h had
never come. Go into the churches of the metropolis any time you like,
and the probability is that in more than half the texts will be taken
from the Old Testament, and the certainty is, that in almost all, all the
arguments and illustrations will have a similar source. Thus we have a
composite order of preaching. It seems as if the preacher knew not on
which side to take his stand, under which king to speak or die. The hand
is Esau's, but the voice is Jacob's. You hear as much of David as of
Christ, as much of the ceremonial of a worship of form and ceremony, as
of the simplicity introduced by Him who was born in a manger, and had not
where to lay his head. To break free from all this--to act in the living
present--to let the dead past bury its dead--to speak to the men of
to-day in the language of to-day, is a great advantage to a preacher,
even if it require, on his part, a little extra care in the composition
of his sermons; and no one knows this better than the popular Assistant
Minister of St. John's, Waterloo Place, Regent Square, London--the Rev.
Mr. Bellew, formerly of St. John's Cathedral, Calcutta.

To give a man the position Mr. Bellew has acquired, however, something
further is needed. Peculiar qualities of thought or utterance,
especially the latter, are essential to a man if he would be talked of on
all sides--run after by fine lords and ladies--in request all over London
for charity sermons--and admitted to plead in the august presence of Lord
Mayors and Princes of the blood. In the first place, then, it must be
remembered that Mr. Bellew preaches with all the studied earnestness of
the actor, and every syllable tells as distinctly as if it were Macready
declaiming on the stage. Then he is an Irishman, and what Irishman is
not fluent and born to drive in the pulpit; and what is wonderful, though
an Irish Protestant, Mr. Bellew avoids the _role_, somewhat overdone, of
a McNeile, or a McGee, or a Maguire, and does not commit the absurdity of
making his every sermon a wearisome protest against Popery and the Pope.
Why should Irish clergymen get wild on this head? It is not, says
Goethe, by attacking the false, but by proclaiming the true, that good is
to be done. And it is the same in religion; the Irish Protestants have
little to complain of--their history is written in the tears and blood of
millions whom they have wronged for ages. By the violation of all
right--by means that will ever st