He sang the hymn all by himself, at the top of his voice, so that the windows rattled, to one of those rousing and popular melodies which have been pressed into the service of the army; it was, in fact, "Molly Darling," and the people at Stepney Green asked each other in wonder if a meeting of the Salvation Army was actually being held at Miss Kennedy's.
When he had finished his hymn he began to preach.
He stammered at first, because the surroundings were strange; besides, the cold, curious eyes of Miss Kennedy chilled him. Presently, however, he recovered self-possession, and began his address.
There is one merit, at least, possessed by these preachers; it is that of simplicity. Whatever else they may be, they are always the same; even the words do not vary while there is but one idea.
If you want to influence the dull of comprehension, such as the common donkey, there is but one way possible. He cannot be led, or coaxed, or persuaded; he must be thwacked. Father Stick explains and makes apparent, instantly, what the logic of all the schools has failed to prove. In the same way, if you wish to awaken the spiritual emotions among people who have hitherto been strange to them, your chance is not by argument, but by appeals, statements, prophecies, threats, terrors, and pictures, which, in fact, do exactly correspond, and produce the same effect as Father Stick; they are so many knock-down blows; they belabor and they terrify.
The preacher began: the girls composed themselves to listen, with the exception of Rebekah, who went on with her work ostentatiously, partly to show her disapproval of such irregular proceedings and partly as one who, having got the truth from an independent source, and being already advanced in the narrow way, had no occasion for the captain's persuasion.
It is one thing to hear the voice of a street preacher in his own church, so to speak, that is, on the curbstone, and quite another thing to hear the same man and the same person in a quiet room. Tom Coppin had only one sermon, though he dressed it up sometimes, but not often, in new words. Yet he was relieved of monotony by the earnestness which he poured into it. He believed in it, himself; that goes a long way. Angela began by thinking of the doctrine, but presently turned her attention to the preacher, and began to think what manner of man he was. Personally he was pale and thin, with strong black hair, like his brother, and his eyes were singularly bright.
Here was a man of the people: self-taught; profoundly ignorant as to the many problems of life and its solutions; filled, however, with that noble sympathy which makes prophets, poets, martyrs; wholly possessed of faith in his narrow creed, owning no authority of church or priest; believing himself under direct Divine guidance, chosen and called, the instrument of merciful Heaven to drag guilty souls from the pit; consciously standing as a servant, day and night, before a Throne which other men regard afar off or cannot see at all; actually living the life of hardship, privation, and ill-treatment, which he preached; for the sake of others, enduring hardness, poverty, contumely; taking all these things as part and parcel of the day's work; and, in the name of duty, searching into corners and holes of this great town for the vilest, the most hardened, the most depraved, the most blinded to a higher life.
This, if you please, is not a thing to be laughed at. What did Wesley more? What did Whitfield? Nay, what did Paul?
They paid him for his services, it is true; they gave him five-and-twenty shillings a week; some of this great sum he gave away; the rest provided him with poor and simple food. He had no pleasures or joys of life; he had no recreations; he had no hope of any pleasures; some of the officers of his army—being men and women as well as preachers—loved each other and were married; but this man had no thought of any such thing, he, as much as any monk, was vowed to the service of the Master, without rest or holiday, or any other joy than that of doing the work that lay before him.