SENSATIONAL SERMONIZING: ELLEN WOOD,GOOD WORDS, AND THE CONVERSION OF THE POPULAR

Abstract

In the nineteenth century Britainunderwent a period of immense religious doubt and spiritual instability, prompted in part by German biblical criticism, the development of advanced geological and evolutionary ideas forwarded by men such as Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin, and the crisis in faith demonstrated by many high profile Church members, particularly John Henry Newman's conversion to Catholicism in 1845. In tracing the development of this religious disbelief, historian Owen Chadwick comments that “mid-Victorian England asked itself the question, for the first time in popular understanding, is Christian faith true?” (Victorian Church: Part I1). Noting the impact of the 1859 publication of Darwin'sOrigin of Speciesand the multi-authored collectionEssays and Reviewsin 1860, Chadwick further posits that “part of the traditional teaching of the Christian churches was being proved, little by little, to be untrue” (Victorian Church: Part I88). As the theological debate over the truth of the Bible intensified so did the question of how to reach, preach, and convert the urbanized and empowered working and middle classes. Indicative of this debate was the immense popularity of the Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon, who was commonly referred to as the “Prince of Preachers.” Spurgeon exploded onto the religious scene in the mid-1850s and his theatrical and expressive form of oratory polarized mid-Victorian society as to the proper, most effective mode of preaching. In print culture, the emergence of the religious periodicalGood Words, with its unique fusion of spiritual and secular material contributed by authors from an array of denominations, demonstrated a concurrent re-evaluation within the religious press of the evolving methods of disseminating religious discourse. The 1864 serialization of Ellen Wood'sOswald CrayinGood Wordsemphasizes the magazine's interest in combining and synthesizing religious and popular material as a means of revitalizing interest in religious sentiment. In 1860 Wood's novelEast Lynnewas critically categorized as one of the first sensation novels of the 1860s, a decade in which “sensational” became the modifier of the age. Wood, alongside Wilkie Collins and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, was subsequently referred to as one of the original creators of sensation fiction, a genre frequently denigrated as scandalous and immoral.Oswald Cray, however, sits snugly among the sermons, parables, and social mission essays that fill the pages ofGood Words.