After several ministers had preached on probation, the choice fell upon the Rev. William Brock—then, I believe, a student fresh from the Baptist College at Stepney. The choice was a happy one. The cause prospered, the church increased, the place was enlarged, and still the pews were full. It was considered a great treat to hear Mr. Brock. Of course the female sex fluttered round the new pastor. Of course the gentlemen fluttered round them. An air of taste pervaded the chapel. It was called “the fashionable watering-place.”
But this was not to last for ever: a time was coming when the pastor would be removed. Amongst the great railway contractors, one of them, it seems, was a Baptist, and an M.P. Sir M. Peto—for it is he to whom I allude—became M.P. for Norwich, and bought an estate in the
neighbourhood. This naturally led to his connection with Mr. Brock, and this connection led to Mr. Brock’s removal to London. In the immediate neighbourhood of the baronet’s residence, Russell Square, there was no popular Baptist preacher. To go every Sunday to Devonshire Square, where the élite of the Baptists did congregate, was a long and dreary ride. It were far better that the mountain should come to Mahomet than that Mahomet should go to the mountain. Sir M. Peto did not wish in vain. These great railway contractors can do what they like. In a very short while a very fashionable chapel was built in the neighbourhood of Bedford Square. It stands out in bold relief by the side of a tawdry Episcopalian chapel-of-ease and a French Protestant place of worship. As soon as the new chapel was completed, Mr. Brock was duly installed as pastor.
Mr. Brock’s début in London was a decided success. The chapel, which, I should think, could contain fifteen hundred hearers, is invariably crammed. If you are late, it is with difficulty you will get standing room. The genteel part of the chapel is down stairs, and if you do get a seat, you will find it a very
comfortable one indeed. In a very snug pew, at the extreme end on the right, you will see Sir M. Peto and his family. Half-way down on your left you will see the spectacles and long head of Dr. Price, Editor of the ‘Eclectic Review.’ Lance, the beautiful painter of fruits and flowers, also attends here, but I believe you will find him in the gallery. The people all round you look comfortable and well fed, and no one presents a more comfortable and well-fed appearance than the Rev. W. Brock himself.
There he stands, in that handsome pulpit, in that richly-ornamented chapel, with all those genteel people beneath him and around him—a stout, square-built man—a true type of Saxon energy and power—without the slightest pretensions to elegance or grace. Such men as he are not the men young ladies run after, fall in love with, get to write in their albums, buy engravings of for their boudoirs; but, nevertheless, with their strong passionate speech, and indomitable pluck, they are the men who move the world. During the war, we are told, it was the weight of the British soldiery that carried everything before it. The Frenchman might be more scientific, more agile, more skilful every way,
but the moment the word was given to charge, resistance was hopeless—you might as well try to stay the progress of a torrent or an avalanche. What the Englishman is in the field, Brock is in the pulpit. You are borne down by his weight. He gives you no chance. On comes the tide, and you are swept away. You are learned—evidently the man before you has little more than the average learning picked up in a hurry, in a second-rate academic institution. You like to theorise on the beautiful and divine—the preacher before you cares nothing for your flimsy network, born of Plato and Schelling. You explain away and refine—Brock does nothing of the kind: ‘It is in the Bible—it is there!’ he exclaims, and that is sufficient for him. You may say it is absurd, it is opposed to reason and common-sense. You can no more move Brock than you can the Monument.
I take it, this is the secret of Brock’s success: he is positive and dogmatic, and people want something positive and dogmatic. It is only one day in the week that Smithers can spare for theology; and, wearied with the cares of six working days, he requires the theology he gets
on the seventh shall be positive and plain. With the monk in ‘Anastasius,’ he feels that life is too short to hear both sides. The British public does not like to be bothered. It likes everything settled for it, and not by it. Hence it is Macaulay’s ‘History of England’ is so popular. Your popular preacher must be dogmatic: the more dogmatic he is, the more popular he will be. Brock’s earnest dogmatism does everything for him. There is no great beauty in his style, there are no bursts of splendour in his sermons, there is no speculation in his eye; but he has a vehement tone, is plain, affectionate, practical, full of point and power.
Brock is one of the Catholic Baptists, and will admit to the table of their common Lord all who believe in Christ as their common head. He has not improved by his removal to London. He preached better sermons in Norwich than here, and he has got a slight affectation which I don’t remember at Norwich. He mouths his a’s as if he had, to use a common phrase, an apple-dumpling in his mouth, and occasionally painfully reminds you of a vulgar man trying to speak fine; but I believe this is unconsciously done on his part. At Norwich he was an ardent