Part 26

He urged them not to mind gossips, "who drink tea and talk vitriol;" and "to opinions and remarks about yourself turn also, as a general rule, the blind eye and the deaf ear."

Of Mr. Spurgeon's most popular books, "John Ploughman's Talk; or, Plain Advice for Plain People," and "John Ploughman's Pictures; or, More of His Plain Talk for Plain People," over four hundred and fifty thousand volumes have been sold. These are full of helpful words in homely garb, but most useful for rich and poor alike.

"Don't wait for helpers," he says. "Try those two old friends, your strong arms.... Don't be whining about not having a fair start.... The more you have to begin with, the less you will have at the end. Money you earn yourself is much brighter and sweeter than any you get out of dead men's bags.... As for the place you are cast in, don't find fault with that. You need not be a horse because you were born in a stable.... A fool may make money, but it needs a wise man to spend it. If you give all to back and board, there is nothing left for the savings bank. Fare hard and work hard while you are young, and you have a chance of rest when you are old.... No matter what comes in, if more goes out you will always be poor.... Plod is the word. Every one must row with such oars as he has.... Never be security for more than you are quite willing to lose."

Spurgeon was an untiring worker. He had no respect for idleness. "Many of our squires," he said, "have nothing to do but to part their hair in the middle; and many of the London grandees, ladies and gentlemen both alike, as I am told, have no better work than killing time.... The greater these people are, the more their idleness is noticed, and the more they ought to be ashamed of it.

"I don't say they ought to plough, but I do say that they ought to do something for the state, besides being like the caterpillars on the cabbage, eating up the good things; or like the butterflies, showing themselves off, but making no honey....

"Let me drop on these Surrey Hills, worn out ... sooner than eat bread and cheese and never earn it; better die an honorable death, than live a good-for-nothing life.

"Rash vows are much better broken than kept. He who never changes, never mends.... Learn to say 'No,' and it will be of more use to you than to be able to read Latin.

"An open mouth shows an empty head. Still waters are the deepest, but the shallowest brook brawls the most.... Beware of every one who swears; he who would blaspheme his Maker would make no bones of lying or stealing.... Commit all your secrets to no man ... seeing that men are but men, and all men are frail."

In "John Ploughman's Pictures" he says, "He who cannot curb his temper carries gunpowder in his bosom, and he is neither safe for himself nor his neighbors.... Anger is a fire which cooks no victuals, and comforts no households; it cuts and curses and kills, and no one knows what it may lead to.... It takes a great deal out of a man to get in a towering rage; it is almost as unhealthy as having a fit.... Shun a furious man as you would a mad dog.... A man in a thorough passion is as sad a sight as to see a neighbor's house on fire, and no water handy to put out the flames." Mr. Spurgeon's books number about one hundred volumes.

Mr. Spurgeon was blest in his home-life. On Jan 8, 1856, he married Susannah Thompson, daughter of Mr. Robert Thompson, of Falcon Square. He was married in new Park Street Chapel, before the Tabernacle was built. The church was full at the ceremony, while two thousand persons outside were unable to enter.

Their twin sons, Charles and Thomas, their only children, have always been a comfort to them. The wife has long been an invalid, but has been enabled to do great good in her home and out of it.

Mr. Spurgeon once said of her, "My experience of my first wife, who will, I hope, live to be my last, is much as follows: Matrimony came from Paradise, and leads to it. I never was half so happy before I was a married man as I am now.... I have no doubt that where there is much love there will be much to love, and where love is scant, faults will be plentiful. If there is only one good wife in England, I am the man who put the ring on her finger, and long may she wear it. God bless the dear soul! if she can put up _with_ me, she shall never be put down _by_ me."

From Hull he once wrote her a poem, beginning,--

"Over the space that parts us, my wife, I'll cast me a bridge of song: Our hearts shall meet, O joy of my life, On its arch unseen, but strong."

"Unkind and domineering husbands," he said, "ought not to pretend to be Christians, for they act clean contrary to Christ's commands."

Mr. Spurgeon once said of home, "That word _home_ always sounds like poetry to me. It sings like a peal of bells at a wedding, only more soft and sweet, and it chimes deeper into the ears of my heart."

Concerning beer-shops he wrote, "Beer-shops are the enemies of home, and therefore the sooner their licences are taken away the better.... Those beer-shops are the curse of this country; no good ever can come of them, and the evil they do no tongue can tell.... I wish the man who made the law to open them had to keep all the families that they have brought to ruin."

Again he writes, "Certain neighbors of mine laugh at me for being a teetotaller, and I might well laugh at them for being drunk, only I feel more inclined to cry that they should be such fools."

Mrs. Spurgeon's "Book Fund"[1] is well known. In the summer of 1875 Mr. Spurgeon published the first volume of "Lectures to My Students." His wife, feeling that they would do great good, desired to place them in the hands of ministers. Speaking to her husband about it, he said. "Why not do so? _How much will you give?_"

She had been keeping for years all the crown-pieces which came in her way; and on counting them, found that she had just enough to send away one hundred copies of the book. Others learned of this work, and were glad to aid it.

During the fifteen years since the Book Fund was started, up to 1890, there have been distributed by Mrs. Spurgeon to needy ministers of all denominations, a hundred and twenty-two thousand one hundred and twenty-nine volumes, largely Mr. Spurgeon's sermons, "The Treasury of David," and other works. The books of other authors have also been used.

Besides books, clothing and other needed things have been sent to ministers whose salary was the meager sum of sixty-five pounds per annum, or less. One village pastor for twenty years had received but sixty pounds yearly, and sometimes only forty-five pounds. Some had not purchased a new book in several years, and wrote back most thankful letters.

The money for this work has been furnished by the very poor as well as the rich. After the death of a woman who had had a struggle to support herself by her needle, more than two pounds, all in three-penny pieces, were found wrapped up in a drawer "dedicated to the Lord's work under the hand of Mrs. Spurgeon."

Mr. Spurgeon had suffered from rheumatism for many years, and had been obliged sometimes in winter to go to Mentone, in the South of France. In the middle of May, 1891, he had an attack of _la grippe_, from which, after a serious illness, he seemed to rally; but this was only temporary.

On all sides there was the greatest interest and sympathy. The Prince of Wales, Gladstone, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler, and scores of the highest in the land, all religious sects, all classes, sent letters or telegrams, to hear about the distinguished sufferer. Gladstone wrote of his "cordial admiration, not only of his splendid powers, but still more of his devoted and unfailing character."

And Spurgeon added to the letter sent back by his wife, July 18, 1891, these lines, "Yours is a word of love such as those only write who have been into the King's country, and have seen much of His face--My heart's love to you."

Mr. Spurgeon was always an admirer of Mr. Gladstone, which was heartily reciprocated. In the year 1880 the former took, for him, an unusually active part in politics. Having to preach for a friend, the Rev. John Offord, Mr. Spurgeon said to him, "I should have been here a quarter of an hour sooner, only I stopped to vote."

"My dear friend," said Offord, "I thought you were a citizen of the New Jerusalem, and not of this world."

"So I am," was the reply; "but I have an old man in me yet, and he is a citizen of the world."

"But you ought to mortify him."

"So I do; for he's an old Tory, and I make him vote Liberal," replied Spurgeon.

In the autumn of 1891, the month of October, the preacher started for Mentone, his friends singing the Doxology as he left Hearne Hill Station, London. "Baron Rothschild's private saloon-carriage was placed at Mr. Spurgeon's service to travel in throughout France to Mentone."

Mr. Spurgeon grew better in the warm climate for a time, and wrote back letters to his church. He soon failed, however; and on the last day of January, 1892, on Sunday, at five minutes past eleven at night, at Hotel Beau Rivage, he passed away. At half-past three he had been unable to recognize his wife, or other friends. He grew weaker, and the end was painless.

The next day the body was almost hidden from sight by the flowers sent by friends. It was embalmed, sealed up in a leaden case, and this was enclosed in a coffin of olive-wood. On it were the last Scripture words uttered by Mr. Spurgeon to his secretary, Mr. J. W. Harrald, before his death, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith."

After service, Thursday, Feb. 4, at the Scottish Church at Mentone, the body was taken to London, where an immense crowd awaited its coming.

Through all of Tuesday, Feb. 9, the body lay in state in his beloved Tabernacle. Friends had been requested not to send flowers, but to use the money which they would have expended thus, for the Stockwell Orphanage. Yet the body was covered with flowers notwithstanding the request. Wednesday was spent in memorial services, the Tabernacle being crowded until after midnight.

At eleven o'clock Thursday, the 11th, the public funeral service was held. Deputations from sixty religious associations were present. Members of the House of Commons, the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, bishops and laity, all came to honor the distinguished preacher.

The boys of Stockwell Orphanage sang the last hymn announced by Mr. Spurgeon before he became ill,--

"The sands of time are sinking, The dawn of heaven breaks, The summer morn I've sighed for, The fair sweet morn awakes."

Dr. A. T. Pierson of the United States delivered an earnest address, and the coffin was borne down the aisle, while the great congregation rose and sang,--

"There is no night in Homeland."

Through four miles of streets, crowds lining the way, the large mourning procession passed,--forty coaches and a vast number of private carriages. Flags were at half-mast, bells were tolled, and houses were draped with black.

At Stockwell Orphanage, on a raised platform covered with the emblems of mourning, five hundred boys and girls, who had loved the great man, once as poor as they, saw the solemn procession pass to the grave. Norwood Cemetery, where none had been admitted save by ticket, was already thronged. After a brief service, the Bishop of Rochester pronounced the benediction, and the sorrowing crowd went back to their homes.

More than two years afterwards, March 21, 1894 the Rev. Thomas Spurgeon was called to succeed his father at the Metropolitan Tabernacle.

The manifold work of Charles Haddon Spurgeon will go on forever, through his books, and through those whose steps he has turned heavenward.

Say not his work is done; No deed of love or goodness ever dies, But in the great hereafter multiplies: Say it is just begun.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] An account of her work may be found in my book, "Social Studies in England."

PHILLIPS BROOKS.

"I never met any man, or any ecclesiastic, half so natural, so manly, so large-hearted, so intensely Catholic in the only real sense, so loyally true in his friendships, so absolutely unselfish, so modest, so unartificial, so self-forgetful.... A blessing and a gracious presence has vanished out of many lives. With a very sad heart I bid him farewell ... the noblest, truest, and most stainless man I ever knew." Thus wrote Canon Farrar of London in _The Review of Reviews_ for March, 1893, two months after the death of Phillips Brooks.

The various pulpits, the press, the millionnaires, the poor, and the lonely, all felt and said nearly the same thing. Canon Farrar wrote elsewhere, before Dr. Brooks's death, "I cannot recall the name of a single divine among us, of any rank, who either equals him as a preacher, or has the large sympathies and the rich endowments which distinguish him as a man."

The _Nation_ said, "The death of Phillips Brooks strikes down the greatest figure left to the American church."

The Rev. Stopford W. Brooke, of the First Unitarian Church of Boston, said, "He was so vigorous, so noble, so persuasive, so ever welcome a guest of all our hearts, that we had almost forgotten he, too, was mortal.... We never once doubted his sincerity, or his large, pure, generous humanity. There was a power in his presence, his smile, the grasp of his hand, that deep and magnificent eye, which triumphed, unconsciously to himself, over all our haggling differences of temperament and opinion, and drew, by the same unconsciousness of itself, our best manhood to his side. I think this long consistent unconsciousness of himself was one of the great qualities that so endeared him to us all. Here was a man possessed of most remarkable gifts,--an extraordinary vitality, an astonishing 'volume velocity' and beauty of language, a rich and fertile imagination which idealized everything it touched, a power of feeling which rose and swept into his audience like the tides in the Bay of Fundy; and yet he never seemed aware that he was anything exceptional.... I believe that greatness is more common, goodness is far more common, than that unconsciousness with which he wore his greatness and goodness."

Stopford Brooke speaks of another remarkable characteristic of Phillips Brooks,--"His radiance and his joy. No one who has read at all carefully the literature of our time can have failed to remark how dominant in it is the note of sadness. The leaders of the past generation bore, with a certain sombre melancholy, the burden of the chaos, as Carlyle puts it, which they were endeavoring to fashion into cosmos."

Not so Phillips Brooks. "Goodness and happiness, duty and joy, were constant companions in his life. We looked at him, listened to him, talked with him, and knew he had saved and kept through many long years the soul's best secret. Through all that he said and did there ran this river, fresh, clear, and abundant, of inner joy. What an inspiration that joy was to us!"

Dr. Samuel Eliot, a member of Phillips Brooks's church, and his life-long friend, says in the eulogy of him, delivered at the Boston Memorial Meeting, "He was blessed with a hopefulness of which most of us have but a comparatively scanty share. No trait of his was more conspicuous. No single source of his power over his generation was more abundant or more effective. Whatever the foreground might harbor in shadows, he looked beyond into the distance and saw it radiant....

"How he helped others to be hopeful also, how many shackles he thus loosed from the heavy-laden, how he thus encouraged his people to work their way forward to a future filled with promise, is a familiar story. His hopefulness gave him his strong hold upon young men. To them, always looking before and not behind, he stood beckoning, and the fire caught from him spread through them and out from them. Neither they, nor any others, may have known all the hope that was in him; indeed, he may not have known it all himself. It often seemed as if he were hoping for brighter days and holier lives than are consistent with human imperfections."

Dr. Eliot, after speaking of Phillips Brooks's affection, playfulness of conversation with his friends, his humor, which rendered his companionship charming, his delight in children, his unconsciousness of all his distinctions and successes, the unchangeable simplicity of his habits, his manners, his opinions, says, "These are pleasant recollections to all who loved him.... They linger like the soft glow of a summer twilight, now that his day on earth is over....

"This great man was never greater than he was in the sight of those who knew him best. 'I shall not change,' he said to a brother clergyman who seems to have been doubtful whether he would be the same after being a bishop,--'I shall not change, and you will always find me just as you have found me heretofore.'"

The Rev. Arthur Brooks, D.D., in a memorial sermon preached in the Church of the Incarnation, New York City, says that on the afternoon of the day of the consecration of his brother as a bishop, fearing that some of his friends might not come to see him as often as heretofore, he said earnestly, "Don't desert me."

Phillips Brooks was born Dec. 13, 1835, on High Street, Boston, the second in a family of six sons. His mother, Mary Ann Phillips, the granddaughter of Judge Phillips, the founder of Phillips Academy, Andover, was a woman of fine intellect and unusually earnest piety. His father, William Gray Brooks, a hardware merchant, whose ancestors, like the Phillipses, held high social position, and power in the State as well, was a man of refinement and scholarly tastes.

The son Phillips, says the Rev. Julius H. Ward in the _New England Magazine_ for January, 1892, "seems to have inherited from his mother the deep and earnest piety and intellectual strength which have always been his characteristics, and from his father the robust physical constitution, the strong and resolute spirit, which he has shown in using them."

"Parents whose praise," says Dr. Arthur Brooks, "because of this great son, is in the churches to-day, earned it by self-denial and the subordination of all interests and ambitions to the training and education of a family of boys.... That love to Christ which glowed in his words and flashed in his eye, was caught from a mother's lips, and was read with boyish eyes as the central power of a mother's soul and life."

Mother-love was always a strong force in the heart of Phillips Brooks. It is related that when some one asked him if he was not afraid when he first preached before Queen Victoria, he replied, "Oh no; I have preached before my mother."

He said in one of his sermons, "The purest mingling of all elements into one character and nature which we ever see, is in the Christian mother, in whom the knowledge of all that she knows, and the love which she feels for her child, make not two natures, as they often do in men, in fathers, but perfectly and absolutely one."

He often spoke of "that self-sacrifice which is the very essence of her motherhood."

At eight years of age, Phillips and his brother William Gray, a year and a half older, were at the Adams School in Mason Street, and entered the Latin School, then on Bedford Street, in 1846, when Phillips was eleven years old. Here he was a quiet, good scholar, excelling in the languages, and all unconscious of his great future. His teacher, Francis Gardner, was a sad, earnest man, whom Phillips Brooks described nearly forty years later, when he spoke, April 23, 1885, at the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Latin School, the oldest school in America.

"Tall, gaunt, muscular ... impressing every boy with the strong sense of vigor, now lovely and now hateful, but never for a moment tame or dull or false; indignant, passionate, an athlete both in body and mind.... He was not always easy for the boys to get along with. Probably it was not always easy for him to get along with himself. But it has left a strength of truth and honor and devoted manliness which will always be a treasure in the school he loved."

In this school young Brooks learned his fondness for and advocacy of the public school system. He said in his anniversary address, "The German statesman, if you talk with him, will tell you that, with every evil of his great military system, which makes every citizen a soldier for some portion of his life, it yet has one redeeming good. It brings each young man of the land once in his life directly into the country's service; lets him directly feel its touch of dignity and power; makes him proud of it as _his_ personal commander, and so insures a more definite and vivid loyalty through all his life.

"More graciously, more healthily, more Christianly, the American public school does what the barracks and the drill-room try to do. Would that its blessing might be made absolutely universal! Would that it might be so arranged that once in the life of every Boston boy, if only for three months, he might be a pupil of a public school; might see his city sitting in the teacher's chair; might find himself, along with boys of all degrees and classes, simply recognized by his community as one of her children! It would put an element into his character and life which he would never lose. It would insure the unity and public spirit of our citizens."

These words of Phillips Brooks. Mr. Edwin D. Mead thinks, should "be printed in letters of gold, and hung up in every home where parents are thinking of sending their children into private schools, thereby condemning them to a narrower and less sturdy education than that given by the State, while also thus withdrawing their own personal interest from the public schools, which need the personal interest and love of every earnest citizen to-day as they have never needed them before."

From the Boston Latin School young Brooks went to Harvard College when he was about fifteen and a half years old. "The college attracted him with its promises," writes the Rev. Dr. Alexander McKenzie, in the May, 1893, _New England Magazine_. "Even the Triennial Catalogue was stimulating as he read there of twenty-five men named Phillips and twenty named Brooks, who had graduated from this university. The place for his own name which should join the two lines was inviting."

And yet Phillips Brooks in no way distinguished himself in college, save, perhaps, in composition. His professors were such men as Agassiz, Longfellow, Asa Gray, Lowell, and others. During his junior year he roomed in Massachusetts Hall, and his senior year in Stoughton.

One of Brooks's class writes, "He was a general favorite, always hearty and kindly, with an abounding sense of humor, which he carried with him through life.... No one could have surmised what profession he would choose, and almost any calling would have seemed appropriate."

Mr. Robert Treat Paine, his classmate, says, "At college he cared little for sport, but preferred to read omniverously almost everything and anything that came in his way." Tennyson was an especial favorite.

After graduation Brooks returned to the Boston Latin School, and became a tutor. Here he failed. He could not or would not be a strict disciplinarian, and he left the position.

Francis Gardner, his former teacher, had said that he "never knew a man who had failed as a schoolmaster to succeed in any other occupation." In one case at least he was mistaken. The young man might and did fail as a schoolteacher; he was a great success as a preacher and a man.

He went back to his college president, James Walker, to advise about his future work in life, and decided to enter the ministry.