XIII.
Lambkin’s Sermon.
A man not over-given to mere words, Lambkin was always also somewhat diffident of his pulpit eloquence and his sermons were therefore rare. It must not be imagined that he was one of those who rebel vainly against established usage. There was nothing in him of the blatant and destructive demagogue; no character could have been more removed from the demons who drenched the fair soil of France with such torrents of blood during the awful reign of terror.
But just as he was in politics a liberal in the truest sense (not in the narrow party definition of the word), so in the religious sphere he descried the necessity of gentle but persistent reform. “The present,” he would often say, “is inseparable from the past,” but he would add “continual modificationto suit the necessities of a changing environment is a cardinal condition of vitality.”
It was, therefore, his aim to keep the form of all existing institutions and merely to change their matter.
Thus, he was in favour of the retention of the Regius Professorship of Greek, and even voted for a heavy increase in the salary of its occupant; but he urged and finally carried the amendment by which that dignitary is at present compelled to lecture mainly on current politics. Mathematics again was a subject whose interest he discerned, however much he doubted its value as a mental discipline; he was, therefore, a supporter of the prize fellowships occasionally offered on the subject, but, in the determination of the successful candidate he would give due weight to the minutiae of dress and good manners.
It will be seen from all this that if Lambkin was essentially a modern, yet he was as essentially a wise and moderate man; cautious in action and preferring judgment to violence he would often say, “transformerplease, notreformer,” when his friends twitted him over the port with his innovations.[68]
Religion, then, which must be a matter of grave import to all, was not neglected by such a mind.
He saw that all was not lost when dogma failed, but that the great ethical side of the system could be developed in the room left by the decay of its formal character. Just as a man who has lost his fingers will sometimes grow thumbs in their place, so Lambkin foresaw that in the place of what was an atrophied function, vigorous examples of an older type might shoot up, and the organism would gain in breadth what it lost in definition. “I look forward to the time” (he would cry) “when the devotional hand of man shall be all thumbs.”
The philosophy which he thus applied to formal teaching and dogma took practical effect in the no less important matter of the sermon. He retained that form or shell, buthe raised it as on stepping-stones from its dead self to higher things; the success of many a man in this life has been due to the influence exerted by his simple words.
The particular allocution which I have chosen as the best illustration of his method was not preached in the College Chapel, but was on the contrary a University Sermon given during eight weeks. It ran as follows:
SERMON
I take for my text a beautiful but little-known passage from the Talmud:
“I will arise and gird up my lions—I mean loins—and go; yea, I will get me out of the land of my fathers which is in Ben-ramon, even unto Edom and the Valley of Kush and the cities about Laban to the uttermost ends of the earth.”
“I will arise and gird up my lions—I mean loins—and go; yea, I will get me out of the land of my fathers which is in Ben-ramon, even unto Edom and the Valley of Kush and the cities about Laban to the uttermost ends of the earth.”
There is something about foreign travel, my dear Brethren, which seems, as it were, a positive physical necessity to our eager and high-wrought generation. At specified times of the year we hunt, or debate; we attend to our affairs in the city, or weoccupy our minds with the guidance of State. The ball-room, the drawing-room, the club, each have their proper season. In our games football gives place to cricket, and the deep bay of the faithful hound yields with the advancing season to the sharp crack of the Winchester, as the grouse, the partridge, or the very kapper-capercailzie itself falls before the superior intelligence of man. One fashion also will succeed another, and in the mysterious development of the years—a development not entirely under the guidance of our human wills—the decent croquet-ball returns to lawns that had for so long been strangers to aught but the fierce agility of tennis.
So in the great procession of the times and the seasons, there comes upon us the time for travel. It is not (my dear Brethren), it is not in the winter when all is covered with a white veil of snow—or possibly transformed with the marvellous effects of thaw; it is not in the spring when the buds begin to appear in the hedges, and when the crocus studs the spacious sward in artful disorder and calculated negligence—noit is not then—the old time of Pilgrimage,[69]that our positive and enlightened era chooses for its migration.[70]
It is in the burning summer season, when the glare of the sun is almost painful to the jaded eye of the dancer, when the night is shortest and the day longest, that we fly from these inhospitable shores and green fields of England.
And whither do we fly? Is it to the cool and delicious north, to the glaciers of Greenland, or to the noble cliffs and sterling characters of Orkney? Is it to Norway? Can it be to Lapland? Some perhaps, a very few, are to be found journeying to these places in the commodious and well-appointed green boats of Mr. Wilson, of Tranby Croft. But, alas! the greater number leave the hot summer of England for the yet more torrid climes of Italy, Spain, the Levant and the Barbarycoast. Negligent of the health that is our chiefest treasure, we waste our energies in the malaria of Rome, or in Paris poison our minds with the contempt aroused by the sight of hideous foreigners.
Let me turn from this painful aspect of a question which certainly presents nobler and more useful issues. It is most to our purpose, perhaps, in a certain fashion; it is doubtless more to our purpose in many ways to consider on an occasion such as this the moral aspects of foreign travel, and chief among these I reckon those little points of mere every day practice, which are of so much greater importance than the rare and exaggerated acts to which our rude ancestors gave the name of Sins.
Consider the over-charges in hotels. The economist may explain, the utilitarian may condone such action, but if we are to make for Righteousness, we cannot pass without censure a practice which we would hardly go so far as to condemn. If there be in the sacred edifice any one of those who keep houses of entertainment upon the Continent, especially if there sit among you anyrepresentative of that class in Switzerland, I would beg him to consider deeply a matter which the fanatical clergy of his land may pardon, but which it is the duty of ours to publicly deplore.
Consider again the many examples of social and moral degradation which we meet with in our journeyings! We pass from the coarse German, to the inconstant Gaul. We fly the indifference and ribald scoffing of Milan only to fall into the sink of idolatory and superstition which men call Naples; we observe in our rapid flight the indolent Spaniard, the disgusting Slav, the uncouth Frisian and the frightful Hun. Our travels will not be without profit if they teach us to thank Heaven that our fathers preserved us from such a lot as theirs.
Again, we may consider the great advantages that we may gather as individuals from travel. We can exercise our financial ingenuity (and this is no light part of mental training) in arranging our expenses for the day. We can find in the corners of foreign cities those relics of the Past whichthe callous and degraded people of the place ignore, and which are reserved for the appreciation of a more vigorous race. In the galleries we learn the beauties of a San Mirtānoja, and the vulgar insufficiency and ostentation of a Sanzio.[71]In a thousand ways the experience of the Continent is a consolation and a support.
Fourthly, my dear brethren, we contrast our sturdy and honest crowd of tourists with the ridiculous castes and social pettiness of the ruck of foreign nations. There the peasant, the bourgeois, the noble, the priest, the politician, the soldier, seems each to live in his own world. In our happier England there are but two classes, the owners of machinery and the owners of land; and these are so subtly and happily mixed, there is present at the same time so hearty an independence and so sensible a recognition of rank, that the whole vast mass of squires and merchants mingle in an exquisite harmony, and pour like a life-giving flood over the decaying cities of Europe.
But I have said enough. I must draw toa close. The love of fame, which has been beautifully called the last infirmity of noble-minds, alone would tempt me to proceed. But I must end. I hope that those of you who go to Spain will visit the unique and interesting old town of Saragossa.
(Here Mr. Lambkin abruptly left the Pulpit.)