By A. A. LIVERMORE, D.D.

It is often said in these days that the power of the pulpit has declined from what it was in the time of our fathers. The press has stolen a march upon the preacher. The lyceum draws better than the meeting-house. The stump speaker has more hearers than the minister. The advocate for reform makes more stir than the Sunday-going parson. The newspaper has got to be the American Bible. The magazine has more readers than the Gospel of Mark, and the Epistle to the Romans.

But this croaking overlooks the fact that our civilization is wider and broader than it used to be fifty or one hundred years ago. It comprehends more interests, strikes the key to more subjects, sweeps into its ever-widening circumference a greater variety of pursuits and influences. The pulpit may be as important as ever and as potent, but relatively other factors have in these latter days come into play,—art, science, philosophy, reform, politics, sociology, and thus have seemingly encroached upon the once almost absolute domain of religious worship and instruction. But it is more in seeming than in reality. Because other powerful auxiliaries have come up alongside of the pulpit to challenge the attention of mankind, and assist in the great enterprise of the upbuilding of humanity, it by no means follows that the peculiar office which the pulpit and the preacher fulfill may not be more needful and more demanded than ever to save the souls of men, and bring the kingdom of God on earth.

It almost however goes without the saying that facts disprove the dismal theory that our civilization is running away from the public administration of religion. We have as mighty preachers in the field to-day on both sides of the water as ever lifted up their voices in Christendom. I need only mention Spurgeon, Beecher, Philips Brooks, Moody, Pere Hyacinth, Bishop Simpson, Prof. Swing, Robert Collyer. And they draw great audiences, produce great effects, convert sinners, edify saints, “hurl back the floods of tyrant wrong” and sin, and bring in the kingdom, as effectually as was ever done by the Chrysostums and Ambroses, the Robert Halls and John Wesleys of the past. God hath not left, and never will leave himself without witness. The eloquence of the spoken word is not yet dead or buried. We have placed at the head of our article one of these great and glorious names, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Baptist preacher in London. He was born in Helvedon, Essex, near London, June 9, 1834. He is now therefore in the forty-eighth year of his age, but how solidly he has packed those years with services to God and man! His origin was in the Congregational body of England. He is a self-taught man, and contrary to what was said of another distinguished self-taught man, that he had a very poor teacher, Mr. Spurgeon had a very good and wise teacher. He became a schoolmaster of others at sixteen, and at eighteen the pastor of a church at Waterbeach. He soon rose to such popularity that he was called to London, where ordinary churches could not contain the crowds that came to hear him. He occupied successively the Baptist Chapel in Southwark, Exeter Hall, Surry Music Hall, and now he preaches in a cathedral-like edifice, called the “Tabernacle,” built for him, where he has an audience of five or six thousand. But like Wesley he is not only a great preacher, but a great organizer and also an affluent writer. On an average he preaches a sermon every day. Ten or more volumes of his sermons have been published in England and reprinted in this country. He has edited the works of some of the old religious classics. He has published lectures to divinity students, tracts for the people, as “John Ploughman’s Pictures,” and “John Ploughman’s Talks with the People.” He is a Calvinist, but not a close communion Baptist. In popularity and wide influence among the masses he stands at the head of the English dissenting pulpit. He has thirty preaching stations in London. He carries on a divinity school, and has educated between three and four hundred young men for the ministry. The expenses of his school are $25,000 a year which he raises himself. He has, according to the testimony of his stewards, appropriated no part of the income of his church to himself for the last three years. He meets the wants of the great middle class of English society. His administration drives at the practical, direct, and pungent application of Christianity to the sins, crimes, and woes of the great capital of the world, and in that world of Great Britain he is a mighty power for good.

The secret of his influence is not far or hard to seek. In the first place, Mr. Spurgeon is built on a large scale in personality and natural endowment. He is John Bull in maximo, a stocky frame, big head, vigorous constitution, a good digester, a deep breather, a massive face, a strong round-about man every way. It is not native to his constitution to be sick, and if he is so it is because of the load, which, like Atlas, he bears on his broad shoulders, of care and duty and preaching, and divinity school, and writing and publishing, and travel, and the superintendence of his thousand and one enterprises to carry forward the cause. He knows how to work himself, and another secret equally important, he knows how to make others work.

Some years ago I heard him preach in his throne of power. It was a sight to behold and never to be forgotten. Thousands of people gathered to hear one man speak. His subject was from Corinthians: “We are ambassadors for Christ.” His tone was kindly, no overbearing, no intellectual pretense or insolence, such as we sometimes see in great men, while his appeal was persuasive and rational. There was a deep and tender tone of sympathy and good will, an evident desire to bring over to his own happy state of trust and love those far from God and Christ, wandering in darkness, in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity. A deep stream of piety and devotional ardor flowed through all the services. His language was plain Anglo-Saxon speech, few “dictionary” words, as they are called, and easy to be understood by the common people.

But next to his piety and zealous faith, should be given as instruments of his power, great affluence of illustration. He tips his sentences not unfrequently with a bit of poetic fire. He levies on the Bible imagery largely. He uses, as Jesus did, the common every day’s events and scenes about him to wing his arrows and point his spears. He has no subtleties, mysticisms, speculations, to clog the minds of his hearers. “Jesus and him crucified” is his paramount theme, as it was that of Paul. He is the John Bunyan of the nineteenth century, and long may he guide the “Pilgrims” in their “Progress to the eternal city.”

The same day we heard Spurgeon in the great Tabernacle we heard Dean Stanley in Westminster Abbey. Both had great audiences. Both gathered many strangers from beyond the sea to hear the most distinguished pulpit orators of Great Britain. Dean Stanley gave his eulogy on the Bishop of Winchester, who had been instantly killed by a fall from his horse. It was a memorable occasion, attended by what was most brilliant in rank, in culture, in power and wealth in England, the lords and ladies of the empire. The music transported you to the seventh heaven. The Dean spoke to the learned, refined and powerful, Spurgeon to the common people, “not heard of a mile from home.” The Dean had more learning, culture, taste, and swept a broader circle of thought; Spurgeon more power, bored deeper into the heart and conscience. Stanley was more a literary man and author; Spurgeon a minister and converter of souls. Stanley is a broad churchman, and aims at the progress of Christianity in the dialect of the nineteenth century; Spurgeon lays about him like Talus, with his tremendous flail, to warn people and drive them from the wrath to come, and to administer the average orthodox doctrines without note or comment, or nice speculations. Both are great men, each good for his sphere. Both refute the notion that the Christian pulpit of this age can not match that of any previous age in the power, influence and following of the noted preachers. There were giants of old, and there are giants now.