Eccentric Preachers
Scores, nay, hundreds of volumes have been gathered upon the oddities of character which mankind, in all ages, have presented to the observant writer who loves to “shoot folly as it flies.” Voltaire has said, “Every country has its foolish notions.... Let us not laugh at any people;” and it would be difficult to find any age which has not its curiosities of character, to be laughed at and turned to still better account; for, of whatever period we write, something may be done in the way of ridicule towards turning the popular opinion. Diogenes owes much of his celebrity to his contempt of comfort, by living in a tub, and his oddity of manner. Orator Henley preached from his “gilt tub” in Clare Market, and thus earned commemoration in the Dunciad:—
Still break the benches, Henley, with thy strain,
While Sherlock, Hare and Gibson preach in vain;
O, worthy thou of Egypt’s wise abodes,
A decent priest, where monkeys were the gods!
But Fate with butchers placed thy priestly stall,
Meek modern faith to murder, hack, and haul.
Eccentricity has its badge and characteristics by which it gains distinction and notoriety, and which in some cases serve as a lure to real excellence. The preaching of Rowland Hill is allowed to have been excellent; but his great popularity was won by his eccentric manner, and the many piquant anecdotes and witticisms, and sallies of humour unorthodox, with which, during his long ministry, he interlarded his sermons. However, he thought the end justified the means; and certain it is that it drew very large congregations. The personal allusions to his wife, which Rowland Hill is related to have used in the pulpit, were, however, fictitious, and at which Hill expressed great indignation. “It is an abominable untruth,” he would exclaim; “derogatory to my character as a Christian and a gentleman. They would make me out a bear.”
The success of Edward Irving, the popular minister of the National Scotch Church in London, was of a more mixed character. It is stated, upon good authority, that he first chose the stage as a profession, and acted in Ryder’s company, in Kirkaldy, a few miles from Edinburgh, about fifty-five years since. The obliquity of his vision, his dialect, and peculiarly awkward gait and manner, created so much derision, that he left the stage for the pulpit, after about three months’ probation.
Irving’s sermons were not liked at first; and it was not until he was recognised by Dr. Chalmers that Irving became popular. But he was turned out of his church, and treated as a madman, and he died an outcast heretic. “There was no harm in the man,” says a contemporary, “and what errors he entertained, or extravagancies he allowed in connection with supposed miraculous gifts, were certain in due time to burn themselves out.” It was not so much the error of his doctrine as the peculiarity of his manner, the torrent of his eloquence, his superlative want of tact, that provoked his enemies, and frightened his friends. The strength of his faith was wonderful. Once, when he was called to the bedside of a dying man late at night he went immediately. Presently he returned, and beckoned one of his friends to accompany him. The reason was, that he really believed in the efficacy of prayer, and held to the promise—“If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that ye shall ask, it shall be done.” It was necessary, therefore, that two should go to the sick man. So, also, he had a child that died in infancy, to whom he was in the habit of addressing “words of godliness, to nourish the faith that was in him.” And Irving adds that the patient heed of the child was wonderful. He really believed that the infant, by some incomprehensible process, could guess what he was saying, and profit by it. His love for children was very great; and he, a very popular man in London, might be seen, day by day, marching along the streets of Pentonville of an afternoon, his wife by his side, and his baby in his arms.
His sermons had a large sale, going through many editions. But Irving complains that, in spite of these large sales, he could never get the religious publishers to whom he had entrusted his book to give him anything but a pitiful return. It is amusing to find him in one letter complaining that there is neither grace nor honour in the religious booksellers, and requesting his wife in negotiating the sale of his next venture to “try Blackwood, or some of these worldlings,” in the evident expectation that “these worldlings” were a good deal more liberal in their dealings, not to say honest, than those whom he regarded as his peculiar friends.