The Debate on Mr. Gladstone's Resolutions.

THIS debate has accomplished its immediate purpose, although it seemed to halt midway. It has held us back a little longer from war on the side of the iniquitous Ottoman Power, and revealed once more that the really governing forces of the nation reside in the convictions, feelings, and thoughts of the people. Without that debate and the manifestations of popular feeling which accompanied it, it is almost certain that the fanatical war party would have flung us, by this time, into a war against Russia. Carlyle's statement was based on more than empty rumour. Preparations had been made and commands given for offensive action. These have been stopped; and so the country, thanks be to God! has been saved from a great crime. Mr. Gladstone, manifold as his services have been to his country, never wrought a nobler deed, or in more splendid style, than on the night of the 7th of May.

Still every man who loves his country and humanity must be vigilant. We have to deal with an astute and wily leader in Lord Beaconsfield, and even now he will master us if we suffer ourselves to sleep with both eyes shut. Lord Derby's despatch ought to be enough to open anybody's eyes, even though they were covered with acres of the perfidious Daily Telegraph. Don't let us forget that "Reply" in congratulating Mr. Cross upon his outspoken and manly speech. That despatch in answer to Russia's declaration of war is a wanton insult, gross injustice, an echo of the arrant folly and double-dyed wrong of "the Guildhall speech" of his leader. No other Government speaks. Germany is quiet. Austria watches in silence. France does not utter a word. Only England is studiously offensive; and at once Turkey is grateful and hopeful. Again, the Sultan writes himself down as a British interest," and clings with a tighter grip to the hope of help from England. But this debate, the vote notwithstanding, will tell the Sultan that such a writing must again be erased, and that long-deferred hope once more given up. The governing Turk ceases to be "a British interest" from May 14, 1877.

66

But the debate has another lesson. It bids all Liberals look well after their organizations, get their machinery in order, and prepare to purify and elevate the Liberal representation in the House of Commons. Why should we send men to Parliament who are so far behind Mr. Gladstone? Had the Opposition been true to its duty and acted according to the convictions of the Liberal party in the country, the European concert would have been maintained, the declaration of war not issued, and the Turk would, as he did in Syria, have yielded to the authority of the chief political forces of Europe. Let us take a deeper interest in politics. To a Christian man they are part of the kingdom of God, and should be dealt with in the same spirit of earnestness and zeal for right, and goodness, and humanity, with which he advocates missions or works in the Sunday school.

JOHN CLIFFORD.

Auld Lang Syne;"

OR, RECOLLECTIONS OF LIFE IN YORKSHIRE.

IV. The Methodist Chapel.

"The worst speak something good: if all want sense,

God takes a text, and preacheth Pa-ti-ence."-Geo. Herbert.

WHEN a minister called one day on a woman of his flock, and found that she remembered neither text nor sermon of the previous Sunday, he said, "I'm afraid you did not profit by the service." "O yes," said she, "I think I did ;" and pointing to some garments lying on the grass in front of her cottage, she said, "I go to those clothes every now and then, and sprinkle water upon them. The water dries up so that I cannot find a trace of it, but I think the linen becomes, somehow, whiter by the process." "So with sermons," continued the woman. They appear lost upon me, for I cannot remember them; but I think I am somewhat the better for having heard them."

That illustration is as philosophical as it is homely. Sermons do influence the mind and mould the character in an imperceptible manner. If they do not, then the great bulk of them are altogether lost. Nobody remembers a thousandth part of what he hears in sermons. Some of the more striking passages will sparkle in the memory, like dewdrops on a blade of grass. They linger for a little time, blessing while they stay; but sooner or later they lose their distinctive character, and become part of cloud-land. But, even when memory is sent empty away, all is not lost. For the time being, the words surround the soul like an atmosphere, and the man can't help being influenced more or less by such an atmosphere. All this is borne out by my own experience. The sermons I listened to when a boy were, for the most part, from local (or lay) preachers, as they were called, to distinguish them from the round, or circuit, or travelling preachers. One of the local preachers was a small farmer, very brown and very thin; but he had a quiet, thoughtful, and impressive manner; and I can feel over again, even now, the kind of interest and charm with which I listened to one sermon of his on How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts!" the sermon itself I cannot remember a single word.

66

Of

Another local was so prosy that by common consent he was called Sleepy." Indeed the mere announcement of his name as the preacher was enough to create a drowsy feeling in the whole congregation. Slow and low, was the style of a very stout man, who in many respects was a great oddity. When he announced a hymn, we could generally hear about as much as I now write. sing together the hundred and

66

teenth hymn, on the

hundred and third page." The consequence was that everybody turned to everybody else, to know what hymn it was. In the sermon, too, it was the same. Of the maxim, "Begin low, rise higher, take fire," he had mastered only the first part. The leading singer found all this too much for his patience, and one day he startled the audience by shouting across the chapel, "Speak up, Caleb." It was like coaxing Mark Twain's frog to leap when its mouth was filled with some ounces of small shot. Caleb's

bosom heaved with a laudable desire, but the attempt was ineffectual, and the voice after one sentence was inaudible as ever.

Mr. Laycock was the man, especially for us children. On a Sunday afternoon he very wisely recognised the fact that the school formed the major part of his congregation, and he therefore addressed himself to the majority. And such addresses! Dr. Richard Newton could not more effectually enchant young people. His subjects were such as "Salt;" "the Eye;" "the Eagle," etc. He was quite a master in the art of giving information, and then getting it back again by means of well put questions and elliptical sentences.

Very occasionally there was to be seen in the pulpit an eccentric individual who went by the name of Squire Brook, instead of Brook, Esq. He had been a wild harum-scarum young fellow, fond of hunting and all kinds of sport, until suddenly arrested in his career of folly, and soundly converted to God. His heart was changed, but his head was as full of wild fancies and strange freaks as ever. In preaching, he leaped over all homiletic rules, just as he used to jump stone fences and five-barred gates in his hunting days. He would take a text, and after saying a number of irrelevant things he would pause, and say, "Dear friends, this text doesn't seem to go very well. If you've no objections we'll take another and try that.' So saying he would turn to another part of Scripture, and announce a fresh text. suited him he would say, "I think this will do; we'll stick to this."

If that

The school sermons were sometimes preached by an eccentric of another kind. He was a tall, elderly man, who tenanted a small farm on a moor some distance away. I remember going to his house in a conveyance, with some older friends, when I was but a very ltitle boy. There was not another house in sight of his. He made us heartily welcome, and when dinner time came the whole party were plentifully supplied with thick oatmeal porridge and an abundance of milk. "Tommy o' th' Heys" was the name he was best known by, and it meant Thomas of the High House; but his proper name was Thomas Greenwood. His broad Yorkshire dialect, combined with originality and enthusiasm, secured him overflowing congregations wherever he went. On the occasion I can best recall, he had taken off his spectacles after reading his text, and laid them on the Bible. By and by, waxing warm with his theme, he was bringing both hands with mighty emphasis upon the book, when he suddenly stopped before his hands struck the page, and exclaimed, "Eh! I'd like t' 'a' brokken mi glasses!" Which being interpreted is, "I was very near breaking my spectacles." Such an anti-climax was too much for the gravity of the audience, for they fairly laughed out.

It must not be inferred from what I have said, that we had never anything else but this kind of thing. Notwithstanding every way, Christ was preached, and many had reason to rejoice. Yea, and even with such men as I have named, despite their oddities of figure and gesture and language, there went forth a power and an unction which could not be gainsaid, "the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following."

I cannot close without gratefully referring to the blacksmith on whose pulpit anvil my heart was broken, but broken only to be healed

GETTING A NEW MINISTER.

223

the same night by the Holy Spirit of God. He was a short, round, bullet-headed man, who on a platform could tell some of the most ludicrous stories, but who in the pulpit was wrought up to a white heat of earnestness in preaching the gospel, and in persuading sinners to accept a Saviour. What his text was on the night referred to I do not know. Nor can I call to mind with any clearness any single thing he said. I only know that after the service he pressed us to come down from the gallery into the body of the place, and he told some affecting anecdotes of young men who had put off salvation till it was too late. I had been under good impressions for a long time, but I then felt-it must be now or never. I went down into the area, and knelt, and wept, and prayed in the corner of a seat. Some kind friends came and spoke with me, and showed me the way of salvation, and I went home that night "a sinner saved by grace." J. FLETCHER.

Getting a New Minister.

V." The Sort of Man we can and ought to get."
BY A "LIVE" DEACON.

Ir the first question a church without a pastor has to settle is "What sort of a man we want?" the second is "What sort of a man can we get?" for the two questions, though much alike, are far from meaning the same thing, and differ so enormously that it would be extremely hazardous to go to work on the answer to the first inquiry, without due consideration being given to the second.

In the City, it is found that the wealthiest and best of masters cannot always command servants of spotless integrity and irreproachable industry. Clerks abound-the market is glutted with them; but good clerks of superior skill and trustworthiness are not to be had every day, either for money or love. Men who think they are born "managers" are not scarce; but managers, keen, shrewd, faultless in judgment, sharp as lightning at figures and never wrong, always energetic and never incautious, are more rare than reliable Turkish bonds. The gold is not coined to buy them. The office is not built to suit them. The business is not launched that is vast enough to attract their genius and force.

But there is another fact of too much weight to be passed over lightly. When a man goes to market, it is desirable he should properly estimate his purchasing power. That everybody believes; and yet I have seen churches waste, not months only, but years, and not time only, but golden chances of success, in the endeavour to get a true measure of their pastor-purchasing power. Some of them have looked into the church's purse, and thought they saw there the indication of the amount of their ability to get the "sort of man they wanted." But as there are masters honest men will not serve, so there are churches, wealthy but wrangling, or delicately respectable but intolerably frigid, that no man with a heart, and that heart in his work, would go to for any money that could be minted. Churches have "characters" as well as pastors, and all pastors of real pith and power inquire more carefully into the character of an inviting church than the churches do into the character and repute of the invited pastor. A minister said to me not long since of a church that did not lack money, "I'd rather be buried than go there." It really is a wise and necessary thing for churches in quest of pastors to ask the question, "What sort of a man can we get?"

66

No doubt some churches would get what they want if they would only be just enough to pay for it. It is not the "sort of man" who is missing; it is the money to sustain him. There are business houses that could secure better

service, and diminish the frauds of their servants twenty per cent., if they would only screw themselves up to the task of paying better wages. But they will not, and therefore they must suffer. So there are churches of high ideals and slender generosity, capable of desiring an apostle or an archangel, and exulting in the self-sacrificing labours of the one, and in the magnificent flights of the other; but alas! equally capable of leaving the first to do and bear all the self-sacrifice for the church, and treating him in a most "scrubby" and niggardly style, and of giving the second only the barest pittance to keep his wings in flying condition. They will shoot at high game; and possibly feel a little grieved when their shot does not hit the mark and bring down the coveted prize. Churches ought to get a fair notion of their purchasing power before they go into the market.

A third question, too, is important. There are some things it is not right to buy. There may be some pastors, exactly the "sort of men we want," whom it is not right for us to attempt to get. A letter just to hand, as I suspect, Mr. Editor, though you do not say so, from another "live" deacon, puts this aspect of the subject in a most lively way under the stinging heading

HAVE CHURCHES A CONSCIENCE?

"It has been said communities have no consciences-meaning, I suppose, that a community of individuals will act in their communal capacity with less moral rectitude than they would when acting as individuals, i.e., that an individual member of a community, say in the position of a head of an office as a solicitor or business as a tradesman, would think he was breaking the moral law were he to seek to entice away from a fellow-solicitor, or from a tradesman in the same way of business, a valuable clerk or clever assistant by offers of increase of salary. He would be overwhelmed with shame at the dishonourable part he was playing, and feel himself humbled in his own estimation, and deserving of the condemnation of all honourable men; though doubtless there are many men, sharp business men of the world, who would think this line of conduct smart and clever, and add to the adage, 'All things are fair in love and war'—' and business:'-but is it? I trust, Mr. Editor, Christians are not fallen so far as to be so blinded to all common honesty as to entirely forget the tenth commandment; though I confess I have heard it has been done, but the individual immediately fell to zero in my estimation as a Christian brother.

"I observe a practice in full operation in our General Baptist churches which I feel to fill me with alarm, shame, and I was about to say indignation, but should say sorrow that they should not see in how lowering a position it places them in the estimation of, I trust, all upright minds-namely, a practice of churches who for various reasons are placed in the position of being without a pastor, looking round the churches, and finding the minister they think they should like to have, and then setting about using means to obtain him from some sister church where he is working peacefully, contentedly, and successfully-and means such as I as a tradesman were I to use towards a brother tradesman in seeking to entice from his assistance should feel myself degraded in my own eyes. What moral right have I to thus injure my brother? And by the same rule, what moral right have churches to seek to injure a sister church by seeking by these underhand (advisedly) means to deprive them of the service and ministration of one thus working with and serving them. I fail to see any. What confidence can we have in holding out the hand of fellowship at our annual meeting with those we know to be trying to filch from us, to themselves, those we value, and who but for their persistent use of the objectionable practice of sending deputations-once, twice, and even thrice-to seek to supplant us, adding private individual persuasion, personally, and by letter afterwards, and offer of increase of salary.

"I know the subject has many difficulties; but surely difficulties must not make us cowards, and instead of facing them, fly directly to breaking the decaloge, and spreading bitterness and distrust between churches and brethren, making it a question of Have churches a conscience ?"",

That is a larger question than I can treat of now. next.

I will deal with it in my