be no more." But a better voice than his mingles with the bell that more and more importunately sounds. Not by any imperious curse, but only by longsuffering, self-sacrificing love, can the world be cleansed of sin. Let us go down to the church, and hear the words of Him whose throne is still the he is gloriously manifest in this vision of N° HUGH LATIMER'S PREACHING. O one is so frequently reminded of Longfellow's line, "Books are the sepulchres of thought," as the reader of old volumes of sermons. Along the brown page of the folio, lie dead words that were once full of vitality to men-a veritable valley of dry bones-and, more frequently still, words that were never instinct with any spark of vitality whatever-mere broken stones. Prominent among exceptional instances are the words of Hugh Latimer. In the homiletic valley his sermons are like a well of living water. Every sentence of Latimer's preaching is animated by the pulsations of a human heart and the breath of a Divine Spirit, and these old sermons, like our old poems, glow with quenchless vitality. Socrates, this practical philosopher of the pulpit read the book of common life, and pressed into the illustration of truth whatever fact or usage seemed most likely to be suggestive to his hearers. With no approach to egotism, Latimer's sermons are full of himself. "In my time," he says, "my poor father was as diligent to teach me to shoot as any other thing. He taught me how to lay my body in the bow, and not to draw with strength of arms, as other nations do, but with strength of body lesson in archery which was never forgotten. The whole weight of Latimer's manhood was in the bow to the end of life's earnest warfare. Dry, impersonal disquisition on moral and religious themes is not to be found in Latimer, but truth only as it had woven itself in the loom of his own experience. In his sentences the pronoun "I" starts up as frequently and as vividly as in the verses of a Pauline epistle. The stories of Latimer's parentage and early life, of his conversion when he "was as obstinate a papist as any in England," of interesting circumstances in his persecutions and adventures, are all brought into the pulpit. Here is an example of a pleasant autobiographical prattle : Though Latimer "knew that the preaching of the gospel would cost him his life," he was no dreary memento mori, but a man in deep sympathy with "the life that now is," and always fresh and cheery as boyhood itself. Merry wit played like an illumination on all the themes of his pulpit. The boldest, he was also the brightest, of preachers. Though master of every oratorical weapon, Latimer was merely a great and earnest talker, who addressed his hearers with the genial confidence of a man encircled by My father was a yeoman, and had no companions. In personal character, in lan- lands of his own, only he had a farm of three guage and sentiment, and in all the colour- or four pounds a year at the uttermost; and ing of his discourse, Latimer was emphati- thereupon he tilled so much land as kept cally an Englishman. His disdain of sub- half-a-dozen men. He had walk for a huntlety and speculation, his plain sense and dred sheep, and my mother milked thirty clear expression, his good - humour and kine. He was able and did find the king a shrewdness, the straightforwardness and prac- harness, with himself and his horse, until he ticability of his aim, and his dogged, cheerful came to the place where he should receive courage, all bespeak him "entirely English." the king's wages. I can remember that I Through his sermons, as through a window, buckled his harness when he went to Blackappear the common phases of fifteenth-cen-heath field. He kept me to school, or else I tury life in England, as in quaint variety it had not been able to preach before the lay around the preacher-for Latimer "held | king's majesty now." the mirror up to nature" and showed his contemporaries their own natural face. Like No affectation of dignity restrained Latimer's freedom. In one sermon he merrily tells the story of a woman who went to the Church of St. Thomas of Acres "because she could get no sleep in any other place." Preaching on having your loins girt about with truth," he makes sport of the rope girdles of the monks," as if the devil's head could be broken with knotted cords." Bell-ringing for the scaring away of evil spirits is quaintly ridiculed by imagining the fiend's perplexity if all the church-bells in England should be rung at a certain hour, for I think there would be almost no place but some bells might be heard there.' Free enough from such condescensions are many of the old homilies. One is now lying before us addressed "to eight malefactors in Newgate,” by way of preparing them for public execution a discourse wherein the preacher quotes Greek on the first page, and then proceeds with a series of similar crimes against the souls of ignorant men. Latimer is always at the extreme distance from such danger. "His similes," says Bishop Burnet, were often most unsavoury." Take, for illustration of this, the following, in which Latimer is pouring contempt on the compromises of an incomplete reformation : "Germany was visited for twenty years with God's Word; but they did not earnestly embrace it, but made a mingle-mangle and a hotchpotch of it-I cannot tell what-partly Popery, partly true religion mingled together. In my country, when they call their hogs to the swine-trough, they say, 'Come to thy mingle-mangle!' Even so they made a mingle-mangle of it." Religion, rather than theology, is always Latimer's theme, and religion in its practical moral bearings. For speculative error, for learned and popular superstition, he has bitter and amusing ridicule; but Latimer's strength is always directed against the bold misdoings of his time. Hence, for example, "restitution " is a common subject of his discourse. This is Latimer's plain statement of the doctrine :-" If thou wilt not make restitution, thou shalt go to the devil for it." And here, again, is his application of the matter to the farmers of the day :-"I know that some husbandmen go to market with a quarter of corn. Now they would fain sell dear the worst as well as the best; therefore they use this policy:-They go and put a strike of fine malt or corn in the bottom of the sack, then two strikes of the worst, then a good strike aloft at the sack's mouth, and so they come to market. There cometh a buyer asking, Sir, is this good malt?' 'I warrant you,' saith he, 'there is none better in this town.' And so he selleth all his malt or corn for the best. The man taketh this for a policy, but it is theft afore God, and he is bound to make restitution of so much as these two strikes. So much he ought to restore, or else he shall never come to heaven, if God be true to His word.” In the same circumstantial manner Latimer describes fraudulent practices among the cattle-dealers. This common-sense apostle for ever takes up his parable less against the misthought than against the misdoing of the hour. He follows English life to the places of its traffic and its labour, and also to the scenes of its recreation, in order that he may hold up to reprobation all its unworthy aspects. As a check upon the coarse lasciviousness with which viousness with which an indolent people were corrupting themselves "indoors,” and ¦ as a remedy for the declining vigour of the national character, Latimer pleads for the revival of Old English outdoor pastimes, especially "archery, whereby God hath given to this country so many and so great victories." Like all great preachers, from the Great Teacher Himself downwards, Latimer was a man of the people." Born of their number he lived for their well-being, making himself great by becoming the servant of all. The following passage, in a sermon before the court, tells its own story of the preacher's sympathy with the masses, and of the confidence this sympathy won for him. The evil referred to by the preacher is the delay of public justice to the poor. "I cannot go to my book for poor folk coming to me desiring that their matters may be heard. I am no sooner in the garden, and have read awhile, but by-and-by cometh some one, and knocketh at the gate. Anon cometh my man and saith, Sir, there is one at the gate would speak with you.' When I come it is some one or other that desireth me to speak that his matters may be heard. I beseech your Grace that ye will see to these matters.' Is not that a pleasant picture of the hale old prelate, wandering book in hand in the sunshine along the box-edged alleys of his garden, garden, "counting no time his own," and unable "to get on with his book" for poor complainants, to whom the good man never denies his ear? Not," he explains, "that I am so full of foolish pity but that I know many complain without cause." Latimer was not afraid of personalities in these exposures of injustice. When he wished to "tell of" a case of flagrant injustice it required no cunning guess to discover who was the delinquent in question. After a sermon before the king he would proceed from the pulpit to the royal gallery, to supplicate the monarch in favour of some obscure suitor, and on more than one occasion the successful preacher rode away with a royal warrant in the interest of the poor man or woman whom he had undertaken to befriend. Spiritual wickedness in high places was a very common mark at which the archer bent his bow, as usual "putting his whole body into it." Hear him on the sin of simony. Sermon on the Plough. "I will ask you a strange question-Who is the most diligent bishop and prelate in all England, that I passeth all the rest in doing his office? will tell you. It is the devil. You will He never find him out of his diocese. keepeth residence at all times. The prelates of England are lords, not labourers. Among all the pack of them that have cure the devil shall go for my money." Respecting the diversion of religious teachers from their proper function Latimer asks "Should we have ministers of the Church to be comptrollers of the mint? Is that a meet office for a priest that hath the cure of souls? I would fain know who comptrolleh the devil at home at his parish while he comptrolleth the mint? Let the priest preach and the noblemen handle the temporal matters." In Latimer's condemnation the twin companion of the "unpreaching prelate" is the "bribing judge." "There was a patron in England that had a benefice fallen into his hand, and a good brother of mine brought thirty apples in a dish and gave them his man to carry to his master. This man cometh to his master and saith, 'Sir, such a man hath sent you a dish of fruit and desireth you to be good to him for such a benefice.' 'Tush,' quoth he, 'this is no apple matter. I have as good as these in mine own orchard!' 'Then,' quoth the priest, 'desire him to prove one for my sake, With the parable of the unjust judge before he shall find them much better than they him, the preacher asks, "What meaneth this, look!' He cut one, and found in it ten that God borroweth this parable rather from pieces of gold. 'Marry,' quoth he, this is aa wicked judge than a good? Belike good good apple.' The priest, standing not far judges were rare at that time, and trow ye off, hearing what the gentleman said, cried, that the devil hath been asleep ever since? "They are all the same apples, I warrant you, I tell you, my lords judges, if ye will consider sir; they all grew on one tree and have one this matter well, ye should be more afraid of taste.' 'Well, he is a good fellow,' quoth the the poor widow than of the nobleman with patron, 'let him have the benefice.' "Get all his friends and power. But nowadays you a graft of this tree," continues Latimer, the judges are afraid to hear a poor man "and I warrant you it shall stand you in against the rich, insomuch that they will better stead than all St. Paul's learning." either pronounce against him, or so drive the poor man's suit that he shall not be able to go through with it. I wish that of such a judge in England now we might have the skin hanged up. It were a goodly sign, the sign of the judge's skin. It should be a Lot's wife to all judges that follow after." "Unpreaching prelates!" is a frequent cry in Latimer's pulpit. For in many instances the Church was a mere source of revenue to indolent and incapable men, who were guilty of undisguised contempt or carelessness of duty. What words Latimer has for these men! Sometimes his indignation bursts forth in a contemptuous nickname, as "Bishops! nay, buzzards!" In one sermon he tells the story of a bishop who could not be rung into the town because the bell-clapper was broken, at which the bishop was much offended. Among the parishioners was a man equal to the emergency, "and he comes me to the bishop, and saith, 'Why doth your lordship make so great a matter of the bell that lacketh his clapper? Here is a bell,' said he, pointing to the pulpit, that hath lacked a clapper these twenty years. We have a parson who getteth fifty pounds a year out of this benefice, yet we never see him.” With grim humour Latimer continues his attack on the same evil in his celebrated In the following ridiculous story Latimer holds up this plague of English justice to popular contempt. "A good fellow on a time bade a friend to breakfast, and said, 'If you will come you shall be welcome, but I tell you beforehand you shall have slender fare-one dish, and that is all.' 'What is that?' said he. 'A pudding and nothing else.' 'Marry,' said he, you cannot please me better, of all the meats that is for mine own tooth; you may draw me round the town with a pudding.' These bribing magistrates and judges follow gifts faster than the fellow would follow the pudding." Beyond anything that is necessary or possible in these days of journalism, the Chris hearer. 'Every man must labour. Yea, though he be a king yet must he labour, for I know of no man who hath greater labour than a king. What is his labour? To study God's Book; to see that there be no unpreaching prelates in his realm, nor bribing judges; to see to all estates, to provide for the poor, to see food good and cheap. Is not this a labour, trow ye? Thus if thou dost labour, exercising the works of thy vocation, thou eatest the meat that God sends thee, and then it follows that thou art a blessed man in God's favour, and it shall be well with thee in body and soul, for God provides for both. How shalt thou provide for thy soul? Go hear sermons. How for thy body? Labour in thy vocation, and then it shall be well with thee both here and in the world to come." tian pulpit of Latimer's time exercised censor- to a king" may be gathered from the closing ship of the whole range of national life. The paragraph of his sixth sermon to the royal pulpit was the one public voice, and the preacher filled the office of Reviewer-General. With pre-eminent power and consistency Latimer sustained that character, and his sermons are invaluable aids to the study of the period during which they were preached. The yeoman's son, and the king's preacherhe touched both extremes of society, and remained through all his varying fortunes the patient and daring champion of the people. "He had compassion on the multitude." This reality of interest in his fellows was the secret of Latimer's unprecedented popularity, and the cause of deep enmity among the classes whom he assailed. Complaints of the seditious tendency of his words were very common. Among his many allusions to these accusations the most characteristic is in a sermon before the court. "I have offended God, grievously transgressing His laws; and but for His remedy and His mercy I would not look to be saved. But as for sedition, for aught I know, methinks I should not need Christ, if I might so say; for if I be clear in anything, I am clear in this." The following quotations, which suggest in one instance the spontaneousness, and in the other the directness of Latimer's ministry, shall close these illustrations. "I coming riding in my way," he says, in a sermon at Hampton Court, "and calling to remembrance wherefore I was sent, that I must preach, and preach before the king's majesty, I thought it meet to frame my preaching according to a king." And what Latimer understood by framing his preaching "according Venerable beyond description must have been the spectacle of this honest, brave, muchsuffering prelate as he stood prophet-like to declare the Word of the Lord." In his latter days he knew full well that "Smithfield groaned for him," yet with rugged manfulness he spoke on his message, resolved to stand thereto to the fire." His sermons were battles for a new and brighter England. Once, through coward fear of death, he wavered from uprightness, silencing his conscience to save his life. But what man could do to efface the stain he did, and Latimer's voice spoke its last in the heroic and immortal saying, "Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man: we shall this day, by the grace of God, light such a candle in England as, I trust, shall never be put out." |