..... the second plan, as far as 10,000. And then I say to any persons, Help me to enlarge my pittance; because every 1007. will, on the first plan, be equal to 2007., and on the second plan to 4007. If I could get from others 1,000l., it would not spare me one penny, but would enlarge my efforts to the amount of 4,000. But behold, I have begun with Derby, and (with the exception of Mr. Evans, who wishes to enlarge my sphere of operation,) I have got but 100/. and that is from Mr. Cope. So that I shall have to sacrifice for that one place nearly one-half of my pittance, whereas I expected that the religious people there would gladly meet me half-way. On receiving his letter I was almost ready to weep. Truly, for the most magnificent church in the county, there is only one person found to meet my offer of fixing the gospel there in perpetuity, or to give a shilling towards it, and thus all my glorious plans and prospects are defeated. I had pledged myself to purchase the great Living at Northampton, at any price. But the vicar has written me word that the corporation intend to get, if they can, an Act of Parliament to enable the Bishop of Lincoln to add to it a valuable sinecure in the town; and in return for that, to have the nomination vested in him. Whether this will go forward, I do not know. If it do, my intentions with respect to it will be frustrated. But should that be the case, I have my eye upon all the provincial towns, tọ spend all I can in securing the gospel to them. I have actually sent to Bath my proposals, and if they be accepted, (Bath will sell for at least 5,0001. having five churches under it,) I shall have my poor pittance swallowed up by that alone. I wrote thither under the full persuasion that the people of Derby would meet me half-way, instead of only giving one solitary hundred towards it. What to do I know not. (All that I purchase will be committed to my Trustees, as all my twenty-two I.ivings are.) I think I must secure Derby, because of the immense importance of it. I will have four or five other places, if I can get them, and get the means of fulfilling my engagements. Pray do for me all you can with any of your friends who are able to assist you in this good cause. Any sums may be placed to my account at Smith, Payne, and Smith's, London. Oh, that there were amongst religious people more zeal for God and more love to immortal souls! In all my Livings I have no personal interest whatever. If I had never done more than purchase Cheltenham, I should be already well repaid for all the pains I have taken and all the labour I have expended." One important topic in the life of Simeon we have as yet only adverted to incidentally; we allude to his preaching. The art of preaching was the chief subject of his labours; by that he gained the popularity he enjoyed in life, and on that he depended for the preservation of his name after death. All his thoughts and all his exertions tended principally to the composition and delivery of sermons. The pulpit was his throne, and when there he felt an enjoyment, that, to use his own expression,' was a heaven upon earth.' He exalted the ordinance of preaching' to little less than a Sacrament. We have already seen how early in his religious life he evinced a taste in this direction, and extracts have also been introduced where he speaks, with his own peculiar and unequalled style, of his powers and his success. Passages like the following continually occur: Last year, during the long vacation, I took the first Epistle to the Thessalonians for my subject on Sunday mornings, and through mercy was enabled not only to enter into the spirit of it, but to breathe the spirit of it in my ministrations.' His letters and his conversation were always alluding to sermons past or to come. He considered his preaching such a strong point, that he staked all his reputation on it, by founding, as it were, a new school of sermons for the benefit of present and future ages. He had classes of young men to instruct in the art, and the only literary productions he has left behind him, are his sermons; enough, perhaps, for one man, it may be said, for his book of skeletons was eventually published in twentyone thick volumes, containing the rudiments of no less than two thousand five hundred and thirty-six discourses. Concerning Simeon's manner of delivery, Mr. Carus has not given many opportunities of judging. His own letters, however, show that an earnest and confident manner was the great secret of his power. Supreme confidence, both in the importance of the subject and also in the manner adopted to set it forth, is the foundation of rhetoric; and one great drawback to the oratorical influence of a religious preacher, is a certain diffidence, not altogether out of place, in dealing with high and sacred subjects. The best style of preaching, we should say, is where the preacher can so far throw himself into his subject and identify himself with it, as that, without being self-confident in his own talents and manner, he can make up for this deficiency by the superior position which a sacred subject gives him over what a secular one can ever impart. Simeon, however, would not seem to have been troubled with this diffidence, and he by no means lost the advantage which great confidence in the manner of stating a subject is able to give. In some passages he makes a profession of thinking only of his subject, and leaving other things to take their chance; but, by the very unreal extent to which he carries such profession, he shows how little he knew practically what he was saying. Certainly his practical advice to others was not of a kind to lead one to suppose that he let the text speak for itself, that he might have nothing to do.' For instance, he says:— . Deliver your Sermons not pompously, but as a professor ex cathedrá, and as a father in his family. To get ease, read parts of your Sermon to an ideal person (any object, as your inkstand, or candlestick), and then repeat the same words in a way of common oral instruction; and repeat this, till you perceive (as it were) that your ideal person clearly understands you.'-P. 685. In fact, Simeon both practised and recommended a theatrical manner in preaching. His whole idea of a sermon led him to this: he considered the pulpit as a stage, whereon he appeared in quite a different character to what he did in his ordinary parochial ministrations, for preaching was with him a sacra mental rite. So just as the Church has practised intonation of voice for certain parts of the service or chanting for others,— as being departure from the common mode of using the voice suited to the divine ordinance of prayer or praise, so Simeon adopted a theatrical style of eloquence as the peculiarity of manner suited to the ordinance of preaching. The management of his voice, and his action, were far more emphatic, we have understood, thau is consistent with the idea of a sermon being a pastoral address. It is plain, therefore, that he thought of it in another light; and that, whether he acknowledged this or not, he gave a sermon a certain individuality of existence which the Church nowhere recognises. Simeon's peculiar attitudes and motions in the pulpit were, we believe, so remarkable, that they afforded subjects for the graphic pencil of more than one profane caricaturist. A poor Italian boy, who had a talent for taking off portraits with the aid of scissors and black paper, was once of malicious intent conducted to Trinity Church. In a few days certain little black figures were to be seen in several shop windows, most successfully illustrative of the bold attitudes familiar to the congregation of Simeon's church. It is even said that their popularity caused the subject of them considerable annoyance, and that his indignation was, on one occasion, somewhat hastily and disastrously vented on a harmless shopwoman, who stood aghast behind the counter, to see the wrathful preacher rudely stamping on his own little black self. Mr. Carus regrets that the size to which his book was swelling prevents his devoting the space he had intended to Simeon's method of instructing his sermon-class in composition. We confess that, as it has been our duty to read the book, we do not sympathise in this regret. There is enough, as it is, to prove how unprofitable and how wearing his style was. He was fond of endless divisions, which utterly confuse the brain, if one attempts to understand the distinctions meant to be implied. It is not, however, difficult to perceive that Simeon's was an illogical mind. He cramped and confined his subject with an outward form of regularity in the shape of divisions, subdivisions, &c.; but it is proved on examination, that these are not logical divisions at all, but often only different words to express the same idea. The mind therefore is wearied with painful repetition under the pretence of nice and discriminating distinctions. How much better is it for the subject to divide itself naturally as it flows on; and pass to a change of application, not because it has been committed to certain binding restrictions by the rules of composition, but because it has viewed the subject in one light, and therefore it is ready to do so in another! We do not see how it is possible for a really thoughtful mind to act with fair advantage when encumbered with sixteen divisions to start with. Surely all depth of thought would fly from such trammels, as a bird from the captivity of a cage. 'As a last lesson for good proficients, he used to take the long discussion in the Christian Observer, under sixteen different heads, on Separation from tho world." "His directions then were: "1. Comprehend them all in one discourse. 66 "2. Let that discourse be so luminous and simple, that a very child may understand it, or form it from his own mind. "3. Let it contain all the proper parts of a discourse: Exordium-Arrangement-Discussion-Application. ""4. Let every one of these sixteen heads find its place. ""5. Let not one be omitted, nor one be added. ""6. Let it be totus, teres, atque rotundus; and turn out of your hand as a filbert from its shell."-P. 643. 6 Then follow the sixteen Topics given for distribution.' As a specimen of Simeon's illogical mind, we will refer to the formal rules which he gave for the composition of a sermon. He first recommends the text to be considered under three great heads: 1. Take for your subject that which you believe to be the mind of God in the passage. 2. Mark the character of the passage. 3. Mark the spirit of the passage.' In the attempt to discriminate between these three heads, the mind is utterly bewildered. We perhaps are inclined to imagine that Simeon had a peculiarly clear mind and could see distinctions which to others are imperceptible; but common sense soon comes to our relief, and convinces us that all this is utter nonsense, that such divisions do not exist,-for each one contains the other two. A thick hazy atmosphere surrounded Simeon's mind, and cut him off from the clear distinctions of common sense and nature. He saw everything in a distorted and reflected manner. Take his own instance of the view he recommends on a particular text. 'For instance. 1 John iv. 18. "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love." This passage should not be treated in a common-place way of shewing, 1. What this love is; 2d. What is the fear which it casts out; and 3d. How it casts out this fear. The passage is intended to shew the influence of the love of God upon the soul, and to set it forth as a test of our attainments in true piety; and therefore the scope and intent of it should be seized as the groundwork of the division. Thus-Consider the love of God: 1. Its influence as a principle (casting out all slavish fear); and, 2. Its importance as a test; (enabling us, by means of its influence in this respect, to estimate the precise measure of our attainments.)'-P. 646. Yet twenty-one thick volumes of skeleton sermons were put forth by Simeon, with a no very modestly expressed idea that they would be standard helps to the clergy for ages to come. A more unfit person for such a task could hardly be imagined. The very enumeration of the objects he had in view when he published them, shows it. The brain staggers when we hear an author say that he has aimed at Unity, Continuity, Pertinency, Diversity, Fulness, Number, Conciseness, Perspicuity, Cheapness, Use, Tendency, and Effect. The two latter, however, we explain at length; for the prospects opened out are too grand to make concealment justifiable. 11. Tendency. 1. To raise the tone of preaching throughout the land. 2. To promote a candid, liberal, and consistent mode of explaining the Scriptures. 3. To weaken at least, if not eradicate, the disputes about Galvinism and Arminianism; and thus to recommend, to the utmost of my power, the unhampered liberality of the Church of England. 12. Effect. -P.719. 1. To impart to young Ministers a clear view of the Gospel. The whole undertaking, we have perfect confidence in saying, is now acknowledged to be a complete failure, as such a fabric of egotism and presumption must ever be. We would now say a few, and only a few words on Simeon's doctrinal theology. From extracts already introduced, the reader will have formed a tolerably correct notion of his opinions; on this ground, therefore, but little now need be said; also neither space nor inclination allow us to make this an opportunity of entering on abstract theological questions. Dogmatical theology was a subject on which Simeon never felt at home. He never has any flow or ease, when compelled to make a statement of his views. But one question ever seems to have occurred to him as of sufficient importance to claim any expression of opinion. This was the controversy between the doctrines of Calvin and Arminius, and this he avoided as much as possible; sometimes on the plea of hating controversy, though he is strong enough in condemning those who hold other views than his own. When, however, he did express any opinions in a formal manner, we see at once two things: first, that he does not in the least comprehend the subject he is about, and secondly, that he is writing in a slippery, unreal manner, as men at the head of a party are apt to do, that they may gain all sides. Thus Simeon often tried to make it appear that there was no real contradiction between Calvinism and Arminianism, and moreover that he had found out the magic wand which reconciled these antagonist principles. |