s fully justified
by the result. Now he has a crowded church, more than 250 communicants,
and a people ever ready to respond to his appeal, and rich in that
charity without which a religious profession is but little better than
sounding brass. The sacrament money at St. Augustine's, as they have no
poor of their own, is distributed amongst those of neighbouring churches.
One of the noticeable features in connexion with the place is the
attendance of young men from the neighbouring College of St. John's. For
the benefit of my readers let me add, that what was Highbury College is
now a place of training for ministerial work in connexion with the Church
of England--of young men who have not had, owing to unavoidable
circumstances, the benefit of a University education, but who
nevertheless are the right stuff out of which to make useful preachers of
the Gospel of Jesus Christ. On Sundays they find employment as
Sunday-school teachers in various parts of the metropolis; also on that
day, with a view to future usefulness, they go to hear such eminent
clergymen as may be preaching in the City or the West-end, but mostly
they attend at St. Augustine's, and under Mr. Calthrop's preaching they
prepare for the great work themselves.
Nor do I know that they could have a better model. Mr. Calthrop is not
the Church of England Spurgeon. I am not aware that the Church of
England has a Spurgeon. I know none of the other Christian churches of
our day that have. It is only once in an age that a Mr. Spurgeon
appears, but Mr. Calthrop has no need to fear comparison with Mr.
Spurgeon or any one else. Personally, he is much smaller than the
far-famed Baptist orator Mr. Spurgeon, and in figure and face very much
resembles the late Douglas Jerrold. His voice is one of wonderful
sweetness and power, and as he reads the Liturgy of his Church you feel
that with him it is no empty form, to be repeated parrot-like and with
railway speed, but the voice of a people humbled on account of sin, and
standing trusting, yet trembling, in the presence of their God.
Exquisitely can he render all its pathos, all its tenderness, all its
sorrow, all its fulness of exultation, all its ecstasy of Christian hope.
From the reading-desk to the pulpit the transition is easy and natural.
At a distance there is something youthful in his look; but in his grey
hair, in his face lined with thought, in his eye, which seems ever
looking far off, as if here was n
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