HENRY SELWYN TO RICHARD MORTON.

Millport, November 9, 184—. MY DEAR MORTON,-I can hardly believe that nearly five months have elapsed since we parted at dear old Chatterton. The pressure of my work has been so great, and the engagements incidental to the beginning of a pastorate in a church like this have been so numerous, that I have been involved in a perpetual whirl of excitement and labour, and have taken no note of time but by its loss. My sermons themselves have been a sufficient tax. You will remember how often, when in our college talks we have sought to anticipate our ministerial work, we have expressed to each other our anxieties as to how two sermons a week were to be prepared. Considering how much time one of our college discourses, especially if it had to be read in the lecture-room, used to take us, it certainly was a puzzle to understand how it would be possible to manufacture two bran-new sermons for each successive Sunday. As you know, I thought to provide against the difficulty by laying up a tolerable stock, on which I thought I should be able to draw for a time until the work became easier. Well, I am wrong on every point. My stock has been of little use. For the first Sunday or two I was glad to resort to them, and they helped me over a time when it would have been all but impossible to settle down, amid all the excitement and novelty of my altered circumstances, to quiet thought and composition. But I soon found that it would not do to go on with them. The more I went among the people, and learned of their circumstances and feelings, the less satisfied was with the cold discussions of abstract truths and general principles which my college sermons generally were; I soon found that what was necessary for the pulpit was not polish, but point and power, and that warm-hearted, earnest utterances, though sadly lacking in finish and even that original thought which we used to think of supreme importance, and altogether unfit to run the gauntlet of keen lecture-room criticism, were infinitely more effective and valuable than the most elaborate and highly finished discourses in which there was more care about style than adaptation and impres siveness. My precious store, therefore, has for some time been utterly worthless, and more than once I have resolved to commit them to the flames, but I could not bear thus to part with what had cost me so much toil, and I have resolved to keep them as useful reminders of my early weakness. On the other hand, sermon-making is by no means so difficult as I expected to find it. I come to it fresh from intercourse with men who are fighting the hard battle of life, struggling against doubts. and difficulties, and sorrows, needing special kinds of help, and

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admonition, and comfort, and nothing but such experience as you will soon have yourself can make any one understand how different this is from coming to the same work with little preparation, except that which is to be derived from theological treatises or the records of the experience of others. Be assured, my dear friend, that to be a preacher it is necessary that a man should be a student of life and character. I have no intention or desire to depreciate the value of what a man learns from books; on the contrary, I feel that a large acquaintance with what other men have thought and written is essential in order to our making the best use of that which we ourselves see. A wise man will endeavour to have both, but if any one resolves to have oue or other exclusively, then I should say that he who knows only life will, so far as the effect of preaching is concerned, beat him hollow who knows nothing but books. For myself I have found the slight acquaintance I have been able to get with my people most helpful for my pulpit work. I have got many a text or gained fresh light upon some old one which I fancied I understood before as I have stood by a sick bed, or have heard from one and another of my members some tale of sorrow or perplexity in relation to which they desired my counsel or comfort. Perhaps you will think that these are early days for me to begin writing in this fashion, but you must remember that I am in the midst of a new world, and, of course, am rather full of its wonders. Besides, I say this to let you understand how it is that I have been able to get through my work at all. I do not, of course, pretend that that work is easy, but the pressure is not so crushing as I once feared it would be. I try when I can to fix upon my texts early in the week, and thus I am gathering materials for my sermons for two or three days before I put pen to paper, and so I am often able to write currente calamo, instead of having those desperate attempts to hammer out a few thoughts which used often to distress and weary me while at college. I feel that I have a point to which to work, and am, I hope, much more anxious to say something, however simple, which shall go direct to that point than to be either profound or elegant. I am certainly not ashamed to be what some people would call common-place, and to put plain truth in the plainest language. Indeed, I have often more labour to secure perfect plainness of speech than it would cost me if I was desirous to be fine and showy. On the whole, if my sermon-making takes up a good deal of time, I have much reason to be thankful that the work is to me much easier and much pleasanter than I had dared to hope.

I have taken up all this space to let you understand how much time is absorbed in simple preparation for the pulpit, but this is, after all, only the smaller part of my work. My pastoral duties

will, I hope, become rather lighter when I have got more thoroughly into them, but hitherto they have been severe. My people are strong believers in pastoral visitation, my predecessor having attached great importance to it and been most faithful in the discharge of its duties. It will never be possible for me to approach him in this particular, even if I regarded it in the same light as he did. Unfortunately I have an idea that the common view of a minister's duty in respect to visitation is a Dissenting superstition which some time or other I must fairly meet. I do not know, however, why I should say " Dissenting," for it appears of late to have become almost as prevalent in certain sections of the Established Church. There is a Mr. Allwright, an evangelical clergyman, here, who seems to devote himself to the work with remarkable assiduity, and though his neighbour and rival, Mr. Furnival, an earnest Tractarian, does it in rather a different style he is not less zealous. I am continually hearing of their untiring diligence, in the hope, I suppose, that I may be stirred up to go and do likewise. But I do not feel the call. "Every man in his own order," and my order certainly is not that of a visitor of the type desired by a good many of my people. I can enter into Mr. Furnival's feelings, and if I believed myself to be a priest I would feel bound to do what I could in the exercise of my priestly functions in visits from house to house. In my own work, too, wherever I think I can do good I shall always be happy to go. But to make what are for the most part mere visits of ceremony, to gratify the self-importance and vanity of those who are flattered by the idea of their minister paying attention to them, to spend precious time in calls which are not likely to have any practical result, is what I do not feel moved to do.

Still, though you have often told me that I was rash and impetuous, I feel that something is due to notions, prejudices though I may deem them, which are deeply rooted in the minds of my people, and I have therefore been engaged in paying a long round of visits, many of which I can assure you were wearisome enough. Happily I generally had for my companion Mr. Davenport, one of the oldest deacons of the church, a man of eminent goodness and great self-devotion, who made it his business to introduce me to the different families of the congregation. I can hardly tell why he should have taken a fancy to me, for our opinions and tastes are wide as the poles asunder. Our one point of sympathy is our common desire for the progress of the work of Christ. He has got an idea, I cannot tell how, that I am adapted to the special wants of this church, and that is with him sufficient to atone for any imperfections in my creed. He is a fine, true-hearted man, and though I was told that he was extremely narrow I find that his narrowness is much more in his creed than in his heart, and that

he is really more liberal than numbers who make louder professions. Let me add, too, that in relation to all ecclesiastical matters I find him wonderfully free. I have ventured to broach to him some of my "advanced" notions, and have been astonished to see how far he is prepared to enter into them. He is, as you may judge from what I have said, a strong Dissenter, but he is by no means an implicit believer in the traditions of Dissenting churches, and, in defiance of some of his own doctrinal opinions, is always ready to insist that the Gospel of Christ is a much broader thing and the Church of Christ meant to be a much freer organisation than Dissenters generally suppose. I have wandered in this talk about my friend away from my immediate subject-my general visitation, in which he has so greatly aided me. He was at home everywhere, and did his best to make me feel so too, and I certainly have through him got a knowledge of the people which otherwise I could not have obtained in so short a time. I could give you some interesting sketches of some of our visits, but I dare not attempt them here. The work was, of course, a new one to me, but I did not feel it so unpleasant as I expected.

And now you will want to know what I think of my people and my work. Millport I need not describe to you, and in truth there is not much that invites description. I can believe that once it was a place of considerable natural beauty, but that was long ago, before the days of long chimneys and crowded cottages. Happily it so far differs from many of the manufacturing towns about that it is built on a hill, and does not, therefore, present that aspect of dull, flat monotony which is so wearying and depressing in some parts of this region. It is on the extreme verge of the manufacturing district, and close to it is a very fine range of country. Within a mile or two of my lodgings are walks of a romantic beauty for which I was quite unprepared, and an hour's drive will take me into scenery almost as grand as any even in the Lake country. The town itself is like most of the towns which modern enterprise has called into existence, without any architectural beauty, and, in fact, without any regularity. Every man appears to have built as seemed right in his own eyes, without regard to general effect or deference to central authority, and the result has not always been happy. The people are clear-headed, warm-hearted, and I think I must add somewhat strong-willed, at least that is the impression I got from a first interview. They gave me a very hearty welcome, but at the same time expressed their opinions with a frankness and want of reserve which to those who do not understand them savours rather of rudeness. This, however, is the last thought in their minds. They pride themselves on their straightforwardness, and do not see why any one should take

offence where no offence is intended. Of culture, as it is generally understood, they have but little; but many of them, as I have already discovered, are keen theologians, holding very strong opinions, and expressing them in a very firm and decided manner. They seem, indeed, to partake very much of the character of the rough mountainous region in the midst of which they live; their intellects are hard and logical, and their creeds are of the same type. They are fond, too, of controversial divinity. You would be surprised if you could see the books to be found in the cottages of some of the artisans, and still more if you could hear their talk about them. I know not how my preaching will suit the strong Calvinism which finds favour with many of them, but they have so much of sturdy honesty and intelligence that I feel I cannot but respect and even like them. Their attachment to their chapel knows no bounds, and it is pleasant to hear them talk of the old minister, under whom most of them have grown up, and of whose services to them and theirs they cherish a grateful recollection.

I can see they have the faults incident to their particular type of character and culture. They have seen little of the world, and are disposed to think of themselves and of their belongings more highly than they ought to think. If the truth must be told, they have not a little of the spirit of that good Scotch minister who is to my mind the very perfection of a "provincial" mind, who used to pray for the two Cumbraes and the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland. To them Millport, Millport opinions, and Millport achievements are the most important things in the world. On London and the south in general they look down with a kind of pity as lacking that strength, and courage, and enterprise on which they so much pride themselves. They evidently think that I ought to consider myself highly honoured in being appointed the pastor of such a church as theirs, and expect me to appreciate the distinction.

They are intensely conservative-of course I do not mean in politics, for there they are the most decided and earnest of Radicals-but in their own ecclesiastical affairs; and the extraordinary thing is how those who are so ready to take part in overthrowing, at all events reforming, the oldest institutions in the country, because they think them wrong, cling so tenaciously to every little practice and theory of their own. But so it is. In the government of the country their maxim seems to be that whatever is is wrong, but as regards their own Church whatever is is right. As things have been, so they ought to be. Their fathers sang out of Watts's hymn-book, and they cannot see the need of new-fangled hymns and tunes. As to suggesting a