That good maxim of the brave English lexicographer, ‘Clear your mind of cant;’ and the noble appeal of Campbell’s chivalric muse, who asks—
‘Has Earth a clod
Where man, the image of his God,
Unscourged by Superstition’s rod,
Should bend the knee?’
have an eternal significance. We are called upon to resist formalism by as potential reasons as those which impel to sincere devotion. It is evidenced in the best writings of the day, that the highest in man’s nature may be linked with the most ferocious and abject. Balfour of Burley is but the fanciful embodiment of an actual union between religious zeal and a thirst for blood. Blanco White’s memoirs indicate the possible variations of speculative belief in an honest and ardent mind; and true observation induced John Foster to write his able treatise on The Objections of Men of Taste to Evangelical Religion. ‘There is no denying,’ says a popular reviewer, ‘that there is a certain stiff, tough, clayish, agricultural, English nature, on which the aggressive divine produces a visible and good effect.’ Father Marquette’s adventurous martyrdom, Pascal’s metaphysical acuteness, the rude courage of John Knox, the witch-chronicle of Mather, the magnetic power of Edward Irving, the wit that scintillated from Sydney Smith, the poetry of Heber, the ideal beauty of Buckminster’s style, and the virtuous charm of Berkeley, prove how the expositors of religion blend with professional life the essential characteristics of man, and how impossible it is to divide the office we are considering, from those qualities and conditions which belong essentially to the race. In the face of such diversity, before such acknowledged facts, how irrational is it to exempt the preacher from any law either of life or character; how unphilosophical and untrue to regard him in any other light than that of experience; and how unjust to imagine there is any occult virtue in ceremonial systems of faith, or the accident of vocation, whereby he derives any special authority unsustained by personal gifts and rectitude.
The problem we have suggested, of an antagonism between the theological profession, the office of priest, artificially held, and the manly instincts, has recently been illustrated by the criticisms on Carlyle’s Life of Sterling. In that work, it is lamented that the mental freedom and just development of a gifted, ingenuous, and aspiring soul were restrained and baffled by the vocation of priest; and to this view Churchmen indignantly protest, and accuse the biographer of infidelity. It is evident, however, that it was not religion but its formula, not truth but an institution, which he thought hampered and narrowed the legitimate spirit of his friend. There is that which commands profound respect in Carlyle’s recoil from the conventional; there is justice in his indignation at the attempt to link a true, loving, brave, and progressive mind to any wheel of social machinery. To keep apart from an organized mode of action is the instinct of the best natures,—not from pride, but self-respect. Of modern writers few have a better right to claim for literature an agency more effective. The press has, indeed, in a measure, superseded the pulpit. No intelligent observer of the signs of the times can fail to perceive that as a means of influence, the two are at least equal. In the pages of journals, in the verses of poets, in the favourite books of the hour, we have homilies that teach charity and faith more eloquently than the conventional Sunday’s discourse; they come nearer to experience; they are more the offspring of earnest conviction, and therefore enlist popular sympathy. When we turn from such genuine pleadings and pictures to those offered by the unspiritual preacher,—how unreal do the last appear! It was once remarked by an auditor of a genial man, who gave a prescriptive emphasis to his sermons, quite foreign to his frank nature, that he seemed to feel that what he uttered was ‘important if true;’ and such is the impression not a few preachers leave on the listener’s mind. If we carefully note those within the sphere of our acquaintance, we find that many are either visibly oppressed or rendered artificial by their profession. It seldom harmoniously blends with their nature. They seem painfully conscious of a false relation to society, or manfully, and it may be recklessly, put aside the character, as if it were indeed a masquerade. Either course is a proof of incongruity; and in those cases where our confidence and affection are spontaneously yielded, is it not the qualities of the man that win and hold them?—his spiritual aptitude to, and not the fact of, his vocation?
In no profession do we find so many instances of a mistaken choice, and this even when its duties are respectably fulfilled. The candid preacher, when arrived at maturity, will not seldom confess with pain, that the logical skill of the advocate, the love of representing nature of the artist, the scientific skill of the physician, or the practical industry of the man of affairs, constituted the natural basis of his usefulness; and proved inadequate endowments in his actual vocation. Perhaps the great error is in prematurely deciding on a step so responsible. To bind a youth’s interests, reputation, and opinions to the priesthood, as is often done by the undue exercise of authority and influence, at an impressible age, by Protestant not less than Catholic families, is a positive wrong; and the moral courage which repudiates what was unjustly assumed, is more deserving of honour than blame. Inefficiency, in such cases, is proverbial: ‘He talks like a parson,’ said Lord Carteret of Sherlock, ‘and consequently is used to talk to people that do not mind him.’ A clergyman, in conversing with a gifted layman, used the phrase ‘born preacher.’ ‘I do not believe there is such a thing,’ replied the former, ‘for it implies a born hearer, which is a being whose existence is incompatible with my idea of the goodness of the Creator.’ Occasionally we see delightful exceptions to such an erroneous choice; men of firm yet gentle souls, deep convictions, and sustained elevation, whose talents not less than the spirit they are of, whose natural demeanour, habitual temper, and constitutional sympathies, designate them for the sacred office. We listen to their ministrations without misgiving, accept their counsel, rise on the wings of their prayer, respond to their appeals, and rejoice in their holiness—as a true and a blest incentive and consolation. We ordain them with our hearts, for the idea of the preacher is lost in that of the brother.
In these instances, the normal conditions of the office are realized, the boundaries of sect forgotten, and the legitimate idea of a minister to the religious sympathies practically made apparent. Such a preacher was Fenelon, in whose life, aspect, and writings the love of God and man were exhibited, with such pure consistency, that his name is a spell which invokes all that is sacred in the associations of humanity. The blandishments of a court, the rudeness of soldiers, the ignorance of peasants, were alike chastened by his presence. Neither persecution, high culture, nor the gifts of fortune, for a moment disturbed his holy self-possession. He disarmed prejudice, envy, intrigue, and violence, by the tranquil influence of the spirit he was of. Ecclesiastical power, ceremony, tradition, and literary fame were but the incidental accessories of his career. The principles of Christianity and the temper of its genuine disciple so predominated in his actions, speech, manners, writings, and in his very tones and expression of countenance, that every heart, by the instinct of its best affections, recognized his spiritual authority. The man thoroughly vindicated the office; therefore the courtier at Versailles and the rustic of Cambray held him in equal reverence.
In Madame Guyon, Anne Hutcheson, and Hannah More, we see the religious sentiment and the instinct of proselytism in connection with the idiosyncrasies of female character, rendered more affecting by its tenderness, or losing in efficient dignity by the weakness of the sex. A beautiful example of the natural preacher, unmodified by the paraphernalia of the office, is given in Wirt’s description of the Blind Preacher, while its original identity with scholarship and philosophy is singularly illustrated in the career of Abelard; and Molière’s Tartuffe is but the dramatic embodiment of its extreme actual perversion at those periods when the form, by a gradual process of social corruption, has completely superseded the reality, and cant and hypocrisy are allowed to pass for truth and emotion. All that is peculiar in the modus operandi of sects testifies to the constant adaptation of the office to occasion: thus the itinerant episcopacy of the Methodists, the attractive temples of the Catholics, the time-hallowed liturgy of the Church of England, the immersing fonts of the Baptists, the plain language and prescriptive uniformity of the Quakers, and the literary culture of the Unitarians, appeal to certain tastes, feelings, or associations, which, although independent of the religious sentiment, greatly tend to the impressiveness of its outward manifestation upon different classes of persons. A spiritual tendency is characteristic of Swedenborgians; an absence of the sense of beauty is observable in the Friends; the superstitious element is the usual trait of Romanists; conservatism prevails among Episcopalians; and a progressive spirit and broad sympathies usually distinguish liberal Christians. To a bigot this diversity is offensive; to a philosopher it is the result of an inevitable and beneficent law. An American poet has aptly described the scene which a Protestant city presents on a Sabbath morning, when its streets are filled with the diverging streams of a population, each moving toward its respective place of worship, in obedience to this law of individual faith.
The word ‘skeleton’ as applied to the outline of sermons is very significant, for this is the only feature they have in common when vital; and yet how different the manner in which they are clothed with life! Sometimes it is logic, sometimes enthusiasm; now the eloquence of the heart, and now the ingenuity of the head that creates the animating principle; in one instance the beauty of style, and in another the force of conviction or the glow of sympathy; and there are cases where only grace of manner, melody of voice, and the magnetism of the preacher’s temperament and delivery impart to his words their effect; for every grade of rhetorical power, from the refinements of artificial study to the gush of irresistible feeling, has scope in the pulpit; there is no sacred charm in that rostrum except what its occupant brings; its possible scale includes elocutionary tricks, and the most disinterested and unconscious utterance; mediocrity lisps there its commonplace truisms, and devotional genius breathes its holy oracles; it is the medium of complacent formulas as well as of inspired truth.
The ancient philosophers and the modern essayists often apply wisdom to life in the manner of the best sermonizers; and as Christianity has infused its spirit into literature, this has become more apparent. Seneca and Epictetus as moralists, and Plato in psychological speculation, anticipated many of the sentiments that now have a religious authority. Rousseau, in as far as he was true to humanity, Montaigne to the extent he justly interprets the world, Bacon in the degree he indicates the approaches to universal truth, Saint Pierre when awaking the sentiment of beauty as revealed in Nature, Shakspeare by the memorable development of the laws of character, Dante as the picturesque limner of the material faith of the middle ages, Richter in his beautiful exposition of human sentiment,—all exhibit a phase or element of the preacher, and in the writings of Milton and Chateaubriand it breaks forth with a still more direct emphasis. Carlyle and Coleridge, Isaac Taylor, Wordsworth, Lamb, and many other effective modern writers, are among the most influential of lay preachers. And this unprofessional teaching, this priesthood of nature, has multiplied with the progress of society, so that every community has its father confessors, its sisters of charity, its gifted interpreters and eloquent advocates; while literature, even in forms the most profane, continually emulates the sacred function, yielding great lessons, exciting holy sentiment, and demonstrating pure faith. Indeed it is characteristic of the age, that the technical is becoming merged in the æsthetic; as culture extends, the distinctive in pursuit and office loses its prominence. Lamb jocosely told Coleridge he never heard him do anything but preach; and there is scarcely a favourite among the authors of the day that, in some way, does not hallow his genius by consecrating it to an interpretation or sentiment which, in its last analysis, is religious.
In these considerations may be found a partial explanation of that diminution of individual agency in the priesthood to which we have referred. The modern religious teachers also, as we have seen, have not the same extent of ignorance to vanquish as the old divines. The line of demarcation between ecclesiastical polity and Christian truth is more evident to the multitude; and it is now felt as never before, that ‘a heart of deep sympathies solves all theological questions in the flame of its love and justice.’ Hence the comparative indifference to controversy; and the recognition of the primal fact—so truly stated by the same reflective writer—that ‘spiritual insight, moral elevation, rich sympathies, are the tokens whereby the divinely-ordained are signalized.’[45]