Irishman,—that he was born in 1784,—and that his plays, especially the Hunchback, still retain possession of the stage.
THE HON. AND REV. BAPTIST NOEL.
Next in estimation in this great democratic country to a real live lord is a real live lord’s relative. If you can’t shake hands with a real peer, it is something to shake hands with his brother. It is impossible to get people to believe that human nature is everywhere the same; that God has made of one blood peers and people, black and white. In this unsettled age, perhaps, faith in the peerage is as abiding a conviction as any whatever. Nor is it limited to what is called the world. The Church participates deeply in the folly; no piety is so acceptable, has so genuine an odour, as piety in high life; no homage is considered so graceful to the Lord as the religion of a lord. A lord at a Bible meeting—a lord stammering a few unconnected common-places about Missionary Societies or the conversion of
the Jews—a lord writing a book on the Millennium, throws the religious world into a state of heavenly rapture.
This, I take it, is the origin of the success of the Hon. and Rev. Baptist Noel as a preacher in this great metropolis. If Baptist Noel is not a lord himself, he is of lordly origin. His mother was a peeress in her own right, and, as a tenth son, he must have a little blue blood in his veins. His sister is, or was, a lady in waiting to the Queen. His brother is an earl. He himself, at one time, was one of the royal chaplains. He is redolent, then, of high life: what a delightful thought for the London shopkeepers and tradesmen, who were wont to resort to St. John’s Chapel, Bedford Row! I really believe that these good people felt that by going to hear him they were killing two birds with one stone—getting into the very best society, and at the same time worshipping the God of heaven and of earth.
But this is not Baptist Noel’s only claim. His position has done much for him; but his real merits have done much more. It is something to find a man who is brought up to the Church, honestly devoting himself to his sacred calling;
scorning the pomps and allurements of the world; in season and out of season a faithful minister of Christ. With his high rank, with his family influence and the family livings—for to suppose that the family has not such, is to deny that it is a respectable family at all—though a younger son, Baptist Noel might have led a haughty and luxurious life—a life of sensual indulgence or lettered ease. For such a course he could have quoted precedents enough. But religious truth had sunk deeply into his heart. His creed was no scholastic dogma, but a living faith. With his inner eye he had seen the vanities of this world, and the awful realities of the next; that all men were guilty before God; and that it was only by faith in the atonement that the guilt could be wiped away. Hence his perseverance, his single-mindedness, his zeal, He preached, not to please men’s fancies, but to save men’s souls—not to lull them into a deceitful peace, but to induce them to fly for mercy from the wrath to come. True to this unvaried theme, Baptist Noel leaves to others gorgeously to declaim, or learnedly to define, or coldly to moralize. Evidently with him, for such matters, life is too short and eternity too long.
Hence he is one of the plainest preachers of the metropolis. He aims at your heart, not at your head. He touches your affections, if he cannot master your understanding. He may win you over by his gentleness, though he fail to convince you by his power.
Such, as a preacher, is Baptist Noel. Immediately he rises in the pulpit you feel that you have that undefinable mystery, a gentleman, before you. Few, indeed, are the gentlemen who surpass him in elegance of appearance, or urbanity of manner. He is about fifty-five years of age, tall, and of a fine figure; his hair is of a light brown colour, his complexion is fair and pale, his face long, and his features handsome. He has a high forehead, deep-set blue eyes, a long and rather aquiline nose, and an expressive mouth. His voice is rich and silvery, not ‘harsh and crabbed,’ but
‘Musical as is Apollo’s lute;’