TWENTY YEARS IN THE CHURCH. * "TWENTY Years in the Church"
purports to be the history of a working clergyman, told by himself. The Reverend Henry Austin is a figment, but the book which relates his experiences, his reflections, and his aspirations, is not a romance or a novel ; it belongs to another order of fiction for which a name is still wanting. It is important that this distinction should be un- derstood from the outset, for it would be an injustice to the author, and a misfortune for the reader, if a book so able in its kind, and so suggestive, were to be judged by alien rules and pre- cedents. Should any one open Mr. Pycroft's pages with the ex- pectation of finding m them an exciting story, strong situations, and an ingenious plot, he would certainly be disappointed ; these are not among the everyday occurrences of real life, and it is the commonplace experience of a faithful minister of the Church that Mr. Pycroft seeks to unfold. His readers must also be prepared for a much larger amount of dissertation than would be tolerable in a novel, where it would be rightly regarded as an excrescence and a deformity, and resented as an impertinent hindrance to the story. But here the personal interest of the story is by no means the first consideration to which all others should be made sub- servient; on the contrary, it is always regarded as an instrument, not as an end. Through it we are led up to the consideration of larger interests than those which centre in the life of an in- dividual; and while we sympathize with the struggles, trials, re- wards, and disappointments of Henry Austin, we willingly lend an ear to his discourses on the subjects to which his whole heart is devoted. We listen the more readily because he talks like a sensible and lively gentleman. He does not preach out of Church, though he talks.earnestly on serious things, and there is no tincture of puritanism or fanaticism in his nature. Whether he is High Church, Low Church, or Broad Church is a point on which he does not take much pains to enlighten us ; what most concerns him is the question how all denominations of churchmen and dis- senting ministers may best labour in their respective ways for the good of the flocks committed to their charge. He is not quite so ardent a champion for the temporalities of the Church as Arch- deacon Grantley of Barchester ; but he thinks that the labourer is worthy of his hire ; that the working clergy are poorly paid, and worse than any other body of men whose profession has cost each of them on an average some 15001.; andT he is appalled by the impediments which physical evils, only to be overcome by a large expenditure of money, present to the extinction of heathen- ism in our crowded towns.
"Some good Christian people think that the Gospel is to do everything. But sanitary reformers and early-closing advocates are its beat allies, and are beginning at the right end. Six days' agrial poison to the brain, or six days' fretting of the nerves or exhaustion of the system, will cause the Sab- bath-bell to sound in vain.
• Twenty Years in the Church. An Autobiography. By the Rev. James P1- croft, B.A. Published by L. Booth. " However' I found about twelve poor bedridden persons for my visiting list. Some had been early trained, and knew the way of salvation ; and the rest seemed comforted by my visits, though very ignorant. Maria Sander's, I particularly remember, had formed a singularly low estimate of heavenly things. She was crippled and wasted away ; and the mortal tenement seemed scarcely to hold together. So, one day, I said, Never mind, Maria, all will be changed ; there will be no pains or sorrows, and we shall have a new body, even a heavenly body.' " Ah, sir !' she said, I am so glad to hear you say so. I do want a new body very bad ; yes, and I want a new inside, too.' " Indeed, the sublunary notions of the poor are often very striking. A friend related to me, that once when he had rather mystified an old sailor with the texts he quoted, in answer to his inquiry as to what Heaven would be like, and what End of happiness to hope for, the poor man exclaimed- ' Yes, sir, all very good, as your honour says—no doubt of it ; but says I, Old Endand for me.' "
Henry Austin's opinions on popular education are strongly pronounced.
" I have heard much well-intended nonsense talked about education being worse than useless, if religion is not taught in the school. One home missionary, at least, at Yatton, would have found his labours materially lightened had the Yatton ears and Yatton minds been already exercised with reading, arithmetic, and geography. And this I say, not for the positive use of these things. For as to Arithmetic, they could all work fractions of days with the farmer, and check the half-pints chalked up be- hind the alehouse door. And as to Geography, the two Tuckers had gone very straight to Botany Bay, after stealing old Cottle's sheep. No, it was not for the use but for the exercise ; these things are wanted by the meter to awaken, to galvanize, and open the portals to the soul. I have known an old granny's Bible laid on the shelf for want of spectacles. I have known a deaf man brought to church by a present of an ear-trumpet. I would, there- fore, have greeted a schoolmaster as I would an optician or an aurmt, for milking way for the word to enter. I need not be reminded that in a cer- tain manner, no religion may prove irreligion, and that there is a way of shelving religion with such indifference, that to leave it out of school may endanger leaving it out of life. Still, this cry has been raised in the wrong place, and much blessed food has been kept from starving children by a party, rather than a hearty cry of 'Bank poison.'" His views on domestic education run counter to common pre. judices ; and in .particular he objects to the practice of putting children in training for the Church before they are first breeched. In reply to the indignant inquiry if his parents gave him no special education for the holy office for which they designed him, he replies- " Certainly they did not ; and considering how such religious training is commonly attempted by persons most likely to put this question, I consider it a happy thing that I had none of it. A. model for a religious book for a child is found in the more serious pages of Robinson Crusoe. Crusoe's find- ing a Bible, and having his mind awakened to a sense of religion, arises so naturally from the incidents of the tale, that a child falls insen- sibly into the same train of thought : whereas, any formal paragraphs, in- tended expressly for his instruction, would be skipped and passed by as a sham. On the contrary, a youth who is often said to have had inestimable advantages in a religious family, has perhaps been sickened with serious advice out of time and out of season, and has hard the name of the Almighty so often associated with childish peccadillos of tops and marbles, that the spell is broken for ever.
"I have known sons of evangelical pastors—men revered for their piety all the country round; and I have known not a few of those sons wring their parents' hearts with deeds of shame, till they would say, Would they had never been born!' And to what was this cruel disappointment owing? Simply to this : If once habitually by word, look, or deed, you demand of a child the seriousness and perfection of later years, your unreasonable de- mand is met by a counterfeit supply, and you receive a discount in sheer hypocrisy. What must be that character which results from acting a lie in contempt of the highest sanction all the day long ? Still, such is the popular notion of religious training—the sons of even thoughtless, worldly men, have, in my opinion, no spiritual disadvantages to compare with such enforced religion."
Henry Austin was rational enough not to despise that wisdom that crieth in the streets, or that utters its oracles through the lips of a stage-coachman. On his way home from Oxford after taking his degree, he learned some things from Sam Edwards, the driver of the Rocket, which were of more use to him than any taught by Chrysippus or Crantor. Edwards had been better educated than the common run of coachmen, but finding that he could not live upon gentility without money, he had put his pride in the hind boot, and worked the first coach he could hear of." The conversation turns on Methodies, Bible Christians, and other Dissenters, and Edwards says- " I do have a good deal of talk and argument with them, and there's one story they all agree in, which is, if the clergy would only talk plain English from the pulpits, and speak from the heart, the Dissenters might almost close their chapels. Now, sir, you'll allow there are two sorts of English : one that is spoken in drawing-rooms, the other spoken in cottages • the one is a conversational language the other bookish ; the one is like talking to a man, the other like preaching to him ; the one is sound, the other sense. The Dissenters use the one, your clergy the other; nine sermons out of ten, as far as the poor man is concerned, might just as well be Greek.'
"'But you would not have us preach in such a coarse and vulgar manner as the Dissenters ? '
"'No, sir' I say, copy what's good, not what's bad, in them. They can command attention when they preach, and you church clergy can't. Suppose I made up my conversation before I started, who'd listen to cue? As it is, I have a certain quantity stowed away in my head, and it comes out when and where it's wanted. That's like the Dissenters. A doctor on our coach once said smartly enough that a Church-of-England sermon ought to be like a separate prescription ; but instead of that it is more hire a box of family pills, a kind of general prescription for all constitutions and all complaints : and worse than that, it is very often about the very last thing in the world to do poor and plain folk any good.' "'Then you think our topics ill-chosen, and our language not the Queen's English ?'
" Queen's English, indeed Nothing like it. 'Why, if I were to talk such English to our horse-keepers and 'pike-men, I should never get along the Queen's highway. There isn't one trade or yelling that could be car- ried on with pulpit English. It won't work week-days, so why try it Sun- days ? Your sentences are twice as long as a sensible man ever forms his mouth to. Don't tell me about a style coarse or vulgar. Read John Bun- yan. Isn't his style genteel enough for you ; Yes, that helps me to explain myself; preach John Bunyan's English, and let it, like that wonderful book of his, be about something. Not "moral influences," not "relative obli- gations ; " that's all for the head : we want something to the heart. A hawker said the other day, "People like a tract with a tale in it."' "There was deep wisdom in all this. Of course Edwards meant, choose those familiar, household words, and that pure Saxon, which speaks so feelingly ; and prefer the concrete, or illustrative, to the abstract or the philosophical. It was not for years that I fully realized the truth of his homely counsel. He would have reminded me of the words so little under- stood, Without a parable spoke He not unto them.' Our Great Teacher never taught without an ilhistration ; how rarely do we teach with one ! The ?arable is only the Oriental form of the concrete style, or the illustrative. The life of William Jay, late of Bath, contains valuable hints to any young clergyman who would apply Our Saviour's method of teaching by parable to the habits of the present day." . . . " Ah ! sir ; you may despise the Dissenters if you like ; but they are, in one way, your very best friends. Without them, it would have been down- right stagnation in the Church a long time ago. They keep you a little to your work : they've already made you march a pretty deal faster than the regulation step.' They are very vexatious, I dare say—an opposition coach always is—emptying your coach into theirs. Now, I'm not over and above fond of these Dissenters, though there are good as well as bad in every party ; but what I dislike is, that they carry such a face with them—no more their own than if it took on and off, which oftentimes I think it does : but for all that, my firm belief is—to speak a solemn thing in a plain way—that you Churchmen will none of you travel to your great journey's end more slowly because they carry on a lively opposition on the same road !' "
The story that runs through this book, if not very striking, is life-like, and the personal interest it excites rises considerably towards the latter part. Two things are there shown: first, how a church may be built at the cost of three thousand pounds, all raised by voluntary subscription ; and yet the enterprise shall tend little, at least in the first instance, to promote the glory of God or peace and good-will among men ; secondly, how the in- cumbent of a church thus erected, may, with a nominal stipend of 150/. a year, be subjected to the pains of slow starvation. Henry Austin and his wife endured this fate for seven years, notwith- standing the supplementary aid they enjoyed in the shape of a "basket fortune." Probably the reader does not know the meaning of that phrase, as neither did they until it was ex- plained to them by a neighbour. "Not heard of a basket-fortune!' Bless me ! why, when fathers and mothers can't afford to part with money for a daughter in our country, then something in kind, as part of a pig that they have killed, and meat and goods they can get- credit for, and the like, and whatever they can grow or make, perhaps a little spoilt or a misfit,—all this is for the basket, so many times a month, according to agreement."
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