THE SERMON-TUB.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 126, 30 May 1871, Page 2

THE SERMON-TUB.

{From the Saturday Review, March 18 ) Every one has laughed over the story of the compliment which Sheridan paid in bis famous '• Begum " speech to " the luminous Gibbon." The historian %vas naturally flattered, and was profuse in his acknowledgments, till the wit explained that what he really had said was " the voluminous." We do not suppose that the parson is very anxious to be coupled with the sceptical historian of the Roman Empire, but there can be little doubt of his right. to one at least of Sh"eridau's epithets. He may or may not be luminous, but he is the most voluminous writer the world has ever seen. Mr. Sala with his thousands of articles (we forget tHe exact figure) " contributed to the Daily Telegraph", is; perhaps the only author that eclipses him. The most moderate of Eoglish preachers, preaches twice on a Sunday, and each, time his sermon lasts a good half-hour. la other words, he

composes every week a pamphlet of fifteen pages of prinf, a»d publishes every year an octavo volume of between seven aud eight hundred pages. To iho outsider there is something inexplicable in this nmaz'iDg fertility. It is difficult lo believe that the ordinary parson of our acquaintance, goodhumored and gentlemanly as he is, is a For remainder of news see fourth page.

specially intellectual being. Grant him what amount of zeal and earnestness one will, it is hard, even for zeal and earnestness to turn out an octavo volume a-year with the regularity of clockwork. And the wonder is increased by the fact that the parson appears to like this enormous toil. He may shirk the service but he never shirks the Bermon. If he engages a curate it is only to relieve him in the labor of " the desk," while he reserves the preaching -specially for' himself. He rarely asks aid from a friend; he looks with a certain jealously even on " the deputation" who expound the cause of the distressed negro or the uobaptized washerwoman. Sometimes he is heroic enough to decline any" substitute 'whatever. "I keep my pulpit as chaste as my wife" was the peremptory reply of an Evangelical vicnr to an offer of clerical assistance. We can't wonder that to the " regular attendant "the weekly sermon seems a weekly miracle. Nothing but a theory of inspiration can account for the conversion of the dull, ponderous incumbent of ordinary life into this perennial fountain of ,fluent theology. But, like other miracles, the marvel loses something of the marvellous when we look a little closer into it. A glance at the parson's not very extensive library reveals volume after volume — " helps," " skeletons,'^ " hints," " appropriate texts" — which conl stitute a perfect machinery for the coml position of a sermon. The Evangelical indeed, has hardly selected his text before he finds his sermon composed for him. Very often " Simeon " gives him the perfect analysis of an orthodox discourse. In any case and with any text there are certain divisions to be filled up, certain doctrines to be deduced, and certain moral axioms to be applied. If the young preacher doubts I^r a moment whether the same sets of VoSi\ c»n -in every instance be legitimatel^NJraqra Mrom the most various texts, or if \e omits v one of the orthodox formulas, he original and ceases to become Evangelical. The High Churchman revels in Pearson on tjie Greed, as the Evangelical revels in «_.. Simeon. Both have their scheme of a sermon, and both have the Concordance to fill up the outline of their scheme. A text has some six or seven catchwords, and by a judicious use of the Concordance you may get some twenty or thirty other passages to illustrate each. Commonplaces, repetitions, affectionate appeals supply an easy padding. Then, too, there are stock bits of judicious learning that never come amiss. It is found by experience that a congregation never wearies of hearing what leprosy is, or what was the precise difference between the Pharisee and Sadducee. The "religious periodical " supplies a fund of. pathetic stories, and every district-visitor likes a story the better for having read it before in her tract. " Only curates try copying "is a scornful remark very common in clerical circles, but Canon Melville became at last convinced by the evidence of his'own ears that he was in fact " a noun of multitude,/ and Mr. Robertson of Brighton wquj6 probably lay claim, were he living, to nine-tenths of the Broad Church discourses on the Epistles to the Corinthians. Nobody, again, buys readymade sermons, though for some inscrutable reason a host of people persist in selling them. But with all this the mystery is only partially explained, There are plenty of parsons whom we know to be innocent of " the purchase system," and at least unconscious of copying. There are plenty of sermons, too, which if not exactly works of high genius or interest, are something 1 more than mere centos of texts. Where do they come from, and how do we get them as regularly on the Sunday aa we get our Times on the Saturday or Monday? The parson does not certainly spend the week in his study. He is not much of a reading man, and he is still less of a writing man. What is the secret of this perpetual supply of appropriate discourses for Sunday after Sunday? The secret lies simply in the sermontub. The sermon-tub is neither more nor less than the hoard where the parson stores the sermons of the past. Even in the heady days of his diaconate, when to write a sermon was a delight and to preach it was Elysium, he .prepared for the boredom and exhaustion of days to come. Each sermon is no sooner preached than, it is docketed with the date and place of its delivery, and stored, face downwards, in the sermo -tub. Few things give the parson so i tuch pleasure as the sjght of the. growing ', cap. As his ideas flow more slowly and 1 is pen loiters, over tne pages of the discc arse, his eye watches with a silent sat sfaction the steady rise of his accumuhtjens. NA part of his wordly, goods js^a 'precious to him. If the vicaragelafces re, the vicar rushes^ fitful his jiurdy withj ;he precious tub in his arms, lo< in on with equanimity while the flam'ef work their will on all beside^ " Evei thing else is ißSuso,4» f -ij^ftiiamftriis -quiet y, " but one

can't' v.insure Perhaps the greatest difficulty he has to solve lies in guessing the memory of his congregation. Some " earnest hearers " are very slow in forgetting, while there are country flocks on whom an old sermon may safely be tried again after a twelvemonth s interval. But it must be remembered that, eyexi j> among those who detect the repetition, there are a good many who are far from disliking it. To them the reappearance of an old sermon is like the meeting of an old friend. "Yes, Sir, I allus liked that sermon," replied the rural churchwarden to the vicar who asked his opinion in vestry. The vigar winced, but the reply" was in perfectly good faith. The revival of the sermon probably recalled a thousand^ little incidents of the past — the passage that must have annoyed Farmer Brown, the nod of the squire at the bit about poaching, the pleasant slumber \in\ the afternoon's sunshine which robbed the hearer of all knowledge of its close. '" Now that the old squire has given up preserving, and Farmer Brown's misdeeds lie asleep with him ia the churchyard, the sermon comes back,<not as a mere sermon, but as a little meifltory and vignette of the past. It is cj^Pus to remark how the sermontub has Been adopted v by vulgar opinion as one of the orthodox usages of the Church. An old sermon is sometimes a matter of joke, but it rarely excites any \ serious protest. To many it seems a part of ecclesiastical order. "What is a Visitation ? " a farmer once asked of a fellow-farmer. " It's a meeting once every three years," his companion replied, " Where parsons swops sermons." " Then oiir parson gets the worst of the bargain," was the emphatic comment, " for he alliis brings home a lot of 'em." It is possible that such a theory of Visitations is confined to the. ; r,ural districts, but the tolerance of the sermon-tub is universal, " I think, Sir, your tub muit be, a leetle out of order," was the discreet protest of a tcvn parish clerk when his vicar preached the same discourse two Sundays running. The poor man had, in fact, fopgotlen the proper re-arrangement andNipckeß^n^, and confounded the "tub of issue" with the " tub o.f , deposit." Sometimes, however, an unluckr parson falls iv with a retentive and critical audience. District-visitors make notesVof the text and, "constant hearers-41^ write out abstracts of the sermons for themselves in the leisure of the week. A bold man may meet even dangers such aa these ; may ring the changes on equivalent texts ; or even, as we have known doDe by an enterprising incumbent, sew up the alternate pages of his discourse,^ and sink, amidst the gratulations of his congregation, from the preacher of an hour to the preacher of thirty minutes. But for any but a bold man the only refuge lies in flight. Promotion, or a dexterous exchange, makes every old sermon new again. It is not easy to imagine the satisfaction of the middle-aged fugitivfr-aa he sets down his sermon-tub in the new Goshen, and sees himself provided with fresh and original compositions for life. The preacher himself receives a new fillip and impulse from the consciousness that, to this congregation at any rate, his sermon has tho merit of novelty. It is quite as often approaching exhaustion of his preaching stores which fires a man to seek promotion as any meaner ambition. The vision of the bottom of the sermontub has before now driven a quiet vicar to the shelter of a deanery, and landed him before death in a bishopric.