The Press.
London, England, 1858-03-27 00:00:00

THE PRESS, MARCH 27,1858.

regret to say he by no means stands alone.
We find a clerk in the London Docks ap-
pointed, for his history and geography, over
the head of a rival who surpassed him only in
the more vulgar acquirements of arithmetic,
orthography, and handwriting. Apparently
history is of importance in the Docks, for there
is another very similar case in the India Docks.
But it is scarcely necessary to scrutinize the
cases in detail, for the Commissioners admit,
with something like exultation, that in about
eight per cent. of their appointments they have
knowingly and deliberately selected men on
account of mere literary acquirements, in pre-
ference to men whom the examination hat
proved to be their superiors in practical quali-
fications. We do not think that the system
will last long, if this mode of handling it is
continued. It is the schoolmaster abroad with
a vengeance !
One other point brought out in this Report
we must allude to, for the benefit of parents
and guardians, and that is, the enormous su-
periority in the results of public compared to
those of private education. The Commissioners
give a list of the successful and unsuccessful
candidates corning from the various schools.
From this list it appears that F ton gains a
place for about two out of every three of her
candidates, Rugby for five out of six, Harrow
and Marlborough for about half; whereas the
private schools only give 61 out of 136, and
private tuition only one out of every three. So
important in education is the mutual collision
of brains simultaneously undergoing the
process.

FREEDOM OF PREACH, OR FREEDOM
OF SPEECH?
" FYE, fye on all tired jades ! on all mad
"masters ! and all foul ways ! Was ever man so
"beaten? was ever man so raged? was ever
" man so weary?" Some of the ecclesiastical
helots of the Church of England might borrow
the language of Grumio at the present moment.
The Archbishop of CANTERBURY has passed his
Freedom of Preaching Bill through the House
of Lords. By the Commons it will most pro-
bably be received with little opposition, on
account of its " liberal" tendency ; and such
being the case, we may shortly expect to find
it incorporated with the Constitution. The
Bill manifestly has been drafted to meet an
excitement, and legalise a novelty. That ex-
citement may or may not be wholesome. The
body sometimes requires stimulants ; so may
the mind. That novelty may or may not be
judicious. A change of diet or of treatment is
sometimes expedient. Perhaps it is the same
' in the case of the Church of England.
Whether or not, it is beyond our province to
pronounce ; but when a Bill is about to be
passed into law which is likely to produce
Ia remarkable effect upon the Constitution
it is designed to stimulate, or relieve, as the
case may be, we cannot help asking ourselves
what is the nature of the complaint with
which it is to deal?

There are thousands of the working clergy in
England who, like Grumio, esteem themselves
" tired jades," and regard the present move
meat as suggested by " mad masters." There
are thousands anticipating the arrival in their
parishes of travelling pulpits, much as the
village children do the advent of a t►•avelling
show ; and those hounded clerks who have
for years been in full chase after their strag-
gling flocks, and are run quite out of breath,
are ready to exclaim, " Were ever men so
" beaten? were ever men so raged? "
These men have conscientiously done their
duty; and as far as the vulgar cry of " loaves
and fishes" is concerned the clergy can afford
to exhibit their self-respect by silence,
because it is well known that (as a body)
from their private resources they bring more
income into the ministry of the Church than
they receive from it. We are certain that both
the Archbishop and Bishop of LONDON believe in
their conscientious and painstaking discharge
of duty. Nevertheless, while they admire the
conscience, they doubt the efficacy. It is pal-
pable the Primate's Bill is intended to create a
more efficacious ministry among the people—

particularly in the
exists.

291

at present

Every one knows how and from whence the
Prelates derived their conviction of this re-
quirement ; for we admit it is a requirement. It
was foliowed up by preaching in Exeter-hall ;
preaching in the Abbey; preaching on week-
days ; preaching in courses ; preaching for a
week together ; and, filially, preaching in the
provinces Several provincial towns, follow-
ing the metropolitan lead, established Sunday
afternoon services, with preaching by all sorts
of men on all sorts of subjects. We ourselves
saw an immense placard in one town, which
ran thus :—" Sunday Services. Subject—The
Devil. By the ltev. —." The subject,
an awful one, a necessary one—for the pulpit ;
but not a fit topic for a placard !
Whether the Archbishop's Bill is pregnant
with good or evil will be decided hereafter.
Whether itinerant clerks with bands, books,
and bibles in a carpet-bag are necessary ; or
even, longo intervallo, will bear any remote re-
semblance to AUGUSTINE, the Apostles, and
confessors of the early Church, we need not
stop to consider ; but we cannot help saying
that the Prelates who have advocated the
Freedom of Preaching Bill seem to us to be
lacking in wisdom; and that they would have
done much better, and acted more in con-
formity with the character of the Church, if,
instead of attempting to provide a cure for a
complaint, they had first endeavoured to pre-
vent the disease In fact, had endeavoured to
check the spread of an infection.
The truth is, the Archbishop's Bill and the
Exeter-hall preachings, and all such measures,
are merely efforts to supply the want of
efficacy in the Church by an enormous in-
crease of quantity rather than of quality. We
hold it is not more preaching that the Church
wants, but better. The reason why people
grow weary and go to sleep, or go to the meet-
ing-house, or go anywhere rather than to
church, is that too many of our curates read
like schoolboys, and too many of our rectors
hum like drones. As the Poet Laureate says,
they are the

ders of old saws,
Distilled from some worm-cankered homily.
The people of England have a notion—singu-
larly mistaken and absurd in the esteem of the
Episcopate and the clergy at large—that it is
the business of a clergyman to read and
preach. Ordination examinations recognise
no such obligations. A candidate for erdina-
tion would risk passing if he made a false quan-
tity in reading his Greek ; but whether he
knows anything about English prosody, proper
emphasis, or how to write a sentence gramma-
tically, have been too much matters of indiffe-
rence to bishops and their examining chaplains.
We believe we may assert without fear of contra-
diction that there is scarcely at this moment one
bishop of the United Churches of England
and Ireland who requires to know, or
even does know, whether his candidates
for ordination can read a chapter in the
Bible correctly, can write a sentence of
English lucidly, or can utter a syllable with
fluency, ease, and proper articulation. The
ability of these young men to read dis-
tinctly and preach profitably are matters
on which our bishops are utterly ignorant
when they " lay hands" on them, and bind
them for life to a profession for which, in hun-
dreds of cases, they prove themselves in
their public acts inefficient. In this way
it arises that conscientious parish priests are
sad and weary when they look on deserted
and empty pews, and hear of crowds of people
thronging Exeter-hall and similar places.
The want of efficiency in the Church of
England lies too much at the door of the
Bishops. They have created the disease, and
now they attempt to cure it. Never was old
proverb more strongly illustrated than in this
case—" Prevention is better than cure." _ _

We believe the Archbishop's Bill would have
been needless, and Exeter-hall and West-
minster Abbey services would have been
unrequirect, if those simple rudiments of
education, to read, to write, to speak, had
been properly appreciated. It is not mon-
ster meetings that the people need. It is
not a superabundance in the quantity of the
material, but an improvement in the quality
The Archbishop might have condensed tha

292

whole subject in the two words " Preach," and
" Speech ; " for we believe the most effectual
re►nedy far empty pews would be provided if
the Bishops, instead of going to Parliament,
would go to their candidates for orders, and
refuse to ordain any man who presumed to
offer himself to preach who had not learned
how to speak.
So much as to one most important point,
the manner in whiclt the sermon is delivered.
A word or two must be added on the matter of
which those sermons are composed. And
surely it is wonderful, when we calmly reflect
upon the fact, that desiring, as most preachers
must, to gain the attention of their hearers,
and to do them good, they should so often
utterly mistake their way in the choice of topics.
Men who have the Bible in their hands, and
may select their subjects from any page they
prefer, choose, in four cases out of five, to
preach upon the lowest topics, and to avoid
the highest—to discuss terrestrial and tem-
porary things, when they might discuss celes-
tial and eternal ones—to deal with, and often
to weary, men's heads, when they might stir
their hearts. This is the greatest of all errors,
and yet it is also the most common.
Most congregations, besides minor subdivi-
sions, may be divided into the two great
classes of the religions and the irreligious.
Now, the religious man, wearied with the
earthly cares and turmoils of the week, comes
to church on Sunday in the hope of being re-
freshed by " gales from heaven." Hs derives
no enjoyment, nor strength, from going anew
over all the perplexities and disappointments
of the week. What he thirsts for is, some
glimpses of the glories and enjoyments of
ar•other world. To gain his ear•, and warm
his heart, do not talk of men, and money, and
gains, and losses, bad tempers or bad con-
duct ; but transport him to the other side of
the dark river, and show him something of
those things which are to be his when these
wretched earthly strifes are over.
And the irreligious man—what will you
proffer him ? Good advice ? He will infallibly
fall asleep under the infliction. Remaining
as he is, you can do nothing with him. The
preacher's only hope for such a man is, that
he may be enabled to effect a change. But
how is a man's heart to be changed ? By good
advice? Was such a change ever seen? Is
"a heart of stone " to be turned into " a heart
of flesh "by moral precepts ? The irreligious
man, if he is to derive any good from a sermon,
must be arrested, startled, and made to think.
Aud how rich an armoury has the preacher, in
the Bible, for such a work ! The simple,
plain, undeniable truth, that to each man
" the end of all things is at hand ;" the reflec •
tion, that when the dark river is once crossed,
the man of wealth wilt find himself without a
penny; the man of luxury, naked and destitute;
the man of ambition, with his state for ever
fixed—such simple facts as these, placed in
various lights, and pressed home on men's
consciences with earnestness, may, by GOD'S
blessing, awaken the sleeping soul. But mere
good counsels for this world's guidance will,
as we have said, end iu sleep ; and alter a brief
forty minutes the bearers will ask each other
—" Haven't we had a long sermon to• day ?"

OUR FOREIGN RELATIONS.

IT is no disparagement to the Noble Lord who
now fills the office of Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs to say that, on Lord DERBY'S
accession to power, there was no member of
the Cabinet who had been subjected to more
hostile remarks than Lord MALMESBURY It was
asserted by those who, for factious purposes,
sought to deceive the British people as to the
true character of the new Administration, that
he was the " friend of Louis NAPOLEON," and
that therefore it was useless to expect from
him any satisfactory adjustment of the French
difficulty. It was alleged—and the statement
found ready credence among those whose poli-
tical knowledge is limited to such au acquaint-
ance with the events of the day as may be
gathered from a rapid perusal of a morning
newspaper—that his conduct during his pre-
vious tenure of office justified the belief that
be would not now maintain the honour of
England with fitting boldness and dignity, and