Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

It was discovered that Arabi, anticipating interference by England and France, was vigorously building and equipping fortifications about Alexandria, and threatened the destruction of all foreigners, and of the Suez Canal, if interference was attempted. Admiral Seymour ordered him to cease operations on the fortifications. The work proceeded. He thereupon demanded the surrender of the forts within twelve hours or he would open fire.

This bombardment was the first step. The burning of the finest portions of Alexandria, the horrible murders there, the concentration of English forces in Egypt against Arabi, his final defeat and surrender, constitute the story of a war remarkable principally for the great perturbation it caused among the powers of Europe, for the small force on the one side, and on the other for the power, pomp and parade, and the vast stores of material and men. On the part of Arabi and his army, for the justness of their cause in the ostensible purposes of the National party, and on the part of England for the flimsy pretext of acting under authority of the khedive, when the only real excuse was the fact that the Suez Canal is of vital importance for connection with its East Indian possessions, and control of Egypt is necessary for the protection of the canal. Especially is it remarkable in view of the show of force and preparation, for the weakness of the Egyptian army and the feebleness and unskillfulness on the part of Arabi and his generals. We can, however, account for the consternation it created in Europe, when we consider that Mahommedanism covers a larger extent of territory and includes more peoples than all the rest of the world. The religious prejudices of the followers of the prophet have only tolerated the presence of Christians when they could be kept under subjection and in servility. Some point was given to the idea that a religious war was imminent by the fact that the False Prophet was advancing into Soudan toward Southern Egypt. What the outcome of such a war would be was difficult to foresee. It would involve more than three-fourths of the population of the world. And while Western civilization would have the advantage of modern improvements in the art of war, it was not certain it could compete with the Moslem hordes that would swarm from Asia and Africa. It would not only check and greatly set back civilization, but would threaten to overthrow and destroy it. It is not surprising, then, that the powers of Europe hesitated. And from the standpoint of Western civilization England can not be too highly commended for her energy in crushing out in its inception what might have ripened into a war involving such tremendous consequences.

The weakness and unskillfulness exhibited by the leaders of the National party, and their indifference to the fate of their subordinates, show that any sentimentality spent upon them is unmerited, and the collapse of the rebellion upon the first serious disaster, which, from the Egyptian standpoint, was a struggle for life and liberty, shows to what state of servility the descendants of the Pharaohs have been reduced, and how utterly incapable they are of self-government.

The last act in the drama was performed at Cairo on the 25th of December, 1882. The leaders were nominally turned over to the government of the khedive for trial and punishment, charged with the massacre and incendiarism of June 11th, and with rebellion. Nothing awaited them but death by assassination or public execution. In reality the turning them over to the khedive was only a form to keep up the pretext of acting under his authority. In fact the trial was suppressed because of the complications which would have arisen from making public the evidences in the hands of Arabi of the complicity of Turkey in the rebellion. Under the dictation of England a plea of guilty of rebellion only was accepted, and sentence of death in form pronounced upon the seven principal leaders, Arabi, Toulba, Abdelal, Mahmoud Sami, Ali Fehni, Yacoob Sami, and Mahmoud Fehni. At the same time a commutation, by the khedive, was announced to degradation and exile for life, and the place of exile has been fixed in the English colony of Ceylon. The ceremony of degradation was performed at Cairo on Christmas day, and consisted in reading the decree of degradation to the prisoners in the presence of the army, public officers, and a crowd of native Egyptians. Immediately thereafter they were sent to Suez and thence to Ceylon under guard. A liberal provision is made for their support in view of the fact that they are state prisoners. About $10,000 each per year is allowed for their support, so that life in exile is not altogether an unmitigated hardship.

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MEN show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they think laughable.—_Goethe._

REV. CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON.

By A. A. LIVERMORE, D.D.

It is often said in these days that the power of the pulpit has declined from what it was in the time of our fathers. The press has stolen a march upon the preacher. The lyceum draws better than the meeting-house. The stump speaker has more hearers than the minister. The advocate for reform makes more stir than the Sunday-going parson. The newspaper has got to be the American Bible. The magazine has more readers than the Gospel of Mark, and the Epistle to the Romans.

But this croaking overlooks the fact that our civilization is wider and broader than it used to be fifty or one hundred years ago. It comprehends more interests, strikes the key to more subjects, sweeps into its ever-widening circumference a greater variety of pursuits and influences. The pulpit may be as important as ever and as potent, but relatively other factors have in these latter days come into play,—art, science, philosophy, reform, politics, sociology, and thus have seemingly encroached upon the once almost absolute domain of religious worship and instruction. But it is more in seeming than in reality. Because other powerful auxiliaries have come up alongside of the pulpit to challenge the attention of mankind, and assist in the great enterprise of the upbuilding of humanity, it by no means follows that the peculiar office which the pulpit and the preacher fulfill may not be more needful and more demanded than ever to save the souls of men, and bring the kingdom of God on earth.

It almost however goes without the saying that facts disprove the dismal theory that our civilization is running away from the public administration of religion. We have as mighty preachers in the field to-day on both sides of the water as ever lifted up their voices in Christendom. I need only mention Spurgeon, Beecher, Philips Brooks, Moody, Pere Hyacinth, Bishop Simpson, Prof. Swing, Robert Collyer. And they draw great audiences, produce great effects, convert sinners, edify saints, “hurl back the floods of tyrant wrong” and sin, and bring in the kingdom, as effectually as was ever done by the Chrysostums and Ambroses, the Robert Halls and John Wesleys of the past. God hath not left, and never will leave himself without witness. The eloquence of the spoken word is not yet dead or buried. We have placed at the head of our article one of these great and glorious names, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Baptist preacher in London. He was born in Helvedon, Essex, near London, June 9, 1834. He is now therefore in the forty-eighth year of his age, but how solidly he has packed those years with services to God and man! His origin was in the Congregational body of England. He is a self-taught man, and contrary to what was said of another distinguished self-taught man, that he had a very poor teacher, Mr. Spurgeon had a very good and wise teacher. He became a schoolmaster of others at sixteen, and at eighteen the pastor of a church at Waterbeach. He soon rose to such popularity that he was called to London, where ordinary churches could not contain the crowds that came to hear him. He occupied successively the Baptist Chapel in Southwark, Exeter Hall, Surry Music Hall, and now he preaches in a cathedral-like edifice, called the “Tabernacle,” built for him, where he has an audience of five or six thousand. But like Wesley he is not only a great preacher, but a great organizer and also an affluent writer. On an average he preaches a sermon every day. Ten or more volumes of his sermons have been published in England and reprinted in this country. He has edited the works of some of the old religious classics. He has published lectures to divinity students, tracts for the people, as “John Ploughman’s Pictures,” and “John Ploughman’s Talks with the People.” He is a Calvinist, but not a close communion Baptist. In popularity and wide influence among the masses he stands at the head of the English dissenting pulpit. He has thirty preaching stations in London. He carries on a divinity school, and has educated between three and four hundred young men for the ministry. The expenses of his school are $25,000 a year which he raises himself. He has, according to the testimony of his stewards, appropriated no part of the income of his church to himself for the last three years. He meets the wants of the great middle class of English society. His administration drives at the practical, direct, and pungent application of Christianity to the sins, crimes, and woes of the great capital of the world, and in that world of Great Britain he is a mighty power for good.

The secret of his influence is not far or hard to seek. In the first place, Mr. Spurgeon is built on a large scale in personality and natural endowment. He is John Bull _in maximo_, a stocky frame, big head, vigorous constitution, a good digester, a deep breather, a massive face, a strong round-about man every way. It is not native to his constitution to be sick, and if he is so it is because of the load, which, like Atlas, he bears on his broad shoulders, of care and duty and preaching, and divinity school, and writing and publishing, and travel, and the superintendence of his thousand and one enterprises to carry forward the cause. He knows how to work himself, and another secret equally important, he knows how to make others work.

Some years ago I heard him preach in his throne of power. It was a sight to behold and never to be forgotten. Thousands of people gathered to hear one man speak. His subject was from Corinthians: “We are ambassadors for Christ.” His tone was kindly, no overbearing, no intellectual pretense or insolence, such as we sometimes see in great men, while his appeal was persuasive and rational. There was a deep and tender tone of sympathy and good will, an evident desire to bring over to his own happy state of trust and love those far from God and Christ, wandering in darkness, in the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity. A deep stream of piety and devotional ardor flowed through all the services. His language was plain Anglo-Saxon speech, few “dictionary” words, as they are called, and easy to be understood by the common people.

But next to his piety and zealous faith, should be given as instruments of his power, great affluence of illustration. He tips his sentences not unfrequently with a bit of poetic fire. He levies on the Bible imagery largely. He uses, as Jesus did, the common every day’s events and scenes about him to wing his arrows and point his spears. He has no subtleties, mysticisms, speculations, to clog the minds of his hearers. “Jesus and him crucified” is his paramount theme, as it was that of Paul. He is the John Bunyan of the nineteenth century, and long may he guide the “Pilgrims” in their “Progress to the eternal city.”

The same day we heard Spurgeon in the great Tabernacle we heard Dean Stanley in Westminster Abbey. Both had great audiences. Both gathered many strangers from beyond the sea to hear the most distinguished pulpit orators of Great Britain. Dean Stanley gave his eulogy on the Bishop of Winchester, who had been instantly killed by a fall from his horse. It was a memorable occasion, attended by what was most brilliant in rank, in culture, in power and wealth in England, the lords and ladies of the empire. The music transported you to the seventh heaven. The Dean spoke to the learned, refined and powerful, Spurgeon to the common people, “not heard of a mile from home.” The Dean had more learning, culture, taste, and swept a broader circle of thought; Spurgeon more power, bored deeper into the heart and conscience. Stanley was more a literary man and author; Spurgeon a minister and converter of souls. Stanley is a broad churchman, and aims at the progress of Christianity in the dialect of the nineteenth century; Spurgeon lays about him like Talus, with his tremendous flail, to warn people and drive them from the wrath to come, and to administer the average orthodox doctrines without note or comment, or nice speculations. Both are great men, each good for his sphere. Both refute the notion that the Christian pulpit of this age can not match that of any previous age in the power, influence and following of the noted preachers. There were giants of old, and there are giants now.

HOW TO REGULATE THE FASHIONS.

From the French of M. AUGUSTIN CHALLAMEL.

When we speak of past fashions, we must always mention sumptuary laws at the same time; that is to say, remedial measures against the excesses of caprice and luxury. As if wisdom could be decreed by law! We know their unsuccessful results. But even at the present day, when difference of rank is no longer marked by difference of dress, we sometimes meet with persons who are indignant with a working woman if she ventures to wear a silk gown or a velvet cape on Sunday.

“No, I can not understand the government not interfering!” exclaimed a charming “great lady” the other day. “Only a week ago I was elbowed by a girl with a gown identically like my own! It is really disgraceful! The rest of the costume did not harmonize with the gown, and the effect was wretched; besides, extravagance and equality in dress are the ruin of scores of working girls. There ought to be a law against it.”

The laws regulating the quality and cost of dress have been tried extensively in the past, and had the lady known the history of past fashions, she would hardly have wished as she did. Far back in the twelfth century sovereigns began to issue sumptuary laws in order to restore respect for the inequality of rank, and to prevent one woman from wearing garments exclusively reserved for another. Philip Augustus raised his voice against fur. Philip the Fair issued prohibitions the wording of which enlightens us considerably in regard to the manners and customs of those times. “No citizen may possess a chariot, nor wear grey fur, nor ermine, nor gold, nor jewels, nor belts, nor pearls. Dukes, counts, and barons, with six thousand livres a year, may have four pair of gowns a year, and no more, and their wives may have as many. No citizen, nor esquire, nor clerk shall burn wax lights.” Baron’s wives, howsoever great, could not wear a gown that cost more than twenty-five cents by the Paris yard; the wives of a lord were restricted to eighteen cents, and of a citizen to sixteen cents and a half. These regulations proceeded probably from the following circumstance: On the occasion of the solemn entrance of the queen into Bruges in 1301, she saw so many women of the middle ranks so gorgeously appareled that she exclaimed, “I thought I was queen, but I see there are hundreds.” Philip evidently thought it time to restrain the license that allowed women of any rank to equal his queen.

Notwithstanding legislative prohibitions, the desire of attracting attention led all women to dress alike. From this resulted a confusion of ranks absolutely incompatible with mediæval ideas. Saint Louis forbade that certain women should wear mantles or gowns with turned-down collars, or with trains or gold belts. But fashion bid defiance to law. The great ladies were not yet protected. More than an hundred years later, in the reign of Francis I., we find the fashion of wearing three gowns, one over the other, resorted to to preserve the distinction in dress. Says a writer of the times: “For one coat that the wife of a citizen wears, the great lady puts on three, one over the other; and letting them all be seen equally, she makes herself known for more than a bourgeoise.”

Even the quality and color of stuffs have been restricted. Henry II. allowed no woman, not a princess, to wear a costume entirely of crimson. The wives of gentlemen might have one part only of their under dress of that color. Maids of honor might wear velvet of any color except crimson. The wealthy classes longed to wear the forbidden material, but the law only allowed them velvet when made into petticoat and sleeves. Working-women were forbidden to wear silk. The complaints became so loud that at last the law-giver was moved with compassion, and allowed bands of gold to be worn on the head, gave permission to the working-women to trim their gowns with borders or linings of silk, and allowed them to wear sleeves of silk—a whole dress of such material was denied. These restrictions were rigorously enforced, and Rousard the poet exclaims:

“Velvet grown too common in France
Resumes, beneath your sway, its former honor;
So that your remonstrance
Has made us see the difference
Between the servant and his lord,
And the coxcomb, silk-bedecked,
Who equalled your princes,
And rich in cloth of silk went glittering
On his way showing off the bravery of his attire.
I have far more indulgence for our fair women,
Who in dresses far too precious
Usurp the rank of the nobles,
But now the long-despised wool
Resumes its former station.”

It did not hold its station, however. Before the century was out Charles IX. resumed the war against fashion and extravagance. He sent out this edict: “We forbid our subjects, whether men, women, or children, to use on their clothes, whether silken or not, any bands of embroidery, stitching, or pipings of silk, gimp, etc., excepting only a border of velvet or silk of the width of a finger, or at the uttermost two borderings, chain-stitchings or back stitchings at the edge of their garments. Nor shall women of any rank wear gold on their heads, except during the first year of her marriage,” etc.

Such a king would find much cause for prohibitory edicts at the present day. And it was not long before kings and courtiers realized that fashion was the most absolute of all sovereigns. In 1680 some one laments that “No longer are our ladies to be distinguished from the women of the people.” Sumptuary laws never filled the demand, nor are they the proper weapons by which to overcome extravagance and folly in dress.

Montaigne writes in 1603 of these attempts to regulate expenses: “The way seems to be quite contrary to the end designed. The true way would be to beget in men a contempt of silks and gold, as vain and frivolous, and useless; whereas, we augment to them the value, and enhance the honors of such things, which is a very absurd mode of creating a disgust. For to enact that none but princes shall eat turbot, shall wear velvet or gold lace, and to interdict these things to the people, what is it but to bring them into greater esteem, and to set every man more agog to eat and wear them? Let kings leave off these ensigns of grandeur, they have enough others besides; these excesses are more excusable in any other than a prince. ’Tis strange how suddenly and with how much ease custom in these different things establishes itself and becomes authority. We had scarce worn cloth a year at court for the mourning of Henry II., but that silks were already grown into such contempt that a man so clad was despised. Let kings but take the lead and begin to leave off this expense, and in a month the business will be done throughout the kingdom without edict or ordinance. We shall all follow.”

THE HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION.

By W. T. HARRIS.