An article of 1858 by WGB begins
An uninviting old quarto lies on our table to which we are anxious to introduce our readers. It is not a book for review for it has been printed two hundred and fifty years but it is a book so eminently rich in thought and diction so full of aphorisms and antitheses, so abundant in illustration and withal so fervidly pious and so thoroughly evangelical that we hope we shall do good service in thus adding to the auditors of famous Master Henry Smith.
Do not turn away dear reader because of the name Smith so widely distributed a patronymic of the British Isles that it would seem to have had its origin in that first black or white smith who was the instructor of every artificer in brass and iron. This venerably ancient name going back to the days of Adam and Eve has since been inherited by Smiths of all trades and professions, pulpit Smiths, witness our author, and platform Smiths, doctor Smiths and music Smiths, poet Smiths and soldier Smiths, learned Smiths and stupid Smiths and in short by Smiths of all sorts, sizes, capacities and functions.
Some parents apparently ashamed of this ancientest English name with a thin fig leaf disguise of some poetical prefix have tried to hide the plebeian origin of an Adamic descent. And so an Albert or a Sydney or a Horace or an Alexander or an Algernon or a Vernon or a Pye or something else takes precedence of the honest monosyllable. But our Smith is plain Master Henry Smith and the old volume from which we are about to quote extensively, not clerically as many have done and are doing without acknowledgment is entitled The Sermons of Master Henry Smith gathered into one volume Printed according to his corrected copies in his life time Whereunto is added God's Arrow against Atheists At London imprinted by Felix Kyngston for Thomas Man dwelling in Paternoster row at the signe of the Talbot 1607.
Being long dead and by all but a few forgotten as a dead man out of mind, he shall again speak. We will furnish him with another pulpit than the old oak one with its hour glass at St Clement's Danes and a congregation as large and as reverent as used in the days of good Queen Bess to hang on our preacher's lips whilst he denounced the sins of the age in fearless Saxon or poured out streams of tender eloquence as he urged the claims of the gospel on the high and noble born of London city, on burly merchants addicted to usury and on the gallant prentice boys that crowded to hear this most popular because most faithful minister of the gospel.
With that silver voice of his he swayed his audience as he list sometimes preaching the terror of the Lord but only to persuade men to be reconciled to God at other times starting penitential tears from courtly eyes as thus with winning earnestness he implored his hearers to give their hearts to God. The master requires labour, the landlord requires service, the captain requires fight but He who requires the heart requires it for love, for the heart is love. Though he says Give it, yet indeed hath he bought it and that dearly with the dearest blood that ever was shed. He gave thee his heart before he desired thy heart, he asks a heart for a heart, a living heart for a heart that died. Thou dost not lose thy life as he did for thee but thou findest thy life when thou dost glorify him, thou dost not part from thy heart when thou givest it to Christ but he doth keep it for thee lest the serpent should steal it from thee as he stole paradise from Adam when it was in his own custody.
Old Thomas Fuller, whose life was writ in 1661, and of whom his biographer says that to him religion, piety, virtue and super-eminent learning were ever acceptable, placed Master Henry Smith in his list of Worthies of England but his notice of him there is very brief for says he, I refer the reader to his life writ by me at large and preposed to his printed sermons. To this life therefore we must go for all the information now to be gathered of the preacher who was commonly called silver tongued Smith, an epithet old Fuller takes care to impress by its repetition.
Walking up the Strand just lately, we stopped to look at St Clement's Danes whose nearness unto Temple bar every one knoweth and thought how seldom that great tidal wave of men and women whose noise is as the noise of many waters, that daily, aye hourly, rushes and roars through that one happily preserved gate of the city, all intent upon the grand business of this brief life and time ever glances at the now elaborate tower of the old church or ever realises the congregation that two hundred and sixty years ago crowded that famous sanctuary.
There would be seen, devout and attentive, the observed of all observers, that great and honourable man, William Cecil Lord Burleigh prime minister and treasurer of England, the envied of noble lords and the admired of noble ladies but ever the steadfast friend of the severely puritanical but tenderly compassionate and ever piously humorous preacher of that crowded church, knights of different orders and of chivalrous fame, gentlewomen ruffed and jewelled, whom our preacher describes as often dressed with ruff upon ruff, lace upon lace, cut upon cut, four and twentyorders until the woman be not as precious as her apparel, stout and wealthy citizens of that fair city wherein we dwell and which hath more prophets crying at once in her streets than were ever in the city of Jerusalem, prentice boys of different companies all hushed and devout as the preacher charms them with his eloquence or terrifies them with his faithful denunciations of the sins of the times.
After many weary and fruitless searches for the aforesaid Life of Smith with his portrait we at last succeeded in the library of Zion College, Cripplegate, in obtaining a copy but alas without the portrait for on the fly leaf was written and we hold up the fact referred to with intense disgust at such sacrilege "The portrait has been stolen out of this book". Oh you Englishman that did that dirty trick may the ghost of Henry Smith be your perpetual torment. The expected life is not writ so large as to forbid its quotation almost entire and as a good and perhaps new illustration of the racy pen, our favourite Fuller, we make no apology for transferring it to our pages. ....
Most of the life by Fuller then appears.
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