Memorials of Francis Storr: Sermons — Text and Context

Two Preachers, Two Voices

Canon Hoare’s sermon opens with a restrained, almost official register: ‘We are met together this afternoon under circumstances of more than ordinary solemnity.’ He proceeds to outline Storr’s career—his education at Harrow and Queen’s College, Oxford, his curacy at Up-Waltham, his rectorship at Otley—in a manner that prioritizes factual sequence over emotional appeal. The pace is deliberate, each paragraph building a case for Storr’s exemplary parish ministry. In contrast, Rev. W. May’s sermon begins with a direct emotional appeal: ‘My heart is very full to-day.’ May’s sentences are shorter, his syntax more broken, and he frequently inserts exclamations (‘How his sermons turned us inside out!’) that mimic spontaneous speech. Where Hoare uses third-person narration throughout, May shifts between ‘I’ and ‘you,’ creating a sense of shared grief. This contrast in voice—one formal and expository, the other personal and urgent—gives the volume a dialogic quality, as if two distinct modes of mourning are being performed.

The Texture of Blindness

Both sermons dwell on Storr’s blindness, but they treat it in markedly different ways. Hoare mentions it briefly, as a biographical fact: ‘For ten years he had been totally blind.’ He then pivots quickly to Storr’s spiritual resilience, using the blindness as a springboard for a homily on divine strength made perfect in weakness. May, however, returns to the blindness repeatedly, weaving it into the sensory details of his recollections. He notes Storr’s ‘memory for quotation—not the words only, but chapter and verse—up to the very last, after ten years of total blindness.’ He also describes Storr’s habit of rising ‘very early in the morning, winter and summer,’ a detail that underscores physical discipline in the face of sensory loss. The blindness becomes not just a trial but a condition that sharpened other faculties: May marvels at Storr’s ‘knowledge of that piece of intricate and, alas! disordered mechanism, the human heart.’ The repeated emphasis on blindness gives the sermons a tactile quality, as if the preachers are feeling their way toward an understanding of their subject.

Pace and the Shift from Eulogy to Exhortation

Both sermons follow a similar structural arc: they begin with eulogy—praise of Storr’s character and ministry—and then pivot to exhortation, urging the congregation to apply the lessons of his life. The pivot is marked by a clear shift in pace. In Hoare’s sermon, the transition occurs when he says, ‘But I must not detain you longer with these details.’ The sentence signals a gear change: the biographical narrative halts, and the sermon becomes a series of imperatives: ‘Let us then learn from his example…’ May’s transition is more abrupt. After a long, emotionally charged passage about Storr’s last sermon, he writes, ‘Turn we now from our dear master who has been taken away to that Master, still more dear.’ The shift is marked by a change in pronoun—from ‘he’ to ‘Thou’—and a sudden elevation of register. The final sections of both sermons are dominated by scriptural quotation and prayer, slowing the pace to a meditative rhythm. This structural pattern—from narrative to application, from past to present—gives the volume a liturgical shape, as if the reader is being led through the stages of grief.

Readers approaching this volume should attend to the interplay between the two sermons and the appended notes of Storr’s final sermon. The notes, though fragmentary, preserve Storr’s own voice—his choice of text (Matthew 11:7-9) and his characteristic directness. Comparing the preachers’ representations of Storr with his own words offers a richer portrait than any single sermon could provide. The volume rewards careful reading of its rhetorical shifts, which mirror the emotional movements of a community processing loss.

There’s something tender about reading a sermon meant for a man who could no longer see his congregation, yet spoke of Scripture from memory. It makes me think of Edwards, who also wrote to be heard, not read. I keep both nearby, reaching for Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards — Inside the Classic when I want that older, steadier voice. Just a quiet habit now.