MR. SPURGEON ON THIS WORLD.
MR. SPURGEON has written two books which are not intended principally for saving souls, but for teaching a homely philosophy of life. One of them is called "John Ploughman's Talk, or Plain Advice for Plain People ;" the other, John Ploughman's Pictures, or More of his Plain Talk for Plain People." Both books are full of shrewd sayings of the "Poor Richard" type, bat the defect of these little books is the same as the defect of Benjamin Franklin's advice,—that the world is not quite so simple, and life not quite so easy to map out so as to suit certain good counsels, as it seems to be to Mr. Spurgeon. For example, John Ploughman begins with one of the most approved subjects for writers of this class, the subject of idleness ; and we have all the pithy sayings that we might count upon from Mr. Spurgeon, who is very in- dignant indeed against the maxim, "Better do nothing than do mischief," and replies to it, "If the evil of doing nothing seems to be less to-day, you will find it out to be greater to-morrow; the Devil is putting coals on the fire, and so the fire does not blaze, but depend upon it, it will be a bigger fire in the end." However, before he gets far on his way, he comes upon one of the difficulties of the subject, and shows clearly enough that he hardly knows what to make of it He is inveighing against lazy parsons, and says, "Many a par- son buys or hires a sermon, so that he may save himself the- trouble of thinking. Is not that abominable laziness ? They sneer at the Ranters, but there is not a Ranter in the kingdom but what would be ashamed to stand up and read somebody else's sermon as if it were his own." But surely Mr. Spurgeon does not really think that it is diligence which makes the Ranter so fond of ranting his own rant, or laziness which makes some men of fastidious mind prefer to read the sermon of a man of real power, to delivering their own common-place thoughts. The great difficulty of the precepts against idleness, at least as regards that part of the world which tands above the social position of the ploughman and the artisan, is that they are often so very uncertain whether what they can best do is worth doing at all ; and when this is the case, to tell them that idleness is worse than mis- chief, is almost equivalent to assuring them that they had better set hard to work at laying trains of gunpowder to blow up other people, than hold their hands till they are quite clear that they will blast only rocks which are in everybody's way. While the chief alternative lies between planting and ploughing and reaping, or idling, there can be no question as to the duty of industry ; but so soon as the alternative begins to lie between doing something of the value or pernicious- ness of which you are entirely doubtful, and doing nothing, the doctrine that doing nothing is allowing the Devil to pile coals on to the smouldering fires within you becomes very dangerous doctrine indeed. Has not many and many a ranter done infinitely more harm by his misleading rant, than the clergyman with whom he is compared did by read- ing a borrowed sermon, or by omitting to read a sermon altogether? Industry is not so simple a virtue as Mr. Spurgeon, supposes. Is it really a good thing to be very industrious indeed in getting men to aid a mischievous enterprise, or persuading men to believe a false and enervating, or a false and intoxicating creed ? Misdirected energy may often be better than idleness, but it may also often be worse, both for the person who first lights the flame, and for those who catch its heat. Mr. Spur- geon is not quite unconscious of the difficulty. "Many of our squires," he says, "have nothing to do but to part their hair in the middle ; and many of the London grandees, ladies and gentlemen both alike, as I am told, have no better work than killing time. Now, they say that the higher a monkey climbs, the more his tail is seen ; and so the greater these people are, the more their idleness is noticed, and the more they ought to be ashamed of it." But here his heart fails him a little, and he goes on, "I don't say they ought to plough, but I do say they ought to do something for the State, besides being like the caterpillars in the cabbages, eating up the good things ; or like the butterflies, showing themselves off, but making no honey. I cannot be angry with these people,. somehow, for I pity them, wIten I think of the stupid rules of fashion which they are forced to mina, and the vanity in whicd& they weary out their days." John Ploughman was, however, very angry with the idle loons who knew exactly what they might work at, and who preferred idleness to work ; so that it is evident that as soon as he realises the risk of choosing work which had better not be done at all, he does hesitate in preferring ill-judged or hap-hazard work to the fastidiousness which, in trying to discriminate good work from bad, loses its own energy and self-con fidence, and falls into a state of paralysis. We are not denying that some sound and healthy work ought to be easily found by every man ; but we do deny very strongly that industry is half as simple a virtue for those who have before them all sorts of complex issues, in- volving much that is bad, and perhaps only something that is good, as it is for those who have to choose between running a straight and running a crooked furrow, or between sow-
ing good seed skilfully and drinking bad beer to their own destruction.
There is the same too great simplicity about almost all Mr. Spurgeon's practical wisdom,—which is very genuine wisdom for a homely and simple world, where the phases of life are few, but hardly applicable at all to a complicated world of all sorts of shades of truth and falsehood, where the chief difficulty is to find the particular types of which he speaks. Take, for in- stance, John Ploughman's remarks on "men with two faces." First, you are told of the men who believe in the winning horse, and who, like rats, desert the sinking ship. They have two
faces only to those who from being prosperous become unfor- tunate; and their double face is really the same face in both
cases,—love of gain. Then we are told apparently of another kind of double-mindedness, the double-mindedness of men who are "so good-natured that they must needs agree with everybody ;" but it soon turns out that John Ploughman does not really believe in these as a separate class at all, but holds that they are only the former time-servers over again :—" If they were at Rome, they would kiss the Pope's toe; but when they are at home, they make themselves hoarse with shouting, No Popery.' They admire the Vicar of Bray, whose principle was to be the Vicar of Bray, whether the Church was ]rotestant or Popish. They are mere time-servers, in hopes that the times may serve them. They belong to the party which wears the yellow colours, not in their button- holes, but in the palms of their hands. Butter them, and like turnips, you may eat them." Clearly, John Ploughman has no genuine belief in human chameleons who change colour with their company, whether it be their interest to do so or not ; he cannot imagine that any one who changes his mind with his companions can have any motive but self-interest in so changing it. Yet we suspect that the sincere double-face he was apparently proposing to paint, is much commoner than the insincere double-face he paints two or three times over, under the impression that he is painting two or three different species. Mr. Spurgeon has no real belief in the double-facedness of intellectual infirmity, or of too great sensibility, and yet each of these types is at least as common as the double-facedness of gain, of hypocrisy, and of conven- tionality.
Take, again, Mr. Spurgeon's advice, excellent up to a certain point, as to the best mode to thrive, and we shall find that where it falls short is just where, in most cases, the difficulty begins :—
"It is bad-beginnin,„■-• business without capital. It is hard market- ing with empty pockets. We want a nest egg, for hens will lay where there are eggs already. It is true you must bake with the flour you have, but if the sack is empty, it might be quite as well not to Bet up for a baker. Making bricks without straw is easy enough, compared with making money when you have none to start with. Yon, young gentleman stay as a journeyman a little longer, till you have saved a few pounds ; fly when your wings have got feathers ; but if you try it too soon, you will be like the young rook that broke its neck through trying to fly before it was fledged. Every minnow wants to be a whale, but it is prudent to be a little fish while you have but little water ; when your pond becomes the sea, then swell as much as you like. Trading without capital is like building a house without bricks, making a fire without sticks, burning candles without wicks ; it leads men into tricks, and lands them in a fix."
Now, it is odd enough that Cobden's life illustrates this in a sense, bat shows that the main difficulty is not touched here, —the real question being how far you may rely on trained skill and knowledge to procure the help of other people's capital. Cobden tells us that he, with two other friends, none of them possessing more than 2200 each, persuaded a great manufacturing firm in Manchester (Fort Brothers) to trust them, "on no other security than our characters and knowledge of our business," to an extent which, within two years, reached 240,000. The real question, then, is not so much whether a thriving man should save before he tries his own fortune in business, but how mualt, he should save, and how much he may trust to the con- fidence others may repose in his skill, intelligence, and integrity; and this is just the point on which John Ploughman throws no light. The truth is that the world of John Ploughman's maxims is a much plainer world of much plainer men than the world most of us know. It deals very vigorously with simpler ques- tions than those which most of us have to answer.
The real value of these books is less the value of the advice given, than the literary skill, for literary skill in a certain homely sense it obviously is, of the mode in which it is given. For instance, when Mr. Spurgeon wants to say that when a man marries a shrew, he should bear his wife's tempers as patiently as possible, he says it thus :—" If a man catches a
tartar, or lets a tartar catch him, he must take his dose of tar- taric acid, and make as few ugly faces as he can. If a three- legged stool come flying through the air, he must be thankful for such a plain token of love from the woman of his choice, and the best thing he can do is to sit down on it, and wait for the next little article ;" and that is surely a very amusing way of saying it. And again, when he wants to advise you against rashness, he puts it thus :—" Some people -like rows—I don't envy their choice ; I'd rather walk ten miles to get out of a dispute, than half-a-mile to get into one. I have often been told to be bold, and take the bull by the horns, but as I rather think that the amusement is more pleasant than profitable, I shall leave it to those who are so cracked already, that an ugly poke with a horn would not damage their skulls. Solomon says, Leave off strife before it be meddled with,' which is much the same as if he had said, Leave off before you begin.' When you see a mad dog, don't argue with him, unless you are sure of your logic ; better get out of his way, and if anybody calls you a coward, you need not call him a fool,—everybody knows that." And that, again, could hardly be expressed in more vigorous English.
Take him as a whole, and the significance of these books of Mr. Spurgeon's is not their substance, but their style. He manages to imprint, in almost every page, the strong and homely imagination of a strong and homely good-sense,—net particularly exalted,— not particularly original,— not par- ticularly thoughtful,—but vivid of its kind, and that of a kind most suited to awaken common-place Englishmen, to appeal to their sense of humour, and to hold fast their attention.
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