New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1892-02-21
MR.. STURGEON
H..
AS LEADER OF THE NONCoNfohNh'i"' no
PREACHER AND WRITER, AND AZ
SPCRGEON.

leaves no successor; men OF genius Sei"o''
and Spurgeon's claim to genius oil cci'"i'
cannot we'll be denied What tie mus VI i'oP'1
ooro n,t for in n cause is the man behind H. ana
c,nrooop was ,he man. lie was the INCARNATION
of ENGLISH Nonconformty. In the struggle ana
conflict Of sects leader is most III 80
Surgeons leadership YVES OF the KIM ""i0' ~
these days is most effective; perhaps l" "' NY,
Of religious history has been most chcc'iNc'
ever else le was ignorant of, lie uhoe'SVoo' "'A''
nature: or to put it more ruy, lit
men and women. 49, ,;n
He was commanding personality, to Desin
with: he would have beer power 1t "e
had been dumb. He impressed himself nV'
n,I,. ON tho sv or seven thousand people
who came every Sunday to the lacernacie' pu'
nm those who did not come no uo"o'
,Lo circulation of his printed sermons had some
thing 10 do with this, but the man had much
more The personal legend is more Uhah the
nrintod word. | will venture on an llusTa'io"
mot meant 10 be irreverent, but chosen ohiy We
cause il is the most forcible. What is Chrlsuani'E
70 all Christendom? Is is not Christ? Inc DE"
whom Plate cruciiied has given MS name ~ '"'
religion he taught and left behind MN hot ~
much a body of doctrine as a new ethicai s'a'c
m.nt of the rule of life People read the Gospels
and the rest of the New Testament But wheh
they close the book and go about their pusiness' ~
is the individual Christ who goes with them' anu
the story of his life which affects their hNes,
ANYTHING affects them. Or | will put it in another
WAY. Take Christ out Of the New Testament ana
what is left? Much that is admirable; nothing
that would have revolutonized world vi
course. | don't suggest any parallel not even inc
mos, remote between the two men, Christ ana
Snureeop. except that they both men.
Snurreon had no creative genius: he has con-
tributed nothing TO religion or 10 ethics, nothlhe
doctrinal or vital or formative. Creeds anu
dopmas are what they were before his VOICE was
heard But he has contributed Spurgeoh' ana
H. will I've many q generation before tne eci,o
of those tones which filled the lapernacle
Sunday after Sunday has ceased to vlbrae IL
mems memories. lie something more than
q bulwark to his own church; be was a pedco"
light which shone from afar we In America
don't forget that he was of the faith ana OF inc
church widest spread in our country. We have
no Nonconicrmity, happily, because we have no
conformity; no State Church to provoke Dissent,
and therefore, no Dissent But the great Noh-
conformist none the less belongs 10 us. II we
rould not all 20 TO the Tabernacle. read him and
read about him We bought his sermons in print
They had, il is said, greater circulation IN the
United States than in England naturally, since the
number of readers is so much greater. whether
WI stole the Gospel according TO SpurG"on or
paid for il, / don't know. Perhaps We did both
There used to he, nav, there still are, people IN
America who hold that because literature is
profitable thing for the people, the people ought
10 have legal right to purloin it from It's owners
The argument. if il can be called an argument,
is inst 50 much better for religion as religion is
better than mere literature.
Surgeons coqJence has been o good deal dis
@l..< Tho 9th
or none Of them; according to the Judgment OF the
critic But the first thing. and also the last. 70
I've said about il is that it did its work Eloquence
is the strict sense il may not have been eioquehce
in the highest sense it certainly was not. But 10
SpurgcOn speech az instrument for the con-
version Of souls, for stimulating religious enthu-
siasm. He wanted to attract great companies OF
people TO what he called tht house Of God. 10
hear what he believed TO he the word
Of God: and when they were there 30
fix their attention and hold it, and plant in their
minds something that would stick there; take
root. perhaps and spring up and bring forth first
blossom and then fruit: but, at any rate, some
thing they could not forget.
To this end nothing came aniss TO him; or al
most nothing. He had the first requisite for
public speaking, voice Of great volume and com
pass capabc of infinite meditation. He he'd
dction which almost too copiOns. The two
books out Of which il came were Shakespeare and
the Bible. He read his Shakespeare, and perhaps
knew 1t. as Bright knew Milton. They We're the
two books-the Bible and Shakespeare-out of
which, as You will remember. Kossuth taught him
self English in an Austrian gaol II man has mas
tered ether-but the Bible for choice-hc has lit
lie need for anything more. | mean, Of course,
the real Bible King Jamess Bible. the Authorized
Version and not that miserable thing called the
may well learn How English Ought Not TO he
Written: or how the nobest monument of English
Literature may be- defaced and degraded by revisers
who thought much of the Hebrew and Greek sense,
and very little of it's right expression in English
and not at all of the reverence due TO the text
in which the genius of the English language is
immortazed
Spurgeon was no rhetorician, no master of style
His printed sermons Will not for a moment bear
comparison with Newman's or Liddons Ii is not
quite fair test sermon in print is a dead thing
But il is fair TO Spurgeon because of the immense
and amazing number of readers he secured for a
kind of prose, most OF which is, by general con-
sent, more wearisome to the flesh than any other
Probably the secret in his case is the vitality of
the man: his force his carnesness, his energy, his
enthusiasm, unquenchable even in print. Some of
the blood which ran in his veins in full tide
overhowed into the printed. cold book. Something
Of the man is there. But in the pulpit. or rather
on the platform, since the pulpit he abhorrcd the
whole man there. II was not merely voice.
not an orator, not minister of religion merely or
mainly but a man II with Spurgeon as
Pascal says Of the writer. You expected to find
a book: you are astonished and enchanted to find
man. So, whether IL be orator or as divine,
or as thc leader Of a great ecclesiastical party We
come back TO the same point; here was a man.
On the purely human side there great deal
that was admirable in Sturgeon; his charity before
all things His creed was not charitable in a
broad sense there was too much dannation III it,
but the man was broader than his creed no uncoul-
mon thing, happily. To take only the coarser form
of charity, suppose nobody WAS ever more open