Back Aa

Goose-Quill Papers

<h2 class="nobreak">BRENTFORD PULPIT.</h2> <div><ANTIMG class="decocap" src="images/deco-f.jpg" width-obs="60" height-obs="59" alt="F" title="F" /></div> FROM a little church of some celebrity, and from a remote corner in its quiet nave, come these rude bygone impressions, transcribed faithfully, save in whatsoever is mainly personal and local. No word is here of Brentford choir or Brentford pews; but a record, strict and spare, of the now vanished figures who expounded texts to the village folk. For the most part, they were but birds of passage, seldom remaining long enough to lose the gloss of novelty, or to escape the awakened scrutiny of young eyes. Two only of these preachers were widely known; but each of them, on the other hand, possessed a striking individuality. The "King of Brentford," as readers of a certain swinging translation of Béranger will remember,-40- was something of an anomaly; and Brentford chaplains, at least in their public career, were indubitably of his court. First, shall we not recall the Reverend L., with his soft majesty of speech, having in it an ever-recurring sforzando, peculiarly impressive and overpowering,—L., with his benignity of soul and his keen, evanescent smile, intellect flashing through it, like lightning over a sombre waste of waters? He required the closest attention of any speaker to whom we have listened. The following must be incessant, the allegiance unabated, lest the Emersonian and gossamer-like sequence of ideas, the swift beauty of phrase and figure, elude you, never to reappear the same. His playfulness in the pulpit was unique. Subdued it was, yet how potent! Humor has many a fit abiding-place in this world, of which the pulpit seems last to be chosen. But L.'s discretion was royally sure. His salutary wit, felicitous in placing itself, and infrequent enough to rouse attention always newly, went on angelic errands with its Puck's wings. An apostolic purpose consecrated-41- his airy thrusts at evil. The hand of steel was present ever under his caressing touches. We surmise that if there was anything connected with his vocation which L. abhorred, it was the necessity of periodical charity-sermons. When induced to appear as pleader on these occasions, his conduct was amusingly characteristic. He played hide-and-seek with his petition; he put it off, eyed it curiously, fenced with it, and kept it at arm's length; then, beginning to advocate its claims, he held it up for your inspection reluctantly, as if it were no child of his, and his right were rather to befriend it in private than thrust it into public notice. He would say a few glowing words, making his fortitude under such an emergency as truly a hint to your benevolence as his spoken plea. He would sum up for you the misery of the poor, the lamentable differences in comfort, the evils that spring from unalleviated poverty, the precept of brotherly love, the imperative command of giving and sharing and making glad; all this with an air of indifference over facts in array, and of needless appealing to such hearts-42- and such purses as yours were sure to be! L. could have written noble charity-sermons for another's delivery, but to ask in his own person was wellnigh impossible. He seemed to rebel, not against the actual discomfort of his position, but rather against the advisability of reminding you of a duty you never could have forgotten. In his chivalrous dealing he smote your sensibilities more surely than many a professional beggar with seven small children; and the shekels leaped in a fountain from you and from everybody else, until the alms-box overflowed. L.'s utility in this strange office was quite wonderful, even to himself. His very exordium, "Dear old friends!" was, though he knew it not, irresistible. On the morrow, Workhouse Tommy with a new cap, or barefooted Molly in the exhilaration of a sturdy dinner, must have blessed the shy and half-resentful claim which a great heart put forth as theirs. L.'s preaching, for the most part, whether in its bright or solemn phases, was best understood by those who best knew the man. Like Walter Savage Landor, in whom he delighted, and whom-43- he strongly resembled, he required appreciators as well as hearers. He loved a thoughtful audience, and to such spoke with all the outpouring of his mightier self. There were minds of a certain cast, wholly foreign to his sympathies, which were slow to be persuaded into a belief of his accessibility. Yet a meeker and kinder heart than L.'s never beat. Half the country knew him as a fine theologian, and scarce fifty for the "sweet sociable spirit" that he was. A touch of the intolerance of genius he had indeed, without which the symmetry of his character would have been impaired. D., with his active and high-strung temperament, was your true conversational preacher, treating with glad and reverent familiarity "thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls." Beneath the sounding-board he was perpetually on the defensive. He was always setting you straight, putting you in the way of seeing good, reconciling you to your antipathies. If we may use the word to signify a process so gentle, he hammered his optimism into you. You must be cheerful, you must be thankful, you must be self--44-sacrificing; there was no escaping it. D., in his zeal and his amiability, was a far-away echo of John the Evangelist; and the phrase, "My little children," came with peculiar unction from his lips. His voice was not powerful. It may have been a slight hesitation and reluctance of speech which gave it an especial charm. "Somewhat he lispèd," also, like Chaucer's Friar; if not <div class="center"> <div class="poem"> ——"for his wantonnesse To make his English sweete upon his tonge." </div> </div> We remember that once, by some chance development of his favorite topic, he came across a wayside tramp, and gave him an apotheosis laughingly called to mind whenever one of that thenceforth respected species lights upon our path. "Here is a vagabond, an outcast of society," began the Reverend D., with his usual high-bred gesture of expostulation,—"a good-for-nothing beggar whom you brush as you pass; and drawing aside, mayhap in your heart of hearts you despise him. You have no right to despise him. Nothing has destroyed or will destroy the eternal-45- brotherhood between you. Despise him? Why, it is a disloyalty to mankind. In the eye of Heaven sinlessness is the criterion, not riches or health or intelligence. And he may stand nearer to the Throne than you, because of a more repentant spirit. Why should you despise him? It belongs to you rather to love and aid him. He is a reflection of yourselves, distanced from you by the mean formalities of the world, but fashioned like you without and within, and co-heir of whatever has fallen to your share. What you have been taught through the dignity of manhood and womanhood to think yourselves—that is he. He is the Image of Uncreated Beauty. He is the Wedding Guest in the palace of the King. He is the Mortal who shall put on Immortality. He is the Son of the House of David, the hope and joy of Israel. His head is like Carmel, and his form as of Libanus, excellent as the cedars. Dare you despise him? Even as you deal with him in your thought, should the Most High deal with you in our great day forthcoming!" This extraordinary burst was delivered with-46- indescribable serenity. We have but suggested the gorgeous language in which D. revelled when he chose, nor hinted at the peculiarity of pose and intonation which helped to make his words vital. To one hearer, at least, the effect was superb, and the tramp was established in his native dignity forever. Dr. R. had the artistic temperament, being a poet of rare worth. There was always a fine metaphoric haze about his sermons. He was by nature diffident and somewhat listless; the effort of mounting the pulpit stair must have been distasteful to him. His phrasing was of extreme nicety and justness; and he spoke English pure and simple. Yet his "Greek languor," his low, unobtrusive voice, served to veil the excellence of his thoughts. He was shy of any display. His Sunday efforts certainly did not become popular, in the Brentford acceptance of that term. But while R., like the clouds, seemed gray always to heedless eyes, to brighter perceptions he must have shown the delicate, transitory tints of the rainbow. He had two great merits: his-47- quotations, scriptural and other, were exquisitely apt; he likewise knew the value of sudden epilogues. You had not time to suspect that the last rounded period was having its dying fall, before <div class="center"> <div class="poem"> "He straight, disburthened, bounded off as fleet As ever any arrow from a cord." </div> </div> Altogether another type of Levite was the Reverend M., of clear Puritan descent. He had an expansive personality, and could rise to any occasion, clothing what he had to say in easy and elegant language. As a rule, his sermons, not to speak it profanely, were pacifying as an opiate. But sometimes he stood before his astonished hearers not wholly as a symbol of the peace-maker. For his text, many years back, he once took the "abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet," Matthew xxiv. The awful sublimity of his reading prepared his auditors for what was to follow. Hearts were stirred to the depths that day, with the measured musical utterance, the dread and calm authority, such as-48- fancy had conceived proper to the Recording Angel. M. never seemed quite so aerial and boyish in his proper person again. That one grand sermon shed its supernatural light still over him, as he walked on Monday and Tuesday in view of the laity. It seemed as if all his previous and subsequent words and ways were a disguise, and that only on the never-to-be-forgotten morning he had been revealed. None of his other attempts were thereafter held in comparison with this, an advantage not to be doubted. A magnificent prejudice in his favor would fain have forced upon his every parley the beauty which the first had worn. We last heard the Reverend M. (he was then nearing his sixtieth year) on the evening of a Christmas day. We recall that he began by poetically picturing the corresponsive hour of that primal Christmas when the divine Child lay slumbering in His mother's arms, the hush of the Bethlehem hills, the unconsciousness of the broad kingdom that "knew him not." Little by little, the monotones of this tranquil dis-49-course fell, like so many snow-flakes, upon our eyelids. A swinging festoon of smilax, stirred by chance beneath the pulpit edge, charmed us deeper into oblivion. The light ran in eddies on the faint gray walls. The visible, the palpable, were as if they had not been. We had slipped from our moorings into the irresistible depth of dreams. Presently we heard anew, half-distinctly, half-confusedly, "O expectatio gentium!" We looked towards the starting-point of that Latin spray, but nothing followed upon our sudden rousing save the burst of the organ. All about us was a rustling and a stirring, such as the Ephesian sleepers might make at the awakening. Horrible! Dreams were over for many others beside the solitary culprit we had supposed ourself. Bonnets nodded; furs were smoothed; numbed feet were tapped upon the carpet for resuscitation; and Chubbuck in the next pew rubbed his eyes, to the imminent extinction of those useful auxiliaries. Heaven forgive us our drowsiness! How much æsthetic pleasure, how much-50- spiritual profit Brentford missed that night, befits us not to conjecture. Yet we palliate the disgraceful circumstances, due in no wise to lack of virtue on our part, or of eloquence on the Reverend M.'s, by surmising that the general slumber was a tribute of itself; not, indeed, a protest of weariness, or ungracious abstraction from duty, but rather an affiliation with the time and the theme ——"made all of sweet accord." Who shall gainsay it? The like hap, we are sorry to state, never befell us under the spell of that austere prelate, Theophilus A. One could as soon have grown mindless of a Gatling gun in full activity. He was an ecclesiastical thunderbolt. Ferdinand would have put him on the Inquisition. He could have served the mediæval writs of excommunication on kings, or stood with high-hearted Hildebrand to confront the German at Canossa. A. was pale, but not weakly, with his dauntless eye, his luminous front, his unrelaxed lips-51- drawn like a bowstring. He was all vehemence; his dearly-beloveds had scintillations to them; his very firstlys and secondlys had the heroic ring. Did he wear the armor of the ancestral Franks under his clerical dress? Whence got he that tremendous vigor, that aptitude for great and hazardous things? Apollyon could scarcely have lessened the vitality of this Christian by any combat, however long and fierce. You must have felt his presence helpful or harsh, as your organization prompted. A harp will quiver with a concussion in its vicinity. So with mortal men and women in juxtaposition with the Reverend A. He had aroused splendid impulses, so it was said, in many lands; but the ultra-sensitive soul was scarcely adapted to his touch. He it was who could make Willard, serene as a child, shake like an aspen-leaf at his mildest peroration. More comfortably enchanting wert thou, O K.! whom every tongue praised. Welcome was thy young cherubic countenance, dawning mid-52-way between the roof and the aisles! Worthy of Talma was that shining dramatic gift which brightened a hundred-fold the utterances of thy manly piety! Who could make doubtful issues surer than thou, least didactic, yet most practical of preachers? Who could so boldly pursue a simile, eking analogies out of stones? Who so pitiless on impostures and shams, when thy gallant oratory "Blew them transverse, ten thousand leagues awry"? Peter the Hermit, with his crusading spirit, would have loved thee. It was the fashion at one time to classify K. along with Dr. S., of a neighboring city, a gentleman with whom he had few mental traits in common, outside of the gift of eloquence. S. was the inimitable to his parishioners; and he had, like Bobadil, "most un—in one breath—utterable skill, sir!" The matter of his sermons could have been turned without alteration into blank verse, having cadences manifold. He spoke rapidly and moved alternately from side-53- to side in lieu of gesticulation; he studied no opportunity, but lavished his fine things, like an almoner at a coronation, here and there and everywhere. K., never a user of notes, and no less spontaneous than his famous reputed rival, was habitually careful of detail. His imagination was gorgeous. His activity ran to the verge of restlessness. Thoroughly earnest and exhilarating, his large intelligence was cheery as a breeze from the mountain-top. Neither can we forget Brentford's Titanic visitor, magnificently verbose, looming at his extraordinary height, with a fund of simplicity and gentleness hidden somewhere beneath that generous exterior. How guileless he was, how tender!—"invaluable at a tragedy." The petition which Mr. Thomas Prince delivered in the Old South would have fallen with equal grace from N.'s lips:— <div class="center"> <div class="poem"> "O Lord! we would not advise; But if, in Thy Providence, A tempest should arise And drive the French fleet hence,-54- And scatter it far and wide, And sink it in the sea, We should be satisfied, And Thine the glory be!" </div> </div> With what fervor, two parts patriotism, one part innocence, would N. have pronounced that mischievous supplication! His conscientiousness carried him once a little too far; and the sequel "dimmed these spectacles," as Thackeray used to say. It was to us the funniest thing that ever happened in sacred precincts,—funny beyond all power of endurance. "When Solomon finished the Temple," said the Reverend N., in his sonorous tones,—"when Solomon finished the Temple he sacrificed one hundred and twenty thousand sheep and twenty-two thousand oxen." Now, that was incontestable. But immediately a wretched little doubt crept in upon his Biblical assertion. "Seventy thousand—ur—ur—twenty thousand sheep," continued the Reverend N., "twenty hundred thousand ox—ahem! I mean two hundred thousand, a hundred and twenty—ur—[very slow and deliberate reiteration]: two and twenty-55- thousand oxen, one hundred and twenty thousand sheep." When the last sheep came on the scene we were suffering from agonies of laughter. Let us trust that they turned their meek and startled eyes another way. There was H., too, a white-haired logician who had proved everything, from the Creation down to the principles of good and evil in the most neglected "queer small boy;" E., drawing exquisite homely illustrations from the sea; and gracious little B., the polished rhetorician, most deferent in his manners of address, most scrupulously reliant on the sense and rectitude of those around him. "Honor and reverence and good repute" be with them all now, wheresoever they may labor or rest. We think sometimes we have heard Cyril and Polycarp among them. Our incurable tendency towards observation—the fact of our having been born in an Observatory, so to speak—stands as apology for touching on the heaven-appointed mannerisms of Brentford Polycarps and Cyrils. <hr /> -56- <ANTIMG src="images/header05.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="187" alt="header" title="header" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.