HUGH STOWELL BROWN.* IT is no doubt well for the
world to know what the leading men in all our religions denominations are like ; otherwise we should hardly have thought that the excellent man whose life is told in this volume would have needed any special record. For most of us,—even for the average of thoroughly faithful men,—" no biography and silence" is probably the happiest fate. This book is the record of the life of a Baptist minister of Liver- pool, and must be full of interest for the friends and fellow- citizens for and with whom he worked for thirty-seven years, preaching in the same chapel—Myrtle Street—during the whole of his ministerial life, from 1847 to 1881. Mr. Caine, in his preface, tells us that he was not only "a remarkable preacher
and much-loved pastor," but "a foremost citizen who bad won his way to public eminence as much by his labours for the good of the people at large, as by his untiring energy in the pulpit and on the platform." We have no reason to doubt this, and it is confirmed by the fact that at Mr. Brown's funeral crowds of persons of every shade of religions and political opinion attended. But in Mr. Brown's autobiography, and in
• Hugh Stowell Brown his Autobiography, his 00171.1110ft plass-Book. and Extracts from his Sermons and Addrersts. A Memorial Volume. Edited by his Bon•InLmr. W. S. OaMe, M.P. London George Routledge and Sons.
the extracts from his commonplace-book, we find little evidence of any laboure.except for the good of his own people and those of other Dissenting congregations all over England. We mean that his hard-working and useful life was not one, neverthe- less, to make its records of interest to a general English public, or to lay claim to national importance, except as England's importance is really indebted to the steady labours and high principles of such men as Hugh Stowell Brown.
The form of the book we do not think a wise one, except that we cannot too much admire the editor's entire self-abnegation. A large collection of extracts is tiresome and tantalising reading, breaking off the train of thought incessantly. It is impossible in such fragments to follow up the subject of any one passage to any complete or satisfactory issue. The sixty-seven pages of very short extracts which the editor calls "Sundry Short and Pithy Notes," are, of course, infinitely more open to the same objection. These last, which average six lines each, are on every conceivable subject. But they contain numerous very amusing stories, original or reported, which exemplify, as his autobiography especially does also, Mr. Brown's very humorous turn. There is much good-natured cynicism; a great number of anecdotes of mendacious attempts to get money or assistance; of ingratitude for help given, and other evidences of moral depravity, and shrewd remarks on men and things. Amongst this medley of scraps, we are struck by two mentions of Thomas Carlyle, with the drift of which we cannot say that we heartily agree, though we are in general sympathy with Mr. Brown's meaning :— "Here is old Carlyle screaming at us for being all gone over to the worship of Beelzebub. There is not a man in England more responsible for this than Carlyle himself. For years he has preached the gospel of physical force. Hero-worship, worship of the strongest and cleverest ; he has poured the uttermost contempt upon evan- gelical religion, and while abusing mammon-worship has left us no other God than mammon to worship. His cry has been, worship power, and we have obeyed him, and finding money the most power- ful thing, we worship it, and are thereby proved to be very faithful disciples of this peevish old man who so storms at us.'
"I find in Fronde's Carlyle 'in the Nineteenth Century, that Carlyle's mother was a pious woman, was intensely anxious that he should read his Bible and believe in it. Her letters to him' full of such advice, will be read by many with a sneer. But suppose Carlyle had received the Bible into his soul and home, would not his life have been far happier and more useful ? Would not his writings have been not soar, severe, hard, destructive, and unsympathetic as they are, but full of kindliness, help, and cheer, for poor ignorant, rude, and erring mortals ? His philanthropy, instead of being as it hi, might is right, would have been right is might; and there would have been none of those uncharitable Reminiscences which, just published, have already lowered him in the esteem of some people, and caused many who admired and extolled him to reject him almost with contempt.'
But even if Carlyle preached the worship of power, he also preached that the worship of mammon was in no true sense the worship of power, and of that Mr. Stowell Brown might have reminded us when he was attacking Carlyle. Another passage in favour of prayer-meetings attracts our atten- tion, as contrasting curiously with many instances recorded by Mr. Brown of the vulgarity, ignorance, superstition, vanity, and almost indecency of the prayers put op at these meetings, which could do nothing but bring prayer into disrepute. Mr. Brown has, of course, many hits at the Church of England—the Broad Church especially—and its abases ; but he is not a narrow or prejudiced Dissenter, and avows, towards the end of his life, that he had " never seen his way to take such strong grounds on the subject [the connection of Church and State] as is generally taken by Nonconformists." The longer paragraphs from the commonplace-book, like the extracts from his sermons, if not so laughter-inspiring—sometimes against our will—as the short ones, are much more useful and serious. They deal with subjects of grave interest, which they treat with sound sense, simplicity, and cultivated thought ; and we can readily believe that, animated by the living voice of a strong and earnest preacher, such as Mr. Brown, they would have the ring of true eloquence. But he was not above having recourse to the clap-trap titles which draw uncultivated audiences—and which have, there- fore, their uses,—such as we find at the head of many of his very telling concert hall lectures on Sunday afternoons,—" Stop Thief !" "I don't care," "Keep to the Right," "The Devil's Meal is all Bran," &c. The whole book, save the preface, is Mr. Brown's, and it gives us a picture of a strong, good, able, hard-working man,—not imaginative or original, or very refined, and not, perhaps, highly sensitive or sympathetic, but generous, high-principled, and single-minded ; hiding nothing, even when he has in honesty to admit inferior motives for his actions, as, for example, grudging generosity Or hard judgment. Of Mr. Brown's political views we learn nothing. Probably, like many clergymen, he kept these to himself, that he might not lose his influence with those who, differed from him. There can be little doubt, however, that his sympathies were with the people, and that he took the side iii politics common to Nonconformists. His autobiography is lively and interesting, but he never touches on his own family relations ; he tells us little of wife or children ; all we know of them is from his son-in-law's preface, where we learn that he lost both his first and second wife and three of his children ; and Mr. Caine adds, with a naiveig that makes us smile, "but otherwise his domestic life was serene and happy."
Mr. Brown was the son of a cleryman in the Isle of Man, with a very small income and a very large family, so that he was early trained to endurance and hardship. During the wandering life of his early years after leaving school, he encountered still more poverty and hardship, and saw much life amongst the artisan class with whom he lived,—much drunkenness, idleness, un- belief and blasphemy, which, since he had too much principle and pluck to be led far astray, was an admirable preparation for his ministrations to the people amongst whom he laboured 130' long and so beneficially. He went first to a surveyor at Congle- ton—a very drunken fellow. Then, obtaining a humble post on the Ordnance Survey, he was sent to York, where it is his modest boast "that, on the ordnance map, the grandest minder in England is laid down from measurements made by my own hands." Thence he went into the engine workshops of the London and Birmingham Railway Company at Wolverton, and he records that the only thing that Company did for the welfare (?) of their employhs there, during his stay, was to build them a public-house, which got the deserved name of "Hell's Kitchen." Fortunately, Mr. Brown's better instincts preserved him from moral destruction, and he became acquainted with the Baptists, to whom he ultimately joined himself. But first he determined to become a clergyman, and returned to his father's poor home ; and he tells us how he became disgusted with the arbitrariness of the Church, and finally broke away from it. He feared his father's displeasure, but was relieved to find him absolutely pleased. His father was a very Low and lax Church- man, caring nothing for creeds, and scarcely more for sacraments. The tragic death of two brothers and of the old father reduced the widow and her remaining children to great poverty. Mr. Brown seems to have been earning a trifle by helping an Independent minister at Douglas, when he most unexpectedly, and even mysteriously, considering his extreme youth and that he was unknown, received an invitation to preach at Myrtle Street Chapel, Liverpool. Here we must leave him, only quoting his own most ingenuous and amusing acccount of his first sermon ;- "Perhaps in point of doctrine the sermon was not so bad. Bat. oh, the attempts to be eloquent, grand, impressive, powerful, the figures of speech, the rhetorical flourishes ! I think that I have some credit now for a plain and homely style ; there was little sign or- promise of it then. Imagine me now in such a lofty style as this. Addressing the stars, I said 'Are there no mysteries among you, ye stare of night ? Have ye no inhabitants who are the object of a Creator's love ? Wherefore, then, do ye hang upon His arm and roll around His feet ? Wherefore do ye raise your useless heads above the waves of space like fishes wandering in the Arctic Sea?' And then addressing Death, I cried out : `No, Death, thou bast conquered one world, but think not to stretch thy sceptre beyond its boundaries ; think not to speed thee on thy blackening wings to fairer worlds on high ; think not to-scatter thy poisonous darts among the hosts of heaven !' And then I asked these interesting questions about the world; Wherefore was this den of traitors suffered to continue in existence ? Wherefore was not this world driven from the universe, and sent reeking into some region of the illimitable void, and doomed to wander for ever in the realms of blackest night ?' But, perhaps,. the climax of the sublime was reached when I exclaimed Oh, how would Satan have exulted had he beheld the forceps of God's wrath grasping the world by its poles and hurling it into hell!' Then by a wonderful change of metaphor I said 'No, Satan, thou hest wrecked this world upon the rooks of sin, but thou shalt not drown its people in the gargling waters of eternal death.' And again changing the metaphor, but still addressing my old enemy, I said 'Yes, thou who art as a young lion, thy prey is groaning in thy teeth ; yes, here cometh the second Daniel who shall deliver the sheep which thou hart seized.' I had not been preaching five weeks before all this awful nonsense had escaped these foolish and inexperienced lips. There was, of course, a peroration of corresponding brilliancy. 'It is finished ; blessed proclamation, earth listened to the sound, and trembled while it listened ! Heaven heard the all-potent words, and gathered up its elands and looked cheerfully on the earth again, and the clouds rolled themselves away like the smoke of battle when the fight is ended! It struck on Satan's ear' (you see I could not leave • him alone), 'it struck on Satan's ear, and he turned pale to hear a voice laden with the destruction of his power. It ran through the armies of the angels, and a shoat of victory rang through the courts of heaven, and was answered by deep groans from hell!' And so with a cordial invitation to the morning stars to sing together, and to the eons of God to shout for joy, this brilliant discourse was brought to an end. Well, I had made a great fool of myself, but the fact was mercifully hidden from me. How shall I ever sufficiently admire or be sufficiently grateful for the patience and forbearance of sash veterans as Mr. Godfrey, Mr. Pearce, and Mr. A. Brown ! Why, I do believe that one of them actually thanked me for that stuff, not, I am very sore, because they could in the least admits it, but because with the courtesy which always distinguished them, they were loth to hurt my feelings. Bat I think that on that day at many a dinner- table I must have been—I deserved to be—the object of unsparing ridicule and convulsive laughter. Indeed, I remember being a little disturbed during the service by seeing one gentleman holding his band over his mouth, unable to keep a grave face. He told me after- wards—a long time afterwards though—that my impression was correct; he could stand a good deal, but the forceps grasping the globe by the poles was too mach for him, and fairly bowled him over. I have often wondered since that the chapel was not all on a titter, nay, that there were not even berets of laughter. The most gentle- manly man might, I think, be fairly excused if the screaming apos- trophes which I addressed to the stars, the angels, and death, had made him roar!"
It may be well to explain an apparent inaccuracy on the title- page, where this book is described as edited by Mr. Brown's eon-in-law. In p. xi, of the preface, the editor says that Mr. Brown married his (Mr. Caine's) sister for his second wife. This is true; but Mr. Caine married Mr. Brown's daughter, and was therefore both brother-in-law and son-in-law of the subject of
his book.
Previous page
