Final extract from The Monthly Christian Spectator 1858

Here is another extract, thoroughly Shakespearian. Who will not recall as they read it the oft quoted phrase 'All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players' but Master Henry Smith has a moral that is wanting if not ignored in Shakespere. The sermon is entitled The Magistrates Scripture and the text is I said ye are gods &c Psalm lxxxii 6 7 The sermon itself is marvellously faithful. We have only to remember the character of his audience and of his times to justify this strong expression. After a long exposition of the idea and function of a magistrate, this young but fearless preacher adds and his words fell on the ears of many that bore the sword.

Call us no more bishops or pastors or doctors or preachers but call us robbers and sleepers and giants and Pharisees whom we succeed. For why should they be called bishops who do not watch or pastors who do not feed or doctors who do not teach or justices who do not justice except this be the reason the idols were called gods though they were unlike God. If their bodies had grown as far out of square since Christ's ascension as their titles, pomp and honour have, they might stand in the main seas and not be drowned for their heads would crow out of the water.

But the passage to which we refer is the following. It is the peroration of the discourse and evidently finished with elaborate care and no doubt delivered with great effect We make no apology for its length.

Who would have thought that Jezebel. that beautiful temptation, should have been gnawed with dogs. Yet was she cast unto dogs and not an ear left to season the grave. What would he think that had seen Solomon in his royalty and after seen him in the clay? Oh world unworthy to be beloved, who hath made this proud slaughter? Age, sickness and death, the three great sumners, which have no respect of persons made them pay the ransom themselves and bow to the carth from whence they came there lie the men that were called gods. How soon the flower of this world is faded. Yesterday, the tallest cedar in Libanus, today like a broken stick, trodden under foot. Yesterday, the state lived upon earth; today, shrouded in earth, forsaken, forgotten, so that the poorest wretch would not be like unto him who yesterday crouched and bowed to his knees. Then woe to them which had the name of God but the sins of men for the mighty shall be mightily tormented. All their friends and subjects and servants forsake them because they go to prison to try the mercy of hell and to take what the spirits of darkness will heap upon them. Where are they who founded this goodly city, who possessed these fair houses, who walked these pleasant fields, who crected these stately temples, who kneeled in these seats and who preached out of this place but thirty years ago? Is not earth turned to earth? And shall not our sun set like theirs, when the night comes? Yet we cannot believe that death will find out us, as he hath found out them. Though all men die yet every man dreams I shall escape or at least I shall live till I be old. This is strange. Men cannot think that God will do again that which he doeth daily or that he will deal with them as he deals with others. Tell one of us that all other shall die, we believe it. Tell one of us that we shall die and we believe it sooner of all than of one, though we be sore, though we be weak, though we be sick, though we be elder than those whom we follow to the ground. So they thought which lie in this mould under your feet. If wisdom or riches or favour should have entreated death, those who have lived before us would have kept our possessions from us but death would take no bail. We are all tenants at will and we must leave this cottage whensoever the Landlord will put another in our room at a year's, at a month's, at a week's, at a day's, at an hour's warning or even less. The clothes which we wear upon our backs, the graves which are under our feet, the sun which sets over our heads and the meats which go into our mouths do cry unto us that we shall wear and set and die like the beasts and fowls and fishes which are now in our dishes and but even now were living in the elements. Our fathers have summoned us and we must summon our children to the grave. Everything, every day, suffers some eclipse. Nothing standeth at a stay but one creature calleth unto another, Let us leave this world. While we play our pageants upon this stage of short continuance, every man hath a part, some longer and some shorter and while the actors are at it, suddenly Death steps upon the stage like a hawk which doth separate one of the doves from the flight and so he shoots his dart and where it lights there falls one of the actors dead before them and makes all the rest aghast and they muse and mourn and bury him and then to the sport again. While they sing and play and dance Death comes and strikes another. There he lies and they mourn him and bury him as they did the former and then to their play again so one after another till the players be vanished like the accusers who came before Christ and death is the last upon the stage and so the fashion of this world passeth away. And therefore that we may be all like gods hereafter let us prepare before the account for none are in heaven but they that left the world before it left them.

A specimen of purer Saxon than the above it would be difficult to find, while the figure of death being last on the stage is worthy of any of our dramatic writers, Master Henry Smith may not be a great thinker or a profound divine but that he was a most earnest and godly preacher none who have read his sermons can for a moment doubt. We believe that the same kind of intensely practical preching (and this has impressed itself greatly on our minds while reading this volume and remembering the age of theological schiomachy in which it was written) would again fill our emptying places of worship, and again restore the pulpit to its rightful and legitimate monarchy over man's crowd governed soul and to its holy guidance through and safe victory over the temptations and struggles, the perils and sorrows, of this actual world in which and not in transcendental land, we live, move and have our being. With but little comment we will give a few more extracts next month, hoping thus we shall make an acceptable contribution to our theological literature but hoping more that we shall promote, by strengthening, our readers spiritual culture.

More from The Monthly Christian Spectator 1858

... But we are lingering on the threshold. As we have little to do but to quote let us proceed. Our next extract shall be from the Christian's Sacrifice in the course of which he says

Christ doth not bid them woe because they were Pharisees as we are not but because they were hypocrites as we are. God delights himself in giving and therefore he loveth a cheerful giver but he cannot give cheerfully which gives not his heart. Therefore, as Judas thought the oil spent which was poured upon Christ and wished the price of it in his purse so they grouch and grieve when they should do good and think, shall I give it, shall I spare it, what will it bring? So the good work dieth in the birth like the bird which droopeth in the hand while the head considers whether he shall let her go or hold her still. As easy to wring Hercules club out of his fist as to wring a penitent tear from their eyes, a faithful prayer from their lips or a good thought from their heart which cannot afford the heart itself. All is too much which they do and they think God more beholding to them for blurting out a Pater Noster or staying a sermon or fasting a Friday than they do for all his benefits and when they have done what is their reward? Woe be unto you like the Scribes and Pharisees because you give not your hearts but your mouths, therefore we do but vex ourselves and lose our labour thinking to make God believe that we pray when indeed our lips do but pray whereby it comes to pass, as we serve him so he serveth us. Our peace is not in deed but in word. Our joy is not in the heart but in the countenance, a false comfort like our false worship for he which giveth God his lips instead of his heart teacheth God to give him stones instead of bread, that is, a shadow of comfort for comfort itselfe.

We call this, and we are sure our readers will, good old English with the ring of the true metal in it, manifesting great power mingled with tenderness and the result of thoughtful preparation with devout fidelity. Here is another passage from the same discourse

Thus ye have heard what God requires for all that he hath given you and how all your services are lost until you bring your heart. What shall I wish you now before my departure? I wish you would give all your hearts to God while I speak that ye might have a kingdom for them. Send for your hearts where they are wandering, one from the bank, another from the tavern, another from the shop, another from the theatre. Call them home and give them all to God and see how he will welcome thein as the father embraceth his son. If your hearts were with God, durst the devil fetch them? Durst those sins come at them? Even as Dinah was defloured when she strayed from home so is the heart when it strayeth from God. Therefore, call thy members together and let them fast like a quest of twelve men until they consent upon the law before any more terms pass to give God his right and let him take your heart which he wooeth, which he would marry, which he would endow with all his goods and make it the heir of the crown. When you pray, let your heart pray; when you hear let your heart hear; when you give, let your heart give; whatsoever you do, set the heart to do it and if it be not so perfect as it should or ought to be, yet it shall be accepted for the friend that gives it.

In another sermon, on The True Trial of the Spirits after speaking of the ministry which is now so despised that from the merchant to the porter there is no calling so derided so that one saith Moses is Quis, that is the magistrate is somebody but Aaron is Quasi quis, that is the minister is nobody. He adds, in words that we fear will be little heeded though greatly needed even in some of our cleverly progressive congregations.

There is a kind of preachers risen up of late which shroud and cover every rustical and unsavoury and childish and absurd sermon under the name of the simple kind of preaching like the popish priests which make ignorance the mother of devotion. But indeed to preach simply is not to preach rudely (hear, hear) nor unlearnedly nor confusedly but to preach plainly and perspicuously that the simplest man may understand what is taught as if he did hear his name. Therefore, if you will know what makes many preachers preach so barely and loosely and simply it is your own simplicity which makes them think so as they go on and say something, all is one and no fault will be found because you are not able to judge in or out and so it is come to pass that in a whole sermon the hearer cannot pick out one note more than he could gather him self.

We give the above for the benefit of those who have one string and only one to their bow and that string is the simple gospel. Had they lived two hundred years ago they would have put Master Henry Smith out of the synagogue and that quickly while the British Standard of that day would have tabooed him as a negative theologian. Happily Smith is dead and gone to heaven and there we hope all these vexatious but mistaken souls will also find their way in due time.

Also from The Monthly Christian Spectator 1858

After the life by Fuller WGB continues with

That's the life of Master Henry Smith, the once famous preacher in St Clement's Danes. It does not run to seed in three painful volumes. We are not told when he rose in the morning nor how he thought upon his thoughts or felt about his feelings. Not a word is said of what he had for breakfast or dinner or whether he was a vegetarian or any other arian. Not a word about how he slept at night or what kind of an establishment he kept up. Not a word about anything that could by its narration serve first the paper and then the trunk makers. We are wiser in this biographical nineteenth century. We love to know all the particulars of the ins and outs of Brown, Jones and Robinson. Who would read a biography that did not extend to three volumes, two of which contain the diary and the other the interesting remarks of the biographer and perhaps his portrait? Who would care to read a pious life if it were not served up with little titbits of gossip, small talk and scandal by way of relief to over much devotion? We cannot help feeling a profound conviction of old Fuller's inferiority to the mass of amateur biographers of the present day in thus, by some hydraulic or other pressure, squeezing poor old Master Henry Smith's life who was but one metal below Chrysostom himself into the shabby and shallow proportions of three pages. This is what Fuller calls his life writ by me at large.

The first sermon is entitled a Preparative to Marriage in which we find quaint and good things which Matthew Henry did not despise, as any one may see who looks at his commentary on the making of woman or dust double refined as he calls her. From this sermon we need not quote more than a bit or two. Our ears are too polite to listen to this homely discourse which created quite a sensation amongst many noble gentlewomen who had but hitherto discharged only a moiety of their duty as mothers. Speaking for instance of the duty of a husband to correct his wife he says

As we do not handle glasses like pots because they are weaker vessels but touch them nicely and softly for fear of cracks, so a man must intreat his wife with gentleness and softness, not expecting that wisdom nor that faith nor that patience nor that strength in the weaker vessel which should be in the stronger but think when he takes a wife, he takes a vineyard and not grapes but a vineyard to bear him grapes. So he must not think to find a wife without a fault for all are defectives but as in space cometh grace so shall he rejoice when his vineyard beginneth to fructify. But this is far from civil wars, between man and wife in all his offices is found no office to fight. If a man cannot reform his wife without beating her he is worthy to be beaten for choosing no better. ... Her cheeks were made for thy lips not for thy fists.

Again, 'If a man wants a bad wife, he were best go to hell a wooing that he may have choice' was a plain way of putting a great truth, perhaps not wholly needless in our days. Of some women he says

As David exalteth the love of women above all other loves so Solomon mounteth the envy of women above all other envies, stubborn, sullen, taunting, gainsaying, outfacing with such a bitter humour one would think they were molten out of the salt pillar into whch Lot's wife was transformed. This is the folly also of some men to lay all their pride upon their wives they care not how they sloven themselves so their wives can jet like peacocks. Women do now some of them cover themselves with pride like Satan who is fallen down before them ruff upon ruff, lace upon lace, cut upon cut, four and twenty orders until the woman be not so precious as her apparel so that if any man would picture vanity he must take a pattern of a woman or he shall not draw her likeness. Whoever hath such a wife hath a fine plague.

Married life then appears to have been like married life now, little hitches and humours and petulances now and then. And so says Master Henry Smith.

A child is the real wedding ring that sealeth and maketh up the marriage. For when their father and mother fall out out, they perk up between them like little mediators and with many pretty sports make truce when others dare not speak to them.

Finally he adds and he shows there is nothing new in this department of duty and discipline under the sun.

The allurements of beauty, the trouble about riches, the charges of children, the losses by servants, the unquietnesse of neighbours cry unto him that is married that he hath entered into the hardest vocation of all other and therefore they who have but nine years to make them good mercers or drapers have nineteen years before marriage to learn to be good husbands and wives as though it were a trade of nothing but mysteries and had need of double time over all the rest.

From The Monthly Christian Spectator 1858

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.