leading and appropriate idea. He commenced with Cowper’s magnificent hymn, “God moves in a mysterious way.” The portion of Scripture read was Christ’s commission to the seventy to go and preach the Gospel all over the world; the prayer was an acknowledgment that the human will should be subordinated to the Divine; and it was “Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah,” which formed the closing song.
As Dr. Parker told us he was going to publish his sermon (his sermons now appear weekly, under the title of “The City Temple”), I need say little of the discourse, of which I have already given the text. It began with a reference to the triumph and danger of liberty—that man might go whether with God or without Him. Man was free, nor was his religion one of slavery. To those who considered such a statement to be a grand contradiction of what we know of eternal decrees, it was sufficient to reply that it could only be harmonized in the ecstasy of light and love. God will not make everything straight, but only in proportion as we trust Him and live with Him will our difficulties diminish. As to his text in particular, remarked Dr. Parker, it was first a warning—there are crooked places. It was a promise—
the crooked places God would make straight: all that we required was patience. Also it was a plan—God would go before us. Say some, that is God’s sovereignty—that is the omnipotent Jehovah. No, it indicated His love, His tenderness, His care. In such an idea we do not dwarf God, but exalt Him. Then came the limitation of the promise. This going before was a question of character. The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord. That, however, was no motive for carelessness, but the reverse. The Doctor, in conclusion, spoke of himself. He had been told that in leaving Manchester and coming to the Poultry he was moving into a crooked place. In explanation he stated he did not look for the ordinary course of a minister. He looked at London, that immeasurable centre; he thought of the young men who come strangers to the metropolis, and with no friends to guide and guard them; and if he did not get people to come and hear him on the Sunday, he trusted they would do so on the Thursday, when there would be a service from twelve to one, when he would aim simply to touch the heart with a sense of sin and forgiveness. He also intended to use the printing-press. He had great faith in the printed page. It remained to be read at spare moments when a man had nothing
to do. Finally, said Dr. Parker, he spoke with fear and trembling, but he came there with a strong determination to succeed, and he appealed to all around to do their duty—not to carp, or criticise, or say unkind words, but to resolve to labour and to be guided by heavenly power and wisdom. At the close of the service there was a collection. After this the immense congregation streamed out into the open air, much to the astonishment of casual passengers, who did not understand what was the matter. The Poultry has a prosperous look, and they have got a new pulpit there almost as rotund, and bright, and buoyant as Dr. Parker himself.
I know not how the Sunday service succeeds, but the Thursday morning service is wonderfully well filled. In this busy age it is scarcely credible that in the busiest part of London, and at the busiest hour of the day, a chapel as large as the Poultry can be crowded, and is regularly crowded, with merchants and men of business and others. Yet such is the case, and Dr. Parker has succeeded in an attempt which, until he tried it, certainly seemed hazardous in the extreme. If the Doctor seems a little bombastic, it may well be forgiven him under these circumstances, especially when we remember that no
preacher can succeed in convincing others that he is worth hearing till he has become firmly convinced of that fact himself. A modest man I fear is out of place anywhere, but most of all so in the pulpit. It was in wisdom that Dr. Parker was selected for his post. I should think he is a preacher pre-eminently adapted to the young. Judged not by what he has done, but by years, the Doctor is almost a young man himself. There is youthful vigour in his full round face, in his small dark eyes; and certainly there is no small store of youthful enthusiasm in his heart. In his black hair and beard there is no suggestive tinge of grey. If he has passed through and left the golden portals of youth behind, it can only be but recently that he has done so, and there is still in him somewhat of its grace and glory. In another respect also the choice of Dr. Parker was appropriate. The Poultry Chapel is in the very heart of London; the chances were that most of the young men present—and, I might add, of the old ones too—were more or less engaged in some secular avocations. In like manner, so the writer has always understood, the Doctor’s youthful years were passed. Hence it came to pass the old Poultry Chapel is in a flourishing state. The Doctor seemed in his right place, and, if we
may judge from appearances, the people seemed to think so.
MR. LYNCH’S THURSDAY EVENINGS.
In a great city like London there are many sources of pleasure completely overlooked. If people complain that life is dull—that it is monotonous—that it presents to them few objects of interest or attraction—I fancy they have chiefly themselves to blame. No man or woman either with heart or head need lead a barren life either in the country or in town. There is always something to do, to see, or to hear, and in London especially is there much to hear of which Londoners know but little. Such, at any rate, was the reflection of the writer one Thursday night as he made his way along the Hampstead Road to a neat little iron church on the left-hand side as you go from the City, and just before you reach Mornington Crescent. Every Sunday morning there preaches there the Rev. Thomas Lynch, the author of some choice prose and poetry—a man at whom there was a dead set made by certain religionists a few years ago, but who has long outlived that, and to whom that time of trial and of trouble was undoubtedly a most blessed event, inasmuch as it taught the gentle author of the
“Rivulet” his strength, both as regards himself and as regards the best of our religious teachers; and inasmuch as it demonstrated to all anew, and more clearly than ever, how hard, how cruel, how unmerciful dogmatic theologians could become. At that time Mr. Lynch was preaching in a chapel in one of the streets running from Tottenham Court Road into Fitzroy Square. He is now nearer Camden Town, and preaches in a building between which and the pastor there seems to be a kind of resemblance and sympathy; at any rate, as much as can exist between what is abstract and concrete—between matter and mind. The church is no Gothic edifice, hoary with time, but slender and modern, and, as much as possible, graceful. You wonder it has not been swept away by the storms of winter. A similar feeling exists when you look at Mr. Lynch. There are great mountains of men, whose tread is terrible, whose laugh is volcanic, whose heads are rugged rocks, whose bodies are bulls of Bashan, whose speech is as the roar of an angry sea, whose faces in summer parch you up like burning suns, or in winter darken you with angry clouds. To this genus Mr. Lynch does in no way belong. The fairies who assisted at Mr. Lynch’s birth did very little for