NOTES AND NOTIONS.

[Bv a New Zealander Abkoad.]

Among the Churches — Some Notable Preachers— Dr, Phiujp Brooks, of Boston — " Shooting without a Rest "—" — Henry Ward Beecher — A Child of his Age — Canon Scott Holland in St. Paul's — Spurgkon — Dr. Farrar — Stopford Brooke — Dk. Bale, ok Birmingham — Dr. Parker in the City Temple — Father Newman — VoYSfcY — is the Pulpit Failing ? I do not spend all my Sundays with the Socialists. I visit the churches occasionally. I have been giving you some Notes and Notions regarding some of the forces that are at work in society outside the church. To keep a balance, I think I will give jou now some Notes and Notions regarding those within the church. I have written of somo of the typical leaders of Socialism. If you will allow me, I will now write of some of the typical leaders of the church. I v ill begin with America, and out of those I heard there I will select two. First, Br Phillip Brooks. Dr. Brooks is the rector of Trinity Church (Ebpi&copal), Boston. Boston has its attractions for tho globe trotter. As everybody knows it is the "Hub "of the Universe A crank ot creature once called upon Emerson. He was one of those individuals who aie in the secret.* of Providence. "Do you know, bir, that tho end oi the world is coming to-morrow ?" "My good sir," replied Emerson ; that does not concern me. I live in Boston." Just so. I went to this wonderful place then, among other reasons, to hear Phillip Brooks. I had read some of his books. 1 wanted to see and hear the man. I was fortunate in both. Ho is easily seen. There is a good deal of him — 6ft and over — with a breadth and body proportionate. He ministers in Trinity Church. It is one of the mo&t costly and most beautiful edifices in America. AVhcn he preaches the building i.s crowded. It was a sweltering August day when 1 was there, but the building was iilled. I admire (distantly) the English prayer-book service. If 1 could hear its prayers read as Dr. Brooks reads them, I think 1 might come to love them. To liston to the rector of Trinity Church conducting the Episcopal service transforms it. You aro not conscious of either reading or praying ; only of the rapt communion ot an intense soul with the In\isible. The spirit of the minister tells on his church. His congregation was the most devotional that I saw anywhere. The impression made by the worshipping part of the fceivice is not destroyed by the preaching. A rough backswoodman in Virginia heard Bishop Meade preach an extemporaneous sermon, and, Joeing somewhat unfamiliar with the ways of the Episcopal Chin eh, he said:. "1 liked him. He was the first I ever saw of those petticoat fellows that could shoot without a rest.'' Dr. Brooks, though not one of those petticoat fellows " (he has declined the offer of bishopric) shoots without a rest — that is, he preaches extempore ; at least he did so the day I heard him, though I believe he does not always do so. He had not even a note ; he read his text out of a small Bible which he carried in his hand, then closed the book, and drawing himself up he simply poured forth. He is the swiftest speaker I ever heard ; he is a perfect terror to reporters. When he was in England a year or two ago they could do nothing with him. I do not wonder. His preaching is a Niagara, on and on, without pause, without lack of a word, and yet there does not seem to be a word wasted. It is not eleoquent verbiage. Every word, when you come to analyse it, is in its right place, and you could not miss one. Still, with all his rapidity of utterance, there is no difficulty in following him. His thoughts, clean cut and clear, and never lost in rhetoric, never clouded by words. They shape his vocabulary, never his vocabulary them. Two characteristics his preaching seems to me to possess — breadth and intensity. It is rare to find these two united in any preacher ; you get them separate often enough. We know tho preacher, who is broad, but his bneadth runs into diffuseuess, It loses point ; it is like some of the loads in the backwoods. They begin well — broad and beautiful — and so for a while ; but then they narrow, lose definitene:?=;, end in a sheep track, and run up a tree. And we all know the preacher, too, who has intensity without breath ; who is all point as sharp as a, needle, and aa hard ; whose intense piety suffices to float his ignorance and make him dangerous. Dr Brooks has a singular combination of breadth and intensity, lie holds with all his soul the great facts of Christianity — holds them with the force and fervour of the narrowest Evangelical ; but he gives them forth from the alembic of a mind of the richest cultureand a nature all open to every influence of both worlds. The word "breadth,'* as applied to a preacher, has a nasty taste in many mouths ; but, as applied to Dr. Brooks,, it has the best of meanings. Ho himself has dofined it; *'I do not mean liberality of thought, nor tolerance of opinion, nor anything of that kind : I moan largeness of movement— the great utterance of great truths ; the great enforcement nf great duties, as distinct from the minute and subtle and ingenious treatment of little topics, side issues of the soul's life, bits of anatomy, the bric-a-brac- of theology." Dr Brooks is true to his own definition. This is tho sort of preaching the age wants. It will listen to it. Dr Brooks is a witness. Ho has won the allegiance of all shades of i*eligious opinion. There is a humanity and divinity, a breadth and inspiration, in all he says and is, that make him a preacher iistened to by every class. The friend of Dean Stanley, he recognises that the kingdom of Christ is wider than any particular church, than indeed all ch'urehes ; that while it uses each as instruments, far its propagation it is not specially confined to any single one. Hence ho moved at a recent Episcopal Convention in Chicago that ifc should give its fraternal greetings to a similar Congregational Con- , vention that was sitting at the same time. A scion of the stock of Emerson, thov© is a great deal of the lucidity and sweet reasonableness that characterised tbo Concord philosoper about him. Boston is proud of its great dead, and among its living none is nearer its heart, and none is exercising a more beneficent influence upon ib than the rector of Trinity (Jhurch. Itia a farory from Brooks to Beecher, And y } ot bobh may be recognised as springing from a common root. Each represent a. strain of blood which, mixed in due pro--portiq'ns, produce the best American 1 character. Brooks is tho lineal descendant of the old Puritan stock. He has its reverence, its respect for tradition, and something of the English spirit which looks for change i not to revolution, but evolution, " broadening slowly down, from precedent." Beecher, • on the other hand, it a child of his age, and distinctively of the American age. He

possesses its courage,, its restlessness, its .qariog, its irreverence. Ho loved liberty. He could live within nQ. organisation.. He sought the laws of his- being, not without but within.— not in a> written -code or creed, but in the; inspirations of the souLitself. Brooks belongs more to the Motherland — England — and carries with him something of the gravity of the Puritan ; a gravity, be it said,, however, not sombre nor ponderous, " but like the hinges of the wonderful gates of the ancient labyrinth — so strong that no- battery could break them, but so delicately hung that a child s touch could make them swing back and let him in." Beecher is racy of the soil : clever, courageous, impatieniof resti'iction, lovingliberty and fighting, for it. In thought and life he is the best type of that part of the American nation wo associate with tho name of Yankee. I did not hear Beecher in Brooklyn—he had gone England — but I heard him in Brighton. The forces of life wero failing, but one could easily gue&s what these once had been. Tho human heart was but a pipe upon which he could play almost any tune lie wished. His audience tho day I heard him alternately laughed and wept. Hi.s humour was irrebistible. Beechor, perhaps, more than most has the credit of sending his iisb through that sham solemnity which lias for bo long done duty for h.anctity and reverence. But he is aLo the creator of that other &ham which is even worse— tho clerical joker, who leaves defilement on everything he touches. Amerioa is cursed with these, from the vulgarity of Talmage down to tho buffoonery of her coar&e&t levivalist. But Beecher's humour is a part of his religion. It grows out of him as natuially aud as usefully as the wings out of a bird. He was describing the reception which men sometimes give to the answers of their own prayers. A rich man says he prays lo be made good and holy, and (Jod takes him in hand. And what is tho firi,L thing he does ? He iinds it necessary to take from him all his money ; and the man starts and rubs hi& hands, and &ays: "Oh, Lord, I can't stand that!" The look and action with which Beecher described such a man set everybody laughing. A moment after ho w ould lay the spell of pathos upon them. He was dcsI scribing death, and the way in which people prepare for it — with fear, with gloom — putting away all glad sights and rounds ; and then he would burst out into a strain of eloquence. Look at Nature Is that the way &he goes to death ? Sec these autumn days. What &unsets ! What colourings in the heavens ! What gorgeous dress in I forest and field ! What tints on leaf and flower ! What changes of lights, what beauty in the 'dying wood ! " How autumn goes gloriously marching to its grave." I It is sad now to think that before another autumn had gone gloriously to its grave, the speaker himself was there. By Beeeher's death America had lost her greatest orator, and this ago one of its most characteristic children. There is a wide contrast between Henry Waid Beecher and Canon Sott-Holland. In St. Paul's. London. Beecher and Brooks are men of tho people. They are neither High Church nor Low Church, nor Broadi Church, but a fusion of the three. Canon. Scott-Holland is a different stamp of man. Tho thin, close-shaven face bares an ascetic look, and one knows at once that he is listening to a representative of that school of thought in tho English Church which numbers among, its ranks some of the saintliest and' ablest men of this century. Next to Canon Liddon and Dean Church, there it> no more popular preacher in St. Paul's than Canon Scott-Holland. Ho has published two volumes of sermons, and that is all that, as a writer, he is as yet known by. But these sermons are among tho ablest that have appeared this generation. His first volumo is- entitled "Logic and Life." No word& could better describe tho author and the preacher. Like Canon Liddon's, his sermons march clad in the armour of reason. But they are not stiff and imweildy. They are instinct with life ; they are full of movement and energy ; they throb with passion ; they glow with light. I heard tho preacher twice in St. Paul's — each time with pleasure akin to dolight. No one who is in London should miss the opportunity, if it comes to him, to hear. Canoir Sco&t-Holland. I was sorry to miss Canon Liddon, who is admittedly the prince of living preachers ; but it was some compensation to hear Canon Scott-Holland, who, with the exception of Dr. Brooks, is the most impressive preacher I have ever heard. Of course e^ erybody and his wife goes to hear Spurgeon, And I wont with them, But I would not go again. Mr Spurgeon is a maivellous man ; marvellous in what he does, and still more marvellous wherein his great strength lieth. Certainly to one hearing him only once, as I did, it remains a mystery to me. There wa& nothing above the most commonplace in his utteiance, bub the vast crowd that filled, the Tabernacle evidently thought otherwise. it is a long stride up — or down — from Sir Spurgeon toStopford SSrooke. Who ministers still i ; i Bedford Chapel, Bloomsbury Square. Air Brookes history is well known. He still retains as much of tho Prayer Book an<.c its forms as ho can. He sings the Hymi;& with the necessary alteration that willu'ovetail them in«o his Unitarian creed. 'Che church is not handsome, and there is of room. It will hold a thousand, r.»»fl about half thatnumb&r are present. Mi> Brooke has a bandsoine face, and there fe a devout tone about his service. Still, Lam conscious that it is- more of a lecture-Hall than a chvzioh. The preacher dellftsi's an essay rather than a message. Uft&&rianism may havO' a philosophy but ijoij a Gospel for tile world. A very diffor.en,& stamp of maa and message meets us, ift the tho ancient and historical chapel gsSlk. Margaret's, Weetiuia&feor. Archdeacon Farrar. Is prcOboibl'y the most outspoken preacher of promfoißiao© in the English. Church. The day I heard him he was thundering anafc&enaas against Ritnalism, or at least agsj&sb those systems of? religion that interpope' barriers between the individual soul ataid its God. Dr. IFavrar impresses you with his earnestness* He sometimes, per* [haps, is "intoxicated with his ows : verbosity," but he- speaks out with a directness and a farce that are rara in Anglican pulpits. He has an extraordinary command over the resources of knowledge, driving home his points by illustrations drawn from the four winds of Heaven. He has an amazi&g capacity for wovk, and how he contrives to find time to do his parochial duty and write the books and reviews that he does, ia a mystery to most people. In the City Temple ministers a remarkable personage. Dr. Parker Has been much before the public recently — First, in connection with the inhibition of "Rev. H. R. Haweis, and then later in connection with Henry Ward Beecher. Just now he is over in America, and it is not unlikely that he may be asked to fill Boeeher's pulpit permanently. There is no question about Parker's ability. He is a genius, and when you get him possessed he is unsurpassable. But he is not always possessed, and on these occasions he is dull and heavy enough. It was unfortunate I did not hear him at his best ; and, not hearing him at his best, he pains you with his

i mannerisms. When he is- inspired you do moti not think of these ; but when hVis-nob you can think of nothing else. He conducts aThursday service for City business men, ancl ;ifc, was on this occasion that I heard him. ,1 should* nob care to hear, him again unless i he were different. . I. oould bhinfe of- nothing: ibut his eccentricites. He is an actor ia •more senses than one. Sowas*Beeeher,,hi» beloved friend, Bub Beecher's dramatic i power was only a means to an end ; with Parker it is often an end in itself. When ,Beocher preached, the man was lost in his message ; when Parker preaches, the message is often lost in the man. Still, he is an. undoubted power, and no- man knowsthe art of advertising better than the .minister of the City Temple. In the same rank with Dr Parker in the* denomination to which they both belong stands Dr. Dale, Of Birmingham, who is now on a visit to Australia I had the pleasure of hearing him when in the manufacturing metropolis last year. Dr. Dale is a man who has left his maik upon his city and time. He is one of the ablest oi the preachers that I heard ; he lacks, however, the popular gifts of Beecher or Brooks, but is no whit behind them in intellectual insight and moral force. But as you will probably be hearing plenty about him I need not further particularise. There lives ia. Birmingham, also, one of the most remarkable men in the religious history of this century — Cardinal Nowmaiu I was in hopes that I might see or hear him. 1 learned that sometimes he conducts, service in the Chapel attached to the Oratory. Thither on a Satin day evening I made my way. I wished to find out whether Father Newman would preach on Sunday ; but I was not to be gratified — he was not. I was struck with the simplicity, bordering on plainness, which sunounds the Oratory. The chapol is in no sense ornate. I went in to vespers, and, comparing the place with others that I have siuco seen on. the Continent and elsewhere, it is not- only plain, but, I.had almost said, mean. Perhaps it is best so. At any rate it accords. best, but I understand, with the Cardinal's own desire. Though old (over eighty), he is an early riser. He is up at five o'clock. Drcs&ing ancl devotion fill up the time till seven, then breakfast, and ailerwards correspondence and study, and the book on winch heis now filling up the twilight of life, occupy him till half -past one,, when he dines. He rarely coes out,audonly changes from his rooms to the schoolhouse while the former are being cleaned. The Oratory pupils do not see much of him. He lives as a father in his family, surrounded by the other priests, and preserving in his household a rare standard of "plain living, and. high, thinking, ' So passes towards night tha life of John Henry Newman ; and as 1 go out from vespers, with the evening shadows deepening into darkness in the silent, cloisters around, I think of " Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom" — that immortal hymn, which will keep green the memory oi. "Newman long, after his. fame as a theologian and ecclesiastic shall have passed into oblivion. Charles Voysey, BA., Mill let, us down from theao high alti.tu.des> to common eai th again. Voy&ey ministers in Swallow Lane, Piccadilly. X was told he was one of the "shows" of London, preachers. So he L?, but in a dillerent sense horn that 1 had expected. He used, to be a minister of the Chinch of England, bub has now, advanced— or declined — into pure Theism, and he calls his Church the ''Theism Chur,ch." It is a poor placa altogether, and as for Mr Voy^ey — well, I must be charitable and will not say much. A college professor was once preaching to a country, congregation. lie was a dull, dry .sort ot man, something like the one of whom Sydney Smith said if you were to boie holes in Mia with a gimlet sawdust) would como out. When the servica was over an old elder lcmarkcd to hie neighbour : " Wejei,. it'll be lang afore thai man maks the do'il swab anyhow." So of Mr Voysey. The service is an emasculated copy of the Church of England, and his sermon was chiefly devoted to pointing out the errors in. Christ's sermon on fch& Mount, and giving an amended version of it a la Voysey. It wastaitogether a dreary business, and I wondered that even the score of people or so who were there came to hear such sfcuJl". Pea-haps a goodly number were like myself — " innocents abroad." When I came out,, a sneli sorb of wind was wandering about,, and Burns's lines,, as far aspreacher and people were, concerned^ exactly expressed my icelings.L — As cnuld a wind as over blew, A uaulder kirk, ancl inU but tew ; A.S cau.d a minister's o'er. spak. \ o'&e a.' be liet ere 1 come back. Is the pulpit failing ? Are men losing irnteresfc in'ils central themes? I saw no sierns of. it. In nearly every church I found crowds tof men and women. The exceptions ase. noteworthy. Where the preacher abdicates his true functions, becomes a philosopher, and instead of announcing amessage delivers an essay, there it is losing its hold upon. tha heart and conscieaco. But where the preacher remains bi'u.e to his original Sanction, preaches the living Jesus and neb doctriues or creeds about him, there still* as of old, crowds will come- to hear. "Ib may be good bo be a llessbeß, who describes the sun ; ib is better to bo a Prometheus, who brings the suns five to the eartji. Tho "speaking man,," as Carlyle call&him, who is a Promoblicutf. rather than a Ifesshell, for him " wibh aJLJ. our writing anjcl printing functions the^Q is a perennial £]&ao."

On Saturday, the 19th November, tho> great attraction in Foley/s. Athletic H^U was tlxo, GUv.oeo-R.oman wrestling match fortho clawnpioiu^hip, bt&ween Connor and Cannon* The prize \ya.s. a cup valued at £IQQ,, presented by Mr L. Foley, and £100 innvmey. The contest was tho best ever witnessed in Sydney* and resulted in a win for Connor, by two, out of three falls. Canwon was by far the heavier man, but did nob display the activity shown by Connor, who gained the first fall in 17min. Tha second fall wont to Cannon, who got tha strangling hold on, in getting away fron\ which Connor considerably distressed himself. In the third bout some wonderfully good play was shown. This ended in favour ot Connor, who thus gained tho matoh. Mr Henry Naidle, the Secretary of the Oxford Military College, at Cowley, writes an interesting letter in the "Pali Mall Gazotte " on tho value of systematic physical training during a course of mental study, and proves the assertion by the fact that twenty -nine candidates out " of thirty-twa from his college were successful in theii* final examination. I extract tho following from his letter :— " For the last eleven years I have" watched very carofully tho results of a systematic physical training as carried on at this college. I have known a large number of boys in delicate health, pronounced by competent authorities as physically unfit for the army, develop a. fine physique, become expert horsemen, and excel at all games." 1 think this forma another nail, and a stout o.ne too, in th§ coffin of the doubters^