The London Pulpit

by J. Ewing Ritchie

or have not courage to brave the consequences of honesty; turns the pulpit too often into the chair of restraint, concealment, or compromise. Wherever this tyranny is obeyed, there cannot be much depth of conviction, vitality of sentiment, growth of knowledge, and improvement of religious life. If this principle were applied to science, it would paralyse all the energies of investigation, and make the wheels of progress stand still. If churches will not respect individual liberty—will not let their ministers and members investigate the Scriptures, and theology, the fruit of other men’s examination of the Scriptures, as fearlessly, impartially, and rigidly as men inquire into Nature and the human results of searching into Nature—such as astronomy, chemistry, and any other branch of science—then it is the duty of every Christian, in God’s name, and the name of human nature, to resist the imposition. It may cost him friends, income, reputation, station, and much which he highly values. He is bound, at whatever sacrifice, to maintain his inborn and inalienable freedom. In this way the yoke of the creeds would be broken. The churches would be turned into the seats of liberty. A noble, manly piety would grow up

among us. The truth, whatever it is, would be discovered. A new state of things would be instituted. Every man would be respected as he rejected human authority over his conscience—refused to allow uninspired men to make his creed as his furniture, his bread, or books—tested all opinions by the light of his own reason—chose to give an account of his convictions, or the use of his powers in obtaining his convictions, to none but his Maker. Self-respect, love of truth, reverence to God, benevolence to men, call upon us all to stand by our native right and duty of searching into all truth contained in all creeds, confessions of faith, catechisms, and all other documents, whether human or divine. The obligation lies in our power of searching into whatever concerns our moral culture, spiritual life, and religious duty.’

Mr. Forster, in accordance with the sentiments here advocated, has left the Congregational body with which he was connected, and has founded a Free Church. Whether that church will answer the wants of our age, time will prove. If the work be good, it will stand. If it be better than old-fashioned sectarianism, it will remain. If it speak to the heart of man, it cannot die. Mr.

Forster has great qualifications for his task. He is in the prime of life. His manner in the pulpit is pleasing. His sermons evince careful preparation, and the possession of a considerable amount of intellectual power. At times he rises into eloquence. Some of his published sermons are inferior to none that have been published in our time, and have been received well in quarters where, generally, little favour is shown to the pulpit exercises of divines.

Though unwearied in the discharge of pastoral duties, Mr. Forster has found time for other labours. Of the Temperance Reformation he has been one of the ablest and most eloquent advocates, and often has Exeter Hall reëchoed his impassioned advocacy in its behalf. He carries abstinence to an extent rare in this country, and abstains entirely from the use of animal food. At one time he was an ardent member of the party of Anti-State Churchmen, of which the late member for Rochdale is the glory and defence. Latterly he seems to have mixed but little with that body. We can well imagine that his time has been otherwise occupied—that his situation must have been one of growing difficulty and danger—that the claims, on the one side, of a

church orthodox on all great questions, and of truth and duty, or what seemed to him as such, on the other, must have cost him many a weary day and sleepless night. That he burst his bonds and became free—that he tore away the associations of a life—argues the possession of honesty and conscientiousness, and fits him to be the preacher of the free inquiry of which he has afforded so signal an example in himself.

THE REV. HENRY IERSON.

‘Can you tell me where Mr. Fox’s Chapel is?’ said I to a young gentleman who had evidently been in the habit of passing it every Sunday. ‘No, indeed, I cannot,’ was the reply. I put the same question to a policeman, and with the same result. Yet South Place, Finsbury Square, is a place of no little pretension. It has been the home of rational religion for some years—of the religion of humanity—of religion purified from formalism, bibliolatry, and cant. There the darkness of the past has been rolled away, and

the light of a new and better day appeared; and yet the scene of all this was unknown to the dwellers in the immediate neighbourhood. There is a light so dazzling that it can only be seen from afar, that close to it you can see nothing. It may be this is the light radiating from South Place.

‘There is a religion of humanity,’ writes Mr. Fox, ‘though not enshrined in creeds and articles—though it is not to be read merely in sacred books, and yet it may be read in all, whenever they have anything in them of truth and moral beauty; a religion of humanity which goes deeper than all, because it belongs to the essentials of our moral and intellectual constitution, and not to mere external accidents—the proof of which is not in historical agreement or metaphysical deduction, but in our own conscience and consciousness; a religion of humanity which unites and blends all other religions, and makes one the men whose hearts are sincere, and whose characters are true, and good, and harmonious, whatever may be the deductions of their minds, or their external profession; a religion of humanity which cannot perish in the overthrow of altars or the fall of temples, which survives them all, and which, were every derived