Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Select Lectures and Sermons of the Rev. William Morley Punshon: Member of the Wesleyan Conference, England
Add to this consideration of history, one drawn from the philosophy of history. What the State remits to society the privileges Which civil organizations from time to time cede to individuals - constitutes progress. Thus as history advances, appeals will more and more be made to men, as such, and less and less to the State; so that in time, eloquence will no longer find her chief need of display at the bar, or on the rostrum. The righteousness and sacredness of the individual conscience will gradually supersede the necessity of many of the statutes. Therefore it would seem that preachers, who alone address the private conscience only, must more and more engross the oppor tunities and the power of oratory.
Thus, first, by inheriting the opportunities which gave the classic civil orator his power, and, second, from the outworking of a historic law, the pulpit orator has already got possession of a vast power, if not the supremacy of speech in this country. But in England, where civilization is older than with us, he is outstripping all competition. Other men may diplomatize and legislate - may engineer corn-laws, and fill bishoprics - but the men who vindicate the power of popular oratory, in the prop agation of popular reforms, are the modern dissenting preachers of England. They repress riot, but they stimulate liberty - they soothe famine, but they rouse the popular will to root out its causes. Year by year they steadily push Glamorous and insa tiate reforms into the lines of ancient and exclusive privilege. Their learning and eloquence have demonstrated, that in con sistence with itself, Puseyism should be Popery, and have already driven the ablest High Church shepherds into the folds of Rome, their legitimate place. But they have been especially signalized in the recent concessions wrung from the Establishment: first, that religious services - the sacred worship of the Church, for practically it is nothing else - may be holden elsewhere than in consecrated places; and, second, that without this concession they will not long be able to hold the masses of the kingdom, who are irresistibly coming uhder the tuition of the dissenting orators. It is a little candle in a dark place: the inauguration of a series of reforms, which will at last make a catholic Christian union possible.
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