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TORONTO
J. BRIERLEY
"J.B."
J. BRIERLEY
HIS LIFE AND WORK
BY
H. JEFFS
AUTHOR OF "THE ART OF EXPOSITION, "PORTRAIT PREACHING,
" CONCERNING CONSCIENCE," ETC.
BAFFLED TO FIGHT BETTER
LONDON
JAMES CLARKE & CO., 13 & 14, FLEET STREET
,
FOREWORD
THE soul of a saint in the body of a man of the world.
The man of the world tingled to the finger tips with
the thrill of the life of his time, yet the body was
the frailest encasement of the virile soul. A chosen
career broken by ill-health that dogged his steps
from the beginning ; then, after four years cessation
of work a second career begun, in an untried pro
fession. Jonathan Brierley at once made his chair
in a Fleet Street newspaper office the generating
station of an intellectual and spiritual force that
for well on to a quarter of a century was powerfully
felt in every part of the English-speaking world.
" Out of weakness he was made strong," and tens of
thousands owed to him a faith that ceased to fear,
a bluer sky, and a more genial climate of the
soul.
My thanks to the many who, in response to a
request, sent letters from "J.B.," and personal
recollections. Most of all are my thanks due to
the Rev. Harold E. Brierley, Pastor of Highbury
Quadrant Congregational Church, who honoured
me with the suggestion that I should write the life
of his father. Mr. Brierley placed in my possession
his father s journal, his note-books, much corres
pondence, and other invaluable material.
5
Foreword
To Mr. John Brierley, of Leicester, only surviving
brother of "J.B.," I am indebted for the means of
filling in the chapter of his early life and education.
"The more one thinks of it," said "J.B.," " the
more plainly it appears that in all regions of thought
religious, scientific, artistic, literary the question
of questions, the pivot on which everything turns, is
personality." His absorbing interest, as a " student
of the soul," was personality. He is never happy
if he is not getting at the innermost, original person
ality of an author, a saint, a mystic, an artist, a man
of the world. His own journal is a most affecting
human document in its revelation of the personality
of a highly gifted man, but most of all of a good man
struggling against adversity, refusing to accept
defeat, keeping the springs of his life always sweet,
intent on using every ounce of his strength and
every golden moment of his time in the service of the
Master to whom the whole allegiance of his heart
was given.
If for no other reason this Life would be worth
issuing for the model it offers of the Faithful Pastor
a challenge to the indolent in the ministry, an
inspiration to those who, at times, feel the burden is
too heavy and are tempted to lose heart and slacken
down.
H. JEFFS.
13 and 14, Fleet Street,
February 2$th, 1915.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE " MAN OF THOUGHT " AND THE " MAN
OF ACTION " 9
II. HOME AND EDUCATION l6
III. SCHOOLS OF THE PROPHETS 28
IV. THE FAITHFUL PASTOR I DEVON 39
V. THE FAITHFUL PASTOR I NORTH LONDON 55
VI. THE FAITHFUL PASTOR : SOUTH LONDON 62
VII. " APART AND RESTING AWHILE " 70
VIII. THE EVOLUTION OF " J.B." 79
IX. THE PROPHET IN FLEET STREET 87
X. THE BOOKS OF " J.B." 115
XI. THE ART OF QUOTATION I LEAVES FROM
" J.B/S " NOTE BOOKS 136
XII. THE POST-BAG OF " J.B." l6l
xin. A PHILOSOPHER S HOLIDAYS 181
XIV. ECLECTIC OF THE ECLECTICS 193
XV. LIFE IN LONDON 195
XVI. SUNSET AND THE CLEAR CALL 209
APPENDIX A. " J.B." AS PREACHER
" OUR THOUGHT WORLD " 2l8
APPENDIX B. " J.B." AS LECTURER
229
CHAPTER^I
The " Man of Thought " and the " Man of
Action "
To write the Life of a man who, to borrow his own
phrase, lived almost entirely in the thought world,
was a task from which the biographer might well
shrink. Jonathan Brierley, known and loved as
" J.B." for nearly a quarter of a century by a
widening circle of readers, had no " strange, eventful
history." Had he been a " man of action," his
biographer might have been embarrassed by the
richness of the material to be worked up into a
picturesque and thrilling narrative. But he was
just a preacher, a reader, a thinker, a writer. In a
world that moves in the daily din and dust of busi
ness, politics and amusement the mere thinking man
fails to draw the attention of the crowd. And yet,
after all, it is the man of thought, with the power of
forcing others to think, who always exercises the
" high command/ The man of action " does
things," but the man of thought sowed the seed of
action. The man of thought is the path-finder,
letting the speculative imagination play around the
facts and forces of his time. The man of action
follows the beaten tracks, and spends his energy in
" carrying on " according to the methods sanctioned
9
J. Brierley
by practice in his department. His watchword is
" business as usual/ and novelty he distrusts because
it means readjustment or scrapping of settled ideas
in which he feels comfortably at home. He is the
successful man and people write books about him
that are given to bright and good young men with
the injunction to follow in his steps. His enter
prise is a ferocious transmutation of energy into
activity. We perspire at the spectacle of his whirl
wind motion. Great is his reward. We need him to
keep us speeded up, but he has the defect of his
quality. He is inclined, all the more if he is an
Anglo-Saxon, to be contemptuous of the reading
and thinking man. He prides himself on his " plain
common sense." The idealist is dismissed as a
dreamer. His dreams are pretty, but they are
poetry, and no price can be quoted for them in the
world s markets. And yet, if the man of action knew
it, he owes everything to the man of thought. But
for the idealists, the dreamers, the men who have
lived in the thought-world, the twentieth century
would have made no advance on the fifteenth or on
the tenth. The men of thought are the prophets,
and science, art, industry, commerce, politics have
their prophets as well as religion. The prophet is
usually ignored, he is sometimes stoned, if he is a
major prophet, in his own age, but the age following
puts up a monument to him, and ages after that
canonise him.
Take science, for instance. Bacon was a " man of
thought," busied with queer experiments, evolving
revolutionary notions as to the methods of investi-
10
" Man of Thought " and " Man of Action "
gation of natural laws and the right way of deducing
the operation of those laws from the compilation
and comparison of particular instances. What an
old fogey he must have seemed to the men of action
of King James s court and the city fathers of his
time ; and how dangerous must his experiments and
conclusions have seemed to the devotees of ortho
doxy in philosophy and religion for it can scarcely
be said that before Bacon there was any science
rightly so called 1 But from the "thought world "
of " deep-browed Verulam," soaring in his flights
of disciplined fancy, have come very largely all
the triumphs of modern material civilisation.
Idealist, indeed, but like every genuine idealist, a
ruthless hunter down of reality. Reality in every
sphere is usually heavily overlaid with a huge dead
weight of cumulative tradition, custom, habit, and
it has to be ever and again dug down to and dis
interred, or there would be no step forward, but much
more likely steps backward ; for the commonalty of
mankind is a praiser ~ of " the good old times/ it
thinks the " wisdom of our fathers " must have
been greater than ours just because they were ancient,
and it is resentfully distrustful of the man who
compels it to think and re-orient itself towards
reality.
In industry, commerce and international rela
tions, it was a few men of the thought world,
Adam Smith, Ricardo and the like not in
business themselves, but just, according to the view
of the men of action of their time, musty professors
and pedants of the study who overthrew the com-
ii
J. Brierley
mercial system based on the principle that the way
to encourage home trade is to destroy foreign trade,
and that the best method of stimulating manu
facturing industry is to reduce the consumption
of the goods produced by artificially forcing the
prices of those goods to prohibitive figures. Yet
Smith, Ricardo, and their school sowed their seed
of thought, and the industrial and commercial
supremacy of our country and empire is the crop of
that seed. The " men of action " get the riches,
but they owe their millions to the men of thought.
But what has all this to do with " J.B. ? "
Just everything. He was the religious man through
and through, but the religious man who believed that
religion was the most practical thing in the whole
world if you only get religion, and not certain
ecclesiasticisms, rationalisms, dogmatisms, con
ventionalisms, traditions that are the mere
simulacra of religion, religious old clothes, often
frayed very much at the edges, mildewed through
too much hanging up in dark and airless wardrobes,
moth-eaten and rotten, and offering very little
protection to the soul of the man covered with their
"looped and windowed raggedness." He was
pre-eminently a student of the soul of man, and no
Livingstone, Stanley, Amundsen, Scott, Shackleton,
or Mawson set out on an expedition into Darkest
Africa or to the white worlds of the Arctic or
Antarctic with keener zest of adventure than that
with which " J.B." plunged into an exploration
of his own soul or the soul of universal humanity.
And what singled him out from many spiritual
12
11 Man of Thought " and " Man of Action "
psychologists was that no man was so absolutely
free from any morbid introspectiveness. His
physical frame left much to be desired, and for many
years he was in his body a broken man, but his soul
was robust and radiant, and it radiated health into
the souls of those who read the essays into which
he put the discoveries of his " adventures in the
infinite."
If only for the shining example he offers of a
dauntless soul, triumphing over an enfeebled body,
the story of " J.B." is worth the reading. So far
from ever repining at his physical disability, "J.B."
was the most uncompromising and unblushing of
optimists. He was always amazed at God s
goodness to him, at the riches beyond the reach of a
Rothschild placed at his disposal.
A spirit like his, in an age too disposed to cosset,
physic and pity itself, was a priceless possession,
and the sunny and bracing optimism of " J.B."
was contagious to tens of thousands who only knew
him through his Christian World essays.
It was not till his chosen career as a Congregational
minister was broken by nervous breakdown that
" J.B." entered on his second and far-reaching
career as a prophet of the pen. Such a breakdown
would, to the ordinary man, have been the end of all
things. It would have wrecked irrevocably the
" man of action." But just because " J.B." lived
in his thought-world he was buoyant to all physical
depression. He resolutely declined to be scrapped
as " broken in the war." A minister, passing
through a time of tribulation, wrote to me : " You
13
J. Brierley
can t sink a cork by pushing it under the water."
So it was with Jonathan Brierley. But, then, he
had been all his life preparing himself unconsciously
for his second career. Shall it be said that for that
career he was predestined in the Divine plan ? As
this book will show, he had regarded his mental
powers as a most sacred trust, and time, to him,
was a potential fortune, every moment of which
must be valued as a grain of gold. In the ministry
he was the most faithful of pastors, and his sympa
thetic personal dealing with the members of his
flock had given him that insight into human nature,
and that sympathy with the psychology and the
worries of the average man, which enabled him as
philosopher always to keep his finger on the pulse of
life. He always escaped falling a victim to the
preacher s characteristic temptation of living in a
professional, intellectual, theological thought- world
that lifted him above and out of the mass of man
kind, and from which it was impossible to get into
any real touch with that mass. He had a real horror
of living in a thought-world of unreality, and was
saved from that danger by his consuming desire to
be practically helpful. His physical weakness,
often with much pain, went to the enrichment
of his humanity as well as of his divinity. Similar
weakness made Herbert Spencer shut himself off
from humanity. Spencer set a noble example of
intellectual zeal and industry, handicapped by the
most unfavourable conditions, but he was hardened
and driven into the cultivation of unsympathetic
and selfish individualism. " J.B." was softened and
14
" Man of Thought " and " Man of Action "
became more tender, human, tolerant, more intel
lectually and spiritually sociable, but then Herbert
Spencer was self-centred, while to " J.B." the Man
of Nazareth was the lode-star of his being, his
constant Companion, the Master of all his thinking,
in whose school he was always the most eager and the
most submissive of scholars. Because Jesus was so
real, so vital, so human, so divine, so sociable, so
catholic, so responsive to every effort of the mind and
heart, " J.B.," as his open-eyed and great-souled
interpreter, was a prophet to his age, who comforted
and strengthened troubled souls, and to many,
alienated from a Christ who was a mere manufactured
symbol of outworn ecclesiasticisms and dried-up
dogmatic systems, Christ was made flesh and blood
again, and received the whole-hearted allegiance
which is always given to Christ the Person, though it
is more and more denied to the Christ of creeds and
hierarchies.
CHAPTER II
Home and Education
JONATHAN BRIERLEY was born on Christmas Day of
1843. Is it fanciful to suppose that his coming into
the world on the most joyous festival of the
Christian year had its influence on the sunny out
look of the religion to which Jonathan Brierley
ultimately won his way ? As will be seen a little
later, that outlook was not the outlook of the
Brierley home. The father was also a Jonathan
Brierley, in business as a lambs wool spinner.
The Brierley family was of Yorkshire Nonconformist
origin. Yorkshire Nonconformity at that time
was of a dour, puritanical character. Yorkshire
men took their religion as they took their business,
with intense seriousness. Even to this day ministers
serving Yorkshire churches testify to that serious
ness and to a certain suspiciousness of the Yorkshire
mind with regard to novelties in preaching and
teaching which conflict with the conditions in which
they have been brought up. The elder Brierley was
born in a family that had become Methodist under the
influence of the Evangelical Revival, but there is
reason to believe that the Methodist feeling was
combined with a considerable admixture of the old
Puritan thinking and attitude towards the lighter
16
Home and Education
sides of life. Jonathan Brierley the elder had
settled in Leicester in 1825.
To Jonathan Brierley and his wife there were born
six sons and one daughter. The receipt of the
paternal Christian name does not mean that the
infant Jonathan was the eldest of the family. He
was, in fact, the fifth son. He was certainly not
born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and there
was very little " spoiling " of the Brierley children.
The father believed in children being taught from
their earliest years to depend on themselves as much
as possible. They were expected to help them
selves rather than look for constant help from
their parents, and they were required to help
each other in all sorts of ways. Mr. John Brierley,
the surviving brother, to whom I owe these details
of the early home life, says that this kind of training
was found very useful in later days, leading to the
formation of invaluable habits of self-reliance. The
mother was a gentle and kindly soul, loved devotedly
by all her children. Her most effective means of
managing an unruly boy was a threat to "tell
father" which she rarely did.
Jonathan was sent to a private school kept by
Mr. Benjamin Hill, where he picked up the rudi
mentary elements of education which were thought
sufficient intellectual equipment in those days for
a youngster who was expected without waste of time
to earn his own living. Mr. Hill was a Dominie who
believed in a liberal use of the rod, and Jonathan
was certainly not spoilt by the sparing of the rod.
No doubt the schoolmaster had provocation, for
17
J. Brierley
young Jonathan was not of the order of the lambs
whose fleeces were the staple of his father s manu
facturing. He distinguished himself on the first
day of his school life by challenging to combat one
of the biggest boys in his class. The event came off
in the dinner interval. The pugnacious new
scholar put up a good pair of " bunches of five,"
and the bout ended in complete knocking out of the
big boy. Most of his brothers shared the same
militant temperament, which is, indeed, when
directed into proper channels, a valuable asset to a
young man bent on winning his way to the front.
Jonathan, however, seems to have been a regular
Achilles of the family, always " good at the battle
shout," and losing no opportunity to show his
mettle and his fistic skill. He was always more than
ready to pick a quarrel, or take up a challenge, with
the roughest boy of his neighbourhood, and he
usually came out as victor, though not always with
out showing signs of the combat.
The Brierleys attended a Wesleyan chapel of a
circuit on which the father was a local preacher on
the plan ; and he was a class leader in the chapel
itself. The father ruled with a strong hand in the
home and brought his family up on strictly Methodist
puritan principles. The boys, while young, showed
no signs of revolt against their religious training ;
on the contrary, after the fashion of preachers
children, they would conduct " preaching services "
of their own at home on Sunday afternoons when
not attending the chapel ; a pulpit was constructed
of four chairs, and " choir seats," and seats for the
18
Home and Education
congregation, were placed with such other chairs as
were available. The service was usually a full one ;
consisting of hymn, prayer, chant, Scripture lesson,
hymn, sermon, collection, hymn, Benediction. No
doubt, says Mr. John Brierley, the theology left much
to be desired, but what was lacking in exactness was
made up for by the fervent zeal.
Attached to the house was a fair-sized piece of
ground. The father was not a great enthusiast for
horticulture and the garden was mostly in the rough.
But there were some large apple trees and a summer
house. The apple trees were extremely useful as
places for the brothers to swarm up into, and the
summer house was a regular conspirators den,
where the brothers discussed ingenious plans for
annoying the neighbours. It is not unusual for
children of preachers, and of people not preachers, who
have brought up their children under strict religious
rule, to find such outlets for the suppressed old
Adam in healthy boy nature. They were warned
one 5th of November, under threat of severe penalty,
not to touch any fireworks. The warning lent to
fireworks the sweetness of stolen fruit. The boys
contrived to get hold of a liberal supply of gun
powder. They exercised their ingenuity in the
manufacture of home-made fireworks by mixing
steel filings with the powder. The result was very
excellent squibs. Jonathan happened to have a fair
amount of the powder concealed in his coat pocket.
A spark from one of the squibs found out the powder,
and the pocket was blown out and his clothes set on
fire. His brothers had nearly to drown him to
19
J. Brierley
extinguish the conflagration. But that was nothing
to the fact that it made concealment of their wrong
doing to their father an impossibility. The conse
quences to all of them were most painful, but it may
be conjectured that, however painful the penalty, the
lads considered that the fun had been worth it.
Another Guy Fawkes escapade, in which Jonathan
was a prime mover, is remembered. The scene was
the garden, which was divided from the street by a
wall about eight feet high. The corner boys of the
neighbourhood, during the apple season, were
given to scaling the wall and raiding the trees.
Needless to say, the Brierley lads did not believe in
practical socialism of this order, and when lads
were caught red-handed Homeric battles ensued.
On this particular Guy Fawkes day a bonfire had
been built up and was nicely going when a noise was
heard of somebody climbing the wall on the side of
the street. The watchful and resourceful young
Jonathan plucked a brand from the burning, stole
to the wall and waited until two hands appeared on
its top. He gently but firmly applied the glowing
brand to the hand, and the " corner boy " let go
with a howl. Unfortunately, the " corner boy "
turned out to be no " corner boy " at all, and the
brothers had a fearful shock when a burly policeman
came round to the door and demanded compensation
for his scorched hand and wounded dignity. He had
only wanted to see the bonfire burning. Such
incidents, at this distance, seem trivial enough, but
the " J.B." that we have known counted nothing
trivial. His bringing up with five high-spirited
20
Home and Education
brothers, each as full of mischief as himself, was an
integral and important part of his education in life,
and education in life was to him by no means confined
to what could be packed into him in school.
The school years with Mr. Hill were not many.
In spite of his pranks and fights, Jonathan was
quick-witted and absorbed teaching quickly and
thoroughly. Mr. Hill was honest enough to tell him
that he had learned all the schoolmaster could
teach him. The father then decided to send
Jonathan to another private school at Dewsbury.
This was kept by Mr. Benjamin Bentley. Jonathan,
in later life, was never a stickler for precedent, but
being what he was it is not surprising to learn that
history repeated itself on the day of his arrival at
the Bentley school. He promptly arranged a fight
with one of the biggest boys and, to the joy of
all the scholars, it was carried through in approved
hammer and tongs style. Jonathan was an easy
winner. Possibly, even at that early age, he was
an instinctive philosopher, and calculated on the
psychological effect of establishing at the earliest
opportunity his supremacy with his fists. He
stayed at the Dewsbury school two or three years
until, indeed, he had exhausted all that Mr. Bentley
could teach him. And when he left it was with a
well-earned reputation for diligence in study and for
pluck in always taking the part of the weak against
the strong. Jonathan, there is no doubt, was
grateful to the weak for giving him a good excuse
for measuring his strength against the strong.
The time arrived to settle the question of what
21
J. Brierley
Jonathan should be put to as a means of earning his
living. The father found it a knotty problem.
He was only in a small way of business, and with
the four eldest sons already in the business he did not
require Jonathan s assistance. A suitable alter
native was not easy to discover. Jonathan had
shown no marked preference or talent for one thing
more than another. After mature consideration
the father negotiated with Messrs. Preston, glove
manufacturers, for Jonathan to learn their trade.
The lad entered the Preston factory, but it was
very soon clear that he was not cut out for a glove
manufacturer, and that some other line must be
found in which he could expend his energy and
acquire skill. The boy had, from the time he could
read, showed a great interest in books. His father,
as a local preacher and a great reader, had acquired
a fair library. It was not a library that might have
been expected to suit the palate of a light-hearted
boy overflowing with life. The books were very
largely of a heavy character theological, philo
sophical, homiletic, historical. One can never
prognosticate, however, what direction a boy s
intellectual taste will take. Nature guides most of
its creatures to the food that is most suitable to
their physical upbuilding, and nature, it would seem,
takes the same pains with regard to mental pabulum.
Jonathan browsed in his father s library, and some
how the heaviest books were those that attracted
him the most. While yet in his teens, such tough
morsels as Locke " On the Human Understanding,"
Adam Smith s " Wealth of Nations," and works on the
22
Home and Education
philosophy of religion and religious history, proved
sweet morsels to him. He liked something he could
dig his teeth into and found more pleasure in mental
wrestling with books that most adults leave severely
alone than in fiction, poetry and such light reading.
The fiction and the poetry might, indeed, have been
sadly to seek on his father s bookshelves ; anyway
Jonathan wrestled with big books as victoriously as
he had wrestled with big boys, and got as much
satisfaction in mastering the books as he had had in
mastering the boys.
The knowledge of this seemed to give his father a
clue as to the line in which the young hopeful might
best be expected to shine, and he arranged for
Jonathan to go as assistant to the firm of J. & T.
Spencer, at that time the principal retail book-sellers
in Leicester. To the lad this was as the opening of
the gates of Paradise. He revelled in the prospect
of the feast of reading which would be at his disposal.
From Jonathan s point of view this was all right, but,
unfortunately, his employers soon found it was all
wrong. When customers were at the counter at
which Jonathan was supposed to serve, they often
failed to attract his attention, so absorbed was he
in the reading of the books which were for sale. As
his son Harold puts it, " My father thought more of
prophets than of profits, and he was reading the Minor
Prophets when he ought to have been selling them."
The fact that the lad had read with such relish the
theology and philosophy in his father s library, and
that the Minor Prophets had had such a fatal fasci
nation for him in the bookshop, makes it the less
23
J. Brierley
surprising that, on his leaving the bookshop, he
should have pleaded with his father to be sent to
college for training as a Congregational minister.
The elder Jonathan would have regarded the appeal
as one to which ready and joyous consent would have
been given if it had been the Wesleyan Methodist
ministry that his son desired to join. The father
was a Methodist as a Roman Catholic is a Papist ;
outside Methodism, according to his conviction, few
there were that would be saved. Young Jonathan,
indeed, had already been under fire as a local preacher
and had been admitted on the plan. He had
preached in the half-dozen chapels composing the
circuit, and the congregations of the country chapels
asked for him to be sent again. His brother says that
his sermons were marked by an individuality which
commended them to the plain country people and
none were ever found nodding when he was preaching.
Religion had laid its strong hand upon him.
He felt with increasing intensity the claims of God
to the love and allegiance of every man, and in a
simple, practical and forceful style he urged those
claims on the conscience and the hearts of his hearers.
There had been, as often happens to an active-
minded young man, taking a serious interest in the
spiritual side of life, a storm and stress period.
Jonathan Brierley was not the kind of man to take
anything for granted, or to be satisfied without
examination with the "traditions of the fathers."
The atmosphere of the home in regard to religion
was of the kind that leads an active youthful mind
to revolt sooner or later. The uncompromising
24
Home and Education
Methodism of the father was all very well when the
children were in tutelage, before they had entered
their teens, but more than one of the boys, when he
reached the age of thinking for himself, found the
father s shutting up of all light and truth within
the confines of Methodism as taught by John Wesley
an unsupportable imprisonment of the spirit.
Jonathan, at one time, had a desperate fight for his
faith. He was not given to refer to this trouble, but
in a late address on " Thought Life," which will be
found as an Appendix, he says,
" My heart bleeds, and my blood boils, as I think of the
terrible persecution which religion has undergone at the hands
of these teachers, and which has turned men away from it
in disgust. I can sympathise with such people. I have been
right through this experience when quite young. I think
I was a little mystic. I know how full my soul was of religion.
Heaven and earth seemed full of God and of glory. But
as I grew up it was like the weather we have been having lately,
where a day began in brightness and got cloudy later on.
I came in contact with the theology of forty years ago,
theology made in the dark ages which made me shudder
and revolt. If ever there was a despairing sceptic it was
J.B. at sixteen. What could I get out of it ? I got a
revelation. It came to me in my reading of the New Test
ament. Faith I find is one thing and men s opinions and
creeds are another. I saw what a fool I was to allow myself
to be cheated of my interest in God and Christ and the
New Testament and the Fellowship of Saints. I have kept
that ever since. Yes, God, Christ, the Bible, these are mine
forever, and they may be yours. Young people, keep to these.
Don t let anybody teach you harsh doctrines of God, cheat
you out of your spiritual inheritance. When you eat fish
you need not swallow the bones. See for yourselves, take
what you can and grow by it."
25
J. Brierley
Whether he told his father of his soul s struggle
is uncertain, but it is reasonable to suppose that the
father s limitation of thought and action to Wesley an
Methodist doctrine and policy had a great deal to
do with Jonathan s choice of the Congregational
denomination as the body in which as minister he
would find himself most at home. It may be also
that the fierce Reform controversy in the Wesleyan
Methodist Church had a potent influence on the
young man s mind. The father himself was inclined
towards the Reformers as having most in common
with the pure doctrine of John Wesley. He was a
marked man in consequence with the dignified
sticklers and the official big-wigs of the circuit and
District, who regarded any breaking away from them
as an unpardonable sin. Though he had been for
many years a class leader and a local preacher, he
was put out of class and his name erased from the
plan along with many others. Friends for a life
time were sundered, arrayed against each other
in separate camps, and there was extreme bitterness
of feeling. On Monday morning, at the Brierley
house, three or four of each party used to meet for
some time to discuss the situation. The young
people were interested listeners, but were not allowed
to take any part in the discussion. None the less,
they had their own opinions, and expressed them to
each other very freely when the father was not there
to correct them. They sympathised with him for
his devotion to principle and his sturdy adherence
to his convictions. They regarded him as a martyr
and became Reformers of a ferocious type. Later
26
Home and Education
on, however, the pull of the old body, with its long
and dear associations, led the father back to
Wesleyan Methodism. The lads lost much of their
faith in him, and stoutly refused to follow him back
into what they regarded as the enemy s camp. The
result was that very strained relations were created
within the home. It was at this time that young
Jonathan made up his mind, if his father would allow
him, to study for the Congregational ministry, and
worried his father until he obtained his consent to
his entering the Nottingham Institute.
It only remains to be said that the religion of the
Brierley home, as regards the views instilled into
the children and the theology of the father, was of
the gloomiest and of the most repellent character.
There was more of Puritan Calvinism than of
Methodist Arminianism in the father s theology.
It was the fear of God and not the love of God that
was impressed upon the children. Satan played a
very large part in the home teaching of religion.
He was a personal devil of the darkest dye whose
chief delight was in setting traps for naughty children
and taking count of their little peccadilloes with a
view of exacting the full penalty from them in an
Inferno out of which there was no escape through
all eternity. Such being the atmosphere and such
the state of affairs at the time, it is not surprising
that young Jonathan shook the dust of Methodism
off his feet with a deep breath of satisfaction and a
sense of escaping into a larger, freer and more
invigorating air.
CHAPTER III
Schools of the Prophets
NOTTINGHAM INSTITUTE AND NEW COLLEGE
NOTTINGHAM THEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE was founded
to give a practical pastoral training to candidates for
the ministry whose circumstances made it im
possible for them to enter a College of the advanced
kind, where the course extended over four or five
years. It was felt that many young men, feeling
that they had a vocation, of guaranteed Christian
character, and with a tested gift for preaching,
were promising material for converting in three
years or so into serviceable pastors of country
churches. The first Principal, who was at the head
of the College when " J.B." entered it, and remained
at the head until 1897, was Dr. J. B. Paton. Under
his direction, for more than forty years, the
Nottingham Institute splendidly fulfilled its purpose.
The doctor was a man of almost incredible physical
and mental vitality. Even as a boy, in his native
South-west of Scotland, he was amazing and dazing.
At the age of eleven he was put to work in the
printing office of a country paper. Within a few
months he was assisting the sub-editor, and in a
single year, before he was out of his teens, he
28
Schools of the Prophets
founded and acted as secretary to a couple of
Temperance Societies. After serving for a short
while as usher in an uncle s school at Cheltenham,
young Paton entered Spring Hill College,
Birmingham, to be trained for the Congregational
ministry. There he sharpened his wits against
those of his fellow student, R. W. Dale. The
Nottingham Institute was founded on the condition
that Paton became its head. He was never the
mere academic don. Everything that was human
interested him, and his fertile brain was constantly
throwing out ideas that fructified in practical
realisation. He started land colonies for the
making of men of the unemployed and unemploy
able, " Colonies of Mercy " for the care and training
of epileptics, Home Reading Circles, and the
Brotherhood and Adult School Movements; and a
dozen other agencies either owed their origin to him,
or found in him their powerful supporter and
propagandist. When he was well on to his eightieth
year Dr. Paton s son said to me, " My father is the
youngest member of our family." " J.B." could
not in all England have found a man better fitted to
guide and inspire him in his preliminary training
for the ministry. Dr. Paton laid the heaviest stress
on the importance of the general culture of the
student being attended to. Everything was done
to quicken his mental activity, to teach him to
think for himself, and to induce him to work for all
he was worth. The Institute was not to be a mere
cramming machine, turning out neatly finished young
fellows conformed to a conventional type. The
29
J. Brierley
students were made to realise that the ministry was
not merely a clerical profession, but that it was a
prophetic calling, for success in which mind and
heart must work together at their fullest power.
In addition to the pastoral and homiletic courses,
and such instruction in Biblical knowledge and philo
sophy as was possible under the conditions, the
young men were sent out to supply village and small
town pulpits of the country side and were encouraged,
even during their College training, to engage in all
sorts of active Christian work.
There can be no doubt that Dr. Paton had a great
and beneficial influence on the shaping of Brierley s
mind at its most pliable period. Paton was nothing
if not practical. His consuming concern was to
invest religion with reality and bring it into constant
and direct touch with life. At the same time he was
a ravenous devourer of books and communicated his
insatiable appetite to his students. To Dr. Paton
indolence was a sin against the Holy Ghost as it was
ever after to Jonathan Brierley. Brierley became a
miser and usurer of his minutes. He was not content
with just the studies prescribed by the College
authorities. He read for himself and began to pick
up languages in order that his voyages of intellectual
discovery might be extended. In one of his essays
we get an inside view of the Brierley who was the
same, only more so, if we may so express it, from the
time when he browsed in his father s library to the
closing days when he was still, in spite of domestic
warnings, bending hour after hour over " heavy
books " :
30
Schools of the Prophets
" How to spend our reading life is a question belonging
to that Ethic of the Intellect of which most people think
so little. Those who are eager for Life s Best will, however,
in this department, take a very clearly marked line. They
make a simple calculation. The world, they find, has produced
a certain number of first-class minds that have left themselves
on record. Their work is mental and moral society of the
highest kind, to which we are freely invited. Why should
we, whose time is short, and who have a thousand other
things to do, waste its hours by lingering in the ranks of the
third or twelfth raters when these elite are calling to us ? They
lie scattered over all the ages and over all the languages.
It is worth studying a language to reach one great book in it.
Robert Hall learned Italian to get at Dante, and it was worth
while. Robertson of Brighton said of certain volumes that,
read and re-read, they had entered into his composition
like the iron atoms of the blood. A certain splendour from
these great spirits casts its glow upon all who come into their
circle. However modest our own dimensions, the swing
and momentum from these force centres will inevitably make
itself felt in our character and action. To the world s first-
class literature we may apply the words used by Madame
Roland of Plutarch. It is the pasture of great souls. "
To Brierley the mastering of a language was a wild
delight. He was spurred on by dancing visions
of masterpieces of thought and fancy, which,
through the medium of the language, would be opened
out to him. Again, let me quote from an essay
which is really a self-drawn mental portrait :
" We should think more hopefully of England s future
if we could see our Englishmen of to-day more in love with
difficult things. Our workmen, so called, are getting more
and more leisure, but what are they doing with it ? Who
of them, for instance, ever dreams of turning his free hours,
as the German so constantly does, to the tackling of a foreign
31
J. Brierley
language ? If he would only try it he would find a good foreign
grammar the most interesting book in the world. For one
thing and just think of that it is all true. It will never
grow out of date for you, and will never deceive you. Come
to it when and where you will, and it has always the right,
the accurate thing to say on the point you are seeking. Of
how many books, ancient and modern, can you say as much ?
And as you grapple with your difficulty in languages or
any other research you discover how all your nature joins
joyfully in. What puzzled you yesterday comes easier to-day.
How is that ? Because the unconscious part of you, the forces
that lie beneath your active will and consciousness, have
come to your aid and have been working for you. They
approve what you are doing and set their seal upon the work.
And if even in the end you are not a success, you are at least
a tryer, and that is a success in itself.
" Intimately linked with that great find is this other ;
that as a tryer you find yourself. You find not only work,
but your work ; your message to and business in this world.
We are all preachers of something or other ; and some of
us are writers. And we have all our style. How did we
get it ? There are innumerable books on style, which some
of us have laboriously perused. We have, if we are
ambitious, studied Quintilian and Aristotle ; we have sought
the secrets of Cicero s flow, of the compression of Tacitus ;
we know our Addison, our Burke, our Macaulay ; we have
sought the phrasing, the epigrammatic sparkle, of France ;
from Bossuet to Renan. You may do this and make a pretty
jumble of it in the end. It has its uses, all that, for no honest
work is useless. But it will be all a wandering in the wilder
ness unless, by God s mercy, this happens that ultimately
you find yourself. Find, that is, your own soul and its mean
ing for this world and its message to it. When you have
got your message, you have got your style. For, as Buffon
has it, and it is the final .word here, Le style, c est I homme
meme (style is the man himself). When you have, not to
say something, but something to say ; when God s word
to you has become a word in you, a word that burns to be
32
Schools of the Prophets
uttered, there is no more trouble about style. It will come
out of you, just as your breath comes out of you, as an
emanation of your very self. And men will taste it and
savour it ; for it is no longer the chopped straw of dead
material, but a bit of actual life. When a man has found
himself his fellows speedily find him. For a part of the
universe has taken root in him and is expressing itself through
him. It has entered into him as deep conviction, as passion
ate enthusiasm. Here is a ray of the eternal light, reflected
through the medium of this one soul, whose separate angle
of reflection returns this unique ray, needed to make the human
vision of God complete. And this message, remember, is
not that only of the professional speaker or writer. You
may never stand on platform, or say a word in print. Not
the less you have your message, if you will seek it ; the
gesture of your own spirit, seen in the temper of your mind,
in your whole attitude to life a beautiful, a significant
message, if only we will seek it and find it."
At the Institute Brierley was among the first batch
of students, and his fellow students included some
who were afterwards most faithful pastors and
effective preachers. Brierley, however, was not
content with what the Institute could do for him.
His ideal of the ministry was so high that he felt he
must have the most advanced and thorough training
possible.
In 1864, ne was transferred from Nottingham
Institute to New College, Hampstead, no doubt
through his feeling the need of a longer and fuller
training. The New College records show that he was
accepted on probation as a lay student for admission
on September 2gth, and was received as a full
student on February 28th, 1865. The College
course extended over five years, which might be
33
J. Brierley
extended or shortened by a year at the discretion of
the Council. The five years were divided between a
literary course of two years and a theological course
of three. The Principal at that time was Dr. Robert
Halley, and the Professors, Revs. Samuel Newth,
John H. Goodwin and Maurice Nenser.
When the College celebrated its Jubilee on
November 6th, 1900, " J.B." was one of the old
students who indulged in reminiscences. In filling
in his answer to the usual questions put to
candidates for admission to the College, he had stated
that he had no theoretical objection to baptism by
immersion. Asked what he meant, he said that his
objections were practical. For instance, if asked to
immerse a stout old lady of seventeen stone, he
would wish to decline. Dr. Halley he described as
vigorous and kind-hearted. He amused the audience
by recollections of the sermon class. Once, when
preaching on the nth of Hebrews, he was picturing
the " procession of heroes marching across the field
of history," when the noise caused by the dismiss
ing of a class overhead caused the Doctor to ask,
" What s that ? " A waggish student replied,
" It s the procession of heroes, Doctor." Professor
Nenser, who taught Hebrew and German, was a
sparkling conversationalist, and Brierley, as his fellow
students, had his wits sharpened by contact with such
a lively and engaging personality.
Surviving contemporaries of Mr. Brierley at
" New " agree that he was looked upon as among
the most promising of their number, though he was
no " pot hunter " of academic distinctions, prefer-
34
Schools of the Prophets
ing to follow his own lines of reading. Rev. Alfred
M. Carter, now at Southend-on-Sea, says that in
Dr. Halley s sermon class " both the matter
and expression of his early efforts charmed us all,
and criticism fell very flat/ In debate and in the
conversational discussions in which he revelled,
he was very ready, and always effective. He could
give a prompt and satirical exposure of any error
of statement or fallacy of argument, but with the
merry twinkle of his eye, and the friendliness of his
manner, he contrived to crush a man without giving
occasion for offence. In denouncing wrong, or
appealing on behalf of righteousness and truth,
he was always intensely in earnest. His geniality
made him a popular comrade. " We all thought/
says Mr. Carter, " that preaching would be
Brierley s chief means of usefulness, but feared
even in College days that his frail physique could
scarcely stand the strain of his vehement outpourings
in the pulpit."
A contemporary student, who left College in the
same year, Rev. Ira Boseley, says Mr. Brierley always
seemed fragile, and when between the classes other
students sought relaxation in the common room,
Brierley was always reading a book or magazine.
" When I expostulated with him for neglecting physical
exercise, he exclaimed that he had established the College
Cricket Club, but I question if he often played cricket. On
meeting him a few years ago he gave me a dig in the ribs and
said : Boseley, if you and I were rolled together we might
make a decent man between us. In the sermon class I
remember he wrote a striking sermon on Ezekiel s vision of
the dry bones, but his exegesis would scarcely have passed
35
J. Brierley
muster with a professor of the traditional school. J.B. ,
however, did not fear professors, for he did not hesitate to
challenge their statements and to argue them out with them.
In the College debates his fellow students were often impressed
with his mental alertness and argumentative power." Only
three months before his death " J.B." wrote to Mr. Boseley
a letter on the death of an old mutual friend. He said, " It
made me feel how terribly the circle of one s own comrades
is narrowed. We need to cherish the more those who are
left. I am grieved to hear of your serious ill-health. That
must be very trying. I too, as you know, have now, for
quite a while, been driven out of the fighting line, so far
as all public appearance is concerned. I keep going only
by the utmost care, and the most absolute quietude. I
can t even attend church, or any public gatherings of any kind.
It is, of course, trying, but then one has a thousand blessings
to be thankful for. My work as a writer is an immense solace,
and the more so as I receive from all parts of the world such
warm-hearted testimonies and expressions of gratitude. I
seem to have such a host of unseen friends. To feel that
you have been really helpful to troubled and burdened souls
is indeed a great reward. I do hope you will have mitigation
of your own physical trouble. Above all, we have our loving
God and the immortal treasure of the spiritual life. I seem
to have a firmer grip of all these than ever I had before."
Another New College contemporary, now Dr.
W. Evans Darby, Secretary of the Peace Society,
says :
" During my college course it was my privilege to be on
terms of intimate association with J. B. We were class
mates and chums. He was one of the first to greet me, and
made a strong impression which deepened with our growing
intercourse. I remember well how, from the first, he stood
out from others as a quiet, thoughtful, diligent, and manly
student. He struck me as being town-bred, self-confident,
of good general education, and a voracious reader. From
36
Schools of the Prophets
the first, he took a prominent position in our debating society ;
he generally spoke in our debates, and proved himself an
able, original, clear, and effective speaker.
" The men of our year were good students, all of them, with
the usual exceptions of those who could not study, to whom
the pons asinorum was impassable, however earnestly
and hard they tried, though otherwise good fellows, and
often good preachers. They excelled in other ways. The
studious section to which Brierley belonged, and which
formed the majority of the class, were hard and devoted
students, who emulated each other in a friendly way, and
stood well both in class work and exams. New College
was not in those days a school of the London University
that was to be a later development though it was associated
with it, and secular degrees were obtainable, Divinity
degrees being at that time beyond the reach of Nonconform
ists in this country. The Arts Course in the College was
arranged so as to give an opportunity for graduation in the
University. In the event of a student having matriculated
before entry, this was comparatively easy ; if not the work
passed beyond the limits of that course, and involved practi
cally a dual curriculum which, to eager and not too robust
students, might, and often did, involve serious consequences.
This is what happened with J.B. , and some of the rest
of us. At the end of the first session, the majority of our
class sat for matriculation, and the majority of those, in
cluding J.B., passed ; of two of the number who took German
as the modern language, one passed ; others failed. J.B/
passed with eclat. Next session, the race was resumed.
At the end of it, these eager class-mates went in for the First
B.A. , as it was then called. Most of them passed, but again,
two took German and were both plucked. After that came
the Divinity course, and the College work for those who had
passed became more exacting. When the session closed,
J.B. took his B.A. in the first division. But by this time
the pace had begun to tell more than one had given out
physically, and when in the following session he proceeded
with the usual fervour to study for the M.A., he found it
37
J. Brierley
was too trying, and very wisely decided to reserve his
energies for the regular Divinity studies, in which, as in
all he touched, he excelled. This is my recollection of the
most outstanding feature of our College intimacy, and it
explained to me taught by a similar experience, though
less fortunate, for some studies had to be postponed to a
more favourable time, and other associations the physi
cal restrictions that lay upon his splendid powers all through
life, while it formed a bond of sympathy between us to the
very end. This was enhanced by the similarity of develop
ment in religious thought and experience ; in his case,
hastened by a wide range of reading and by omnivorous
assimilation."
At New College he remained the full five years.
He matriculated at London University in 1865,
and took his B.A. degree in 1867. He won the
New College Burden Scholarship in 1869, and left
to enter on his first pastorate in September, 1870.
CHAPTER IV
The Faithful Pastor: Devon
A CALL to the pastorate of the Church at Great Torring-
ton in North Devon was accepted towards the close of
1870. The town, with a population of little more
than 3,000, was reached from Exeter, but the railway
at that time did not get nearer to it than the village
station of Umberleigh, seven miles away. The
scenery is among the most beautiful in Devon and
gave to Mr. Brierley an endless variety of the long
walks in which he found not only health but pulpit
inspiration. The Congregational Church dated
back to the Nonconformist Ejectment of 1662, and
the Nonconformity had remained of a sturdy type.
The church was in lineal descent from that founded
by John Howe, the saintly author of The Living
Temple, when Howe was ejected from the parish
church. Is it far-fetched to discover analogies
between "J.B." and John Howe? Howe was
urged by the Bishop of Exeter, his old college
friend, Seth Ward, who had had no scruples about
conforming, to consent to re-ordination, and it was
absolutely certain that if Howe had consented he
would have received a Bishopric. " What is the
hurt," asked the Bishop, " of being re-ordained ? "
" Hurt ? " replied Howe, " it hurts my reason. I
39
J. Brierley
know that I was called once to the Lord s ministry.
Can a man be called twice ? " In The Living
Temple there is the same serene and catholic out
look which was so characteristic of " J.B." Howe
sees shattered humanity re-united in Cnrist, and all
conflicting theological and ecclesiastical divisions
done away with for ever. " J.B." reverenced his
reason as did John Howe. He regarded reason as
God s gift to man, as a spark of God s own Divine
intelligence communicated to His children. Reason
to him walked hand in hand with faith each
reinforced the other. It is needless to insist upon
the essential catholicity of " J.B. s" mind and heart.
The Church in all the ages, the saints and sages, the
theologians and philosophers, in the mind of
" J.B.," were all broken lights of the Light Supreme.
He was, like Howe, not a controversialist because he
so clearly saw the many-sidedness of truth, and in
men who differed most widely from each other he
found simply thinkers who were looking at truth
from different view-points, each mistaking the other
for an enemy, because neither saw enough of the
truth to comprehend more of it than the little
segment that was visible to himself.
Fortunately, a change has come over Torrington s
demands on the preacher since the days of Howe,
when the endurance alike of people and preacher
was such as this degenerate age would shiver
to think of. A biographer of Howe, speaking of
his extraordinary diligence, says :
" On public fast days, which were then much more frequently
observed, he commenced Divine service at nine in the morn-
40
REV. J. BRIERLEY
(About the close of the New College period and at the
beginning of his Torrington Ministry)
The Faithful Pastor: Devon
ing. He first offered up an extempore prayer, supplicating
the Divine presence during the day, he then read and
expounded a psalm, or a chapter, and afterwards offered
another very solemn prayer, entering particularly, and with
singular propriety, into the causes of their meeting. Next
followed a sermon, the delivery of which took more than an
hour ; then he again prayed ; after this a Psalm was sung,
suited to the occasion, during which he retired to take some
slight refreshment. At the close of the singing, he again
entered the pulpit, prayed with great earnestness for a
considerable time, and then preached another excellent dis
course, concluding the service about four in the afternoon,
by a solemn prayer and benediction."
Jonathan Brierley was exacting enough in his
demands on himself, but he would have panted in
vain after his first predecessor.
Like most young ministers he soon found himself
a wife. He had been fellow Sunday School teacher
at Oxford Street Chapel, Leicester, with Miss Selina
Crossley, daughter of Mr. James Crossley, a member of
theCrossley family of Halifax. Mr. Crossley was one
of the best known of Leicester s citizens, and a
leader of Liberalism of great influence. The pair
were married at Walthamstow, where Mrs. Crossley
was born and to which she returned on the death
of her husband in 1872.
The Torrington ministry began on the second
Sunday of 1871. The first entry in the Diary is
" Friday 6th. Reached Torrington. Met at Coach
Office by several friends." The " Visitation Book "
shows that the young pastor lost no time in getting
to know his people. He was brought at once into
the tragedy of life, for there is an entry for January
9th : " Mrs. s daughter dead. Scarlet fever.
J. Brierley
Small cottage end of Calf Street." He was
thoroughly in earnest.
As minister, Mr. Brierley was a firm follower of
Richard Baxter in his belief that the " faithful
pastor," by his intensive dealing with persons, is
many times more effective than the mere preacher,
whatever crowds he draws, who deals only with
people in the mass. He was not John Howe s
successor at Great Torrington for nothing. His
Journal and Visitation Book show how diligently
he used all available means of getting into personal
touch with his people. After his retirement from
the ministry, while nursing himself back to com
parative health at Neuchatel, in one of his earliest
Christian World articles, he heavily emphasises the
value of pastoral visitation, and advises ministers to
get and read Baxter s Reformed Pastor. He says :
" Baxter s work in Kidderminster may be recognised as
a scientific experiment in the field of human nature, and
one the results of which have established for all time the
validity of certain processes with reference to it. Bring
into operation on any scale, large or small, the same causes,
and similar results may confidently be expected to follow.
Let it not hence be supposed that I am expecting the
Christian pastor in this business of visitation to be on every
occasion tackling his auditors in cottage or workshop
with theological problems or specific religious discourse.
Let that come as it is needed. The essential point is
in his being there his higher humanity, his Christian
consciousness, his nature in all that it is worth, in
immediate vital contact with this fellow man. Let the
contact be established through sympathy, and the process
of raising and redeeming has commenced. Apart from the
consideration that the time to be devoted to this work would
be, in my scheme, time redeemed from needless and injurious
42
The Faithful Pastor: Devon
pulpit preparation, I am bold to affirm that the method of
individualising more upon souls in the business of visitation,
is to one who knows how to turn his opportunities to account
in itself a preparation of unsurpassed value to the preacher
and the theologian. The Christian minister is a pro
fessor of the science of human nature, and how can he gain
his efficiency apart from a continual diagnosis of individual
cases ? The poet, the dramatist, and the novelist, who are
workers in the same field, know the value of the method.
Fielding, Thackeray and Dickens were students of books ;
but they would never have achieved their successes
had they shut themselves up in their libraries and sought
all their information there ; they could not afford to con
fine themselves to second-hand studies, they must get
face to face with the actual living fact, and bring to bear
upon it there before them all the faculty of insight they
possessed. If any man needs further convincing on this
point let him put the matter to a practical test. Taking
the method as it relates to public preaching, let him prepare
two discourses on successive weeks on these two different
systems and compare their effectiveness. For one, let him
draw his inspiration simply from theological, literary and
philosophical sources. The effect will hardly be electrical.
For the other let him, in the earlier part of the week,
prepare by a course of visitation, let him open his ear and
heart to the pathetic story of human life as it is offered to
him by one struggler after another in the great battle-field.
Let him be a good listener and a keen observer, getting the
entree to human interiors by the open sesame of a genuine
sympathy. Let him, from this observatory, note the boundless
variety of human experience and of human feeling. Then, for
the discourse he is about to deliver, let him begin to gather
up the results of his observations, and he will be overwhelmed
with the richness of the field that has opened up. Every
visit has furnished pictures for the imagination. Every life
he has touched reveals itself as a poem, one an epic, another
an ideal, a third a tragedy. Let him weave all or some
of this into the structure of his thought. Let the discourse
43
J. Brierley
he is to deliver throb with this still sad music of human
ity. With rapid touches of the true artist let the audience
be made to see what he has seen, and to feel what he has
felt, and there will be, I venture to predict, no sleepy person
in his congregation. Such a preacher will never run dry,
for the field he works in is inexhaustible."
Before me is the Visitation Book kept by Mr.
Brierley from the beginning of his pastorate. He
makes such notes as these :
Young people s party at Mrs. . Not introduced
to me by name. Note : always in future, if possible, get
introduction by name in order to know people.
Visited Mr. , carpenter, young, married, one child,
Just begun business. Ill with rheumatic fever. Active at
Ragged School. Bottom of Wells Street, left side going down.
At chapel sits before Mr. .
Visited Miss , aged. Laid up with cold. Row of small
cottages off Baptist chapel. Last door but one, going down
street. Other people who come to church in same row.
Miss - formerly member of Baptist church. Sits in
second pew right-hand aisle going in.
Visited Mrs. , widow. Sons in Australia. Poor.
Confined at present to room. Next door to Belle Arms.
Visited Mrs. . Husband just died. Cottage in
Castle Street. Children do not come to school.
Such entries show that the pastor practised what
he preached, and preached to people whom he took
care to know.
In a letter from Torrington, an old member of the
church, Mr. W. E. Medland, architect and surveyor,
tells me that he first met " J.B." in 1865 or 1866,
when he heard him speak in a debate in New College
Lecture Hall, opened for and against by Llewellyn
Be van and Samuel Pearson. Brierley s speech was
44
The Faithful Pastor: Devon
warmly applauded, and Bevan congratulated him.
Mr. Medland says :
" I little thought at the time that within three years
J.B. would be my minister in my own native town of
Torrington, and that I should have the honour of giving
him his first drive through the charming lanes of Devon,
between the railway station and our town, a distance of ten
miles. It was a delight that he never forgot, reminding
me of it on his last visit here. Our church was his first love
and it always kept a sacred place in his affectionate and
broad spirit. When he visited Torrington in later years
he would look into our pretty little cemetery, and spend
a few minutes in visiting the graves of our fathers who
admired and loved him. They were very loyal to him, and
highly appreciated his unique ministry here. During its
early part he preached from the venerable three-decker/
placed against the east wall and ascended by a considerable
flight of steps. That pulpit provoked his constant protest,
and one morning on descending it, he declared to a few of
us, I cannot go on preaching on that elevated, isolated box.
I must get down, closer to my hearers. We yielded, and
the three-decker gave place to a slightly raised rostrum, and
was brought nearer to the pews. Preacher and hearers
alike rejoiced in the change.
" J.B. was a great walker, as well I know, for on one
bright, frosty winter day, shortly after he came amongst us,
he prevailed on myself and a mutual friend to join him in a
walk to a seaside resort, ten or eleven miles distant, with
which there was no railway communication. J.B. s
pleasant and inspiring talk made the walk a delight, but
in spite of that lightening of the journey it was too much
for myself. To him, however, that was a normal tramp,
and he used to say that most of his sermons were composed
on his rambles through Devon s lanes and hedgerows."
That objection to the " three-decker " was
" J.B." all over. He hated always to feel himself
shut in and he longed for the human contact.
45
J. Brierley
The Journal shows that his favourite Minor
Prophets still kept their hold on his affection, for a
portion of the book is occupied with " Notes on the
Minor Prophets." Words of the various books are
transcribed in the Hebrew characters, and their
meaning, and shades of meaning, are discussed.
There is a definition of the prophet, which shows the
young student s dislike of confining the " free
spirit" of the prophet to any conventional,
theological limitations : " If we also consider that
the title of prophet is given not only to those we
know as prophets, but to Moses and David, and also
to Abraham, we shall see that the popular sense of the
word is far too limited. The original term suggests a
general definition a prophet, we may say, is he to
whom a special Divine message or communication is
given. This message is generally, primarily, a
personal one, having reference to the Theocracy of
the Jewish Church. The Theocracy is the visible
type of the invisible government of God. Hence the
frequency of prophetic addresses to the kings. Also
the kings of Israel after separation of the tribes. If
you ask for the principal object of these prophecies
you find it is the maintenance and inviolability of the
Law as a Divine institution, and therefore of the
claims of God to the loyalty and obedience of
the nation. Hence, the frequent denunciation, first,
of idolatry : God is a jealous God. Won t allow
Astarte, Moloch, etc. Hence frequent threats
against violation of social laws."
A record of letters written and received, in the
same book, shows that he kept in close touch with his
46
The Faithful Pastor: Devon
parents, brothers and sister especially his sister.
Against the date, September igth, is the entry,
" Received from sister. Ordained." With that
sister, who predeceased him only by a short time, he
was always on the most affectionate terms.
Returning to the Journal, it gives many details
of his habits, his reading, his states of mind, his
pastoral work, his preaching and speaking and
preparation of sermons and addresses. It reveals a
man of sincere and virile piety, regarding his work
with a high seriousness, and determined to let no
mental or physical indolence or corrigible short
comings on his part lessen the effect of his ministry.
When he did permit himself a day off, he thoroughly
enjoyed the well-earned relaxation. Here is the
Diary record of three days, March i6th, I7th and
i8th, 1873 :
Sunday 16. Rose little after 8. Day cold and snowy.
Bad day for Brother Spear, whose farewell services to-day.
Congregation thin for bad weather. Good time though.
After evening service Miss came in. Long interview.
Decided to join the Church. After prayer and supper read
History of Philosophy one hour. Then to bed, 10.40.
Monday 17. In fine trim for Monday. Wrote Father.
Wrote out sketch of Sunday morning s sermon. Got
together notes for speech for evening. Read History of Philo
sophy one hour. After short walk dined at 1.30. Scammell
came by 4.6 train. Went together to Spear s farewell tea
meeting. Had an exceedingly interesting public meeting
in the evening. Scammell stayed with us the night. Sat
up late at music and talking. Bed 12.45.
Tuesday 18. Breakfast 8.45. Music, some singing.
Then walked with Scammell, saw Spear, all out together.
Very pleasant walk. Home at 1.30. Afternoon at chess
47
J. Brierley
with Scammell left by 7.40 train. A holiday for both of us.
Very well in a way, but would not do too often. Read Taylor
in the evening. Prayers, supper and bed at n.
It appears to have been a habit to " after break
fast prepare sketch of day s work." The evening
prayer is usually entered, and when he is in a happy
mood he will sometimes wind up with a joyous
paean from the Vulgate, of which he was very fond.
Thus, on the day following those just recorded,
when a good " tale of bricks " was rounded off by
a " nice, earnest service," after which he " practised
the children at hymns," he ends, " Lauda, anima
mea, Dominum; laudabo Dominum in vita mea!"
He has his bad days, when his head is " queer," and
he is self-reproachful for neglecting work. The
" queerness " is not surprising, for Brierley was
always without temperance as a reader, and put the
heaviest tax upon his nerves. At the close of a day
when he felt so unwell that he " could do nothing
till after ten " (a.m.), he winds up, " De profundis
clamavi ad te, Domine. Domine, exaudi vocem
meam ! " The next day was a Sunday, and the
entry is :
Made strong effort and got through my work very fairly.
Preached morning and evening. Old subject in the evening.
Did me good rather than harm. After evening service read
Bunyan s " Jerusalem Sinner Saved." Struck with the
power of the performance. Impressed me more with his
mental powers than anything I ever read of his before. In
te, Domine, speravi.
At the end of a Monday entry, with an evening
meeting " full of hope and good feeling," he bursts
into prayer from the Vulgate " Et sit splendor
48
The Faithful Pastor: Devon
Domini Dei nostri super nos, et opera manuum
nostrarum dirige super nos ; et opus manuum
nostrarum dirige ! "
The manse had its garden, and sometimes Brierley
found physical exercise and relaxation from study
there. Once on an April morning early, when " not
up to hard work," he "took to gardening. Dug and
delved from 8.45 till n. Went out and paid some
calls. Bought garden seeds. Sowed mustard and
cress. After dinner did a bed with radish. Visitors
then. Got to sermon at 5. Baptism at 7.15.
Service 7.30. After service, a Committee meeting.
Finished day with grind at Sol Fa. Bed at n."
Not bad for a day, when not "up to hard work ! "
The " grind at Sol Fa " was in view of a Psalmody
Class he had it in his mind to start. There is a
humorous juxtaposition in an entry, " Read
South, planted potatoes," that would have pleased
that "most witty of English preachers."
One April Friday in 1873 he concludes with the
reproach, " A week rather disappointing ; no
intense fixture on work. Replenish me, O Lord, with
Thy grace, that I lose not the things I have gained."
He wakes self-reproachful the next morning, for he
writes, " In no great mood for work, I suppose,
seeing I began with newspaper reading. Read
Christian World and Christian Age. Then two of
South s sermons."
The book of Nature he was never tired of reading.
Botany and geology were favourite studies, not only
in books, but as an investigator of phenomena for
himself. There are such entries as :
49
J. Brierley
Went with Lowater to Westward Ho. Very fine day.
Discussed the rocks on the coast. L. thought they were
granitic rocks breaking through the clay slate at a point
below the pier. What he called granitic looked to me
more like limestone. Picked several flowers by rocks which
were strange to me. Brought them home to examine.
After breakfast wrote my Diary and began my reading by
looking up some things in Encyclopaedia. Reading con
fined to geology. Looked up shales.
Picked up some cuckoo flowers in the valley near the station.
Examined the side of the stream. All the bank on the
left is drift evidently. Should think the whole valley
a river bed at one time.
In May, 1873, he is restless and indisposed to work,
but as the last entry in the following series shows,
there was good reason :
Thursday 15. Up very late. Too bad. They would per
suade me. I am not in health. Would rather not err on
the indulgence side. Looked into garden before breakfast.
Friday 16. Spent day mainly in working up the vis
viUe which had got to a low ebb. Must get the habit of doing
my necessary work, sermons, &c., earlier in the week,
then may do outside work as I have more strength.
Saturday 17. Did comparatively little all evening. Had
recuperated by that time and went forward well.
Sunday 18. Rose at 8. Preached with some vigour in
morning. Not much good in the evening.
Monday 19. Should put this in red letters. At 8.30
our baby boy was born. Could do nothing all day but
potter about trying to realise this state of things. Parson,
husband, father. Life will find it difficult to provide me
with a new experience now.
He is soon himself again, as witness entry :
Wednesday 28. Rose 7.45. Prepared for marriage service.
Haywood s wedding at 10.30. Attended breakfast and
proposed bride and bridegroom. Back at 1.15. Sermonised
50
The Faithful Pastor: Devon
till dinner at 2.30. After dinner, garden, potatoes till 4.
Sermon preparation till service time. After service singing
class. Good day s work and well tired at end of it.
The garden, he underlines next day, wants lot of
looking after, and it gets it most days.
It is good to note how appreciative he is of
brother ministers. In connection with a Dissenters
Club meeting there is a sermon. He notes :
Sermon by Rennard. Enjoyed it much. Rennard man
of an excellent spirit. Knows what prayer is.
A Sunday entry concludes :
Was unusually fresh for evening service. Must make
that a great point to preserve freshness.
There is a set-back the week following :
Could do nothing at sermonising this week. Certainly
I am not a machine yet. I must have not time merely,
and mere intellectual force, but inspiration in order to do
anything. Made many vain attempts but gave it up
at last. Determined to reproduce something for Sunday.
Had much walking. Not well on the whole, and the week
as to actual work rather unprofitable. But I feel it better
at times to knock off like this, as I come after a change of
that sort with great vigour and elan to work afterwards.
God forbid there should be any real and permanent declension
of piety and zeal. I want nought but progress there.
Sunday follows, and he notes :
Mere playing at preaching both times. Expected not
to do much and fulfilled the expectation. After evening
service read some of Urqu hart s Life and some chapters
in Matthew in Greek. Somehow a new view of Christ
from reading Matthew in that way. I tried to exercise the
historical imagination over it. What a stupendous character
it was 1
51
J. Brierley
Within a black border there is, in 1874, the
entry :
December, Sunday 20. Father died.
In the summer of 1875 he is much indisposed, and
finds work the heaviest burden. On a day when he
feels better, he notes :
Vulgate, wrote Journal. Read little of Barrow. Some
of Spurgeon. Did something at Sunday morning sermon.
A sleepy and rather profitless morning.
The day closes. " Seem gathering strength again.
May it soon be in full tide and all given to God ! "
July nth (Sunday), 1875, he "had good time in
morning. Did not seem to get up steam so
thoroughly in the evening. Lord s Supper at close.
Thank God for the day. And could wish had more
reaping for this sowing. Let us stick more deliber
ately to this point, and have this as the object."
One day he notes :
New plan of beginning earlier to get Saturday s rest so far
successful. Had voice practice after dinner. This, I am
persuaded, will produce astounding effects in every way.
Soon after he is convinced, on a Sunday, that the
voice production exercises have improved his delivery.
It is easy to detect " J.B." in the making in 1875
entries :
May, Sunday 23. Preached both times with little
satisfaction to myself. Went to bed feeling as if God s
ploughs and harrows had been over me.
Monday 24. Read till dinner. Biographical notices of
Keats, Hook (Theodore), George Fox. Read carefully
number of Shakespeare s Sonnets. Much struck with their
extraordinary depth and beauty.
52
The Faithful Pastor: Devon
A full day s work followed and the entry concludes:
The dissatisfactions of the previous day were made up by
the fruitfulness of this day. Thus I learn the uses and the
value of sorrow.
On the 25th he " read Montaigne till dinner."
A June day s reading begins with Vulgate and
Greek Testament, and then with " read Lillie s
(Mrs. Brierley s) Journal of Fashions till tired and
went to bed." A few days later it is, " read Lillie s
book on Babies. Plenty of fun." On an " off day "
" Read Tancred. Deeply interested. Gave me new
view of Disraeli."
On a July Tuesday of 1875, after " some weeding
in garden," he had good " morning at Bible studies.
Read in Latin, Greek and English. Began plan of
studying a chapter more thoroughly, writing para
phrase after to test knowledge." At this time, in
his light reading, he is alternating Poe with Spurgeon.
After a week-night service, he exclaims : " Had
some power in prayer again, O that it may increase !"
He suffers much from sleeplessness and is evidently
questioning whether his health would not benefit
by a change from Torrington. Then the 1875
entries close :
October to Xmas. An interval of unsettlement. Received
invitation to preach at Leytonstone, London, E. First
refused. Asked again and went. Result was request to
preach two more Sundays and did so. An invitation followed,
and after serious consideration was accepted. At same
time was asked to preach at Newcastle, but thought it better
at once to decline, as bad to be distracted between two
places.
53
J. Brierley
The next entry is :
1876. June, Sunday 9. This day closed my ministry
of five years at Torrington. My first charge. In the place
to which I brought my wife, where my two children were
born, where I may say I began life. Much to be thank
ful for there. No rupture to our harmony or charity ; many
friendships made, which I think death only will sever. Work
done and experience gained which lay a capital foundation
for future efforts, and now in a new sphere my way opened
up to, I think, extensive usefulness. May God help me to
deep gratitude and to earnest endeavour to improve all
privileges.
Crowded congregation for closing service. Much feeling.
Preached an hour and a quarter.
So came to a close a pastorate that was a most
important part of " J.B. s " education in life.
Often he returned to his first love, and always
with keen pleasure to meet his old friends, on
whose mind and heart he had stamped indelible
impressions. His was the true ministry of soul
to souls. Preacher he was indeed, fresh, stimu
lating, suggestive, striking home to the depths
of the being of his hearers; but those who remain
of the hearers testify that the breezy, cheery per
sonality of the man, his combination of deep serious
ness and light-hearted bonhomie, his intuitive
sympathy and tact, his " good talk " on any and
every subject, his catholic interest in people irres
pective of social position and education, did
more even than his pulpit messages to make his
ministry a success. Scores of souls " made better
by his presence " never ceased to " call him
blessed," and some remain unto this day.
54
CHAPTER V
The Faithful Pastor: North London
THE Leytonstone of 1876 was not the congested
area it has since become. It lies low, some seven
miles north of the Thames, between the River Lea
and Epping Forest. It was a fairly substantial
middle-class district then, and Nonconformity, as in
all outer North London, " ruled the roost."
Between Mr. Brierley and his people, during his
four years ministry, there was warm and un
clouded friendship, and when ill-health compelled the
wrench of separation, there was sincerest regret on
both sides. He went to a temporary iron church.
He set to work to get built a permanent church,
to seat 850. This, which cost 10,000, was opened
in 1878. Though his ministry ended two years
later, Mr. Brierley saw the church largely paid for,
with a large and growing congregation, which ensured
its future success.
The Journal during the Leytonstone period is not
kept with anything like the same regularity as at
Torrington. There were various reasons for this.
The charge of a London church in such a district, to
a pastor of his type, meant a constant pressure of
engagements. Then, living in the London area,
with his keen interest in men, movements and things,
Mr. Brierley had many irresistible and quite legiti-
55
J. Brierley
mate distractions. It was soon discovered that the
Leytonstone minister was an exceedingly attractive
personality, and a preacher and speaker with a large
store of matter, and with a gift for expressing original
thought in a way that captivated his audiences.
He was not the kind of man to shut himself up
hermetically within his local sphere. He took a
strong interest in denominational and Free Church
affairs, and soon began to be in demand as a special
occasion man. There was enough and to spare,
anyway, in his own church for a man of much stronger
physique than Mr. Brierley s. He had not been three
months at Leytonstone before he started a prayer
meeting for the young folks, and a Ladies Bible
Class, which he inaugurated with a sketch of the
literary history of the Bible. He says that he
" means to give them some general information on the
Bible as a whole, and then to settle down on the Acts
of the Apostles." There is a Young Men s Society,
at which he gives his lecture on Whitefield and
Wesley. There is " Capital attendance. Got
money enough to clear off debt on society and to
leave good balance in hand." He is in very good
spirits, and after this entry on April 5th, he notes :
Am much improved in health by the change from Devon
to Essex. Air of Devon evidently my foe. With better
health let us hope I shall do better. Not been able to take
up definite plan of life and study yet, through our unsettled
domestic condition, house being in utter disorder since we
came in. Papering, cleaning, new furniture, getting in
carpenters, jobbers about of all sorts. Have had to do
my thinking anyhow. Making some approach now to civil
ised conditions. Hope shall enjoy when reached.
56
The Faithful Pastor: North London
After his recognition he remarks, " Glad it s all
over. Have been recognised enough now for the
next ninety years." He feels some compunction at
yielding to the delights of life in London. He says :
April 20. Read paper, wrote four letters, occupied
remaining time till dinner sketching out plan for future.
Have been going back in habits, I fear, a little lately ; must
get myself to the level or how can I expect to help others
up ? After dinner a round of visiting. More of same after
tea. Finished with reading N. Macleod s life. He gets
better as he goes on. The difference between him and
McCheyne. There is a peculiar spiritual temperament of which
the latter is a striking illustration, which no mere earnest
ness can secure. A gift of God, none so precious.
The next day he notes :
Fair day on the whole. Am yet much behind in visitation,
not nearly round my parish. More than ever convinced
of importance of house to house work. Can do genuine
good so and no ostentation.
A Sunday entry concludes :
People very attentive, but not sure whether what I gave
calculated for the highest results. This I must always aim
at, and be satisfied with nothing else.
On a day when there were guests in the house he
enters :
Not much work to be done when visitors in the house,
feel uneasy when not hard at it. Still my duty to attend to
guests.
A new chapel scheme is inaugurated. He
arranges for a public meeting, and remarks, " Must
go to this with all my heart. Work while it is day."
57
J. Brierley
In May, 1876, he goes to the Liberation Society s
evening meeting, and notes :
Fine speech from Chamberlain, of Birmingham. Same
from Landels ; sad failure on part of Dr. . Got off the
rails somehow and fairly broke down. Intensely painful.
Spoilt meeting.
Unfortunately his old trouble of sleepless nights
recurs. He is often put off work and blames himself.
Thus, a day after the Liberation Society s meeting :
After breakfast, finished Macleod s life. Truly a noble
man. Speaks continually of his waste of time, desultori-
ness, but how much worse am I ? He was at it often from
6 a.m. till 10 p.m. Early rising. Hour for devotion to begin
with. Was no great scholar, but did good work without.
Comfort for me. His assiduous visitation when a young
minister to note. Felt what I feel, ministerial usefulness
needs basis of personal friendship which is to be got by
visitation. If your work is to have a pure and elevating
character you must have such a character yourself, and you
must be continually bringing that into contact with the lives
of the people.
Here is an entry a little later : " Must as much as
possible make myself a Sunday School man. Vast
importance of this work. After a May Meeting week
he writes :
Had week of dissipation at May Meetings, etc. Found
the meetings very pleasant though the excitement takes a
good deal out of one. As to work nil. Would not do to
have many weeks of this sort, if progress is to be made either
in work or character.
After a dinner of old and present New College
men he writes :
58
The Faithful Pastor: North London
A little tame. One seems to have grown away from the
interests of College life now. The wider sea one has launched
on makes this seem a tame mill-pond in comparison.
On a Monday following a bad week he writes :
Right in health once again. Begin a week which I trust
will be more successful in every way than the last. Ill
health puts me out in every way, intellectually and spirit
ually. Don t know how it may be with others
Read hard for Bible Class. Had good attendance. Good
prayer meeting after which helped to screw me up again.
A Wednesday entry concludes :
Preached with much comfort. No reason why week-night
services should not be a thorough success. Determined
to try and make them such.
The following Sunday it is :
Bad night through thorough wakefulness. Got up tired,
but the entry ends :
Crowd at chapel in evening. Great freedom in speaking.
Very tired.
Thursday, July 25th, 1876, he is in self-reproachful
mood :
In morning worked at Hebrew. Mean getting up lost
ground here. Going through the Scripture without com
mentary. This style of regular reading conquers sloth,
conquers list lessness. I am weak as water. God help me!
A little later a day concludes on a brighter note :
" Thank God for work to do and strength to do it,"
and the next day it is :
A not wasted day, glad to say. Got once more at visita
tion, despite struggle of inclination. Let me ever plunge
59
J. Brierley
boldly at work I do not like. The work I do like can take
care of itself.
*****
Saturday, 3, to Sunday 4 August, 1876. James Preston,
Junr., up from Leicester. Taken off my work for the time.
Showed him sights of London. Is really a sacrifice to me
to go pleasuring. Am glad it is so and that I feel my true
pleasure in my work.
There is a gap of two months, and then " J.B."
severely lectures himself :
Long interval from last entry. How is that ? Answer :
J.B. s knack of every now and again letting his habits
take care of themselves. Said J.B. finds it easy to get on
inclined plane and slide down a piece, but climbing back
again, there s the rub, sed revocare gradum, hie labor est \
Interesting speculation : He has put pen to paper again,
how long will this spurt continue ? What has he been doing
in the interval ? Answer : Preaching Sundays and Wed
nesdays, having Bible classes, attending meetings, writing
many letters, reading some books and a good many, too
many, newspapers. Has not visited much. That depart
ment has been terribly neglected. Not much private
devotion. Inner life subject of many strong yearnings,
but not of much regular discipline. Done some Hebrew, but
scarcely any other regular study. Has not been careful
to redeem the time. God help him !
The ill health became more pronounced, and
entries in the Journal are few and brief. The last
relating to Leytonstone is Sunday, October 28th,
1877, when he preached three " special sermons "
and " felt strong and well in it all." In the late
summer of 1878 he felt so unwell that he got a
month s leave of absence. After unwisely preaching
at Edinburgh he had such a collapse as alarmed him,
60
MR. BRIERLEY WHEN AT LEYTONSTONE (about I860)
The Faithful Pastor: North London
and found two months rest would be needful, which
lengthened to three. A note sandwiched in the
sermon record states : " Absent in Scotland, in the
Mediterranean, Black Sea, the Danube, and the
8ta(3o\o<s knows where else." A letter on his
adventures in the Bosphorus and the Black Sea will
be found in a later chapter.
A note at the end of his record of sermons preached
at Leytonstone, end of January, 1880, says :
"Phil. i. 12, "The things which happened unto me."
Closed my ministry at Leytonstone. Four years of service,
broken and at last ended by ill health, but of much joy,
appreciation and prosperity.
One of his Leytonstone friends, Mr. J. Skelt, still
a deacon, says the fame of Mr. Brierley s preaching
brought people to the church from a very wide
district, and no preacher in North-East London at
that time had a higher reputation. Mr. Brierley
in those days was fond of horse-riding, and he much
relished jog-trots along the Epping Forest roads and
parks on a grey mare lent him by a deacon. He
was succeeded by Rev. Colmer B. Symes, B.A., and
the church has had unbroken prosperity right
down to the time of its present minister, Rev. H.
Lemon, B.A.
61
CHAPTER VI
The Faithful Pastor: South London
TILL September Mr. Brierley was resting and slowly
struggling back to some measure of health. There
is a record of six " Occasional Discourses " delivered
in that month. He accepted a temporary co-
pastorate at Trinity Church, Croydon, and preached
there once each Sunday from the first Sunday
of January, 1881, till the middle of 1882. He
revisited and preached at his old churches. On
May 7th and 28th he preached to the newly-formed
church meeting in a Lecture Hall at Balham. This
led to a call to the Balham pastorate, which he
accepted. Croydon was on the fringe of South
London and no doubt the Balham leaders had heard
of the quality of the preaching at Croydon, and
gone over to " sample " it.
Balham the church is really in the Balham High
Road, Upper Tooting was then a new suburb, cover
ing part of what, not very long before, had been fields
and woods, along the high road to Epsom, and thence
to Brighton, with nothing between the west end of
Clapham Common and Wimbledon but the ancient
village of Tooting, reputed to have been for a while
the home of Daniel Defoe. South London was
eating up mile after mile of the country, the specu-
62
The Faithful Pastor: South London
lative builder was covering the area between Tooting
and Wandsworth Common with " roads " of villas,
letting, on the Upper Tooting side, at from 40 to
100 a year, and on the Balham side at from 30 to
40, with " streets " for the working classes. There
were no traditions, and the population migrating
into the district was of an " exclusive " character.
Upper Tooting was distinctly gilt-edged ; Balham
was less "select 1 and its residential population
was largely of the superior wage-earning class
clerks, teachers and the like. The new Congrega
tional Lecture Hall was strategically placed to draw
alike from Upper Tooting and Balham. The first
members included some enthusiastic, very loyal
and substantial people, with whom Mr. Brierley
found it easy and pleasant to work. A number
of them were men of great influence in the business
world of West London, and the church has always
attracted an unusual proportion of highly educated
men and women.
The people were responsive to Mr. Brierley s
stimulating, broad-minded, original preaching, and
backed him generously in the building scheme
for a new Church, which was soon raised. The
ground is high, and surrounded by a belt of commons,
nearly seven miles south of the river ; the neigh
bourhood is healthy and for a couple of years or so
he felt in good condition. Perhaps, after his
manner, he yielded to the temptation to overdo it,
for at the end of the 1883 record of sermons, he
notes triumphantly, " Preached twice fifty-one
Sundays out of fifty-two this year of grace." He
63
J. Brierley
took his holiday of three weeks, in January, 1884,
at Ventnor.
That new Church did not prove an unmixed
blessing. It was built in the " Nonconformist
Gothic " style, and as every subsequent minister
has found out to his cost, the one thing that was
not provided for was good hearing. The acoustics
were as bad as they could be, necessitating a constant
strain on the preacher s voice and nerves, and even
then there was the consciousness that the sound
waves were scattered, and that the greater part of
the congregation not immediately in the direct
line of their travel were straining themselves to catch
uncomfortably bits of broken sentences. Mr.
Brierley attributed to the acoustics the wearing
down that led to his final collapse as a pastor. As
will be seen in a later chapter, the iron of the
villainous acoustics entered into his soul, and he
liberated his soul very freely on the subject in the
first article contributed to The Christian World.
The Balham ministry was soon interrupted by
a breakdown. He notes, under 1885 :
April to September. Went through illness in Wales and
Bournemouth. Much kindness of people.
There is no further entry till July, 1886, when
there is one of the most serious :
July, Tuesday 13. Have been glancing over the records of
the past. Curious sensation doing so. Are records of
hard work which I did not think much of at the time.
Records of three services often a day, done with compara
tive ease, and now my power is limited to one on the Sunday,
and with that I need assistance. And what then ? A good
6 4
The Faithful Pastor: South London
soldier gets wounded and takes it as a matter of course.
Tommy Atkins for is. 2d. a day. But I am in the service
of Jesus Christ. The wounds are honourable. Now I must
serve Him by some other ways. I have been stirred up
to see if I cannot do something more than I have ever
done by conversation with persons about Him, to stir
up His friends to greater zeal and directly attack those
who have not yielded to Him. Oh, that I may be
strengthened and sustained in this ! I want to keep and
record here specially of this form of work, to note processes
and results, on myself and others. Lord, help me. For I
have no strength in myself. Help me to commit all my
way to Thee !
That day, after long search for a Sunday subject,
he does a round of visitations, and notes :
Thought occurred while visiting. Why should there be
characters of my type in the world ? Why not all go in for
money-making, etc. ? Answer : Because the world in the
present stage needs the lost sheep looking up. When all
looked up the Evangelist Church not needed. God sends
to the world what is needed. Was enabled to speak to
some Christian friends about witnessing for Christ. Have
not, as yet, however, directly tackled any outsider with
the great theme. Shall not believe in myself till I have
done that. -Lord help me ! Wrote Professor Elmslie.
Began paper, " Duty of Citizens to the State."
The next day he says :
What a mercy I am able to do some things still ! Can read
and think, and talk. All these are methods and possibilities
of work for the Master. Doctor says I am to keep within
my tether. How to find its length ?
The doctor s wisdom is shown by the note the
day following, " Very weak and dizzy after previous
65
J. Brierley
day s study." As it " seemed could get no
further study," he walked out, but is incorrigible.
Behold the good effects of an hour in the open ! Got back
ready for study work, which was able to pursue during the
rest of the day. . . . Some fervent aspirations this day
for personal growth, and the prosperity of the Church. Oh,
let me be enabled to kindle them to a flame in other hearts
in the Church !
Sunday, July 18. A rather restless night. At present
moment (morning) not realised much of Sabbath rest in
the soul. Am looking forward to meet my Lord, in the
work for Him. O, gracious Lord, show to me the love
which casteth out fear to-day ! (After service.) Got on
without much physical discomfort or exhaustion, but
not with that complete liberty and power of spirit which
I desire. Believe I was hampered by my having written
so much, and by remembering what I had written. Went
to school in afternoon and said a few words. Praying
for more work and the power to do it. I must use
my small talent and put it out to usury in the Lord s
service. Make every day very fruitful for Him. Then,
whether they be long or short, they will witness. Oh, how
have I wasted my years and opportunities of late by
neglecting to cultivate my spirit ! God forgive me, and
preserve me for His sake from ever falling back again.
He reads Baxter s Reformed Pastor " a tonic
for time and eternity, which I hope greatly to profit
by." A " Monday off " is devoted to hearing
Dr. Parker lecture at Exeter Hall in the morning,
and a game of chess in the afternoon, but there is
a feeling of uneasiness " A day full of pleasant
things. What of my work ? Don t let this week
glide past without some stroke struck for your Lord
Jesus. Reverence your calling, minister of Christ,
ambassador to souls ! "
66
The Faithful Pastor: South London
A certain notorious case in the Law Courts in
1886, which flooded the papers with unsavoury
details, greatly distressed him. He was to preach
at Croydon on a week-night. He says :
A long walk to the church of nearly a mile somewhat
upset me, and just before service I wondered what kind of
appearance I was about to make. It seemed as though there
was absolutely nothing left in my mind of either thought
or feeling. These fears, however, are not to be our guides.
When in the pulpit I had the greatest liberty, though faint
with physical weakness. Preached on " The Spiritual
Harvest in England." Message seemed one to me needed,
and therefore I gave it. Had wondered how it would be
received, perhaps very indifferently, for it is quite the
opposite line to that in which the English people are turned
just now. Is there room for any Christianity among them,
I wonder ? Perhaps it will grow by and bye. I may be
all wrong in my diagnosis. Hope I am.
Next day :
Tired, very. Day s hard work before me. Trust strength
will come as needed. Above all, Lord Jesus, be Thou with
me, and just take all my life into Thy hands this day.
He found himself too brain weary for book work,
and visited a boy in the last stage of consumption,
and did his best to comfort the mother. He con
cludes " The interview seemed an opening by Christ
my Master to the kind of work for which I have
been longing. Let me steadily follow this up ! "
When his vacation comes he writes :
Holiday begun. I want to spend it well. No relaxation
of spiritual vigilance, or growth of character. Am to use
it for physical improvement, but also spiritual. Refreshment
for my great work in all its parts. Let me remember this !
After prayer, breakfast, and then a thorough good turn in
67
J. Brierley
the garden. Oh the weeds ! Read letter from Mr.
about W. , and F. . Great joy at hearing of this
open decision. Let nothing go backward. God calls us
forward.
The holiday began at Cliff House, Rowsley.
Passing through Leicester he is moved to tears,
and writes : " As I came to the old town could
not help a deep sense of gladness my birthplace,
seat of my father s sepulchre, where my kindred
dwell. Can I forget thee ? " The day after arrival
is wet, but in the afternoon he plays chess and
records : " Played four games, won two, and lost
two. How I love chess, yet how poor a player I am !
Brain seems bewildered." He has good talk with
Dr. Grattan Guinness, whose astronomical and
geological knowledge he greatly admires, and has
" good crack with Tutor Rattray. Rare old Scotch
man," with whom he discusses Sayce s " Baby
lonian Inscriptions," and " thanks God for this
day." There is a Tent Mission, and he cannot keep
out of it.
I worked in the after meetings and got one young woman
to decide for Christ. Oh ! my God, help her ! Heard she
had been a very troublesome girl in the village. Blessed
work bringing souls to Christ. May this be the beginning
of much more work of the same kind.
A week by himself at Rowsley is followed by the
spending of the remainder of the holiday at Dover
with his wife and children. After a family evening
at chess, with a drawn game, he gives himself the
warning : " In playing must avoid any ostentations
of strength and be always ready to accept defeat,
68
The Faithful Pastor: South London
if it comes, with cheerful grace, otherwise a bad
thing." Three excursions to Ostend are squeezed
into the holiday, for the sake of the sea.
Work was resumed, but health became more and
more precarious. On Sunday, September 12, he
notes :
Some fear and trembling in view of service. Had, however,
a most valuable thought which I must keep as a treasure.
It was to look at the feeling of nervousness as something
which God knows all about, in which God was, and which
therefore had some Divine purpose of good. I at once
from that thought rose above the wall of nervousness and
looked right over it, and felt at rest. In the service itself
was much helped. Parts of my topic which in preparation
were unsatisfactory straightened out, as I came to them
in speaking, and so what I said was better than what I had
thought. Remember how in other ways the future when
it is come up to is so often better than our thought about it.
God adds something of His own to that future which we had
not calculated on.
Health breaks down completely, and in March,
1887, there is the closing entry :
Balham ministry closed through ill health. Built a Church,
filled it. Left everything in prosperous condition, thank
God, and with unbroken friendship and esteem.
Under the successive ministries of Professor
Elmslie who served during an " interregnum "
Rev. E. Griffith- Jones, B.A. (now Principal
Griffith-Jones, D.D., of Yorkshire United College),
and Rev. H. H. Carlisle, M.A., the Balham Church,
somewhat improved in its acoustics by ingenious
devices and the building of a gallery, has shown
that its spiritual foundations, at any rate, were
" well and truly laid."
69
CHAPTER VII
" Apart and Resting Awhile "
WHEN, at the age of forty-three, Jonathan Brierley s
Balham pastorate was broken, it might well have
seemed to himself that his public work was ended.
But he was not the type that gives up hope while
there is life. His dauntless soul kept the flag flying
however damaged might be the ship that carried it.
He was a Christian who believed in prayer, and
prayer to him always had a calming and healing
effect on his shattered nerves. With his young
family he settled at Neuchatel, on the north shore
of the lake to which the town gives its name.
Neuchatel, 1,433 feet above sea level, and lying
well above the lake, is the capital of the Canton.
It has a population of 25,000. The streets rise
in terraces, and the outlook ranges from the High
Alps of the Bernese Oberland to the east, to the
huge white mountain bastions of the Mont Blanc
range away beyond the Lake of Geneva to the south.
Mr. Brierley always loved the mountains, and his
sensitive soul drank in their inspiration. In one of
his early Christian World articles, he tells how,
on a mountain climb, with companions, he came
to a point of view where the majesty of the scenery
so overwhelmed him that he felt for a short while
70
"Apart and Resting Awhile
he must be alone with his thoughts, and, finding
the opportunity, he let the influence of the moun
tains sink into him.
The rest, the air, the glory of the lake, the moun
tains and the sky, gradually restored him to some
measure of strength, though his nerves were never
again to be equal to any sustained strain. He
walked much, when equal to it his favourite
exercise, and also his favourite method of mental
stimulation. He had taken with him, of course,
ample provision of books, for how could he live
without reading ? And when he found himself
able to read with some system, great was his joy.
There was a very good library in the town. " J.B.,"
of course, made friends with the librarian, and
had the freedom of the library. He greatly widened
the range of his reading, and studied seriously along
certain special lines. He was never a student
of the Mr. Casaubon type, continually taking in
stock and going to do marvellous things some day,
but bowed down by the weight of his intellectual
accumulations and paralysed by his eagerness to
add to them. He was seized by that zest for human
ity, that humani nihil a me alienum puto, that
passion for service, that almost miraculous touch
with the life and thought of the age and intuitive
understanding of men and movements, that were
a perpetual wonder to all who knew and read
him.
Many blank pages of the inseparable Journal were
fill d with notes on his reading at this time. There
is Reuss on the Pentateuch. He analyses the philo-
J. Brierley
sophy of Rothe. It is interesting to note this
on "J.B. s" favourite subject of personality:
Rothe holds that till we have attained spirituality we
are perishing. Distinguishes between soul and personality.
Intelligence and will are instruments of personality. Per
sonality is built up of acts of intelligence and will. We have
a soul, but are not the soul. Beasts have a soul. Person
ality is a thing which uses the soul and body. Out of the
activity of will and intelligence, therefore, something entirely
new, i.e., the personality, has come into being, the highest
thing yet.
Rousseau s " Du Contrat Social " is subjected
to similar analysis. After a spell of Godet s
" Introduction to Luke/ he turns to the Greek
poets Hesiod, whose " Theogony " he analyses,
the Orphic Hymns, Theocritus, Bion, Anacreon.
Then he reads Scherer on Goethe. Some
thing diverted his attention to art, and there are
many pages of notes on A. Michel s " History
of Flemish and Dutch Painting." Monostier s
" History of the Vaudois Churches " evidently
vastly interested him. This is an interlude in
his art studies, which are resumed with Coindet s
" History of Art in Italy." The Greek Traged
ians ^Eschylus and Sophocles are relieved by
Ritschl and Augustine. Then he takes a turn
at French religious preachers and writers Lamen-
nais, Amiel, Edgar Quinet. He is thrown forward
to Ibsen, and gives short analyses of Ghosts,"
" The Wild Duck," and " Hedda Gabler." It is
almost with a shock that we find him returning
to such a study as Duff s Ecclesiastical History.
72
" Apart and Resting Awhile"
A series of bits from Browning that he had marked
closes the Journal s record of his systematic
reading.
There is a recollection of the Neuchatel period
by Dr. Evans Darby, who called on his old College
chum.
" We met at Neuchatel during his residence, and again
I carry with me the sacred memory of a happy evening, and
pleasant intercourse. It was in 1890, at the beginning of my
Continental visits, and I had made a tour to Grenoble,
Geneva, Montreux, and Berne, arranging, on my way back,
to leave by an earlier train, and pay a surprise visit to my
old friend. He gladly gave up the evening to me, took me
for a charming walk on the heights above the city, from
which I had the finest view of the Alps I have ever seen
Mount Pilatus on the distant left to Mont Blanc towering
above all on the right. He was a delightful guide, pointing
out peak after peak, and chatting in his inimitable way
about his personal experiences in mountain climbing. Then,
too, I heard of the offer made to him by The Christian World,
and that he was probably soon returning to London."
When he began to " feel his feet " again, the
creative instinct was strong, and it was quickened
by the necessity of finding some solution of the
problem of his future. He preached sometimes
at Neuchatel, but then, as always, preaching took
so much out of him that it was extremely doubt
ful if he would ever be able to resume the active
work of a preacher. The idea of using his pen
instead of his tongue was bound to suggest itself.
He began to set in order his thoughts on various
courses of reading he had pursued, and wrote essays
on " Augustine in Literature," " Ignatius Loyola,"
73
J. Brierley
" Modern Realism," "Fourier and his Phalanstery/
and " appreciations " of a number of writers who
had treated the religion of their age in a very free
spirit, from Lucian to Voltaire. Some of his MSS.
were sent to two or more editors before getting
accepted, and some were not accepted at all, but
Brierley was as difficult to sink as a cork. He
tried his hand even at the short story, but a specimen
remaining among his papers shows, what might
have been expected, that he had not acquired the
lightness of touch and the appearance of spon
taneity essential for success in the field of fiction.
Here, perhaps, is the right place to mention that
now and again he was moved to write verse, and
a curious fact emerges. He had a fine taste in
poetry, as his note-books, with the quotations from
poets he was reading, show. But in his own verse
there is often jolting rhythm and questionable
rhymes. The poet is born, not made, and " J.B."
was born to wear the mantle of the prophet and not
the laurel crown of the poet.
Bibliophile though he was, "J.B." read always
with the definite object of fertilising his mind,
and enabling it to grow richer crops of creative
work. In one of his Essays, on " Method in Brain
Work," speaking undoubtedly from his own ex
perience, he says :
" The main point to remember is that mental
work is a species of agriculture, and that here, as
in actual farming, the secret of success lies in a
good system of rotation of crops. The farmer
knows that if he goes on raising barley from the
74
"Apart and Resting Awhile"
same field for a succession of years, the crop will
constantly degenerate, and the soil be impover
ished. By varying the crop a fresh set of elements
in the soil is drawn upon, and so the process of
exhaustion is retarded. But rotation of itself
is not enough. The elements that have to be taken
out of the land will have to be replaced. And
in addition, the ground at times will require a period
of rest. It must lie fallow.
" Precisely the same obtains in mental production.
Every student, for instance, knows the relief obtained
by varying the tasks. Wearied with mathe
matical problems, the mind will feel a revival of
vigour in turning, say, to the study of history.
But there is another thing which is not so clearly
seen. In each day the moment comes, with some
earlier, with others later, when the brain can no longer,
with any advantage, continue to absorb facts and
ideas. To toil on then, as so many do, in the
same line of effort, is a grave blunder. What the
mind picks up in its weariness from such toil it will
not retain. And serious risks to its own soundness
are being run. But the rest it is now calling for
need not be inaction. What is wanted is simply
totally to reverse the mental process. Instead of
continuing to receive and absorb, let the student,
throwing his books aside, set in motion his crea
tive faculties. It will be a positive and delicious
rest now to let the mind dream its way along some
line of its own, to sketch a character, to project an
article, to lay the foundations of a sermon. The
experience here is as when one takes a relay of fresh
75
J. Brierley
horses on a long journey. It is only one side of the
brain that is tired. Another set of faculties, those
of imagination, of suggestion, of invention, have
been all the time resting, and are now at our bidding,
ready to spring forward, like high mettled coursers,
eager for the race."
The idea of inactivity at any age was simply
painful to " J.B." In an essay in June, 1891,
" On Retiring from Business," he urges that a
successful man should not defer his retirement
till he is worn out, but should, while still capable
of work, divert his mental activities into other
channels, and so bring into play faculties that,
during the business career, had little chance of
development. The man who does not want to
make a failure of his closing years should ask him
self, " Have I some object in life, apart from the
money-making which I am now renouncing, capable
of possessing my mind and soul, and of filling each
day with ennobling interest and occupation ? "
He knows how the ordinary middle-aged pros
perous bourgeois will look askance at the
idea of starting his real intellectual education at
fifty or thereabouts, but why not ? " Suggest to
him that there are worlds of thought and know
ledge which up to the present have been closed
to him, and the entry upon which will double the
range of his consciousness. Ask him, for instance,
to open acquaintance with the great continental
languages and literatures, and so to discover what
other first-class peoples, outside the English circle,
are saying and thinking, and he will ask himself to
u
Apart and Resting Awhile"
what madman he is talking. Put himself to school
at his age ? Begin to learn languages at fifty ?
Preposterous. It is not so preposterous at all.
Let our bourgeois bring to this occupation the
methods and qualities which made of him a pros
perous business man ; let him bestow on it the
same attention, regularity and care of detail, and
success will be certain and the rewards great. He
will find himself upon a path which slopes steadily
upward, where at every step of the ascent the pros
pect widens beneath his feet, and where his spirit
as it takes in the invigorating breaths of this upper
air is filled with the intoxicating sense of a new life."
His sense of the necessity of getting the most
possible out of all available time is thus expressed :
" Those who want to make most of their time will think
of it as capital, and will use it as such. Whatever else we
have lacked we have had this, and it is much. When this
year is completed we shall have had just as much of it as
a Rothschild or a Rockefeller. We have all been million
aires of minutes. And here, as with the capital we call cash,
there are two ways of dealing with it, the way of thriftless
spending, and the way of productive use. There is no more
searching question than this : What have we done with
our hours ? There are dozens of ways of spending them,
the only return for which is a sense of exhaustion, of mere
wastage, and of desolating vacuity. There is no poverty
so squalid as that of the time-spendthrift. The poverty
here is of body and soul. In honest labour, on the contrary,
you have not only the present joy it offers ; but the fact that
it is an investment which, for all the future, brings in its
dividends. To learn to do things is to strengthen our life,
to broaden in all directions its acreage of possibility. We
ought to abolish the idler, whether at the top or the bottom
77
J. Brierley
of the social scale, in order to give the poor fellow a taste
of life s real flavour. The best training we know of, a train
ing which should become universal, is that of some of the
American popular Universities, where the students earn
their bread by daily hours of manual labour in the fields,
the gardens, the carpenter s shop with certain other daily
hours for the mental culture. To get that training should
be every man s birthright, and every woman s. A robust
physical vigour put into the brain s work ; a well-stored
brain directing the body s work here is your combination
for a full and wholesome life."
This chapter cannot be better concluded than
with the summing up, from his experience, of the
chief end of life and the noblest privilege of man :
" Some of us, who have fared far in the journey of life,
who have busied ourselves with its varied cultures, who
have tested its chief experiences and appraised their values,
have come as a result to one assured conviction. Christ
is the heart of the mystery, the key to it all. And Life s
best business, in the Church or out of it, is to work in this
heady, tempestuous civilisation of ours for the restoring of that
line, now so largely left out, the line of the Christ character,
the Christ life ; to work for that, knowing it is the world s
only health, its true sanity. And how shall we do that ?
How else than by having the lines of that glorious portraiture
all produced and showing in ourselves ? For so essentially
divine is that portraiture, that wherever, and however feebly,
men see it reflected in their neighbour, they see in it some
hint of the heart of God."
78
CHAPTER VIII
The Evolution of "J.B."
IT was as " A Congregational Minister " that
" J.B." tried his prentice hand in The Christian
World with a series of papers on " Questions for
Free Churches." The first appeared in the last
number of 1887. The subject was " A Good
Building," and there was passion in the denunciation
of architects who built churches without regard
to acoustics. There was only too good reason for
the feeling. He said : " Mr. Beecher once said,
with reference to a large and costly church in New
York, that its minister spent half his life force in
endeavouring to overcome the physical obstacles
to his influence, which that building, with its bad
arrangements and bad acoustics, presented. It may
be said, with little exaggeration, of half the church
buildings erected in recent years in this country. A
holocaust of bishops has been suggested as the only
effective means of waking up railway authorities to
take preventive measures against accidents. With
out expressing an opinion on that subject, we will say
with emphasis that something desperate will have to
be done before long with church architects. We
do not ask for their blood. Our vengeance would be
satiated by seeing some of them condemned to
79
J. Brierley
preach for a term of years in the structures they have
planned. Can anything be more galling to an able
and earnest preacher than to know that Sunday by
Sunday his words, prepared with such care and
delivered with such passionate energy, are reaching
only a part of his congregation, while others are
straining to catch something intelligible out of a
babel of echoes, which twist and toss the words into
all manner of grotesque distortions ? Eight or
ten thousand pounds of hardly got money have
been spent in securing a result like this ! Had as
many hundreds been used in putting up four square
walls and a flat roof, the speaker would, at least,
have had scope for the proper work of his ministry
and the putting forth of all that was in him. But
his architect has finished him ; and having accom
plished the feat and pocketed his commission,
goes on his way rejoicing, in search of the next
victim."
That article, exactly a column in length, whetted
the appetite for what was to follow, and the suc
ceeding articles made it very clear that the " Con
gregational Minister " was an original and powerful
voice. There was an unerring instinct for the
practical, for the things that matter, a swift brush
ing aside of the cobwebs of convention and a rubbing
off of the mould and dust that had settled on the
forms of public worship and the methods of the
pulpit. The forthright style, the touches of
humour, the logic and lucidity, the insistence on the
principle that Churches and ministries exist for the
people and not the people for Churches and min-
80
The Evolution of "J.B."
istries, the equal insistence on the fact that the
thing that tells is consecrated personality and not
office, the prophetic spirit and not the echoing
of consecrated formulae and phrases these things
in the series of articles made them looked for with
cumulative eagerness, and excited curiosity as to
the identity of the author.
In the second article Mr. Brierley "went for" the
shutting up of the congregation to the ministry of
one man, to whose limitations of outlook and interest
they were perforce confined, and of whom, good
though he might be, they would sooner or later
get sated. He spoke of the complexity of modern
life, the multiplication of its interests, the dis
satisfaction of the modern man with monotony even
in his amusements, his craving for variety and
enlargement of experience. We must, he said,
accommodate ourselves in things religious, as
elsewhere, to the new conditions. Those conditions
were writing with the finger of doom the sentence
upon a system which gave to one congregation all
through its services nothing but the sound of one
voice and the product of one brain, and that brain
weary and utterly overtasked. The system was
merciless to the minister himself.
" Do our readers ever scan the columns of denominational
intelligence to note the number of ministerial breakdowns
that appear there ? The butcher s bill is a heavy one, and
seems to become heavier every year. Do they ever set them
selves to study what all this means, the anxiety caused to
congregations, the damage to religious interests, to say
nothing of the grievous suffering of the wrecked ones and
their families ? Steadily, year by year, some of the best and
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J. Brierley
most useful life of the nation is being ground to pieces between
the upper and the nether millstones of this system, and yet
it goes on as though it were part of the order of nature, or
a vital element of Christianity. And it is all the while nothing
of the kind. It is certainly not natural, and still less is it
Christian. It is an invention of the Puritan section of the
English speaking race, and one which does little credit to
their common sense. One seeks for it in vain elsewhere.
In the Greek and Latin Churches it is unknown. In those
communions the people have no idea of regarding the
sermon as an essential part of divine worship. The sermon
is, as a rule, something special, for a special occasion, and
is entrusted to a specially qualified man. The great preachers
of the Roman communion have always known how to reserve
their forces. Lacordaire s Conferences, those magnificent
specimens of pulpit eloquence which crowded N6tre Dame
with the elite of Paris, were given in series, with long intervals
between. Richly furnished as he was for his work, Lacor-
daire felt the necessity for long intervals of silence and
retirement in order that he might give only of his best. The
Protestant communions of the Continent know nothing of
our system. In the town of Neuchatel, for example, the
Protestant National Church has four pastors and three or
four different preaching places. One minister will preach
a sermon on a given Sunday morning at one of the churches,
and will repeat it the following Sunday at another ; and
so on. . . . We ask, what hinders that some such
method be not established among us ? Why can there not
be, in towns at any rate, a grouping of churches and a
partnership of their ministers ? "
Again, out of the fulness of his heart, his pen
wrote. Brierley, as minister in active service,
had never spared himself, and had been increasingly
conscious that no congregation had the right to wear
out its preacher by exacting its weekly Shylock s
pound of flesh out of his heart and brain and nerves.
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The Evolution of "J.B."
A less conscientious man, finding the strain in
tolerable, would begin to " ca canny," to rely on
his fluency, to trust to " what came," but that way
lies disaster to the minister. He is sooner or later
found out and condemned as a " wind bag," and he
joins that one-third of the ministerial army which
a very distinguished and well-informed Noncon
formist denominational chief official has said would
be glad of a call to some other sphere of service, while
his congregation would be most heartily thankful
to any church that would give him a call. Mr.
Brierley was always his own severest critic, and
rebuked himself for the slightest sign of slackness,
even when a little temporary slowing down was due
to ill-health. He had thrown himself to the wolves
of the " one church, one preacher " congregation,
and the wolves good, kind wolves though they were,
and wholly unconscious that there was anything
wrong in the system to which they had been brought
up had done for him, assisted by the church
architect, and sent him to Neuchatel to discover
in operation what in his view was a far more
excellent way.
The " J.B." signature begins to appear in 1889.
The earliest " J.B." article I have found is in the
March 7th number an analysis of the Christian
habit of mind, on Paul s counsel to converts to be
" without carefulness," while in another of his letters
the Apostle commends them for their " carefulness."
J.B." explains the apparent contradiction :
" The Christian, free by faith from the fear which chills and
paralyses, has his forces available for things worthy of him.
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J. Brierley
But his whole character and action will be marked by
an instinct of carefulness. It will show in his daily work.
If he is an artist, religion will, by the conscientiousness
with which it inspires him, prove an aid almost as valuable
as genius. If an artisan, he will, like Carlyle s father, make
his Christian carefulness shine out of the bridges he builds,
or out of whatever other work he puts hands to. If he is
a teacher, he will take care that no pupil of his falls into
shipshod habits by copying his own. Half the world s
mistakes and miseries arise, it is not too much to say, from
the loss of a religion which expresses itself in carefulness."
The " J.B." of that early period, however, is still
more of the preacher-philosopher than the journalist-
prophet. This " J.B." article was used while the
" Questions for Free Churches " series was still
running, and in the March 28th number, a
" Questions for Free Churches " article on " Free
Churches and Sisterhoods " is immediately followed
by a "J.B." article on " Everybody Alone."
The motive of this article is the essential solitariness
of the individual in his soul life even while he is
gregarious in his social relationships. Each has
his own destiny, lives in his own mental and moral
universe, but our fellow man is a being with whom
we walk arm in arm in the grounds which surround
our dwelling place. But when we enter there, into
the citadel of our real life, the door closes heavily
upon us, and our friend is left outside.
He leads up to the thought that " it is in the
greatness of the human destiny that of being
linked in indissoluble ties with God that we
find the reason for the limitations of our inter
course with our fellows. To be completely filled
The Evolution of "J.B."
with the human would leave no room for the divine.
Therefore is it that He who has made us for Himself
has fenced in the soul with barriers, that the fellow
ship of Father and child may be less interrupted.
To understand this is to understand the meaning
of life, and to be victorious in it. Having this
relationship with the Eternal Spirit, all else falls
into its proper place. Our human fellowships become
inexpressibly sweet and sacred because touched
with the glory that streams over them from the
sanctuary within where God dwells. And when
these fellowships fall from us, and we prepare for
the last great illustration of the soul s solitariness,
the movement along death s awful road, the spirit,
as it draws off from time, exultingly sings in the
words of Him who has redeemed it, I am not
alone, for the Father is with me.
There speaks the mystic that was always in
" J.B." the mystic, however, who hated the idea
of being lost in contemplation and ecstatic spiritual
self-indulgence ; but whose sociable soul always
longed to be in communion with his fellows.
"J.B. s" mysticism was an inseparable part of his
composition. He did not coddle it, was rather on
his guard against it getting too much the upper hand,
but the note of mysticism, so wholesomely kept
in its proper place, lent alike moral force and
literary charm to his practical teaching. At fairly
frequent intervals the initials were appended to
articles, of about half the length of what became the
regular " J.B." measure when he had " come to his
own." His articles were always given a place of
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J. Brierley
honour, usually on the leader page, even before
he joined The Christian World staff as a journalist
confessed, in 1891. His health was not yet restored,
and he wisely remained at Neuchatel until he felt
equal to work under conditions demanding a system
atic output of energy. Now and again there is
a suspicion in an article that it is a boiled down
sermon, but it was always a sermon with meat
on its bones, and the concentrated essence of it
has an appetising flavour. Later, with renewed
vigour, though his nerves were never to be other
than a terror to him, as he becomes conscious of
a new career, with the pen replacing the tongue as
his means of self-expression and prophetic utter
ance, he gets gradually further away from his MS.
stock-in-trade, works industriously at the taking in
of fresh material from the most varied sources, and
gains in clearness of vision and strength of wing
for bolder flights over new lands and seas of
thought and feeling.
CHAPTER IX
The Prophet in Fleet Street
IT was in 1891 that Jonathan Brierley settled in
Fleet Street as a fully-fledged journalist. Many
ministers with journalistic ambitions have put
the question to me, " What is the best thing to do
for a man to get into journalism ? " That is a
question by no means easy to answer. As a rule,
a man gets into journalism because he cannot keep
out of it. Like the poet, he is born, not made. He
has ink in his veins. He is an eager watcher of the
drama of the passing day. He is on the bank of the
swirling stream of the world s activities. He is
acutely sensitive to all things said and done affect
ing the life of his time, and there is an irresistible
impulse to describe the things he has seen, to
communicate the impressions made upon himself,
and the facts he has collected, to a circle of readers.
He has the pen of the ready writer, though when he
is in journalism he finds himself compelled by
inexorable editors and sub-editors sternly to
discipline that pen. He must master the art of how
to begin, and the still more difficult art of how and
when to leave off. He must have an unerring eye and
ear for points that matter and leave out irrelevancies,
except such as may lend piquancy and colour to an
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J. Brierley
otherwise bald narrative. The minister aspiring to
journalistic writing, as a rule, finds his ministerial
training and style a severe handicap. He is given
to " introductions " and perorations, and is guilty
of the unpardonable offence of being " preachy "
which no newspaper constituency will stand.
Brilliant academic distinctions, University blue
ribbons, not rarely act as an equal handicap. The
University man is given to think that outside his own
speciality nothing matters. He is an incorrigible
critic, with the airs of the superior person, of books
he has given to him for review, and of opinions that
are other than his own. He can write a dissertation
but is baffled by a paragraph or a " Note."
Jonathan Brierley at once settled into his chair,
as to the manner born. He had the journalistic
flair highly developed, and simply revelled with almost
boyish glee in the opportunities given to him by the
position. Our rooms were next to each other on
the same floor in Fleet Street. They looked out on
the same prospect, Chancery Lane opposite, with
the Law Courts to the left, and to the right " the
Street of Adventure." At the bottom of Chancery
Lane a jewellery pawnshop stands on the site once
occupied by the silk mercer s shop of Izaak Walton.
Is it far-fetched to discover analogies between the
author of "The Compleat Angler" and " J.B." ?
Each of them worked in the mid-stream of London
life ; each had the same zest in living in that mid
stream ; each maintained amidst the flurry and
feverishness of central London his calm serenity ;
each was a healthily pious soul whose religion was as
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The Prophet in Fleet Street
practical a matter to him as his business or his
profession ; each was a student of himself and of
humanity, and looked from his Fleet Street window
upon humanity with the same serene gaze, and each
was a writer who put into his literary work the rich
fulness of his personality. The Fleet Street of
Walton s time was not the Street of Adventure that
it is to-day. The current of life in the seventeenth
century ran with nothing like the swirling current
of our own time. None the less, " J.B." kept himself
free from the fever, notwithstanding that no man
in Fleet Street was more fascinated by its life and
watched the manifestations of that life with livelier
interest. " J.B." used to say that his room in Fleet
Street was a " Cave of the Winds." It was open to
every wind that blew, and the soul and mind of
" J.B." were thrown open to all the winds. He
revelled in them as a strong man walking across a
wind-blown moor revels in the gusts that try to
slacken his pace. The wonder of " J.B. s " life and
work is that, apparently a hopelessly broken man
when he had scarce passed his fortieth year, and
from forty to seventy-one often racked with pain,
and sometimes entirely disabled by physical and
nervous breakdowns, yet in all Fleet Street there
was no more robust and virile soul, no thinker or
writer who kept his finger so closely pressed to the
pulse of manifold humanity, no seer with a clearer
vision and with a message so ringing and so surely
directed to the needs of the age.
He came to The Christian World in the early years
of the editorship of Mr. James Clarke, jun. The
J. Brierley
father, one of the greatest and noblest religious
journalists England has ever had, had not long passed
away. James Clarke, sen., had saved the infant
paper from striking on the rocks, and by his brilliant
capacity, his broad catholic outlook on life, his
sympathy with everything that made for progress
and freedom, his instinct for men and women who
could write, he had made the paper a power in every
land where the English language is spoken. Not
only had the first editor passed from the scene,
but the paper had also lost two of its most power
ful contributors. Dr. Peter Bayne and Mr. J.
Allanson Picton had for many years been leader
writers and reviewers. There was room for a new
comer such as Jonathan Brierley had already shown
himself to be. Mr. James Clarke, jun., had inherited
much of his father s scent for ability. He was
strongly attracted towards Jonathan Brierley as a
kindred soul, for James Clarke had a holy horror
of the fastening of any shackles on the free
spirit of Christian intellectual liberty. Between
the two men a warm friendship sprang up. The
sub-editor of that time, who still occupies the sub-
editorial chair, says, " Whenever I wanted to consult
James Clarke and found him away from his room,
it was almost certain I should find him having a
chat with J.B. upstairs." Mr. Clarke and Mr.
Brierley planned together various Symposia on such
theological subjects as the Incarnation, on which
men of various denominations and diverse theological
schools were invited to write. Nothing pleased Mr.
Brierley more than such pooling of opinions.
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The Prophet in Fleet Street
He gladly took his full share of the review work,
and in no religious paper office was there more
reviewing to be done than at The Christian World.
The " big " theological books sent in for review
were often put into" J.B. s" hands, and there was no
form of press work that he relished more. He did
not adopt the time-honoured press tradition of
reviewing by " cutting the pages and smelling the
paper knife." He mastered the book, revelling
in a piece of solid scholarship, constructive thinking,
and rigorous logic. Even when he was not in
agreement with the conclusions, the catholic
eclecticism of his mind, his sure conviction
that every religious thinker was pursuing the
truth and glimpsing such part of it as was within
the range of his vision, made him sympathetic and
tolerant. There was often acute, but always fair,
criticism, and never any " slashing " condemnation
and super ior-personish arrogance and contempt.
Dr. Dale s The Living Christ and the Four Gospels
was the subject of a fine bit of reviewing work. At
that time the " Back to Jesus " tendency was in
full stream. " J.B.," with Dr. Dale, approved the
historical method of getting at the real Jesus as
far as it went, but held that it had its limitations,
and if followed exclusively had its characteristic
dangers. He says : " Niebuhr created a revolution
in historical studies like that initiated in the investi
gation of the phenomena of Nature by Lord Bacon,
and in the interests of Christianity itself , not less than
in the best interests of men, the primary docu
ments of the Christian faith must be put into the same
J. Brierley
crucible. Inevitable as this process is, Dr. Dale s
book does not appear a moment too soon to remind
us that the movement has its dangers, and that
important and fascinating as it is, it is only one
method of discovering and verifying truth. One
chief peril is that, being absorbed in the quest for
the historic bases of the Christian faith, our eyes may
be closed to the great Emersonian doctrine that the
Divine voice which speaks authoritatively in the
soul of man is the source of all our wisdom and the
working force of our religious faith. Books may
supersede souls, and that is a usurpation not to be
suffered even by the best of all books. God Himself
is nearer the human spirit than any literature, and
He uses literature as the organ of His thought and
the conduit of His life. Critics may pore over docu
ments till they cannot see the essential characters
of the human spirit ; canvass the testimony of the
Fathers/ and ignore the witness of consciousness ;
fight over the Christ of the second century, without
even seeing the Christ who reveals Himself
in the tragic experiences and moral miracles
of the living men of our own day. Let us have
justifications and verifications by all means
and on all accounts, but the verifications must
not be attempted only on one line, and by the sole
use of the critical faculties. The contents of the
human consciousness, illuminated and enriched by
Christ, have as much right to be sifted, arranged,
and allowed for, as the contents of the letters of Paul
and Pol year p."
Shortly after another book that made its direct
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The Prophet in Fleet Street
and impressive appeal to the soul and intellect of
" J.B." found in him its expert reviewer Dr.
Hatch s The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages
upon the Christian Church. He not only did the
review, in two numbers of The Christian World,
spread over five columns, but it was followed up by
an article in which " J.B." as " J.B.," and not as
reviewer, enforced its lessons. He says : " He
(Dr. Hatch) has shown that in the very earliest age
faith was rather loyalty to a Divine Life than belief
in any series of propositions. He has exhibited the
causes which were at work during the second and
third centuries to change this simple affection
of faith into an intellectual acknowledgment of
authoritative creeds. That such a process actually
took place has of course been more than suspected
by thousands of modern Christians. But we do not
think it has been set forth so clearly, with such strong
evidence, or with such telling illustrations, as by
Dr. Hatch. Many a soul puzzled by polemics, but
filled with love for the mission of Jesus, may here
find comfort in the assurance that he has the root of
the matter in him."
" J.B." is led on to what he confesses is "delicate
ground," and there is a touch of unfamiliar bitter
ness in his condemnation of sloppy modern preach
ing, when the preacher sets out to be not a prophet,
but a " pedlar " in popular subjects, and a cheap
rhetorician. He says :
"It is impossible to glance at the programmes of pulpit
lectures and courses of sermons posted at the doors of churches
without being sometimes sick at heart. Here we have The
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J. Brierley
Strongest Man in the Bible, there The Richest King in
Scripture ; and, again, David s Hatred of the Blind and
Lame. Or we have seen : The Jews, Past, Present and
To Come. Now, we are far from saying that such subjects
may not be made entertaining, amusing, or even instruc
tive ; but we do say that they do not suggest Christian
preaching. -. . . What Dr. Hatch calls the sophistical
element in Christian preaching is very largely dependent upon
the survival of those Greek influences which he has so lucidly
traced in the course of these lectures. If we can only get
back from the Nicene Creed to the Beatitudes, from theories
about the Atonement to the vision of Calvary, and from
wrangles about Inspiration to the words of Him who spake
as never man spake, the sophistical element will die away
of itself."
The difference between the ideals of the Church
and the ministry, and the actual modern church and
its minister, was " rubbed in " in an article of
March I2th, 1891. He pictures a minister facing the
ideal and failing to recognise himself in it.
" Wherein, after all, lies my resemblance to the
Prophet of Nazareth ? I am an Englishman,
saturated with the spirit of the Western world
and of the nineteenth century. I am surrounded
and hemmed in with conventionalities of all kinds.
I dress conventionally. I and my family keep up
a certain social position, and conform to its written
and unwritten rules. My round of ecclesiastical
engagements is largely a conventional one, for a
large part of which I find little enough precedent in
the four gospels. What is there in all this which
would lead any of my fellows to discover in my life
and work anything approaching to a facsimile of
the life of Jesus ? "
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The Prophet in Fleet Street
Even in ultra "respectable" conditions, " J.B."
saw no reason why a minister should not be a prophet,
but he puts down to a false idea of the Church and of
religion the idea that a Church just exists for
preaching and hearing much of the starving of the
modern minister s soul and the clipping of his wings.
He says :
" Churches, in a multitude of instances, are in an
unhealthy condition because they have been trained
to hear and criticise instead of to work. Some day
we may hear of a Christian community, with the
minister at its head, instead of spending the regu
lation hour and a half of Sunday morning in the
stereotyped form of service, devoting it to a great
visitation of the neglected parts of the neighbour
hood, discovering cases of need, both spiritual and
temporal, comforting the afflicted and inviting the
outsiders to a great Gospel Service in the evening.
Why, when the Master laid such stress on feeding
the hungry and clothing the naked, should the
modern minister be shut up to a gospel of talk ? Let
him be free to abate the flood of religious oratory
which is now expected of him, and to give himself to
the service of man in the thousand ways that are
open. Herein he will be able to follow far more
closely the footsteps of his Leader, will prolong his
life by abating the strain upon one overtaxed part
of his nature, and will show the Church how to
increase a thousand-fold its power for good upon
the community and the age."
That phrase of " abating the strain upon one
overtaxed part of his nature " was wrung from the
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J. Brierley
heart of a man who had snapped under the strain,
and who never gave out his soul in public speech
without having to pay for it the penalty of pain.
In an article (January 28th, 1892) on " Prophetic
Power/* " J.B." discusses the nature of inspiration,
in preachers and religious teachers. He suggests
that the Christian Church might profitably institute
a commission of inquiry to collect and sift all the
evidence bearing on the possession and exercise of
prophetic power, with a view to discovering the laws
of its operation. Such an inquiry, he believes,
would yield these, among other results :
" i. There is a condition of mind of the religious
teacher, in which the power he exerts is not that
merely of organisation or of affirmation, though
the effect of these is included in it.
"2. The speaker finds in himself an exaltation
of inner states in which, while the brain is intensely
active, its functions are dominated by another force,
which some may call religious feeling, which others,
more specifically, affirm to be a deep sense of the
Divine presence in the soul. The sense of this
presence is an essential condition of persuasive or
prophetic power.
" 3. This power, higher than thought, can only
be possessed by men whose minds are deeply and
habitually exercised on life s highest themes."
In the very next number of The Christian World
there is an article by " J.B." on the death of Charles
Haddon Spurgeon. He found in the lasting power
of Spurgeon a reinforcement of his views on
" prophetic power."
The Prophet in Fleet Street
It was his spiritual force which drew men. Many
who did not accept his opinions on more than one
outlying religious question, and on some which he
regarded as vital, thankfully reckoned him as their
teacher because of this. Said Dr. Pusey once, I
love the Evangelicals because of their great love for
Christ/ And multitudes of educated Christian
men loved Charles Spurgeon, spite of intellectual
differences, for that reason. From the days when
Samuel Rutherford so preached his Master as to
compel the Duke of Argyll to cry out, Oh, man,
keep on in that strain ! no one, we can safely
say, has set forth the claims of Christ to men s love
and service with such inimitable sweetness, with
such melting pathos, with such eloquence of the
inmost soul as Charles Spurgeon. It may be that the
dark background of his theology, to which the mood
of this age could not by any effort accommodate
itself, threw into greater relief this side of his
teaching."
That same year " J.B." wrote on " Yorkshire
Methodism," which had shown a numerical decline.
He recalled some notable Yorkshire figures of the
Evangelical Revival, and led up to William Bram-
well, of a later generation. There is the familiar
belief in an ultra-human power operative in men in
close communion with God, combined with the
belief that that power, if understood, is not so much
supernatural as in the line of the Divinely natural.
He says :
" Bramwell might be described as one of the elect
few of humanity who have been permitted to
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J. Brierley
penetrate into the innermost secret of the spiritual
life. All the great systems of faith have had the
consciousness of a far-off but not inaccessible centre
of life and force, which it was the highest object of
their cult to reach. In esoteric Buddhism, in the
Neo-Platonism of Porphyry and lamblichus, in
the Spiritual Exercises of Loyola, as well as in
the perfectionism of the Salvation Army, we get
expressions of this belief. And all the systems have
examples to quote of those who have attained to
the highest grade of power. William Bramwell
must certainly be placed among the foremost of these.
What other men sought by busying themselves
amongst their fellows, he, unless his biography is all a
romance, obtained by communing with the Invisible.
It was with him a familiar experience to spend long
hours upon his knees, hours which he counted among
the most productive of an extraordinarily busy life.
His prayers seemed to work miracles. If people
could get him to pray for them, they went away
assured that the way would be opened, though a
mountain or a sea stood in front. In his presence
men were conscious of a subtle spiritual influence
which they could not analyse, but which filled and
lifted the soul. Wherever he went, great revivals
broke out. In the fulness of his power he predicted
he was about to die, and the prediction was fulfilled.
"Some day science will come to recognise that, in
the phenomena which such lives present, lies more
of the secret of the universe than anything which
geology or biology can furnish. The latter may
reveal to us what man has grown from. The former
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The Prophet in Fleet Street
are full of hints as to what he may grow to ...
The force that shatters men s oppositions and changes
their lives comes from a sphere behind and above that
where learning and oratory, wealth and position,
produce their effects. It is a possession for those
only who know how to hide themselves in the secret
place of the Most High."
The capacity of writing crisp, pointed Notes on
passing events, is one of the rarest and most valued
in journalism. " J.B." was specially happy in
" Notes by the Way," a favourite feature of The
Christian World from the beginning. On some
incident that had happened, a remark in somebody s
speech, a sentence in a paper, or an address, he
would say with the utmost lucidity, felicity and
pungency just the right things, condensing into
half-a-dozen or a dozen sentences what the non-
journalistic commentator would have required a
column to deal with. " J.B." always "got there"
and in the fewest words. Any more words than he
used would have made the Note less perfect. He
had a genius for concentration and condensation,
without sacrificing clearness and human interest.
The view from his window up Chancery Lane,
and the glimpse of the Law Courts and of part of
Fleet Street, gave " J.B." a joyous feeling of
being in the centre of the whirlpool of London,
and the Empire. To him a walk along Fleet Street,
or the Strand, was an adventure as romantic and
as full of thrilling discovery as any that Haroun
Alraschid in disguise took through the streets of
Baghdad. Every man and woman whom he met
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J. Brierley
was not, as to most people, just an item in a London
crowd, a drop in the human ocean, but was a
drama, a thrilling novel, in flesh and blood, as
crammed with interest as any play of Shakespeare
or story of George Eliot, Walter Scott, or Dickens.
In every one of them Jonathan Brierley saw the
potentialities of tragedy and comedy. If they
could only be read, if their past and present
were only known, and their future could only be
forecast, what an immortal masterpiece the story
of any life would make ! He felt himself at one
with them simply because he was a man clothed
with the same flesh, and because they and he alike
were moulded in the same dust by the same Divine
Hand into " His own image." It was this quick
human sympathy that made " J.B." not only a
prophet to his age but such a potent personality
in religious journalism. He loved to feel that
he was one with the common people, which meant
that he was one with universal humanity in all
the ages, every man contributing consciously or
unconsciously towards the evolution of the race
and its progress towards the founding and building
of the City of God.
His Fleet Street window was like Keats s
" magic casement opening on the foam of perilous
seas and faery lands forlorn." It was that burning
interest in humanity, that insight into the heart
of man, that sympathy with man s struggles, suffer
ings, fallings and aspirations, that gave to " J.B."
the creative imagination which counted for so much
in the work of his pen.
100
MR. BRIERLEY ABOUT THE YEAR
The Prophet in Fleet Street
He describes a City street scene in one of his
essays :
"The other day, passing up Ludgate Hill, the present
writer saw a thief taken in the act. There was a sudden
rush ; half-a-dozen hands held the struggling wretch until
a policeman, appearing at the nick of time, took over the
capture. Got it in his hand, has he ? said the grinning
officer, as, seizing the culprit by the collar, he marched away
with him, followed by the crowd. He s got pinched/ said
an urchin to a group of companions, who entered heartily
into the jest. Everybody seemed interested. The incident
was a relief to the monotony of the day. Meanwhile the
individual who formed the centre of it all was clearly not
enjoying himself. He was a type of the London vaurien
of its lowest class, undersized, with bent shoulders, squalid ;
hunger and despair looking out of his eyes. The most aston
ishing part of the affair, to one onlooker at least, was the
perfect ease with which it seemed to fall into a pre-arranged
system of things. Everything and everybody appeared
to be ready for that thief. The British Constitution, the
law court, the magistrate, the policeman, the prison were
all waiting for him. They were there in anticipation of his
procedure ; he performed his share in a business, every
detail of which had been previously thought out. The catch
ing and immurement of thieves, is not that a feature of
civilisation ? Society knows exactly the part it has to play.
Three months hard, endured by the prisoner and paid for
by the nation, will perfectly settle the account."
Man, he believed, came from God, and men
holding the greatest variety of views in all the
ages were all contributing to the establishment
of the Truth of truths, and enriching each other
by their multiplied experiences and their diver
sities of thought, provided they were honestly
seeking after God. Evolution he regarded as
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J. Brierley
God s method of working. Man in the process of
evolution began as flesh in order that he might
receive and develop spirit. In Our City of God,
in the essay on " The Incarnation," he says :
" This doctrine of personality and of new originations
the doctrine, in other words, of the universe as spiritual
and as ever developing carries us a long way in the direc
tion of our theme. Conjoined with it, as a still further help,
let us now take another of our instruments of vision, our
present day philosophy of history, our view, that is, of
humanity as a whole. The world is now in full possession
of the idea that history is no mere collection of isolated
facts, but that it represents an organised and definite move
ment towards an ascertainable end. History is, in short,
the record of the spirit u ah sat ion of humanity. Augustine,
as we have said, in his City of God, worked on that principle,
though he restricted it to only one portion of the race. Pascal,
in his great saying that human history was as the story of
a single individual ever growing and ever learning, put the
idea into its modern form, the form which was developed
with such prodigality of illustration by Lessing, by Herder,
by Hegel, in short by the whole of the German illuminati.
It is now no longer a German speculation, but the property
of the race. It is at the back of all our thinking about man.
The late Archbishop Temple worked it into his much discussed
essay on The Education of the Human Race/ Lamennais,
in his Paroles d un Croyant, carried it to the extreme of
representing humanity as in itself the incarnation of God,
the eternal victim, bearing its cross, ascending its Calvary,
offering its expiations."
" J.B.," while his interest in the individual
man was intense and never-failing, did not care
to split humanity up into units. Humanity, to
him, was not a sand heap, but a continuity of related
individuals, the totality of whom was God s great
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The Prophet in Fleet Street
family. " The earth is the Lord s and the fulness
thereof," he held ; but he held just as firmly that
the earth and its fulness are man s are every
man s. In one of his latest essays, " Our Poss
essions," January i5th, 1914, he tells how :
" We stood once with a landed proprietor on an
elevated position on his estate. Around us was
a great stretch of country, fields, moorlands, with
swelling hills bounding the horizon. It is some
thing/ said our friend with a laugh, to look around
on all this, as far as your eye can see, and to feel
that it is all one s own ! We could not repress the
reply : When nature stretched out this outline,
these valleys and hills, millions of years ago, do
you think she had you particularly in mind ; or
will you be particularly in her account in the other
millions of years that this is going to last ?
He thus states his gospel of " possession " :
" I possess the estate," says the man of the
purse. And I possess the landscape/ says the
poet. He, and the artist with him, own its beauty,
draw its revenue from high raptures, and noble
inspirations, in a degree impossible to the mere
purse. Compare the owning of a rare edition of
Homer by a wealthy but ignorant book-collector,
with that of the scholar who knows it by heart.
We enter into this, the truest ownership, by the
love and labour of the mind. We take away
from earth s treasures according to what we bring
to them. A fresh, beautiful soul, possessing nothing
in the capitalist sense, will take out of the earth,
on any summer morning, things which the financial
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J. Brierley
magnate never stumbles on. He will see worms
where the other will pick up diamonds. Here is
old Traherne, the penniless parson of the seventeenth
century, with not an acre of his own, and yet enjoy
ing the earth in this fashion :
Long time before
I in my mother s womb was born,
A God, preparing, did this glorious store,
The world, for me adorne.
Into this Eden, so divine and fair,
So wide and bright, I come, His son and heir.
"Renan felt like that, when, associating himself
with Francis of Assisi, with no invested capital
in the earth, he realised, with the saint, that he
enjoyed the usufruct of the whole, having
nothing and yet possessing all things. And there
are others of us, thank God, to-day who are possessors
of this wealth, and would not part with it for any
other."
A good many people in the course of a year
call at The Christian World office with the desire
of getting publicity given to some cause they have
at heart, or to explain some religious speciality
in which they are interested. Very often the callers
are cranks and the member of the staff on to whom
they are turned has to dispose of them with as
little loss of time as possible. " J.B." rather
liked seeing callers if there seemed a possibility of
their having anything interesting to say. Once
a Greek Archimandrite called and was shown
up to "J.B." With his knowledge of Eastern
religions and forms of Christianity "J.B." took
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The Prophet in Fleet Street
to the Archimandrite and added at first hand to
his store of useful information. It does not follow
that he was so much impressed by the Greek prelate s
dignified position as by the man whom he en
deavoured after his manner to discover in the
ecclesiastic. He kept up his acquaintance with
leaders of French religious life and thought such
as Sabatier. When he knew that any of these were
visiting England, he would write to invite them
d luncher with the intention of having a stimu
lating intellectual and spiritual " crack " with them
afterwards. As regards the interviewing, he did
not care to see men of the narrow and unscholarly
type who were ignorantly intolerant of other men s
opinions, and wanted to nail the faith down on the
counter as a bad coin is nailed with the idea of
keeping the faith fixed. " J.B." believed in a
faith that is always being freshly minted of the
pure gold of increasing knowledge and vividly
realised personal experience. Always kindly and
broad-minded, he mellowed as he grew older and
took an increasing dislike to controversy. For
one thing, he knew only too well that controversy
in matters of religion only sharpens temper and
stirs up bad blood, leaving each party the more
fixed in his opinion. He would state his own
view on any question as clearly as he could ; if
his view was attacked he let his case stand as he
had stated it, and rarely troubled to reply to any
attacks upon it.
He always took the greatest care to make his
thought so clear in its verbal expression that no
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J. Brierley
reader should have any doubt as to his meaning.
He was a very careful reader of his proofs and
made few alterations, but sometimes, if it struck
him that a passage could be put into clearer and
terser language, he would re-write it. Now and
again compositors who did not possess microscopic
vision misread what he had written. Like many
other writers, " J.B." was serenely unconscious
of the worry his manuscript was to the printers.
Now and again he was a little ruffled by the
" improvements " effected in what he had written,
and expressed his intention to go over and treat
the offenders to a little lecture on their high crime
and misdemeanour.
It was in the Essay that " J.B." found in The
Christian World a medium of expression exactly
suited to his genius. The Essayist follows his own
path, fancy free, and if he chooses he can leave
the path and indulge in any diversion that lures
him into a pleasant by-way. He is not hampered
by set rules, for he makes his own rules as he goes
on. Into the Essay the writer can infuse his
personality. He can, if he is that way disposed,
be dignified ; or he can take slippered ease in the
easy chair and chat garrulously. He can take
all mankind and all knowledge for his province.
He can quote at his sweet will. He can press into
his service all that he has read, heard, or seen.
He can give the reins to his imagination, be humour
ous or sentimental, be as long or as short as he
pleases, or as his editor will allow. " J.B." felt
his way towards the length and style which made
10 6
The Prophet in Fleet Street
the essays of " J.B.," at his ripest and richest, the
dearest delight to his weekly readers. His early
efforts, as has been suggested, were still a little
in the sermonic style. It was difficult for a man
who had served the pulpit for sixteen years to
divest himself entirely of his pulpit robes and
mannerism, but at the end of three years or so
Jonathan Brierley had become thoroughly " J.B."
of The Christian World. Space limitation always
has to be considered in a newspaper. " J.B."
had the gift of moving at his ease in the two
columns and a bit given to him on the leader page.
For one thing, he had learnt, what every preacher
would do well to learn, the value of concentrating
on a single idea and getting that idea driven home
by looking at it from various points and illustrating
it from all sorts of sources. It is an ancient vice
of the pulpit to confuse congregations by allowing
successive secondlies, thirdlies, and so on to over
lay the firstly, the fact being that each additional
" point " or " lesson/ often forced in to make up
a given number, is skilfully or unskilfully applied to
the blotting out of the point or lesson just developed.
"J.B." as essayist always hit the nail on the
head and drove it home because he had only one
nail and hammered at it without missing till
it was fast to the neck. If he had not said all
that could be said on the subject he would! return
to it in another essay and that other essay was so
fresh from beginning to end that it read like a
new creation as it was. Some of his colleagues
used to chaff him on his fondness for " a theme
107
J. Brierley
with variations ; " for when his imagination was
powerfully kindled by a creative idea, he would
return to it again and again, so varying the pre
sentation of the idea, however, that an incautious
reader might fail to discover its essential identity
with the idea as expounded in previous " J.B. s."
" J.B.," with his pen, had Beethoven s and Mozart s
genius for giving a score or a couple of score of varia
tions of the same theme in such a way that each
variation was itself a miniature masterpiece. " J.B."s
gift in this direction came in handy when selecting
essays for republication in volume form. The
" theme with variations " gave a telling title and
lent a thread of continuity to the collected essays.
The Note-books of " J.B.," on which a chapter
follows, show that " J.B." was a voracious reader
and a warm admirer of the essayists, English and
French. The French essayists and writers of
Pensees and Maximes especially appealed to him.
These were men of great intellectual power and
original outlook on life, naturally gifted with the
rare and fine art of putting things. They were
shrewd judges of human nature and acute critics
of life, though sometimes their criticism was coloured
and their judgment somewhat warped by a dash
of cynicism. " J.B." liked the logic, the lucidity,
the point, the grace of the French writers. Pascal,
La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyere, Vauvenargues,
Montaigne, Joubert and similar critics of life he
had at his finger ends. He was one of the first of
the few Englishmen who have understood Rabelais,
that intellectual and prophetic giant in cap and
108
The Prophet in Fleet Street
bells. It is Montaigne, however, who, in French
literature, appealed with special force to " J.B."
Montaigne might almost be described as a French
" J.B." of the sixteenth century. He was the creator
of the French Essai. The Essai to Montaigne
was Montaigne himself. Montaigne was an omni
vorous reader, and no man of his time had a more
piercing eye for contemporary men and movements.
He was a genial philosopher in slippers, and no doubt
forced thousands of people to read him, with the
grace and piquancy of his style, who read little
literature of a more systematic and serious kind.
I cannot help thinking although, so far as I know,
" J.B/ never confessed it, perhaps he was scarcely
conscious of it that Montaigne was very much
his model in the matter of literary form, and not
only in the matter of form, but in his ways of treating
life. " J.B." was a modern English Christian
Montaigne, the man of encyclopaedic knowledge,
the open mind, the searching eye, the smiling
sympathy, and with, underneath, what Montaigne
had not, a deep current of Christian faith and
Christian feeling.
" J.B." had the Sophoclean outlook on life, the
outlook that " sees life steadily and sees it whole."
Nothing that concerned humanity was foreign to
his heart and interest. Some of his readers would
possibly have been shocked at papers and magazines
that "J.B." read, but "J.B." believed that if
you wanted to understand people you must read
what they read and find out the things that interest
them. He read The Referee, for instance. The
109
i
J. Brierley
Referee, a Sunday paper, at one time had a weekly
article on some religious subject. " J.B." discovered
that the writer of these articles was snowed under
almost by letters from readers expressing their
interest in them. The discovery gave him the
greatest joy. It revealed to him what a vast
number of good people in the Churches never realise,
that there is very real interest in religion among
masses of people who never darken church doors,
and are regarded as outcasts from the Churches,
and callously indifferent to the concerns of the soul.
To " J.B." it was incredible that any man could
expel the religious instinct from his being. Like
Tertullian, he believed in " the soul of man naturally
Christian," and that though he may try to live
without religion, and may think he has got rid of
religion altogether, there will be crises in the man s
life when religion will force itself back, and claim
its rightful share in his heart and interest.
" J.B. s " mind was so richly stored that an idea
had only to be dropped into it and it would gather
by electrical attraction the matter and wealth of
illustrations and quotations required to complete
an essay. He was most catholic in his reading,
though he had his specialities. He knew the
Fathers of the Church, Greek and Latin, and could
quote Origen, Augustine or Tertullian as familiarly
as the modern daily paper special article writer
quotes Kipling or George Bernard Shaw. To his
reading, which he kept up vigorously to the end,
were added his close following of the literature the
newspapers, reviews and books of the day, his
no
The Prophet in Fleet Street
personal observation of men and things, and what
he picked up in his discussions at the Eclectic and
in little groups round a smoke-room table at the
National Liberal Club, where after lunch most
things in heaven and earth and in the waters under
the earth are settled by select coteries over the
coffee, and with that cloud of tobacco smoke which
the Dutch forefathers of New York, and certain
eminent theologians and philosophers still living,
considered essential to clearness of vision and
soundness of judgment. Nobody ever talked with
" J.B." without feeling that he had had a mental
and spiritual tonic, and " J.B." never talked with
anybody from whom he did not pick up something
that would be of future use to him. The books he
reviewed, the sermons he heard, would set his mind
going, and fire his imagination, giving him the
subject of a " J.B." There are tricks of the trade
even in the Essay business. " J.B. s" Notebooks
are full of quotations out of almost any one of which
a man with his intellectual stock-in-trade and
quickness of invention could get an article. There
is strong reason to suspect that " J.B. " was indebted
to his quotations for quite a crop of his essays. He
would not start off with the quotation as a text.
He would lead off with " J.B." pure and simple,
and perhaps half-way through the quotation and
its author would appear at the nick of time, like
Bliicher at Waterloo, to reinforce " J.B." and
clinch the conclusion he was driving at. It took
a " J.B.", however, to get such Essays out of his
quotations, and he would not have got the Essay
in
J. Brierley
if he had not first disinterred the quotations from
the books in which he had found them, and with
many of those books few in England beside
" J.B." were familiar. Moliere claimed the right
to use whatever he could find that he could work
into his plays, and Handel boldly confessed that he
exercised the same right of gleaning golden grain,
and working it up into his operas and oratorios.
Moliere and Handel exercised the prerogative of
genius, and as a man of genius "J.B." did not
disdain to follow their example. As he recognised
truth wherever he found it, so he rejoiced in finely
pointed and picturesque phrasing of a truth, and
delighted to hang such an " apple of gold in a picture
of silver " on a wall of the Essay house that " J.B."
built.
It was no light business, in addition to his other
journalistic work, to create a " J.B." article every
week. He would stay at home on Thursday, The
Christian World day off, and on Saturday, to set the
wheels of his mind going, and get his article sketched
in brief. That sketch method he had practised
with profit from the beginning, in the preparation
of his sermons and addresses as minister. During
the years of his membership of The Christian World
staff, when his health was fairly good, he would
finish his article, very likely, by Saturday evening.
In his later years he often found himself most in
the mood for writing on a Sunday evening. He
lived a long way from Lyndhurst Road Church
at Hampstead, which he attended in the morning.
His health, never good at its best, did not permit
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The Prophet in Fleet Street
him to attend two services, and he felt he could
not better employ the solitude and calmness of
the Sunday evening, when he could be sure of
freedom from distraction, than in the writing of
an article that was going to fill the hearts and
minds of scores of thousands of lay-readers, and
that was certain to re-appear in its thought, and very
likely in its phrases and quotations, in hundreds
of sermons. The writing of a " J.B." was to him
not only a labour of love, but it was a pious sacrifice
laid on the altar of the Master who was the inspiration
of all his feeling and thinking. " J.B.", writing his
essay, felt that a live coal from the altar, according
to his view of prophetic inspiration, might kindle
the pen of the ready writer as much as the lips of
the pulpit preacher.
He wrote in a microscopic hand, contriving to
squeeze his two-and-a-half columns or so in The
Christian World into five slips of manuscript. His
manuscripts are simply blinding, even to a man
whose eyesight is good. A friend who professes to
be an expert in chirography informs me that such
microscopic writing may be taken as a sign of intense
mental concentration of the writer. Compositors
and others, such as sub-editors, who have to make
out such writing, might well rejoice that microscopic
mental concentration is a rare thing. " J.B."s
script might have been written, as Meissonnier was
said to paint, under a microscope and with nibs made
specially fine for the purpose. The article was
usually in the sub-editor s hands on Monday morning,
and " J.B." carefully revised the proof.
J. Brierley
His fellow members of the staff realised the char
acter of the man in the journalist, and referred
to him half seriously, half jokingly, as " the
prophet." He was not a prophet " like a star
who dwelt apart," but was genial, companionable,
comradely, entirely destitute of " side." If he
had heard a good story, or a humorous idea had
struck him, he would come into his neighbour s
room to share it. His alert manner, cheery smile
and twinkling eyes did good to his colleagues, in
whose work he took a kindly interest, and he was
not slack in expressing appreciation of anything
that he had liked. It was a great grief to all when
the word came that henceforward his work must
be done at home, but often he sent kindly mess
ages to those of us with whom he had long been
associated in the bringing out of the paper.
114
CHAPTER X
The Books of "J.B."
THE books of " J.B." were republications of selec
tions of his essays. First in date was the Questions
for the Free Churches, but here we have still the
" Congregational Minister," rather than " J.B.,"
criticising in a friendly spirit the short-comings
of the denominational Churches, which he is anxious
to see facing the age untrammelled by ancient
methods that have no relation to modern needs.
From Philistia : Essays on Church and World
(1893) is " J. B." well in the making. There is
a good deal of the work done at Neuchatel, collected
from various periodicals, and some till then
unpublished. The title-page bears the motto, " La
Verite etant un sommet, tout chemin qui monte
y conduit."
There is defiant challenge in the title. Matthew
Arnold was engaged in his favourite pastime of
persiflage of Puritanism and all its works and
ways, as the antithesis of Hellenic " sweetness
and light." Puritanism stood for pietistic " Phil
istinism/ that coinage of German origin used to
express the suburban bourgeois attitude to
wards life and literature, as against the attitude
of the cultured " children of this world." Non-
J, Brierley
conformity was satirised on the stage and in novels,
and " Society " regarded it as vulgarity that " came
between the wind and its nobility." Yet, says,
"J- B." :
" What is here written will be found, not only definitely
related to religious faith, but to a form of it which polite
Society has, with impressive unanimity, pronounced upon.
These essays are edited from the heart of Philistia. In other
words, their author belongs to that region of esprits bornes,
and of intellectual density, connoted by the terms Protest
ant Nonconformist. To enter here will be, doubtless, to
many cultured persons, an adventure as serious and un
wonted as to traverse the realms of
Antres vast and deserts idle,
Of anthropophagi and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.
If any such make the venture we can only wish them a
safe and happy issue out of it. Should they emerge alive
it may perhaps, be with the tidings that the tales of intel
lectual savagery in vogue concerning its inhabitants owe, like
some of Othello s stories, a good deal to the imagination of
their authors."
Noteworthy are the range of the author s literary
interests, the catholicity of his taste and the poise
and large tolerance of his judgments. He places
men of the most diverse types in the setting of their
age and nation, and tries to get at the soul of the
man beneath what, sometimes, is a repulsive
outward show. He is not afraid of traditional
bogeys of pious people, such as Voltaire. When
he gets close to such bogeys, and is introduced
to them, he finds that they have something
to teach that even the pious people would be
the better for learning. Thus, under the often
116
The Books of "J.B."
nauseating " Pantagruelism" of Rabelais, he sees
a reformer of eclectic culture, a man of immense
genius with views far in advance of his age and
country, expressing these views in the most effec
tive way then possible, always at the risk, if he
were " found out," of being burnt as a dangerous
heretic. Voltaire was not, as usually held by
religious people in this country, an eighteenth
century Satan in impudent revolt against God,
but " a convinced Theist, believing in a righteous
God and in a life to come," a man able to appre
ciate a reasonable religion as he had seen it lived
in England, a fearless preacher of religious tolerance,
who cast down the gauntlet in the face of the Church
that broke heretics on the wheel and hunted them
like wild beasts. It was the ugly side of religion,
as shown by the Church in France in the age of
its foulest corruption, that he attacked with the
merciless satire of his unrivalled pen. There
is an essay on Lucian, that Greek Voltaire of the
second century, who, with the grace of a Heine,
scarified the religious and philosophical charlatans
battening on the credulity of a superstitious and
ignorant people. He finds that Lucian, after all,
by his hatred of humbug and imposture, and
his exposure of the shams of his age, was really
showing himself " on the side of the angels," and
unconsciously preparing the way for the Christ
ianity which he had only known through the antics
of certain unworthy exploiters of it. Boethius,
the philosopher moralist of the sixth century,
is discussed with sympathetic insight. The author
117
J. Brierley
of the De Consolatione seems to have been much
more of a " classic " than a Christian, for even
when dealing with questions of Christian theology
his arguments and methods are drawn from Plato
and Cicero, rather than from Paul. " The problem,"
says " J.B.," " seems soluble by a very simple
hypothesis, but one which critics generally appear
to have overlooked. It is that of explaining
Boethius on the supposition that, while a Christian
by profession, he was by temperament and mental
habitude mainly a philosopher and a classicist.
. . . . His case is by no means without parallel.
The Renaissance shows us multitudes of men,
in Italy and France especially, ecclesiastics by
profession, who on occasion delivered themselves
duly in defence of orthodoxy, but whose tastes
and sympathies were essentially pagan. There
was, though, this difference between them and
Boethius. While the latter assimilated what was
best and noblest in the old world, too many of the
former revelled in the aspects of it which were
sensuous and base." Montaigne, of course, found
in " J.B." a friendly critic one who not only
found him " prodigiously entertaining," a level
headed and genial philosopher in a mad world,
a gay-spirited agnostic, prepared in matters of
religion to live and let live, but a teacher whose
book remains as one of the very few the study and
mastery of which constitute in themselves a
liberal education.
Some essays of the " Congregational Minister "
type, sandwiched between these studies, have an
118
The Books of U J.B."
incongruous look. They provoked from the
reviewers criticism of the " inequality " of the
essays, but on the whole the reception of the book
was favourable enough to encourage the author,
and the critics whose judgment was most worth
having were quick to recognise the originality
and value of the work of the Free Church " Phil
istine."
In 1893 appeared Studies of the Soul, the most
successful of all his books. It has run into eight
English editions, and has had a large circulation
in translations into German, Swedish and other
languages. To " J.B." the soul was the person
ality of the man, the means of spiritual communi
cation alike with his fellow men and with God.
It was the battleground of the forces of light and
darkness. It could be fed or starved, grown or
stunted.
To a generation which does not read the world s
deepest books it is difficult to give an idea of what
the human soul has really grown to in those who
have given it a chance. The literature of this
subject is the lives of the great saints, and amongst
them perhaps especially the great mystics. Here
we learn the possibilities of a grown-up soul ; the
annihilation in it of the lower desires, and the
full set of its determination upon the highest
things ; its power of vision, by which it has an
apprehension of God which nothing can shake,
and a sense of the spiritual world that makes it
grandly indifferent to the conditions of the earthly
lot ; its power of influence, such that through
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J. Brierley
commonest words and acts thrill mysterious
forces that shake and inspire the hearts of men;
and its power of enjoyment, drawn from sources
which the world cannot dry up, and which reaches
at times an intensity that transcends the limits of ex
pression. Unless the world s best men and women
have been its greatest liars, these experiences have,
in differing degrees, been common to them all."
Everything, he argues, turns on the question
of personality.
" The personal is the one thing that interests.
Doctrine and dogma, whether theologic, social or
economic, left to its naked self, will moulder
on the back shelves of libraries. To be powerful
it must be incarnated. Create a living character
which holds the doctrines and he will preach them
to millions. The Baptist creed of Pilgrim s
Progress can hardly be called attractive to the
mass. As talked by Christian and Hopeful it is
the property of the world. Scotch Presbyter-
ianism in the aibstract is held commonly by
outsiders to be a dry subject. Translated into
the life of a Jeannie Deans, or into the characters
and opinions of the worthies of Drumtochty, its
flavour is appreciated by every palate. Art
tells the same story. The pictures that live
are those where the colours have been mixed with
the artists own life-blood.
" Surely the reason of all this is plain, and it is
dead against the materialists. Into whatever
region of thought we stray whether theology,
philosophy, history, literature or art we find the
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The Books of "J.B."
universe spelling out one word as its final message,
that word is personality. The personal life is the
ultimate life, the personal interest the ultimate
interest. The line which is writ everywhere on this
side of the grave, we may well believe is the
line beyond it, and becomes thus the charter of
our persona] existence after death."
The complexity of the soul ; its inheritance,
conscious and unconscious, for its direct line
of succession and the race ; its inexhaustible
treasure in the subsconscious self waiting to be
brought to the surface and always in a myriad
ways influencing its activities and its outlook ;
its autonomy, if it choses to exercise it, not at all
fettered, but invested with limitless freedom by
its Overlord ; its " impedimenta," its " negative
capability," the use of imagination in religion
these, and other aspects of the question of soul
personality, are discussed with never failing zest,
and with amazing fertility of thought, fancy and
illustration.
The essay, " Life s Unknown Quantities," reaches
the high water mark of " J.B. s" achievements.
Many readers have testified to the indelible im
pression it made upon them. He begins :
" Emerson has, in one of his essays, a striking passage
in which he speaks of the way in which the machinery of
society adapts itself almost automatically to the varying
fortunes of the individual. A man in the heat of passion
commits some crime which, in his earlier years, would have
seemed to him impossible. When he comes to himself it
appears incredible that he should have done such a thing.
He finds, however, society, with its police, its magistrates,
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J. Brierley
its dock, its criminal procedure, calmly and methodically
dealing with this phase of his career as though it had been
waiting for it through all the years. It is a somewhat grue
some reflection, but there is an idea underlying it which
may be carried further. The varied apparatus of civilisa
tion, and its startling relation to us under certain contin
gencies, suggests an even more complex structure and its
relations that, namely, of our own organism and inner
consciousness. It would be a bewildering calculation to
endeavour to total up the sum of all the phases and shades
of thought and feeling passed through by a fully -developed
modern man in the course of a life-time. But the calcula
tion would, after all, be simple when compared with another
that of the experiences which, through that life-time, have
been possible to such a nature, but into which it has never
entered. There is something eerie in the thought of the
pictures which our inner machinery is prepared to throw
at any moment upon the screen of our consciousness, but
which will never come there. The precise sensation realised
by a person when threatened by a terrible catastrophe, such
as death by burning or by murder ; or that, on the other
hand, felt on the news of the coming to us of a great fortune,
is what few among us will ever know. None the less the
registering apparatus for the production of that sensation
is all ready within us, and would, on occasion, produce it
there with infallible accuracy. Poets have often chosen
psychological themes as the subject of their muse. They
have written on Hope, on Memory, on Imagination. There
is clearly a field open for another great poem the Unrealised
Possibilities of Consciousness."
He is led on to consider not simply the existing
capabilities which are never called into action,
but the possible further development of the capaci
ties themselves. We know a very little of such
powers as that of memory, of the " second sight "
possessed by certain individuals, of the mysterious
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The Books of "J.B."
powers, baffling completely our Western science,
shown by Eastern yogi, all, we may well believe,
part of our common heritage, if we know only
where to find and how to train them.
" A fresh window let into the wall of our con
sciousness might make our knowledge of the
world as certain as that of the planetary system,
and cause Agnosticism, Pessimism, and Materialism
to be tenable only in Bedlam. And no sound
Evolutionist will say that such an organic develop
ment is impossible. The outside universe contains
innumerable unknown quantities ; and that man
has, in his microcosm, the elements which answer
to them all, may be far more than a poetic conceit.
What Goethe said of the Divine immanence has its
meaning also for man :
Ihm ziemt s, die Welt im Innern zu bewegen,
Natur in sich, sich in Natur zu hegen."
In The Eternal Religion, published in 1905, he
is preoccupied with the essential unity of all
religion in so far as it is a feeling after God if haply
we may find Him. It is the soul of man seeking
contact with its Maker. " I have," he says, " kept
always before me the idea of religion as at once a prin
ciple and a history. Its story, properly considered,
is that of eternal ideas expressed, with varying
degrees of clearness, in historical personalities.
The progress both of the ideas and of the person
alities has, it is here maintained, reached, so far,
its highest tower in Christianity, which is accordingly
here treated as the Eternal Religion." The view
presupposes, of course, the method of evolution
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J. Brierley
which, indeed, to " J.B.," was a most powerful
reinforcement of faith, while, at the same time,
it made in the sphere of religion for the completest
tolerance and the catholic spirit.
He has no faith in a vain Protestant attempt,
in the interest of a traditional concept of an
" infallible Bible," to " join modern science to
ancient Genesis."
" The position to-day amongst both religious teachers and
their followers is, in this matter, entirely unsatisfactory.
They are carrying two sets of ideas in their minds to each of
which they in turn defer, but which they are quite unable
to reconcile. They believe in science ; they believe in revel
ation. They accept the truth which is being arrived at by
observation and research ; they live morally by another
truth which they hold has come down from heaven. But
when these two appear to clash, as is often enough the case,
the modern believer has no solution of the difficulty. He
is only uneasily conscious that his two life theories are some
how at war, and his soul suffers accordingly.
It is time this war was ended, and that can only be in one
way. Religious peace will come, a peace final and abiding,
when men everywhere recognise that these two things are,
after all, one ; that science and revelation are really the same
thing; that there is no true revelation that is not science,
and that there is no true science that is not revelation.
Humanity has been long, and by devious routes, working
its way towards this conclusion, and at last it is fully in sight.
To accept it, we know, means to cut through a great many
venerable ideas, but, crede expertis, when we have done
the business, we find ourselves spiritually not one penny the
worse."
He shows to what good purpose he has studied
the history of religion and the new science of com
parative religion.
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The Books of "J.B."
" Where the Church has fallen into error, and brought
confusion into our thinking, has been not in affirming a Divine
revelation, but in restricting it to one particular time or set
of times, and to one particular order of ideas. Whereas
the Divine revelation is an eternal one]; has been going on from
the beginning ; is going on now. It is a favourite idea of
certain researchers, illustrated, too, with a vast mass of evidence,
that every tribe of man has in its literature or customs the
marks of a pure and elevated primitive faith. However
that may be, one cannot read the world s story at any point
without realising how, from the beginning, the men of every
nation have been under a spiritual discipline. Who that has
looked into the Bhagavad Gita but has felt this as regards
India ? When we read, too, the definition of religion by Asoka,
the great Buddhist king : Religion is an excellent thing.
But what is religion ? Religion is the least possible evil, much
good, piety, charity, veracity, and also purity of life, can
we doubt that here, also, was a heavenly leading ? The Stoics
were seekers after God if ever there were any ; and when
Epictetus declares : When you have shut your door and
darkened your room, say not to yourself you are alone ; God
is in your room, we may be sure that some of them had not
only sought God, but found Him. That was a truth which
some of the early Fathers were not slow to realise. It is
pleasant to see an Origen, a Clement, openly proclaiming
that the Greek and Latin teachers spoke by the inspiration
of the Eternal Word. Zwingli, who saw so many things
before his time, saw also this. In a Confession of Faith,
written just before his death, he speaks of the assembly
of all the saintly, the heroic, the faithful and the virtuous,
when Abel and Enoch, Noah and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
will mingle with Socrates, Aristides and Antigonus, with
Numa and Camillus, Hercules and Theseus, the Scipios and
the Catos, and when every upright and holy man who has
ever lived shall be present with his Lord. Luther and
Bossuet, from their opposite camps, joined in condemning
this utterance. We to-day, in the clearer light that has come to
us, are sure that he was right and that they were wrong."
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J. Brierley
A favourite idea is that of our potential wealth.
We usually prefer, however, to trudge through
life as tramps without drawing on our credit at God s
bank. Says " J.B." :-
" Another page of the ledger, always on the debit side,
opens with our conscious life. Here again an incessant,
unpaid for, receiving. We breathe the air of liberty. It
was won by our forefathers, who, some of them, laid down
their lives as the price. Our mind, as it opens, gulps know
ledge, truth, beauty; civilisation, the arts, music, science,
the myriad conveniences of life, are there waiting for us. And
they are all gifts. Our billionaire, it seems, is fitting us up
gratis and regardless of expense. Yet more. It is made
plain to us that this largeness of reception is the condition
and ground of our value. Our quality of being is according
to our power of taking it in. The universe with all its wealth,
of being, is around the oyster just as much as around you
and me. The difference between us is that the oyster cannot
digest the universe as we can. Our faculties, our organs,
are the most insatiate of beggars, incessant with their give,
give/ at every point extracting from the world its precious
things, and carrying them to that limitless absorber, our inner
self."
What is our cheque book on the bank ?
" The possibilties of life will never be properly realised
until each one of us is intent on getting the best in order
that he may give the best. I am defrauding my fellow if
I do not seek to broaden and deepen my mind, with every
labour and exercise, that I may speak to him from a fuller
knowledge, a wider experience. What an immense signi
ficance for all teachers lies in that remark of Stanley on
Newman : How different the fortunes of the Church of
England might have been if Newman had been able to read
German ! How dare any of us attempt to teach unless we
have learned something, and unless we are continually learning
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The Books of "J.B."
more ! And this learning will have to be more than a secular
knowledge. Our commerce will have also to be with the
Unseen. To us must apply that fine idea of Plutarch s,
where, speaking of the daimon of Socrates, he declares that
it was the influence of a superior intelligence, and a diviner
soul, operating on the soul of Socrates, whose calm and holy
temper fitted him to hear this spiritual speech. "
The futility of trying to tether man to systems
of thought of any age is thus demonstrated :
"By an imperious law of his being man overturns all that
he creates. We are at last beginning to understand why
this is. When the lesson has been completely learned the
revolt of one part of us against the other will cease. What
is the fact ? It is simply that there can be no permanence
for man in any of his systems, and that because change is the
law of his own being. He is the eternal changer. That,
however, fortunately, is not the whole. It is not mere
wreckage that he indulges in. His creeds, his constitutions,
incessantly crack and fall around him, because he, the in-
dweller, is ever getting bigger. And the growing nature
must, as part of the process, continually cast its old shell.
The secret at his centre, which explains all, is that man is
not a Being so much as an eternal Becoming, a passage always
from one stage to another. And because of this no extern
ality can be final for him. It stands, but he moves. And
the thing that stands is bound to be left behind by the thing
that moves."
Ethics as practical morals, rather than as the
philosophy of morality, always attracted him. A
movement was started in France to found a so-called
scientific morality, independent of the Christian
sanctions. The claims of justice, social order and
morality were urged at great meetings on purely
naturalistic grounds. With all* his catholicity of
charity, " J.B." knew too much of history and
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J. Brierley
of the heart of man to believe that there was any
rooting and branching power in a merely material
istic morality. He puts his finger on the weak
link where the chain will snap.
" A true morality, we have said, requires a growing know
ledge. But to be operative it demands something more.
It must have a motive, an impelling force. We know Matthew
Arnold s definition of religion morality touched with
emotion. It is by no means a complete definition, but it
goes a long way. And it is the Christianity of the presence
of Christ that gives us the true morality and the true emotion.
In Russia or England, or anywhere else, where religion may
be more or less dismembered from the best living, it is because
there is a link missing, a lack of coherence between the know
ing and the feeling. Where the Gospel is really understood
and felt it has always uplifted the morals. Chalmers in his
early days preached morals alone and with no moral result.
He became filled with the love of Christ, and with that power
behind him engiaved the ethical precepts on the heart of
Scotland. M. Villemain, in his great work on the Fathers,
while recognising that the early Church lost much of the
intellectual treasure of the Greeks, observes that it was more
than compensated by the moral force which Christianity
brought into the world. The heart of man, as he truly says,
has gained more in this discipline than its imagination has
lost."
To Augustine " J.B." had always been power
fully drawn as a great Christian soul whose thinking
was the outcome of his personal experience and his
deepest feeling. One of " J.B. s" earliest essays
dating from the Neuchatel period was on " St.
Augustine in Literature." It was the man, rather
than the " Augustinian Theology " in which he found
much that was repellent and contrary to his view
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The Books of "J.B."
of the love of God and His relation to men that
interested him, but he found in the conception
of " The City of God " a thought that lent itself
to enlargement from the limitations given to it by
Augustine.
In Our City of God, published in 1897, he works
out his own idea of the city of a purified and glorified
humanity. The various more or less complemen
tary essays are grouped in three Parts I. Theo
logical ; II. Social ; III. Personal. We find various
familiar ideas reappearing in such essays as " The
ology s Hidden Factors," Our Debt to Life,"
" The Doctrine of Limit," and " Our Personal
Fortunes/
The shortcoming of Augustine s view of " The
City of God " was due, he shows, to the historical
conditions of the time when the " De Civitate Dei "
was written. The Roman Empire, which had
seemed the framework of all civilisation, was
crumbling into ruins and it seemed as if anarchy
was to overwhelm the world as a flood. Augus
tine took refuge in the thought of a Church, a body
of elect souls who, and who alone, would be saved
from the wreck of all that was visible. The host
outside were a massa perditionis, whose very
virtues are splendida vitia, and whose doom is the
eternal fire. But that meant leaving the Church
without influence on the perishing world. It
presupposed a too pessimistic view of the world.
It lent itself to that intolerance which made the
Catholic Church of later days a ruthless persecutor.
Yet
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J. Brierley
" What great and eternally true things there
are in his conception ! The view of world-history
as the continuous unfolding of a Divine purpose ;
of world policies, moralities and economies as being
rooted finally in spiritual principles ; of the State
as subordinate to an invisible power that is higher
than itself does not all this remain to us not
only august and venerable, but as essentially
valid ? Augustinianism needs and has received
in our time rigorous revision. But its root idea
holds. It is the only one that covers humanity,
that accounts for its history, and gives to institu
tions and governments their true basis."
Here was " ample room and verge enough "
for the imagination of " J.B." to soar in audacious
flights, and he let it soar to splendid purpose.
What an age in which to study man !
" There never was an age so equipped for a study of
humanity. In the light of modern knowledge we can no
more accept unquestioned the earlier verdicts on this subject
than we could accept the Ptolemaic astronomy. Of man s
history as an animal and as a soul ; of his physiology and his
psychology ; of the way in which his beliefs, his first theologies,
came to him ; of the laws which have governed the develop
ment of his mind, in the successive stages of his progress ;
of his ethical history, the story of his falls, his recoveries,
his crimes, his virtues ; of the value and action in him of
the spiritual faculty, and the results offered by his world
wide and age-long religious experiences in all these and
other directions we have such a science of man as no past
age could pretend to. And to that science our theology
is bound to conform itself."
Then what new views of Himself God is giving
to us :
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The Books of "J.B."
" This Divine self -revelation goes on, as we have said,
according to a fixed law the law of growth. It is precisely
according to our height that God opens Himself to us. Thus
is it that we see a constant progress in the idea of God. A
man s education, the age he belongs to, with its notions
and prejudices, are his apparatus of observation. The
difference in the apparatus makes all the difference in the
object viewed. Jupiter to the naked eye is one thing ;
quite another to spectrum analysis and the Lick telescope.
Hence the God of the middle ages is impossible to us. The
instruments were imperfect and so reported badly. Anselm s
theory of the Atonement in his Cur Deus Homo offers
us a deity with the sentiments of a mediaeval baron, jealous
of personal honour, and determined to vindicate it with
blood. The eleventh century deity is not ours. So, too,
in the long, fierce centuries during which power, mere force,
was regarded as of itself the supreme right, the source of all
authority, and when remorseless cruelty was considered
a mere detail of its exercise, the doctrine of hell, as an
underground furnace whose torturing flames enwrapped
myriads of victims through all eternity, seemed natural enough.
In the Roman Church this view appears still to subsist, for
we read in a recent Jesuit book that sinners in hell have
asbestos souls to ensure their burning for eternity. "
Let the appeal to men and women of the age
be boldly made, and there will be a response,
for even oar age is not necessarily graceless.
" The supreme want of our time is a spiritual teaching,
which, addressed with fearless impartiality to our upper,
our middle, and our working classes, shall, with irrefutable
argument and irresistible appeal, urge them to inner improve
ment as the indispensable accompaniment of any external
advance. This teaching must be adapted to the new thought
conditions. It must, above all, be a teaching that shall
capture the imagination of the young. One of the leading
features of it should be the creation in their minds of an intense
J. Brierley
sense of social obligation. They should be taught to realise,
as their great initial lesson, their debt to life. This, indeed,
is the old evangelic doctrine of grace, presented in the form
which the new generation can understand and appreciate.
But in the old theologic phraseology it would be to multitudes
repugnant and meaningless. But there is a way of putting
it which will make it plain enough and impressive enough
to every youth and maiden of common understanding.
The doctrine to be taught, we say, is a doctrine of grace,
and of a commensurate indebtedness. There is a huge account
against us, which, if we possess a spark of honour, we shall
want, as far as we can, to repay. We are where we are and
what we are because of boundless benefactions bestowed
upon us by invisible helpers. It would be the death blow,
one would think, both of cynicism and of pessimism, if people,
instead of accepting what they possess to-day as a thing
of course, would take the trouble to trace the process by
which it has come to be theirs. We should see then, if we
never saw it before, that a Cross is signed upon all things,
that we live by a system of vicarious sacrifice."
The dauntless and cheery soul of " J.B." is felt
in a passage which we have only to read the extracts
from his Journal to know is refined gold poured
from the crucible of his own deepest experience.
"Whatever the situation, our happiness to-day is to an
enormous an extent in our own hands. A man is happy
when he thinks he is. And why should I not this morning
think so ? Why should I be gloomy when I can be glad ?
Here inside me is a force that can drive away the clouds.
Our will power, which can call up good thoughts and disperse
bad ones ; which can concentrate on the lighted side of
things ; which can fall back on gracious memories as a
refuge from present evils; which, in a word, can make its
own weather, winning through thickest clouds to the blue
sky and shining sun our will power, we say, if we will only
use it, is our philosopher s stone, that turns all things into
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The Books of "J.B."
gold. The more we give it to do the better it works.
Adversity braces it as the Styx hardened Achilles."
There is an essay very rich in human sympathy
and the fruits of the widest reading on " Friends
and Friendship." " J.B." believed in early friend
ships kept at a glow through life.
" The best friendships, as a rule, are those that begin young.
Life s iron is then fire-hot, and we weld easily. And the
special happiness here is that, properly managed, these unions
are often for all the years. In the college common room
we stumble upon a brother soul which vibrates responsive
to our own, and now, after three or four decades, and when
we are almost at the end of the journey, the music is still
going on. Our careers have been wide apart, our fortunes
different, our meetings, perhaps, infrequent ; and yet the mere
sense that our friend is yonder, thinking his thoughts and
doing his work, is a strength and a companionship to us.
How much so, we shall know when he has gone. A soulful
intimacy of this kind acquires an ever better flavour with the
years. And here it is that a mere self-seeking ambition
defeats itself in the search for the prizes of life. In the rush
for worldly advancement our pusher, eager for more brilliant
aliances, drops his old friends, or, what is worse, adopts towards
them an attitude of condescension. What he has gained
in this process we will not inquire. We know what he has
lost. Such a man has no friends. To apply this title to his
new entourage would be too cynical. And the friendless
man, whatever height he has climbed to, is surely a being to
be pitied."
After one of his frequent breakdowns he tastes
life again with fresh zest, and characteristically
mints gold even out of his illness. In an essay,
" On Being 111," he says :
"Nature takes pains to show that weakness and suffering
are not her first intentions concerning us. We are on the
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J. Brierley
track of our ailments, and see from what preventible causes
many of them have sprung. There is that unknown ancestor
of ours whose excesses saddled his descendants, ourselves
included, with perhaps a whole family of diseases. We
should so like to have a word with that gentleman 1 But
not to be too hard upon him. For aught we know his excess
lay in being too moral instead of not moral enough. Perhaps
he was an ascetic who starved himself on principle, or a
student who burnt too much midnight oil, or a philanthropist
who tainted his blood by visiting fever-haunted hovels.
Probably he was quite other than that, but give him at least
the benefit of the doubt."
The personal note is very traceable also in the
concluding essay, " Remainders," another of his
finest inspirations. He says :
" There are few severer tests than physical defect, but
it is only small souls that sink under them. Tie large nature
makes of them stepping stones. It is, for instance, a reflection
full of optimism to note how men of fewest inches, deprived
of that element of power which comes from commanding
stature, have, spite the lack, by sheer energy of mind, become
the great swayers of destiny. What a tiny man was Lord
John Russell ! Yet he led the House of Commons, and was
Prime Minister of England. Napoleon was almost a dwarf.
Agesilaus and Alexander were under the middle height. In
other regions of influence, note Montaigne, Spenser, Barrow,
Pope, Steele, Watts, Wesley, all meagre of body. How
they bulk to-day in the world of thought and deed ! Nor,
when we are of the right temper, will the advance of years,
with whatsoever physical shearings and loppings it may bring,
put us off from the business of inner progress. Cato learned
Greek at sixty ; it was at the same age Robert Hall took
up Italian, that he might read Dante. In his eightieth
year Michael Angelo, walking in Rome, on being asked
the reason of his expedition, replied, That I may learn
something. "
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The Books of "J.B."
To Cato and Robert Hall, in the penultimate
sentence, he might have added " J.B." Hebrew,
Greek, Latin and French he had known from quite
early manhood, but the German literature he
knew, at fifty, only through the veil of translation.
This did not satisfy his eager soul. He must get
soul to soul with the Germans in their own lan
guage, for there was personality in their words as
actually spoken and written. So, half-way between
fifty-five and sixty, " J.B." set to work on German,
and for eighteen months he was worrying at
grammars, vocabularies, annotated editions, in
trains and trams, and every five minutes he could
abstract from anything else was given to German.
He had his exceeding great reward, for at the end
of the year and a half he was reading with ease
and enjoyed not only Goethe, Lessing, Schiller and
Heine, but such Teutonic nuts to crack as Kant and
Hegel, and quotations from German writers began
to flow as unconsciously from his pen as those from
his soul companions of other tongues.
The going to school with the Germans at fifty-
five is only another illustration of the flesh and
blood reality that made Jonathan Brierley " J.B."
His books, with all their intellectual power, were
always more out of his heart than his head ; all
his counsels were the outcome of his personal ex
perience ; he tested and tried all his teaching on
himself before he set out to teach others. That
was what his readers instinctively felt, and so
it was that his essays and books made his readers
his grateful disciples.
135
CHAPTER XI
The Art of Quotation
Leaves from "J.B.V Note-books
THE quotations with which " J.B." illustrated
and spiced his essays were regarded by a great
many readers as a most relishable ingredient of his
work. He was no pedant. He never quoted for
the sake of quotation, but because, like the poet s
" numbers," the quotations "came." In his reading
he had always a keen eye for a striking fact, a thing
well said, a revelation of personality, anything
that added to his knowledge of human nature,
or cast a sidelight on religion in any of its aspects.
He did not want to forget a thing that had struck
him, and so followed Captain Cuttle s counsel
When found make a note of." The mere making
a note of it seemed to impress it on his memory,
for the Rev. Harold Brierley says he did not think
his father often referred to his Note-books. " Where
on earth do you get your quotations ? " was a
question often asked by his friends. His Note-books
show, to some extent, by enabling one to follow
his courses of reading, but a very striking thing in
these books is that one quotation almost always
seems to suggest others, and it is followed by a
catena of quotations from the most extraordinary
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The Art of Quotation
variety of sources. Scores of these catenae suggest
essays of which they would have made the fortune.
Every bookman rejoices in quotations. Dr.
Johnson said that Robert Burton s " Anatomy
of Melancholy "stuffed with Latin quotations
from a host of little known or quite forgotten
authors was the only book that kept him awake
in bed. The seventeenth century preachers
Anglican and Nonconformist peppered their ser
mons thickly with quotations in Greek and Latin
not alone from the Bible, but from the classic writers.
It is to be feared that many of these preachers,
when read at all, are read more for the sake of the
quotations than for themselves. Jeremy Taylor s
readers never cease to wonder at his inexhaustible
flow of quotations in Greek and Latin. What
the congregations thought of them is another thing.
No more entertaining reading has been provided
for the bookman during the last quarter of a century
than the parts of The Oxford English Dictionary,
which illustrates each word with a series of quo
tations in chronological order. The art of quotation
was much better understood in more leisurely days
than it is now, for it is largely the art of the well-
stored, orderly, retentive memory, and of the
talent of mental concentration in reading. We
read too much and we remember too little, and
if we want a quotation we have to hunt it up.
" J.B." knew how to read, he subjected his mind
to the sternest discipline, and so his sheaves of
quotations grew, and were always at his disposal,
with or without the note-books.
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J. Brierley
At first he did not translate quotations in other
languages. That greatly distressed readers, and
tearful letters came, especially from ladies, implor
ing him to condescend to their weakness and supply
translations. He steeled himself for a time against
such appeals but at last yielded to gentle pressure.
One of his minister friends, an Oxford man, very
bookish, humorously accused him of " invent
ing quotations, and then palming them off on
to people nobody ever heard of, so that we cannot
find you out."
A score of note-books of his quotations were
among the material placed at my disposal by his
son. They are little penny black-covered books,
three inches by two, such as would go in a waist
coat pocket. It is astonishing how much, in his
blinding handwriting, with his contraction devices,
" J.B." gets into every one of these books, which
are numbered in order on the covers. They cover
the period pretty well from the Neuchatel years
to nearly the end. If the note-books, carefully
edited, could be published in a volume, the book
would be one of the most prized in any biblio
phile s library, and it would be a veritable diamond
mine to the preacher. It was impossible to
resist the temptation to transcribe specimens,
taken at random from note-books as they were
picked up.
Fiske, " Struggle for Existence " :
Battles far more deadly than those of Gettys
burg or Gravelotte have been incessantly waged on
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The Art of Quotation
every square mile of the earth s life-bearing surface,
since life first began.
Naturalists classify more than two million species
of plants and animals.
Modern science justifies the guess of Democritus
that " all the senses are modifications of touch."
"Consciousness is an orderly succession of changes
a succession of changes arranged and combined
in special ways."
Note explanation of instinct and association of
ideas by nerve channels. In instinct they are
made in the embryo and so the intuitions would
run through a ready-made channel. In associa
tion of ideas the channels are in close relation
to each other, so the nerve discharge affects
both together.
All knowledge is a classification of experi
ences, and every act of knowledge is an act of
classification.
Says Bagehot : " One of the greatest pains to
human nature is the pain of a new idea."
Think you this mould of hopes and fears
Could find no statelier than his peers
In yonder hundred million spheres ?
Goethe " Im Ganzen, Guten, Wahren, resolut
zu leben."
Comte s predictions. In seven years the control
of public education was to be given to France.
In twelve years the Emperor Napoleon was to
resign in favour of a Comtist Triumvirate. In
thirty-three years the religion of Humanity was
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J. Brierley
to be definitely established (cf. this with C. Fourier s
predictions about his phalanstery system).
One authentic instance recorded in the case of
a man brought out for execution in India in which
the change of colour (of hair) so rapid that it was
perceptible to the eye.
Kissing is not innate.
Mr. H. Wedgwood explains kneeling and uplifted
hands in prayer by the attitude of suppliant captives,
who offer hands to be bound by the victor.
Louis XVI., when surrounded by a fierce mob,
said " Am I afraid ? Feel my pulse."
Monkeys, some seem to laugh or to approach
to it, and even to smile. (Darwin).
Expression of the Emotions. In cauda venenum.
Old negro during a Charleston earthquake.
" Good Lawd, come and help us ! Oh, come now !
And come yo self, Lawd, taint no time for boys."
Sir Thomas Browne : " A man should be something
that men are not, and individual in somewhat
beside his proper name."
Milton : " He who would not frustrate of his
hope to write well hereafter in laudable things,
ought himself to be a true poem."
Who are modest because they continually
compare themselves, not with other men, but with
that idea of the perfect which they have before
their mind."
Idea of friendship, of human value, in Gray s
friend Nicholls, who after Gray s death to his
mother :
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The Art of Quotation
You know that I considered Mr. Gray as a
second parent, that I thought only of him, built all
my happiness on him, talking of him for ever,
wanted him with me wherever I partook of any
pleasure, and flew to him for refuge whenever I
felt any uneasiness. At present I feel that I
have lost half of myself."
Pope spoke of " that long disease, my life."
Gray on Melancholy :
" But there is another sort, black indeed, that
has something in it like Tertullian s rule of faith,
Credo quia impossibile est. For it believes, nay,
is sure of everything that is unlikely, so it be but
frightful ; and on the other hand excludes and
shuts its eyes to the most possible hopes, and
everything that is pleasurable."
Says Keats : " Men should bear with each
other ; there lives not the man who may not be
cut up, lashed to pieces, on his weakest side."
Voltaire : " No nation has treated in poetry
moral ideas with more energy and depth than
the English nation."
Byron : " Give me a Republic. The King
times are fast finishing ; there will be bloodshed
like water and tears like mist, but the people will
conquer in the end. I shall not live to see it, but
I foresee it."
M. Arnold on Shelley : " Beautiful and ineffec
tual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings
in vain."
Christopher North : Says Southey, Coleridge,
Wordsworth not to be compared with Pope.
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J. Brierley
Says Dr. Johnson : " I am sorry that prize
fighting has gone out. Every art should be
preserved, and the art of defence is surely important."
C. North, of Wordsworth : " My God, to com
pare such a poet with Scott and Byron ! "
Says " I care not a single curse for all the criti
cism that was ever canted or decanted or recanted."
" I have heard Coleridge. That man is entitled
to speak on till Doomsday or rather the genius
within him for he is inspired."
" It was Burke who vindicated the claims of
smells to the character of the sublime and
beautiful."
Abusus non tollit usum.
Plotinus, 204-269 A.D., when, after a long time
spent in different philosophical schools, was taken
to school of Saccas Ammonius, on hearing him,
exclaimed " This is the man I am seeking ! "
S. Ammonius been poor man, and had followed
trade of a porter, but his wisdom drew round him
some of the great minds of the time.
Emperor Gallienus proposed to rebuild an imperial
city and call it Platonopolis, to be administered by
him on the principles of Plato s Republic. Proposed
this under the influence of Plotinus.
Last words of Plotinus: " I am striving with all
my might to return the divine part of me to the
Divine whole which fills the universe."
Porphyrius 233-305 circa at Athens was a
man of such learning that he was regarded as a
kind of living library or walking study.
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The Art of Quotation
It is said Plotinus tracked Porphyry once when
as a young man he was voluntarily dying of
hunger. " With wealthy store of comfortable
words he recalled his soul just ready to take flight
from his body, and strengthened his body to receive
his soul."
Dr. Stocker says of Germany : " Protestantism
is sick, sick unto death. In the north and north
east the friends of Christianity are among the
aristocracy and among the peasants ; while the
middle classes, the educated, industrious, commer
cial people, are with few exceptions opposed to the
Church ; the working men of the towns, belonging
as they often do to the Social Democratic party,
being necessarily hostile."
Pastor Ernest Fiirster says: "In Mecklenburg,
Pomerania and the most of Brandenburg, that
is, most of the purely Protestant parts of Germany,
the Church is dead."
Augustine in the Soliloquies speaks of God as
" the country of the soul."
Malebranche : " God is the place of spirits, as
space is the place of bodies."
To see the world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower ;
To hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
Joubert : "To live is to think and to feel one s
soul ; all the rest, eating, drinking, etc., are only
the preparations for living, the means of supply.
I should myself, if there were no need of them,
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J. Brierley
willingly give up all these and do very well without
a body, if one left me my soul."
Someone said of Joubert that he had " the air
of a soul, which had by chance encountered
a body and was doing the best he could with it."
Joubert expressed it as his one desire to put
a book into a page, a page into a phrase, and the
phrase in one word."
He thinks you must sometimes be obscure to
mount to the sublime. " In order to read the
skies one must pass through the clouds/
The great Buddhist King Asoka, his idea of
religion, says in the " Inscriptions of Piyadasi," (his
other name) :
" Religion is an excellent thing. But what is
Religion ? Religion is the least possible evil, much
good, piety, charity, veracity, and also purity of life."
Asoka on Toleration. " We must not extol our
own sect and deny others ; we must not underrate
others without legitimate cause ; we must rather, on
every occasion, render to other sects the honour
they merit."
To his ( Asoka s) sons and grandsons. " They
must not think that conquests by means of arrows
deserve the name of conquests ; they are but
disturbances and violence. The conquests of
religion alone are real conquests ; they hold good
for this world and the next."
Father Taylor : " It may be that Emerson is going
to hell, but of one thing I am certain he will change
the climate there, and emigration will set that way."
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The Art of Quotation
From a Persian writer : " How can we know a
prophet ? By his giving you information regarding
your own heart."
Sainte Beuve on the true classic : " An author
who has enriched the human spirit, who has really
augmented its treasure, who has enabled it to take
another step forward, who has discovered some
genuine truth of morals, and seized afresh some
eternal passion of the heart in which everything
seemed known and explored ; who has rendered
his thoughts, his observations, his discovery in a
form varied it may be, yet with breadth and grandeur,
with strength and delicacy, noble and beautiful in
itself ; who has spoken to all in a style of his own,
yet a style which belongs to the world, in a style new
without neologism, new and old, easily the contem
porary of all ages."
" There is no receipt for making classics."
Rousseau said of his Confessions that the book
" was a point of comparison for the study of the
human heart, and that it is the only one that exists."
Ste. Beuve says Rousseau was the first who put
green fields into French literature.
Rousseau on a country walk : " Walking has
something which animates and stirs my ideas. I
can hardly think when I am still. I need a bodily
motion to set my soul in motion. The views of the
country, the succession of pleasant prospects, the
open air, the good appetite, the good health I gain by
walking, the liberty of the inn, the distance from
everything which reminds me of my dependence,
from everything which recalls my personal situation
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J. Brierley
to me : all this frees my spirit, gives audacity to my
thought, throws me, as it were, into the immensity
of things, which I can combine, choose from,
appropriate according to my liking, without trouble
and without fear. I act as master of all nature."
Said Camille Desmoulins : " Death extinguishes
all rights. It is for us who now exist, who are now
in possession of this planet, to give the laws to it in
our turn." (" France Libre ").
He speaks of " Le sansculotte Jesus."
Taine at twenty says :
" My only desire is to improve myself, in order
to be worth a little more every day, and to look
within myself without displeasure."
" Being a true Sybarite, I am going to sweep
and garnish this inward dwelling, and to set up in
it some true ideas, some good intentions, and a
few sincere affections."
On Perfection. " I know that it does not exist
in the human race, and that if anything approaches
it, it is not woman but man, so that my ideal would
be rather friendship than love."
The sight of mutilated human nature, the
necessity of only loving others and oneself by
halves, this radical vice of the nature of man, who,
wounded in his innermost being, drags his incurable
hurt always with him. Time opens to him all
this moves me, like the sight of ships in danger
on the sea."
" I think a man s position should correspond
to his value."
" My only consolation is that the game will
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The Art of Quotation
only last forty or fifty years at most, and that at
the end of it all is rest; eternal sleep, I hope."
" I am proud that other men s amusements
do not amuse me."
" Education is but a card of invitation to these
noble and privileged salons." (That is, to the great
minds of the world).
" It is not from Christianity I would turn you,
but from impiety. To debase God is impiety."
" Religion, though one, differs with different
minds. Some interpret it well, and on it seed
generous feelings, exalted hopes, great thoughts.
Other falsify it, and make it a routine of kneeling,
processions, penances, vows, ridiculous practices,
tending to destroy health, to injure the intelligence,
and to banish piece of mind."
Music, as Luther used to say, " is the finest
thing in the world after theology."
" The more I see of nature and the fields, the
better I love them ; they seem to have more intelli
gence, more soul than man."
Heraclitus of Ephesus (B.C. 500) : "All human
laws are fed from the one Divine law."
Hegel, by his dialectic, proved (as he thought)
a priori that there were seven planets, which after
science has shown to be incorrect.
Augustine : " Virtutes ethnicorum splendida vitia."
Hazlitt : " To have seen Mrs. Siddons was an
event in one s life."
" Poetry is not a branch of authorship ; it is
the stuff of which life is made."
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J. Brierley
Of Coleridge : " His genius at this time had
angelic wings and fed on manna. He talked on
for ever, and we wished him to talk on for ever."
Of Scott : " His works, taken together, are almost
like a new edition of human nature."
" There is an old tradition human nature,
an old temple the human mind, and Shakespeare
walks into it and looks about him with a lordly
eye, and seizes on the sacred spoils as his own."
" The vivida vis of the poet."
Tertullian : " But Venus and Bacchus are close
allies."
" Unquestionally the soul existed before letters,
and speech before books, and ideas before the
making of them, and man himself before the poet
and the philosopher."
" Man is the one name belonging to every nation
upon earth ; there is one soul and many tongues,
one spirit and various sounds ; every country has
its own speech, but the subjects of speech are
common to all. God is everywhere, and the good
ness of God is everywhere."
Scott, Heart of Midlothian : " Without entering
into an abstract part of divinity, one thing is plain,
viz. : that the person who lays open his doubts
and distresses in prayer, with feeling and sincerity,
must necessarily, in the act of doing so, purify
his mind from the dross of worldly passions and
interests, and bring it into that state when the resolu
tions adopted are likely to be selected rather
from a sense of duty than from any inferior motive."
Balzac, Peau de Chagrin :
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The Art of Quotation
" Our ideas were complete, organised beings,
which lived in an invisible world, and had power
on our destinies."
tf Catholicism puts a million gods in a sack of
flour/
" Women will have emotions at any price."
" Hate is a tonic ; it revives, it inspires venge
ance ; but pity kills, it enfeebles even our feeble
ness."
Captain Parker Gilmore s The Great Thirst
Land speaks thus of J. M. Mackenzie s Sunday
afternoon service at Stosburg, South Africa : " In
my early life I had regarded religion lightly, but
when I looked upon half-a-dozen stalwart men
accustomed to every hardship and danger of
life, our worthy pastor s children, and a few servants,
giving their whole soul to what they were engaged
in, I more forcibly felt than ever I did before, that
there was a great God above us One who wanted
our adoration and love. That was the most solemn
Sunday I ever passed. No coat of hypocrisy
was here ; what I heard was an exhortation from
an earnest, true, reflective man, endeavouring to
make his fellow creatures feel the depth and height
of religion, and the consolation they could derive
from it."
"Alone, to land alone upon that shore,
To begin alone to live for evermore ;
To have no one to teach
The manners, or the speech,
Of that new life, or put us at our ease ;
Oh ! that we might die in pairs or companies ! "
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J. Brierley
" Has your child been baptised ? " said a West
country rector to a woman. " Well, Sir, I should
not like to say as much as that, but your young
man, he came round and did what he could/
Said Jowett of the English clergy :
" Is there any reason to think that if the clergy,
with their present intolerance, ignorance, narrow
ness, and love of pious frauds, could succeed to
the utmost of their wishes, they would produce
any other revival than such an one as seems to be
going on in France four out of five women semi-
Catholics, four out of five men semi-infidels ? "
Charles Lamb : " Don t introduce me to that
man. I want to hate him, and one cannot hate
a man one knows."
Richard Sibbes says : " Gracious men are public
treasures, storehouses wherein every man hath a
store or portion. They are public springs in the
wilderness of this world to refresh the souls of the
people."
Marquis de Vauvenargues, born 1715, died 1747.
One of his sayings, " Les grandes pensees viennent
du coeur." So Quintilian Book IV. of oratory.
" Pectus est quod disertos finit, et vis mentis."
Frederick the Great. " II faut prendre 1 esprit
de son etat," wrote he to Voltaire. Wrote also
to him, " Every man has a wild beast in him,"
said he : " It is not given to every one to make
the soul laugh " " de faire rire 1 esprit."
Said Bolingbroke of Marlborough : " He was
so great a man that I have forgotten his vices."
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The Art of Quotation
Montaigne on Age : " I have seen a great shooting
of flowers and of fruit. Now I see la secheresse.
I see it happily, for it is natural. "
Boileau once said about Conde, after a difference
with him, " Henceforth, I shall always be of the
prince s opinion ; especially when he is wrong."
Royal Prerogative. Verse of Madame de Maine :
C qui chez les mortals est une effronterie
Entre nous autres demi-dieux n est qu une galanterie.
Louis XL once said to his Parliament, if they
refused to pass a certain ordinance, he would put
them to death. The Parliament appeared before
him. Asked what they wanted, " Death, Sire,"
replied the President, " the death you have decreed,
as we are resolved to choose that rather than
pass your edict against our consciences."
La Rochefoucauld has denned the gravity of
certain people as " a mystery of the body invented to
conceal their defects of the mind " " Une mystere
du corps invente pour cacherles defauts de 1 esprit."
St. Simon : " How inferior are the pleasures
of the sense to those of the mind."
Of Diderot as critic, seems good everywhere.
"He found gold in the crucible like an alchemist;
he had put it there."
Diderot on Seneca s Treatise " On Brevity
of Life," where in Chapter III. he says, " Pass in
review your days and years, take account of them !
Say how often you have allowed them to be stolen
by a creditor, a mistress, a patron, a client. How
many people have been allowed to pillage your life,
while you were not even aware you were being
J. Brierley
robbed ! " Diderot wrote on this : "I have never
read this without blushing ; it is my history."
Noble word of Diderot : "A pleasure which is
only for myself is brief and touches me only lightly.
It is for myself and my friends that I read, that
I reflect, that I write, that I meditate, that I under
stand and study and feel. I think continually of their
happiness. A fine line strikes me they shall have it.
Have I met a noble sentiment? They shall share
it. Have I under my eyes some fine spectacle? I
meditate a description of it for their enjoyment."
Fontenelle, remarking on the human way of
thinking the world made for them only, says :
" We are like a certain Athenian lunatic of whom
mention is made who imagined that every vessel
that entered Piraeus belonged to him."
Condorcet thought that human longevity would
go on indefinitely increasing.
Daguesseau, noble fellow, born 1668, gentleman,
scholar and Christian. He spoke thus of his
father, also fine fellow, in his biography of him.
" Naturally of a quick temper," he says of him,
" one saw him redden and become silent at the
moment ; the noble port of his soul allowing
the first fire to pass without a word said in order
to re-establish straightway that inner calmness
and tranquillity which reason and religion had
combined to make the habit of his soul."
Fine subject of sermon by Bossuet : " The
love of oneself pushed to the point of contempt
of God " (mepris de Dieu " ) and " Love of God
pushed to the point of contempt of oneself."
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The Art of Quotation
Aristotle said a man should rule his slaves as a
despot, his children as a king, and his wife as a
magistrate, in a free state.
In China a woman has three obediences. When
young she obeys her parents, when married her
husband, when a widow her son.
The Greek Church, contrary to Rome, allows
divorce.
Power of names. In the Egyptian " Book of
the Dead," the first thing the deceased says to
Osiris is " I know thee, and I know thy name,
and I know the names of two and forty gods who
live as warders of sinners and who feed on their
blood." Knowing their names, he has magic power
over them.
The Buddhist Eight-fold Path : Right views, right
aspirations, right spirit, right conduct, right will, right
effort, right mindf illness and right contemplation.
The Eight Precepts : Not to destroy life, not
to take what is not given, not to tell lies, not to
become drinkers of intoxicants, not to have unlaw
ful social intercourse, not to eat unseasonable food
at nights, not to use garlands or use perfumes, to
sleep on a mat spread on the ground.
Confucius: Ke Loo asked him about death.
Answer : " While you do not know life, how can
you know about death ? " Says Confucius : " With
coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my
bended arm for my pillow, I still have joy in the
midst of these things."
Dr. Pusey, at his death, 1859, as his last act
threw up his arms and cried, as if with surprised
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J. Brierley
recognition, " Sister ! Sister ! " The vision seemed
to be of his sister Elizabeth, who died at Manchester,
seventy years before, cf. Macaulay s death. Scott
died 1832.
Says Dr. Q. : "I have passed more of my life
in absolute and unmitigated solitude, voluntarily,
and for intellectual purposes, than any person of
my age, or that I have either met with, heard of,
or read of." Born 1785.
Milton, Areopagiticus : " For books are not dead
things, but do contain a progeny of life in them
to be as active as that soul was whose progeny
they are ; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the
purest efficacy and extraction of the living intellect
that bred them."
Toland found no authority in the Fathers, " who
thought as little of becoming a rule of faith to
their posterity as we to ours."
Locke s " Reasonableness of Christianity " appeared
in 1695, Toland s " Christianity not Mysterious "
in 1696, Collins s " Discourses of Free Thinking "
in 1713. Says he : " The prophets were Free
Thinkers, while Judaism was simply a religion of
priests and institutions."
Owen, " Problems of Faith and Freedom,"
says that at the end of the eighteenth century,
" English theology was in Germany in those days
what German theology is in England to-day.
Baumgartner seems to have reviewed almost every
Deist and apologetic work in our language. The
translation of Sherlock s Trial of Witnesses
reached thirteen editions."
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The Art of Quotation
Lessing wrote to a friend : " The more con
vincingly one party would convince me of Christian
ity the more I doubt ; the more wantonly the other
would trample it to the ground, the more I feel
inclined to uphold it, at least in my heart."
Kant s " Religion within the Limits of Reason,"
issued in 1792, says, " Man is not created good,
but to be good. The Son of God is humanity in
its moral perfection. An ideal humanity, which
is only worthy the Divine goal of perfection, is
in God from all eternity, the image of God s glory,
a begotten Son, not a created thing."
Schleiermacher s Reden, published 1799. Full
title : " On Religion : Speeches to its Cultured
Disciples." Schleiermacher s great mistake in
addressing only the cultured and in thinking the
toiling masses incapable of the best religious con
ceptions. " The pressure of material and unworthy
tasks, under which millions of both sexes and all
ranks sigh, makes them incapable of the free glance
with which the Divine can be found." It is really
among such that the deepest religion has been found.
Schleiermacher urges that the thing to be desired
is that "both activities, self-surrender and self-
realisation, should be at once invigorated and
reconciled." Towards that object we can only
be forwarded by those prophetic souls who have
found God without losing themselves.
" We see in the human soul on one hand the
endeavour by absorbing what is around it to
get its own sustenance and increase, to establish
itself as an individual ; and on the other the endea-
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J. Brierley
vour to avoid the dread feeling of standing over
against the universe and by surrendering itself to
be absorbed in a star."
Empedocles, in a fragment of a poem which has
come down to us, speaks of himself as " An exile and
with orders from God, bondsman of insensate strife,
for I have been ere now a boy and a girl, a bush and
a bird, and a glittering fish in the sea."
" Neither positive nor negative electricity can be
produced without producing an equal amount of the
other." Negative electricity is always invariable.
Gases made subject of experiment, while impossible
with electricity. Scientists always busy with nature
of gas.
Atom smallest chemical part of an element.
Molecule smallest of " compound/
The Brahmin believes in reincarnation of all human
beings ; Buddhist of humans carrying on their
Karma. Buddha s dying words, " That which is spirit
will all return to nothingness." The closing com
ment of Gautama s biographer : " To sense joys of
after life, this is world s chief joy. To add the pain
of other births, this is the world s worst sorrow.
Buddha, escaped from the pain of birth, shall have
no joy of the hereafter. He has shown the way
to all the world who would not reverence and
adore him."
Father Duggan says, " Papal authority was never
stretched so far in any country as here in England.
For the Pope was at the time liege lord of England,
he levied a tax in England, he appointed to benefices
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The Art of Quotation
in England, he sent Italians over to rob the English
clergy."
Every Catholic Order has its special devotion
thus the Carmelites have the Scapular, the Domin
icans the Rosary, the Franciscans the Portiuncula.
Many Egyptian maxims very like our Book of
Proverbs. Those of Ptah-hotep for example. Go
not out with a foolish man, nor stop to listen to his
words."
" Do not according to the advice of a fool."
Among Egyptian moralists are Ptah-hotep, Antef
and Amy. They are dead against gossip. Thus
Amy " In keeping quiet thou wilt do best ; do
not be a talker."
Again " Guard thyself from sinning in words, that
they may not wound ; a thing to be condemned in
the breast of man is malicious gossip, which is never
still."
Amy " I have not given way to anxious care."
It seems there is no idea of sin in the Egyptian
moral code. Like the Greek in this. The Egyptian
ideal was to be strong, steadfast, self-respecting,
active and straightforward ; quiet and discreet ;
avoiding covetousness and presumptuousness. Yet
to avoid mercilessness and asceticism.
Amy " There is no son to the chief of the
treasury, there is no heir to the chief of the soul."
Capital saying these things belong to ability, not
inherited.
Amy " There shall be no surprise to him who
does well. He is prepared. Thus when the
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J. Brierley
messenger shall come to take thee, he shall find one
who is ready."
In early Egypt the social system matriarchal.
Women the treasurers and masters of the household
to this day.
Warnings against the strange woman just like
Proverbs.
Selden traces origin of tithes to John of Lycopolis,
Egyptian monk to whom the people of the province
brought a tenth of their produce, which he distributed
to the poor.
We recommend to modern prophets the idea of a
Moslem Ulema, who, when all Egyptian Moslems, as
well as Christians, were expecting the end of the
world on the faith of a Christian prediction, June,
1734, and the day came to an end, announced that he
had succeeded in persuading the Almighty to hear
his prayer and to put off the catastrophe. He
thereby reaped honours and rewards.
In his " De Iside et Osiride," Plutarch, under his
third class of sources of religious belief, gives law and
established custom. " Nomos," he says, is " religio
institutus." "Nothing has become established, which,
however irrational, mythical, superstitious it may
appear, has not some moral and salutary reason, or
some ingenious historical or physical explanation."
Plutarch deprecates a too free handling of sacred
things. " What an abyss of atheism opens before
us, beneath us, if we resolve every deity into a
passion, a power, or a virtuous activity."
The " patrios kai palaia pistis." Plutarch, in his
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The Art of Quotation
consolatory letter to his wife (Consolatio ad Uxorem
612), on death of their little daughter, tries to show
that those who die young will earlier feel at home in
the other world than those whose long life on earth
has habituated them to so different a condition
from the beyond.
Plutarch, in Boeotia in Augustine s time, recognises
fully the benefits of Roman rule universal peace,
toleration and liberty.
Plutarch s " De Sera Numinis Vindicta " (" Delay
of Divine Justice") is a wonderful plea. DeMaistre
convinced such a vindication of Divine method must
have been written by a Christian. Deals with the
fact that virtues and vices seem to have no connection
with prosperity, etc., in the world. He indicates
here the doctrine of Ennius :
Ego deum genus esse semper dixi et dicam coelitum,
Sed nos non curare opinor quid agat humanum genus,
Nam si curent, bene bonis sit, male malis,
Quod nunc abest.
He has here the fine idea that punishment does
not, as Plato says, follow upon injustice, but, as he
finds in Hesiod, the two are contemporaneous, and
spring up from the same soil and root. Evildoers
are tormented necessarily by some of their own
iniquity.
He holds that the existence after death of the soul
stands or falls with the providence of God. God
would not take such trouble for us here if our souls
were as brief in their bloom as delicate flowers.
Plutarch s fine idea concerning the " daemon "
of Socrates, that it was the influence of a superior
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J. Brierley
intelligence and a diviner soul operating on the soul
of Socrates, whose calm and holy temper fitted him
"to hear this spiritual speech which, though filling
all the air around, is heard only by those whose
souls are freed from passion and its perturbing
influence." (From the essay on " The Daemon of
Socrates.")
Says he also, " For it is not abundance of wine and
well-cooked meats that gladdens our hearts in a
religious festival ; it is our good hope and belief that
God Himself is graciously present and approving
our acts."
In his " De Superstitione," he maintains that our
unbelief in God is less mischievous than superstitious
devotion. " The atheist does not see God at all,
but the superstitious sees Him terrible instead of
benign."
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CHAPTER XII
The Post-bag of "J.B."
It was soon recognised, after " J.B." came to The
Christian World, that he was a power to be reckoned
with. He forced men to read him, and he forced
them to think about what they read. It was not only
men of the Churches who read " J.B." He had his
following among many who had dropped out of the
Churches because of theological or other difficulties,
but who had not found it easy to eliminate the
religious instinct from their lives. Nothing delighted
" J.B/ more than to receive letters from men whose
faith had suffered shipwreck, or who were drifting on
to reefs of unbelief. Such men had read one of his
articles, had been struck by an idea or an argument
that it contained ; they thought there was after all
something to be said for faith, and not only from all
parts of Great Britain, but from all the British
Dominions and from Britons scattered in every part
of the world, there came letters to "J.B." thanking
him for his articles, stating doubts and difficulties,
and asking if he could give any help in meeting the
difficulties and clearing away the doubts. He used
to say laughingly that he was Father Confessor to
the people whose faith had failed, and he was
splendidly gifted to act the part. He had sym-
161
J. Brierley
pathetic, intuitive understanding of the minds of
these doubters. He knew just what forces had been
at work to create their difficulties and to shatter their
faith in the things they had been taught, but the
truth of which had not been really demonstrated to
them. He was no worshipper of the dead past any
more than he was an idolater of the living present,
but he would not turn his back on the past, which,
indeed, he never considered dead, but very much
alive, nor did he fear to face the difficulties of the
living present. " J.B." was an eclectic in the sense
that he believed in the continuity and the unity of
humanity, and in the one foundation that underlies
all the varieties of human experience.
A lady at Willesden Green, suffering from ill health,
and worried by difficulties alike as to God s existence
and His real Fatherly concern for His human family,
writes to " J.B." She has kindly sent me the letters
in which he tries to meet her difficulties. They are
dated April and December, 1909.
"I cannot forbear a line, albeit a hurried one, in answer
to yours. These are old difficulties. As to Who created
the Creator ? the problem is in a line with a whole series
all belonging to the relation of the finite to the infinite, and
all clearly beyond human solution. The human reason breaks
down here, and thus its incompetency to deal with them.
I could give you quite a number of propositions belonging
to this order, i.e., relating to finite and infinite, each one of
which seems absolutely certain, but each of which is in
absolute contradiction to some others. Kant and Hamilton,
as well as other philosophers, have given pages of them.
As a single illustration, mathematicians prove that a body
may move from one point towards another, say a yard distant
162
The Post-bag of "J.B."
shall move towards it at a given rate to infinite time, and
yet never reach it. The reason at the same moment pro
nounces this impossible, and yet also pronounces it possible.
This all shows simply that at a certain height our mental
machinery, taken by itself, is not equal to the solution of
certain problems.
"The difficulty you suggest is of this order. At a certain
point you have to stop your ordinary thinking about cause
and effect. The reason has got into too rarefied an atmo
sphere. For instance, if we are evolutionists, at a certain
point we have to stop. For there must be a starting point
of the evolution, the bringing in of a force which evolution
does not account for. The truth of religion, when it comes
to this, has accordingly to rest itself not simply on the judg
ments of the intellect, but also on what is deeper the instincts
of the heart. As Pascal puts it, the heart has reasons which
the reason knows not of. When all is said, faith has to take
its leap.
"I am glad to hear from you, but heartily wish you were
able to write in a brighter strain. You find suffering your
own and that of others a bar to believing in the love of
God. I confess I have never been able to view it in that
way. For long years I have been a stranger to health, and
of late have been quite incapacitated from public work. And
in my family life there have been many trials. But in all
this my faith in God has been the great joy and support. I
have never imagined God as sitting comfortably outside our
sufferings. He is in them, a sharer, and that makes all the
difference. About it all there is, of course, a deep, insoluble
mystery, but faith, love, devotion, the highest things in
us, are not to be stifled and destroyed because we cannot
see through everything. I hold with Sir Oliver Lodge that
our best and highest thoughts are likely to turn out the truest.
Your dear mother, be sure, is in the right, with her faith and
trust. That, after all, is the doctrine that works, and we are
learning in these days to trust the doctrine that works best,
that has the best results on character and life, as being in
this way its own evidence. Remember that Christianity
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J. Brierley
is built on a Cross ; its victorious faith is founded on
what outwardly was the worst of catastrophes; the trium
phant answer to all the blackness and devilry the world
contains. It reached the bottom of human experience
and cried from its depths that all was well. That is why
it holds and ever will hold its place.
"Pardon this hurried line. It comes from my desire to
help you."
To a West Bromwich gentleman, eighty-four at
the time, who, risen from the position of a collier, had
sent him notes of his earlier life, and the conditions
then prevailing, " J.B." wrote two letters, in 1912.
In the first he says :
"You have had a remarkable career, one in which God s
guidance has been distinctly shown. I may say that I have
had similar ones from men who have begun life in the pits,
and that leads me to realise what an amount of shrewd sense
and genuine religious character are to be found among that
great band of workers underground. It is a pleasure to
me to know that my work has been helpful to you. I have
similar assurances from various parts of the world, and they
are amongst my best rewards as a writer. I want above all
things to help my fellow travellers in the good way."
In the second he says :
" These were the bad old times indeed.
"There is plenty that needs alteration yet, but at least we
have made some progress. Your career shows, amongst other
things, what grit and perseverance will do in the most seem
ingly hopeless situations. Character is the thingthat conquers,
and real religion is the thing that makes character."
Enclosing a letter received from " J.B." in 1912,
Mr. A. H. Harper, of Hull, says it was in reply to one
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The Post-bag of "J.B."
in which he criticised" J.B/s " article of March I2th,
which partly dealt with the question of heredity in
regard to certain characteristics of the individual soul
and the spiritual nature of man. Mr. Harper
" could not share his views entirely, neither can he
agree with the arguments contained in his character
istically kind reply," which he values very greatly.
From Brighton, where he was taking a short " cure,"
" J.B." wrote :-
"Your position is, of course, that of the Theosophists. I
am fully aware of all the arguments used in defence of
it, and I know that the view has been held by many noble
minds. I do not wish in the least to dogmatise upon the
question ; yet my own feeling is that the trend of facts is
against it. Take again the case of John Wesley. Can you
imagine him as the offspring of debased parents in a slum?
Surely parenthood, its character and quality, had some
thing to do with his character and quality ? We breed animals
with a sure trust in the transmission of race characteristics.
And we see the law in its applications to many slum children,
born of diseased vicious parents, and inheriting their qualities.
People living in good surroundings, possessing health and
character, will, as a rule, have children possessing these things.
There are, of course, exceptions ; occasionally we see a throw
back to an earlier, ruder type. But the rule is there. If
there were no such rule what reason should we have for
exhorting our young people to live clean, godly lives, in view
of the welfare of the future generation ? If the soul were
independent of the parents, all the reasons for high morality
in them would, so far as the children were concerned, be
valueless. To me such a state of things would reflect far
more on the Order of the Universe, on the Divine character,
even than the other view. But I do not think it well for us
to make this or that view of ours on the facts of lif e a criterion
by which we may judge our God. We know too little about
these matters to sit on the judgment seat."
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J. Brierley
A lady in Scotland tells how on two occasions an
essay of " J.B." came to her as a veritable voice from
heaven with exactly the message she needed. Once
she was fretful and discontented with the drudgery
and humdrum of life in a country town after living in
London and Glasgow and travelling in America and
South Africa. Just at that time the answer came in
his essay, " The Burden." On another occasion
she had spent an evening at a friend s house playing
bridge the usual game there and finished up by
fortune-telling " in fun of course." She was put
out and lost control of her temper and then, as at
such times, her first thought was, " What would
J.B/ think of that ? " To her amazement, next
week appeared his essay, " The Something Added,"
which was her rebuke and her inspiration. She
wrote to him about his essay on " The Evangelical
Root." He stated that Atonement was not so
much a separate act as a process. He promptly sent
a reply in October, 1913 :
"Dear Friend, I am glad to know that my writings have
been helpful to you. I have no difficulty in answering your
question. Most assuredly do I believe that the man Jesus
Christ really lived and died and rose again. There is no more
certain fact in history. All the talk about a non-historical
Christ is, to me, too absurd for words. As to the quotation
from my article. Creation, of course, is a process, an evolution,
a perpetual development. So is Revelation. It opens on the
world as the world reaches the power of receiving it. Atone
ment really means at-one-ment, and in its highest meaning
is the process by which man comes into his final union
with God. And Salvation is also a process, never done at
one stroke, either for the world or the individual ; though,
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The Post-bag of "J.B."
as in the other great process mentioned, there are outstanding
points in the process. Christ and His work is the greatest
point in them all.
" I hope this explanation may be of some service. Keep
fast hold of God and of His revelation in Christ. Here, in
this strong tower, we may hide ourselves from all the storms
of life."
In a reply to a further letter, he said :
"As to the differing accounts of the Resurrection, I have
long given up attempting to reconcile them. What remains
is that a great something happened, an immense spiritual
event, of which these various chroniclers have attempted
to give their account. The confusions in it are, after all,
not more than those we find in historical events, the central
fact of which nobody questions. For instance, the murder
of Darnley the husband of Mary of Scots was an undoubted
fact. But the accounts of it, given by people who profess
to have been eye-witnesses, are absolutely contradictory.
We have to judge between them and to construct the actual
history as best we can. In the New Testament question we
have, as Harnack puts it, to discriminate between the Resur
rection stories and the Resurrection faith, We may take
a discount from the former without losing the latter."
An interesting series of letters written by " J.B."
to Mrs. Annie Wright, of Sciennes Grove, Edinburgh,
has been kindly sent by that lady. They cover the
period from January I4th, 1903, to April 20th, 1912.
In the first, he deals with the question of " the life
beyond." He says :
"Like you I have my personal stake there, in loved ones
who have passed beyond sight. I may write more on this
theme as light is given me. As to the inferior races well,
inferiority is all a question of degree. To the higher intelli
gences the best of us in this world may seem much lower
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J. Brierley
down than is the savage in relation to ourselves. The future
seems to me the realm of endless possibilities. I suppose the
development, for the highest and the lowest of us, will begin
where it left off. What science is proving for us is that in the
realm both of matter and spirit, there seems no such thing
as extinction. All endings are but new beginnings. We
burn the coal in the grate. It has disappeared, but no frag
ment is lost. It is simply a change. Personality seems the
final cause and the end to which creation strives. And if
the coal has not been destroyed in the fire-death that has
happened to it, far less, we may well believe, is the greatest
thing, a human personality, gone to nothingness in death.
As to the mode of existence beyond, I am more and more
inclined to think that our present blindness and deafness
to messages from that other side is from the limitation of our
present faculties. If only another window could be opened
in the wall of our consciousness how much more of the universe
should we see ! And probably humanity will develop these
new faculties as it grows in spirituality.
" On these questions I am glad to see that the researches
of the late F. W. H. Myers, a man of the most brilliant abilities,
and of a truly scientific mind and culture, who devoted the
later years of his life to the thorough investigation of the after
death problem, are shortly to be published under the title
Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death.
His conclusions, I believe, are that the fact of authentic messages
from the beyond has now been scientifically proved. Mean
time it is for us all to live the best life, to follow the Highest
Model, and to hold on by faith on that road which leads to
more and more of spiritual assurance."
On March, I3th, 1910, he writes :
"You mention some points that seem to you a difficulty.
As to the birth stories of Matthew and Luke the farthest
I have gone is to state the inadvisability of grounding our
doctrine of the Divinity of Christ upon these narratives.
That is not where Paul grounded his belief. What is good
enough for Paul should be good enough for us. As to the
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The Post-bag of "J.B."
Resurrection, let us rest on the supreme fact that Christ is
indeed risen ; is living and active in the spiritual world. With
that to rest on, the question of His relation to material form
is a minor detail which need not trouble us.
"Of course we have all of us felt, and felt deeply, the
difficulty raised by the verse you quote,* and similar
ones, concerning the judgment and the future state. Some
influential critics regard those chapters as fragments of a
Jewish Apocalypse which has been adapted and incorpor
ated into the Gospel. . . .
" I do not doubt myself, with Origen, that just as the vege
table takes up into itself the elements of the inorganic, and
as the animal takes up the vegetable, so Christianity itself
will in the course of the ages be taken up into new expressions
suited to the times yet before us. It is undergoing that
process now. In that process the merely outside earthly
integuments will fall away ; but none of the essential will
be lost.
"As to everlasting fire and all that, it can never be other
than symbolic. On these questions keep to this point :
God is love, God is everywhere, and wherever He is He can
only act according to His character. If He is everywhere,
He must be as much in hell as in what we call heaven. And
in hell He can only act in love. That is quite enough for me.
We must trust our God all through if we trust Him at all."
In October of the same year he writes :
"What you Say about the article Is Christianity Passing ?
makes me realise how badly I express myself at times. To
suggest that Christ and Christianity are to be superseded
was farthest from my thoughts. When I spoke of a thousand
years hence, I meant the Christianity of that time would
be as much further evolved as ours is from that of a thousand
years back. As to that future life and future recognition
question, I may write on it sometime. Let me say here that
what seems to you so difficult to believe is to me not nearly
* Matt. xxv. 41,
J. Brierley
so difficult as the things that have actually happened. Imagine
a thinker unacquainted with our world being asked to believe
that such a race as ours would be evolved out of matter. I
think he would regard it as incredible, and yet here we are.
When I think of the million improbabilities d priori against
my being alive as I now am upon the earth this other
question of continuing such a lif e seems quite a minor difficulty.
We live in a universe of incredibles all of which have come
true."
Letter writers sometimes ask " J.B." to write on
subjects of their suggestion, and the subjects are not
always easy ones, as when a Congregational lay
pastor, interested in Chemistry, invites him to follow
up an essay on "Some Continuations" with another,
" dealing with the fact that spiritual law is
analogous to that of chemical affinity, in that aspect
of it which deals with the exact proportions in which
alone certain chemical substances combine." The
correspondent, perplexed by the apparent absence of
result from much honest and earnest spiritual work,
suggests that " the very vagaries of electricity and
of magnetism, under the strict control of absolute
law, doubtless have their counterpart in the spiritual
regions."
A Congregational minister would like him to write
a series of articles on " Christ s Laws of Spiritual
Life."
An Essex reader wanted him to deal with the
question, " Was Jesus morally perfect ? " This
question," he said, " haunts me perpetually."
It was a heavy demand that some of his readers
made on "J.B./ as the lady who, explaining she was
" not a Congregationalist and not English," said :
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The Post-bag of "J.B."
"Perhaps you cannot conceive how one earthly note in
your writings one instance of your feelings clouding your
spiritual vision one indication of anything having come
between you and pure thought and moral sentiment how
anything of that kind would have depressed me and almost
finished me at times. You have much reason to thank God
for the beautiful restraint that has been granted you so that
you have been able to give your readers wisdom unalloyed.
Nothing helps the poor world like this speaking truth to
it, real truth with healing in its wings, not bitter or sarcastic
invectives or torrents of abuse wrongly regarded as speaking
truth. You keep the " old man " out of your writings ;
vanity, impulsiveness and prejudice you don t allow to enter
in."
A Stockholm lady, disappointed at finding " J.B."
away from London when, on a visit to England, she
had sought to thank him by word of mouth,
writes : You have given me courage to live and
die, alone as I am in the world, and I hope you
will still write many books to show us the way."
Admirers of each other s work were " J.B." and
Mrs. Humphry Ward. Thanking him for the gift
of one of his books, the novelist writes :
"There is a delicate truth and fragrance, a note of
real experience in the essays, that make them delightful
reading. I trust that they may give to many people the
same stimulating and yet restful pleasure that they gave to
me."
A Hindu member of the Brahmo Somaj, having
been powerfully impressed by the essay " The Un
written Gospel," writes to say how deeply indebted
he is to " J.B." for his writings. He rejoices to
" make his spiritual acquaintance." " From an
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J. Brierley
appreciative Hindu residing in far-off South India"
comes a New Year s card, with the couplet
May the struggle for others selves
Be the cult of ev ry coining New Year.
Sacred Writings.
and the wish " Long live J.B." There comes also
a New Year greeting from Tokyo, Japan, " A Happy
New Year for you and others through your writings."
From Tiverton, Devon, came a letter from a lady
with the New Year wish " that your cup maybe filled,
pressed down, and running over with the faith, the
fortitude, the gladness that you bring to so many
other hearts." Prays the writer :
"May God bless you a thousand times for all the resolute,
believing and strenuous inner discipline which must have
made you able to be this ; and help you to go on. I could
not tell you how often in the struggle with physical weakness,
with the deadening pressure of daily attention to the ever
repeated details that seem to waste and not to use one s
energies, with depression, with the questionings which
so often seem to blur all spiritual affirmations, with a huge
note of interrogation in all sorts of circumstances here and
in India I have turned to you for help, and found it,
and I feel I cannot let any more time go by without trying
to acknowledge my spiritual debt."
" Where do your ever fresh, original quotations
come from ? " asks a Sydney (N.S.W.) correspondent,
just recovering; from a dangerous illness. He tells
" J.B." as one who would understand his feelings
from his own experience what a joy it is to be able
to take an interest in life again.
"Daily I make a short trip to one of the many beauty spots
we are so rich in here. The wild flowers have been specially
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The Post-bag of "J.B."
fine this spring, and my friends have kept me well supplied
with posies of them the fresh wild scents of the boronia,
native rose and wattle are as delightful and healing as is
affection from humans. Wattle Day is over with its
planting of innumerable trees, and I could only send down
button-holes to the dining room and staff ; but that made
us all patriotic, for the wattle is our national flower, indigenous
in all the States. Do you know Kipling s Wattle of Lichten-
burg ? The scent appeals to Australians the world
over, and the golden glory is splendid. Luckily all the while
I was on the shelf I was able to read, and that kept me in
touch with things. I am a member among other things
of the Dickens Fellowship. I mention that as you wrote
so sympathetically about Dickens. Yes, he lives here, and
Thackeray s name is rarely mentioned. Some silly writer
wrote the other day criticising Dickens want of education
how it affected his style and his thought 1 If he had been a
college-bred man we would never have had our big-hearted,
untiring lover of common humanity our Boz ! "
Enmeshed, and unhappy, in the doctrine of " the
fortuitous concourse of circumstances" the "Calvin-
vinism of Science/ with its automatic fatalism a
correspondent suggests that
"With your ability to find a spiritual haven from the
roughest seas of mental difficulties you may perhaps throw
a tow rope to me and the likes of me in one of your future
Christian World voyages."
An official at the London terminus of a great rail
way system wrote in 1893, rejoicing that the ministry
of " J.B. s" practical anonymity had been carried on.
He says :
" It will perhaps help you to understand my position by
my giving a few personal details : Brought up in a remote
corner of Wales ; suffered much neglect of school training ;
came to London at sixteen as a railway clerk. Since then
12
J. Brierley
sixteen more years have elapsed they have gone I know
not how. All I can say is that at thirty -two I found myself
wofully ignorant and therefore a useless man, and mayhap
little joy further away from God than when a boy.
" The little daily leisure during all these years, which I now
see should have been precious sowing years, I have largely
frittered away upon newspapers, magazines, and such ephe
meral print ; and although I have been endeavouring to
make amends lately, I find the mind humiliatingly slow
of grasp, and when a fact has been got hold of, the memory
exasperatingly treacherous about retaining it. With these
serious defects, and possessing no accomplishments whereby
to give pleasure to others, I have withdrawn from the corporate
life of my fellowmen (with results which you can very well
imagine), contenting myself with one or two friends, a few
loved books, and rambles amongst nature s sweet by-ways.
This life is pleasant enough from the purely selfish standpoint,
but of no service to society, and you can understand \ he old
perplexing enigma constantly confronting me, Oh, why
was I born ? "
"But hope even where there is little hope rises eternal
in the human breast, and my main point in troubling you
is this : While the general mental quality must, I suppose,
in each of us remain what at maturity we find it, cannot some
thing effectual be done to improve that attribute of it
Memory ? You have more than once eloquently written on
the subject in particular, the pleasure to be derived from
drawing upon this treasure-house as occasion requires.
This I am sorry to say is outside my experience, for when,
away from books, I have desired to recall the substance of some
beautiful verse or brilliant passage, or it may be the features
of a pleasing landscape, to my confusion nothing remains
except a hazy recollection as if fifty years ago of the
pleasure it gave me to read the particular book, and view
the fine scenery.
"The general principles given as regulating memory I am
acquainted with, but could you kindly refer me to a good
plan of note-taking and referencing ? Do you know, Sir,
174
The Post-bag of "J.B."
of a really helpful System of mnemonics ? I have but little
time for reading, and that it would be wise, I take it, to confine
as far as possible to the recognised masters of our English
literature ? But without some definite method and the use
of memoranda, I should, under the circumstances, profit
very little by the study."
Writing in 1913 to thank " J.B." for his essay on
" Burdens/ a Chesterfield correspondent asks for a
little more light on the sentence " They lent their
imagination to the service of fear " :
"How if the imagination is collared, and not lent? Some
teacher has said that, at bottom, all fear resolves itself into
the fear of death. I don t think this is altogether true.
"To the Christian disciple, a perfect love and implicit trust,
ought, I suppose, to cast out all fear.
" But how about the case of the highly strung neurasthenic
who, though a life-long disciple in the periods of deadly
weakness and loss of nervous control peculiar to that com
plaint is haunted, not by the fear of death, but by the fear
of mental derangement ? This is no imaginary case.
"It is not so hard to see that bodily suffering may be sent
for disciples, but it is difficult to see how polishing may come
from mental distress.
" I am thinking of the black fears all the worse for being
vague which assail the sleepless hours of the early morning
when prayer frequently seems to be of no avail.
"Can you please deal further with the subject in a further
early paper ? "
A Chicago choir trainer tells of the cheer he gets
from " J.B." Few men, he confesses, during his
fifty years among the churches, had impressed him
with their preaching, though he names two, after
whose sermons he went away feeling " What a
glorious God our Father is, and how easy it is to bear
175
J. Brierley
sadness when we have a true sense of what God
endures for our sakes!"
"I do not wonder at the falling away of attendance, partic
ularly of the working classes. They feel that the Church
holds little in common with them. Moving as I do among
all classes of musicians I often hear them and talk with them.
So very many of them are from Europe, and know too well
what the Church, as they know it, stands for, and think
all are alike, and never go only to play at some mass or concert.
Very few of the men in our Free Churches, as I know them,
can be distinguished from any other men of the world. I
have said that if we would just shut up for a year or two and
give ourselves up to practise Christ s teaching what a change
would be felt in the city and how people would want to know
what brought the change about. I do believe that Christ s
men will some day come to believe profoundly that A man s
a man for a that. You should hear the response when I
recite that poem. Down deep they believe it but not enough
to practise it yet. Men will believe anything about Christ
you like to preach. But to believe in Him what a different
thing that is. ... Americans put on the coin In God
we trust, but forty years living among them teaches
me that they really hold in a lively manner the creed,
We believe in the Dollar mightily ! Is not that same
faith in England more prominent than all else ? I will not
say what men ought to do, but will wait till that mighty
Tornado of human love from the centre of things strikes us.
I will hug fast to such as the following, He that would be
first among you let him be your servant, Whatsoever
ye would that men should do to you do, ye even so unto them.
" So my thanks bound out to you, Mr. J.B. , for your
seeing, and telling of what you see, a Revival of Faith. "
Some of the correspondents express their amaze
ment at the range of " J.B. s" reading as revealed in
his quotations and references. A Toronto (Canada)
writer thanks him for the emphasis he lays on the note
The Post-bag of "J.B."
of the spiritual, and tells how he and others diffuse the
teaching of "J.B." in their conversation. He
adds :
" Pardon a query : When have you had time to do so
much reading ? From Plato to Spencer, from Zeno to Kant,
from Pindar to Browning with Francis, Augustine, Hugo,
Bronte all bearing witness to your argument really it all
seems impossible ! Have you the philosopher s stone ?
It is not at all an exaggeration to state that there is in
your writings a personality embodying (quite strangely)
some characteristics of Carlyle and Emerson. I have often
marked passages as being quite Carlylean or decidedly
Emersonian. I hope some article may appear on Com
pensation. The subject is so absorbing, after reading
Emerson on it."
Among the soul friends of " J.B." who felt them
selves drawn to him by peculiar affinity, was that
veteran champion of progressive religious thought in
America, Dr. James M. Whiton. In a letter dated
December i6th, 1913, only a few weeks before " J.B."
passed away, Dr. Whiton said :
" You some time ago wrote to me, Power to your elbow.
You have attained it. I recall Cassius wonderment expressed
to Brutus that a man of such feeble physique as he assigned
to Caesar should bear the palm, etc. With equal ground for
wonder I think of the power wielded from your retired
thinking shop, or phrontisterion, as Aristophanes termed
Socrates mental laboratory."
In a previous letter of the same year he says he
would have liked to have visited England in the
summer for "a preaching parish." Dr. Whiton
explains that the growing infirmity of " the dear
wife, wedded fifty-eight years ago this May, makes
177
J. Brierley
it impossible to put the Atlantic between us, so I do
the best I can with my pen to keep my British
friendship in good repair."
An Indiana, U.S.A., correspondent, writes :
"We here in America are greatly indebted to the Mother
land for many suggestive and inspiring writers who feed
our lives. It is a strength to those who, on this side, are work
ing their way through the perplexities that stand in the way
of a full confidence, to find that in another land men are moving
in the same direction under the impulse of similar ideals and
ideas. One can but think that it is not merely a coincidence,
but is suggestive of a spirit bending men s minds in the direction
of a larger, freer truth. Your book, Life and the Idea],
has been my daily companion for months, and I have never
failed to find solace and strength, with the clearest insight,
in its company. To the writer of that book I am under deepest
obligations, and I, a stranger, from a far distance, venture
to salute you, and to say Thank you for bringing his vague
fancies to clearness, and his heart s dearest wishes into faith
or at least into the structure of his faith. "
A lady writes from Cornwall :
" I can no longer resist sending my Thank you ! You cannot
know how very much your essays mean to me every week and
how I appreciate and enjoy them I am only a country girl
with the days full up of work (work that often-times would
be drudgery did not J.B. make the halo of divinity to
shine on all the so-called common -place) and so I trust you
will pardon this liberty I take of writing from my heart to
thank you, and may you be long years spared to us to reveal
more of the grandeur of life and its possibilities 1 Your
Appreciation of Life in last week s Christian World meant
so very much to me. I have experienced the power of suffer
ing but I would not have missed it. I know you have
expressed it for me that the gain is infinitely greater than
the pain and I am nearer being one with the great Heart of
the universe. I don t think I should ever have presumed
178
The Post-bag of "J.B."
to have written you this my Master but that some weeks
ago you wrote There are teachers who have opened to us
the way of truth hearts of gold that have offered us of their
treasures and when too late we remember that we have failed
to tell them what we owed. "
There is a humorous letter from a Sydney, N.S.W.,
correspondent who says that under the Southern
Cross the mystic initials " J.B." have a two-fold
significance :
"Even as the English summer has by its traducers been
described as three hot days and a thunderstorm, so here
in Sydney it happens that, after two days of heat and dusty
westerly winds, many an anxious eye is raised to the summit
of Sydney Post Office, and broad are the smiles which greet
the appearance thereon of a flag bearing the letters J.B. ,
signifying to the citizens of Sydney that the beneficent
southerly has reached Jarvis Bay and may be expected shortly
at Port Jackson, bringing, as it so frequently does, great
masses of cloud laden with rain, which to most Australians
is a veritable golden lining, bearing renewed assurance of
continued prosperity to a country where the word drought
is one of almost constant menace ; and then every Tuesday,
from the same Post Office, the mail brings its news of another
J.B., whose welcome utterances in The Christian World
are such a regular feature of that grave and reverend publi
cation. I therefore venture to congratulate you upon the
happy coincidence to which I have referred, and further
to congratulate you upon your unfailing versatility, which
to many of us who are more familiar with Fleet Street, E.G.,
than with Pitt Street, Sydney, is a source of continual
pleasure."
A German reader, Herr Paul Jaeger, writes in 1898,
from Thuringia :
To-day I got a copy of Studies of the Soul from D.
Rade, in Frankfort, and I am very happy indeed to have the
179
J. Brierley
book at last. And just now I have put down The Christian
World of May igth, with your article on The Religious Value
of Death, which has created in my heart the strong desire
of expressing afresh my thanks to you for giving us what
you have received from God. I cannot help thanking you,
whenever I read one of your articles. And they all taste
of more, as we say, Sie schmecken nach mehr ! "
180
CHAPTER XIII
A Philosopher s Holidays
INTO his holidays " J.B." always flung himself with
schoolboy zest. Most of all he enjoyed holidays
abroad.
In his account of himself in Who s Who, he says
that he " resided four years on the Continent, study
ing theology and general literature ; spent some time
in European and Eastern travel." His recreations
were given as "reading, chess, foreign travel, cycling."
A breakdown led to his being absent from his
church during the last three months of 1878. While
he was in Scotland the way was opened for a voyage
up the Mediterranean to Constantinople and beyond
to the Turkish coast of the Black Sea, just after the
Russo-Turkish War. In a long letter to Mr. Wick-
ham, of Leytonstone, describing the Turkish part
of his experiences, he says :
" Events, impressions, ideas, all new and strange, have
tumbled in upon me in such volume since then as will take
years to digest and chew the cud of. I know, however, you
will be interested in the stray jottings I am able to give. It
was a strange sensation when, sailing up the Hellespont,
I caught sight of the first Turkish town, with its mosques
and minarets gleaming in the sunshine, and realised that I
was beyond the bounds of Christendom and in a country
where I should not be recognised as a believer but only as a
181
J. Brierley
Giaour and an infidel. But the sensation was still stranger
when, our vessel having brought to in the Bosphorus, I
first set foot on Turkish soil and found myself in Constanti
nople. I accompanied the captain ashore in a small caique
pulled by two lean but wiry Turks. As we threaded our
way through the narrow, crowded and inconceivably dirty
streets I felt verily that I was a stranger in a strange land.
I stuck closely to my companion during that first hour, for
to have been without an English face to look at and English
tongue to answer me just then would have been too bewilder
ing. This feeling of utter strangeness, amounting almost to
pain in its intensity, soon wore off, however, and on my next
visit ashore, the following morning, I started off alone and
crossing the great wooden bridge which spans the Golden
Horn, wandered about the streets and lanes of Stamboul
with as much composure as if I had been in the Strand. I
took my bearings carefully, noting every turning as I went
on, and so found my way home without difficulty. I should
think no city in the world presents such striking and novel
effects as Constantinople. The situation is incomparable.
The view of it from the Bosphorus can never be forgotten.
The blue waters are crowded with the shipping of all nations.
Lifting your eyes you have Europe on the one side, and Asia
on the other, the fringe of rock continent lined, as far as the
eye can reach, with buildings, whose white fronts glitter in
the sunshine, and this picture is set in the framework of an
atmosphere without a trace of smoke and of a sky without
a cloud. The scene, however, loses three-fourths of its beauty
when you land. Now you come upon streets innocent of
drains, and where the dogs are the only scavengers, and upon
smells which none but an Asiatic or an Inspector of Nuisances
could be expected to stand. In no other city I should think
is there such a variety of languages habitually spoken. Go,
for instance, into a shipping office, or any large place of business,
and in five minutes you may hear French, English, Italian,
Greek and Turkish. English is comparatively little spoken.
I go into a shop in Pera. Parlez vous anglais ? Non,
Monsieur, je parle francais, italien et grec, would often
182
A Philosopher s Holidays
be the reply. I then have to muster up my French, and so
get my business transacted. The difficulties of shopping
are not lessened by the peculiarities of the Turkish currencies.
When a man tells you the price of an article you have to be
careful to ascertain whether he means good money or
bad money. By good money is meant the gold, silver
and copper currency. The gold lira or pound is worth i8s.
of our money. The silver medjidie or dollar, 33. 8d. ; the
chireq about one franc and the piastre 2|d. The bad
money is the paper caime the value of which fluctuates
every day. Fluctuation is perhaps hardly the proper
word, for day by day its value now steadily declines. Yester
day at Trebizond we got 420 piastres caime for a lira or i8s.
The piastre in hard money is as I said before 2^d. This
will give you an idea of the difference in value. The foreigner
needs to look out, especially if be an Englishman. Our nation
ality seems to be at once recognised, and as we are all supposed
to be made of money, 100 and 200 per cent, is at once put
on to the price of an article. An addition to the excitement
of life in Constantinople lies in the fact that, after dark
especially, it is a trifle unsafe. I understood that thirteen
murders are known to have been committed last month,
besides robberies innumerable. In the part of the city where
our vessel was moored no one who has anything to lose thinks
of going alone unless well armed. I thought it expedient
to conduct most of my explorations by daylight. I roamed
about in all directions armed with nothing but a stout stick
and met with no molestation anywhere. One day the captain
and I took a horse apiece and had a ride out to the environs.
You never saw such roads. Now the descent would be almost
as steep as the side of a house. Anon you come to a place
where you have a deep pit on one side and a steep slope on
the other with about a foot of level ground between. As
you come up to it you wonder which your horse will do,
fall into the pit or roll with you down the slope. You discover,
however, that it is not the first time your horse has gone
over a Turkish road. It picks its way with admirable circum
spection between the Scylla and Charybdis and brings you
183
J. Brierley
out all right on the other side. Amongst other notable places
we have seen here is the Mosque of St. Sophia. We gained
admittance by the payment of five francs. It is without
exception the grandest interior I have seen, not excepting St.
Paul s. It has lost much of the ornamentation which it had
when a Greek basilica, and all traces of its former devotion
to Christian worship have been carefully removed. The
Turk could never build a place like that if he tried for a thou
sand years. He is after all only a cuckoo bird getting into
nests which others have made and that only to defile them.
But I must leave Constantinople to tell you where I am and
what I am doing now. I am in the oddest position. Our
vessel has been chartered for a month by a Greek agent of the
Government here to carry Turkish troops to various points
in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. I had no option
but to go with the vessel as I could not very well walk home
from Constantinople. Unless therefore something unexpected
turns up by which I can get a passage back earlier I shall
be away three months instead of two and it will be as much
as I can do to appear in England by Christmas. It certainly
seems a queer conjunction of circumstances. I never thought
that I was to be swept into the skirts of this great Eastern
war cloud, and on the Turkish side too. The position, though
a queer and unexpected one, however, is full of interest and
of material for observation. We are now on our way to
Constantinople from Trebizond. We have taken out there
over i, 600 troops, nearly all of them released prisoners from
Russia. Here, packed together as thick as sardines in the
hold and on the deck, were the warriors of Plevna, of Kars, and
of the Shipka. They seem to have been well treated by the
Russians in their captivity. They looked well fed and healthy
and most of them were attired in Russian greatcoats. My
cabin is on the deck and has a small ante-room attached
to it about the size of a dog kennel. Their chief officer, a long
fellow who was taken at Plevna, coiled himself up in this every
night, and appeared to think himself in exceptionally luxurious
quarters. The mode of enforcing discipline amongst the
men was essentially Turkish. If a fellow was recalcitrant
184
A Philosopher s Holidays
an officer would give him a lick over the head with a stick
and then spit in his face, or he would perhaps order half-a-
dozen men to strike him over the face one after the other
with the flat of their hand. On the whole, however, the men
were wonderfully patient and well conducted. Their rations
were bread and water and their quarters the dark stifling hold
or the open deck, but they took everything cheerfully and
seemed as merry as sand boys. Many a time at night I have
walked right on their heads as they lay on the deck (there
was no other way of getting about). And the operation
has not elicited as much as a grunt from them. I suppose
it was that I was very light and their heads were very hard.
They were unarmed, the Russians having taken good care
of their weapons. In our present journey, back from Tre-
bizond to Constantinople, we have not quite so manageable
a set. I am writing this surrounded by a host of 800 Turks
armed to the teeth with breech loaders, bayonets and short
swords. We have had two or three rows already with these
and may have some more. The officers, of whom there are
twenty or thirty, wanted to take possession of the cabin
below. As this would have left the captain and me without
a single place of retreat, we flatly refused. We had another
scene at the bridge. They crowded up on it in a way which
made it impossible to work the ship. The captain then,
at my suggestion, told our Greek interpreter to inform them
that he would not weigh anchor or move a single inch towards
Constantinople till every man was off the bridge. This
brought them down, but in a state of great discontent. The
interpreter brings us now and then some beautiful specimens
of their threats. Spite, however, of pleasant suggestions about
having our hands cut off or being put overboard we eat our
meals with unabated appetite and sleep undisturbed."
" J.B. s " foreign travels broadened his religious
views and enlarged his tolerance for other forms of
faith. He says :
" We travel to the ends of the earth, only to find the same
thing. The present writer remembers the sensation with
185
J. Brierley
which, on sailing up the Dardanelles, he caught sight for the
first time of the Mohammedan minarets which proclaimed
him a Giaour and infidel. It was with a similar conscious
ness that, in standing at the tomb of the Apostles in St. Peter s,
he suddenly called to mind that the Church he was in, like
the Turkish mosque, disposed in the most uncompromising
manner of his future. We are all damned at least half-a-
dozen times by the faults we do not accept. Pondering
these things the feeling, we say, comes over us that the thing
has been a little overdone, and we are disposed to ask whether
humanity might not, to the general advantage, stay its lust
of affirmation and give its infallibility a rest. In such moods
we fall in love with the undefined, and are disposed to say
with Chamfort, " II faut agir davantage, penser moins,
et ne pas se regarder vivre." "Let us do more, think less,
and not peer too closely into the business of living."
He told sometimes in dramatic style the story of
a holiday in which he was mixed up with a tragedy.
The ship on which he was enjoying a Mediterranean
cruise put in at a Spanish port. A sailor inadvert
ently crossed a chalk line beyond which passage was
forbidden and was shot dead by a customs official.
"J.B." and the captain took the matter up, and made
a journey into the interior to lay the case before the
British Consul, and urge him to action. The Consul,
however, regarded the matter with such callous
indifference that " J.B.," who could use very forcible
language when the occasion demanded it, frankly
expressed his opinion of the Consul, and so frightened
f him that he promised to investigate the circumstances.
On coming home, " J.B." went to the Foreign Office,
and his determined activity resulted in reparation
being demanded and obtained.
To Switzerland his allegiance never faltered.
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A Philosopher s Holidays
Often in his essays there are reminiscences of Swiss
holidays. Here are some extracts :
" Have any of our readers been through the clouds and seen
them from their upper side ? It is a marvellous experience,
of which the balloonist has not the entire monoply. The
spectacle is granted sometimes to the mountaineer. The
present writer has vivid remembrance of a dull November
afternoon in the Jura, when, plunging into the heavy cloud
which all day had hidden sun and sky, he toiled upwards, till
Suddenly, in one dazzling moment, he found himself outside
and above it all. He was in a realm of glorious sunshine.
Above was the dazzling blue ; away to his right lay a rolling
sea of magnificent cloud colours ; at the far side of this sea,
gleaming in the white radiance of their snow raiment, rose
the whole mighty range of the Alps. What a scene, and
what a parable ! This same cloud, which, from one side and
in one aspect, glowered over the world as the image of all
that was gloomy and forbidding, required only another view
point to stand revealed as in itself beautiful beyond imagin
ation, while serving as the foundation of the sublimest of
world pictures."
******
" The present writer can never forget the sensations of
one summer day when, solitary amongst the mountains of
the Orisons, he was held as in a trance by the scene before
him. The magical hues of the atmosphere playing over the
far-stretched valleys and lower heights, the blue of the cloud
less sky, the hush upon all nature, seemed supernatural
while the vista of mighty peaks, virgined in their snowy
whiteness, soaring into the very heavens, seemed visibly to link
our world to a fairer universe beyond. One had seen the
mountains before ; for years the view of them had daily
fed the eye, but never before or since has there been in con
templation of them such a quality of feeling. It was as though
the utmost essence of all that was beautiful had suddenly
passed into the soul. There was nothing for it but worship.
It was heaven."
******
187
J. Brierley
" In the summer months English people, on travel bent,
often leave their home scenery in search of backgrounds.
For foregrounds and middle distances our own island is incom
parable. From end to end it is a dream of pastoral beauty.
Its landscapes are such as a Cuyp, a Claude Lorraine, dreamed
in their most inspired hours. But the view has nowhere
the gigantic backing of Alp or Apennine. There are effects
which the snow mountains alone can offer. If any one wants
their spiritual interpretation let him read or re-read the first
volume of The Stones of Venice. Yes, the Alps for back
ground. We shall ourselves not easily forget one moment
when, on a hot summer day, toiling up the St. Nicholas valley,
it was before Zermatt knew its railway we turned a sharp
corner and had for the first time our vision filled by the
gigantic Matter horn, the cock that crows over Europe,
to use Michelet s term, its solid rock-mass cleaving the very
heavens."
Just before he took up his position on the staff of
The Christian World he had an experience of Swiss
mountain climbing that might easily have nipped his
journalistic career in the bud. He told the story of
his ascent of the Diablerets, in his 90 holiday, in The
Christian World.
"It was rough work," he says, "reaching the summit,
10,000 feet above the starting point. Leaving the guide s
chalet at one in the morning with a Swiss pastor and three
English youths in the party, the crest was attained at eight
in the morning." " J.B." loved the mountains and he revelled
in the adventure. " This," he says, " is indeed the upper world.
As we drink in the life-giving air, and take in the details of
a panorama of which Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa, the Matter horn,
the Weisshorn, and a dozen other Alpine royalties form
part, we think of the multitudes of unfortunates immured,
at this moment, in stuffy shops and warehouses of smoke-
begrimed cities, and conclude that we are highly privileged
persons. But privileges have to be paid for, and before
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A Philosopher s Holidays
the day is over there come moments when probably the ware
houseman would vastly prefer his position to ours.
"We had gained the summit, but the real difficulties of our
expedition were yet to come. Instead of returning by the
route we had already followed, our guide proposes to take
us over another point of the range, and then to descend by
the further side. It is difficult, he says, but we shall be equal
it. Accordingly, after an hour s rest, we set off once more.
" Our first bit of work is to cross an arete or ridge of rock,
about a foot in width, with naked precipices on either
side. When we are over the guide, who is in front, informs
us that he had seen six chamois on the right. He had not
called our attention to them, because, looking down into
the abyss from that ticklish spot, some us might have
turned giddy.
"And now comes a bit of glacier to cross, which is by no
means plain sailing. It slopes down at a terribly sharp angle,
and is as slippery as frozen snow can be. Attention, gentle
men, says the guide, if anyone slips on his back here he
is lost. The danger is minimised, however, by the steps
which he cuts for us with his ice-axe.
"It is half -an -hour after, when engaged among the diffi
cult rocks of the Tete Ronde, the second peak of our series,
that we encounter the real crux of our expedition. Our
leader has called a halt, while he goes forward to assure
himself as to the road. By and by he comes back with strange
tidings. A certain couloir or passage, which formed part
of the way down, has been in part destroyed by an avalanche,
and there is nothing for it but to improvise another route.
To go back is next to impossible, for we have just been lowered
one by one down a precipice by ropes, and there is no getting
up it. By and by another track is found, and the order is
given to advance. It is only a chamois path, but there is
nothing else. We are now creeping, one after another, along
the face of a tremendous precipice. Above are hundreds
of feet of perpendicular wall. Below is a fathomless abyss.
What we have to walk upon is a cornice of crumbling rock,
often sloping down then up, and sometimes not more than
13
J. Brierley
four inches wide. To add to the pleasure of this little
promenade there is a sharp corner in it to be turned.
" Suddenly there is a slip, a crash of something falling, and
a smothered exclamation. A piece of rock on which one of
our young Englishmen has placed his boot has given way,
and goes crashing into the gulf. An instant more and he
would have followed it, but a hand of iron is upon him. It
is that of our brave Swiss pastor, who, by a special providence,
is next him, and within reach. He has him by the collar,
and holds him till he can struggle on to another ledge. Had
there been another foot of distance between them, or had the
grip of his helper been less firm, our return home would have
been a funeral march. His alpenstock has gone. The
miracle is that its owner is still here.
"It is a terrible moment. There are two of us still to
pass that spot. Part of the narrow ledge has already given
way. Why may not another ? The guide, who had been on
in front, is back in a moment. Steady, gentlemen !
above all things don t lose your nerve. He works himself
along the wall like a chamois, and gives us a hand. Another
minute and the corner is turned. We are safe for the moment
on a narrow platform of rock, and we draw a long breath.
We wonder what our friends would say if they saw us at
this moment. Well, we know what the sensation is of
facing a violent death. We decide it is not nearly so bad
as one might think, and that as an experience it has its
value.
" But we are not yet out of the wood. We have, in fact,
hours of similar work, in which every nerve is stretched
to its utmost tension. It is an immense relief to have it
varied, as it is at times, by a glissade down a snow-field.
There are shouts of laughter when, in the middle of the rush,
some one loses his equilibrium and comes rolling head over
heels, in the most undignified fashion, to the bottom of the
slope.
" But it is with a sense of profound thankfulness that, with
no life lost and no serious hurt sustained, we at length reach
the lower levels, and look back on the frowning impossible
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A Philosopher s Holidays
heights above where so lately we were playing the game of
life and death.
Messieurs, says our guide, I congratulate you,
I can tell you now that the Matterhorn does not offer such
difficulties as you have gone through. It was a path for
chamois that you have come by. There is nothing left
in the Alps for you to do. "
During his Christian World period, " J.B." had as
holiday companion on various occasions his colleague
and intimate friend, Mr. F. H. Fisher. They were
in Scotland together, in the Lake District, in the
Midlands, in Devonshire and in Norfolk. Says Mr.
Fisher :
" One very delightful holiday in Norfolk remains in my
memory. J.B. was an enthusiastic cyclist, and on the
cycle, and at walking or mountain climbing, though he was
much the elder of his companions, he could leave us all behind.
I had many opportunities of sharing in the treasures of his
richly stored mind, always prodigally pouring itself out
to his friends. On that Norfolk holiday, on a lovely morning
of early autumn, we were approaching a village on our cycles.
As was often the case, the exercise stirred his imagination
and started his mind on a course of reflections.
"Have you, he asked, thought of the continuity of
things ? What about natural predestination ? We started
as a world with a nebula which became a molten globe ;
that cooled and became fit for the habitation of the creatures
of the primeval slime ; then, in the course of evolution, came
the monkeys and these, later, took on human characteristics ;
our savage ancestors, like the dragons of the slime, butchered
and ate each other ; after that softer moods prevailed the
young man and maiden walked and courted in the groves
and all this that you and I might cycle through this village
we are coming to. Does not this impress you with the import
ance of your personality, that all this was done that you
and I might enjoy such a morning ride as this ? "
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J. Brierley
Mr. Fisher laughingly confessed that it had not
occurred to him, but such trains of thought were
always being started in " J.B."
A minister friend, who spent holidays with "J.B./ 1
tells of his schoolboyish happiness amid wild Scottish
scenery. On a very hot day they came to a small
loch, remote from anywhere. " Let us bathe ! " said
" J.B." They were soon in the water, and on
emerging " J.B." raced and laughed in the sunshine
till he was dry.
192
CHAPTER XIV
Eclectic of the Eclectics
" J.B." never lost his interest in the ministry. He
liked to feel he was still in touch with the cloth, and
the cloth was proud of " J.B. s" former membership
of their order. Though his pulpit and platform
appearances on his return to London as journalist
became rarer and rarer, after the first few years, he
enjoyed meeting ministers at the Eclectic an informal
gathering for social intercourse and free discussion,
the sacred arcana of which were impenetrable by the
mere layman, but his ministerial brethren were glad
to recognise "J.B." as being " once a minister, always
a minister." One of the most brilliant of the
Eclectics, the Rev. J. Morgan Gibbon, of Stamford
Hill, says :
" The Eclectic is a little dining club with a membership
limited to a round score of Congregational ministers living in
London. Like Dr. Johnson s club in Essex Street, the terms
are lax and the expenses light. Though, or because, it is a
ministerial club, no papers are allowed nor speeches allowed.
The club aims at nothing except at that which, if it comes off,
is the best thing of all, the fruition of good fellowship.
"I do not know whether J.B. was one of its founders; if
not, he was one of its oldest members, and at its board he was
seen at his very best. He was a very clubbable man in
Johnson s sense of the term. The sight of J.B. s slight,
193
J. Brierley
tense figure, with the scholar s stoop, the bright face, the kindly,
eager eyes, gave everyone assurance of a good meeting. Of
course he could write, that goes without saying ; the whole
reading world knows it. But what a good talker he was !
And a cause of good talk in others. He delighted to hear and
cap a good story. He never claimed the floor for himself ;
like Sydney Smith he took the half-minutes and rilled them
with light or with lightning as the occasion demanded.
Omnivorous reader as he was. J.B. was no bookworm,
nor was he a specialist tied up to one subject. He was alive
to every aspect of lif e. The last time I met him at the club he
was full of the question of armaments. He would have
England, as a great act of faith in God, lay down her arms and
call upon other nations to do the same. He was confident
that what the world wanted was the stimulus of a great appeal
and the inspiration of a great example. The slight hesitancy
which latterly marked his opening words completely disappeared
in the rush of words that swept away all opposition, as with
apostolic zeal he unfolded his ideal for his country. For the
only time I can remember, men left their places and gathered
round him ; the club became a little church, with J.B. for
its preacher. That was, as I say, wholly exceptional, but then
J.B. was exceptional.
"We have had noble and brotherly men among us, whose
memory we cherish Cave, Spensley, Morlais Jones, Dorling,
Twenty man what good lovable souls they were ! But no
greater, more genial, more deeply beloved member ever graced
our little feDowship, or, passing from it into the unseen, left us
with a greater sense of loss or gratitude than J.B. A few days
ago he, like us, was grappling with problems ; to-day he has
passed into the solution. Laus Deo / "
194
CHAPTER XV
Life in London
WHEN he settled again in London, Mr. Brierley
took a house at Willesden Green, N.W., " Helens-
leigh," Dean Road. That combined to his mind,
several distinct advantages. It lay high ; country
walks were possible ; there was good communica
tion with the City ; and he was within a long walk
of Lyndhurst Road Congregational Church, where
he decided to settle under the ministry of Dr.
Robert F. Horton. It was a great joy to feel that
he was again in the mid-stream of thought and
action, where at every moment of the day his finger
was on the pulse of life. To him as to most educated
and imaginative men who have come up from the
country, London was always the city of magic,
mystery and thrilling romance. His health, for
a few years, was fairly good, and he was able to do
a reasonable amount of pulpit " supply " work,
sometimes taking both services. He made several
welcome reappearances in his old Balham Church,
and was in frequent demand for " special occasions "
on Sundays and week-days.
There was an exhilarating freshness alike in his
thought and his phrasing, and his pulpit and
platform delivery, without any attempt at rhetor-
J. Brierley
ical effect, fitted his thought and its expression
like a glove. He used the conversational voice,
and made it take on the colour and temperature
of his emotions, neither tearing passion to rags
nor serving thought generated in passion on
a cold dish a not infrequent way of spoiling
an oratorical entree. His language was simple,
straightforward, clear cut, nervous Anglo-Saxon,
of the kind found only in speakers to whom the
Bible is familar as household words. But " J.B. s "
zest of life, his touch with the humanity of his
time, the reality and vitality of the questions and
problems with which he dealt, his eager interest
in those problems, his apostolic zeal to help men
by enlightening their minds and quickening their
consciences and persuading them to discover and
draw out the hidden wealth of their personality,
made it impossible for him to be dry or vainly
to beat the air. To him the Bible was a present-
day Book, because the Bible writers were men
like ourselves tempted and tried, sinning and
suffering and repenting, perplexed and baffled,
but wrestling to save their souls alive, and even
amid clouds and thick darkness still believing
in a quenchless light, and saving themselves, and
helping to save their age and the ages to follow,
by faith in the soul, in God and the things that
cannot be shaken. He made the writers and
heroes of the Bible live, and the inspiration of their
consecrated personalities, which had been made
the medium of the messages that came to them,
infused itself into the preacher. He showed
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Life in London
that " new thought " has never, in the great affairs
of the soul, and in human character and conduct,
Been able to improve on the " old thought,"
though the advance of knowledge, and the accumu
lation of Christian experience, have illustrated
from every point of view and demonstrated in
countless ways the unsuspected richness, the
infinite applications, and the timeless validity of
the spiritual and ethical conceptions of the Bible
writers. A sample of his sermon notes of the
nineties period will be found as an Appendix.
He was a frequent preacher at Congregational
services that were being held in Streatham Town
Hall. In his notes of sermons preached in 1891,
there are such subjects as " Fulness of Joy,"
" Chariots of Fire," " Evolution and Evangelical
Faith," " Present Salvation," " Obedience of
Thoughts," " On Promises " and " The Conver
sion of Lydia " all these came within the category
of " Travellers," but they were not dusty and
footsore travellers. There was nothing of the
traditional " three decker," no " Brethren,"
no tiresome introduction, no conventional pulpit
vocabulary or intonation. He liked to plunge
straight into his subject with a story, or recollection
of a striking conversation on some aspect of the
faith, that at once captured attention. There
was not much in the way of exegesis of the text,
but the spirit of the author was brought to the
illumination of the teaching of the text, and the
teaching was found to be as up-to-date as the
leading article in the Saturday s paper more
197
J. Brierley
up-to-date, for it would be in date as long as man
had a brain to think and a heart to feel.
At Lyndhurst Road Church " J.B." found himself
in a congenial atmosphere. Dr. Horton had
absorbed all that Oxford could give to one of the
most receptive of souls. He had that combination
of the cultured mind and the Evangelical heart,
the wide-eyed outlook on the age, the faith in the
future, and the " passion for souls," which had
been Mr. Brierley s own ideal of the Christian
preacher and pastor. In Lyndhurst Road Church,
whose pulpit he sometimes occupied, " J.B. s "
striking personality was a wholesome influence,
and a warm attachment sprang up between him
and the pastor. Touching letters passed between
them when Dr. Horton s health failed. Knowing
what this meant to a minister, "J.B." wrote out
of the fulness of his heart. " J.B." and Dr. Horton
were both Hellenes in their sweetness and light-
domiciled and naturalised in Philistia, and they
saw no reason why Hellas and Philistia should
be divided as by the gulf that shut off Dives in Hades
from Lazarus in Abraham s bosom.
Dr. Horton says that one of " J. B. s " sons joined
the Church and the father s gratitude and joy
at this were most moving and almost unequalled
in his recollection. That is a side of his life that
people did not know. " Sometimes," says Dr.
Horton, " I went over and had a talk with him
and sometimes walked out with him. His con
versation was always eager and interesting. He
preached occasionally, and when he did that or
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Life in London
spoke at a meeting he always made a great impression
on the people there was something so alert and
pertinent in all he said. He would often speak
at small meetings in the early days and would give
bright and charming little addresses full of humour
and wisdom. I have met so many people who
said they depended on J.B. s article as a kind of
spring of fresh water in the week s life. When
I first came to London he was at Balham and I
heard an immense amount about him from certain
people who knew him. Then I met him. There
seemed such a contrast between the brilliant and
successful preacher and the sort of man he was
when I saw him. He seemed so secular, so to
speak. It was not the note of piety at all that
struck you it was the note of the religious man
in the street, the newspaper style of man, and it
was a great difficulty even when he came to live
near us to realise that he had got in him what
he had. His outside did not seem to suggest his
mind. He was one of the most striking instances
I have met in my life of the difference between
the mere house in which the soul lives and the
soul itself. That first impression was deepened
up to the last. The last time I saw him I had the
feeling again It is incredible how this human
soul shines with such lustre in such an imperfect
kind of candlestick.
There was a playful difference of opinion between
Dr. Horton and " J.B." over the character of the
Sunday morning service. For a number of years,
partly because of the distance from his home,
199
J. Brierley
but chiefly because of the state of his nerves,
" J.B." was only in his pew on the Sunday morning.
He used to tell Dr. Horton that he regarded the
morning service as his Church meeting and got
all the religious value of the Church meeting out
of it. This Dr. Horton, with his invincible Con
gregational view that in the Church meeting every
member should have an equal place, would not allow.
"J.B." as journalist was as far removed as possible
from the minister in his dress and conversation.
Others than Dr. Horton who were introduced to
him in Fleet Street or elsewhere confess that they
felt the same difficulty. " J.B." was so much the
Christian man of the world, his conversational
range was so wide, he was able to discuss almost
any question with such apparent expert knowledge,
his talk was so frank and free and racy, he was
so utterly unlike the conventional idea of the reli
gious teacher, that people were nonplussed. Those
who had come, through his writings, to reverence
him as a seer and a saint, could scarcely believe
their eyes and their ears when they came face to
face with this man wearing a darkish grey morning
suit and the oblong, rather high-crowned hard
hat which he affected, and listened to his merry
chaffing chat. But when " J.B." did get into the
channel of religious talk no doubt was left as to
his identity with the author of the essays in The
Christian World.
Politics he regarded as the efforts of the State
to translate into practice the social and ethical
ideals of the nation. He was bound to take the
200
Life in London
deepest interest in politics because he wanted the
nation to be really ethical and religious in all depart
ments of its life. He did not expect too much
from politics because he realised that the State
was never likely to rise above the level of the
intelligence and morals of the people. He held
that politics would be purer, more progressive
and more effective, only as the individual citizen
came to realise his citizenship as a sacred respon
sibility, and to exercise his vote and influence
with the same conscience as he performed his
religious obligations. He held very strongly that the
Churches had failed to influence the affairs of the
State by their narrow, artificial conception of spirit
uality. They had thought more of the Church
than of the Kingdom of God, more of the education
of the individual in one part of his nature than of
the preparing of the whole individual to play his
manifold part in the leavening of the community.
He was a Nonconformist Liberal who did his own
thinking and was not disposed to make a shibboleth
either of the Nonconformity or the Liberalism.
He was a Passive Resister against the Conservative
Education Act because he did believe, honestly
and conscientiously, that that Act deliberately
inflicted injustice on the part of the nation belonging
to the Free Churches by compelling them to pay
rates for teaching designed to subvert those things
which their Churches had come into existence to
maintain. In September, 1912, he wrote a letter
of strong protest to The Daily News for what he
considered its mischievous nagging at Sir Edward
201
J. Brierley
Grey, and his conduct of the foreign policy of the
Government. He received a large number of
letters thanking him for the letter and endorsing
his protest. He was an idealist in his politics, but
always, as with his religion, he was the practical
idealist making allowances for the defective
materials and the imperfect conditions under which
work had to be done, and judging men according
to the ability and sincerity with which they did
their best under the circumstances. He had no
faith in the idealism which expects to be carried
through in a hop-skip and a jump reforms which
will only be possible after generations or centuries
of ethical social evolution. His evolution had
taught him that progress is a step by step it may
be an inch by inch matter, but that it always
means movement in the forward direction.
He joined the National Liberal Club, not because
he was cut out for a club-man, or because he had
the time to spend at a club, but because the club
gave him occasional opportunities of mixing with
men of all sorts and conditions in conversation,
and of learning much of sides of human nature and
spheres of activity that were outside his ordinary
experience. It was his habit to lunch at the club
on Tuesdays and Wednesdays during the years
of his regular service at The Christian World
office. A member of the club has favoured me
with a note of his impressions of " J.B." and his
conversation :
" J.B. was not what one would call a dazzling conversa
tionalist, though his talk was brilliant, scintillating with
202
Life in London
humour and sparkling with wit and reminiscence. He was
rather a brilliant monologist. He liked to do the lion s share
of the talking. In fact he loved an audience. When in the club
circle he was always eager to talk but reluctant to listen.
About the time of the 1906 General Election he joined the
National Liberal Club and two or three days a week went there
to lunch. Gradually he became known to an ever -expanding
circle of Free Churchmen who forgathered in the smoke room,
and J.B. s presence in the group was always welcomed. He
thoroughly enjoyed these impromptu little fraternal gatherings.
And when he was there the group would swell in size. The
range and scope of J.B. s interest and knowledge often
amazed his fellow members at the N. L. C. Even on political
matters his coffee table talk was distinguished. His mind
was soaked in history and his spirit was democratic with a
radicalism which was almost revolutionary in its revulsion
from territorial tyrannies and hereditary privilege. The calm
insolence with which the peers after the General Election of
1906 set to work and smashed all the Liberal Government s
legislative endeavours maddened J.B. His fury was quite
explosive. But it was when conversation dropped away from
politics into the realms of travel and literature or art that J . B. s
table talk was most fascinating. His optimism never flickered.
It was always in full flame. One day a Free Church minister
and novelist gave utterance to a pessimistic plaint in J.B. s
presence. He was almost shocked. No, no, you ve no right
to be a pessimist, he said. I m the only man here with that
right : but I m an optimist through and through. For the
last twenty years I ve had an inside that has played all
sorts of unconscionable tricks upon me. I never know when
I get up in the morning whether I shall not before the end of
the day have been sent to bed for a week or a fortnight. But
every morning when I get up as I sit on the side of the bed and
pull on my breeches I say to myself, Brierley, you old rascal,
you get infinitely more than your deserts. After that
occasion, pessimistic utterances were restrained in the presence
of J.B. His optimism when he had so much right to
be pessimistic silenced cheap pessimism."
203
J. Brierley
No one during his years in Fleet Street had
closer intimacy with him than his colleague, Mr.
F. H. Fisher, editor of The Literary World. Mr.
Fisher says it would have been impossible to find
a more genial soul, or one with a brighter outlook
on life and more tolerant of other people s principles
and prejudices. No one could imagine in conver
sation with " J.B." that he was talking to a
" parson." He was just a good natured, cultured
Englishman, mellowed by years and very wide
experience. An excellent raconteur, he delighted
to tell of his travels and adventures.
In one of the extracts in his Note-books, " J.B."
quotes Hazlitt as saying that Coleridge in con
versation was inspired and he could go on for
ever, and the listeners wanted him to go on
for ever. " J.B." was a good deal like that
himself. Mr. Fisher recalls how once, at a
breakfast table, " J.B." got going, and the party
were so entranced that they forgot the break
fast and everything was getting cold. One matter-
of-fact young lady, however, who was of Koheleth s
opinion that there is a time for all things, became
impatient, and in shrill tones asked another lady to
pass her something. There was a general horrified
" Hush ! " " J.B." stopped short, took a look at
the offender and resumed his talk ! For years after
she was reminded of her high misdemeanour in
checking the flow of the prophet s inspiration.
As regards his chess, his colleague, Mr. Fisher, with
whom he often played " not at the office," explained
Mr. Fisher says :
204
Life in London
" We were both amateurs, but J.B. was as near to a
professional as I have ever met. He was a very tricky player,
and his favourite game was to sacrifice any piece to get position.
He once explained that his model was a famous chess expert
who had first tried his opponent by giving him a knight, and
then a bishop, before taking any of his opponent s pieces, just
in order to find out what his opponent s skill was. I know
that very rarely did I win against him, and when I did, I
counted it a red letter day."
During his later years " J.B.," when the weather
permitted, spent a good deal of his time in the park
at Dollis Hill. He always loved the open air and
drank in not only refreshment for the body but in
spiration for the mind. He would sit for hours
together on a seat reading and writing. The open air
often got into his articles with bracing effect.
Five or six years before the end, such health as
" J.B." possessed began seriously to fail. There were
alarming symptoms and his nerves became more and
more shaky. He had to abandon work at the office
and greatly to reduce his output at home. He clung,
however, to his weekly essay as his great means of
continuing his ministry to the world, and so far from
his work showing any falling off in quality many of
those essays of the last four years were equal to the
best work he ever did. Sometimes there would be a
break of several weeks when he was quite unequal to
anything. He was begged from the office not prema
turely to resume work, but as soon as he felt fit the
craving for paper and pen and the impulse to soul
deliverance took possession of him. Books which
really were books for review he always welcomed,
and his reviews were conscientious and often brilliant
205
14
J. Brierley
work. He was an eager learner to the very end, and
the new books sent to him he regarded as means to
his education.
In The Christian World of February 5th, 1915,
appeared an essay on " Life s Loose Ends." It was
destined to be the last he was himself to see in print.
It was one of his greatest achievements showing that
the power of his intellect and his heart was un
abated. He begins :
" Benjamin Constant relates that he met once with a
Piedmontese who gave him his confession of faith. He
believed that the world was made by a God who had died before
his work was completed. Only in this way could he account
for the bewildering contradictions which he found everywhere ;
on the one side the evident marks of law, order and beneficent
design ; on the other hand, the confusions, the evils, the ragged
edges of things. Everywhere an aim at perfection which had
stopped short, a purpose uncompleted, if not frustrated. So
our Piedmontese ; who certainly, amid the medley of cosmic
theories with which philosophy has presented us, has the
merit of offering one as quaint as it is> original. His solution
is the last we should think of accepting, but he unquestionably
had an eye for certain aspects of things which call for a
solution."
" J.B. 5 treats the apparent incompleteness of
things as God s challenge to man to continue His
work and fill out the plan which He has sketched.
We may well imagine how "J.B." wrote with feeling
when he said :
" There is a personal side to this topic which might well have
occupied all our thought, but which we can now only briefly
touch upon. How often do we seem, in our private fortunes,
to be brought to a loose end ? Some source of supply has been
stopped ; some door of career has been suddenly slammed in
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Life in London
our face. The well-defined track we have followed has all at
once disappeared we are faced with the wilderness, wherein
we must strike a road of our own. Most of us who have lived
any time in the world have had a touch of that experience.
It is one of the greatest tests of character. We have been good
enough for routine ; what good are we for this crisis of the
unexpected ? It is here that strong men prove their strength.
How often has that moment proved the starting point of
mightiest things ! It was so with Wesley when he found
himself in hopeless conflict with the Anglican authorities,
and he must choose some other way. And with General Booth,
his true successor, when on that fateful morning he left the
New Connexion Conference, his terms rejected, his career as
one of its ministers closed, and himself in face of a new,
untried world. Spurgeon had his moment when by the
strangest of accidents he missed his collegiate training. But
these men made good, as the Americans say, of their loose
end. And their example shows us how a loose end in life,
encountered with courage and faith, may become to us our
divine moment ; may prove the turning point to our true
vocation. Assuredly no man, whether he be great or small,
should be afraid of his loose ends. They are life s great
possibles ; they call upon what is in us. The gulf that
yawns in front reveals your leaping power. The seeming ruin
may be the beginning of your better fortunes. The world is
full of hopes for the man who has hope for himself.
The way to master the world s loose ends is to have no loose
ends in ourselves. Things may snap at the circumference,
but there will be no catastrophe if there is soundness at the
centre. A man may find his world tumbling around him,
as when Robertson of Brighton saw the dogmatic structure of
his earlier creed crumbling to ruin. He found himself with
nothing to believe in but God and duty. But in that wild
hour those central anchors held ; held till a clearer, fuller,
saner, Gospel faith was born in him, a faith which proved
good for thousands of other storm-tossed souls. The thing is
to hold on and never to give up. Believe, in the tempest s
fiercest hour, that the world you are in is water-tight, and is
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J. Brierley
not going to founder. You are in a world of loose ends, and
the handling of them calls for every atom of strength and
courage that is in you. But the farthest ends of them are
not loose. They are gripped by a hand that is Love and
Omnipotence."
At the time of his death a sequel to " Life s Loose
Ends," entitled " Our Possessions," was in the Editor s
hands, and he had just completed another essay on
" Religion and Buildings," which curiously exceeds
his normal length of two-and-a-half columns. There
is a note of reminiscence in each of these essays.
He says in " Religion and Buildings " :
" In our own early religious life we used to attend a Monday
evening prayer meeting, held in a humble room over some
stables in an inn yard. It was a stuffy, ill-ventilated,
malodorous meeting place, amid the most incongruous surround
ings. But never since have we experienced a greater power
of religious emotion, of the pure spirit of fellowship, of prayer,
faith, and rapturous devotion than in that crowded, ill-smelling
room. When the surroundings are humblest the spirit mounts
highest. It is the continuous complaint of the Fathers that
when the Church came out of the back streets and from its
humble conventicles to sumptuous buildings and worldly
recognition, its early spirit declined, its purity was soiled."
208
CHAPTER XVI
Sunset and The Clear Call
EARLY in January, 1914, after an attack of influenza,
" J.B." went to Westcliff-on-Sea, Southend, to pull
up strength. His old colleague on The Christian
World staff, Mr. F. H. Fisher, was living at Westcliff ,
and it was he who, in The Christian World of February
i2th, told the story of "J.B.V last days. He
says :
" For some five or six years past ill-health had dogged the
footsteps of both of us, and I feared that the opportunity
would never recur of hearing his beloved voice. But it had
happened that J.B. came down to Westcliff-on-Sea to recruit
after an attack of influenza at the beginning of the present
year, and I learnt that he was staying in the very next road to
that in which I have my residence. I called upon him the
day after he arrived, and found him much aged and suffering
from ear-ache, contracted, he believed, in a draughty railway
carriage. The weather was extremely cold, and the ear trouble
became worse in the next few days, so that he at last yielded
to solicitations, and consented to see a doctor. This he had
previously refused to do, jocularly remarking that he never
saw doctors willingly, because it was bad enough to fight the
disease, without having also to fight the doctor. Later he
welcomed the attentions of the kindly medical man. J.B.
was able to take short walks and enjoy the brilliant sunshine
during the day, and also to do his full quota of work. One day
Mrs. Brierley pressed upon him the necessity of slowing
down. Surely, she said, you need not be always reading
209
J. Brierley
those heavy books, and might content yourself with writing
your articles. But J.B. gave a shrug and said : As long
as I live I must go on working. I have nothing else to do.
To deprive me of that would be to take away the great joy of
my life, or words to that effect. Indeed, he wrote about the
same time to another colleague : You might send me some
more books if you have anything really worth attention. I
can do them at my leisure. I am more than willing to review
good books. They are a help to one s own education.
"Scarcely a day passed during the last month that I did not
run in to see him, or he came to my house to have a talk and a
game or two of chess the one recreation he allowed himself.
On Saturday I sent a line over asking him to come in at 4.30
to tea and chess. He came at the hour appointed, and after
some talk on ordinary affairs we sat down to a game, a friend
looking on. We had not progressed far when J.B. suddenly
exclaimed, I feel faint, and fell back in his chair. His face
became livid, his eyes closed, and he seemed to have ceased
to breathe.
" Fortunately there was a doctor living close by. He came
in about a quarter of an hour, and diagnosed the case as one
of cerebral embolism, telling us that death might take place
at any moment. From that time until 10.30 he rallied con
siderably, and was able to understand and give intelligible
answers to questions. I was with him most of the time. At
length he said, Don t talk to me any more, and I respected
his wishes. Later he began again to talk. I m done. . . .
I m done. . . . The end, the end, came from him
at intervals, but he hardly seemed to have consciousness. At
about 10 o clock he lapsed into a state of coma. His regular
doctor came and recommended his removal to a nursing home
in the next road. This was done with great tenderness and
care, and without the patient showing any sign of suffering.
That was the last I saw of him, for at II o clock on Sunday
morning he passed away without, apparently, having recovered
consciousness.
" J.B. s death was to all outward seeming as nearly painless
as could be. No doubt a small blood-vessel had burst in the
210
Sunset and The Clear Call
brain, the consequence of that condition of the arteries which
is the usual concomitant of old age. It may be said, therefore,
that the body had worn out while leaving the mind in the
fullest activity, as readers of J.B. s recent articles will readily
acknowledge. It was a beautiful death, and one that might
well be desired by us all if choice were given in such matters.
To the last he retained the keenest interest in all human affairs,
even such a matter as the Mexican anarchy being alluded to
in his conversations, for J.B. , above all things, was practical,
and no mere scholarly visionary, as some, who had not the
privilege of knowing him intimately, may have deemed him."
To this narrative may be added the characteristic
incident that when " J.B." recovered consciousness
he found himself being fanned with the current
number of The Christian World containing his article
on " Life s Loose Ends," and made a little joke on
the irony of it.
In the same number his pastor and friend, Dr.
R. F. Horton, said :
" He always reminded me of the Grammarian in The
Grammarian s Funeral how honoured I should be to carry
his worn frame to the heights and to leave him there racked
with so many pains and compassed with infirmities, sight half
gone, lungs ailing, locomotion impossible, he still continued
at his investigation of the question of life ; he was still serene;
there was no haste and no rest. He was of opinion that man
has Forever. If he had known that he would die last Sunday
he would have plunged into a new inquiry with the same zest
on Saturday. He did not fear to leave loose ends when he
finished here, for a master -hand was making the pattern, com
pleting the work, there as here. And yet how unlike the
Grammarian 1 His was not the problem of the enclitic 5e ;
the formalities of grammar, of logic, were very secondary to
him. It was life in its endless play and variety that interested
him. Not only mind was active about him, but all minds
were active to him, played upon him, entered into him. He
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J. Brierley
was "a man of endless quotation, not because he could
not think, or needed the expressions of others, but because
what everyone said came home to him with piquancy and
charm. He quoted because he liked to think that others were
with him, that he was in the blithe company of thinkers, writers,
poets, and he was pleased with the way in which Joubert or
Merimee or Flaubert had happened to say just what he himself
wanted to say. It was life, all life, that formed his style, and
became the material of his work. There was no dry-as-dust
about him. If dust came his way, he watered it, and made it
the soil of a new bulb of thought.
" Like the Grammarian in the physical limitations closing in
upon him unlike the Grammarian in the theme he handled,
the endless, glowing, various theme of man in the universe.
Much more reassuring than mere scholarship can ever be, he
reported hopefully, confidently, buoyantly, of life. We who
saw him labouring under the disabilities, we who knew the past,
and what life had cost him, looked in amazement at this irre
pressible gaiety. R. L. Stevenson was gay, in the sense that
he would never be beaten. Willy-nilly life should yield a value,
if it was not there it should be imagined ; if it would not come
of itself, it should be captured by art. But J.B. seriously
found the world and all its problems teeming with promise.
He was optimistic, not by an effort of the will, but by a gift
of insight. When the cruel medical verdict banished the young
minister of Balham from the pulpit, and that rare eloquence of
easy speech and racy expression was silenced, in effect for his
life-time, it never so much as occurred to him that his work
was done ; only the venue was altered. He did not excuse
himself from effort because speaking was forbidden and his
chosen career was closed. He withdrew to the healthy sur
roundings of Switzerland, mastered French, mastered French
literature, forged a philosophy of life, which took no account
of his own misfortunes. Who could have guessed that it was
a broken and disappointed man piecing together the fc.cts of
the world, to see, with the Creator, that it was all good ?
" And was it not good ? If J.B. had continued to be the
pastor of Ba]ham, he would have trodden the usual round of
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Sunset and The Clear Call
ministerial success ; he would have given Congregational
lectures, he would have been Chairman of the Union ; he would
have published volumes of sermons, he would have been asked
to deliver the Lyman Beecher lectures at Yale. He would
have been a D.D. but J.B. he would never have been. His
audience would have been limited, and his.work would have
run along the stereotyped lines. It was a wise and loving Hand
that took him from the pulpit and shut him in his study, that
silenced his voice, to make him use his pen. Take up any one
of these volumes of essays, even the first, but follow the series
with their never failing vitality and endless resources, and you
pronounce even from the first this unhesitating opinion : This
work could never have been done in a pulpit ; a pulpit would
have prevented it from being done.
"The essay was precisely the form which suited his genius.
Even if he had been healthy and robust, he would probably
not have excelled in hard continuous thinking. In the
American phrase, it was not his metier to think conclusively.
He thought suggestively. The Christian World gave him a
golden opportunity. To write on what he liked, and as he
liked, to be committed to no conclusions, was just what he
wanted. He felt the immense value of raising questions,
following them a certain way, getting glimpses of light on them
from many quarters, and then leaving them unanswered. He
did not want to answer questions. What a dull universe it
would be in which the questions were all answered ! Who wants
finality who, at least, that has Forever ?
"And yet for the constant reader of his essays answers were
constantly coming. Where dogma irritates, where the
pronouncement ex cathedrd only makes Protestants, the
brilliant, playful mind, gaily raising, handling and laying
down the problems of life, helps the thoughtless to think, and
elicits out of the reader s own breast the power to find the
answers.
" His mind was so sparkling, so dazzling, so informing, and yet
it was so free from pedantry, from dogma, from intellectual
tyranny, that we all conceived for him what Spindza would
have called an intellectualis amor. Not that we did not love
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J. Brierley
him as a man, as the most loyal of friends, the most agreeable
of companions, but we loved him chiefly as a Mind. The mind
was lovable even when it did not carry conviction. It gave one
the feeling of a high-spirited youth, whose sallies are not the less
agreeable because they provoke argument, or even rebuke.
It is that Mind, that many-fountained mountain-peak of
thought and observation, that we must now for a time do
without."
No passing of the months before the War was
mourned with a deeper sense of the loss of a loved
friend and teacher than that of " J. B. " At the funeral
service, at Lyndhurst Road Congregational Church,
on February I3th, about 250 ministers of all denom
inations were present. The first part of the service
was conducted by Dr. Alfred Rowland. In his
address, Dr. Horton deprecated any extremity of
grief. Against that, " J.B." had himself warned them.
"He has," he said, "been the most fascinating teacher,
and no one who has come under the spell of his writings and of
his soul thinks of him only as a writer, but always as a master
and a teacher. He has taught us the serener and more
optimistic view of the universe in which we live. He said :
" On a local and narrow outlook we call ourselves bankrupt,
forgetting that we are shareholders in a universe which is
entirely solvent. It is amazing how clever people will torture
themselves. Why lament with Pope that all things will be as
gay as ever on the day of our death ? Is the world to turn drab
because we have passed out of it ? Must it
Make one mad to see what men should do
And we in our graves ?
It were better surely while we are hereto make possible a
better doing and being for those who come after, when the
grave does get us.
" What a mercy it is that he has spoken such blithe words and
is speaking them to us to-day ! For instance, he tells us that :
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Sunset and The Clear Call
"Death remains for us all a great venture. "Who knows/
says Euripides, "if life be death and death life ? " On that
" Who knows," the great " Perhaps," countless multitudes of
our fellow men have been content to live and die. To us,
with all the light that comes from both science and religion,
the step from " here " to "there " we have all to take remains
still a step into the unknown. The mystery of living is kept
up to its last moment. We are to be on tip-toe all the time.
The soul is not allowed to support itself on any other material
than faith. And that it is so is surely well ; for us it is best
so. Were certainty and clear vision better we should have
had it. But we are to trust the whole way and go by trusting.
Wejhave been led too well and too graciously to permit of our
believing that we shall be fooled at the last.
" How blithe, how brave, is his note in the very shadow of
death !
" I cannot help quoting also words you will recognise a little
passage which is that from all literature that I think he would
wish quoted to-day. It is from the Phsedo of Plato, the
sublime words of Socrates that soul who passed away so
sharply and cheerily :
Let a man be of good cheer about his soul if only he has
arrayed her in her proper jewels Temperance and Justice,
and Courage, and Nobility and Truth. Thus arrayed she
will be ready when the hour comes to start on her journey to
the other world. And there she will dwell in mansions fairer
than this.
" I need not explain to those who knew him why it seems to
me he would have wished me to quote from Plato rather than
from the New Testament. To some minds it might seem that
J.B. s teaching did not express a very definite faith in our
blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. What I wish to say
is this : that it was J.B. s task, his own allotted task, and
it became more his task as his work went on, and he recognised
the extent of his power, to stand at the cross-roads where faith
and unfaith diverge. Standing there, surveying, considering,
looking steadily and dispassionately at the alternatives, he
induced multitudes who were in a state of indecision to enter
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J. Brierley
the way of faith. If he had used the language of faith, and
spoken as we speak in the pulpits, he would have lost the ear
of the large, indeterminate mass, to whom his wisdom and
reasonableness were a Godsend. He did his work for Christ
in his own way, and we do not presume, in speaking from
what we know, when we say that it is Christ who has met him
on the other side with Well done, good and faithful servant
faithful unto death !
"For twenty-one years he was a member of this church.
While he could, he was in that seat, his face reverent, eager,
friendly. He felt at home there, and in his place. This church
has never welcomed a more elect and salutary soul, and while
a much wider Church to which he ministered feels his loss
so acutely we cannot help laying our own wreath of immortelles
upon the bier, and breathing a prayer of devout gratitude
that we enjoyed Ms fellowship so long.
4 Let me close these few broken words by quoting from a letter
received from J.B. s beloved son, Rev. Harold E. Brierley,
whose brilliant success in his ministry was the dearest joy of
his father :
Our dear " J.B." passed silently and swiftly to his rest at
Westclifi on Sunday. I was summoned, and went with all
speed, but was too late to see him alive. It is my mother s
wish and mine, and I know it would have been his. that the
service should be in Lyndhurst-road, and that you should
conduct it. By his own wish we shall proceed afterwards
to the Crematorium at Colder s Green. My mother and I
would like Dr. Rowland, one of his oldest and dearest friends,
to take some part in the service. I cannot trust myself to
write about it all. The world is poorer now. As I have told
Dr. Rowland, one great verse has been singing itself in my
mind all day, which might have been written of him :
One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break ;
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would
triumph,
Held, we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to
wake.
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Sunset and The Clear Call
" Stevenson s own great epitaph fits him so well, too, who
was to like Stevenson in the great joyous fight be made against
ill-health and adversity :
Glad did I live and gladly die,
And I lay me down with a will.
This be the vane you shall grave for me :
Here he lies where he longed to be ;
Home is the sailor, home from the sea.
And the hunter home from the hill.
" I looked my last on the dear facethis afternoon at Westclift,
and " his face was as it were the face of an angel." "
After prayer by Dr. Horton, the hymn, " For alJ
Thy saints, who from their labours rest/ was sung
with deep emotion, and the Benediction was pro
nounced. Chopin s " Marche Fun^bre " was played
by the organist, and afterwards " O rest in the Lord."
The body was then borne out of the church,
with the family and Dr. Horton following, and was
conveyed to Golder s Green Crematorium, where
Dr. Horton pronounced the committal sentences.
So let the story end of one who tasted with zest the
cup of life to its last drop, and who sweetened that
cup to thousands who were finding in it the Waters
of Bitterness. The soul of " J.B." will march on in
all those lives made better by his presence, and
hundreds who preach in pulpits and write in the
press will pass on the spirit and the messages he
communicated to them until their day s work too
is done.
217
u
APPENDIX A
J.B." as Preacher
OUR THOUGHT WORLD
(Notes of a Sermon)
"Bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience
of Christ." 2 Corinthians x. 5.
I. I PROPOSE to speak this evening about Chris
tianity and our thought life. I will begin what I have
to say by a personal reminiscence. Some years ago
when travelling in France I met a countryman of
mine who had been domiciled there for some years
and had got into their way of thinking and of living.
Our conversation turned on religion. I well remem
ber him saying, as though it was a clincher which
settled everything, " See what an impossible religion !
It positively proposes to take control of my very
thoughts." And he did not seem at all affected
by my argument that a religion was not going to
do anything for us that did not take precisely
this thought-region as its sphere of work. There
are a good many people about who think like
him. You get a religion which, while satisfying
people s emotional life, will let them go easy as to
private habits and it will be popular. The old
paganism was a popular enough religion. Yes, and
if you had your religious festivals like theirs, where
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"J.B." as Preacher
you had Bacchanalian feasting and dancing, where
every lustful inclination was gratified, and where,
while people engaged in these things, they flattered
themselves that they were serving religion, no doubt
you would soon get a crowd. The question, " Why
men don t go to church ? " would never be raised.
But the New Testament will have nothing to do with
this kind of religion. It in no way regards a crowd
as the essential thing. It proposes instead to take
hold of the man and lift him up. Yes, if you want a
low type, please beware of Christianity. It is dead
against you. It is such a dreadfully radical affair.
Once it gets fairly hold of you it has not done with you
till it has turned you upside down and inside out.
II. If you want an illustration of this action, I
recommend you to read John Bunyan, in that mar
vellous human document of his, " Grace Abounding."
He tells us of the three grades of work which the New
Testament performed in him. First of all, it won him
to the act of allegiance to Christ. Christ took him
to God as his Master. Next it effected a work of
separation from his old habits, his old haunts, his old
companions. But (3) there was a yet more difficult
operation. Somewhile after he became a Christian
he played with his thoughts. His old bad life broke
out in him ever and anon, and a fountain of black
water spoured its muddy streams over his soul. It
seemed as if from the back chambers of his brain a
horde of imps and demons of the night came forth
and swarmed over his new life ? He had to struggle
for his faith for a long while before he could exorcise
the demons and obtain a clean interior.
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J. Brierley
III. " But that was a man in the back time of the
seventeenth century while all our thought world is
in the twentieth century." But what a glorious
thing it is to live in such a century ! You talk about
the British Empire. But what is the Empire com
pared with the realm which you possess ? The
British Empire is a mere parish boundary compared
with the viewless realm of our thought. Our thought
world is our real world. What are we doing there
from day to day in our life. What are we making
of it ? It is a vast realm, but oh ! how neglected !
The British Empire has its thousands of miles of
sheer wilderness. But in that inner realm of ours
we could make every inch rich with flowers and fruit,
could open it to the highest inspirations, perfumed
with the very breath of heaven. Instead, most of us
are content with cultivating a narrow band on the
outer edge, scratching the surface for a few kitchen
vegetables and the rest is as barren as Sahara.
IV. There is a great work to be done here. Let
us see how the Apostle puts it " Bringing every
thought into subjection." I imagine that he here
means the whole internal life. Psychologists, you
know, divide our inner world into compartments.
They speak of thought, feeling, volition. That does
very well for analysis, but if you imagine what goes
on inside you, you find that the machinery acts as
practically one. Thus, for instance, thought is full
of feeling. Our ideas float in an atmosphere of feeling
which colours them. On the other hand feeling,
say our feeling about a man or an event, is full of
ideas and facts, and then our volition is always a
220
"J.B." as Preacher
result of thought and feeling. Paul proposes that
all this shall be in subjection to Christ.
V. A great many people, cultivated men of
to-day, on hearing talk of this sort, feel compelled
to revolt against it. " Subjection of thought to
Christ ! This to them is to put their mind in chains,
They imagine it is a kind of sordid narrowness in
which we propose to plunge them. Such a man runs
over the inventory of things he is asked to give up.
Nothing is left in the way of a broad and joyous out
look over literature. He must give up his Goethe,
Shakespeare, Dickens. To take to religion means
that he must take to appalling theological reading
Boston s "Fourfold State," or Goodwin on "Justifi
cation by Faith." As to music he must content
himself with hymns, with selections from Moody and
Sankey, with the Scottish version of the Psalms. In
science he must not look at such naughty things as
Darwinism, or anything contradicting the sixteenth
century interpretation of the Book of Genesis. He
pictures to himself an interior dark and dreary, a
drab world with no gleam of humour. Everything
is grey and glimmering as a light at the bottom of
a well.
VI. Numbers of people think like that about these
propositions and they have some reason for it.
My heart bleeds, and my blood boils, as I think of
the terrible persecution which religion has undergone
at the hands of these teachers, and which has turned
men away from it in disgust. I can sympathise
with such people. I went right through this ex
perience when quite young. I think I was always
221
15
J. Brierley
a little mystic. I know how full my soul was of
religion. Heaven and earth seemed full of God and
His glory. But as I grew up it was like the weather
we have been having lately, where a day began in
brightness and got cloudy later on. I came in contact
with the theology of forty years ago, theology made
in the dark ages, which caused me to shudder and
revolt. If ever there was a despairing sceptic it was
" J.B." at sixteen. What could I get out of it ?
I got a revelation. It came to me in my reading of
the New Testament. Faith, I found, is one thing,
and men s opinions and creeds are another. I saw
what a fool I was to allow myself to be cheated out
of my interest in God and Christ and the New Testa
ment and the fellowship of the saints. I have kept
to that ever since. Yes, God, Christ, the Bible, these
are mine for ever, and they may be yours. Young
people, keep to these ! Don t let anybody teach you
harsh doctrines of God ; cheat you out of your
spiritual inheritance. When you eat fish you need
not swallow the bones. See for yourselves, take
what you can and grow by it.
VII. Then there is this aspect of Christian free
dom. Do you think Paul s position really limits
your intellectual outlook and activity ? Let us see
how the matter stands. When he speaks of the
Christian s subjection of the thought world, he speaks
of Christ as the representative of the Divine. To
me Christ and God are interchangeable. To Paul,
Christ, as he lived on earth, was all of God that could
be put into human life. And the man Christ he knew
was all of God that could come into relation to man.
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"J.B." as Preacher
Christ was the personality of God on the human side.
So His idea is that our thought world, to be
brought into a healthy condition, is just to be
patterned on God s thought world and to be united
to it by a living tie. Is that a thing to limit and
cramp us ? Oh, if it were possible to a human soul,
it is surely the grandest thing that can happen to it.
To get hold of it better, let me try and illustrate it
in one or two departments, and I could not do better,
perhaps, than follow the objections we a moment or
two ago imagined our critic as making.
VIII. He thought, for instance, that this sub
jection of thought to Christ would narrow his
intellectual outlook. His science, he thought, would
be Church science, outworn notions of the Middle
Ages. He must not look at evolution for fear of
orthodoxy. Well, there are certain ecclesiastical
systems that say all that. But, thank God, not ours.
The Protestant Free Churchism of to-day knows
nothing of them. We have learnt Pascal s lesson
that the first of Christian principles is that truth
must be loved first of all. And with that to guide
us we are not afraid of any new discovery. The fresh
scientific fact may be very new and startling to us,
upsetting to our traditional notions, but it is not in
the least new or startling to our Heavenly Father.
When fifty years ago the Darwinian theory burst on
the world it produced a prodigious pother in the
Christian Churches. But there was no pother in the
mind of God. Whatever is true in evolution was
quite familiar to Him. If God is not startled, why
should we be ? We know now that no truth of
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J. Brierley
science can do a farthing s worth of damage to
genuine religion. Oh, this text will make us want
to know all we can of the universe of God, and the
more we know of the universe the more we know of
its Maker, and the more we know of Him the better
we can serve and obey and love.
IX. But then our friend argued from his artistic
side. What, for instance, would happen to his
music ? Why, nothing. So far from being harmed
he would find that if he looked deep enough the only
way for him to get the greatest music is to get the
mind patterned on God s mind. The theologians
have not thought enough on this side. I believe the
great principles of religion could be proved by the
fact of music alone. Nothing argues so wonderfully
of man s Divine origin, of the spiritual universe he
belongs to, of the inseparable relation of his soul to
God, as a study of musical laws. What a course of
sermons could be preached here ! All great music
is a revelation from God. All the great masters of
music are so simply as interpreters and disciples of
His mind here. Your Beethoven and Mozart
created nothing. They simply observed what was
there before them. The laws of musical harmony
with which they dealt are laws of God. You cannot
add to or take from them, not by a hair s breath.
And that mysterious thrill of our inmost soul when
a great harmony sweeps across it, what is it but the
response of the ears of the human to the impact of
the Divine ? These great masters were not always
saints in their moral life, but in this matter they
studied and obeyed God in one department of His
224
"J.B. Vas Preacher
laws, they served Him to the utmost of their powers
in their art. I repeat, it would be the better for the
rest of us if we studied and obeyed the Divine laws.
So Paul s way is the way to perfection in all the great
arts of life.
X. And to carry this a point further. Our friend
has a notion that if his mind squared with the Divine
mind there would be an end to life s pleasantry, its
gaiety, its humour. There would be a drab world,
too terribly solemn. Where did that notion come
from ? Certainly not from the New Testament.
The New Testament, though some have failed to
discover it, is full of suggestions of laughter and
gladness. The parables, most of them, have humour
as a back-ground. The children playing and piping
in the market place. When the prodigal comes back
he is welcomed with music and dancing. Strange
that theology has so frequently forgotten this !
Theology has occupied itself with the world s sin,
sorrow, tears, but would it not have been better to
have taken fuller note of the world s humour and
laughter ? That is a part of the cosmic scheme.
No humour in man, indeed ! and yet there is humour
in God. Where does the human soul get its light-
hearted laughter, so very human ? Did man manu
facture it ? If you think so try to get it in or out of
man. No kind of surgical operation will produce it.
But if man did not create it, who did ? None could
have created it but the Maker of the human mind.
I love to think of this aspect of the Divine nature.
It explains so much. It suggests so much. And
the problem is easily solved. When you see children
225
J. Brierley
at play, the lambs skipping, or listen to the grotesque
imitations of a parrot, and ascend from these things
to the play of wit in a Cervantes or a Shakespeare,
what is it but the broad genial smile of our Heavenly
Father who looks upon the world and finds it good ?
XL Well, that is an imperfect analysis of our
principle, but it is sufficient to show what an incred
ible mistake men make when they want to shut God
from their life. Why, they are shutting out the sun
shine. You cannot come to your best in any
department till you have opened your whole being to
His approach.
XII. I have been too long on these points, for
it has left me no time for what I wanted specially to
tell you. I have been, as it were, on the defensive
against opponents. But I wanted to say something
more, and to push home by a positive consideration
that if you want a life worth living and a glad time
not only on a Sunday, but on a Monday and all the
week, you must learn the secret of the mind of Christ.
How our thought world is conditioned by the
atmosphere of feeling in which the thought flows !
Now, the speciality of the Christian thought world is
in its atmosphere. And Christ is the atmosphere.
You know in the outside world everything depends
on that. I shall never forget a scene in Switzerland.
I tramped with a friend one stormy evening towards
an elevated plateau. We found a chalet where we
spent the night. Dark clouds covered the heavens.
A lake beneath us was forbidding in its gloom. The
black rocks glowered on us with a demon scowl.
Rain beat on us, the fierce wind bellowed around. It
226
"J.B." as Preacher
was a terrible and forbidding world we were in. But
we reached shelter and after supper came rest and
sleep. Next morning we woke early. We threw
open the shutters. Then what a scene ! It was the
same world and yet could it be ? Yes, but now it
was Paradise we were looking on. The lake glittered
like an emerald. The mountains were as pedal
organs clad in flawless white. The sky was cloudless,
opening into heaven. And it was just a change of
atmosphere ! And what a different world to all of
us the atmosphere makes ! Some are in Paradise
and others in Inferno, and it is all but a difference
in atmosphere. The Christian thought world is
charged with faith and love. The Christian who is
really so goes about with a beaming face because he
has learned the great secret, and that secret is faith.
XIII. The Christian life of faith, do you know
what that is ? It is so easy to talk about. I re
member when, as a young man, I started preaching,
my first sermon was on justification by faith. Oh !
these young preachers ! They will take big themes,
and they are so cocksure about their doctrine. I
don t fancy I knew much about it. I have learned
a thing or two since then. Faith ! It is the practice
of the presence of God. It is seeing Him everywhere
and in everything. You see the trees putting their
new clothes on in spring. Why it is God working
visibly before your eyes ! You find it difficult to
discern God in the events of your life. There is a hard
crust on them outside, but the kernel of an event is
always spiritual. Get into the habit of taking every
event as a message from the Father. How people
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J. Brierley
miss that secret ! I met a man one day, a man in a
good position. He had a flourishing business, a
charming home, he was a man of culture, but he was
horribly depressed. What was the matter ? " Oh,
nothing is the matter," he said to me, " but I have a
feeling as if something is going to happen to me."
I laughed, Why yes, if we wait long enough some
thing is going to happen to us all. But oh, our God
has given to simple souls this marvellous gift to have
our fortune linked on to His, to know what happens
to us is part of His purpose in us, and that our whole
business is to trust Him to the end in simple reliance
on His infinite and eternal love. Now that is the
kind of feeling a man gets when his thought world is
subject unto Christ.
228
APPENDIX B
"J.B." as Lecturer
IGNATIUS LOYOLA
IN the later years of his ministry and his early years
as journalist, " J.B." was very popular as a lecturer.
There is a lecture on " Ignatius Loyola," which is a
very striking illustration alike of his eclecticism and
his intense interest in personality, especially religious
personality. The lecture must have occupied an
hour and a half in delivery. It is given here with
some curtailment and condensation.
Great men are the world s centres of force.
Coming in contact with them, even in thought, will
tend to give our own characters, unless they be of
the heaviest sort, something of the swing and
momentum of their own. I think it is quite time
that Protestants, in their search for spiritual heroes,
should cease to confine themselves to the too narrow
boundaries of their own communions. If we are
wise we shall feel that we cannot afford, for the sake
of a name or of differences of religious thought,
however serious, to lose the inspiration which comes
from the study of men whose purity and self-sacrifice
have made their characters illustrious. In this spirit
I paint the picture of Loyola.
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J. Brierley
He was born in 1491. It was a wonderful age to
be born in. Eight years earlier Martin Luther had
come into the world. One believed with all his soul
that he was commissioned of God to pull down a
great religious system, the other equally believed
that he was commissioned by the same Power to
build it up, and both under these opposing convictions
laboured with amazing ardour and wonderful success.
Loyola was a year old when Christopher Columbus
started on the voyage that was to issue in the opening
up of a new world. That same spirit of adventure
we may find in the explorations which Loyola
conducted through the regions of spiritual
mysticism.
The bluest blood of Spain flowed in his veins.
His father, Don Bertram, was Lord of Loyola and
Ognez in Guipuzcoa, a province of Biscay. His
mother, Donna Maria Salez di Baldi, was of equally
illustrious birth. War was then the one pursuit for
men of spirit. Loyola, as a young man, took his
place in the brilliant court of Charles V. Men said,
and the ladies were not behind in endorsing the state
ment, that the king s dominions did not furnish a
handsomer form, a higher spirit, a more aristocratic,
but withal a winsome bearing, than were combined
in the youthful Loyola. He fought bravely in the
wars, but it was other battles he was born to
fight. He was thirty years of age when, defending
Pampeluna against the French, he was struck by a
cannon shot which brought him down with a broken
leg. That cannon shot meant much for the religious
fortunes of the world. Loyola was carried wounded,
230
"J.B." as Lecturer
as it seemed nigh to death, to his father s castle of
Loyola. The doctor gave him up. Romish
biographers say that Peter appeared to him and
effected a cure. It seems odd, however, that the cure
was so imperfect that it left Loyola with one leg
shorter than the other, and a piece of bone protruding
from beneath the knee. It says much for the man s
fortitude that, in order to cure himself of the lameness,
he had the piece of bone sawn off and the short leg
stretched on the rack. He whiled away the hours
he lay in bed by reading the lives of the saints,
especially the doings of Francis and Dominic. These
lives stirred a new ambition in him. He would follow
in their steps. He would penetrate, as they had,
the deepest recesses of the valley of humiliation.
The Catholic biographers speak of a peculiar action
of Divine grace in leading to this decision. There
may have been an earthly motive. A skilful reader
of character could see that one of the deepest purposes
of that man s heart was a purpose to rule. He must
rule. He had been born of a race of rulers. He was
himself cut out and moulded for the ancestral trade.
Sway and Empire were written on his capacious
brow and were revealed in his flashing eyes.
But now we have our hero swung round to a
new life purpose. We have seen the process by
which the great change was effected; nothing
more nor less than the reading over a musty old book
and ruminating thereon. Mark particularly that
it was one book, or if a set of books, that they all
bore upon one topic. I cannot forbear observing
that if circulating libraries had existed in those days,
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J. Brierley
and had Ignatius followed his reading of the Lives
of the Saints by a selection of three volume-novels,
or of magazine literature and penny papers, in all
probability he would never have been heard of
by us. The chances are exceedingly remote that
he would have formed the subject of a lecture in
the nineteenth century as the founder of one
of the most powerful religious orders the world
has ever seen.
Let me stop here, then, and say one word about
this business of book reading. If a man wants
in reading simply to amuse himself, or to extend his
information, then, of course, Mr. Mudie s library
is the place for him to apply to the wider the range,
the greater the choice of subjects the better.
But if he reads that he may brace up his mind to
the height of some lofty purpose (and alas for the
man who has never done that in the course of his
life ! ) then, as I take it, the proper thing for him
is to be, as Loyola was at this time, a man of one
book, or at least of one kind of book. He may
afterwards, when the set of habits, to the making
of which he is now bending his powers, are formed
and crystallised into enduring hardness, read as
others read, for instruction or for amusement, and
so wander easily into all sorts of literary company ;
but to do this in the habit-forming time, when the
life purpose is as yet a mere pulp without bone,
a furrow just begun to be opened, is simply ruination.
If I hear that a man has been reading and re-reading
a great book, specially if it be great in heart power,
I shall look for something from him ; from the
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"J.B." as Lecturer
man who reads only third-rate books and reads these,
moreover, indiscriminately, in higgledy-piggledy
fashion, I expect nothing, and don t look to be
disappointed in that expectation.
We turn now again to Loyola. Having formed
his purpose he was not slow to put it into
execution. We see him one fine morning, having
got free from bed-chamber, physicians and boluses,
riding away on horseback from the castle of Loyola.
A few miles away from the city of Barcelona, on a
craggy wind-swept mountain height, there stands
the Benedictine monastery of Montserrat. That
is the place he is making for. Reaching it, after a
few adventures in the wood, he forthwith dedicates
himself solemnly to the service of God. There
is a church connected with the monastery and there
one night we find him alone. He takes off his
sword, and hanging it up on one of the pillars, by
that act bids farewell to his old calling of arms.
Through the long remaining hours of that night he
continues there alone, prostrate on the ground
before the altar, confessing his sins, recording his
vows. As the morning light streams through the
windows of the sacred pile, he rises from his vigil
and passes out. His new life has begun. Ignatius
Loyola, the gay and courtly knight, is a dream
of the past ; henceforth he is the devotee, the
beggar monk, the man of the wandering foot and
of the homeless head. He has begun now his period
of penance, that extraordinary process of self-
mortification by which he proposes to educate his
character for his future work. It is a long, painful,
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J. Brierley
but withal most singular story for any one who
chooses to go through it. At Montserrat, and after
wards at the neighbouring monastery of Manreza,
to which he removed, we find him going through
such feats of fasting, flagellations, vigils, as would
make an Indian fakeer mad with envy. There is
scarcely a thing in the shape of work or position
which you can conceive of as most repugnant to
flesh and blood but he embraced with eagerness.
Born to riches, he begged his bread from door to
door ; accustomed to every indulgence, we see
him now passing often a whole week without food,
and allowing himself no sleep except at intervals
when his wearied body sinks of itself exhausted
on bare ground ; surrounded once and ministered
to by troops of obsequious servants, he performs
now for others the most menial offices ; if in
hospital there is a case so loathsome that professional
nurses are driven away in disgust, Ignatius is there
to embrace the charge.
To all this, moreover, were added such daily
and nightly spiritual struggles, such agonies of
remorse for sin, such soul-racking longings for a
seemingly unattainable good, as made the outer
trials seem insignificant. Amongst the performances
of this period is to be numbered a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem. People nowadays make pilgrimages to
Jerusalem. But between the modern devotee who
with well-filled purse does the journey by first-class
railway carriage and a state cabin in a Peninsular
and Oriental steamer, having all trouble taken
out of his hands by his obliging courier, or even
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"J,B." as Lecturer
by the humbler process of taking a Cook s excursion
ticket between this modern specimen of a pilgrim
and Ignatius Loyola, travelling without a penny
in his purse, trusting entirely to providence and
the alms he might receive in the countries he
passed through, starved one day, struck down
with ague the next, and shipwrecked on the third
between these two, I say, there is a difference in point
of self-sacrifice and religious hardihood which I
hope we shall not be so unjust to our hero as to
overlook.
Thus much of Loyola s penances. Now, asks the
thoughtful inquirer, what do they all mean ? What
in the first place was their meaning to Loyola
himself ? Why these vigils, these fastings, these
self-immolations ! Will it be uncharitable if I
suggest, as a first reason, his vast ambition ? He had
read of Benedict, of Francis, to what lengths they had
gone in these directions. Loyola must not be behind.
Just as, had he kept to war as his calling, nothing
less than supreme honour and command would
have contented him, so in this vocation of saintship
he will have no second place. He must be able
to say to the saintly names of the past, " Ye have
watched and prayed and fasted, but I more ! "
If we are discriminating, however, in our
analysis, let us also be just. That also Ignatius
Loyola loathed himself because of past sin, that
he panted and thirsted for holiness, that his soul
yearned with inexpressible longing for complete
reconciliation and fellowship with his God, nothing
but the most blind prejudice could deny.
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J. Brierley
" But," says some sleek, well-fed representative
of modern comfort, " supposing his intentions
were mainly pure, what insane folly to suppose
that all this self-torture could in the least benefit
him ! " Well, granted that he was mistaken,
yet, my friend, so well-fed as you are, somehow
I think I should be inclined to respect you rather
more if I saw in you, which I do not, the possibility
of making a similar mistake. Ignatius Loyola
believed he had a soul which wanted saving and
purifying, and that belief, taken even with all
the mistakes it led him into, was to our thinking
something immeasurably nobler than that modern
creed which deifies the human stomach and which
teaches us that to keep this well nourished is the
whole duty of man. Ignatius Loyola made a mis
take in seeking perfection in this way. But after
all, is it not in this very business of mistake-making
that the very greatest men have often shown to
the best advantage? What is the history of
scientific progress but a history of mistakes, first
made, then found out, then made the guide-posts
to true knowledge ? No astronomer will laugh
as he thinks of Kepler spending month after month
in endeavours to strike out a theory which should
reconcile the real motion of the planets with their
movements as seen by the eye. But all the schemes
he thought of were mistakes, all except the last.
But he had never got to that last, to the right one,
viz., to that one which established for ever his fame
and widened so vastly the horizon of human
knowledge, had he not gone through all that
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"J.B." as Lecturer
blundering before. If we do not laugh at Kepler,
the daring explorer of the heavens, shall we
laugh at Loyola for seeking by the same process
of experiment and mistake-making to explore the
mysteries of his own soul, and to solve the
problems connected with the attainment of spiritual
perfection ?
We shall be still less inclined to laugh at these
mortifications when we think of the results he
got out of them. One, not the least notable, was
this very belief that he had been mistaken. After
having starved and beaten himself almost to death,
he got out of it all this conclusion, which most of
us will think a wise one, that starving and beating,
the whole process in fact of riding rough-shod
over the bodily nature, is not the royal road into
God s Kingdom far otherwise.
That teaching, gained from experience, he gave
to his followers, and to this day the Jesuits are
distinguished from other Roman Catholic religious
orders by the omission among them of fasting
and flagellation as necessary parts of their discipline.
But a perhaps more momentous consequence of
this ascetic retirement was the production of a
book, his sole literary performance, which has
produced a prodigious effect in the direction its
author intended, which bears on every page the
impress of his genius, and also of the profound
experiences through which he himself had gone.
This is the far famed "Book of the Exercises."
And what, some ask, is the book about ? In brief,
it may be described as a sort of patent conversion
237
M
J. Brierley
machine. Having himself gone through every
phase of feeling between spiritual despair and
triumph, and having watched with the eye of a
philosopher each phase as he passed through it,
and noted the causes which seemed to produce
it, he has in this extraordinary book put down
the results of his experience as a guide for others.
It gives directions for a training of forty days
in duration, which are to be passed in seclusion
from the world and each of which is to be occupied
with the subjects of contemplation which the
book enjoins. The topics of the first week are all
designed for bringing the disciple into a state of
contrition for and horror of his past sins. In the
second week he is led forward to making the great
choice of his heavenly and earthly calling wherein
he makes election of the Son of Man for his leader,
and of that sphere in the world where he can best
serve Him. In the third week the exercises are
for the confirming him in his resolve by a view of
the terrors of hell from which Christ came to
deliver man, and the fourth a view of the supernal
glories to which He will elevate His faithful ones.
That is the idea and outline of the work. You
see the soldier-born saint in it all through, a man
who scorns to put pen to paper merely to amuse or
even to instruct, who aims at nought less by his
words than to put a mark on his readers which shall
last through this life, and the after life as well.
Certainly it was a wonderful idea. We have heard
of calculating machines and other inventions equally
curious but here is a machine which may fairly
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"J.B." as Lecturer
claim to be quite unique, one for converting men
wholesale ; a piece of mechanism forty days long
into one end of which a man goes, and though
he may be a roue, a worldling, a buffoon, yet is
warranted to come out at the other a devoted
" religious " and on the way to becoming a full
blown saint. A singular conception, but perhaps
what is more singular, is the success with which
it has worked. Every Jesuit past and present
has gone through that forty days process. If
you ask why it is they are so much alike in aim
and method, the answer is in Loyola and his forty
days automatic converting machine, by which their
raw and unformed human nature has been moulded
into the shape he wanted.
Another scene of his life now opens. He has
striven in such wise as few would attempt to educate
his soul. But that he finds does not complete his
preparation for the work he would do in the world.
He must now educate his mind. The son of a noble,
he had been trained as such were in those days.
That training, whatever it was, did not include
solid learning. Knowledge was then, in Spain at
least, the monopoly of the clergy. It was their
business to be knowing and the business of nobody
else. So that Ignatius Loyola, turned from warrior
into saint, finds that he is a very ignorant saint,
a state of things which will not fit in at all with
his present designs. Now with him to see the
need of a thing was to will it and to will it was to
perform it. So the next thing we see is the saint
at school. He goes about the business in a charac-
239
J. Brierley
teristic way. He knows nothing. He will
begin then with those who know nothing. In a
boys school at Barcelona behold him, then, on
a form with a lot of young lads who gaze wonder-
ingly at their strange associate meekly working
at his Latin grammar, getting initiated into the
mysteries of qui, qua, quod, of verbs and nouns,
conjugations and declensions. Beginning thus
humbly, he works his way with indomitable per
severance till school is exchanged for the University,
and we find him treading successively the aca
demic halls of Alcala, of Salamanca and finally
of Paris. Now the fact that Loyola at so advanced
an age (for he was over thirty when he began Latin
at the boys school), a time when most men s habits
of mind are irrevocably fixed, an age when men
who aspire to learning are supposed not only to
have laid the deep foundations but to have reared
much of the superstructure, could set himself thus
determinedly and hopefully to make up for lost
ground, and not only to start, but patiently and
continually to plod forward till success was
gained, shows in itself to the discerning eye a man
of no common stuff. What was it sustained him
in the drudgery ? The conviction, born of that
clear common sense of his which in his wildest
extravagances never deserted him the conviction
that in order to gain anything like lasting influence
over men s minds there needs, as an indispensable
qualification, an intellect which shall be strong and
cultivated. His visions, his raptures, his enthu
siasm, his intense devotion he feels will do little
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"J.B." as Lecturer
to accomplish his purpose unless backed up by
a tough and well-fed brain.
The religious mind will easily understand one
form of trial Loyola had to contend with while
pursuing these dry studies ; the trial arising from
the very devoutness of his mind. Going over his
Latin grammar was at first hard work for his head,
but it was far harder for his heart. This attending
to subjects which were merely secular seemed,
in comparison with that spiritual communion, that
lifting up of the soul to the highest regions of
devotion, to which he had now been so long
accustomed, like being turned out of paradise
into the wilderness. It seemed to be taking him
away from God. But he did not fling it aside.
Instead he found out there was such a thing as,
to put it in his own words, going away from God
for God, i.e., for God s sake, and losing the present
comfort of communion with Him for the sake of
His greater glory. The principle he here lays down
is one which all devout men need well to ponder.
A child may be so fond of his mother as to hate
being out of her sight. But the mother knows
that a fondness of that kind will be no good to him
or her. He must by and by show his love and
she must show hers by separation. He will find
he can only do his highest duty to her by performing
tasks which at times will not only bring bodily
separation, but even shut out the thought of her
from his mind. Precisely so is it with our relations
with our Father in Heaven. If we want to serve
God eminently there will have to be processes
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J. Brierley
not simply of devotion and communion, when
the soul mounts on eagle wing into the sapphire
heaven, but of study and thought when we drag
ourselves over subjects which at first sight (but
at first sight only) seem to have nought of God or
heaven in them.
We left Loyola at his studies. It was in 1528,
and when in his thirty-ninth year, that, leaving
the University of Salamanca, he entered that of
Paris, which at that time was the European centre
of intellectual light. Most momentous in his life
story was that sojourn at the French capital. It
was to him what Oxford was to Wesley. For as
it was in our English seat of learning that the founder
of Methodism gathered his first associates and
made of them the nucleus of his Society, so was it at
Paris and amongst his fellow students that Loyola
picked the men whom we now recognise as the germ
of his new institution, the beginners proper of Jesuit
ism. The idea of forming a new religious order had
long been cherished in the time of his solitude,
but it had now gathered shape and was ripe, in
fact, for being put into action. Some mighty
names here emerge into view as his associates.
Who that knows ought of Church history has not
heard of Faber, of Salmeron, of Laynez, of Xavier ?
These were all Paris students and Loyola s first
spiritual conquests. It is deeply interesting the
way in which he got hold of and moulded these
men. Like Napoleon Bonaparte, a conqueror in
another region, he had that attribute of greatness,
the power of discerning greatness in others, and
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"J.B." as Lecturer
of drawing the possessors of it to himself. What
Ney and Murat and Massena were to Napoleon,
men whose powers his own eye saw and whose
genius, by the attractive force of his own greater
genius, he won over to himself, so Laynez and
Xavier and Faber were to Loyola. He saw in them
the faculty divine and that faculty must be his,
first to mould and then to use. Indeed, they were
worth securing, these young men. Methinks had
Loyola been able to peer into the future and see
the career of these three, what stupendous engines
they were to develop into for moving the world,
how honestly they were to yield up all their magni
ficent endowments of mind and heart to the service
of him, their leader, what successes they were to
achieve, and what imperishable honours were to
gather about their names, could he have seen all
these he would have laboured, if it were possible,
with an even greater ardour for their conquest,
and when that was achieved have exulted over
it with a yet deeper joy. Who were these young
students he had now won to his side ? One of them
I have said was James Laynez. That you may
know something of the powers that lay in him
I sketch a scene which lies some twenty years further
on in our story. We are in the cathedral of Trent.
The historic pile is crowded with one of the most
remarkable assemblies Europe has seen for ages.
Princes, ambassadors, papal legates, cardinals,
theologians, the representatives of nearly all the
varieties of human power and greatness, are there.
The scene we look on is none other than the far-
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J. Brierley
famed Council of Trent, that assembly which Rome
has just summoned to devise measures for beating
back the rising tide of Protestantism, and to give
to Catholic Christendom a revised creed and code
of laws. But see, a great excitement has come
all at once over the crowd. Princes and cardinals
are rising from their stalls and turning without
regard to dignity down the aisles towards a distant
corner of the building ; the whole audience follows
suit. Precedence and etiquette give way to a
scramble for places. What does it all mean ?
Only that in that far off corner a man has risen
and is about to speak. He is spare, his voice is
thin, and his garments contrast strangely in their
meanness with the gorgeous habiliments of his
audience. But he speaks and every one crowds
up a little closer. The stream of eloquence has
begun to flow and for two hours it keeps on flowing.
All are silent, rapt in attention and admiration as
on the profoundest subjects argument follows argu
ment, clothed in transparent language and delivered
with the easy grace of one who is perfect master
of his ground. If you would know the man who
could win such a triumph in such a place it is Laynez.
He has gone there as representative of his master
Loyola and also, higher honour still some would
think (though perhaps not he), of the Pope himself,
and has in his previous utterances in the Council,
though a comparatively young man, shown such
boundless learning, such powers of argumentation,
such subtlety and far-seeingness as have secured
him the deep homage of the assembly, and the
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"J.B." as Lecturer
power to sway it in almost any direction he chooses.
When you speak of the theologians of the fifteenth
century, and name Calvin and Zwingli and
Beza, do not forget that on the other side stands
one who in scholarship and varied powers is every
way their match, and that is Laynez. He it was
who gave the Jesuits their distinctive theology.
As a body they have always been known as the
champions of free will as opposed to the pre
destination tenets of the Dominicans and the
Jansenists. That they are and have always
been so is owing almost entirely to the influence
of Laynez. You will agree now, I think, that to get
hold of a youth with such promise in him was no
bad day s work for our Paris student.
But there is another whom Loyola has won
over to join that small circle, whose name blazes
with a glory more illustrious even than that of
Laynez. I mean Francis Xavier. I must needs
tell you something of him also. Born of a noble
Spanish family, which was much reduced in cir
cumstances, young Xavier had come to Paris for an
education with a view of afterwards making his
own fortune in the world. Handsome, fascinating
in manners, and with brilliant talents, he soon
gained name and popularity. Having won his
degree he soon after becomes a teacher where he
before had been learner, and we find him occupying
with much success the Chair of Philosophy at the
University. Loyola, while yet a student himself, fixed
his eye on him, saw his great qualities and marked
him for his own. With ceaseless pertinacity
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J. Brierley
he clings to him, helping him in straits, enduring
his raillery, for Xavier met at first his religious
exhortations with unmeasured ridicule, haunting
him ever with this question on his lips, "What
shall it profit you, Xavier, if you gain the whole
world and lose your own soul ? " At length the
brilliant philosophy professor, strong in himself,
bows to the fascination of one stronger than he,
and after going through the preparatory discipline
of the forty days spiritual exercises enters himself
as one of the Society. So Loyola, after almost
infinite pains, has secured this man, one convert.
One! How small a result that would look on a
table of religious statistics ! Only one, but the
gaining of that single man was one of the most
important events of the whole fifteenth century.
After the Society was fully established and recognised
the lot fell on Xavier to represent Jesuitism in the
mission field, and no story of romance that ever I
read comes anywhere near, for high adventure,
for daring, for endurance, the record of that man s
missionary life. Breaking from all the ties which
to most men make life sweet, he sailed away alone,
without money, without any visible provision for
his wants, to the very ends of the earth where,
for ten wondrous years, we see him now traversing
afoot the burning and at this time unexplored plains
of India, again alone in the heart of Japan, first
of Europeans who had penetrated there, again
crossing stormy Eastern seas in a frail bark with
pirates for his companions, now disputing with
subtle philosophers, here in a Japanese court,
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"J.B." as Lecturer
at the risk of his life denouncing its idolatry and
immorality, again in a Portuguese settlement excit
ing frantic opposition by his stern rebukes of their
godlessness, and then when, by his matchless patience
and devotion, he has won them to an admiration
as great as was their former hatred, fleeing from
their plaudits to break up new ground amongst
fresh peoples, and so encounter again the scorn
and hardships without which it seemed he could
not live. We are Protestants by birth and convic
tion and Xavier was a Roman Catholic : he would
have called us heretics and we if we had got hot
with theological controversy would perhaps be
inclined to fling names almost as hard at him, but
looking away from his opinions to his life and
spirit, I find no man who comes nearer to eclipsing
the Apostle Paul himself, and no man certainly
who makes the modern efforts at missionising
look more puny. In those ten years he had admitted
into the pale of Christendom 200,000 converts
and had traversed oceans, islands, continents,
through a track equal to more than twice the circum
ference of our globe. The people over there, both
settlers and natives, begin to think him a magician,
and well they might. It has been well said, there
is at least one well-authenticated miracle in Xavier s
story. It is that any mortal man should have
sustained such toils as he did and have sustained
them too, not merely with composure, but as if in
obedience to some indestructible exigency of his
nature. Such then was the second of the circle
Loyola had at Paris gathered round him. I cannot
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J. Brierley
stay to describe the others, further than that the
names of Peter Faber, of Salmeron, of Rodriguez
and Bobadilla, the four who with Xavier and Laynez
formed the Society at its commencement, were
of the first rank in ability and manifested their
leader s prescience by their after achievements.
Ignatius had now fairly made a beginning. He
had conquered himself. He had won to his views
a band of men small in numbers but every one fit
for a world conqueror s lieutenant. The next busi
ness was to get his idea into more definite shape
and to have the Society formally established..
They determined to begin by taking together
a solemn vow which should at once define their
work and tie them to it with the most sacred bonds.
So on the i5th August, 1534, a date ever afterwards
held memorable with the Jesuits, just as the dawn
was springing in the East, there might be seen emerg
ing from one of the gates of Paris a little band of
men who march in silent procession towards the
hill of Montmartre which lies a little distance
in front. We recognise the leader by his halting
gait, and by that imperial countenance which
tradition has universally given to Loyola. At the
summit of that hill there are some steps leading
down into the crypt of St. Denis, so named because
Denis, the apostle and patron saint of France, is
said there to have suffered martyrdom. In
this crypt our little company has assembled and,
having received the communion from Faber, who
is now in priest s orders, they proceed to take the
great oath which is to bind their lives. Each in
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"J.B." as Lecturer
his turn, with a solemnity which indexed the depth
of their resolve, repeats the words of that awful
vow. It was a scene at which the nations might
have trembled. Never, it has been truly said,
have human lips pronounced a vow more religiously
observed or pregnant with results more momentous.
What they vowed was this : (i) That they would
live unmarried. (2) That they would continue
in perpetual poverty. (3) That they would be
obedient to their ecclesiastical superiors, and (4)
this being the vow special and distinguishing, that
on finishing their studies they would proceed to
Venice with a view of sailing to Palestine to convert
the infidels, or supposing it proved impossible to
go to Palestine, they would go to Rome and offer
themselves in absolute obedience to the Pope, for
him to send them wherever he chose or on what
soever errand. These vows were, as I have said,
taken in 1534. It was late in 1536 that, having
completed their studies, they proceeded to carry
out the last and special part of the compact. They
set out for Venice on foot, and on ariving there,
finding the Palestine scheme for the present im
practicable, their leader pushed on to Rome to lay
his plan before the Pope. To carry his point
at Rome was one of the hardest struggles of his
life. When he arrived there first, Paul III. was
out of the way on a journey. Of the cardinals
whose interest Loyola sought most pooh-poohed
the whole thing. Caraffa, the Pope s principal
adviser, though an earnest man, was deeply preju
diced against anything new, and had a scent of
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J. Brierley
preternatural keenness for heresy. So for a time the
saint made no way at head-quarters. The utmost
he could do was to gain permission for himself
and associates to preach and work amongst the
poor in Rome. But at last, after three years of
negotiations, entreaties, rebuffs, hopings against
hope, he prevailed. The Pope, whose spiritual
dominions were being broken in upon in every
direction by the Reformers, saw at last that in so
dire an extremity he could not afford to throw
away such an offer as these men were making him.
They wanted him only to speak the word, to give
his sanction to their idea, and they would be his
utterly and for ever to fight the battles of Peter
against heathen and Protestant, against earth and
hell. The word was given and in 1540, six years
after the scene at Montmartre, the little company
was formally recognised by a Papal Bull and the
Society of Jesus, as they called themselves, was
for good or ill fairly started in the world. Now
Protestants, all ye who have lifted your hands
against the might of Rome, beware! Be sure the
foundations on which you rest are solid rock,
for an assault is about to be made, against which
anything less enduring than the everlasting
granite will crumble down. Look well to your
weapons, make sure they are of the true temper,
and that they rust not in their scabbards, for
here are foemen everyway worthy of your steeL
To be sure, your new foes are a mere handful, there
are only ten of them, but Leonidas with his invin
cible three hundred at Thermopylae, Cortes conquering
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"J.B." as Lecturer
an empire with an army numbering only a third of
an English regiment, have proved what a few
mighty souls can do against multitudes who are not
mighty, and these ten who go out against you
have weapons at their command more potent
far than those which the heroes of Grecian story
or they who conquered in the Mexican plains
dreamt of; for they have power, these ten, not
only to dare and endure, but to think, to speak,
to touch all the springs of influence, to sway the
men high placed in the world, in whose hands are
the souls and bodies of millions. Beware again,
say I. A stone has been cut out of the mountains
and in this 1540 year it is set agoing ; look how it
bounds and plunges, how it gathers size in its
flight, and deadlier velocity at every moment.
I tremble as I look at the Protestant citadel down
there in the valley against which the mountain-
born mass comes thundering ever nearer, I tremble
till I think of what the citadel is made and on what
foundation it rests !
The Jesuit Society is started, and now they must
have a leader, a constitution and a code of laws.
One of their number, chosen of themselves, must
.step from the ranks and rule. Who shall it be ?
If you have followed me in my story of the previous
progress of the movement you, I suppose, will
say without hesitation, " Ignatius, of course."
Already master de facto, it is the only natural order
to make him master de jure. So we should think,
and so thought all the Society except Loyola him
self. Unanimously elected, he represented himself
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J. Brierley
as astonished and grieved at the decision, and at
first absolutely refused the post. But a fresh vote
of the Society bringing the same result, he at length
with every sign of reluctance submitted, and
mounted the seat of power with the title of General.
It is natural that Loyola s Catholic biographers
should devoutly believe that when he said he didn t
want to rule he really meant it. But it is just
as natural that his Protestant critics should believe
no such thing. Certainly it is something to swallow
when we are told that a man born for sway as he
was, after having with immense patience and out
of a long cherished scheme created this Society,
should really prefer that now its whole future be
taken out of his hands. We do not see quite why
he should have been at such trouble to make the
machine if it were not to do his work. It looks
very much as if the General of the Jesuits was
allowing himself to be a little Jesuitical here, that he
was indulging in a little by-play, by way of testing
to the full the character of his associates and their
feeling towards himself. If you won t accept
that explanation here is another ready-made for
you by a good Catholic, that the motives of saints
are often far too deep for ordinary and profane
mortals to understand. However, nolens volens,
whether he likes it or not, General he is, and he
speedily shows that the office is not going in his
hands to be a sinecure.
His business now is to settle clearly and once
for all the principles of the Society, and the way it
is to carry them out. This he does in two ways.
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"J.B." as Lecturer
One is by writing the so-called Constitutions,
i.e., the Jesuit code of laws, the other way, the
example he himself sets. Studying the Order from
these two positions, we get some idea of what
Ignatius meant it to be and do. The key note
of the whole lies in the word obedience. It is that
fourth vow in which the professed Jesuit offers
himself absolutely to the service of the Pope, to
be sent anywhere and on any errand at his bidding,
that the system is marked from all the other religious
Orders. It was no new thing in the Catholic Church
for men to vow celibacy and poverty and the
ordinary ecclesiastical obedience. But the followers
of Benedict and Dominic, the regular monks,
that is, had the privilege within certain limits
of " calling their souls their own." But this the
Jesuit by his vow utterly disclaimed. Absolute,
unhesitating, unquestioning obedience to the will
of his General was with Loyola the cardinal virtue.
No man could enter the Society who was not pre
pared for that supreme act of self-renunciation.
As the ball which rolls in the direction you push
it, as the violin passive in the hands of the musician,
so is the Jesuit to the will of his superior. The
whole company was to be one machine, moved by
the General at his absolute pleasure, while he
in his turn was to be moved in the same way by
the Pope. It is as if the General were the Jesuit s
Christ and the Pope his God. Here is an illustration
of his way of dealing. There are some schools
and colleges to be opened in Sicily, and Ignatius
is applied to to send some Jesuit fathers as teachers.
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IT
J. Brierley
He calls his Society (which by the way had now
many additions to its ranks) and catechises them
thus : " Are you whom I shall send to Sicily quite
as ready not to go as to go ? If you go, are you
as willing to teach one thing as another, to teach
what you best know, or what you know imperfectly,
or not to teach at all ? Are you as ready if need
be to do domestic service in the kitchen, as to
impart learning in the college ? " And not till
their replies, which came without any hesitation,
had satisfied him that these men, many of whom
were fit to teach in any European university,
were just as willing to sweep the kitchen as to lecture
on mathemathics, that they had in fact no will
but to obey, no desire but to serve, not till then
was it that he sent them out to their work.
It is a phenomenon worth, I think, a moment s
study, how this man, by a word or a look, could
rule men like this. How was it that men obeyed
Ignatius so utterly ? I say mainly because they could
not help themselves. There is a law governing
the sons of men stronger than all political systems,
a law which is seen under republics as well as
despotisms, a law which laughs to scorn our babble
about human equality, this, viz., that the man
who is strongest in will and mind shall have sway
over the less strong. He will get it if not in one
way then in another. Says one stubborn of nature,
listening to this doctrine, " Pooh, no use any one
trying that on me ; I would yield to nobody s
dictation." Very well, my friend, but let the
strong man come, and we hold you will be ruled
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"J.B." as Lecturer
by him nevertheless. You are impregnable on
one side of your nature. He only approaches you
on another side. You will not be dictated to,
but you will be argued with that, then, is where
he will have you ; quite independent of your will
about the matter there will grow up in you a
reverence for a reasoning power which is greater
than your own. So let such a man appear on the
scene of life, a man who is at once inflexible in
purpose, who has great intellect to conceive and
great enthusiasm to carry out the conception,
and ordinary men may as soon talk of resisting
his will as a stone flung into the air might talk
of resisting the attraction of the earth.
I go further, men will not only acquiesce but
as a rule rejoice in their servitude to such an one.
People talk sometimes about the misery of having
to bear a yoke which has been put upon them
from without. But suppose you take off all yokes
from their shoulders, absolve them for a while
from all the ties which bind them to their leaders ;
what will happen ? This. They will find that, of
all burdens, the burden of being free, that is of
being spiritually and intellectually on their own hook,
of being left to pick out their own way through
these difficult regions, is the heaviest, and they will
hasten, as did the Israelites of old, to look out some
Saul, some one a little taller than themselves, and
put him in front. Ever since the beginning of the
world the game of " follow my leader " has been
in vogue, and I expect men will go on playing it
till we have a new edition of human nature. It
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J. Brierley
was then, I take it, mainly because Ignatius
Loyola belonged to this rank of men, the kings
who rule by a true jus divinum, that men obeyed
him so.
If anything needs be added to this explanation
of his power, it is that he was not a commander
simply but a leader, between which words there
is a difference. What he said to his followers
was not go but come. Into no region of devotion
or of awful sacrifice did he invite his Society, but
he had been there himself, and they knew it. Did
he order a man to start without a shilling in his
pocket on a journey to the ends of the earth ? The
man went because he was sure that he, who gave
the word of command, was ready if need were to
take himself that very journey and in that very
shillingless condition.
We begin now to see what this Jesuit Society
was. A company of able and determined men
who, just at the time when Protestantism was making
its fiercest onslaughts on the Papacy, had banded
themselves together for the defence of that Papacy,
who to this end had given themselves in utter
obedience to their General and the Pope, themselves
with all their talents, time, energy, for whatever
service might be allotted them. I must now add
something about the ways in which they sought
to gain the ends they had before them.
I might put this in brief by saying there was no
method by which the human heart and intellect
could be influenced which they did not use. They
caught men as individuals by personal solicitation,
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"J.B." as Lecturer
they reached them in the mass by preaching, they
seized the opportunities which suffering gave them
by diligent attendance at hospitals and infirmaries,
and above all they laid skilful hand on that
great engine whose power we are just beginning to
understand, education.
Let me particularise two of these. Preaching,
I have said, was one of their working tools. Is the
pulpit a worn-out piece of Church furniture ? So
think some in the present day. So did not think
Ignatius. He preached and his associates preached,
and that on all sorts of occasions and in all sorts of
places. And in their preaching they had one
signal advantage over many who in the present
day aspire, as the Scotch say, to wag their pow
in a pulpit. They were dead in earnest. They
went at their work as if they meant it. It was
a rule with them that they should think only of
the effect to be produced, the end to be gained,
caring nothing for either applause or criticism.
You will agree with me perhaps that here at least
is one Jesuit rule which might with advantage
be painted up at the back of many a Protestant
pulpit.
But the sway of the Jesuits would never have
attained that far-reaching character which soon
belonged to it, if they had confined their efforts
to pulpit declamation, however earnest and im
passioned. Loyola went to the root of the matter
when he declared that his Society should be above
all things else a great teaching power. Europe
was just now waking to a sense of the value of
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J. Brierley
knowledge. One of the most damning accusa
tions which Protestants were making against Rome
was that for her own purposes she had kept men in j
ignorance. " You have kept us in darkness because
you were afraid of the light," said they, and to the
cry Rome found it hard at first to find an answer.
But in Ignatius the Papacy had a champion who
saw everything and who seemed able to provide
for everything. In his bold soldier s fashion hej
takes up the gage thrown down by the Protestants.
" Knowledge is against us and on the side of you
Protestants, is it ? " said he. " Then we will
make you see, and make Europe see, that Rome is
not only friendly to knowledge, but the dispenser
of it, that if the nations want to be taught, she keeps
the best school." The word went forth and speedily
the nations saw rising in their midst schools under
Jesuit superintendence, colleges with Jesuit teachers,
and the national universities with Jesuits in their
professorial chairs. Specially was it so in Italy,
Germany, Spain and Portugal. Of course, this
could not have been done had the members of this
Society been other than extraordinary men.
George III. sat on the English throne because
his father sat there before him, and had he been
a bigger fool than he really was that would have
been no flaw in his title. But by no such rule
could a man sit as a professor of mathematics in a
college. For that, he must be a mathematician.
It was not enough for Loyola to will to possess
the keys of knowledge in the nations. He must
have men about him able dexterously to finger
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"J.B." as Lecturer
them. But here is the beauty of it. The men
he needed he had in numbers about him. In the
ranks of those who called him General he had masters
in art, science, theology, classical learning. There
were painters, poets, astronomers; heraldry owes to
them its language of signs; they had writers on the
art of military defence ; and the student who wishes
to master political science will turn to Jesuit works
amongst others as authorities. Fortunate Loyola !
Wellington would have fared badly at Waterloo,
I fancy, with all his generalship, if the material
he had to work on had been anything worse than the
solid British stuff it was, and you, Loyola, would have
cut a far less figure in history had not your plans
been in the hands of men worthy of them.
But give him his due even here. We call a man
a good workman not only because he knows well how
to use his tools, but because he knows a good tool
when he sees it. Loyola went beyond that, though.
He could see the material out of which a good
instrument could be made when that material
was all in the rough, and then went and made it.
It is curious to watch him going about the world in
this process of picking out fit instruments. He would
take the points of a man in a flash of the eye
and know at that moment whether he was of the
kind he wanted. Numbers of candidates offer them
selves, learned many of them, pure, wealthy, but
some one thing they lack, and then, spite of tears
and entreaties, back they must go. Serve God
and the Church in such ways as you can," was
his verdict, "but you are not called to be Jesuits."
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J. Brierley
On the other hand, when he saw his man, whoever
he might be, however hopeless the conquest seemed,
he would rarely or never leave him till secured.
Extraordinary stories of these captures are told.
There is a professor at Paris, with great qualities,
but worldly. His great passion is billiards. Loyola
visits him one day and finds him, cue in hand,
at his favourite game. He is jovially invited to
play. He will on these conditions, that the winner
shall fix the pursuits of the loser for the forty follow
ing days. Good. And the game is began. The
saint beats the professor and puts him through
the forty days spiritual exercises we spoke of and
the worldling is gained to Jesuitism.
Funny story that, but a score of similar ones
might be added. The care he himself showed in
selecting men he sought, by means of rules, to be
continued always in the Society. None were to
be admitted without some remarkable endow
ments of intellect and piety, plus good health,
an agreeable person and attractive manners.
If of high birth, as the majority of the early
members were, so much the better. Like Bona
parte s imperial guard, like the Theban band of
Epaminondas, every soldier was to be a veteran.
And now I have to make a statement about Loyola
which may be of special interest to the lady portion
of my audience, but which at the same time I
scarcely know how they will receive, whether as
a compliment or the reverse. He has already
shown himself an almost resistless mover of men.
His life history shows one occasion when he was
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"J.B." as Lecturer
called to try his power on women. And I have
to say that this was about the one experiment
in his life in which he failed. You have heard of
Jesuits, but you never, I suppose, heard of Jesuit-
esses. There are none. But it looked at one
time very much as if there were to be some. Thus
did it happen. Donna Isabella Rosella, a devout
lady of Barcelona, who had known Loyola when
a scholar there, having heard of the noise he was
making in Rome, took it one day into her pious head
to go and pay her respects to him. Some other
ladies, catching the same enthusiasm, determine
to accompany her, so that by and by we behold
a convoy of fair devotees bearing down full sail
on the hapless General. Holding the advanced
doctrine that what is good for the souls of men is
good for the souls of women also, they mean to be
put through the Jesuit initiatory discipline, and
then live a religious life under Loyola s direction.
Now whether the General was or was not a believer
in the ungallant dictum that, of all the mischief
going in the world, lovely woman is at the bottom,
I cannot say, but I know this : the saint hummed
and ha d at the proposal, shook his head and
finally came out with a point-blank refusal.
Now when Ignatius Loyola said No, ordinary
people, yea and extraordinary ones too, usually
considered it quite a waste of time to get it changed
into Yes. But he was fighting now with women,
and are not they born into the world for the special
purpose of leading men captive, and is this man
going to make an exception of himself to that
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J. Brierley
estimable law ? " Not if we know it," said Donna
Isabella and her fair companions. Now just see
the artfulness of them. They knew the General,
invincible everywhere else, had, like Achilles,
one attackable point and that was in his vow of
obedience to the Pope. Get the Holy Father on their
side and all will be well. To him they go. His
Holiness melts into speedy acquiescence and orders
the Jesuit General to take the suppliants under
his charge. Ignatius groaned but obeyed. Poor
man ! His worst forebodings were soon realised.
Not many days passed before troubles began.
There were complaints from some both deep and
loud about their lodgings, and a host of other things;
then others of the sisters had extraordinarily sensitive
consciences which needed an immense amount
of direction and sympathy ; others were blessed
with a theologically inquisitive turn of mind,
which produced every day showers of fresh questions
which " would the General be good enough to answer
for them ? " Even the saint s patience gives way
at last. " It costs me more labour," says he,
" to direct a handful of women than to keep the
whole Company in order from the Netherlands to
India." His mind is made up. To the Pope
he goes one day and tells him his doleful tale. The
work did not lie in the scope of his calling, nothing
but mischief would come of the connection. The
Pope yields to this masculine counterblast as he
had before yielded to the ladies, and Loyola comes
back triumphant with a special papal brief by
which the Jesuit Society is for ever exempted from
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"J.B." as Lecturer
the management of women. Whether this failure
of the first and last negotiation for a union between
the Jesuits and the feminine portion of the Catholic
world was a good thing or a bad thing for the world,
or for the Jesuits, or for the ladies themselves, is a
question I am not going to answer, but prefer
rather to leave as one of the problems arising out
of this lecture for you to discuss at your leisure.
The narrative part of this sketch must now
come to a close. It was impossible in one lecture
to do more than to trace the rise of this Society,
for when once started its history branches off
into a dozen different channels, to track each of which
would require a volume. Ignatius lived sixteen
years after his Order was recognised by the Pope,
but to get a fair idea of what he and his associates
had been doing in that time you will have to acquaint
yourselves with the histories of Italy, Germany,
France Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Great
Britain, and the far settlements of the New World,
for in all these lands were they busy, and into the
history of them all had they by this time inextric
ably woven themselves. Before those years had
come to an end we find them pouring their counsels
into the ears of the greatest princes, and pulling
the wires of half the Cabinets in Europe. Loyola
had seen his missionaries traverse every country
of the then known world, and Europe, Asia, Africa
and America were to him simply an aggregation
of Jesuit provinces. At the centre of this vast
organisation he himself sat, the heart and moving
principle of it all, leading in his house at Rome
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an outwardly simple and unostentations life,
relieving beggars, nursing sick people, taking his
turn at preaching and mass-saying, giving no
outward sign that he was a potentate wielding a
power more absolute and extensive than perhaps
had ever been known in this earth before.
But the world has one conqueror to whom sooner
or later even an Ignatius must bow. Sixteen years
has he been General and then in 1556 the end
comes. Slow fever aggravated by a cold caught in
a damp house brought him down. He knew death
was close on him, and so summoning what of his
followers were within reach he gave them his last
counsels. It is July 3oth. All through the long
summer night he lies in his narrow bed waiting
for the great change. In the morning it comes.
There is a fluttering of the pulse, a flickering smile
crossing the upturned face, a whispered utterance
of the name of Him whom Protestant and Catholic
know as the Saviour, and then the light which for
sixty-five years had burned in those lustrous eyes
fades out of them, and his weeping followers know
that their strong leader, he who with iron grip had
put his hand on the hearts of men and on the
destinies of nations, is no more.
And now, out of all this, some vast questions
arise, worthy of far more elaborate and carefully
considered answers than we are able to give. What
ought our verdict as Protestant Christians to be
on such a man as this ? What is the nature of
the influence he exerted on the nations and on
the Church ? Is the Society he founded to be
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"J.B." as Lecturer
considered an unmitigated blessing, or an unmiti
gated curse, or neither of these ? With some these
questions would meet with a speedy, and sweeping,
answer, an answer which would bury the whole Society,
its founder, its agencies, its work, under a lava-
stream of fiery denunciation. But that is just
what a man who has informed himself of all the
facts, and who wishes to be taught by the facts
and not by his prejudices, finds himself unable to
do. In the Society whose origin and leader we have
sketched he sees a tangled web of good and evil.
If he wants to escape all trouble in his task of
summing up and verdict-giving he will, if he be
a Romanist, cover the whole with one easily uttered
word, and say " Good all of it ; " if Protestant,
by another word equally short and easy of utter
ance, "Bad all of it." How much simpler this
method than that of drawing from that web patiently
the tangled skeins, the threads white and black,
the putting them together in their separate places,
the weighing and measuring them, and then strik
ing the final balance ! No wonder bigotry is so often
popular. To be a bigot is uncommonly easy,
while to be impartial and give every man his due
means hard work. For myself I trust that in the
final estimate of Loyola and his work with which
I bring this lecture to a close, I shall attain what
certainly I have sought, discrimination and fairness.
Speaking for myself first, you will have been
able to gather from what I have already said a good
many of the elements out of which you may suppose
I should construct my estimate. There is no need,
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surely, for enlarging here on the grounds of his
title to greatness. If my picture of the man has
not already impressed you with the notion of one
who, in the qualities which fit for rule, towered
head and shoulders above his fellows, I must have
been a very indifferent painter. However we
may disagree with the Jesuits, we shall be disposed,
without arguing the question, to fall in with that
estimate of their master which they have put as
an epitaph on his tomb : " Whoever thou mayest
be who hast portrayed to thine own imagination
Pompey or Caesar or Alexander, open thine eyes
to the truth, and let this marble teach thee how
much greater a conqueror than they was Ignatius."
In spite of all they have done, the Jesuits are
a hated Society. They were hated yesterday and
they are hated to-day. There must be some reasons,
and good reasons, for a feeling so deep and wide
spread. What are they ? The answer does not
lie far off. Any clear-sighted man looking at the
very structure of the Society would see with half
an eye that it was bound sooner or later to do
mischief. Consider it for a moment. The Society
is a machine to be moved in all its parts only by the
will of its master, the General. All the subordinate
members of it are just so many wheels, cogs, pulleys.
They have no will of their own. The General is
their conscience, his will their motive power.
Now supposing the object of the Society had been
one we could agree with, we are obliged to feel
that such a means for producing it must work
badly, both for the members of the Society and for
266
"J.B." as Lecturer
the world. Can a man ever expect to be healthy
spiritually, if he crushes out his own conscience
and judgment ? These two are the very pillars of
the human soul. How can it remain upright if
they, the main supports, are pulled down to begin
with ? Moreover, ought it not to have been present
to Loyola s mind what risks he was running in putting
such absolute power as this into the hands of
only one man ? How was he to secure to the end
of time that the Generals themselves should be
pure and holy men ? Perhaps he could continue
such himself, but he had no business to take himself
as the rule for all after times. Nay, was not the
very position of General likely to make a man bad
if he were not so before ? All history has proved
that nothing so quickly warps a man s moral nature
as absolute power. Supposing that law to operate
in the case of the Jesuit General and what is the
consequence ? The whole Society, with its splendid
intelligence, its unbounded power for influence,
is then just the obedient instrument of one bad man.
I defy anybody to say that is not a logical outcome
of Jesuit principles ; and history is a great liar
if it has not shown in more than one country and
generation that this very thing has actually happened.
I say, then, Loyola in stamping out the individual
conscience and judgment from his Society was
perilling their own souls and perilling society.
I do not think, however, I have yet touched the
main reason why the Jesuits are as a rule hated so
cordially and especially by us English people.
That, I believe, lies in the fact of their being a secret
267
J. Brierley
society. We as a people hate conspiracies. Let
a man s design be as pure as that of an angel, we
will have nothing to do with it or him unless he
will consent to carry it out above board. And
as it seems to me for a very good reason. Motives,
like mutton, require to be kept out in the open air
if they are to be kept sweet. I do not care what
pretensions a Society may have, unless it gets venti
lation by publicity and criticism from without,
it is bound by and by to go mouldy. For that
reason then I think Ignatius gave us a bad legacy
in leaving a Society which was always to work
in the dark.
Headley Brothers^ Printers, London , and Ashford, Kent
Sj PRINTED IN U. S. A.
