Two deceased friends I may here notice. At an early period in my Kensington pastorate, a gentleman called upon me in the vestry with a transfer to our Church from a communion he had joined in Manchester. At the time he was a rising engineer, and afterwards took part in the construction of railways over the Alps and in South America. He was a botanist, and came to possess a large garden and conservatory where he lived. He received the honour of knighthood, and as Sir James Brunlees became well known. He took a deep interest in our Congregational affairs, and after his change of residence from Addison Road, Kensington, still continued, with his family, to worship with us on Sundays. He was an intimate friend of John Bright, both of them being anglers; and I was entertained by stories of their success, as brethren of the rod. I often spent a few restful days at Argyle Lodge, where he and his kind-hearted lady made me as much at home as I felt at my own fireside. She died suddenly, after my retirement, when she was visiting a friend. I was immediately summoned to meet and comfort the mourning family. Another friend—George Rawson, of Bristol, the gifted hymn-writer—also died after my retirement, leaving memories of intelligence, humour, and affection, which I shall fondly cherish as long as I live. His beloved wife, daughter of the Rev. John Clayton, one of my predecessors in the Kensington pastorate, died some years before at Bristol. The touching memory of her funeral, and of the company then present, passes before me as I write these lines.
When I wrote this chapter, I asked my dear daughter Georgie to give me some results of her own experience whilst visiting the poor. She returned the following notes:—
“Instances of unselfishness are sometimes very touching. I knew a Christian woman who suffered for years with weak sight, and had several operations on both eyes, so that she could only distinguish outlines of different objects. She heard of two little children, distant relations of her husband, being left orphans, and as she had no children of her own, she suggested that they should adopt these little girls, and lead them in early years to a knowledge of Christ. The husband was so touched at his wife’s readiness, with failing sight, to take this burden upon herself that, though a common labourer, he was willing to incur the extra expense, and ever since that home has been one of the brightest I know.
“A poor woman expressed a strong desire that some one would speak to her sailor boy, who was wild and unmanageable. An opportunity occurred not long after, but the lad manifested great disgust at being talked to, and afterwards whenever I called he left the room. When about to start upon a voyage, I went to bid him ‘Good-bye.’ On leaving I said, ‘The time may come when you will feel the need of a true friend; remember that Christ is ready to receive you, for He has said, “Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out.” These words may fill your heart with gladness some day.’ I did not hear anything of him for a long time, but one evening I received a note saying he was lying ill in a hospital, and would I go and see him. I complied, and found he had never forgotten the Saviour’s words which I had quoted. He resisted, he said, the voice calling him to forsake his sins and cleave to Christ till he could bear it no longer. At last he yielded, and the change produced in him was remarkable. During a long illness he manifested patience, unlike his old self, and the lad’s cheerfulness and readiness to help his mother were very beautiful. He died in her arms, singing ‘Safe in the arms of Jesus.’
“Many of the poor have seen days of prosperity, and have forgotten God; but, when adversity comes, like frightened children, they rush to the Father’s arms. One man, possessing at one time over £20,000, with a hundred men under him, lost all. Then, when reduced to the greatest distress, he listened to the Divine voice.
“I remember that on Lord Chichester’s library table there always stood a large card, with the words:
‘Lord Jesus, make Thyself to me
A living, bright reality.’“And such words unite the rich and the poor. One of the poorest women I ever met, had a strong realisation of Christ’s constant presence; and it so beautified her life, that all who entered her humble home felt such a prayer had been answered in her experience. I never talk to her but my mind is carried back to the Stanmer library.”
At the end of this chapter, which closes my Kensington ministry, I venture to speak of my methods of preaching.
The main object of my ministrations was the illustration of God’s Holy Word. Archbishop Whately preferred “to set his watch by the sun”; and, therefore, tested the results of his own thinking, and other teachers, by a comparison of them with the decisions of Scripture. When Scripture was plain, the subject on which it pronounced a distinct judgment was regarded as fixed for ever. That method it was my desire habitually to pursue. I made it my aim, not only to interpret the meaning of a particular verse taken by itself, but to catch, and fix in my mind, the drift of Apostolic thought in particular instances. It has been said, irreverently, that some expositors, when persecuted in one verse, flee to another, and the connection between the several parts of a paragraph is overlooked and lost.
It was my desire to look at long trains of thought in the writings of St. Paul as a sacred landscape, in which here and there a verse occurs as a lofty hill, which serves as a commanding point for surveying a landscape of thought round about. A single verse is often a key to an entire paragraph.
It was my habit to go over now and then a large extent of Scripture—doctrinal, biographical, historical. “Stars of the East, or Prophets and Apostles,” formed a series of personal sketches in the Old and New Testaments, afterwards published by the Religious Tract Society. Another course, called “Lights of the World,” were illustrations of character, drawn from records of Christian experience and action, such as “William Tyndale, or Labour and Patience”; “Richard Hooker, or a Soul in Love with God’s Law and Holy Order”; and “Robert Leighton, or the Peacefulness of Faith.”
Besides such methods I did not scruple to lay under contribution to the pulpit, condensed summaries of Puritan works, such as Baxter’s “Now or Never”; also I may mention that a course of Sermons on “Pilgrim’s Progress” excited much interest, and three or four of these I repeated at the close of my pastorate.
As to the real value of a sermon, form must never be confounded with substance. It is vain to vote the mantle into majesty. A royal robe depends for effect on the richness of the material, not on the adjustment of its folds. Toller’s “Sermons” [248] so eulogised by Robert Hall, depend for their impressiveness, not on a careful selection of words—in this respect they are open to criticism—but upon the intrinsic majesty of such thoughts as they express.
There is an obvious contrast between French and English preachers in this respect. They are more attentive to form than we are. I have witnessed effects in Parisian, and in Italian churches as well, produced by modes of delivery, such as I never saw in our own country. Young preachers in England might make their sermons more effective than they are, by greater attention paid to a mode of delivery.