DEAN RAMSAY ON THE PULPIT.* THE republication of these two
lectures is very opportune. Dean Ramsay is a wise, humorous Scotch Episcopalian, very orthodox, but accustomed to live among people who are not Episcopalians, and, therefore, not much tempted to put the special opinions of his Church too obtrusively in front. We might call hiin the Sydney Smith of his "denomination," but that it would be unjust, he being more of a true cleric than Sydney Smith; and unkind, as he has obviously a notion, not altogether unjustified, that his true powers lie elsewhere, that he is not so much essayist, though he has written many and good essays, as acceptable preacher of the Word. Whether as essayist or as preacher Dean Ramsay's table talk on the pulpit is worth hearing, the more because he gives it us in literary and not in sermonical English, is not afraid of a joke if that helps his argument, does not shrink from genuine religious teaching if that serves his purpose, and an on occasion introduce his own views on dogma in the pawkiest way. There is a little extract from a speech of John Wesley's, introduced, one understands, merely as an illustration, and as a sentence the Dean by no means intends to embody in his own sermons; but if the world will listen to it once again, because it is
in a book of jottings, the author will pardon their not appre- -ciating anything else. We will extract that paragraph, which
is pretty much forgotten, for a reason which does not perhaps differ very widely from the one in the Dean's own heart. If our readers will just glance over that they can leave this review unread, and not hurt us. This was Wesley's idea of the doctrine of Election :—
" This doctrine,' he says, 'represents our blessed Lord, Jesus Christ the righteous, the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth, as a hypocrite, a deceiver of the people, a man void of common sincerity ; for it cannot be denied that He everywhere speaks as if Ho were willing that all men should be saved. You represent Him as mocking His helpless creatures by offering what He never intends to give. You describe Him as saying one thing and meaning another; as pretending the love which Ho had not. Him in whose mouth was no guile, you make full of deceit, void of common sincerity. When nigh the city, He wept over it, and said, "Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how -often would I have gathered thy children together, and ye would not !" Now, if you say they would, but Ile would not, you represent Him-- which, who could hear ?—as weeping crocodile's tears, weeping over the prey which Himself had doomed to destruction. Oh, how would the enemy of God and man rejoice to hear these things were so ! How would he cry aloud and spare not ! How would he lift up his voice and say, "To your tents, 0 Israel ! Flee from the face of this God, or ye shall utterly perish !"'" If the Spectator had ventured, while saying pretty nearly the same thing last week in feebler words, to use that expression -" crocodile tears," it would have been condemned for blasphemy. The power of speaking plainly, not to say the wish to speak plainly, seems to have gone out of the modern pulpit.
Dean Ramsay divides preaching into five modes, first, the meta- physical, which may be said to be the style of Scotland, and of which he gives the following pleasant anecdotes :— "As an example of such preaching, and that the driest of the dry— suppose a congregation assembled to listen to a sermon from the cele- brated and very learned Dr. Richard Bentley, an eminent man and dis- tinguished preacher of his day. Fancy their excited attention whilst he lays down his heads of discourse. 'First, I will prove it impossible that the primary parts of our world, the sun and the planets, with their regular motions and revolutions, should have subsisted eternally in the present or a like frame and condition. Secondly, I will show that matter, abstractly and absolutely considered, cannot have subsisted eternally; or if it has, yet motion cannot have co-existed eternally with it as an inherent property and essential attribute of the Atheist's God, Marna.' One of our own Scottish divines, Dr. Macknight, author of an -elaborate commentary on the Epistles, and a work on Evidences—an able and learned man—was a remarkable example of this chuss of preachers. Logical and erudite, he could find no place for the relief of the imagination or of fancy in composing his discourses, could assume no fervour of enthusiasm in their delivery. Of this estimable divine the pleasant story is told of what his colleague slily remarked upon his pulpit ministrations. Dr. Macknight had been overtaken by a sharp shower in coming to church. In the vestry, and before the service be- gan, the attendants were doing all in their power to make him comfort- able by rubbing him with towels and other appliances. The good man was -much discomposed, and was ever and anon impatiently exclaiming, 4 Oh, I wish that I was dry,' and repeating often, 'Do ye think I am -dry eneuch now?' Dr. Henry, his colleague, who was present, was a jocose man, of much quiet humour. He could not resist the oppor- tunity of a little hit at his friend's style of preaching ; so he patted him on the shoulder, with the encouraging remark, 'Bide a wee, Doctor, bide a wee, and ye's be dry eneuch when ye get into the pulpit."
Secondly, there is the Biblical-criticism style, growing too coin-
• Pulpit fable Talk By Dean Ramsay. London CasselL
mon with many among the more scholarly of the clergy, which produces sermons very valuable in type, but not equally valuable in the pulpit ; thirdly, there is the moral or didactic style, which as the audience gets educated tends to pass away, audiences of to-day not being much edified by Sunday essays on life, which the Saturday Review or the Spectator can do twice as well ; fourthly, the alarmist style, which as universalism spreads becomes of less and less moment, except as it empties churches ; and fifthly, the gentle style, which urges the promises of the Gospel. Dean Ramsay descants on each in a gossipy but withal serious and gently forbearing way irresistibly attractive ; but nevertheless he forgets both the sixth and the seventh styles, which seem to us to be among the effective styles of preaching, namely, the human, in which the preacher talks of religion as a man talks with his brethren of other things of importance, using plain words, and familiar illustrations, and strong appeals, and caring only to con- vince; and the oratorical, when a man gifted to that end makes ideas which are perhaps old, and thoughts which are perhaps flat, powerful through his faculty at once of delivery and expression. Of all styles that last is the most common and effective among the preachers of this world, the least frequent among the preachers of the next. This, we take it, was the main gift of Chrysostom, in whom the Dean believes so greatly, but whose discourses, if badly delivered or so arranged as to lack some of that external beauty of which it is so difficult to divest them, might seem in a modern pulpit very flat things indeed. No man appears among us even now with the fire of the genuine orator on his lips, the prose poet who can stir men, but his church or chapel fills to the roof with men careless of his special dogmatic opinions.
Dean Ramsey pones lightly, but easily, over the historical por- tion of his subject, interlacing short but pithy accounts of ancient, mediteval, and Reformation preaching with many a quaint or humorous anecdote; outlines Hooker, Barrow, and Jeremy Taylor,—of which triad he prefers the last, as the man of genius, "the Shakespeare of the pulpit," — mentions, not we think very lovingly, Massillon and Lacordaire, Whitfield, whose sermons, however, he had never seen, John Wesley, of whom he quotes the markedly doctrinal opinion given above, and Robert Hall, in whose lofty eloquence he evidently believes—he was perhaps the exainple of our seventh style—and of whom he gives this anecdote, which to us at least is new :— "Hall was of an independent spirit, and often winced under the control exorcised, or attempted to be exercised, by English Dissenters over the preaching of their pastors. I had the follow- ing anecdote from Dr. Chalmers :—A member of his flock, pre- Burning on his weight and influence in the congregation, had called upon him and took him to task for not more frequently or more fully preaching Predestination, which he hoped would in future be more referred to. Hall, the most moderate and cautious of men on this dark question, was very indignant ; he looked steadily at his censor for a time, and replied, 'Sir, I perceive that you are predestinated to be an ass ; and what is more, I see that you are determined to make your calling and election sure!' "
Mere brutality, most readers will say ; but Dean Ramsay has lived among churches where every old woman is a critic, and cannot for- bear a certain sympathy, and neither can we. He then glides into an analysis of the power displayed in the pulpit by Chalmers and Irving—an analysis of little originality, and revealing, we think, a somewhat florid taste—and ends with this general counsel, at least as much needed in England as in the Dean's own country :—
" Sermons will vary much in language, in style, and in ability ; but there are certain qualities which should be found in all sermons, and certain qualities which should be excluded from all. There should always be gravity, sincerity, simplicity, earnestness, and truth. There never should be affectation, buffoonery, or self-conceit. There never should be the vanity which would sacrifice propriety to popularity. Men will have their favourite preachers—men will have their own ideas of what are the finest sermons. But the essential elements of the true Christian orator have been already drawn by the band of a muter :— 44 Would I describe a preacher such an Paul,
Were he on earth, would hoar, approve, and own, Paul hhould himself direct me. I would trace His master strokes, and draw from his design; I would express him ;Ample, grave, sincere;
In doctrine uncorrupt ; in language plain,
And plain in manlier; decent, solemn, chaste, And natural in gesture; much impressed Himself, as conscious of his awful charge, And anxious mainly that the Hock he feeds May feel it too ; affectionate in look, And tender in address, as well becomes
A messenger of grace to guilty man: "
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