coiled from them when he found how far they drifted from the devout Evangelicalism of Schleiermacher. Dante appeals to him, Goethe does not. He is deeply read in the Fathers, a taste which he acquired under the influence of his Tractarian tempters. The theater has played no part in his education. The only play he has witnessed was the morality "Everyman; Everyman;" but although he is a friend of Mr. Beerbohm Tree, he has not, up to the moment of writing, wit nessed the performance of "Resurrection." In religion, it is not very difficult to place him. is a Broad Church Evangelical, with a dash of mysticism and a spice of Puseyism. His Evangelicalism is very fervent, his rationalism is tempered by prudence. Speaking to a recent interviewer about his views as to the higher criticism, he is reported to have said:

He

I

I lean to the way of the higher critics generally, but I go very cautiously; that is quite a different thing from always preaching their way. If I have to tell the truth about a text, I must say what the accepted criticism says about it, but I don't dwell there by any means. don't think it is the part of preaching to hold a brief either for or against the higher criticism. The preacher must keep an open mind. As Ruskin says in his "Modern Painters," the preacher is a commentator upon infinity.

When he accepted the call to the empty little church in Union Street, Brighton, few ventured to anticipate that he would make his mark so suddenly and so decisively. Brighton is not exactly the choicest forcing-house of ministerial reputations. Union Street Chapel was almost deserted. The larger Congregational church in Queen Square, where Paxton Hood had previously ministered, was shut up. Nonconformity in London-sur-Mer had seldom been at a lower ebb when, in 1895, Mr. Campbell began to preach. In a single year he had wrought a wondrous change. He first filled Union Street Church, and then, finding it impossible to ac commodate the crowds who flocked to hear him, he migrated to Queen's Square. His fame was soon established as that of the Nonconformist Robertson of Brighton. His church was filled every Sunday. It became the rage to hear Campbell. But it was no mere passing fashion. He kept it up year after year. Robertson Nicoll advertised him more suo in the British Weekly, and the fame of the new Robertson spread throughout the land.

Dr.

When Dr. Parker entered the incline that leads to the Valley of the Shadow of Death, he requested Mr. Campbell to take the Thursday noonday service at the City Temple. Mr. Campbell complied with his request, and it soon became manifest that the charm which had worked such

wonders at Brighton was still more potent in the City. The crowds which blocked the aisles and choked all the standing space in the City Temple far exceeded those which attended the ministry of Dr. Parker. Hence, it was inevitable that when Dr. Parker passed away Campbell of Brighton would be called to the vacant pulpit.

What is the secret by which, by what the apostle called the foolishness of preaching, Mr. Campbell is able not merely to attract but to command the enthusiastic allegiance of vast multitudes of men and women who are usually impervious to pulpit oratory? Mr. Campbell makes no pretense to oratorical effect. His predecessor was a natural-born actor, who made his pulpit a stage from which he moved his hearers by turns to laughter or to tears. Mr. Campbell is slim and slight and slender. His personal appear ance is almost boyish. Yet he holds and thrills his audiences wherever he goes.

It is evident at first sight that Mr. Campbell is eminently magnetic. There is an unconscious hypnotism in his preaching to which men yield without a struggle. The power is largely in his mild and lustrous eye, but it is aided by a musical and flexible voice. His manner is natural, his delivery almost colloquial, as that of a man who is thinking aloud and all the while feeling for the soul of his hearers. And his hearers feel the grip of him and respond.

Mr. Campbell somewhat resembles Canon Liddon in one respect. He is a man who is accustomed to dealing with the souls and consciences of living men. He is not only a preacher, he is a spiritual director. Being a Congregationalist, he will not establish a confessional in the City Temple, but his vestry and his letter-box are no bad substitutes. He is very simple and direct in his utterances, whether to the congregation or to the individual.

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No small part of his power as a preacher is because he is human, full of sympathy born of a wide and varied experience. In this he resem Henry Ward Beecher more than any preacher of our time. There is no wall of parch ment or of ecclesiasticism to bar him off from the humblest and meanest and wickedest of human beings. He neither smokes nor drinks; but he rides and he golfs, he touches the ordinary life of ordinary men on many sides. There is in him something, but not much, of the man of the world; there is also something, and not a little, of a little child. He is in no sense a Brahman. His Tractarianism has not tainted him with any of that insufferable "side" that is the bane of so many Anglicans. He is a human man, and withal one who loves his fellow-men,

not down nor up, but on the level of their common life.

In estimating the sources of his strength, it would be absurd to ignore the nature of his message. When he announced, on March 12, that from that day he was minister of the City Temple, he assured his crowded congregation that he would have but one theme-Christ and Him crucified. He pledged himself never to preach anything that he had not felt in his own experience to be true. In the sermon which fol. lowed, he spoke on the humanity of God in terms which showed how true was his own definition of his religious position, that of a Liberal Christianity with an Evangel-a message of good news from God to man.

Yet with all his exalted and impassioned devotion to the mystical side of religion, he is full of a fine and subtle humor which often sends a ripple of mirth over a sea of upturned faces which but a few minutes before had been thrilled with reverence and with awe.

Mr. Campbell is passionately alive to the importance of those secular means of grace which are supplied by the municipal and political affairs of the nation. Few things are more certain than that if Mr. Campbell is sent to jail for refusing to pay the new church rate he will step from prison into Parliament. "The little gray archangel," as I called him years ago at Brighton, would be a somewhat strange addition to the House of Commons. But such a new ingredient might not be without its uses in the legislature.

In politics, Mr. Campbell is an Imperialist, chastened by the bitter experience of what comes of Imperialism when it is allied with a political party with no fear of the Ten Commandments before its eyes. He is, as I have said, a member of the Committee of the Liberal League. He finds himself in strange company. He joined it in order to ingeminate peace and unity. He preaches his gospel to unwilling ears. He is a vox clamantis in deserto, a missionary in partibus infidelium.

Mr. Campbell has a unique and splendid opportunity of making the City Temple not only the metropolitan cathedral of Nonconformity, but the living center of all the forces making for righteousness in the.empire. There is no social center in London. Dean Stanley, in his time, used to make the Deanery of Westminster, on a small scale, what Mr. Campbell may make the City Temple on a scale more in proportion to the spacious times of modern democracy. If he does, the influence which he will exert will go forth to the uttermost ends of the earth, and the City Temple will become one of the most useful nerve-centers of the human race.

III. THE REV. C. SILVESTER HORNE.

Mr. Horne, who has just accepted the responsible duty of making the renovated Whitefield's Tabernacle the social center of the great district that is bisected by Tottenham Court Road, is a close friend of Mr. Campbell. He is also about the same age, being only two years his senior. They are both Oxford men, both are called to new and important Congregational churches in London in the same year, and both are passionately at one in their detestation of the new education act. They began their new pastorates together, they may go to jail together, and if so they will certainly go to Parliament together. Both men are slender of build, both are above the average height, and both men are swayed by the influence of the spirit of the age. They bid fair to be regarded as the great twin brethren of the renascence of Nonconformity.

Despite these numerous points of resemblance, in their education, their temperament, and their record, there are almost as many points of difference. Mr. Campbell, as has been remarked, was born a Free Methodist, educated as a Presbyterian, confirmed as an Episcopalian, and he went to Oxford intending to become an Anglican priest. Mr. Silvester Horne had no such multifarious spiritual adventures before he was called to the Congregational ministry. He was the son of a Congregational minister, and the grandson of one of the leading Congregational laymen of last century. He was born a Congregationalist, educated as a Congregationalist, and ordained as a Congregational minister without once straying from the Congregationalist path. Mr. Campbell is a Scotchman, born in London and reared in Ireland. Mr. Horne is English through and through. He was born in Sussex, educated in Shropshire, and after graduating at Glasgow University he returned to England and spent three years at Mansfield College before he was called to his first charge in Kensington. spiritual fathers were Congregationalists. Dr. Dale of Birmingham and Dr. Fairbairn of Mansfield were to him what Bishops Paget and Gore were to Mr. Campbell.

His

Perhaps on account of this consistent uniformity in his upbringing, Mr. Silvester Horne remained proof against the contagious delirium to which Mr. Campbell succumbed in 1900. Mr. Campbell has never quite emancipated himself from the baleful spirit of ascendency which permeates the Orange atmosphere in which his boyhood was passed. Mr. Horne was shielded, from the cradle upward, from the pestilential malaria of race-domination. Hence, when Mr. Campbell became Jingo, Mr. Horne was from the outbreak

of the war to its close a stout, uncompromising pro-Boer. He was a "Stop-the-war" man who bore testimony clear, unterrified, and unflinching to the policy of justice, of righteousness, and of peace. There were many Liberals who publicly denounced the war but who shrank from proposing to end it until the Boers had been crushed, alleging that such a policy was good for Sundays but impossible on week-days. To Mr. Horne, such a phrase carried its own condemnation. The policy which was good for Sundays was one which ought to be acted upon all the

days of the week. There is therefore no stain on Mr. Horne's escutcheon. The crucial test found him flawless.

Mr. Horne began to preach when a mere lad. He learned the art of persuasive speech by addressing Shropshire rustics, and acquired a mastery of simple, direct eloquence in preaching to congregations which were often only numbered by tens. But his talent was so unmistakable that it was soon recognized that the ministry was his natural vocation. He went to Glasgow, where his energy and his enthusiasm marked him out as a natural leader of men. At the university, he was a fervid politician, a diligent student, and a strenuous and consistent Christian. Dr. Paton, of Nottingham, encouraged his youthful ambition. "Don't be content with a donkey cart," said the fatherly principal of the Nottingham Congregational Institute; "aim for a coach and four." At Whitefield's Tabernacle he is now on the box seat. In those early days he was permitted to enjoy the great privilege of close intimacy with Dr. Dale of Birmingham, whose example and whose influence left a deep impress upon his character.

After leaving Glasgow, he went to Oxford, where he became the close friend and companion of Mr. Campbell. For three years he studied and worked at Mansfield College under the stimulating direction of Dr. Fairbairn. It was while he was still in his novitiate at Mansfield that he was called to the pastorate of Kensington Congregational Church, which for a century and more had been one of the most famous meeting-places of the Independents in western London. The church was not exactly to his liking. Mr. Horne, being born and bred a democrat, craved rather a sphere in which he would have been brought face to face with the working classes. But as the call was pressing, he accepted it, and the result justified his decision.

tor.

Kensington was his first and up till now his only church. That he is leaving it this year is due to no dissatisfaction on the part of the congregation, no restlessness on the part of the pasA new sphere in which he might have an opportunity of realizing his early ideals has lured him from fashionable Kensington to the democratic precincts of Tottenham Court Road. Whitefield's Tabernacle, once a famous meetingplace, has of late years fallen into decay. It has been rebuilt and equipped with the appliances for institutional work among the masses of the people. The new edifice needed a new chief, and Mr. Silvester Horne was recognized as the man for the post. He was called, and he accepted the summons. In September he will take over his new duties, and with his advent a new breath

of life will stir the crowded district of which the Tabernacle is the center.

Last year, Mr. Horne was elected chairman of the London Congregational Union, an office which corresponds to that of Bishop of London as nearly as anything Congregational can correspond to Episcopal jurisdiction. At the close of his term of office, he told his church how he had endeavored to discharge the duties of the chairmanship. Twelve months, he deplored, was too short a time in which to get even a nodding acquaintance with London.

"When I have gone down to any neighborhood unknown to me," he says, "I have usually gone down early and taken a walk round the district, and made some inquiries as to the conditions of life and the position which Christian institutions occupy in the sympathy and confidence of the people. I have asked two questions everywhere: 'How much do the people care for the churches?' and 'How much do the churches care for the people?' There are perhaps more reassuring signs than one might suppose. But I think only the most prejudiced and conservative minds could remain complacent. I have finished my year with one fixed conviction,-that, in the most populous districts, a single church, unsupported, with its single minister and its starved agencies, is helpless and hopeless; and, so far as meeting the needs of the locality is concerned, it is hardly an appreciable force at all."

The lessons learned in this pastoral visitation and inspection will not be thrown away at Whitefield's Tabernacle, which will probably be better known as the Central Hall, round which will be grouped all the humanizing agencies now in operation or soon to be brought into operation in the Tottenham Court Road. What Mr. Horne tried to do for the Thomas Binney Institute will be done on a larger scale at the renovated Tabernacle. In his circular on behalf of the institute, in 1901, he said:

We are appealing to all our churches and young people's societies through the country to put us in touch with young members coming up to business life in London, and we undertake to do our best to make them welcome, to introduce them to helpful companionship, and to provide for them some home comforts and healthful interests for their evenings and for Sundays.

He has a special eye to the new-comers to London-the lonely migrants into the great city. It will not be his fault if he does not make the Central Hall a great agency for making these strangers at home in London.

Of the work which is to be undertaken at Tottenham Court Road it is impossible to speak, at present, save in the most sketchy outlines. Mr. Horne means, if he can, to make the transformed Tabernacle a living church.

As broad as is the love of God,
And wide as are the wants of man.

In Tottenham Court Road, with its great industrial barracks and its crowded cosmopolitan population, man has many wants. Mr. Horne hopes to minister to them all, to enlist a consecrated and intelligent host of workers, with the love of God in their hearts and common sense in their heads, whose aim and object will be to help every one in the district to enjoy more health, happiness, and holiness than they have at present.

In the choice of agencies, Mr. Horne will have a free hand. He is singularly free from trammeling prejudice. He told me that nothing they had done at Kensington had impressed him. more deeply than the representation of Milton's "Comus" which was given there by the young people of the church, aided by one or two members of the Elizabethan Society. If they performed "Comus" at Kensington, they may stage Everyman" at the Central Hall. The sacred drama is one of the unused resources of the Christian Church. No one who has ever visited Oberammergau can question the potency of such dramatic representations-undertaken, not by professionals, but by the people themselves-as a religious and educational force in the uplifting of humanity.

Whatever doubt there may be about the sanctified use of the stage as an accessory of the pulpit. there can be no doubt about the lawfulness of having recourse to the ministry of music. General Booth has created more players on musical instruments out of the men in the street than all

our colleges of music. Every church ought to be a college of music. The singing of hymns on Sundays to the accompaniment of the organ ought not to exhaust the use that can be made of minstrelsy and song. The Central Hall may become a nest of singing birds, with almost illimitable resources in the companies of players on instruments. Music is a universal language, much more popular than Esperanto; and the Central Hall, situated as it is in the midst of a cosmopolitan population of all nationalities, will utilize the one mode of appeal which does not presuppose a mastery of the English language.

Mr. Horne, while still a youth, found the debates of the local Mutual Improvement Society marvelously quickening to his intellect as well as an invaluable training in the art of ready and cogent speech. I shall be much disappointed if one result of his transfer to the Central Hall be not a revival of the practice of public debate on all manner of public questions. Why should the House of Commons be the only arena in London in which representatives of opposing opinions have an opportunity of meeting face to face in free and fearless debate? Conferences, real

conferences, on public questions, in which the congregation is made to feel that it is expected to do more than merely listen, are practically unknown among us. Our public services are purely hortative and devotional. There is none of that stimulating clash of mind with mind. which is the most potent method of arousing attention and provoking thought.

The Central Hall, under Mr. Horne, will be preeminently social. In its drawing-room, gossip ought to be recognized as one of the means of grace. Every church that has any life in it is a more or less unconscious matrimonial agency, and the Central Hall will be a miserable failure if it does not supply endless opportunities for the young people to make those acquaintances which ripen into marriage. Among the opportunities which such an institution should create, one of the most useful ought to be the Sunday evening At Home, in which, after the evening service, the church becomes the genial hostess.

Of the institutions more directly helpful to the poorer members of the community, the poor man's lawyer, the thrift clubs, and similar agencies which are to be found in every settlement, there will be no lack in the transformed Tabernacle. But the soul of all these institutions will be the inspiration of the preaching of Christ and Him crucified. For Mr. Horne is nothing if not a Christian preacher. As such he began; as such he will end. But his Christianity is no mere morality charged with emotion. It is the cultivation of the ideal life, that is a union of thought and zeal.

To Mr. Horne, the religious life is barren if it does not descend into the market-place, the forum, and the home. The Central Hall will be of necessity a great political center, not a center of wire-pullers, but a center pulsating like a dynamo, whose activity will bode ill for the forces of reaction and corruption alike in the municipality and in the constituency. Mr. Horne cannot understand Christian teetotalers who vote for a party to which every public-house acts as a committee-room.

The education bill revealed Mr. Horne to the country as the Congregational counterpart of the Baptist, Dr. Clifford. It was his resolute

insistence, his passionate pleading, which committed the Congregational Union, last autumn, to a policy of passive resistance to the Education Act. He is a Radical stalwart, nurtured on the pure milk of the Word, and saturated with the associations of the Free Churches of which he is the latest historian. His popular "History of the Free Churches" (J. Clarke & Co.) is, as he phrases it in his preface, the story of an unconquerable spirit dedicated to the service of an

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unconquerable ideal. It is a declaration of war to a finish against the House of Lords, that ef fective instrument against popular privilege and progress," and it demands recognition as the fundamental principle and privilege of the constitution, religious equality for all and ecclesiastical ascendency for none.

Mr. Horne is a total abstainer, but he is no superhuman ascetic. He is a human man who loves the pleasant things of life, the life in the open air, the sweet joys of domestic life, and genial intercourse with friends. And, having all these things in goodly measure, he longs to see the same blessings enjoyed by all, even the poorest and the weakest of all God's creatures. He gets on well with his fellow-creatures; he puts on no "side." He is not a professional parson. He has traveled far,-has visited Australia, and has lectured in the United States. He married the daughter of Mr. Justice CozensHardy, who has borne him several children.

The advent of two such men as Mr. Campbell and Mr. Horne as leaders at a time when the

(A conspicuous London site bought as headquarters of Wesleyan Methodism.)

death of Dr. Parker and Mr. Hugh Price Hughes deprived London Nonconformists of two of their most eloquent chiefs is an event of good omen. It coincides with the still further development of the social movement among the Wesleyans which is so encouraging a sign of the times. The purchase of Westminster Aquarium to secure a site for the new Wesleyan Church House is significant. But it does not stand alone. Not less reassuring, last month, was the laying of the foundation-stone of the new building of the Leysian Mission in North London, in which £100,000 will be well invested for the social and religious amelioration of that populous district.