Gladstone’s Preaching and Gladstone’s Reading

Abstract

William Ewart Gladstone, the Victorian Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was also a connoisseur of sermons. He preached regularly to his own household between 1840 and 1866, usually writing the sermons on the day of their first use and sometimes amending them on subsequent delivery. They followed the cycle of the church year and concentrated on the struggle of the believer against sin. Reflecting Gladstone’s changing churchmanship over the period, the sermons also reveal where Gladstone derived his ideas. They show signs of his long-term reading as well as of the books he was currently absorbing. Among the long-term influences, the Bible was chief, followed by Aristotle and Dante in a small way and Augustine in much larger measure. Of contemporary writers, those asso-ciated with the Oxford Movement, especially Robert Wilberforce, left the greatest imprint. Among the writers whose works Gladstone was currently reading were the medieval theologian Bernard, the writer on the wrongs of women Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna, and Gladstone’s friend Henry Edward Manning, later Cardinal-Archbishop of Westminster. The long-term influences exercised the greater sway over the politician’s preaching.