| | | | | | To beings of the rougher sex ~~ let us honestly confess it | ~~ one of the most charming of those ever-recurrent | surprises which the commonest incidents of the holidays | never fail to afford is the surprise of finding themselves at | church. Whatever the cause may be, whether we owe our | new access of devotion to the early breakfast and the | boredom of a bachelor morning, or to the moral compulsion | of the cunning display of prayer-books and hymnals in the | hall, or to the temptation of that chattiest and gayest of all | walks ~~ the walk to church ~~ or to an uneasy conscience | that spurs us to set a good example to the coachman, or to a | sheer impulse of courtesy to the rector, certain it is that a | week after we have been lounging at the club-window, and | wondering how all the good people get through their | Sunday morning, we find ourselves safely boxed in the | family pew, and chorusing the Family

"Amen!"

| No doubt much of our new temper springs simply from the | change of scene, and if the first week in the country were a | time for self-analysis we might amuse ourselves with | observing what a sudden simplicity of taste may be gained | simply by a rush from town. There is a pleasant irony in | being denounced | | from pulpit and platform as jaded voluptuaries, and then | finding ourselves able to trample through coppices and | plunge into cowsheds as if we had never seen a cowshed or | a coppice before. But there is more than the pleasure of | surprise in the peculiar rural development of attendance at | church. Piety brings its own reward. We find ourselves | invested with a new domestic interest, and brought into far | closer and warmer domestic relations. Mamma looks a | great deal more benignant than usual, and the girls lean on | one's arm with a more trustful confidence and a deeper | sympathy. | A new bond of family union has been found in that victory | of the pew over the club-window. But earthly pleasure is | always dashed with a little disappointment, and one drop of | bitterness lingers in the cup of joy. If only Charlie and | papa would remain awake during the sermon! They are so | good in the Psalms, so attentive through the Lessons, so | sternly responsive to each Commandment, that it is sad to | see them edging towards the comfortable corners with the | text, and fast asleep under the application. Then, too, there | is so little hope of reform, not merely because on this point | men are utterly obdurate, but because it is impossible for | their reformers even to understand their obduracy. For with | both the whole question is a pure question of sympathy. | Men sleep under sermons because the whole temper of | their minds, as they grow into a larger culture, drifts further | and further from the very notion of preaching. Inquiry, | quiet play of | | thought, a somewhat indolent appreciation of the various | sides of every subject, an appetite for novelty, a certain | shrinking from the definite, a certain pleasure in the vague | ~~ these characteristics of modern minds are hardly | characteristics of the pulpit. There are, of course, your | drawing-room spouters, who can reel off an artistic or | poetic or critical discourse of any length on the rug. But, as | a rule, men neither like to pump upon their kind nor to be | pumped upon. They like a quiet, genial talk which turns | over everything and settles nothing. They like to put their | guard up, and say nothing about their deeper thoughts or | feelings. They vote a man who airs his emotions to be as | great a bore as the man with a dogma, or the man with a | hobby. A sermon, therefore, from the very necessities of | its structure, is the very type of the sort of talk that revolts | men most. | | On the other hand, women really enjoy preaching. | Mamma's reply to the natural inquiry as to the goodness of | the sermons ~~ ~~ is something more than a | matronly snub, it is the inner conviction of woman. She | likes, not merely a talk, but a good long talk. She likes | being abused. She likes being dogmatized over and | intellectually trampled on. In fact, she has very little belief | in the intellect. But then she has an immense faith in the | heart. She lives in a world of affections and sympathies. | She has her little tale of passion | | in the past that she tells over to herself in the dusk of the | autumn evening. She believes that the world at large is | moved by those impulses of love and dislike that play so | great a part in her own. And then, too, she has her practical | house-keeping side, and likes her religion done up in neat | little parcels of

"heads"

and

"considerations" |

and

"applications,"

and handed over the | counter for immediate use. And so while papa quarrels | with the rector's forty minutes, his indiscriminate censure | of a world utterly unknown to him, his declamation against | Pusey or Colenso, or while Charlie laughs over his rhetoric | and his sentiment, woman listens a little sadly and wearily, | and longs for a golden age when husbands will love | sermons and men understand clergymen. | It is just from this theological deadlock that we are freed by | the Pretty Preacher. If the world laughs at the Reverend | Olympia Brown, it is not because she preaches, put because | she prisons herself in a pulpit. The sure evidence that | woman is to become the preacher of the future is that | woman is the only preacher men listen to. It is hard to | imagine any bribe short of the National Debt that would | have induced us to listen through the dog-days of the last | few weeks to the panting rhetoric of Mr. Spurgeon. But it | is harder to imagine the bribe that would have roused us to | flight as we lay beneath the plane-tree, and listened to the | cool ripple of the Pretty Preacher. Of course it is a mere | phase in the life of woman, a short interval between the | dawn and the night. There is an exquisite piquancy in the | raw, shy epigrams | | of the abrupt little dogmatist who is just out of her teens. | Her very want of training and science gives a novelty to her | hits that makes her formidable in the ring. No doubt, too, | as we have owned before, there is a faint and delicate | attraction about the Fading Flower of later years that at | certain times and places makes it not impossible to sit | under her. | | But the sphere of the Pretty Preacher lies really between | these extremes. She is not at war with mankind, like the | nymph of bread and butter; nor does mankind suspect her | of subtle designs in her discourse as it suspects the elder | homilist. Her talk is just as easy and graceful and natural | as herself, and, moreover, it is always in season. She never | suffers a serious reflection to interfere with the whirl of | town. She quite sees the absurdity of a sermon at a five | o'clock tea. No-one | is freer from the boredom of a long | talk when there is a chance of a boat or a ride. But there | are moments when one is too hot, or too tired, or too lazy | for chat or exertion, and such moments are the moments of | the Pretty Preacher. The first week of the holidays is | especially her own. There is a physical pleasure in doing, | thinking, saying nothing. The highest reach of human | effort consists in disentangling a skein of silk for her, or | turning over Dore's hideous sketches for the Idyls. At such | a moment there is a freshness as of cool waters in the | accents of the Pretty Preacher. She does not plunge into the | deepest themes at once. She leads her listener gently on, up | the slopes of art | | or letters or politics, to the higher peaks where her purely | dogmatic mission begins. She is artistic, and she labors to | wake the idler at her feet to higher views of beauty and art. | She points out the tinting of the distant hills, she quotes | Ruskin, she criticizes Millais. She crushes her auditor with | a sense of his ignorance, of the base unpoetic view of | things with which he lounged through the last Academy. | What she longs for in English art is nobleness of purpose, | and we smile bitter scorn in the sunshine at the ignoble | artist who suffers a thought of his butcher's bills to | penetrate into the studio. If we could only stretch the Royal | Academicians beside us on the grass, what a thrill and an | emotion would run through those elderly gentlemen as they | listened to the indignation of the Pretty Preacher. | But art shades off into literature, and literature into poetry. | We are driven into a confession that we enjoy the frivolous | articles that those horrid papers have devoted to her sex. Is | there nothing, the Pretty Preacher asks us solemnly, to be | said against our own? And the sun is hot, and we are | speechless. It was shameful of us to put down the | Spanish Gipsy, and let it return | unfinished to Mudie's! Never did rebuke so fill us with | shame at our want of imagination and of poesy. But | already the Preacher has passed to politics, and is deep in | Mr. Mill's prophecies of coming events. She is severe on | the triviality of the House, or the quarrelsome debates of | the past Session. She passes by our murmured excuse of | the weather, and dwells with a | | temperate enthusiasm on the fact that the next will be a | social Parliament. Do we know anything about the | Poor-laws or Education or Trades'-societies? Have we | subscribed to Mr. Mill's election? We plead poverty, but | the miserable plea dies away on the contemptuous air. | What our Pretty Preacher would like above all things would | be to meet that dear Mr. Shaw Lefevre, and thank him for | his efforts to protect woman. But she knows we are utterly | heretical on the subject; she doubts very much whether we | take in the Victoria Magazine. | We listen as the Tory Mayor of Birmingham listened to Mr. | Bright at his banquet. The politics are not ours, and the | literature is not ours, and the art is not ours; but it is | pleasant to lie in the sunshine and hear it all so charmingly | put by the Pretty Preacher. We own that sermons have a | little to say for themselves; above all, that the impossibility | of replying to them has its advantages in a case like this. It | would be absurd to discuss these matters with the Pretty | Preacher, but it is delightful to look up and see the kindling | little face and listen to the sermon. | It is, however, as the theologian proper, as the moralist and | divine, that we love her most. She arrives at this peak at | last. As a rule, she chooses the tritest topics, but she gives | them a novelty and grace of her own. Even Thackeray's | old "Vanity of Vanities" wakes into new life as she | dexterously couples it with the dances of the last season. | We nod our applause from the grass as she denounces the | | worthlessness and frivolity of the life we lead. If the | weather were cool enough we should at once vow, as she | exhorts us, to be earnest and great and good. Above all, let | us be noble. The Pretty Preacher is great on self-sacrifice. | She sent two of her spoilt dresses to those poor people in | the East-end, after listening to a whole sermon on their | sufferings. The congregation at her feet feels a twinge of | remorse at the thought of his inhumanity, and swears he | will put down his segars and devote the proceeds to the | emigration fund. Does he ever read Keble? There is a | slight struggle in the unconverted mind, and a faint whisper | that he now and then reads Tupper; but it is too hot to be | flippant, or to do more than swear eternal allegiance to the | Christian Year. | The evening deepens, and the sermon deepens with it. It is | one of the most disgusting points about the divine in the | pulpit that he is always boasting of himself as a man like as | we are, and of the sins he denounces as sins of his own. It | is the special charm of the fair divine above us that she is | eminently a being not as we are, but one serene, angelic, | pure. It is the very vagueness of her condemnation that | tells on us ~~ the utter ignorance of what is so familiar to | us that the vagueness betrays, the utter unskillfulness of the | hits, and the purity that makes them so unskillful. It is only | when she descends to particulars that we can turn round on | the Pretty Preacher ~~ only when a burning and | impassioned invective against Cider Cellars suddenly | softens into the plaintive inquiry, | | ! So long as the preacher keeps in the sphere of the | indefinite, we lie at her mercy, and hear the soft thunders | roll resistlessly overhead. | But then they are soft thunders. We feel almost | encouraged, like Luther, to

"sin boldly"

when the | absolving fingers brush lightly over our cousinly hair. Our | censor, too, has faith in us, in our capacity and will for | better things, and it is amazingly pleasant to have the | assurance confirmed by a squeeze from the gentle | theologian's hand. And so night comes down, and preacher | and penitent stroll pleasantly home together, and mamma | wonders where both can have been and the Pretty Preacher | lays her head on her pillow with the sweet satisfaction that | her mission is accomplished, and that a reprobate soul ~~ | the soul, too, of such a gentlemanly and agreeable | reprobate ~~ is won.