I have yet to see the person whose feeling at the first sight of the great Baptist preacher was not one of overwhelming disappointment. His legs are short and tremble under the heavy trunk. His forehead is low, with a bush of black hair above it, the brows beetle over small, twinkling eyes, the nose is thick, the mouth large, with a pendulous lower jaw. “Here is an animal!” you say to yourself. “Of the earth, earthy. Of the commonalty, common!”
He moved slowly and painfully, and while preaching, praying and reading, rested his gouty knee upon the seat of a chair and stood upon one leg. His hand, stumpy and ill-formed, although small, grasped the chair-back for further support. If I remember aright, there was no invocation or other preliminary service before he gave out a hymn. His voice is a clear monotone, marvellously sustained. The inflections are slight and few, but exceedingly effective. The ease of elocution that sent every syllable to the farthest corner of the vast building was inimitable and cannot be described.
“We will sing”—he began as naturally as in a prayer-meeting of twenty persons—“We will all sing, with the heart and with the voice, with the spirit, and with understanding, the ——th hymn:
“Let us all, with cheerful mood
Praise the Lord, for He is good!”
The pronunciation of “mood” rhymed precisely with “good,” and he said “Lard,” instead of “Lord.” But the words had in them the ring of a silver trumpet.
The precentor stood directly in front of the preacher, facing the audience and just within the railing of the stage. The instant the reading of the hymn was over, he raised the tune, the congregation rising. The Niagara of song made me fairly dizzy for a minute. Everybody sang. After a few lines, it was impossible to refrain from singing. One was caught up and swept on by the cataract. He might not know the air. He might have neither ear nor voice for music. He was kept in time and tune by the strong current of sound. There was no organ or other musical instrument, nor was the voice of the precentor especially powerful. It was as if we were guided by one overmastering mind and spirit constraining the least emotional to be “conjubilant in song” with the thousands upon thousands of his fellows. Congregational psalmody, such as this, without previous rehearsal or training, is phenomenal.
A prayer followed, as remarkable in its way as the singing. Comprehensive, devout, simple, it was the pleading of man in the felt presence of his Maker;—the key-note—“Nevertheless, I will talk with Thee!” Next to Mr. Spurgeon’s earnestness his best gift is his command of good, nervous English,—fluency which is never verboseness. Knowing exactly what he means to say, he says it—fully and roundly—and lets it alone thereafter. He is neither scholarly, nor eloquent, in any other sense than in these. He read a chapter, giving an exposition of each verse in terse, familiar phrase. There was another hymn, and he announced his text:
“Rather rejoice because your names are written in Heaven!”
I should hardly name humility as a characteristic of prayer or sermon; yet, for one whose boldness of speech often approximates dogmatism, he is singularly free from self-assertion. His sermon was more like a lecture-room talk than a discourse prepared for, and delivered to a mixed multitude. His quotations from Holy Writ were abundant and apt, evincing a retentive memory and ready wit. One-third of the sermon was in the very words of Scripture. His habitual employment of Bible phrases has lent to his own composition a quaint savor. He makes lavish use of “thee” and “thou,” jumbling these inelegantly with “you” in the same sentence.