MUSINGS and MEDITATIONS

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 21, 25 May 1907, Page 21

MUSINGS and MEDITATIONS

By

Dog Toby

THE Editor’s notes, last week, of a sermon by “ lan McLaren,” recalled to my mind a similar incident in my own boyhood, and

memories, never to be effaced, of our school chapel. The boys in the preparatory school were not supposed to go to the afternoon service, but a few of us obtained leave to go one Sunday when Dean Stanley was to preach. 1 was scarcely ten at the time, but both the preacher and the sermon are still fresh in my recollection, and I wrote out as much of the sermon as I could remember in an old school note book. 1 have it still, old and tattered and filled with

many strange scraps of schoolboy lore, but the childish mis-spelt notes vividly recall the whole scene to my mind. 1

ean remember the interest with which we looked on the while hair and keen intellectual face of the preacher, the unaccustomed sight of the Older of the

Garter worn over the surplice, the exquisitely modulated voice, now soft and pleading as lie spoke of the love of Christ for little InWren, and again clear and ringing as he described, as only lie could describe it, the fervour of devotion in the East. No preacher had a greater gift for seizing on local incidents, and making them a treat for his sermon. We had just had a great storm in which many buildings had suffered, and which had involved a great loss of life. In one of the local churches a pinnacle had gone crashing through the roof only a few minutes after the congregation had left. He used this incident to bring before us the nearness of death, even to the young, and he compared the listlessness of our responses with the fervid prayers of Eastern worshippers, whose omens echoed and reverberated with a sound like that made when some of the giant trees had gone crashing down in the recent gales. Those were the days of great preachers in the Church. Farrar was then at his best. It is the fashion, just now, to sneer at Farrar, just as it is the fashion to use the word “ poisonous.” “ Look at the poisonous way he brushes his hair” is an expression that is supposed to be the smartest of. smart talk. Both

fashions bespeak the vacant mind. “The man that laughs at Farrar,” said Dean Bradley, “is a fool.” Sir John Gcrst once told me that a great many excellent judges of oratory in the House of Commons regarded Farrar as one of the finest orators of the day. He had an excellent delivery, and though he generally read his sermons, it was not easy to detect the fact. It is doubtful if any preacher of the English Church has exercised a greater influence over the general mass of Londoners. Of a totally different type was Canon Ainger. lie possessed the rare gift of attracting men of intellect ad education. His style was always exquisitely pure and graceful; the spirit of his hero, Charles Lamb, seemed to have entered into his soul. When he came to Bristol the cathedral was almost empty. After he had been there a few months it was difficult for late comers to find a seat. He was at his best when preaching on Bible characters. He would begin with a striking sentence such as: “ The defect of (Saul’s character was not egotism but egoism,” or “ It is not the morality, but the morale of a nation that makes it great.” Ho was not an orator, but he was a thinker, and clothed his thoughts with

all the charm that comes from literary grace. If .linger appealed to men of culture, Archdecon Wilson appealed to men of thought. As befitted one who had been Senior Wrangler, his sermons were alwqys most closely reasoned; he was at his best when preaching before his old University. Page Roberts was always impressive by reason of his telling and pungent way of putting things. 1 remember that once, in preaching on the ninth commandment, he said the burglar was a far better person than the scandalmonger, “ because the one sius openly and boldly, the other crawls to his crimes with the slimy decorum of a snail.” Amongst purely extempore preachers, probably Knox Little, whom the “ Times ” ouee described as Know Little, ami Boyd Carpenter occupied the foremost place. They were both born orators, the first-named passionate and vehement, the latter pleading and persuasive. Nothing could exceed the perfect harm and grace of Boyd Carpenter’s delivery. Beginning in a low key so that the hearer had to strain a little to catch the opening sentences, he would gradually raise his voice as he warmed to his subject. Then just before the close there would be a pause, after which, in a low, but perfectly dear and silvery voice that could be distinctly heard in the farthest corner of the church, he would deliver his persuasive and impressive appeal to his hearers to lay to heart the message of the text. These are only a few notes jotted down at random from personal recollections. The pulpit has always exercised a great and perhaps unsuspected influence over the hearts and minds of the English nation, and it is to be hoped that the day is far distant when that influence shall be on the wane.