Clergymen and Doctors 4

Clergymen and Doctors 4

 "MONMOUTH."

 

 

SOUTH ON THE COMMONWEALTH PREACHERS.

 

Dr. South, in one of his sermons, thus reflected on the untrained and

fanatical preachers of the time of the Commonwealth--many of whom but

too well deserved the strictures:--"It may not be amiss to take

occasion to utter a great truth, as both worthy to be now considered,

and never to be forgot,--namely, that if we reflect upon the late times

of confusion which passed upon the ministry, we shall find that the

grand design of the fanatic crew was to persuade the world that a

standing settled ministry was wholly useless. This, I say, was the main

point which they then drove at. And the great engine to effect this was

by engaging men of several callings (and those the meaner still the

better) to hold forth and harangue the multitude, sometimes in the

streets, sometimes in churches, sometimes in barns, and sometimes from

pulpits, and sometimes from tubs, and, in a word, wheresoever and

howsoever they could clock the senseless and unthinking babble about

them. And with this practice well followed, they (and their friends the

Jesuits) concluded, that in some time it would be no hard matter to

persuade the people, that if men of other professions were able to

teach and preach the word, then to what purpose should there be a

company of men brought up to it and maintained in it at the charge of a

public allowance? especially when at the same time the truly godly so

greedily gaped and grasped at it for their self-denying selves. So that

preaching, we see, was their prime engine. But now what was it, which

encouraged those men to set up for a work, which (if duly managed) was

so difficult in itself, and which they were never bred to? Why, no

doubt it was, that low, cheap, illiterate way, then commonly used, and

cried up for the only gospel soul-searching way (as the word then

went), and which the craftier set of them saw well enough, that with a

little exercise and much confidence, they might in a short time come to

equal, if not exceed; as it cannot be denied, but that some few of them

(with the help of a few friends in masquerade) accordingly did. But, on

the contrary, had preaching been made and reckoned a matter of solid

and true learning, of theological knowledge and long and severe study

(as the nature of it required it to be), assuredly no preaching cobbler

amongst them all would ever have ventured so far beyond his last, as to

undertake it. And consequently this their most powerful engine for

supplanting the church and clergy had never been attempted, nor perhaps

so much as thought on; and therefore of most singular benefit, no

question, would it be to the public, if those who have authority to

second their advice, would counsel the ignorant and the forward to

consider what divinity is, and what they themselves are, and so to put

up their preaching tools, their Medulla's note-books, their

melleficiums, concordances, and all, and betake themselves to some

useful trade, which nature had most particularly fitted them for."

 

 

PETER THE GREAT AS DENTIST.

 

The Czar Peter, impelled by natural curiosity and love of science, was

very fond of witnessing dissections and operations. He first made these

known in Russia, and gave orders to be informed when anything of the

kind was going on at the hospitals, that he might, if possible, be

present to gratify his love for such spectacles. He frequently aided

the operator, and was able to dissect properly, to bleed, draw teeth,

and perform other operations as well as one of the faculty. Along with

a case of mathematical instruments, he always carried about with him a

pouch furnished with surgical instruments. The wife of one of his

valets had once a disagreeable experience of his skill. She was

suspected of gallantry, and her husband vowed revenge. He sat in the

ante-chamber with a sad and pensive face, provoking the Czar to inquire

the occasion of his gloom. The valet said that nothing was wrong,

except that his wife refused to have a tooth drawn that caused her

great pain. The Czar desired that he should be allowed to cure her, and

was at once taken to her apartment, where he made her sit down that he

might examine her mouth, in spite of her earnest protestations that she

had no toothache. The husband, however, alleging that she always said

so when the physician was present, and renewed her lamentations when he

departed, the Czar ordered him to hold her head and arms; and, pulling

forth his instruments, promptly extracted the tooth which he supposed

to be the cause of the pain, disregarding the piteous cries of the

persecuted lady. But in a few days the Czar learned that the whole

affair was a trick of the valet to torment his wife; and his Majesty

thereupon, as his manner was, administered to him a very severe

chastisement with his own hands.

 

 

A MILD CRITICISM.

 

While Sir Busick Harwood was Professor of Anatomy at Cambridge, he was

called in, in a case of some difficulty, by the friends of a patient,

who were anxious for his opinion of the malady. Being told the name of

the medical man who had previously prescribed, Sir Busick exclaimed,

"He! if he were to descend into the patient's stomach with a candle and

lantern, when he ascended he would not be able to name the complaint!"

 

 

HOUR-GLASSES IN CHURCH.

 

To restrain over-eloquent or over-zealous preachers in the length of

their discourses, hour-glasses were introduced in churches about the

period of the Reformation. In the frontispiece prefixed to the Bible of

the Bishops' Translation, printed in 1569, Archbishop Parker is

represented with an hour-glass standing on his right hand. Clocks and

watches being then but rarely in use, the hour-glass was had recourse

to as the only convenient public remembrancer which the state of the

arts could then supply. The practice of using them became generally

prevalent, and continued till the period of the Revolution. The

hour-glass was placed either on the side of the pulpit, or on a stand

in front. "One whole houre-glasse," "one halfe houre-glasse," occur in

an inventory taken about 1632 of the properties of the church of All

Saints at Newcastle-on-Tyne. Daniel Burgess, a Nonconformist preacher

at the commencement of last century, alike famous for the length of his

pulpit harangues and the quaintness of his illustrations, was once

vehemently declaiming against the sin of drunkenness. Having exhausted

the customary time, he turned the hour-glass, and said, "Brethren, I

have somewhat more to say on the nature and consequences of

drunkenness; so let's have _the other glass and then_--" The jest,

however, seems to have been borrowed from the frontispiece of a small

book, entitled _England's Shame, or a Relation of the Life and Death of

Hugh Peters_, published in 1663; where Peters is represented preaching,

and holding an hour-glass in his left hand, in the act of saying, "I

know you are good fellows; so let's have another glass."

 

 

THE METHODIST DOG.

 

In the early days of Methodism, meetings for preaching and prayer were

held regularly about Bristol, and usually well attended. The people who

had frequented these meetings had repeatedly observed a dog that came

from a distance; and as at the house to which he belonged the

Methodists were not respected, he always came alone. At that time, the

preaching on Sunday began immediately after the church service ended;

and this singular animal, invariably attending on those occasions,

received the name of the "Methodist Dog." He was generally met by the

congregation returning from the church, and abused and pelted by the

boys belonging to that party. His regular attendance had often been the

subject of public debate; and, merely to prove the sagacity of the

animal, the meeting, for one evening, was removed to another house.

Surprising as it may seem, at the proper and exact time he made his

appearance. A few weeks after, his owner returning intoxicated from

Leeds market, was drowned in a narrow shallow stream; and from that day

the "Methodist Dog" ceased to attend the preaching. Concerning this odd

fact, a good Methodist (John Nelson) used to say, "The frequent

attendance of this dog at the meeting was designed to attract his

master's curiosity, and engage him thereby to visit the place; where,

hearing the gospel, he might have been enlightened, converted, and

eternally saved. But the end to be answered being frustrated by the

master's death, the means to secure it were no longer needful on the

dog's part."

 

 

THE TWO GATES OF HEAVEN.

 

"God," says St. Pierre, in his _Harmonies of Nature_, "God has placed

upon earth two gates that lead to heaven; He has set them at the two

extremities of life--one at the entrance, the other at the issue. The

first is that of innocence; the second, that of repentance."

 

 

GIBBON'S RETORT ON THE PHYSICIAN.

 

A good story of Gibbon the historian is told in Moore's Memoirs. Gibbon

and an eminent French physician were rivals in courting the favour of

Lady Elizabeth Foster. Impatient at Gibbon's occupying so much of her

attention by his conversation, the doctor said crossly to him, "_Quand

milady Elizabeth Foster sera malade de vos fadaises, je la guérirai_."

[When my Lady Elizabeth Foster is made ill by your twaddle, I will cure

her.] On which Gibbon, drawing himself up grandly, and looking

disdainfully at the physician, replied, "_Quand milady Elizabeth Foster

sera morte de vos recettes, je l'immortaliserai_." [When my Lady

Elizabeth Foster is dead from your prescriptions, I will immortalize

her.]

 

 

TRUMP CARDS.

 

Mrs. Bray relates the following instance of the power of a ruling

passion or habit, concerning a Devonshire physician, boasting the not

untradesmanlike name of Vial, who was a desperate lover of whist. One

evening, in the midst of a deal, the doctor fell off his chair in a

fit. Consternation seized on the company, who knew not whether he was

alive or dead. At length he showed signs of returning life; and,

retaining the last fond idea that had possessed him at the moment he

fell into the fit, he exclaimed, "_What is trumps?_" A _bon-vivant_,

brought to his deathbed by an immoderate use of wine, after having been

told that he could not in all human probability survive many hours, and

would die before eight o'clock next morning, summoned the small

remnants of his strength to call the doctor back, and said, with the

true recklessness of a gambler, "Doctor, I'll bet you a bottle that I

live till nine!"

 

 

PERSUASIVENESS OF WHITFIELD.

 

Benjamin Franklin, in his memoirs, bears witness to the extraordinary

effect that was produced by Whitfield's preaching in America, and tells

an anecdote equally characteristic of the preacher and of himself. "I

happened," says Franklin, "to attend one of his sermons, in the course

of which I perceived that he intended to finish with a collection, and

I silently resolved he should get nothing from me. I had in my pocket a

handful of copper money, three or four silver dollars, and five

pistoles in gold. As he proceeded, I began to soften, and concluded to

give the copper. Another stroke of his oratory made me ashamed of that,

and determined me to give the silver; and he finished so admirably,

that I emptied my pocket wholly into the collector's dish, gold and

all. At this sermon there was also one of our club, who, being of my

sentiments regarding the building in Georgia (the subject of

Whitfield's appeal), and suspecting a collection might be intended, had

by precaution emptied his pockets before he came from home. Towards the

conclusion of the discourse, however, he felt a strong inclination to

give, and applied to a neighbour who stood near him to lend him some

money for the purpose. The request was fortunately made to perhaps the

only man in the company who had the firmness not to be affected by the

preacher. His answer was: 'At any other time, friend Hodgkinson, I

would lend to thee freely; but not now, for thee seems to be out of thy

right senses.'"

 

 

"PREACHING FOR A CROWN."

 

Howell Davies, who was Whitfield's Welsh coadjutor, walking one Sunday

morning to preach, was accosted by a clergyman on horseback, who was

bound on the same errand, and who complained of the unprofitable

drudgery of his profession, saying that he could never get more than

half-a-guinea for preaching. The Welshman replied that he for his part

was content to preach _for a crown_. This so offended the mounted

priest, that he upbraided the pedestrian for disgracing his cloth.

"Perhaps," said Davies, "you will hold me still cheaper when I inform

you that I am going nine miles to preach, and have only seven-pence in

my pocket to bear my expenses out and in. But the crown for which I

preach is a crown of glory."

 

 

SHEDDING HIS BLOOD FOR HIS COUNTRY.

 

Lord Radnor, who lived in the middle of last century, had a singular

liking for the amateur employment of the lancet on the veins of his

friends, or of persons whom he induced by gifts of money to allow him

to display his skill upon them. It is told of Lord Chesterfield, that,

desiring the vote of Lord Radnor in some division impending in the

House of Lords, he went to him, and by and by, in the course of

indifferent conversation, complained that he was suffering from a bad

headache. Lord Radnor leaped at the opportunity of indulging his

predilection for phlebotomy on such a _corpus nobile_; he told Lord

Chesterfield that he ought to lose blood at once. "Do you indeed think

so, my dear Lord? Then do me the favour to add to the service of your

advice that of your skill. I know that you are a clever surgeon." In a

moment Lord Radnor had pulled out his lancet case, and opened a vein in

his visitor's arm; who subsequently, when the bandage was being put on,

as if casually, asked the operator, "By the by, does your Lordship go

down to the House to-day?" Lord Radnor answered that he had not

intended going, not having information enough as to the question that

was to be debated; "But on what side will you, that have considered the

matter, vote?" Lord Chesterfield stated his views to his amateur

surgeon, whose vanity he had so cleverly flattered; and left the house

with the promise of Lord Radnor's vote--having literally, as he told an

intensely amused party of his friends the same evening, "shed his blood

for the good of his country."

 

 

DR. KIRWAN, DEAN OF KILLALA.

 

Towards the end of last century, there arose in Ireland an eminent

preacher, who, to use the emphatic language of Grattan, "broke through

the slumbers of the pulpit." This was Walter Blake Kirwan, originally a

Catholic priest and Professor of Philosophy at Louvain, and afterwards

chaplain to the Neapolitan embassy at London. In 1787 he resolved to

conform to the Establishment, and preached for the first time to a

Protestant congregation in St. Peter's Church at Dublin. He

subsequently became Prebend of Howth, Rector of St. Nicholas, Dublin,

and ultimately Dean of Killala. Wonders have been recorded of his

attractiveness as a preacher. That he was a great orator, the manner in

which he was attended abundantly proved. People crowded to hear him,

who on no other occasion appeared within the walls of a church: men of

the world, who had other pursuits, men of professions, physicians,

lawyers, actors--in short, all to whom clergymen of the highest order

had any charms. The pressure of the crowds was immense; guards were

obliged to be stationed, and even palisades erected, to keep off from

the largest churches the overflowing curiosity, which could not

contribute adequately to the great charities for which he generally

preached. The sums collected on these occasions exceeded anything ever

before known. In one instance, such was the magical impression he

produced, that many persons, ladies particularly, after contributing

all the money they had about them, threw their watches, rings, and

other valuable ornaments into the plate, and next day redeemed them

with money. The produce of this triumph of pulpit oratory was indeed

magnificent; it was no less than £1200--a much larger sum at that day

than the figures represent in ours. Worn out by his labours, Dr. Kirwan

died in 1805; and a book of sermons printed in 1814 is his sole

literary memorial.

 

 

JEREMY TAYLOR.

 

Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down, from the fertility of his mind and the

extent of his imagination, has been styled "the Shakespeare of English

divines." His sermons abound with some of the most brilliant passages;

and embrace such a variety of matter, and such a mass of knowledge and

of learning, that even the acute Bishop Warburton said of him: "I can

fathom the understandings of most men, yet I am not certain that I can

fathom the understanding of Jeremy Taylor." His comparison between a

married and a single life, in his sermon on the Blessedness of

Marriage, is rich in tender sentiments and exquisitely elegant imagery.

"Marriage," says the Bishop, "is the mother of the world, and preserves

kingdoms, and fills cities, churches, and even heaven itself. Celibacy,

like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness;

yet sits alone, and is confined, and dies in singularity. But marriage,

like the useful bee, builds a house, and gathers sweetness from every

flower, and labours and unites into societies and republics, and sends

out colonies, and fills the world with delicacies, and obeys the king,

keeps order, and exercises many virtues, and promotes the interest of

mankind; and is that state of things to which God hath designed the

present constitution of the world. Marriage hath in it the labour of

love, and the delicacies of friendship; the blessings of society, and

the union of hands and hearts. It hath in it less of beauty, but more

of safety, than a single life; it is more merry and more sad; is fuller

of joy and fuller of sorrow; it lies under more burthens, but is

supported by the strength of love and charity; and these burthens are

delightful."

 

 

A TWO-EDGED ACCUSATION.

 

Dr. Freind, like too many of the physicians of his time--under Queen

Anne--was not very careful to keep his head clear and hand steady by

moderation in tavern potations; and more often than not he was tipsy

when he visited his patients. Once he entered the chamber of a lady of

high rank in such a state of intoxicated confusion, that he could do

nothing more than mutter to himself, "Drunk--drunk--drunk, by ----!"

Happily, or unhappily, the lady, from the same cause, was not in any

better case than the physician; and when she came to herself, she was

informed by her maid that the doctor had briefly and gruffly described

_her_ condition, and then abruptly taken his leave. Freind next day was

puzzling as to the apology he should offer to his patient for his

unfitness to deal with her ailment, when to his great joy there came a

note from the lady, enclosing a handsome fee, and entreating him to

keep his own counsel as to what he had seen.

 

 

RADCLIFFE AND KNELLER.

 

Sir Godfrey Kneller and Dr. Radcliffe lived next door to each other in

Bow Street, just after the latter had come up to town, and were

extremely intimate. Kneller had a very fine garden, and as the doctor

was fond of flowers, he permitted him to have a door into it.

Radcliffe's servants, however, gathering and destroying the flowers,

Kneller sent to inform him that he would nail up the door; to which

Radcliffe, in his rough manner, replied, "Tell him he may do anything

but paint it."--"Well," retorted Kneller, "he may say what he will; for

tell him, I will take anything from him, except physic."

 

 

SLAPS FOR SLEEPERS IN CHURCH.

 

A Methodist preacher once, observing that several of his congregation

had fallen asleep, exclaimed with a loud voice, "A fire! a fire!"

"Where? where?" cried his auditors, whom the alarm had thoroughly

aroused from their slumbers. "In the place of judgment," said the

preacher, "for those who sleep under the ministry of the holy gospel."

Another preacher, of a different persuasion, more remarkable for drowsy

hearers, finding himself in a like unpleasant situation with his

auditory, or rather _dormitory_, suddenly stopped in his discourse,

and, addressing himself in a whispering tone to a number of noisy

children in the gallery, said, "Silence! silence! children; if you keep

up such a noise, you will waken all the old folks below." Dr. South,

chaplain of Charles II., once when preaching before the Court--then

composed, as every one knows, of the most profligate and dissolute men

in the nation--saw, in the middle of his discourse, that sleep had

gradually made a conquest of his hearers. He immediately stopped short,

and, changing his tone, called out to Lord Lauderdale three times. His

Lordship standing up, Dr. South said, with great composure, "My Lord, I

am sorry to interrupt your repose; but I must beg of you that you will

not snore quite so loud, lest you awaken his Majesty."

 

Lassenius, chaplain to the Danish Court in the end of the seventeenth

century, for a long time, to his vexation, had seen that during his

sermon the greater part of the congregation fell asleep. One day he

suddenly stopped, and, pulling shuttlecock and battledore from his

pocket, began to play with them in the pulpit. This odd behaviour

naturally attracted the attention of the hearers who were still awake;

they jogged the sleepers, and in a very short time everybody was

lively, and looking to the pulpit with the greatest astonishment. Then

Lassenius began a very severe castigatory discourse, saying, "When I

announce to you sacred and important truths, you are not ashamed to go

to sleep; but when I play the fool, you are all eye and ear."

 

When Fenelon, as almoner, attended Louis XIV. to a sermon preached by a

Capuchin, he fell asleep. The Capuchin perceived it, and breaking off

his discourse, cried out, "Awake that sleeping Abbé, who comes here

only to pay his court to the King;" a reproof which Fenelon himself

often related with pleasure after he became Archbishop of Cambray.

 

A PREscRIPTION FOR LONG LIFE.

 

In the reign of Francis I. of France, the saying went--

 

"_Lever à cinq, diner à neuf, Souper à cinq, coucher à neuf, Fait vivre

d'ans nonante et neuf_;"

 

which we thus translate--

 

"Rising at five, and dining at nine, Supping at five, and bedding at nine, Brings the years of a man to ninety and nine."