Sydney Smith | Page 8

was soon followed by a second and enlarged edition. This book of sermons is dedicated to Lord Webb Seymour[17]--"because I know no man who, in spite of the disadvantages of high birth, lives to more honourable and commendable purposes than yourself."
The preface to the book is a vigorous plea for greater animation in preaching, a wider variety of topics, and a more direct bearing on practical life, than were then usual in the pulpits of the Church of England.
"Is it wonder," he asks, "that every semi-delirious sectary, who pours forth his animated nonsense with the genuine look and voice of passion, should gesticulate away the congregation of the most profound and learned divine of the Established Church, and in two Sundays preach him bare to the very sexton? Why are we natural everywhere but in the pulpit? No man expresses warm and animated feelings anywhere else, with his mouth alone, but with his whole body; he articulates with every limb, and talks from head to foot with a thousand voices. Why this holoplexia on sacred occasions alone? Why call in the aid of paralysis to piety? Is it a rule of oratory to balance the style against the subject, and to handle the most sublime truths in the dullest language and the driest manner? Is sin to be taken from men, as Eve was from Adam, by casting them into a deep slumber? Or from what possible perversion of common sense are we to look like field-preachers in Zembla, holy lumps of ice, numbed into quiescence and stagnation and mumbling?"
The subjects with which these sermons deal are practical in the highest degree, such as "The Love of Country," "The Poor Magdalen," "The Causes of Republican Opinions," "The Effect of Christianity on Manners," and "The Treatment of Servants." One or two short samples of his thought and style will not be out of place.
This is from his sermon on the Magdalen:--
"The best mediation with God Almighty the Father, and His Son of Mercy and Love, is the prayer of a human being whom you have saved from perdition."
This is from the sermon on "Christianity and Manners":--
"If ye would that men should love you, love ye also them, not with gentleness of face alone, or the shallow mockery of smiles, but in singleness of heart, in forbearance, judging mercifully, entering into the mind of thy brother, to spare him pain, to prevent his wrath, to be unto him an eternal fountain of peace. These are the fruits of the Spirit, and this the soul that emanates from our sacred religion. If ye bear these fruits now in the time of this life, if ye write these laws on the tablets of your hearts so as ye not only say but do them, then indeed are ye the true servants of Jesus and the children of His redemption. For you He came down from Heaven; for you He was scorned and hated upon earth; for you mangled on the Cross; and at the last day, when the trumpet shall sound, and the earth melt, and the heavens groan and die, ye shall spring up from the dust of the grave, the ever-living spirits of God."
All the sermons breathe the same fiery indignation against cruelty and tyranny, the same quick sympathy with poverty, suffering, and debasement; and, here and there, especially in the occasional references to France and Switzerland, they show pretty clearly the preacher's political bias. In his own phrase, he "loved truth better than he loved Dundas,[18] at that time the tyrant of Scotland"; and it would have been a miracle if his outspokenness had passed without remonstrance from the authoritative and privileged classes. But the spirited preface to the second edition shows that he had already learned to hold his own, unshaken and unterrified, in what he believed to be a righteous cause:--
"As long as God gives me life and strength I will never cease to attack, in the way of my profession and to the best of my abilities, any system of principles injurious to the public happiness, whether they be sanctioned by the voice of the many, or whether they be not; and may the same God take that unworthy life away, whenever I shrink from the contempt and misrepresentation to which my duty shall call me to submit."
The year 1800 was marked, for Sydney Smith, by an event even more momentous than the publication of his first book. It was the year of his marriage. His sister Maria had a friend and schoolfellow called Catharine Amelia Pybus. He had known her as a child; and while still quite young had become engaged to marry her, whenever circumstances should make it possible. The young lady's father was John Pybus, who had gone to India in the service of the