I saw in a foreign journal a report of one of George Whitefield's sermons—a sermon preached a hundred and twenty or thirty years ago. It seemed that the reporter stood to take the sermon, and his chief idea was to caricature it, and these are some of the reportorial interlinings of the sermon of George Whitefield. After calling him by a nickname indicative of a physical defect in the eye, it goes on to say: "Here the preacher clasps his chin on the pulpit cushion. Here he elevates his voice. Here he lowers his voice. Holds his arms extended. Bawls aloud. Stands trembling. Makes a frightful face. Turns up the whites of his eyes. Clasps his hands behind him. Clasps his arms around him, and hugs himself. Roars aloud. Holloas. Jumps. Cries. Changes from crying. Holloas and jumps again."
One would have thought that if any man ought to have been free from persecution it was George Whitefield, bringing great masses of the people into the kingdom of God, wearing himself out for Christ's sake: and yet the learned Dr. Johnson called him a mountebank. Robert Hall preached about the glories of heaven as no uninspired man ever preached about them, and it was said when he preached about heaven his face shone like an angel's, and yet good Christian John Foster writes of Robert Hall, saying: "Robert Hall is a mere actor, and when he talks about heaven the smile on his face is the reflection of his own vanity." John Wesley stirred all England with reform, and yet he was caricatured by all the small wits of his day. He was pictorialised, history says, on the board fences of London, and everywhere he was the target for the punsters; yet John Wesley stands to-day before all Christendom, his name mighty. I have preached a Gospel that is not only appropriate to the home circle, but is appropriate to Wall Street, to Broadway, to Fulton Street, to Montague Street, to Atlantic Street, to every street—not only a religion that is good for half past ten o'clock Sunday morning, but good for half past ten o'clock any morning. This was one of the considerations in my work as a preacher of the Gospel that extended its usefulness. A practical religion is what we all need. In my previous work at Belleville, N.J., and in Syracuse, I had absorbed other considerations of necessity in the business of uniting the human character with the church character.
Although the Central Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn of which I was pastor was one of the largest buildings in that city then, it did not represent my ideal of a church.
I learned in my village pastorates that the Church ought to be a great home circle of fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters. That would be a very strange home circle where the brothers and sisters did not know each other, and where the parents were characterised by frigidity and heartlessness. The Church must be a great family group—the pulpit the fireplace, the people all gathered around it. I think we sometimes can tell the people to stay out by our church architecture. People come in and find things angular and cold and stiff, and they go away never again to come; when the church ought to be a great home circle.
I knew a minister of religion who had his fourth settlement. His first two churches became extinct as a result of his ministry, the third church was hopelessly crippled, and the fourth was saved simply by the fact that he departed this life. On the other hand, I have seen pastorates which continued year after year, all the time strengthening, and I have heard of instances where the pastoral relation continued twenty years, thirty years, forty years, and all the time the confidence and the love were on the increase. So it was with the pastorate of old Dr. Spencer, so it was with the pastorate of old Dr. Gardiner Spring, so it was with the pastorate of a great many of those old ministers of Jesus Christ, of whom the world was not worthy.
I saw an opportunity to establish in Brooklyn just such a church as I had in my mind's eye—a Tabernacle, where all the people who wanted to hear the Gospel preached could come in and be comfortable. I projected, designed, and successfully established the Brooklyn Tabernacle within a little over a year after preaching my first sermon in Brooklyn. The church seated 3,500 people, and yet we were compelled to use the old church to take care of all our active Christian work besides.
The first Brooklyn Tabernacle was, I believe, the most buoyant expression of my work that I ever enjoyed. It drew upon all my energies and resources, and as the sacred walls grew up towards the skies, I prayed God that I might have the strength and spiritual energy to grow with it.
Prayer always meets the emergency, no matter how difficult it may be.
That was the substantial backing of the first Brooklyn Tabernacle—prayer. Prayer furnished the means as well as the faith that was behind them. I was merely the promoter, the agent, of a company organised in Heaven to perpetuate the Gospel of Christ. It was considered a great thing to have done, and many were the reasons whispered by the worldly and the envious and the orthodox, for its success. Some said it was due to magnetism.
As a cord or rope can bind bodies together, there may be an invisible cord binding souls. A magnetic man throws it over others as a hunter throws a lasso. Some men are surcharged with this influence, and have employed it for patriotism and Christianity and elevated purposes.