CHAPTER XXVI. P. I.

DANIEL AT DONCASTER; THE REASON WHY HE WAS DESTINED FOR THE MEDICAL PROFESSION, RATHER THAN HOLY ORDERS; AND SOME REMARKS UPON SERMONS.

Je ne veux dissimuler, amy Lecteur, que je n'aye bien préveu, et me tiens pour deüement adverty, que ne puis eviter la reprehension d'aucuns, et les calomnies de plusieurs, ausquels c'est éscrit désplaira du tout.

CHRISTOFLE DE HERICOURT.             

Fourteen years have elapsed since the scene took place which is related in the twenty-second chapter: and Daniel the younger at the time to which this present chapter refers was residing at Doncaster with Peter Hopkins who practised the medical art in all its branches. He had lived with him eight years, first as a pupil, latterly in the capacity of an assistant, and afterwards as an adopted successor.

How this connection between Daniel and Peter Hopkins was brought about, and the circumstances which prepared the way for it, would have appeared in some of the non-existent fourteen volumes, if it had pleased Fate that they should have been written.

Some of my readers, and especially those who pride themselves upon their knowledge of the world, or their success in it, will think it strange perhaps that the elder Daniel, when he resolved to make a scholar of his son, did not determine upon breeding him either to the Church, or the Law, in either of which professions the way was easier and more inviting. Now though this will not appear strange to those other readers who have perceived that the father had no knowledge of the world, and could have none, it is nevertheless proper to enter into some explanation upon that point.

If George Herbert's Temple, or his Remains, or his life by old Izaak Walton, had all or any of them happened to be among those few but precious books which Daniel prized so highly and used so well, it is likely that the wish of his heart would have been to train up his Son for a Priest to the Temple. But so it was that none of his reading was of a kind to give his thoughts that direction; and he had not conceived any exalted opinion of the Clergy from the specimens which had fallen in his way. A contempt which was but too general had been brought upon the Order by the ignorance or the poverty of a great proportion of its members. The person who served the humble church which Daniel dutifully attended was almost as poor as a Capuchine, and quite as ignorant. This poor man had obtained in evil hour from some easy or careless Bishop a licence to preach. It was reprehensible enough to have ordained one who was destitute of every qualification that the office requires; the fault was still greater in promoting him from the desk to the pulpit.

“A very great Scholar,” is quoted by Dr. Eachard, as saying “that such preaching as is usual is a hindrance of salvation rather than the means to it.” This was said when the fashion of conceited preaching which is satirized in Frey Gerundio, had extended to England, and though that fashion has so long been obsolete, that many persons will be surprized to hear it had ever existed among us, it may still reasonably be questioned whether sermons such as they commonly are, do not quench more devotion than they kindle.

My Lord! put not the book aside in displeasure! (I address myself to whatever Bishop may be reading it.) Unbiassed I will not call myself, for I am a true and orthodox churchman, and have the interests of the Church zealously at heart, because I believe and know them to be essentially and inseparably connected with those of the commonwealth. But I have been an attentive observer, and as such, request a hearing. Receive my remarks as coming from one whose principles are in entire accord with your Lordship's, whose wishes have the same scope and purport, and who while he offers his honest opinion, submits it with proper humility to your judgement.

The founders of the English Church did not intend that the sermon should invariably form a part of the Sunday services. It became so in condescension to the Puritans, of whom it has long been the fashion to speak with respect, instead of holding them up to the contempt and infamy and abhorrence which they have so richly merited. They have been extolled by their descendants and successors as models of patriotism and piety; and the success with which this delusion has been practised is one of the most remarkable examples of what may be effected by dint of effrontery and persevering falsehood.

That sentence I am certain will not be disapproved at Fulham or Lambeth. Dr. Southey, or Dr. Phillpots might have written it.

The general standard of the Clergy has undoubtedly been very much raised since the days when they were not allowed to preach without a licence for that purpose from the Ordinary. Nevertheless it is certain that many persons who are in other, and more material respects well, or even excellently qualified for the ministerial functions, may be wanting in the qualifications for a preacher. A man may possess great learning, sound principles and good sense, and yet be without the talent of arranging and expressing his thoughts well in a written discourse: he may want the power of fixing the attention, or reaching the hearts of his hearers; and in that case the discourse, as some old writer has said in serious jest, which was designed for edification turns to tedification. The evil was less in Addison's days when he who distrusted his own abilities, availed himself of the compositions of some approved Divine, and was not disparaged in the opinion of his congregation, by taking a printed volume into the pulpit. This is no longer practised; but instead of this, which secured wholesome instruction to the people, sermons are manufactured for sale, and sold in manuscript, or printed in a cursive type imitating manuscript. The articles which are prepared for such a market, are for the most part copied from obscure books, with more or less alteration of language, and generally for the worse; and so far as they are drawn from such sources they are not likely to contain any thing exceptionable on the score of doctrine: but the best authors will not be resorted to, for fear of discovery, and therefore when these are used, the congregation lose as much in point of instruction, as he who uses them ought to lose in self-esteem.

But it is more injurious when a more scrupulous man composes his own discourses, if he be deficient either in judgement or learning. He is then more likely to entangle plain texts than to unravel knotty ones; rash positions are sometimes advanced by such preachers, unsound arguments are adduced by them in support of momentous doctrines, and though these things neither offend the ignorant and careless, nor injure the well-minded and well-informed, they carry poison with them when they enter a diseased ear. It cannot be doubted that such sermons act as corroboratives for infidelity.

Nor when they contain nothing that is actually erroneous, but are merely unimproving, are they in that case altogether harmless. They are not harmless if they are felt to be tedious. They are not harmless if they torpify the understanding: a chill that begins there may extend to the vital regions. Bishop Taylor (the great Jeremy) says of devotional books that “they are in a large degree the occasion of so great indevotion as prevails among the generality of nominal Christians, being,” he says, “represented naked in the conclusions of spiritual life, without or art or learning; and made apt for persons who can do nothing but believe and love, not for them that can consider and love.” This applies more forcibly to bad sermons than to common-place books of devotion; the book may be laid aside if it offend the reader's judgement, but the sermon is a positive infliction upon the helpless hearer.

The same Bishop,—and his name ought to carry with it authority among the wise and the good, has delivered an opinion upon this subject, in his admirable Apology for Authorized and Set Forms of Liturgy. “Indeed,” he says, “if I may freely declare my opinion, I think it were not amiss, if the liberty of making sermons were something more restrained than it is; and that such persons only were intrusted with the liberty, for whom the church herself may safely be responsive,—that is men learned and pious; and that the other part, the vulgus cleri, should instruct the people out of the fountains of the church and the public stock, till by so long exercise and discipline in the schools of the Prophets they may also be intrusted to minister of their own unto the people. This I am sure was the practice of the Primitive Church.”

“I am convinced,” said Dr. Johnson, “that I ought to be at Divine Service more frequently than I am; but the provocations given by ignorant and affected preachers too often disturb the mental calm which otherwise would succeed to prayer. I am apt to whisper to myself on such occasions, ‘How can this illiterate fellow dream of fixing attention, after we have been listening to the sublimest truths, conveyed in the most chaste and exalted language, throughout a liturgy which must be regarded as the genuine offspring of piety impregnated by wisdom!’”—“Take notice, however,” he adds, “though I make this confession respecting myself, I do not mean to recommend the fastidiousness that sometimes leads me to exchange congregational for solitary worship.”

The saintly Herbert says,

“Judge not the Preacher, for he is thy Judge;   If thou mislike him thou conceiv'st him not.   God calleth preaching folly. Do not grudge   To pick out treasures from an earthen pot.   The worst speak something good. If all want sense   God takes a text and preacheth patience.   He that gets patience and the blessing which   Preachers conclude with, hath not lost his pains.”

This sort of patience was all that Daniel could have derived from the discourses of the poor curate; and it was a lesson of which his meek and benign temper stood in no need. Nature had endowed him with this virtue, and this Sunday's discipline exercised without strengthening it. While he was, in the phrase of the Religious Public, sitting under the preacher, he obeyed to a certain extent George Herbert's precept,—that is he obeyed it as he did other laws with the existence of which he was unacquainted,—

Let vain or busy thoughts have there no part; Bring not thy plough, thy plots, thy pleasure thither.

Pleasure made no part of his speculations at any time. Plots he had none. For the Plough,—it was what he never followed in fancy, patiently as he plodded after the furrow in his own vocation. And then for worldly thoughts they were not likely in that place to enter a mind, which never at any time entertained them. But to that sort of thought (if thought it may be called) which cometh as it listeth, and which when the mind is at ease and the body in health, is the forerunner and usher of sleep, he certainly gave way. The curate's voice past over his ear like the sound of the brook with which it blended, and it conveyed to him as little meaning and less feeling. During the sermon therefore he retired into himself, with as much or as little edification, as a Quaker finds at a silent meeting.

It happened also that of the few clergy within the very narrow circle in which Daniel moved, some were in no good repute for their conduct, and none displayed either that zeal in the discharge of their pastoral functions, or that earnestness and ability in performing the service of the Church, which are necessary for commanding the respect and securing the affections of the parishioners. The clerical profession had never presented itself to him in its best, which is really its true light; and for that cause he would never have thought of it for the boy, even if the means of putting him forward in this path had been easier and more obvious than they were. And for the dissenting ministry, Daniel liked not the name of a Nonconformist. The Puritans had left behind them an ill savour in his part of the country, as they had done every where else; and the extravagances of the primitive Quakers, which during his childhood were fresh in remembrance, had not yet been forgotten.

It was well remembered in those parts that the Vicar of Kirkby Lonsdale through the malignity of some of his puritanical parishioners, had been taken out of his bed—from his wife who was then big with child, and hurried away to Lancaster jail, where he was imprisoned three years for no other offence than that of fidelity to his Church and his King. And that the man who was a chief instigator of this persecution, and had enriched himself by the spoil of his neighbour's goods, though he flourished for a while, bought a field and built a fine house, came to poverty at last, and died in prison, having for some time received his daily food there from the table of one of this very Vicar's sons. It was well remembered also that, in a parish of the adjoining county-palatine, the puritanical party had set fire in the night to the Rector's barns, stable, and parsonage; and that he and his wife and children had only as it were by miracle escaped from the flames.

William Dove had also among his traditional stores some stories of a stranger kind concerning the Quakers, these parts of the North having been a great scene of their vagaries in their early days. He used to relate how one of them went into the church at Brough, during the reign of the Puritans, with a white sheet about his body, and a rope about his neck, to prophesy before the people and their Whig Priest (as he called him) that the surplice which was then prohibited should again come into use, and that the Gallows should have its due! And how when their ringleader George Fox was put in prison at Carlisle, the wife of Justice Benson would eat no meat unless she partook it with him at the bars of his dungeon, declaring she was moved to do this; wherefore it was supposed he had bewitched her. And not without reason; for when this old George went, as he often did, into the Church to disturb the people, and they thrust him out, and fell upon him and beat him, sparing neither sticks nor stones if they came to hand, he was presently for all that they had done to him, as sound and as fresh as if nothing had touched him; and when they tried to kill him, they could not take away his life! And how this old George rode a great black horse, upon which he was seen in the course of the same hour at two places threescore miles distant from each other! And how some of the women who followed this old George used to strip off all their clothes, and in that plight go into the church at service time on the Sunday to bear testimony against the pomps and vanities of the world; “and to be sure,” said William, “they must have been witched, or they never would have done this.” “Lord deliver us!” said Dinah, “to be sure they must!”—“To be sure they must, Lord bless us all!” said Haggy.