SOME LONDON PREACHERS.
Canon Liddon and the Bishop of Peterborough stand out as unquestionably the two first preachers of the Established Church of England. There is a story of a private soldier having gone to St. Paul’s on an afternoon when Dr. Liddon was to preach. The printed paper with the hymn was handed to him, but not understanding that it was offered gratis he refused it with a shake of the head, saying: “You don’t suppose I should be here if I had got any money?” Most of the people who go to hear the eloquent Canon are different from this soldier, for they would pay—and very liberally—to get seats near the pulpit. On the afternoons of the Sundays when Dr. Liddon is in residence, the Cathedral presents an extraordinary sight with its huge nave and aisles densely thronged. So far as the preacher’s voice will reach people stand, straining eyes and ears, and fortunately Dr. Liddon’s voice resounds well under the dome; though now and then it becomes indistinct through the preacher’s speaking too fast in his excitement. Two other things occasionally mar Dr. Liddon’s delivery. Shortness of sight makes him often stoop to consult Bible or notes, and again he bows the head in a marked manner when he utters the holy name; but when he thus bends he goes on speaking, so that his words fall on the pulpit cushion and are deadened, which produces upon people who are at a little distance off, the effect of continual stoppages and gaps in the sermon. No other defects beside these, however, can be noted in orations which for beauty of language, elevation of thought and lucidity in reasoning, could not be surpassed. We have heard Dr. Liddon many times at Oxford and in London, and have observed that the impression produced by his eloquence was always the same, no matter who might be listening to him. We remember, in particular, a sermon of his on the text: “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation.” It was absolutely magnificent to hear him prophesy the gradual progress of the world toward a higher state. Every man, from the greatest to the least, was made to feel his share of responsibility in advancing or retarding the evolution of mankind, and while the consequences of evil were pointed out as extending to incalculable lengths, there was a sublime hopefulness in the promise that the smallest good offering brought to the Creator would be multiplied by Him as the “five loaves were multiplied.”
Optimism—which is nothing but great faith—pervades Dr. Liddon’s preaching. He never leaves his hearers under the apprehension that in any struggle between the good and the bad forces of this world, the bad are going to get the best of it. He knows human nature too well, however, to exaggerate what can be done by any single human being. “The first lesson in true wisdom”—he said in one of his most recent sermons—“is the limited nature of our faculties, the reality and extent of our ignorance;” and there is a curious mixture of religious and mundane philosophy in the following remarks about the presumption of St. Peter, a few minutes before he denied his Master:
We only weaken ourselves by dwelling upon mischiefs which we can not hope to remedy. We have only a certain amount of thought, of feeling, of resolve, each one of us, to dispose of. And when this has been expended unavailingly on the abstract, on the intangible, it is expended; it is no longer ours, and we can not employ it when and where we need it close at home.… Peter failed as he did, because he had expended his moral strength in words, and had no sufficient force to dispose of when the time came for action and for suffering.
These observations made in a grand sermon, “The Lord was not in the fire,” may also be quoted:
Religious passion carried to the highest point of enthusiasm is a great agency in human life; but religious passion may easily be too inconsiderate, too truculent, too entirely wanting in tenderness and in charity, to be in any sense divine. Christendom has been ablaze again and again with fires: and those fires are not extinct in our own day and country, of which it may certainly be said that the Lord is not in them.
The Bishop of Peterborough has not often been heard in London of late years, but whenever he is advertised to preach, crowds flock to hear him. He need not be compared with Liddon, for the personal appearance, style, and opinions of the two men are quite different. But whereas the Canon sometimes preaches above the understanding of dull men, the Bishop’s eloquence never soars much above earth. It is a rousing eloquence, spirited, combative, often sarcastic and always directed against some evil which is preoccupying public attention at the time being. Dr. Magee is not merely a hater, but an aggressive enemy of “humbug,” clothe itself in what garb it may. With his animated Celtic features, long upper lip, large mouth, energetic nose and shaggy eyebrows, with his gruffness and broad smile which breaks up the whole of his face into comical lines, he has all the look of a humorist. The glance all round which he takes at his congregation when he has got into the pulpit, is that of a master. His first words arrest attention, and if some unlucky man drops a book during his exordium, that man will stare hard at the pulpit and pretend to have no connection whatever with the book, lest his lordship’s eyes should suddenly be turned upon him like two fiery points of interrogation. Presently, when the Bishop warms to his work, his arms hit out from the shoulder like piston-rods wrapped in lawn; down come his large hands with great slaps on his book or cushion, and if he is preaching in a church where the beadle has not heard of his little ways and has not been careful to give the cushions a beating, enough dust will be raised to make a fine powdering for the heads of the people in the pew beneath.