03.09. London - Spurgeon - Dr. Parker - St. Paul's Cathedral
Chapter 9 London.
-- Spurgeon--Canon Farrar -- Dr. Parker -- St. Paul’s Cathedral -- The Whispering Gallery -- On the Top of the Dome.
I Arrived in London late on Saturday afternoon. An arrival in London has always been and will always be an event in a human life, from the child of genius coming up as a poor, unknown lad to the metropolis to achieve fame, to the traveler with no ambitious intent, but who has heard all his life of the wonderful city. These poor lads were much in my thoughts as I drew near the great capital. How many went up and failed! Chatterton, the most brilliant of them all, died heartbroken or starved. Shakespeare, after staying awhile, went back to Stratford-on-Avon, the home of his boyhood. Perhaps he thought he had failed. Some few succeeded and remained. But they all felt the thrill of entering London. As the poet laureate puts it, while afar off upon the fields or roads, they "Saw in heaven the light of London Flaring like a dreary dawn."
Sunday morning dawned beautifully fair, and I sat down, so to speak, to a spiritual bill of fare not to be had every day, or in every place, by any manner of means. I listened to the three great lights of London at 11 A. M., 3 P. M., and 7 P.M. At eleven I directed my steps to Mr. Spurgeon’s church, which I found was twice as large as Dr. Beecher’s. I was escorted into the prayer meeting, held in a room back of the pulpit, just before preaching. One of the brethren, in the midst of a long prayer, called the meeting the center of power in the church. I had only been in the room a short while, but felt he was mistaken. Each succeeding prayer convinced me more than ever that the brother was incorrect. The center of power always means a glorious death to circumlocutory and mechanical prayers. In a few minutes more I noticed that Mr. Spurgeon was not present. An half-hour later I was listening to him as he poured a rich and unctuous gospel into the hearts of five thousand people. I knew then that the center of power was in Spurgeon. A man has to pray himself, and to pray much, and to pray mightily and importunately, to have power over the hearts and consciences of men. Nothing else will bring it.
Mr. Spurgeon commented on the chapter he read for thirty minutes, and after that preached forty minutes. But no one wearied. What a feast he gave us in Christ’s first miracle in Cana of Galilee! Christ filled the discourse; was felt in every accent of the voice, and looked out of every expression of the face. The man drew the rich provisions for us as if, like Joseph, he had been filling the storehouses of his mind for years, and there was no stint nor limit. And yet in the midst of the feast I looked down and saw two of his prominent members asleep! I was comforted for myself and my brethren in the ministry. The great orator shows signs of physical feebleness. He moved stiffly in the pulpit, as if he feared the awakening of slumbering pain. But his square English face was lighted up with God’s own love and peace, and his intellect was as lordly as ever.
After the sermon he took up a special collection. An hundred wooden boxes were instantly passed down the aisles, and the rattle of the pennies sounded like hail on the roof. I am convinced that the "collection" is an institution, universal and permanent. At 3 P. M., I listened to Canon Farrar at Westminster Abbey. The subject was, "Saul Forsaken of God." It was a polished sermon, like the statues around him; but a great spiritual power was not there. Perhaps it may be difficult to preach among marble statues, tombstones, and cold gray walls. To hear the organ in Westminster constitutes an experience. The strain rises up into the lofty ceiling, eighty feet above you, wanders away from you down the long nave, comes sweeping back up the transepts, gets lost among the many stone arches and pillars, and finally you hear it sobbing and dying among the tombs of dead kings and queens, and warriors, and statesmen, and poets, and preachers in the far distant parts of the building. At 7 P. M., I heard Dr. Joseph Parker, of the City Temple. He is a Congregationalist. He preached that night to fully four thousand people. Dr. Parker wears his hair rather long and flung back. He has a grand leonine face that, in the distance, reminds you of Dr. C. K. Marshall. His subject was, "The Boy Samuel," his ministering before the Lord, and yet "not yet knowing the Lord." He held up the words, "not yet," and drew forth thought after thought until the hearer was amazed at their number and appropriateness. Dr. Parker is fresh, original, forcible, and, at times, dramatic in tone and gesture. My card secured me here, as elsewhere, immediate attention. Perhaps it was because of the "D. D." attached to the name. These lay brethren in England do not know how cheap a degree it is in America, and has come really to mean next to nothing. While in Mr. Spurgeon’s church I happened, in speaking to one of the ushers, to say Doctor Spurgeon. He quickly replied, "He is not a doctor; he is only a teacher!" Here was rebuke, and here was food for reflection. Is a "D. D." one thing and a teacher of God another? Do we cease to become a teacher when we attain unto this title? "He is only a teacher!" May the Lord grant us to be teachers, though we never have half the alphabet swinging, like a comet-tail, to our names!
Monday morning I ascended to the top of St. Paul’s Cathedral to get my bearings and map London in my mind forever. On our way up I was stopped in the dome to hear a whisper one hundred and fifty feet away. As I stepped in the gallery that runs around the inner wall of the dome I noticed five gentlemen, on the opposite side, with their ears to the wall, while the guide, standing near me, was whispering the following information: "St. Paul’s Cathedral was built by Sir Christopher Wren. It required over thirty years for its completion. The paintings on the ceiling were executed by Sir Joshua Reynolds. The height is four hundred and four feet. The diameter of this dome is one hundred and twelve," etc. The gentlemen left, and I took their place, whereupon the guide bowed himself against the stone wall, and, in a whisper, which I heard distinctly over one hundred feet, said: "St. Paul’s Cathedral was built by Sir Christopher Wren," etc. As I left three gentlemen took my place, and I saw the guide go down f or the third time against the wall, and impart the thrilling information that "St. Paul’s Cathedral was built," etc. My heart melted for the man. He spends his life going over about a half-dozen sentences, telling people that this cathedral was built by Sir Christopher Wren, and that, too, in a whisper, with his mouth against the wall. Over and over he tells it. He told it, the day I was there, doubtless, a thousand times. He is still telling it, and will continue to affirm and asseverate that matter about Sir Christopher Wren to the traveling multitudes through the years. If he is a man of much nervous sensibility, there are, doubtless, days that he heartily wishes that Sir Christopher Wren had never been born. Suppose a book should be written of the sayings of this guide? I remember a colored man who kept a coffee stand in Jackson, Miss., by the depot. I was passing through the place when I had just entered the ministry sixteen years ago. It was then I first heard his voice crying out: "Hot coffee and cold cakes!" Four years after I passed through again, and he was still calling, with the exception that he had left off the cold cakes. Either he had met with business reverses, or was growing more sententious. Eight years passed away, and, as my train stopped at Jackson for a few minutes one night, the first voice I recognized was that of my colored friend, with his unwearied statement of "hot coffee." This spring, in going up to deliver an address at Oxford, a midnight stoppage of a few moments at Jackson was rewarded with the sound of the voice of my old friend, still insisting that he had "hot coffee." These two words constituted the man’s vocabulary. He was never heard to say anything else. To my knowledge he has kept it up for sixteen years. There have been wars a nd revolutions in distant States; great have been the changes in the business and political world; but he has not changed. Suppose a book should be written containing the sayings of this man, as a companion volume of the biography and speeches of the guide of St. Paul’s Cathedral! In a little while I stood upon the "golden gallery" that runs around the Spire above the vast dome of St. Paul’s. Byron alludes to the dome in one of his poems, where, after painting the wilderness of houses and forests of masts said above it all: ----A foolscap’s crown, And that is London town."
We are close by the ponderous bell that has been likened to conscience by some writer. It sends forth, at times, its deep solemn boom; but London, in the rush and roar of the daytime, hears and heeds it not. But at night, when the streets grow quiet, all hear it then. I can testify to both facts, and especially to the solemnity of its stroke at the hour of midnight. Writing in my room on several occasions until after midnight, and only three blocks away, I have come to know the iron voice of London’s great cathedral.
Standing on the golden gallery, I observed that the river Thames, bending like a bow, divided London into two sections, north and south. Looking southward, I saw the Tower of London on my left hand on the east bank of the Thames, fully a mile away. To my right, two miles distant, was Westminster Abbey and the House of Parliament.
Looking south again, I counted seven large bridges over the Thames. Facing north, many noted places came into view. Just beneath us is the Bank of England; a little to the left is the famous Newgate Prison; before us is the church on Cripplegate street, from which Mr. Wesley’s father was ejected, and in whose walls Cromwell was married and Milton lies buried. Farther out still is the place where William Wallace was executed, and the martyrs burned. Away to the left are the palaces of Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales. The fog and smoke prevent our seeing more than two or three miles in any direction; but as far as we can see there are houses by the thousands and multiplied thousands -- the view is that of a wilderness of dwellings.
Descending to the street, we find rushing through hundreds of channels, with impetuous force, great living streams of humanity. Streams mightier and more awful than Niagara and the Mississippi, in that they are living streams, shall live forever, and are rushing on to God and eternity. May the Savior guide these streams, and bring them to swell the volume and add to the gladness of the river of life that is to refresh and bless this world, and glorify, by and by, the universe of God forever!
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