A Brief History of Life in Victorian Britain by Michael Paterson

Author:Michael Paterson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781472107671
Publisher: Robinson

Sermons

Discoursing on these matters was often a struggle for the young. Molly Hughes (or Molly Thomas, as she was at the time), whose family lived in London and attended St Paul’s cathedral rather than some mere parish church, would often talk with her brothers as they walked back to Canonbury:

The sermons were usually stiff with learning and far over our heads. After one on Solomon’s vision, I asked Barnholt on the way home whether he would have chosen wisdom if he had been Solomon. ‘Oh no,’ said he, ‘I’ve got enough of that. I should have asked for a new cricket bat.’ The rest of the walk home was spent in enlarging on the things we might have got from such a golden opportunity.13

These addresses were not necessarily given and forgotten. The notion of the ‘popular preacher’ is largely unfamiliar today, because the doings of churchmen no longer excite the same degree of interest in the public. For Victorians, a visiting preacher known to be particularly gifted could draw considerable crowds, and members of the congregation would have to go early to be sure of seats – perhaps arriving an hour or two before the service began. The same might well be true if the subject of a sermon were topical – for instance a recent disaster or a particularly interesting vice – for churchgoers would look forward to hearing the views of a trained and analytical mind. Before the arrival of television to provide mass education, the church sermon could fulfil something of this function, by providing a concise and reasoned examination of a current question, just as a documentary does today.

If a clergyman were known to be young and handsome, it could be guaranteed that the front pews would be occupied by ladies. Should his sermon prove especially memorable it might well be published, perhaps as part of a collection of his own addresses, or in a volume with those of others. The sermons of a man like Dean Stanley of Westminster sold widely and were not only read at home but even ‘recycled’ by other preachers. The celebrity achieved by a popular preacher, Anglican or otherwise, is clear in the case of the young and fiery Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the Baptist pastor whose services at his south London church attracted huge crowds. When he married in 1856, the occasion had something of the atmosphere associated in our day with media personalities, as the local newspaper demonstrated:

In point of numbers and enthusiasm it far outstripped any display which the West End is in the habit of witnessing. Shortly after eight o’clock, although the morning was damp, dark and cold, as many as five hundred ladies, in light and gay attire, besieged the doors of the chapel, accompanied by many gentlemen, members of the congregation and personal friends. From that hour, the crowd increased so rapidly that the thoroughfare was blocked up by vehicles and pedestrians and a body of the M Division of the Police had to be sent for to prevent accidents.

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