The London Pulpit

by J. Ewing Ritchie

Yet even the stage has had its saints, as in old times the world gave up its high-spirited and gay to the cause of God. If emperors have become monks, it is not wonderful nor surpassing the bounds of probability that men should give up writing plays and take to writing sermons instead. A few years back Gerald Griffin exchanged the world for a monastery. In our own day Sheridan Knowles is an example of a still greater change, for he has left the stage for the pulpit, and has consecrated the evening of his life to the advocacy of Christian truth. I fear in this latter character he is not so successful as in his former. Well do I remember him at the Haymarket. It was the first time I ever was inside a theatre. The enjoyment of the evening, I need not add, was intense. A first visit to a theatre is always enough to bewilder the brain. You never see men of such unsullied honour—women of such gorgeous beauty—scenes of such thrilling interest in real life—and when I learned that the drama itself was

the production of Knowles, my admiration of him knew no bounds. But I confess in the pulpit he did not appear to me to so great an advantage. It may be that I am older. It may be that time has robbed me, as he does every one else, of the wonder and enthusiasm which, to the eye of youth, makes everything it looks on beautiful and bright. It may be that I, as every one else does, feel daily more deeply—

‘The inhuman dearth
Of noble natures;’

but nevertheless the fact, I fear, is but clear, that Knowles does not shine in the pulpit as he did on the stage, which he has now renounced some years. Of course he has a crowd to hear him, for a player turned parson is a nine days’ wonder, and run after as such. The question is not, can he read well? not, can he convey his thoughts in elegant language? not, can he compose a lecture which, to his own satisfaction, at least, can demolish insolent popes and self-conceited Unitarians, against which classes he principally labours; but can he preach—preach so that men are awe-struck—acknowledge a divine influence, and shudder as they look back on the buried

past? I fear this question must be answered in the negative.

Let us imagine ourselves in one of the numerous Baptist chapels of the metropolis—for to that denomination of Christians does Mr. Knowles belong—while he is preaching in the pulpit. You see a shrewd, sharp-looking old gentleman, dressed in black, with a black silk-handkerchief around his neck, and with a voice clear and forcible as the conventional old sea-captain of the stage. He takes a text but remotely connected with his discourse, and begins. You listen with great interest at first. The preacher is lively and animated, and is apparently very argumentative, and nods his head at the conclusion of each sentence in a most decided manner, as if to intimate that he had very considerably the best of the argument. Now, this is all very well for five minutes, or even ten; but when you find this lasting for an hour—with no heads for you to remember—you naturally grow very weary. Knowles, I imagine from his preaching, seems to think argument is his forte; never was a man more mistaken in his life. His sermons are bundles of little bits of arguments tied up together as a heap of old

sticks, and just as dry. He seems an honest, dogmatic man, certainly not a great one, and clearly but a moderate preacher after all. A man may eschew the conventionalities of the stage, and the conventionalities of the pulpit, and yet fail. Mr. Knowles is a case in point. As a lecturer, I am told he has been very successful in Scotland. He seems to suit the Scotch better than the English. He lectures against Popery, and the Scotch will always listen with kindly feelings to the man who does that. I don’t imagine that in London Mr. Knowles will do much. He is very controversial. Theology is to him a new study, and he rushes into it with all the zeal of a juvenile enthusiast. This suits the Scotch, but not the English. We are a more tolerant folk. We are all orthodox, of course, but our orthodoxy takes a milder form. We tolerate a clever George Dawson, an infliction against which Scotland rigidly rebels. We may be one nation, but we are far from being one people. We yet live on different fare.

I have already said Mr. Knowles is a Baptist. He has been connected with that sect ever since he left the stage and became a religious man.

It was in Glasgow, I believe, that he, to use the common phrase of the evangelical sects, came to a knowledge of the truth. It was in consequence of his attendance on the ministry of the Rev. Mr. Innes, a Baptist minister in that city, that the change took place—and that he was led to look upon the world, and man, and his relation to them both, in a new light. It was in Glasgow that he was baptized, and became a member of the church. That he should turn preacher was natural. Accustomed to address public audiences, there was no necessity why he should give up the practice, and there were many reasons why he should not. Accordingly, every Sunday almost he is engaged in preaching, and occasionally takes lecturing engagements in the country. He is also Professor of Elocution at the Baptist College, Stepney—a teacher of deportment—a clerical Turvey-drop to the pious youth of that respectable institution. This is all very well. If art is of use—if it can make the eloquent more eloquent, and the dull less so—its aid should surely be invoked by the Christian Church.

I would only add, that Mr. Knowles is an