IN CHURCH AND ABOUT IT.* IF there is one kind
of book that baffles a reviewer, it is a collection of anecdotes strung together without any distinct unity or centre of interest. Such books are becoming too general. Sometimes they wear a thin mask of 'life and recollections.' At other times, they represent the genuine diary of a man who collected stories' for use in society, and who, dropping golden eggs as a talker, shared after his death the fate of the famous goose. Dr. Dorarr is perfectly honest in avoiding all such pretences. His book is simply made up of anecdotes, and though they all relate to one subject, the threads on which they are strung do not form integral parts of the texture. We are favourably impressed by one cha- racteristic of the Doctor's stories which, naturally enough, is rare in a book of this class. A very large proportion of them is new. Some, indeed, are only new in their setting, while others are not equal to the familiar ones whose place they occupy. But between the risk of being stale and that of being unappreciated, a story-teller sometimes chooses a less satisfactory mean. The want of some absolute authority for anecdotes is perhaps his greatest danger. Few can hope to get their stories first-hand. Most retailers are content to pick up anything that sounds well, and do not ask about either its truth or its consistency. There are stories which seem never to be told twice of the same persons. One reason of this is that it is judicious to link your story with sonic name that attracts attention. Dr. Doran gives some curious instances of the cycles in which certain anecdotes revolve. Thus, the joke made against Dr. Cumming, who prophesies the immediate end of the world, yet buys a lease of sixty or seventy years, dates from the early part of the last century, and was then applied to Whiston. After preaching that the Millennium was close at hand, Whiston offered some property for sale at thirty years' purchase. The man to whom the offer was made very properly resented it, exclaiming, "I'm surprised at you, Mr. Whiston. Thirty years' purchase? IVhy, Sir, you know better than any other man that long before a quarter of the term has expired all things will be in common." Remem- bering this story, and many others of a similar kind, Dr. Doran has an advantage over those who never go back more than ten or twenty years, and who, if they were to tell anything about Rowland Hill, would change the name to Spurgeon.
" Saints and Sinners ; or, in Church and About It. By Dr. Doran, F.B.A. 2 cola. London: Hurst and Blacken.
We do not say that Dr. Doran is free from errors. There are one or two grave ones in his book. After the number of floggings given by the Saturday Review for this very fault, it is strange to find him quoting Gregory of Nazianzen. The blunder of " sequor asino " mars an otherwise excellent story. The version given here of Bishop Blomfield's meeting with an intrusive gentleman is not equal in point or likelihood to the one in Mr. Denison's life of Bishop Lonsdale. But, perhaps, the strangest mistake made by Dr. Doran is found in his remark that David's cry for fuller knowledge took much the same form as Goethe's dying words, "Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, 0 Lord !" The only instance at all parallel to this is the ending of one of Sydney Smith's sermons, "And now, my brethren, let me conclgde in the words of the sweet singer of Israel, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word.'" We are afraid that such a mistake on the part of Dr. Doran shows him to have been more about church than in it.
When this has been said, we have discharged our critical duty. The book, as a book, has been reviewed. It only remains for us to give our readers an idea of the mass of anecdote that it con- tains, and to pick out some part of it for their amusement.
We cannot do better than take for our starting-point the story -of a child's first attendance at church. Being asked what he thought of the service, he observed, "Well, I think it was so long before the end came that I feel I can't remember what the begin- sung was." was." Any book of stories about the English Church would be sure to contaiu similar references to the length of the services. Of course Dr. Doran repeats the well known answer of Canning to the clergyman who, on being complimented for the shortness of his sermon, observed modestly, "I did not want to be long and tedious."—" Ah ! but," put in the statesman rapidly, "you were tedious." Yet this is capped by a saying attributed to Lord Nor- ananby, and far too good for such a parentage. "There were some things in your sermon to-day," he said to one of his chaplains, " which I never heard before." The clergyman was flattered, and was curious to know what they were. "Sir," said Lord Normanby, "during your sermon I beard the clock strike twice." An Amen- can remarked, with regard to sermons of more than a certain length, that if a preacher couldn't "strike ile " in twenty minutes it was a sign he was either boring with a wrong gimlet, or didn't know how to use it. There is nothing very new in Dr. Doran's book about that sleep which is the normal accompaniment of long :sermons, and has been since the days of Eutychus. But he tells as of some boys being alone in one of those "drawing-room pews" which are attached to some churches, and occupying sermon time by roasting chestnuts on the bars of the fireplace. "All seemed to be going on most promisingly, when the chestnuts gave token of their being ready by a quick succession of loud explosions." A better way of disposing of the young folks was that adopted by -a former Marquis of Bath. As soon as the prayers were over the -children withdrew from the family pew, which probably had a private entrance, into the adjacent gardens. There are many grown-up people who would gladly do the same. We have seen it done, and once, being in a remote gallery, we did it ourselves. But, as was stated the other day in these columns, our act might have exposed us to an admonition.
Some curious examples of texts are given by Dr. Doran. South ?preached before the Merchant Taylors' Company on the words "Not a remnant shall be saved." A preacher at Cambridge who was much annoyed by the undergraduate practice of " foot- .scrapiug," chose for his text, "Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God." Oxford lays claim to the text of a sermon preached before Pitt when he was a young Minister, and had at bis disposal some Church preferment for which there were count- less applicants. The text was, "There is a lad here, which hath tve barley loaves and two small fishes : but what are they among so many ?" The coincidence of names in the following anecdote gives it an apocryphal air :—
" The Irish Church has one pleasant story of a text that was success- lully applied to useful purpose. A poor clergyman, named Joseph, had rendered some valuable service to the head of the house of Butler, who promised, in return, to further the preferment of the preacher. Time passed, and performance did not follow upon promise. Weary of waiting, the country curate found his way to Dublin, and contrived to .obtain access to the pulpit of the church where the great lord attended .divine service. He chose for his text, 'Yet did not the chief Butler remember Joseph, but forget him.'" According to Dr. Doran, the text "Top-knot, comedown," ascribed to Rowland Hill when he was moved in spirit by his wife's head gear, has no foundation in fact. We observe that "It came to pass that the beggar died," so often said to have been chosen by Mr. Spurgeon for a funeral sermon over an obnoxious deacon, is
considered wholly mythical. Sorry as we should be to surrender it, we think Dr. Doran is probably right. Many of the dramatic gestures attributed to the same preacher are no doubt mere revivals. A French preacher mentioned by Dr. Doran may have been the original from whom some of them were taken. This was one Father Brydaine, who lived in the first half of the last century. "On one occasion his servant dragged him into church by a rope round his neck as an illustration of human reluctance to fulfil duty. At another, when preaching a long sermon on the judg- ment day, he suddenly disappeared ; but he might be heard bellow- ing at the bottom of his pulpit in the character of a lost sinner, tossed on the flames of a fire which burned for ever, but never consumed." Another device of much the same character as the use of ultra-theatrical gestures is the employment of slang in the pulpit. We are told of a fashionable looking young preacher— it must surely have been Charles Honyman—who, describing the argument of our Lord with the Doctors, said that our Lord shut them up. And Mr. Spurgeon talked of sending a sinner away with a flea in his ear. If it often seems odd that clergymen can- not use short and simple words, it must be still more strange that they cannot hit the medium between Johnson's Dictionary and the Slang Dictionary.
There are many curious church customs, some purely anti- quarian, some surviving to the present day, touched on by Dr. Doran. Among them is the habit still existing in some villages of a churchwardens' round during service to see that none of the congregation are at the alehouses. This is a part of that ecclesi- astical discipline of which we have more than one example. The Doctor tells of a clergyman who performed no service in his own church, but prosecuted those who went elsewhere ; and of another who was said to give his parishioners much more of the law than of the gospel. Tillotson when only a curate persuaded an old Cromwellian soldier who preached in his parish not to usurp a priest's office, adding, that he had much better betake himself to "some honest employment." In those days, as is well known, the status of the country parson was much lower than it is now. The white tie was not even worn. Paley said that the country parson might be picked out from among a hundred, by the token of his having a black silk handkerchief round his neck, and being more greasy than any other man in the parish except the butcher. An advertisement for a curate in 1756 referred all applicants to the Cambridge and Yarmouth carrier, who was to be spoken with on a certain day in the week and at a certain inn. Whether the car- rier was commissioned to inquire into the curate's doctrine is not stated. We can imagine his puzzled look, if he was accosted by some of the modern school, and informed that their views were according to the Prayer Book. Yet, after all, he could hardly be worse than the captain in the Navy who ordered the chaplain of his ship to read service, saying, "I think this sort of thing should be done sometimes, as long as Christianity is on foot." And the clergy of the old school to whom we have alluded were hardly worse than the pluralists, one of whom spoke to Bishop Burnet about holding two livings, saying that he would do the duty in one of them by deputy. "Ay, but," rejoined the Bishop, "you would be damned in your own person." A late Archbishop of York was not so strict. "An over-zealous clergyman once com- plained to him of a professional brother who ran his mare at country races, though not in the reverend owner's name. The charge, made with intense seriousness, was listened to in the same grave spirit, and the mischief-maker thought he had succeeded in his object. Runs his mare, does he ? ' said the prelate, solemnly. Well, look here, sir ! I don't mind backing her at half-a-crown against you, if you'll give me the odds.' The accuser withdrew in disgust."
With this we, too, may withdraw. Not from any lack of further materials for quotation, or from any weariness with the compiler of these volumes. But we will not guarantee our readers against any such feeling if they do not know how to skip, and if they take up the work as a grave and improving study. In the first case they would soon find they had too much of it, and in the second that there was nothing in it to their address. Our ex- tracts, however, have told what the book is, and we need not enter into any detailed criticism to show what it is not.
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