Sermons as Prose: An Independent Tradition in Context

Abstract

This paper focuses on the golden age of English Nonconformist ministry, recognizing that golden ages are myths, known only in retrospect but taking the golden age of such ministry to be in the second half of the nineteenth century. It considers the possible evidence for such an ideal, before concentrating on the evidence provided by sermons. Three minis-ters are selected: two Congregationalists (David Loxton, 1818-1876, and Alexander Raleigh, 1817-1880), and one Baptist (Samuel Augustus Tip-ple, 1828-1912), are selected. Loxton was a Londoner, with his main ministry in Sheffield; Raleigh and Tipple, from Scotland and East Anglia respectively, had their main ministries in London. Their social back-ground, their careers, their character and appearance, their familial and congregational credibility are outlined and their theological flavor indi-cated. The extent to which they were public figures beyond the immedi-ate confines of their congregations is also suggested, with particular ref-erence to the brush that Tipple (the least “public” of the three) had with John Ruskin in the early 1860s and 1870s. Their style and rhetoric are then examined, with evidence from Loxton’s working-men’s lecture (1853), fast-day sermon (1855), and address to fellow ministers (1875); Raleigh’s two national denominational addresses (1868) and communion sermon (1870s); and Tipple’s sequence of prayers and sermons (early 1880s-1910). For each of the three, the sermon is seen to have been a literary and intellectual creation designed to convince, convict, and trans-form.