strenuous endeavours, in my little way, to do all the public and private good in my power, I might be permitted to drop quietly into the grave. But this is denied me" To some remarks of mine in 1825, he replied: "You say my notes on Isaiah are too short—I do not think so: on my plan they are as long as they should be. It would have been easy to have made them much longer. Jeremiah and Lamentations are just finishing at press. Ezekiel and Daniel are ready to go in, as soon as the others come out. And, if God spare life and health, the twelve minor prophets will be finished before next Christmas: so I see land at last in this long and dangerous voyage." At the conclusion of the Commentary in 1820, he says, "In this arduous labour I have had no assistants; not even a single week’s help from an amanuensis; no person to look for common places, or refer to an ancient author; to find out the place and transcribe a passage of Greek, Latin, or any other language, which my memory had generally recalled, or to verify a quotation;—the help excepted which I received, in the chronological department, from my own nephew. I have laboured alone for nearly twenty-five years previously to the work being sent to the press; and fifteen years have been employed in bringing it through the press to the public: and thus about forty years of my life have been consumed." The following observations which he made in a letter to a young friend, should be more publicly known: "Mr. Wesley’s Notes on the New Testament are excellent and useful; and, were I not fully convinced in the fear of God of what I am about to say, I would not say it. I then say, Carefully read over my comment on the Scriptures. I wrote every page of it in reference to the ministers of the word of God, and especially those among the Methodists; and I know of no work, be it what it may, in which the doctrines of the Methodists are so clearly stated, illustrated, and proved." In this I heartily concur. At an early age Dr. Clarke took for his motto: "Through desire a man having separated himself, seeketh and intermeddleth with all wisdom;" and I remember asking him, some years ago, if he would advise me to apply myself to the study of geology and mineralogy, when he promptly replied, "Yes; a Methodist preacher should know every thing." He not only possessed one of the most select and valuable libraries in the kingdom, but he made such use of his opportunities as but few persons have done. The stores of useful knowledge which he amassed were prodigious. The late Rev. Robert Hall pronounced him to be "an ocean of learning;" while another eminent Baptist minister says he was "unquestionably the most universal scholar of his age." He never sought, but rather shunned, literary honours; thinking himself to be undeserving of them: but learned and literary societies thought otherwise. He received, as we have seen, his diplomas of A.M. and LL . D. from the University and King’s College, Aberdeen; and was successively elected president of the Liverpool and Manchester Philological Society,—member of the Oriental Sub-Committee of the British and Foreign Bible Society,—sub- commissioner of Public Records,—librarian of the Surrey Institution,—fellow of the Antiquarian Society,—member of the Royal Irish Academy,—member of the American Antiquarian Society,—member of the Geological Society of London,—member of the Royal Asiatic Society, and member of the Eclectic Society of London. But, in a letter to his friend Mr. Drew, he piously observes: "Learning I love,—learned men I prize,—with the company of the great and the good I am often delighted: but, infinitely above all these and all other possible enjoyments, I glory in Christ,—in me living and reigning, and fitting me for his heaven." To slavery Dr. Clarke was a most determined foe, considering "it and all its appendages the first brood of hell." In politics he was a whig; but he very seldom looked over the pages of a newspaper. I was with him when be read the "Voice from St. Helena;" and shall not soon forget the terms in which he spoke of the treatment of the exiled emperor, and of the manner in which the last war was conducted. On several subjects both civil and ecclesiastical, which of late years have created no small stir, he wrote to me with the utmost freedom. These letters, for reasons which need not be mentioned, are not published in this memoir of my dear and venerable friend, whose face I shall see no more. To say that I esteemed, admired, and loved him, is saying but little: for my esteem, and admiration, and affection were such as I never felt for any other man; and I am constrained to add, "Take him for all in all, I ne’er shall look upon his like again."

He was a burning and a shining light; and thousands for a season rejoiced in his light. He suffered, from the shadow of death, a momentary obscuration, and now appears in that region where "they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever."

END OF THE LIFE.