From a very early time the art of oratory attracted me strongly. I remember, as a boy, my father reading to us the full report in the Times of Edwin James’s defence of Orsini; and in later days, during my apprenticeship in the city, I began from time to time to attend debates in the House of Commons.
It was at about the same time that my friend Alan Skinner and I used to find ourselves Sunday after Sunday in the little chapel in Great Portland Street listening to the great Unitarian preacher, James Martineau.
Though not a constant church-goer, I had the opportunity of hearing most of the foremost pulpit orators of that day, including men as opposite in their styles as Spurgeon, Canon Liddon, and Dean Stanley. Liddon’s voice was a great possession, but his eloquence was not of a kind that specially attracted me; and Dean Stanley, though his preaching was impressive, scarcely ranked as an orator. On the other hand, Spurgeon’s unquestioned power over his audience constantly puzzled me. I was drawn again and again to his great tabernacle simply from the desire to discover, if I could, the secret of his authority; to understand if it were possible the means by which he contrived to sway the vast crowds that gathered to hear him. But I remained to the end baffled in my inquiries and, as regards my own personal impressions, entirely unconvinced by the exercise of a gift that for the multitude possessed an obvious fascination. It may be said, of course, that his appeal was intended to be merely popular, but I found in the case of other speakers who owned no loftier mission that it has been impossible not to realise in some degree the source of their influence. From Spurgeon’s preaching I derived no such satisfaction; the impression left upon me never passed beyond cold disappointment.
With Martineau the case was wholly different. To my feeling, he easily distanced all his contemporaries in the pulpit, and the impression left upon me to-day is, that he and John Bright stand out as the two greatest speakers of their generation.
Though widely divergent in manner, they both possessed an unequalled power of impressing an audience with the sense of ethical fervour and elevation of spirit.
There was no sentence of Martineau’s sermons that was not carefully balanced and considered, and yet even the most complex passages of philosophic thought were illumined and sustained by the sense of a passionate love for the truth he was seeking to expound. In every sentence the white light of reason was shot with fire; and although I think his sermons were always prepared and written, they had the effect, as he delivered them, of springing directly from the heart of the man. He seemed less of a
Emery Walker
JOHN BRIGHT
From the painting by Walter William Ouless, R.A., in the National Portrait Gallery.