I heard a number of rich sermons from Dr. John Hunter, Gipsy Smith, Dr. Thornton, Rev. R. J. Campbell, and Mr. Connell. But the strongest, most spiritual and most comforting sermon I heard in London was preached by the Rev. J. Monro Gibson, D. D., pastor of St. John's Wood Presbyterian Church. That also was an expository sermon, as the best preaching so often is.
The only other man of mark whom I heard in the metropolis was General Booth, organizer, leader, and absolute monarch of the Salvation Army, an old man of spare frame, with shaggy, grisled hair and beard. His voice is not a good one, but he commands perfect attention, and his sermon, which was evidently well thought out, and which, if I remember aright, had but one undignified remark in it, showed the true nature of sin, and laid hold of the conscience with power. When we entered Exeter Hall, which was already nearly full of people, we saw on the platform a band of sixty musicians, in scarlet uniforms, leading the multitude with violins, cornets and drums, in a hymn sung lustily to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne." When the General came on the platform a few minutes later, they received him with a cheer. His sermon was followed by the usual uproarious proceedings. With these, of course, I have no sympathy, nor with the absolute despotism of General Booth, but the Salvation Army has done a vast deal of good among "the submerged tenth." The census taken this year by the _London News_ shows, however, that the Salvation Army is on the decline in that city, and the reason assigned for it is the lack of a body of trained preachers.
But Scotland is the land of preachers. The greatest Scotchman that ever lived was a preacher, and to him, John Knox, Scotland is more indebted for what she is to-day than to any other man.
"The Scotch, it is well known, are more remarkable for the exercise of their intellectual powers than for the keenness of their feelings; they are, therefore, more moved by logic than by rhetoric, and more attracted by acute and argumentative reasoning on doctrinal points than influenced by the enthusiastic appeals to the heart and to the passions, by which the popular preachers in other countries win the favor of their hearers." So wrote Sir Walter Scott, and no doubt there is truth in it; but we must not underestimate the quickness and depth of their feelings. It was an apparently hard-natured Scotchman of our own day who wrote the following more balanced estimate, "It's a God's mercy I was born a Scotchman, for I do not see how I could ever have been contented to be anything else. The little, plucky, dour nation, set in her own ways, and getting them, too, level-headed and shrewd, and yet so lovingly weak, so fond, so led away by song or story, so easily touched to fine issues, so real, so true." Carlyle said Burns was the æolian harp of nature against which the rude winds of adversity blew, only to be transmuted in their passage into heavenly music. But no people without tender and strong feelings could have produced or appreciated such a poet as Burns. (By the way, I was astonished to discover, in 1896, that there were more than thirty thousand visitors annually to the birthplace of Burns, as against only twenty thousand to the birthplace of Shakespeare.) Moreover, no people without the right kind of feeling, and plenty of it--aye, and of enthusiasm, too--could have accomplished what Scotland has done. With a rigorous climate and a small country, much of it wild and untillable mountain and moor, and with fewer people in the whole country than in the city of London, Scotland--