London in Sight
/ “TTTHAT my destiny was going to be was V V becoming clearer and clearer, and I marked the growing vision with thankfulness and yet with nervous apprehension. The secret hidden in my heart was that one day I would become a preacher of the Gospel. Everything pointed in that direction. It was a family anecdote that early one Sunday morning when walking with my father I was found standing at a gate with my index finger pointing to the sun, saying aloud to myself, “What are these arrayed in white, brighter than the noonday sun?” Erom that moment my father felt that I was to be a preacher, though then but a child of very tender age. I was always interested in great speeches, in parliamentary debates, in preaching, and in public meetings. In all these matters, as well as in others,
there is an inborn instinct. One of my great
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delights was to read the defence of the Irish seditionists of the time. I bought verhatiin copies of the speeches of Whiteside and Meagher, and other orators, so far as they were available, and pinned them to the paper of my bedroom wall, and having committed them to memory I declaimed them aloud in my solitude to excited but invisible juries.
Somebody had told me that if I would read the “Westminster Election Speech by Charles James Fox, I would know what use could be made of the English language alike in exposition and invective. With a lamentable lack of caution I went to the bookseller’s and ordered the “Speeches” of the illustrious statesman. To my horror I discovered, when the bill came in, that the price of the volume — a large and handsome one, which another young man subsequently borrowed and never returned — amounted to no less than twenty shillings. For me that meant bankruptcy immediate and assets nil. But little by little I struggled through the difl&culty and got all possible advantage (which was not much) from the Westminster speech, for which I had to pay so high a price.
Along with this reading of speeches there proceeded a some^■hat copious committal of poetry to memory, with the express intention of making capital out of it whenever I was called upon to face a public audience. In due time my opportunity came, A fruit soiree was one of the entertainments at the Independent Chapel. I had been invited to deliver a speech in connection with that autumnal event. For that cool September night I had made many preparations — notably, I had bought a red tie, and had secured a pair of plaid trousers, the order being given on the understanding that Henry Brougham, the future Lord Chancellor of England, betrayed his littleness l)y sporting that kind of toggery. It was understood that a popular l)arrister in the district always addressed the Court in the attitude of having one hand in his breeches pocket. That was enough. The young men who observed such little personal points of dress and attitude had no hesitation in conjuring up for themselves an oratorical future absolutely dazzling in glory. ‘On that y memorable autumnal evening I recited, to the evident delight of my audience, the scathing lines of the dyspeptic Cowper:
“Where others toil with philosophic force, His nimble nonsense takes a shorter course; Flings at your head conviction by the lump, And gains remote conclusions at a jump.”
To whom this denunciation applied — probably* to nobody at all — I have no desire to remember, l3ut that it was spoken by me in good faith, though it may be with juvenile indiscretion, I have no manner of doubt. Never can I forget the offence which I gave to one honoured minister in a very luckless way. In public speaking he made copious use of pretty couplets; in the instance to which I specially refer his couplets amounted to twenty-seven in number. They looked like a complete bazaar of rhymes properly stalled out and ready for sale. When I was called upon to address the meeting, immediately after him, I wickedly deplored the fact that the only poetry I could remember was:
“Thirty day hath Septemboi-.”
That night I nearly killed a friend — not killed, perhaps, not killed, that is a strong word, but so stunned him that it took years — as it always takes a certain type of piety — for him to recover the shattering bloAV. I have since learned that it is always wise for public speakers not to make any comments upon their predecessors unless they can do so in the sense of appreciation and gratitude. Cacoethes loqiiendi seemed to have seized a good many of my youthful contemporaries. A rather notable set of men they were, as may be imagined from the fact that one of them became a London vicar, another became preacher at a celebrated Inn of Court, another of them became proprietor of Dore’s Gallery, and another raised himself to the position of the first mathematician in the county of Northumberland, whilst another, of merit less commanding, is writing this autobiography.
Many young men of my time began life as local preachers in connection with some branch of Methodism. They may not have been very brilliant, and they may not have developed into any remarkable social magnitude, but I never can regard them but with honour for diligently spending their days and nights in the acquisition of Biblical knowledge and in humble preparation for Christian service.
I have sometimes wondered whether all this early devotion to i)reaching, reading, and debating was not to be accounted for by the fact that there was no middle course open to youths of my class. Our course lay between God and the devil. 1 seriously believe that if I had touched a card or a box of dice there might have been murder under our roof. This is a strong assertion, but I cannot substantially modify it. A pack of cards in the house! The very thought is blasphemy. Of course the word “theatre” simply meant the devil. All actors were hypocrites, all actresses were harlots, all playhouses led down to the pit of jierdition. Woe to the boy who read a novel! This was the atmosphere in which I was brought up. Admit the narrowness of the environment, admit the absurdity and the injustice of much of the criticism, and it yet remains true that this moral temper and its consequent attitude have poAverfuUy affected the middle-class life of England. It is the operation of this Puritan conscience — no doubt often blind and narroAV — that makes it hard for Nonconformist England to take kindly to horse-racing premiers or to gambling princes.
The more popular of the young local preachers excited, as was to be expected, the envy and jealousy of inferior minds. One of these inferior minds, listening in company with myself to one of our foremost young laymen, excitedly said to me afterwards, in the confidence of an evening walk, that he “woukl preach him any day for five shillings.” We were always frank with one another in our interchange of criticism, so much so that if any one of us rose to a great height of eloquence the other man asked him where he got that climax from. The thought that it was the young man’s own climax never entered even generous minds.
But I must hasten. At length the door opened, and opened not only in an unexpected but in an almost ghostly manner. I was sure there was a door somewhere and that it would some time open, but where it was, or how it would fall l)ack, I had no definite conception. Without consulting any one (a habit of mine which has 1)een both serviceable to myself and sometimes irritating to others) I wrote to a then eminent minister in London, whose name was familiar to me through the editorship of various religious magazines, giving him an outline of my life, frankly expressing my aspirations, and asking him if he could advise as to my future. To my surprise he promptly answered that he himself had such an opening for just such a young man, and that if I would come at once lio could place me in his pulpit for three Sundays, and would give me three guineas a week towards my expenses. For a moment I felt as if I had committed some inexplicable crime. I had asked a question, I had expected an answer, yet, so strange is human nature, no sooner was the great man’s letter in my hand than I felt that all things were going round and round, and that I was being sucked down into the unfathomable by a sAvirling maelstrom. Here was destiny! “Now was the winter of my discontent made glorious summer” by this unseen London editor! What would the other youths think? What would the local minister say? I no longer moved through the town in the ordinary manner, but as it were by levitation, skimming the air about three inches from the pavement, and going through crowds without touching them.
How easy to say in one off-hand sentence that I went to London! But who can tell the agony that preceded and accompanied the simple event? The father and mother were disquieted beyond the reach of consolation, though proud enough, in a silent way, that their son had been thus honoured by a man whom they regarded as a kind of denominational god. I started from Newcastleupon-Tyne at a quarter past Aa-o in the morning in the parliamentary train, and arrived at King’s Cross between seven and eight in the evening. How impossilily young and impressionable I was at that far-off time! Not one impression has faded. If I might make note of one above all others, it would be the indescribable moment when, just before the train started, my father put three hard-earned sovereigns into my hand. Immediately Ijefore the starting-whistle sounded I put out my hand for a final shake, and in the act of doing so I secretly returned half the money, and thus I landed in the metropolis of the empire with thirty shillings at my disposal! It was not much, but it was enough, more than enough, better than enough, — it was gold of the heart — treasure full of tears and love and sacrifice. I could tremble for young men who know nothing of the value of money. Perhaps I know it too well. I never had a penny that I did not work for. My critics have bestowed many epithets upon me, but I am not aware that the severest of them ever called me an idle man; it is therefore to industry that I Gave every book on my shelf and every loaf in my cupboard. And industry, I secretly resolved, should return the thirty shillings with compoiinrl interest. But hoAV r When? The tale of my life will duly tell.
On my tAventy-second birthday (April 9th, 1852) — how far off it seems this morning! — I found myself in “Whitefield’s Tabernacle, face to face with its redoubtable editor-minister, whose throat had (for me) providentially failed, and who therefore added an editorship to his pastorate, generously dividing his pastoral income with his young assistant. He does not hulk so largely in my imagination now, but no one can have any idea how great was the denominational influence then Aviclded by the cx-blacksmith, John Campbell, He seemed to be the totalised denomination! My father had taken in his magazines from the first — in fact, I ha e a bound volume of one of them in my study at this moment. I thought as I sat in the editor’s dining-room on that memorable April night that I had never seen so imposing a personality. Behind that huge nose (quite as Roman as Wellington’s) were battles and storms and manifold omens of jjOAver. The small, sunken grey eyes, under the thick thatch of his eyebroAvs, were active and penetrating. The Avide, firm mouth was shut like an oven door. The voice was Ioav, woolly, and judicial. I found the great man kind and genial. He asked me what my first text was to be, and what subject I would take in the evening, and then, to my alarm, suggested that I should change the order of the topics, and finally announced that he would himself take the devotional part of the services. Once more things began to swim round and round. Remember, I was but twenty-two, and had probably never before been more than thirty miles out of my native town. Looking back upon the event is one thing, but realising it at the moment of agony was another. The centre of gravity was changed; Time took upon itself the complexion of Eternity; the first Tabernacle was again sliadoAving the hot sand, and a new Moses was looking out of its canvas door. (By the way, this is a happier allusion than I had at first supposed, for a favourite riddle in Dissenting circles was,” What is the difference between Moses and Campbell? “the answer being,” Moses made a Tabernacle in the wilderness, and Campbell made a wilderness in the Tabernacle.”) From my rural environment to this metropolitan opportunity, what a transition and what a contrast! Think of it! The Tabernacle! Whitetield’s Tabernacle! An enclosed wilderness! The lojSdon in sight birthplace of my lifo-long ministry! The imj)ortance ol” the occasion acquires a new significance when I remember that at the very moment of writing these lines I have received an invitation, after a lapse of forty-six years, to lay the foundation-stone of Whitefield’s Tabernacle in Tottenham Court Road, and the stone which I am invited to lay is none other than the identical stone Avliich Whitefield himself laid more than a hundred years ago! Do events move in circles? Is not the stifp, straight line, the rigid perpendicular itself, without losing its hold upon the rock of prose, constantly moving up towards blossoming and poetry and lilywork? The universe is itself a circle on which the Eternal is enthroned.
Having fulfilled my three weeks’ engagement, my senior asked me to continue my ministry from time to time until we could sec how events would shape themselves. Two or three distinguished ministers had been invited to hear me preach and to consider my case, as being in some respects unique, with the result that they unanimously agreed Avitli John Campbell that there was absolutely no need for me to go through any preparatory
A PREACHER’S TJFE
course at one of our denominational colleges. I was advised to go through an abbreviated course of study at University College, London, and there, under a very bewildering lectureship, I studied mental and moral philosophy and formal logic. Bewildering, I must say (though to better pupils the lectureship may have been alike definite and brilliant); but when it came to writing Aristotle on the blackboard in Greek characters. Dr. John Hoppus showed, notwithstanding his large brown wig, that even Greek could be written legibly. I never saw Greek written in that artistic fashion before. My shorthand notes of this professor’s learned lectures are in my study to-day, and are often looked at with curious interest. I may add that there was a link between Dr. Hoppus and myself of which he knew nothing, for the Doctor was a hunilile Sunday-school or Bible-class teacher in Whitefield’s Tabernacle, Tottenham Court Road, when I was the junior minister at Whitefield’s Tabernacle, Moorfields; not only so, I have pr(^ached to Dr. Hoppus at the former Tabernacle under the self -deceiving impression that he would not recognise in me the sloAvest and stupidest of his students. When I was ordained at Banbury I invited Dr. Hoppus to deliver the charge to the young minister, which he would gladly have done hut for the claims of his professorial duties. Dr. Hojipus was an enlarged and glorified edition of my third schoolmaster.
In this way I passed into the Christian ministry, and took my place amongst such men as Richard Watson, Jahez Bunting, Adam Clark, Morley Punshon, Thomas Scott, Richard Baxter, Andrew Puller, Thomas Lynch, Robert Vaughan, and C. H. Spurgeon. If my brethren thus named were as satisfied with me as I was satisfied with them, our relationship must be accounted most happy and satisfactory. All my life long I had been training for the ministry: I had never been trained for anything else. When, therefore, young men refer to me as one who has made progress without the aid of denominational college training, they must remember that for twenty-two years I was undergoing special training of a still larger kind. On these matters men must adopt their own conclusions and work according to their own opportunities. There should be no alienation or bitterness as amongst the various grades of ministers. We are the servants of one Master, and should be animated by a common inspiration.
My career at the Tabernacle was vitally educational. I had the advantage of the most experienced pastoral oversight; I read historically and theologically under the direction of my most sagacious leader; at his bidding and under his advice I paid all his pastoral visits; he introduced me to various public and influential men; he heard me read my two sermons for the following Sunday every Saturday night, and then commended me to God in very rich and pathetic supplication. He sent me at one time as many as sixty volumes bearing upon the work of the ministry and the exposition of the divine Word. Long years after I contril)uted many articles to the publications which he edited, and in his closing years he sent me his last book, bearing the inscription:
“From the Author to Dr. Joseph Parker. A Small Token of great esteem.”
We had our conflicts and differences, but it is only fair to say that Dr. Campbell frankly admitted that he had made great mistakes. That our final relation was even hapjner than our first may l)e inferred from the fact that in the last letter which I received from him occur the romantic words, “I expect you and your companion gem to dine with me” on such and such a day. Dr. Campbell had great faults and great excellences. As to his large intellectual capacity there could be no manner of doubt, and as to his deep evangelical convictions I have no shadow of misgiving; and for my Own part it would be unpardonable to forget that he directed my opening ministry and comforted me in my first endeavours l)y many a generous benediction.