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THE REV. JAMES HAMILTON, D.D

It is a remarkable fact that a Scotchman has never led the House of Commons. The real reason is, I imagine, that Scotchmen are not generally very oratorical. The Scots suffer from the fercidum ingenium which old Buchanan claimed for them, undoubtedly; but it does not generally assume an oratorical form: it finds other ways of development. It leads Sawney, junior, to bid farewell to the porridge of the paternal roof, to cross the Tweed, to travel in whatever dark and distant land gold is to be had, and a fortune to be won. But there it stops. Joseph Hume was a model of a Scotch orator. There was not a duller dog on the face of the earth than that most excellent and honoured man. One would as soon listen to a lecture from Elihu Burritt, or sit out a pantomime, as listen to a speech from the Scottish Joseph.

So it is with the Scottish pulpit. It is generally hard and heavy, destitute of life and power, abstruse, metaphysical, learned, and consequently dull. Yet there have been splendid exceptions. The fiery and holy Chalmers was one, and Edward Irving was another. The Scottish Church in Regent Square was at one time a place of no common repute. Irving, with his splendid face, half fiend half angel – with his intellect hovering between insanity and genius, the companion of fanatics and philosophers – there

‘Blazed the comet of a season.’

To this day his name yet lives. In spite of the delusions and follies with which his name was connected – in spite of the reaction, the natural result of all enthusiasm, no matter what – Irvingite churches remain amongst us to this present hour. But at one time they threatened to pervade the land. All London flocked to Regent Square Church: the religious world was in a state of intense excitement. Timid men and nervous women went there, Sunday after Sunday, till they became almost mad. Unknown tongues were heard; strange sights were seen. Some thought the end of the world had come, and were seized with trembling and fear. It was a time of wonder, and mystery, and awe; but it passed away, as such things in this world of ours must pass away. The great magician died. The crowd that had wondered and wept at his bidding, went to wonder and weep elsewhere.

Under such circumstances, to attempt to fill the vacant pulpit was no easy task; and yet that it has been done, and done successfully, is evinced by Dr. Hamilton’s success. It is a fact that he preaches there every Sunday to a crowded church; that there, where there were divers prophesyings and bewilderment universal, now order reigns; that the only voice that you hear there now, besides that of the preacher, is that of the precentor, as he reads the bald version of the Psalms, to which the modern Scotch stick as immovably as did their fathers to the Covenant in the days of Montrose. This is an undeniable fact. Nor does it surprise you when the Doctor makes his appearance in the pulpit. At first, perhaps, you are rather surprised. There is certainty nothing taking about the man. He looks tall, strong, and awkward, with a cloudy face, and a fearfully drawling voice; a man, not timid, but not striking – plain and unaffected – better fitted for the study than for the fashion of May Fair. If you look closer, you will see indications of a calm, untroubled heart, with deep wells of fine feeling, of tenderness and strength combined. But still the Doctor is not the man to make a sensation at first sight – very few ministers are. One can understand this in a way. In certain families, it is said, the good-looking are put into the army – if fools, into the Church. Yet, generally, the jewel is worthy of the casket. If the one be rich and beautiful, the other is so as well. Plain and slouching as he is, I am told the Doctor succeeded in engaging the affections of a lady possessed of considerable property. But this is by no means remarkable: clergymen of every denomination make as many successful marriages as most men. One would think that they took the common wicked standard of wicked men, and judged a woman’s worth by the extent of her purse. I fear that there are as many fortune-hunters in the Church as there are in the world.

If ‘Hudibras’ had been written in our day, we should at once have supposed that Dr. Hamilton had helped the poet to a hero. Like Hudibras, the Doctor

‘scarce can ope
His mouth, but out there flies a trope.’

He has been called the Moore of the pulpit. An admiring critic says of him: ‘Like the poet of “Lalla Rookh,” he possesses vivid imagination, brilliant fancy, and sparkling phraseology. His sentences are strings of pearls, and whatever subject he touches he invariably adorns. His affluence of imagery is surprising. To illustrate some particular portion of Scripture, he will lay science, art, and natural history under contribution, and astonish us by the vastness of his acquirements, and his tact in availing himself of the stores of knowledge which, from all sources, he has garnered up in his mind. But plenteous as are the flowers of eloquence with which he presents us, their perfume, their sweetness, do not cloy. We listen in absolute wonderment as he pours forth a stream of eloquence, whose surface exhibits the iridescent hues of loveliness – one tint as it fades away being succeeded by another and a brighter. And a pure spirit of earnest piety pervades the whole of the sermon, the only drawback of which, to southern ears, being the broad Scotch accent in which it is delivered.’

Perhaps this character is a little coloured. Something must be set down in it for effect. Still the characteristic of the Doctor’s oratory, whether in the pulpit or on the platform, is poetry. He is a prose poet, and his genius makes everything it touches rich and rare. As becomes a divine, he sees everything through an Eastern medium. He is at home in the Holy Land. Jerusalem is as dear to him as London. All the scenes of sacred story, in the dead and buried past, live before him, and are realized by him as much, if not more, than the most exciting scenes of the living present. He follows the Christ as he treads the path of sorrow – sees him in the manger – in the temple disputing with the doctors – in the crowded streets followed by an awe-struck Hebrew mob – alone in the wilderness – or dying, amidst fanatic scorn and hate, a triumphant death: and the Doctor tells you these things as if he were there – as if they had but happened yesterday – as if he had come fresh from them all. Hence there is a pictorial charm in his preaching, such as is possessed but by few, and excelled by none.

This is also characteristic of the Doctor’s writing. He has used the press extensively. I see he has just issued an account of one of the sufferers in that unhappy missionary expedition to the island of Terra del Fuego, the result of which was the slow death, by hunger, of the parties engaged. His cheap series of tracts, entitled ‘Happy Home,’ are considered, by the religious world, exquisite productions. They are much in demand. This, however, is easily accounted for. The pastor of a rich London congregation can always have a good sale for his works. The wealthy members of his church will buy them for distribution; even the very poor will make an effort to procure them. Bad or good, they are sure to have a respectable sale. Happily, in Dr. Hamilton’s case, this respectable sale is deserved. His publications have the same beauties as his sermons. It is to be regretted that the small tracts, published by well-meaning men, with the best of motives, should be so little adapted to that end. In reality, they do more harm than good. The very class they are intended for do not read them; and those who do are precisely the class that need to be stimulated into some life higher and grander than your small tract-writer can generally conceive of. It is to the credit of Dr. Hamilton that he does not disdain to write little books on great subjects, and thus seek to rescue the tract system from the contempt into which, owing to the injudiciousness of its friends, it has so extensively fallen.

We have only to add here, that the Doctor sides with the Free Scotch Church, and that, of that remarkable movement, he was one of the earliest and warmest friends.

Miscellaneous

THE REV. WILLIAM FORSTER

Aristophanes, were he alive now, I imagine, instead of aiming his wit at the philosophers, would have a turn with the theologians. Theirs is the real cloud-land. In spite of the inherent conservatism of human nature in theology, you cannot keep up the old landmarks. Nay, such is the perverseness of human nature, that the more you try to do so the less chance there seems of your succeeding. To the reign of the Saints succeeded the madness and the profligacy of the Restoration. Lord Bolingbroke always said it was Dr. Manton’s Commentary on the 119th Psalm, which his mother, much against his inclination, compelled him to read, which made an infidel of him. Holyoake, the leader of the Secularists, was brought up in the Sunday School at Birmingham. Thomas Cooper, the author of the ‘Purgatory of Suicides,’ was a Methodist local preacher. William Johnson Fox, who has done as much as any man to destroy orthodoxy in persons of intelligence and position in society, was at one time pastor of an Independent church. Sterling was long a clergyman of the Church of England, and poor Blanco White traversed every point of the religious compass, earnestly seeking rest, and unfortunately finding none.

Is there, then, no religious truth? Is man ever to be surrounded by doubt – to be ever void of a living faith – from age to age to turn an anxious eye above, and there see

‘no God, no heaven, in the void world —
The wide, deep, lampless, grey, unpeopled world’?

Is it all dark cloud-land when we have done with this fever we call life? Religion is man’s attempt to answer this question. A church is an attempt to answer it in a certain way. The true church is the church which gives the true answer. But who is to decide? ‘The Catholic and Apostolic Church,’ says one; ‘the Bible,’ says another. But, then, who is to decide as to which is the Catholic and Apostolic Church, or as to what the Bible says? In all these cases the final appeal must be made to the intellect of man. But man’s intellect grows with his growth, and strengthens with his strength. I am not to-day, either in body or in mind, what I was yesterday. To-morrow I shall be a different man again. Changing myself, how can I subscribe an unchanging creed? ‘Excelsior’ is my motto. I believe that

‘through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened by the process of the suns.’

And it is vain, therefore, that you seek to tie me to a creed, or to stereotype what should be a growing faith. My aim is loyalty to my conscience and God. Where they lead I follow.

In some such way, I imagine, has Mr. Forster, late pastor of the Congregational chapel, Kentish Town, reasoned. Originally a minister in Jersey, he was invited to the metropolis about twelve years since. At that time he was an ardent Calvinist. The investigation which led him to abandon unconditional election, the final perseverance of the saints, and the special influence of the Holy Spirit, shattered the whole system of opinions in which he had been educated, and which he had hitherto faithfully upheld. Other changes followed. His views of the Trinity were modified. The consequence was, when a new chapel was built for him, in Kentish Town, it was agreed that all definition of God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, should be avoided, and that the clause, ‘This place is erected for the worship of God, as the Father, through the Son, and by the Holy Spirit,’ should be placed at the head of the deed.

After further investigation, Mr. Forster found that he could not even subscribe to that – that he had ceased to regard Christ as a mediator at all – and, consequently, he resigned the charge of a church, which, owing to his labours, had become flourishing and great. Now his banner bears the motto of ‘Free Inquiry.’ He preaches in a handsome chapel in Camden Town. His church calls itself a Free Church. It promises to be a successful one. It is well attended, though it has much to contend against. The orthodox will not forgive Mr. Forster his desertion of their camp; and the Unitarians, who, in their way, are often as narrow-minded and dogmatic as the most orthodox themselves, cannot exactly hold out the right hand of fellowship to a man who professes to be free – who claims to know no master – whose appeal is to the law and to the testimony, rather than to the doctrines and opinions of men.

Thus Mr. Forster gravitates, like Mahomet’s coffin, between heaven and earth. Yet his condition is by no means a rare one. That a large number sympathise with him, the attendance at his chapel is convincing proof. Coming out from the orthodox, he bears testimony against them. In his farewell sermon to his Kentish Town congregation he says: ‘How little have the contents of the Bible to do with men’s personal belief! How seldom are men taught to rely on their own powers in the investigation of the truth! How few are the Christians who sit at the feet of Jesus, or frequent the apostolic college! If Dissenters have renounced the infallibility of the Pope, have they not bowed their necks to a yoke almost as heavy and galling? If they have given up the Thirty-nine Articles, have they on that account conceded to each other the right of judging all things for themselves? If the Trentine pandects are not retained as the law of their religious faith and life, are they not bound by the Institutes of Calvin, the Westminster Confession of Faith, the Assembly’s Catechism, the Minutes of Conference, and the Sermons of Wesley – the creeds of chapel trust-deeds, the Congregational Union Confession of Faith, or by the writings of Howe, Watts, Doddridge, Gill, Fuller, Hall, Priestly, Watson, Channing, and of other great men, who ought to be dear to their hearts, but not lords of their faith? Are we not all of us more or less guilty of this servility? Have we not yet to learn that there is no via media– no middle way between Reason and Rome? There is, unhappily, floating over us an invisible and unexpressed opinion, to which all, in the main, must agree. It hovers over the pulpit and the pew; over the church and congregation; over the professor’s chair and the students’ form; over the family and the school; over the Bible and the Commentary. All thought, all sentiment, all investigation, all conclusions, all teachings, are controlled by it. It is this which checks free inquiry; shuts the mouths of those who have convictions which fit not the Procrustes’ bed, according to which all opinions are to be shortened or stretched; makes hypocrites of those who cannot afford to keep a conscience, or have not courage to brave the consequences of honesty; turns the pulpit too often into the chair of restraint, concealment, or compromise. Wherever this tyranny is obeyed, there cannot be much depth of conviction, vitality of sentiment, growth of knowledge, and improvement of religious life. If this principle were applied to science, it would paralyse all the energies of investigation, and make the wheels of progress stand still. If churches will not respect individual liberty – will not let their ministers and members investigate the Scriptures, and theology, the fruit of other men’s examination of the Scriptures, as fearlessly, impartially, and rigidly as men inquire into Nature and the human results of searching into Nature – such as astronomy, chemistry, and any other branch of science – then it is the duty of every Christian, in God’s name, and the name of human nature, to resist the imposition. It may cost him friends, income, reputation, station, and much which he highly values. He is bound, at whatever sacrifice, to maintain his inborn and inalienable freedom. In this way the yoke of the creeds would be broken. The churches would be turned into the seats of liberty. A noble, manly piety would grow up among us. The truth, whatever it is, would be discovered. A new state of things would be instituted. Every man would be respected as he rejected human authority over his conscience – refused to allow uninspired men to make his creed as his furniture, his bread, or books – tested all opinions by the light of his own reason – chose to give an account of his convictions, or the use of his powers in obtaining his convictions, to none but his Maker. Self-respect, love of truth, reverence to God, benevolence to men, call upon us all to stand by our native right and duty of searching into all truth contained in all creeds, confessions of faith, catechisms, and all other documents, whether human or divine. The obligation lies in our power of searching into whatever concerns our moral culture, spiritual life, and religious duty.’

Mr. Forster, in accordance with the sentiments here advocated, has left the Congregational body with which he was connected, and has founded a Free Church. Whether that church will answer the wants of our age, time will prove. If the work be good, it will stand. If it be better than old-fashioned sectarianism, it will remain. If it speak to the heart of man, it cannot die. Mr. Forster has great qualifications for his task. He is in the prime of life. His manner in the pulpit is pleasing. His sermons evince careful preparation, and the possession of a considerable amount of intellectual power. At times he rises into eloquence. Some of his published sermons are inferior to none that have been published in our time, and have been received well in quarters where, generally, little favour is shown to the pulpit exercises of divines.

Though unwearied in the discharge of pastoral duties, Mr. Forster has found time for other labours. Of the Temperance Reformation he has been one of the ablest and most eloquent advocates, and often has Exeter Hall reëchoed his impassioned advocacy in its behalf. He carries abstinence to an extent rare in this country, and abstains entirely from the use of animal food. At one time he was an ardent member of the party of Anti-State Churchmen, of which the late member for Rochdale is the glory and defence. Latterly he seems to have mixed but little with that body. We can well imagine that his time has been otherwise occupied – that his situation must have been one of growing difficulty and danger – that the claims, on the one side, of a church orthodox on all great questions, and of truth and duty, or what seemed to him as such, on the other, must have cost him many a weary day and sleepless night. That he burst his bonds and became free – that he tore away the associations of a life – argues the possession of honesty and conscientiousness, and fits him to be the preacher of the free inquiry of which he has afforded so signal an example in himself.

THE REV. HENRY IERSON

‘Can you tell me where Mr. Fox’s Chapel is?’ said I to a young gentleman who had evidently been in the habit of passing it every Sunday. ‘No, indeed, I cannot,’ was the reply. I put the same question to a policeman, and with the same result. Yet South Place, Finsbury Square, is a place of no little pretension. It has been the home of rational religion for some years – of the religion of humanity – of religion purified from formalism, bibliolatry, and cant. There the darkness of the past has been rolled away, and the light of a new and better day appeared; and yet the scene of all this was unknown to the dwellers in the immediate neighbourhood. There is a light so dazzling that it can only be seen from afar, that close to it you can see nothing. It may be this is the light radiating from South Place.

‘There is a religion of humanity,’ writes Mr. Fox, ‘though not enshrined in creeds and articles – though it is not to be read merely in sacred books, and yet it may be read in all, whenever they have anything in them of truth and moral beauty; a religion of humanity which goes deeper than all, because it belongs to the essentials of our moral and intellectual constitution, and not to mere external accidents – the proof of which is not in historical agreement or metaphysical deduction, but in our own conscience and consciousness; a religion of humanity which unites and blends all other religions, and makes one the men whose hearts are sincere, and whose characters are true, and good, and harmonious, whatever may be the deductions of their minds, or their external profession; a religion of humanity which cannot perish in the overthrow of altars or the fall of temples, which survives them all, and which, were every derived form of religion obliterated from the face of the world, would recreate religion, as the spring recreates the fruits and flowers of the soil, bidding it bloom again in beauty, bear again its rich fruits of utility, and fashion for itself such forms and modes of expression as may best agree with the progressive condition of mankind.’

And this religion of humanity is to be met with in Finsbury Square. I am not aware there is anything new about it. Every school-boy is familiar with it in Pope’s Universal Prayer; but latterly, in Germany, in England, and across the Atlantic, it has been preached with an eloquence of peculiar fascination and power. Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson have been the high priests in the new temple, which fills all space, and whose worship is all time. In England, as an organisation, whatever it may have done as a theory, it has not succeeded. Here William Johnson Fox, originally a student at the Independent Academy, Homerton, then a Unitarian minister, and now the member for Oldham, and the ‘Publicola’ of the ‘Dispatch,’ has been its most eloquent advocate. If any man could have won over the people to it, he, with his unrivalled rhetoric – rhetoric which, during the agitation of the Anti-Corn-Law League, will be remembered as surpassing all that has been heard in our day – would have done it; and yet Fox never had his chapel more than comfortably full – not even when the admission was gratis, and any one who wished might walk in. But now the place has a sadly deserted appearance. You feel cold and chilly directly you enter. The mantle of Fox has not fallen on his successor; and what Mr. Fox could not accomplish, most certainly the Rev. Mr. Ierson will not perform.

At half-past eleven service every Sunday morning commences at the chapel in South Place. You need not hurry: there will be plenty of room for bigger and better men than yourself. The worship is of the simplest character. Mr. Ierson commences with reading extracts from various philosophical writers, ancient and modern; then there is singing, not congregational, but simply that of a few professionals. The metrical collection used, I believe, is one made by Mr. Fox, and is full of beautiful poetry and sublime sentiments; but the congregation does not utter it – it merely listens while it is uttered by others for it. Singing is followed by prayer. ‘Prayer,’ says Montgomery (James, not Robert) —

‘is the soul’s sincere desire,
Uttered or unexpress’d,
The motion of a hidden fire,
That trembles in the breast.’

Mr. Ierson’s prayer is nothing of the kind: no fire trembles in the breast while it is offered up. It is a calm, rational acknowledgment of Divine power and goodness and beauty. Then comes an oration of half an hour, the result of no very hard reading, and the week’s worship is at an end, and the congregation, principally a male one, departs, not much edified, or enlightened, or elevated, but, perhaps, a little puffed up, as it hears how the various sects of religionists all, like sheep, go astray. Such must be the inevitable result. You cannot lecture long on the errors of Christians, without feeling convinced of your own superiority. The youngest green-horn in the chapel has a self-satisfied air. Beardless though he be, he is emancipated. The religion which a Milton could make the subject of his immortal strains – which a Newton could find it consistent with philosophy to accept – which has found martyrs in every race, and won trophies in every clime – he can pass by as an idle tale or an old wife’s dream.

Mr. Ierson himself is better than the imaginary disciple I have just alluded to. He has got to his present position, I believe, by honest conviction and careful study. Originally, I think, he was a student at the Baptist College, Stepney; then he became minister over a Baptist congregation at Northampton, and there finding his position at variance with his views, he honestly relinquished his charge. I fear such honesty is not so common as it might be. I believe, in the pulpit and the pew, did it exist, our religious organisations would assume a very different aspect. The great need of our age, it seems to me, is sincerity in religion – that men and women, that pastor and people, should plainly utter what they think. I believe there is a greater freedom in religious thought than really appears to be the case. ‘How is it,’ said I to a Unitarian, the other day, ‘that you do not make more progress?’ ‘Why,’ was the answer, ‘we make progress by other sects taking our principles, while retaining their own names:’ and there was truth in the reply.

Still, it is better that a man who ceases to be a Churchman, or a Baptist, or an Independent, should say and act as Mr. Ierson has done. He will lose nothing in the long run by honesty – not that I take it Mr. Ierson has achieved any great success, but he gives no sign of any great talent. He is not the man to achieve any great success. People who believe his principles will stop at home unless there is in the pulpit a man who can draw a crowd. Fox could scarcely do this. Such men as Ronge, or Ierson, or Macall, who lectured to some forty people in the Princess’s Concert Booms, cannot do it at all. Mr. Brooke might, if he could be spared from Drury Lane – so could Macready or Dickens, or Thackeray; but in these matters everything depends upon the man.

Of course the first question is, thus emancipated – Why worship at all? why rise betimes on a Sunday, shave at an early hour, put on your best clothes, and, mindless of city fog and dirt, rush hurriedly to South Place, Finsbury Square? If I take the New Testament literally, I take with it the command relative to the assembling of ourselves together, and have a scriptural precedent for a course sometimes very wearisome and very much against the grain; but with free reason, an emancipated man, the case is altered. I am in a different position altogether. Custom is all very well to the holders of customary views. I expect a secret feeling lies at the bottom, that, after all, church and chapel going is good – that worship in public is a service acceptable to Deity.

It may be, and this I believe is the great secret of the success of churches and chapels, that people don’t know how to spend their Sundays, especially in country towns, without going to a place of worship. You cannot dine directly you have had your breakfast; you must allow an interval. Now, you cannot, especially if it looks as if it would rain, and your best hat might be damaged, fill up that time better than in a place of worship. So, even Mr. Ierson gets a congregation, although it is made up of people who see in him a man not a whit more qualified to teach religious truth than themselves, and who maintain the right of individual reason, in matters of religion, to its fullest extent. He has no claim to being heard; yet they go to hear him. They claim the right of private judgment; yet they take his. Worship, in its ordinary sense, they deem unnecessary; yet they approach to it as nearly as they can. Such is the incongruity between the religious instinct on the one side, and the logical faculty on the other – an incongruity, however, proclaiming that, reason as you will, man is a religious animal after all; that he has the faculty of worship, and must worship; that, take from him his sacred books – his Shaster, his Koran, or Bible – still the heart is true to its old instincts, and believes, and adores, and loves. True is it, that man, wherever he may be, whatever his creed or colour, still