d toil; but
to keep a position is almost as difficult as to make it, and this Mr.
Brown has succeeded in doing. The reason of this must be sought for in
Mr. Brown himself. The man must have some speciality to fit him for his
work, or he cannot be successful in it. That Mr. Brown has this is, I
take it, beyond a doubt; nor can you long attend upon his ministry
without finding such is the case. Mr. Brown's distinguishing
characteristic is freshness. There is nothing stale or conventional
about him. He evidently preaches what he thinks. His speech is a living
speech, not a monotonous repetition of old divinity. He has wandered out
of the conventional circle. He has come in contact with great minds. He
has had a richer experience than generally falls to the lot of the
divine. He views things broadly and in a manly manner, not from the
narrow platform of a sect. His faith is a living one. His Christianity
is practical--that by which men may shape their life as well as square
their creed. Instead of wandering weakly and sentimentally in other
lands and in other ages, he brings his mind and heart to bear upon the
realities of the present day. The questions of our age, not of past
ages, he discusses in his pulpit. The day that passes over him is the
day to which he devotes his energies. He gives you an idea of
earnestness and activity and independence--of a mind well educated and
drawn out--filled with Christian truth, and earnest in the application of
that truth. He is not a great rhetorician--his strength seems to be in
his common sense. If the Bible be true, the sooner man gets that idea
into his head and acts according to it, the better. If man have to obey
the Divine law, the sooner he submits himself to it the happier he will
be in this life as well as in that which is to come. I know there is
nothing new in this,--that other men attempt to teach the same
thing,--that all divines are saying it one way or another every Sunday;
but the merit of Mr. Brown is that he says it as a man of common-sense
would say it to men possessed of common-sense--that he does not wrap his
meaning in the unreal verbiage of a mystic and unreal theology--that he
takes his teachings, and arguments, and illustrations from real life--and
that he talks of religion as men of the world of consols and railways;
and no man can do this, to whom religion is not the business of his life.
In personal appearance there is nothing particularl