The romance of preaching

Introduction

By Charles R. Brown , D. D., Dean of the

Tale Divinity School

FROM the days when Henry Ward Beecher gave the first series of lectures on the " Lyman Beecher Foundation " in Yale University, on through those years when this service has been performed by such eminent men as Phillips Brooks and R. W. Dale, Henry van Dyke and John Watson, Lyman Abbott and George A. Gordon, Washington Gladden and Francis G. Peabody, the task of inspiring young ministers to nobler effort in their high calling has been well performed. But among them all, few lecturers have ever so gripped the divinity students, the larger audience of pastors in active service and the thoughtful people of New Haven as did Silvester Home when he spoke to us on " The Romance of Preaching."

He was himself a shining example of those 5

6 INTRODUCTION

high and chivalrous quaHties which he would covet for the true prophet, and the younger Knights of the Cross responded to his spiritual appeal as to the bugle-call of a genuine leader.

The intellectual distinction which marked his utterances, the fine literary form in which they were phrased, the moral passion which gave to their delivery that energy which belongs to words which are '* spirit and life," together with the rare spiritual insight displayed, all combined to make notable the service rendered by Mr. Home to Yale University.

It seemed tragic that just three days after he had finished this course of lectures, he should suddenly be caught away like the prophet of old, from the deck of a steamer as he neared the city of Toronto where he was to preach next day at the University. Here, indeed, are his last words, spoken in an upper room to his brother ministers, younger and older, upon whom he had breathed his own spirit of intense devotion to the high task of proclaiming the Gospel of Christ 1

INTRODUCTION 7

The sense of loss to England and to America, and to the whole Christian world, made all hearts heavy. But " he being dead yet speaketh," in these inspiring words and in that genius for friendship which has left its benediction upon so many thousands of hearts, and in that distinguished service which it was his privilege to render to Church and to State on that side the water and on this.

Yale University.

A Biographical Sketch

By Howard A. Bridgman, D. D., Editor of " The Congregationalist "

INTO the forty-nine years of his earthly life Charles Silvester Home poured a measure of service in behalf of his nation, his church and the world at large, such as can be credited to few of his contemporaries on either side of the Atlantic. He was fortunate in his ancestry, his training, his environment, his family, his friends, and in the opportunities that, from time to time, crossed his path, but the greatest of God's many gifts to him was a sense of the glory and seriousness of life and an eagerness, with God's help, to do his own part in the work of the world. A son of the manse he was born in Cuckfield, Sussex, England, April 15, 1865, took his arts course at Glasgow University, entering upon graduation the newly established theological school at Oxford known as Mansfield College, whose 9 lO A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

principal, the late Dr. Andrew M. Fairbairn, was renowned for his learning and his personal influence over his pupils. Before the young theologue, who at once evinced his unusual qualifications for the ministry, completed his course, a church in London claimed him as its leader and there at Kensington for ten years in a fashionable section of the world's metropolis Mr. Home preached and laboured, building up a compact and vigorous organization and gaining distinction even in his earliest years as a pulpit and platform orator. Then came the pull on his sensitive, daring nature of London's poverty and need. Leaving his attractive pastorate, where he had won popularity among all classes, he assumed the leadership at Whitefield's Tabernacle in the heart of the city, close to the homes of the poor and to haunts of shame. Into this new enterprise he entered with characteristic zeal and soon developed a great church of the institutional type, pervaded with a homelike atmosphere and ministering Sundays and week days alike to clerks, artisans and other types of

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH II

working people, and exercising a beneficent influence over the neighbourhood, which sadly needed something to counteract the influence of the gin-house and brothel.

Meanwhile the Congregational Churches of England, and the Free Churches generally, had been claiming Mr. Home's efficient assistance in the support of important enterprises. Invitations to speak here and there were showered upon him. He was honoured with the chairmanship of the Congregational Union of England and Wales. Pressing public issues like the controversy over the Education Bill drew him into the arena of politics, and he became known as one of the most gallant and earnest fighters for freedom in Church and State. His rare oratorical gifts made him one of the favourite spokesmen of the Non-conformist conscience on many public occasions. It was natural, in view of the reliance placed upon him, that he should at last yield to the strong demand that he stand for Parliament, and in 1910 he was returned as junior Member for Ipswich. For a time he undertook to carry

12 A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

the burden of his great church along with his Parliamentary duties, but at the end of ten years of the hardest kind of work at Whitefield's he relinquished his leadership, only, however, to give himself more untiringly to clamorous calls for his services. He felt especially the appeal of the Brotherhood Movement, and was planning as National President to give much time to its advocacy and to details of administration.

All through the years of active ministry he wielded a facile pen and many articles in newspapers and magazines bear witness to his literary fertility, while even more substantial and enduring in their influence are his valuable volumes, " A Popular History of the Free Churches," " A Modern Heretic," " A Story of the London Missionary Society," " The Ministry of the Modern Church," and " David Livingstone." His last and in many respects his noblest literary production was the Lyman Beecher lectures at Yale, to the preparation of which he devoted much time during the last year of his life, and which are embodied in this volume.

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 1 3

As preacher, organizer, publicist, author, pastor and friend, Silvester Home did a work in his short life that in volume and quality made him one of the remarkable religious leaders of his age. And over and around everything that he did, touching it with enduring beauty, was the radiance of a pure, joyous and unselfish life.

Boston.

The Passion of Evangelism : Wes-

ley and Whitefield