Rev. Richard Cecil, M.A.
Mr. Cecil was a very popular preacher when I went first to London, though I always thought his popularity was not equal to his desert. I greedily seized every opportunity in my power of hearing him, and never without impression. The impression was not so much of the pathetic as of the serious and solemn. He did not excel so much in the soft and tender, as in the striking and powerful.
He was perfectly free from all afiectation of oratory; but everything about him in the pulpit, his figure, his looks, his hand sometimes laid across his loins from pain, his firm and decisive enunciation — all was dignified and impressive, and never failed of commanding attention. Conscious of the divinity of his mission, and the importance of his message, he always seemed to feel what he once expressed, when with a powerful voice he said, must be heard/
For the sake of excitement and efiect, especially upon the mass of his hearers, he was sometimes, after the manner of the Nonconformists, with whose works his education made him familiar, quaint in his sentences, and sometimes also in the plan and division of his sermons. Indeed, his excellency lay, not so much in the clear and orderly arrangement of his subject, as in the fillings up and exemplifications. There was also nothing very consecutive in his discourses; no one train of thought being pursued at length, or fully argued out: and this, I remember, Mr. Wilberforce rather complained of, saying, one day, after he had been attending him, that he seemed too much to follow after things by starts, and sometimes failed to overtake them. This was rather severe, especially for him; and I could not but think that the senator had been hearing rather than the Christian; and that for once, if possible, the talent and the eloquence to which he had been accustomed made him forget what is most profitable to a common congregation.
The eloquence of the senate, the bar, and the schools will never be the effective eloquence of the pulpit. All eloquence there which does not arise from feeling, and produce it, is sounding brass and tinkling cymbal; and any profound argumentation, or long-continued illustration, will fail in keeping up the attention, or in securing the remembrance, in ordinary hearers.” The words of the wise are as goads and as nails.^’ What preponderates must be weighty; what pierces must be pointed; what is carried away must be portable; and all cannot equally carry.
Mr. Cecil had always a number of striking remarks, reflections, and sentiments, which would be remembered from their own impressiveness, independently of a more lucid or connecting arrangement. He seemed much at home in treating historical passages; in representations of common life; in brief sketches of character; and in hitting off, with a stroke, a particular feature, so distinctly and strongly, that there was no mistaking the individual to whom it belonged.
He had few anecdotes, but these always told, and were brief and pertinent, and uniformly offered their assistance, instead of being introduced for their own sakes. But he abounded peculiarly with Scripture facts, which, without a formal quotation, he aptly interwove in the texture of his discourse, with singular propriety and telling effect. If a figure would go with him a mile, he did not compel it to go twain. He never evaporated the spirit of a metaphor, in numerous, subtle particles of allusion,
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He seldom used an entire comparison; but rather, as he passed along, by a glance, snatched from it a significant circumstance which helped his subject without drawing off attention to itself. Instead of glossing a passage of Scripture as he repeated it, or explaining it after he had repeated it, he admirably threw out the meaning and force of the words previously, and then announced them as a beautiful and powerful illustration, confirmation, and clinching of the argument he was treating.
Among many other excellencies in his preaching he was always brief. I never heard him exceed forty minutes. This is an excellency which did not distinguish our forefathers; and it is not, I fear, very likely to be a characteristic of the moderns, especially our younger preachers, who show in their long harangues the confidence they have in their own ability and acceptance.
The late Dr. Bogue is reported to have one day said to some of his students, “Do you suppose that people have nothing to do but to listen to your emptiness by the hour?” — a rebuke too pettishly given, and too severe. But there is propriety in Lamont’s remark, “There is no excuse for a long sermon; if it be good it need not be long, and if it be bad it ought not to be long.” Queen Anne, after hearing Dr. South, said, “You have given us an excellent sermon, Dr. South: I wish you had had time to make it longer.” ‘’Nay, please your majesty,” said he, “I wish I had had time to make it shorter.” Whitfield and Wesley, and most of the early Methodists, were short. Why do not many of their successors follow their example?
No man distinguished more in his mind, and in his preaching, between the essential parts of Christianity and the subordinate and circumstantial than Mr. Cecil. With what a crushing force has he been heard to repeat the language of Jeremiah, “He that hath a dream let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat?”
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With him “neither circumcision availed anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature/^
I believe the following incident has been published; but I was in London when it occurred, and knew it before it spread. A female, who had more of the form of godliness than of the power, one day said to him, “Sir, have you heard that I am going to turn from the Dissenters to the Church ?^^ “Madam,’’ he replied, “you are turning from nothing to nothing,”
Hearing a person censuring a churchman for going to hear the Gospel in a meeting, (the only place in the village where it then could be heard,) he exclaimed, “Did ye never read what David did when he was an hungred, and they that were with him; how he entered into the house of God, and did eat the shew-bread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them that were with him, but only for the priests?”
He had his own fixed views and convictions, (and without these candour is only indifference,) but he was moderate enough to think it no sin to attend occasionally in Argyle Chapel; and one iday calling upon me, he asked where he could take two sittings for his daughters? adding, “You know I am an Episcopalian, and wish my children to go to church, that is, if the one thing needful be heard there. But they must take heed what they hear, as well as how they hear. If the story be not told in a cathedral, they must follow it into a barn; for they must hear it, and hear it with care.” — And what practical proof can we give of our belief either of the truth, or the importance of evangelical principles, if it be nothing to us whether we hear the words which cause us to err, or those by which we may be savad?
With this man of God I had some acquaintance in London, but he frequently came to Bath for some weeks together for recreation or health, and then I had much intercourse with him. His conversation was equal to his preaching. It was singularly original, vigorous, pertinent, instructive, and edifying; and none
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I remember his admonishing me against having too great a plenitude of matter in a sermon — an admonition which I fear I have not sufficiently followed.
He also advised me, as I was acceptable, and found people much disposed to hear, to beware of checking it by disappointment in frequently putting up others to preach. But how is this in many cases to be avoided? Can a minister slight his brethren when they come in his way?” But they may decline his invitation /^ yes, — and this would be often wise even for themselves j for when people hear under a baulked expectation, they seldom hear with pleasure or profit.
“Be,’^ said he, never to he had.^^ Many other hints I received from his rich mind and acute and judicious observation, by which I ought to have profited more. I thank God that I ever heard the preacher or was in company with the man.
Who can be ignorant of his” Remains ?^^ Is there a work of the same size that abounds with such riches of understanding and wisdom, and genius and truth? By what a multitude of inimitable passages from them has Mr. Poynder enriched his three volumes of ‘Literary Extracts V How much of his excellency has his daughter secured and made known in her Memoirs of Mrs. Hawkes!