anything else.' A man who would succeed as a preacher would probably do right well either as a grocer, or a lawyer, or anything else. A really valuable minister would have excelled at anything. There is scarcely anything impossible to a man who can keep a congregation together for years, and be the means of edifying them for hundreds of consecutive Sabbaths; he must be possessed of some abilities, and be by no means a fool or ne'er-do-well. Jesus Christ deserves the best men to preach His cross."

Too High. "I heard a story the other day of some young person going out of this place and saying, 'I don't like Mr. Spurgeon at all, he is so high in doctrine, he said so-and-so.' And then the young woman quoted a text out of the Bible as a very wicked thing that I had said, something about the potter having power over the clay. The friend who was with her said, 'It was Paul said that, not Mr. Spurgeon.' 'Ah,' said she, 'the Apostle Paul was a great deal too high too.""

CHAPTER XVIII.

Influence on the Religious Life of the Age.

M

R. SPURGEON'S successful and useful career is

one of the great facts of this nineteenth century. Take him all round, he is one of the greatest men of the age. Look at him as a preacher, writer, platformspeaker, pastor, organiser of public movements, founder of institutions-he is half-a-dozen men in one. He is a capable and sufficient man, regard him how you may. It is not too much to say that there is no other man in his own line that, taking him altogether, can for a moment bear comparison with him. Of the Christian preachers of this or any other country, he is the facile princeps of them all. There was a time when he was regarded as a notability, but nothing more— -when he filled Exeter Hall for months together, and the Strand was almost impassable-when the great Music Hall of the Surrey Gardens, though spacious enough to receive nine thousand persons, was Sunday after Sunday crowded to excess-when not only the " common people," but also professional men, senatorial men, ministers of state, and peers of the realm, were among his weekly audiences-when he was looked on as a wonder which it

was difficult to understand. But, for the most part, the opinion of the public was that he could not last—that instead of being a star of the first magnitude, as some few thought him then, he was only a meteor shooting across the sky, destined soon to utter extinction. These prophets have all been wrong. All these years he has held on his steadfast way, shining with ever-growing strength and lustre.

How shall we account for his success? It cannot be owing to the circumstances of his birth and training, or his ecclesiastical connections. In his antecedents we find no traces of academic fame and promise, no influential patronage. It was not culture that at first gave Mr. Spurgeon power over men. In metaphysics, in scientific investigation, in theological truth, in all matters where a trained power of discrimination would have become conspicuous, his mind was at the outset in a very crude condition; and even yet, in some respects, there is a great want of discipline, and his knowledge cannot be said to be accurate or full. There is no original or profound thought; no lifting of the veil in his utterances from any previously undiscovered truth. His success is not to be accounted for by his bodily presence. There is neither the lofty form, nor noble brow, nor intellectual look, which you see in some men who command their fellows.

"Much has been said about Mr. Spurgeon's voice, as though the secret of his power lay in a great measure there. He can preach loud; and to say that, it is thought, is to say a great deal. It is, in fact, to say nothing. The question is not about a man who has voice enough to make ten thousand people hear, but about a man who has attraction enough to bring ten thousand people together to listen." It is not every man who can speak so as to make a large congregation hear, that gets a large congregation to hear him. After all, while Mr. Spurgeon's voice is good in some respects, it is a comparatively level voice. "Its great attributes are distinctness and force. Were it to soar at

times with the grand, and to descend at times with the pathetic, as the voice of an orator of the highest order would be sure to do, the hearing would not be so uniform as at present. Mr. Spurgeon has made the pulpit more attractive than any living man; but he has done so by means of a voice which can scarcely be called oratorical."

One great secret of Mr. Spurgeon's success through his whole career is the style of his address. His language is, to a great extent, plain, forcible, idiomatic Saxon. It is not the language of colleges, or of books, but the language which the people employ in common use the language of the shop, the market-place, the factory, the fireside. There is no need to have a dictionary with you when you listen to him, that you may consult it before you can know his meaning. No man or woman can fail to understand him. He touches the springs of a man's nature; moves to tears and to laughter. His hearers cannot but listen. Referring in the preface of one of his earliest volumes of sermons to this characteristic of his mode of address, he furnishes the following explanation:-"There are also many expressions which may provoke a smile; but let it be remembered that every man has his moments when his lighter feelings indulge themselves, and the preacher must be allowed to have the same passions as his fellow-men; and since he lives in the pulpit more than anywhere else, it is but natural that his whole man should be there developed ; besides, he is not quite sure about a smile being a sin, and at any rate he thinks it less a crime to cause a momentary laugh than a half-hour's profound slumber."

With reference to the preacher's style, a writer in The National Review penned the following passage six-andtwenty years ago with certain modifications it is true to-day" Mr. Spurgeon's style appears to us quaint and grotesque, with a strong dash of genuine humour. He is obviously to the last degree vivacious and susceptible, and

being to a great extent an uneducated man, his illustrations constantly overstep the limits of vulgarity; but that is not their special characteristic. There is nothing vulgar, for example, in the following, though it is as grotesque as a gurgoyle :-'Oh, may God awaken us all, and stir us up to pray; for when we pray we shall be victorious. I should like to take you this morning, as Samson did the foxes, tie the firebrands of prayer to you, send you in among the shocks of corn till you burn the whole up."" Referring to the familiar and frequent utterances of the preacher about the most sacred themes, the same writer remarks, that "the fact that it is usually considered reverent to speak of God, Christ, heaven, hell, the devil, and the feelings which they excite, in an obscure and indefinite manner, has always appeared to us one of the strongest proofs of the prevalence amongst us of unacknowledged scepticism. Mr. Spurgeon, no doubt, constantly falls into the other extreme. To speak of such matters very seldom and very plainly would seem to be the course pointed out both by reverence and common-sense; but if we must choose between the two, we do not know whether it is not less bad to handle spiritual truths as you would handle a bullock, than to handle them as you would handle a mist.”

The pictorialness of his style is one of the obvious sources of his success. He is full of apposite and striking illustrations. He paints pictures of the pious mother and her sinning child, or the repentant son returning to his father's house; or he employs some historical fact to illustrate a spiritual principle. For example "Some of you," he says, "would like to have grace in reserve, to lay up as people place money in the bank or the funds, to call out upon occasion. But God does not deal with you that He knows you too well to do that. He knows how ready you are to forget Him now-how much worse it would be then. He promises grace as you want it-accord

way.