ce after all--the appeal, in reality, being to the
Bible, and the Bible alone, which, in the well-worn language of
Chillingworth, is the religion of Protestants. Thus is it so much
preaching in the Church of England fails to reach and attract the masses.
The ministers will deal in fictions--will exclaim, "Hear the
church"--will wander away from topics of human interest into questions
with which the educated (and still more the uneducated) mind has no
sympathy. The middle-class public go to hear--for it is the genteel
thing to go to church--but they sit silent, passive, exhausted by the
long preliminary service, wearied, and unmoved. What wonder is it that
the more independent and manly--the men who do not fear Mrs. Grundy--who
are not afraid of conventionalisms, either stop at home, or leave the
Establishment for the more living service of dissent? Mr. Christmas
observes:--"Few will venture to say that the style of preaching most
valued among nonconformists is inferior to that heard from the pulpits of
the Establishment." The reason is not far to seek: dissent has no
ancient prestige to plead; dissent has no rich endowment to fall back on;
dissent lives on and is strong in spite of the cold shade of aristocracy,
or of the sneer of the bigot or the fool; dissent depends upon the
pulpit. If that be weak and cold, and dull and dim, dissent melts like
snow beneath the warm breath of the south. Dissent reminds us more than
the Establishment of the earlier period of Christianity, of the
Carpenter's Son who had not where to lay his head; whose apostles were
fishermen, and whose kingdom, to use His own emphatic declaration, "was
not of this world." The public mind is shocked and estranged when it
hears the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as he did the other day, defending
a recent ecclesiastical appointment, on the plea that the fortunate
individual was a man of blameless life, of high family, and great wealth.
"Mr. A. B.," says Mr. Christmas, "must be a clergyman, and Mr. A. B. has
not the gift of utterance. Well, he will be able to read his sermons,
and the rest of his brethren do the like. It is no detriment to a man's
prospects that the church is half empty when he preaches. 'He is a very
learned man--or a very well connected man--or a very good man--or an
excellent parish priest: it is a pity he is not more successful in the
pulpit; but then, really, preaching is the smallest part of a clergyman's
duty.'" Such is th