orthodoxy, and to glow with unholy zeal as he
found him missing his footing on the tight-rope. In London there was
such a man in the shape of Thomas Binney, who had come from the Isle of
Wight to the King's Weigh House Chapel, now swept away by the underground
railway just opposite the Monument. Binney was a king among men,
standing head and shoulders above his fellows. All that was intelligent
in Dissenting London, among the young men especially, heard him gladly.
Yet all over the land there were soulless deacons and crabbed old
parsons, whose testimony no man regarded, who said Binney was not
orthodox. He lived long enough to trample that charge down. He lived to
see the new era when men, sick of orthodoxy, hailed any utterance from
whatever quarter, so that it were God-fearing and sincere. As you
listened to Binney struggling to evolve his message out of his inner
consciousness, you felt that you stood in the presence of a man who dwelt
in the Divine presence, to whom God had revealed Himself, whose eye could
detect the sham, and whose hot indignation was terrible to listen to.

Let me chronicle a few more names. Dr. Andrew Reed, whose occasional
sermons at other places--I never heard him at Wycliffe Chapel--were most
effective; Morris of Fetter Lane, who preached to a crowded audience with
what seemed to me at the time a slight touch of German mysticism;
Stratten, far away in Paddington, whom rich people loved to listen to, as
he was supposed to be a man of means himself; and old Leifchild at Craven
Chapel, filled to overflowing with a crowd who knew, however the dear old
man might prose in the opening of his sermon, he would go off with a bang
at the end. But I may not omit two Churchmen who, if they had not
Melville's power, had an equal popularity. One was the Hon. and Rev.
Baptist Noel, who preached in a church, long since pulled down, in
Bedford-row. He was tall, gentlemanly, silver-tongued, and perfectly
orthodox. His people worshipped him, for was he not the son of a lord?
His influence in London was immense, but he left the Church for
conscientious reasons, and became a Baptist minister. That was a blow to
his popularity which he never got over, though he lived to a grand old
age. Another popular Evangelical preacher was Dale, who preached at St.
Bride's, Fleet Street. He was a poet and more or less of a literary man;
but he had more worldly wisdom than Baptist Noel. Dale was a Professor
of Lit