MR. SPURGEON and his Tabernacle are “down” in guide-books among the lions of the metropolis. But, in engaging a carriage to take us to the Tabernacle on Sabbath morning, we had to clarify the perceptions of our very decent coachman by informing him that it was hard by the “Elephant and Castle.” Nothing stimulates the wit of the average Briton like the mention of an inn or ale-house, unless it be the gleam of the shilling he is to spend therein.

In anticipation of a crowd, Caput had provided himself with tickets for our party of three. These are given to any respectable traveller who will apply to the agent of the “concern,” in Paternoster Row. To avoid the press of entrance we allowed ourselves an hour for reaching the church. The Corinthian portico was already packed with non-holders of tickets, although it lacked half an hour of the time for service. There were ushers at a gate at the left of the principal entrance, who motioned us to pass. The way lay by a locked box fastened to a post, labelled “For the Lay College,” or words to that effect. In consideration of the gratuity of the tickets, and the manifest convenience of the same, that stranger is indeed a churl, ungrateful, or obtuse to the laws of quid pro quo, who does not drop a coin into the slit, and feel, after the free-will offering, that he has a better right to his seat. A second set of ushers received us in the side vestibule and directed us to go upstairs. The gallery seats are the choice places, and we obeyed with alacrity. A third detachment met us at the top of the steps, looked at and retained our tickets, and stood us in line with fifty other expectants against the inner wall, until he could “h’arrange matters.” Our turn came in about five minutes, and we were agreeably surprised at being installed in the front row, with a clear view of stage and lower pews. In five minutes more an elderly lady in a black silk dress trimmed profusely with guipure lace, a purple velvet hat with a great deal of Chantilly about it, and a white feather atop of all, touched my shoulder from behind, showing me a face like a Magenta hollyhock, but sensible and kind.

“Might I inquire if you got your tickets from Mr. Merryweather?”

I looked at Caput.

“No, madam!” he replied promptly. “I procured them from ——,” giving the Paternoster Row address.

“Possible? But you are strangers?”

He bowed assent.

“And Americans?”

Another bow.

“Then all I ’ave to say is, that it is extror’nary! most extror’nary! I told Mr. Merryweather to give three tickets, with my compliments, to an American party I heard of—one gentleman and a couple of ladies—and I was in hopes they were providentially near my pew.”

She leaned forward, after a minute, to subjoin—“Of course, you are welcome, all the same!”

“That is one comfort!” whispered Prima, as the pew-owner settled back rustlingly into her corner. “In America we should consider her ‘very-very’ impertinent. Do circumstances and people alter cases?”

Ten minutes more and the galleries were packed by the skilled ushers, and the body of the lower floor was three-quarters full of pew-holders. We scanned them carefully and formed an opinion of the social and intellectual status of the Tabernacle congregation we saw no reason to reverse at our second and longer visit to London, two years afterward, when our opportunities of making a correct estimate of pastor and people were better than on this occasion. Caput summed it up.

“I dare affirm that eight out of ten of them misplace their h’s——”

“And say, ‘sir!’” interpolated Prima, gravely.

Yet they looked comfortable in spirit, and, as to body, were decidedly and tawdrily overdressed—the foible of those whose best clothes are too good for every-day wear, and who frequent few places where they can be so well displayed and seen as at church. Somebody assured me once, that white feathers were worn in Great Britain out of compliment to the Prince of Wales, whose three white plumes banded together are conspicuous in all public decorations. If this be true, the prospective monarch may felicitate himself upon the devotion of the Wives and Daughters of England. I have never seen one-half so many sported elsewhere, and they have all seasons for their own.

The last remaining space in our slip was taken up by a pair who arrived somewhat late. The wife was a pretty dumpling of a woman, resplendent in a bronze-colored silk dress, garnie with valenciennes, a seal-skin jacket, and a white hat trebly complimentary to H. R. H. She and her dapper husband squeezed past those already seated, obliging us to rise to escape trampled toes, wedged themselves into the far end of the pew, and a dialogue began in loud whispers.

“I say it’s a shame!”

“If you complain they may say we should a’ come h’earlier.”

“I don’t care! I will ’ave my say! Mr. Smith!” This aloud, beckoning an usher; “I say, Mr. Smith! You’ve put one too many h’in our pew. Its h’abominably crowded!”

The slip was very long. Besides the malcontents, there were five of us, who looked at each other, then at the embarrassed usher. The gentleman next the aisle arose.

“If you can provide me with another seat I will give the lady more room,” he said to the man of business.

With a word of smiling apology to his companion—a sweet-faced woman we supposed was his wife—he followed the guide, and, as the reward of gallantry stood against the wall back of us until the sermon was half done. We did not need to be told what was his nationality. The victorious heroine of the skirmish did not say or look—“I am sorry!” or “Thanks!” only, to her husband,—“Now I can breathe!”

She was civilly attentive to me, who chanced to sit nearest her, handing me a hymn-book and offering her fan as the house grew warm. She evidently had no thought that she had been rude or inhospitable to the stranger within the gates of her Tabernacle.

The great front doors were opened, and in less time than I can write of it the immense audience-chamber, capable of containing 6,500 persons, was filled to overflowing. The rush and buzz were a subdued tumult. Nobody made more noise than was needful in the work of obtaining seats in the most favorable positions left for the multitude who were not regular worshippers there, nor ticket-holders. But I should have considered one of Apollos’s sermons dearly-bought by such long waiting and the race that ended it. The ground-swell of excitement had not entirely subsided when the “ting! ting!” of a little bell was heard. A door opened at the back of the deep platform already edged with rows of privileged men and women, who had come in by this way, and Mr. Spurgeon walked to the front, where were his chair and table.

I have yet to see the person whose feeling at the first sight of the great Baptist preacher was not one of overwhelming disappointment. His legs are short and tremble under the heavy trunk. His forehead is low, with a bush of black hair above it, the brows beetle over small, twinkling eyes, the nose is thick, the mouth large, with a pendulous lower jaw. “Here is an animal!” you say to yourself. “Of the earth, earthy. Of the commonalty, common!”

He moved slowly and painfully, and while preaching, praying and reading, rested his gouty knee upon the seat of a chair and stood upon one leg. His hand, stumpy and ill-formed, although small, grasped the chair-back for further support. If I remember aright, there was no invocation or other preliminary service before he gave out a hymn. His voice is a clear monotone, marvellously sustained. The inflections are slight and few, but exceedingly effective. The ease of elocution that sent every syllable to the farthest corner of the vast building was inimitable and cannot be described.

“We will sing”—he began as naturally as in a prayer-meeting of twenty persons—“We will all sing, with the heart and with the voice, with the spirit, and with understanding, the ——th hymn:

The pronunciation of “mood” rhymed precisely with “good,” and he said “Lard,” instead of “Lord.” But the words had in them the ring of a silver trumpet.

The precentor stood directly in front of the preacher, facing the audience and just within the railing of the stage. The instant the reading of the hymn was over, he raised the tune, the congregation rising. The Niagara of song made me fairly dizzy for a minute. Everybody sang. After a few lines, it was impossible to refrain from singing. One was caught up and swept on by the cataract. He might not know the air. He might have neither ear nor voice for music. He was kept in time and tune by the strong current of sound. There was no organ or other musical instrument, nor was the voice of the precentor especially powerful. It was as if we were guided by one overmastering mind and spirit constraining the least emotional to be “conjubilant in song” with the thousands upon thousands of his fellows. Congregational psalmody, such as this, without previous rehearsal or training, is phenomenal.

A prayer followed, as remarkable in its way as the singing. Comprehensive, devout, simple, it was the pleading of man in the felt presence of his Maker;—the key-note—“Nevertheless, I will talk with Thee!” Next to Mr. Spurgeon’s earnestness his best gift is his command of good, nervous English,—fluency which is never verboseness. Knowing exactly what he means to say, he says it—fully and roundly—and lets it alone thereafter. He is neither scholarly, nor eloquent, in any other sense than in these. He read a chapter, giving an exposition of each verse in terse, familiar phrase. There was another hymn, and he announced his text:

“Rather rejoice because your names are written in Heaven!”

I should hardly name humility as a characteristic of prayer or sermon; yet, for one whose boldness of speech often approximates dogmatism, he is singularly free from self-assertion. His sermon was more like a lecture-room talk than a discourse prepared for, and delivered to a mixed multitude. His quotations from Holy Writ were abundant and apt, evincing a retentive memory and ready wit. One-third of the sermon was in the very words of Scripture. His habitual employment of Bible phrases has lent to his own composition a quaint savor. He makes lavish use of “thee” and “thou,” jumbling these inelegantly with “you” in the same sentence.

For example:—He described a man who had been useful and approved as a church-member: (always addressing his own people)—“The Master has allowed you to work for many days in His vineyard, and paid thee good wages, even given thee souls for thy hire.”

In what shape reverses came to the prosperous laborer we were not told, but that he did see others outstrip him in usefulness and honors:

“You are bidden by the Master to take a lower—maybe the lowest seat. Ah, then, my friend, thou hast the dumps!”

I heard him say in another sermon: “If my Lord were to offer a prize for a joyful Christian I am afraid there are not many of you who would dare try for it. And if you did, I fear me much you would not draw even a third prize.”

Occasionally he is coarse in trope and expression. I hesitate to record a sentence that shocked me to disgust as being not only in atrocious taste and an unfortunate figure of speech, but, to my apprehension, irreverent:

“If we are not filled, it is because we do not hang upon and suck at those blessed breasts of God’s promises as we might and should do.”

His illustrations are like his diction—homely. There was not a new grand thought, nor a beautiful passage, rhetorically considered, in any discourse we ever heard from him; not a trace of such fervid imagination as draws men, sometimes against their will, to hear Gospel truth in Talmage’s Tabernacle, or of Beecher’s magnificent genius. We have, in America, scores of men who are little known outside of their own town, or State, who preach the Word as simply and devoutly; who are, impartially considered, in speech more weighty, in learning incomparably superior to the renowned London Nonconformist. Yet we sat—between six and seven thousand of us—and listened to him for nearly an hour, without restlessness or straying attention. Yes! and went again and again, to discover, if possible, as the boys say of the juggler—“how he did it.”

In giving out the notices for the week, Mr. Spurgeon thanked the regular attendants of the church for having complied with the request he had made on the preceding Sabbath morning, and “stopped away at night,” thus leaving more room for strangers. “I hope still more of you will stop at home this evening,” he concluded in a tone of jolly fellowship the people appeared to comprehend and like. He was clearly thoroughly at one with his flock.

At night we also “stopped away,” but not at home. After much misdirection and searching, we found the alley—it was nothing better—leading to Dr. Cummings’s church in Crown Court, Long Acre. It was small, very small in our sight while the remembered roominess of the Tabernacle lingered with us,—plain as a Primitive Methodist Chapel in the country; badly lighted, and the high, straight pews were not half filled. The author of “Voices of the Dead” and “Lectures upon the Apocalypse” is a gray-haired man a little above medium height. His shoulders were bowed slightly—the bend of the student, not of infirmity; his features were clear-cut and spirituelle. He preached that night in faith and hope that were pathetic to us who had read his prophecies—or his interpretation of Divine prophecy—as long ago as 1850, and recalled the fact that the time set for the fulfilment of some of these had passed.

His text was Rev. i. 3: “Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things that are written therein—for THE TIME IS AT HAND!”

He believed it. One read it in every word and gesture; in the rapt look of the eyes so long strained with watching for the nearer promise—the dayspring—of His coming; in the calm assurance of mien and tone, the dignity of a seer, whom Heaven was joined with earth to authenticate. He spoke without visible notes; his only gesture a slight lifting of both hands, with a fluttering, outward movement. We listened vainly for some token in his spoken composition of the epigrammatic, often antithetical style, that gives nerve and point to his published writings. The interesting, albeit desultory talk was, he informed us, the first of a series of sermons upon the Apocalypse he designed to deliver in that place from Sabbath to Sabbath. He had been diligently engaged of late in recasting the horoscope of the world. That was not the way he put it. But he did say that he had reviewed the calculations upon which his published “Lectures” were based, and would make known the result of his labors in the projected series.

He preferred, it was said, the obscure corner in which he preached to any other location, and had refused the offer of a lady of rank to build him a better church, in a better neighborhood. I suppose he thought it would outlast him—and into the millennial age.

I read, but yesterday, in an English paper, that he had retired from pulpit duties, in confirmed ill-health, and that after his long life of toil he is very poor. Some of his wealthy friends propose to pension him. And we remember so well when his “Voices of the Night”—“The Day”—“The Dead” were read by more thousands and tens of thousands than now flock to hear Spurgeon; when the “Lectures upon the Apocalypse” were a bugle-call, turning the eyes of the Christian world to the so long rayless East. We recall, too, the title of another of his books, with the vision of the bent figure and eyes grown dim with waiting for the glory to be revealed,—and another text from his beloved Revelation:

“These are they that have come out of Great Tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”