THE LIFE OF MORLEY PUNSHON.* FOR upwards of thirty years,

Morley Punehon was one of the most popular preachers in England. Whether he preached in a Cornish village, or in London, his name brought together over- flowing audiences ; and when he lectured, and people were free to express their feelings, his oratory called forth demonstrations of approval such as are rarely to be witnessed now except at a great political meeting. It is a pity that his biography was not written earlier, for the fame of the orator soon passes away, unless associated with some great historical movement. Mr. Macdonald is a good writer, and a cool-headed critic. If he has not produced a biography of surpassing interest, the fault is not his, but is due to the circumstance that Mr. Panshon lived so much for the public and in public, that there is little private life to record. Mr. Punshon was born in 1824, at Doncaster. His parents were Methodists. He left school before he was fourteen years of age, and entered a counting-house. He was not particularly studious, bat he showed his bent by a taste for political speeches ; he also read English poetry, and made many verses. Having re- solved to become a Methodist minister, he entered the Theological Seminary at Richmond, bat remained there only three months.

Like many eminent Nonconformist ministers, he owed almost nothing to academic training. He never became a scholar; nor was he a deep or original thinker. He began his ministry in Marden, in the Maidstone circuit. He was moved to Whitehaven, and afterwards to Carlisle. Newcastle, Leeds, and other great cities were successively the scene of his labours and of his triumphs ; for his career was one of uninterrupted success and of growing fame. He came to London in 1858, and to London he became mach attached. Its variety and stir gratified his restless oratorical temperament. When he was obliged to leave it, he always did so with a sense of going into exile. In London, he delivered lectures on such subjects as "The Prophet of Horeb," " The Huguenots " and " Macaulay." Some of the old-fashioned Methodists looked askance at lectures as a dangerous innova- tion ; but the success of Mr. Panshon's lectures soon silenced all murmurs. When we read of the effect produced by his lectures, we are disposed to ask whether it is that lecturers have lost their power, or that London audiences have changed. He lectured on one occasion in Exeter Hall on Banyan,—an in- teresting, but not exactly an exciting subject. One who was present describes the scene :—

"He spoke with his usual captivating elocution, and with immense energy and force. Feeling among the audience grew ; enthusiasm was awakened, and gathered force as he went on. At last, at one of his magnificent climaxes, the vast concourse of people sprung tumultuously to their feet. Hata and handkerchiefs were waved ; sticks and umbrellas were used in frantic pounding of the floor ; hands, feet, and voices were united in swelling the acclamations. Some shouted Bravo ! ' some Hurrah ! ' some Hallelujah ! ' and others Glory be to God ! ' Such a tornado of applause as swept through Exeter Hall, and swelled from floor to ceiling, I have never witnessed before or since."

The oratory which produced those effects did not possess the highest kind of distinction. It was entirely wanting in the

revealing flashes which are never absent in the highest oratory. The charm lay in the treatment, in the style, and above all, in the delivery. The style was wanting in moderation and in self- restraint. It was florid and ornate, made up of flowing sentences and high-built paragraphs. It was, however, full of brightness and colour ; and the hearers were delighted to hear their own opinions expressed in what appeared to them, singularly stately and beautiful language. Mr. Panshon's oratory was full of quotations and references to literature and history ; and it pleased his auditors to see these rival powers, as they deemed them, pressed so deftly into the service of religions teaching. The references were all the more acceptable, that they were to a literature familiar to them ; and they did not leave an expression of blank amazement on their countenances, as the allusions of some speakers do. Mr.

Panshon's elocution was extraordinarily rapid ; but he enun- ciated with perfect distinctness, and the rapid, vigorous utter- ance was in reality an advantage, as it prevented the long sentences from becoming wearisome. Mr. Macdonald says that, although not otherwise musically gifted, Mr. Punshon possessed

an unerring feeling for the melody of words and the larger harmony of sentences. Not an intonation, was wanting that could give expression to his meaning, or add beauty to stately or tender language. He knew his audiences perfectly ; and skil- fully selected thoughts and illustrations which could be easily • The Life of William Morley Punshon, LL.D. By Frederic W. Macdonald, Professor of Theology, Handsworth College, Birmingham. London Hodder and Stoughton, 1887.

worked into the glowing climaxes in which he delighted. Many speakers have dwelt on the vastness of London ; but it would be difficult to find a passage in which it is represented with more ingenuity and effect than in the following extract from a sermon of Mr. Panshon's on " The Spiritual Wants of the Metropolis :"—

" How shall we get to understand it ? Weigh it with kingdoms. The Kings of Hanover, and Saxony, and Wiirtemberg do not, any one of them, reign over as many subjects as our Queen rules in this City of London. Try it by its own growth. We do not ask you to go back to the time when Druids drank at the Wallbrook, and when the Fleet was a rushing water, in which the Saxons were baptised, and on whose bosom floated navies of merchantmen. Come to later times. When John Wycliffe lived, a light shining in a dark place, there were not so many people in all England, by half-a-million, as will sleep to- night in London. If the houses which hold its population were put side by side, you would have one continuous street, with the tenants at one end listening to the chimes of York Minster, and the tenants at the other end slumbering under the shadow of the Pyrenees. Think of it by its periodical increase. If it were supposable that all who come into London in a year were to be drafted thither from one place, then, in a single year, Guernsey would be like Tyre in her ruin,

desolate, and without inhabitant ;' the lovely Isle of Wight would in two years be an Eden, with scarce an Adam to till it ; and several Scottish shires would have their broad acres cleared, one after another, as effectually as feudal laird could wish. And finally—to bring home to you the vastness of this little world—remember, that out of every thousand people the great world has in it, two of them are Londoners, and that if its inhabitants were drawn up in marching order, walking two-and-two, the line would stretch for six hundred and seventy miles, and at the speed of three miles an hour, it would be nine days and nights before the last of the long procession swept by."

Mr. Punshon's private letters and journals are somewhat dis- appointing. . They show little of the descriptive power, and of the aptitude for personal portraiture which his lectures display.

The careless jottings of a weary man, for he suffered much from the reactions consequent on incessant speaking, they have not much literary merit. There is a singular absence of references to the movements of his time, religious or political.

His biographer says that he often went to the House of Commons to listen to political speeches ; but he does not seem to have left any record of his impressions. His accounts of the Methodist Conferences, and his letters from America, are not without vivacity. If, however, his letters and journals are disappointing from a literary point of view, they exhibit his character in a pleasing light. His private utterances are always manly, tender, and humble, and he makes little of his popularity.

He speaks of himself as one who dearly loved the approbation of the public, but he treats this as a grave fault. If he did not, like Lacordaire, use the scourge after his oratorical triumphs, he took himself severely to task for the pleasure which his suc- cesses gave him. He was evidently haunted by the dread that he might please the ears of his hearers, rather than influence their hearts ; and nothing gave him such genuine pleasure as indications that his hearers had derived spiritual benefit from his sermons. He was at heart, as his journals show, an old- fashioned Methodist. He examined his own life with scrupulous

care, and was overwhelmed with sorrow if at any time he spoke 4' unadvisedly with his lips." Such expressions as " Marsh fountains " show that the quaint, pathetic language of his early faith clung to him to the last. His friend Dr. Rigg wrote of him after his death that he was a perfectly sweet-tempered man, free from envy, and guiltless of detraction. This is exactly the impression left upon us by his journals, which do not contain an ungenerous sentence.

The deep attachment with which Methodism seldom fails to inspire its ministers was strongly felt by Mr. Punshon. His journals are filled with references to the Conferences, and he took much interest in the missions of the Society of which he

was secretary daring the last years of his life. He cherished no bitterness to other Churches, and his favourite book was Keble's Christian Year. He endeavoured to do for Methodism what Keble had done for the Church of England, in a volume of verses called Sabbath Chimes. He was not, however, disposed to listen to those proposals of incorporation of Methodism with

the Church of England, of which some clergymen of the Church of England still dream. In 1874, he was appointed President of the Conference, and in his address from the chair he gave eloquent and dignified expression to his feelings regarding the relation of the Methodists to the Church of England :—

"The longer I live the less I am disposed to call down fire from heaven upon any. We cannot afford to be intolerant in our treatment of intolerance. We cannot afford to trample upon pride with greater pride. We cannot afford it because it would neutralise our witness- bearing, fret our own mule, and bring ne down from onr own high sphere of hallowed toil. At the same time, we must retain our self-respect ; and as we are so often asked to consent to unite or be absorbed in another Church, I think the time has come when on this question of

our ecclesiastical position we should give forth no uncertain sound. We believe that we are a Church of God's making. We are content with our position ; we are assured of it ; we have no misgivings about it ; we believe it can be scripturally sustained. We have no unfriend- liness to other Churches. We do not wish to build ourselves upon their ruins. It is no joy to us that there are among them irritations of feeling and lapses from faith. But we will not be moved from the position in which we believe God has placed us. And the time is long gone by—we had better decisively affirm it—when we will listen to any proposals for union except on equal terms."

In the year 1868, Mr. Punshon went to Canada to assume the office of President of the Wesleyan Methodist Church. He wished to marry the sister of his first wife ; and as the marriage could not be legally contracted in England, he went to Canada.

Many of Mr. Punshon's best friends regretted the step ; and it is difficult to vindicate it, however little respect one may have for the wisdom of the statute of 1835 by which such marriages were rendered illegal. Mr. Punshon, however, felt convinced that the marriage was one of duty and honour. Miss Vickers had lived for many years in his house, and meddlesome friends insisted that he should either marry her or send her away. Mr. Punshon thus writes of his marriage :-

"In fulfilment of this duty I had to make great sacrifices, to consent to be misjudged, to grieve some whom I loved, to lay my account with a publicity given to my private affairs which is to me the heaviest cross of the kind that I could be called to bear, to lose a position which had become assured by years of service, to trample upon love of country (with me a passion), to break up old friend- ships, to bear the imputation of motives which my soul scorns, and to bear it without answer, to found a home in the New World, and, above all, to imperil my usefulness. But my convictions of duty have never wavered."

The letters and journals written in Canada are brighter and more interesting than those belonging to other parts of his life.

In Canada he became an important public personage ; and the Canadians bestowed upon him an academical degree, and offered him a professorship of Moral Philosophy. He never, however, lost his longing for home, and on the death of his wife, he returned to London, where he remained until his death in 1881.

Mr. Punshon's Life will be read with profound interest by members of his own communion. Many others will desire to learn something of a man who achieved such remarkable oratorical triumphs. Mr. Macdonald's account of his oratory is critical as well as descriptive, and it throws light upon the secret of rhetorical success, which is by no means an open secret, even to men who have been public speakers all their lives.