The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1868-08-15 00:00:00

PULPIT COWARDICE.

There has been a great many letters written lately on the
subject of long sermons : and " S. G. 0." sends the following
letter to the Times for publication :

For some three dozen years the writer of this letter
has been a preacher of Sermons; he has in that time
been as little out of his own pulpit during the year-as
probably living;
any clergyman he rarely uses
" notes ;, ' he is quite aware that but too often, for his
own health's good and the patience of his congregation,
he has preached "not wisely, and but too long." He
um yet say, in all truth, the respectful attention he
has ever seen in his congregation, if it has gladdened
his heart, may often have been a snare to lead him to
trespass too far on its good nature.
Few men working in a small sphere as the rule, but
from time to time, in the course of years, having to
preach to very different congregations from their own,
have had their thoughts more directed to the subject
of "Sermons and Sermons" than myself; none can be
more sensible, from experience, from study of preachers
and congregations, why it is the pulpit is fast
losing any power which it ever possessed • Ser-
mons are voted to be trials of patience, and the
discontented are inclined to cry out, "If we cannot
have attractive preaching, let us away with it, and
only go to prayers." Yes, Sir, I, too, would say, let

_
• us have ',reaching as an exceptional matter, if people
will come to church really to pray. If I believed that
all tho, ho are bored with sermons had really
refreshed their souls with prayer before the clergyman
ascended the pulpit, and felt it a weariness to be
disturbed by mere ordinary human teaching out of the
frame of mind the beautiful language of our Liturgy
had produced, I for one would propose we should preach
but once a month, and I am quite satisfied the result
would be, were the custom general, that the people
would be infinitely more blessed from within and
without, by becoming truly prayerful in church than
by listening to any eloquence of the most gifted and
earnest men, let them charm the ear or attract the
understanding to any degree conceivable.
I have no desire to occupy any space either to express
assent or dissent to anything which has been written
by yourself—i.e., in your leading article—or in the
letters of correspondents on this subject. I do, how-
ever, ask permission to state my view of the matter,
however distasteful it may be to a great many church-
goers, and generally unacceptable to your clerical
readers of all ranks and opinions. I assert the pulpit
has failed of much it ought to have done, and is
becoming daily more weak for good, because it has
deliberately betrayed the cause for which alone it
athould be, as the rule, ever occupied. Preachers, to
avoid what they know they. ought to say but dare not
say, wander away in their discourses from plainly
speaking plain truths to everything and anything
their ingenuity can extract from Scripture which may
chance to attract, but it is not likely to offend.
When I was a young man I WU doing duty in a
parish which my sexton thought highl privileged.
" There was a deal of carriage company." I had one
morning preached on the proper religious training of
children, the duty of keeping them out of the way
of early vanity and temptation to early ungodliness.
I had hardly got home to luncheon when a groom
came with a hurried note from one of my flock,
a lady of high rank and what was called great
worldly influence—as kindhearted a creature of that
mrt as any I have ever known. She expressed her
astonishment that, being on the friendly terms I was
at with all the famil, I "should have so
iwinteilly preached at them." I sent her the sermon,
case and all, begged her to observe it had been
preached a few Sundays before at 1) t for the
National School Society. She apologised the next day
with all that good-humoured grace which so well be-
came her, only adding—" But you know, I think,—you
ought to have seen, that what would not give offence
at 11—t would mrely do so to us." There is a story,
an old one, but still afloat, which for my purpose I
may well quote. A certain preacher, of by no means
extreme views, had several times quoted from Scrip-
ture, and enforced in his own language, certain pas-
sages warning mankind against the teaching and
temptation of our common enemy—the DeviL He
was spoken to on the subject of the use of the word by
a leading parishioner, the head of the chief house.
He defended himself as well as he could by the argu-
ment that all he had said was, after all, only Bible
teaching. It was admitted; but he was in effect told
that he would act a more prudent part, if he felt com-
pelled to speak from the pulpit ` all that kind of
thing," to do it in the afternoon ; be would assuredly
give offence—to whom? to his morning congregation?
In fact, he was not to parade the Devil and his
doings to "carriage company."
Being in London some few years since, I was taken
by a friend to two churches, W.E., to hear popular
preachers. In the first I heard an eloquent appeal
to the congregation to fall in with the views of
the incumbent, he proposing a plan to shorten the
time they—the congregation, a highly-dressed one—
were detained at the Holy Communion, there being
a large number of communicants. He reminded
them it could be done, for, he went on to say, "iii
a neighbouring well-known church they did yet
it over, the numbers being greater than in this
church, in half the time ;" like Captain Cuttle, I
made note of the expression at the time. In the second
church I attended, it was crammed with purple-and-
fine-linen people, the very eloquent preacher coolly
told a congregation which seemed to hang for very
spiritual life on his lips that there was much he wished
to say on his subject, but "he shrank from opening
out these mysteries "—to whom?—" to a mixed con-
gregation !" In my own mind I made note to ask
him, if ever we met, where was the congregation not
mixed. If the investments of his congregation clad
individuals of so weak intellect or such cool piety that
he felt it necessary to reserve high class spiritual food,
where were we to look for the qualified ?—how could
the poortaste of this reserved grace?
The clergy, Sir, may, as the rule, be deficient in
eloquence, and far below as advocates of the truth
what all could desire. Cod's Courts may have a weak
" bar," few on the parochial circuit qualified to act as
"leaders" to prosecute the wrongdoer or defend him
who doeth right ; but the brief we hold is in our
peoi de's hands, and the great majority understand its
most important pleas as well as ourselves. Where we
fail is—from cowardice. Why we are cowardly is to me
quite clear—we contend under difficulties no human
power can overcome.
. . .

In my opinion the great use of preaching is to
uphold right, denounce wrong ; to offer hope, or
warn against its loss, without respect of persons,
accordkg as it is written. It is very easy to find
fault with us -there is abundance of room for sharp
criticism ; but do remember we are ordained very
young, and the law hinds us for life to work, the
reality of which we have yet to learn. It was hard to
ask for the tale of bricks from the Israelites,
and give them no straw; only one thing would
have been worse —to have demanded bricks from
gravel, not clay. All I ask for is a just considera-
tion of our ease. Say that a London West-end preacher
determines to be honest, or even that a Bishop in Ins
pulpit Is SO, would the congregation bear to be told
in plain W.,11 is Bible-truth as to adultery, gambling,
utter devotion to money-seeking, the giving up mind
and bode to mere pleasure-bunting in any fields, how-
ever polluted by open sin? Would sea that preacher,
be he even the most simple of Bishops, know full well
that if he were to venture to talk to the well-clad and
scented en .wd before him about their lives as he would
talk to the class of young folks just confirmed in a
country parish, that be would be transgressing all rule
as to what Society calls good taste in the pulpit?
Does not every Bishop and preacher to the upper
ten" know full well that if, as before God, he did his
duty from Sunday to Sunday, he would have to tell his
congregation seine truths as to their lives they would
not endure? What is the result? Sermons are tame,
often stupid. The preacher can hardly be very ani-
mated in delivering a religious essay calculated not to
offend when in his heart he feels what a sham it is.
Yes, Sir, there is many a pure heart which feels itself
choked in utterance because' forsooth, the higher
order are not to be offended; their vice is to be deli-
cately handled, their path heavenward to be left easy,
lest in the attempt to show that they have something
yet to do they are offended. Your music is good; it
is a high-bred audience; the offertory collection ad-
mirable ; well, you can let off steam into an S.P.G.,
abuse Colenso, and narrate the hideous morals of
Zulus and colonists. . -

Take a country parish, with the usual proportion of
great house, farmhouse, servant, and labourer element.
You are expected to work at those poor poor; to
preach down drunkenness, poaehing—stealing of all
kinds; and in the afternoons to speak plainly about
the marriage vow and its frequent breach. You know
full well that these poor poor have been starved on
low wages, that they are dependent on the poor-rate
for every interruption to their normal starving state ;
you know they are so housed that all ordinary rule for
the protection of modesty is a farce; that drunken-
ness to them is a dearly-bought forgetfulness,
for a time, of the wretched monotony of a struggling
life, and becoming a habit is their ruin. You know
that their condition can truly be traced to the door of
some of the other classes to whom you have to preach;
that they, owners and occupiers, do reap the benefit
of keeping these poor as they are. Now, dare one
clergyman in a hundred could he get a Bishop to do
it for Lim ?—preach lid de truth as plainly about the
duty of employer and land-owner to their poor as they
expect Lim to preach to the poor the virtues which
Heaven deman is from them, and which will make
them better earl/h, servants? If your great man or
any of the lesser great ones should live a profligate
life, should he be a known drunkard, would it be Jus-
tifiable, even in your Bishop's eye, if you preached at
his vices as he expects you to attack those of thetpoor?

I will trouble 'you Nith no more for the pre.sent,
only adding my conviction that if a Church which has
failed of its purpose should be disestablished I think
my Church in danger. Certainly I cannot see that we
have made the wealthy and noble much better • and
these tell us our poor are very bad. I cannot admit,
however, it is all our fault. I should like to see one
. .

year s honest pulpit campanili against high-class vice.
I should then he leas ashamed of the order to which I
belong, the profession I have not yet altogether quitted.