Anthony Norris Groves (1795–1853)
Anthony
Norris Groves (1795-1853), "the father of faith missions," deeply influenced the founders of the China Inland Mission, the North Africa Mission, and particularly his own brother-in-law, George Muller.
Anthony was the only son in a family of six. His mother was gentle and talented. His father was an aggressive businessman, who lost much of his wealth in ill-advised ventures. The Groves were staunch Anglicans, attending the gloomy old grime-stained Anglican Church at Fulham in London. Coupled with the stern disciplines of a religious upbringing, the traits of the parents surfaced in Anthony.
Like his father, he was both generous and adventurous, with a quiet determination which would not shake loose from a goal. He also displayed the serenity of his mother. Henry Craik was a tutor to Anthony's children before they left for Baghdad. Young Craik was a bit awed by Groves' example of "generosity, heavenly-mindedness, great talent, persuasive eloquence, gentleness, humility, and learning."
Groves was awakened in soul at age 13 or 14, and vowed to overcome his shortcomings and ease his conscience by doing protestant penance as a missionary in India. Thereafter, whenever spiritual disquiet recurred, he renewed his vow to be a missionary. At the age of 19, to atone for his sins, he offered himself to the Church Missionary Society. Then he met the Paget sisters, and through the witness of Miss Bessie Paget (who would later work closely with R. C.
Chapman) Anthony came to Christ. His conversion--while it cleared the fog about sin and salvation--did not weaken but instead gave reason to his resolve.
Following training in chemistry, surgery and dentistry, young Groves had begun a career as a dentist in Plymouth on his nineteenth birthday. Two years later, he married Mary Bethia Thompson.
As they prospered, as a matter of principle, the young couple purposed to give a tenth of their income to the Lord for the needy. The proportion then increased to a fourth of their income, but the more they gave, the more they prospered. Ultimately they carved their standard of living to bare essentials and gave away the balance. As a dentist, he was earning 1,500 pounds a year (a considerable fortune).
At first, Mary was as opposed to Anthony's missionary ambition as he was for it. Whenever he raised the topic she wept. He waited ten years before Mary was not only agreeable but enthusiastic about them going, at which time they offered themselves to the Missionary Society. They were accepted--but it was for Baghdad instead of India. He turned his dental practice over to a young relative--to whom he later gave it--and began studies for a theological degree at Dublin, as a prerequisite to ordination in the Anglican Church. At this time, he began questioning the need for a university degree for a prospective missionary. Then, in the summer of 1827, by a strange coincidence, his house was broken into and money set aside for schooling was stolen (although other money was left untouched). The Groves took this as a token of the Lord's guidance and dropped the course.
Next came doubts about ordination to preach. When he informed the mission that he was prepared to go to the field as a layman instead of as an ordained minister, they said he would not be able to celebrate the Lord's Supper! That was enough to sever their commitment to the C.M.S. They prepared to go at their own expense.
At this time Anthony gathered with believers in Dublin and broke bread after the New Testament pattern. Groves was a precursor to multitudes who set sail without the aid of ecclesiastical machinery.
At the same time he shed the control of missionary organizations (which meant no salaries or pledges of any financial support from men). In a small sailing yacht, on June 12, 1829, Anthony, Mary, sons Henry (age
10) and Frank, (age 9), and seven co-laborers set sail for St.
Petersburg, Russia.
The stormy voyage would be prophetic of the rest of the journey. In Russia they traveled through rugged landscape in springless carriages crammed with bodies and baggage. Attacks by mosquitoes, drenched in torrents, endangered by gangs, strange food, bad food, no food and failed horses combined to discourage.
But Anthony was resilient. At their destination, he gave thanks for every survivor of that journey of four months and 1,400 miles. Their account reads like a paraphrase of 2 Corinthians 11.
In the first year in Baghdad, Anthony wrote, "I never had a very strong expectation that what we were to do was manifestly very great, but that we shall answer a purpose in God's plan I have no doubt."
He started to study Arabic, opened a boys' school and, to establish contacts, gave free dental and optical treatment (including cataract operations). Baghdad's suffocating heat was dreadful The citizens appeared to be warlike, thieving, and bigoted.
Then came the plague in April of 1830, which, during its peak, carried off a thousand victims a day. "Fifty unburied corpses might be seen during a walk of 500 yards, and the wails of naked and starving children who roamed the streets were heartbreaking." At the height of the plague the river flooded, collapsing about 5,000 houses and crushing some of the inhabitants.
Most horrific was the death of Groves' devoted wife,
Mary. Entire families had perished in the districts around the missionaries' home. Still the plague had not invaded their home. But as the clouds seemed to be receding, Anthony made this entry in his diary:
"The Lord has this day manifested that the disease of my dear wife is the plague, and of a very dangerous type, so that our hearts are prostrate in the Lord's presence... It is indeed an awful moment, yet my dear wife's faith triumphs. The difference between a child of God and a worldling is not in death, but in the hope the one has in Jesus, while the other is without hope and without God in the world."
After the plague, a Turkish army besieged the city. In later years, Anthony's son Henry "pathetically recalled the fact that after leaving England he could not remember ever having been a boy."
For Anthony, a hidden resource strengthened him to write, "When I consider how God, in His infinite and unsearchable Providence, has seen fit to bring to naught all our plans... I cannot but feel it is a strong call to form very few plans for the future and just to work by the day."
Among other trials, the long delay or loss of letters meant protracted isolation and privation. Financial support was uncertain. He once claimed that they went without financial support from anyone in England for over a year, but that the Lord did not allow him to go into debt. His diary contains repeated praise to the Lord for material provision. For example, "My soul is led to abhor more and more that love of independence which still clings to it, when I see how it would shut me out from these manifestations of my Father's loving care."
About this time, a revised charter granted to the East
India Company opened the way for unrestricted missionary work in India.
On invitation from Colonel (later General Sir) Arthur Cotton, in 1833, Groves visited widely among missionaries in India. He was in his element. Soon he brought his sons and others from Baghdad, and in the next two decades found open doors for the gospel of Christ, mainly in the Godavari Delta.
He was not a church-builder like his friends J. G.
Bellet, R. C. Chapman, J. N. Darby, and George Muller, but rather a single-minded evangelist and teacher. In logic, he was consistent (even if his applications were not always workable). He could be staunch, yet courteous to any who disagreed. And disagree they did.
His aggressive exhortations to missionaries to live simply and to trust God to supply their needs was not always welcome.
But one young convert, John Aroolappen, acted on Groves' principles and as a full-time worker lived "by faith." Through Aroolappen's ministry, a revival broke out in Tinnevelly in South India and many congregations were formed. Groves visited this area, and his teaching so upset the Anglicans that they accused him of being the greatest enemy the Church of England had in India.
After a year's furlough in England, he returned to
India with a small party of missionaries and a generous stock of sheep, cattle, chickens, and geese (The sailors complained about being on Noah's ark) in 1836.
Groves continued preaching and teaching in India until illhealth forced him back to England in 1852. His condition deteriorated until he quietly passed into the presence of his Master in May 1853 in the home of George Muller.
Anthony Norris Groves' contribution to the missionary enterprise springs less from measurable results than it does from his utter devotion to Christ and complete dependence upon Him for his needs. He left a pattern to emulate.
Leonard Strong (1797–1874)
Why would the twelve-year-old son of a Church of England clergyman join the British Navy? Of course, this was a different time, and people seemed to be constituted of sterner stuff. And besides, what twelve-year-old wouldn't be filled with romantic notions of sailing the high seas? Leonard Strong (1797-1874) soon found out what it was like.
This fearless young man served as a midshipman in the French and American wars. Many times his ship saw battle.
We make a mistake if we think that men like Leonard Strong, who have seen death up close, have become too calloused, too hard. But while on duty in the West Indies, he almost drowned when his shore-going boat upset in a squall. During the rescue, this hard-bitten sailor saw that maybe he wasn't so tough after all. His sins rose before him, and he cried to God for mercy. He was like a man pulled out of a coma. Once awakened, he resolved to serve God. He left the Navy and enrolled at Oxford in 1823. Evidently he thought that to be ordained as a minister would be a safe start on the voyage for heaven. In his time at Oxford, he saw the truth of the Gospel and was definitely converted. Now his ambition was to be a missionary. It may be at this time that Strong first met Anthony Norris Groves, who would also become a pioneer missionary. Strong left Oxford without taking a degree. Although he was ordained in the Church of England as curate of Ross-on-Wye, he did not stay there long. He went out to the area where God first awakened him during his naval service in the West Indies, to British Guiana in 1826, as rector of St. Matthew's, Demerara.
The coastland is flat, marshy and well forested. The three rivers, the Essequibo, Demerara, and Berbice and their innumerable tributaries make it "the land of the waters." The heavy seasonal rains must be seen to be believed.
Farther inland there are stretches of savanna merging into the mountainous area, with ranges which rise 9,000 feet. Parts of this area are still unexplored. "Parrots are screeching, monkeys are chattering, cigales are piping on a high note which suggests a shrill steam whistle, insects innumerable are chirping and whirring; while, at times, there comes a noise like a muffled crash of thunder, which tells that some ancient giant of the woods has fallen at last...
"There are myriads of butterflies on wings of crimson and gold, darting hummingbirds, with ruby or emerald breasts gleaming in the sunlight; fireflies which come out at dark, and flit to and fro with their soft twinkling lights in the warm night air that is heavy with the breath of flowers."
These inland foothills are the source of forest products and minerals. In the savannas and part of the coastal plain, sugar cane was the principal product. Here slaves labored and deplorable stories are told of the fate of those hapless Africans.
Slavery was not outlawed until 1834, so Leonard Strong witnessed the atrocities of the trade. Rendle Short tells of the slaves' lot on the sugar and cotton plantations in British Guiana: "They lived in filthy huts like kennels. They had no furniture except an iron pot and one blanket per person. Their food was salt fish and vegetables. At six every morning the slave-drivers turned them out with the whip to work till six in the evening, or sometimes longer. They had no rights and no redress. For every infraction of a command they were brutally beaten.
If they died of the punishment, no one cared. Their moral life was low and degraded, but in this respect their white masters were little better. Their religion was much like that of the heathen African of today. Obeahism (African sorcery and ritual magic) played a large part in it... Such a welter of misery and degradation it would have been hard to find elsewhere in the world."
Strong devoted himself to work among the slaves, braving the wrath of the planters, who were so enraged they threatened to shoot him.
Because of his work among the slaves, he was forced by the planters to leave his position and to move to Peter's Hall and Georgetown, where he began his work again. Disillusioned by the pride and apartheid which confronted him, Strong began to question the scriptural authority for an established church. While examining the Scriptures, he saw practical truths about worship and service that he could not reconcile with his position in the Church of England. In 1827, he made a costly decision to give up his lucrative living, (about #800 per annum), and to meet for simple worship with the several hundred new converts.
Venturing out in dependence, God's hand was with Strong from the beginning. Meetings were held in a large shed used for drying coffee and as many as 2,000 attended. An assembly commenced at Peter's Hall in
1827 and another at Georgetown in 1840. Strong's life and labors provided a pattern for the missionary effort which spread through the West Indies, where a vigorous work continues to the present day.
When news eventually reached believers in Britain and Europe, Strong's story confirmed what had previously seemed for many to be only a theory. No one could imagine how a lone missionary like Strong could have been materially maintained with no set salary and no organizational backing for so many years. It was in 1842 that George Muller heard of him and was able to provide some help. Here was a missionary working on scriptural principles whom Muller was delighted to support with gifts from the funds of the Scriptural Knowledge Institution.
Strong's furlough in England made interest in British Guiana deepen.
Muller recorded in his Narrative that on August, 31, 1843, Mr. and Mrs.
Barrington of Bristol sailed with Strong for Demerara. Eleven months later, one of the pillars of the congregation at Bethesda followed; fifty-two-year-old Mr. Mordal, a father of a large family. Mordal died of fever on January 9, 1845, only three months after arriving.
Mr. Strong left Demerara for good in 1848 or 1849. He settled at Torquay, on the south coast of England where his ministry was valued.
He wrote several beautiful tracts and books, including one on Daniel.
He was a welcome speaker at the meetings held in London on prophecy, and was one of the first writers in the well-known missionary periodical, Echoes of Service. The cries of perishing souls in the regions beyond seemed to ring in his ears and burn in his heart. A gifted and gracious man, he was greatly beloved. He died in London in
1874, aged 77, but was buried in Torquay, where he had lived and labored faithfully since leaving the West Indies.
â
Robert Cleaver Chapman (1803–1902)
The letter, sent from abroad, was simply addressed to:
University of Love
England
Robert Cleaver Chapman (1803-1902) was so renowned for his wisdom and compassion, that the postal service knew where to deliver that letter.
Robert was born into a wealthy English family. His mother tutored him at home until he was about nine. As a child he showed aptitude for language study. At age fifteen, Robert was sent to school in Yorkshire.
Henry Pickering says he "studied law and became a solicitor. In this profession he soon occupied a good position, and had he pursued the course on which he started there is little question that the high honors to which it can lead might have been his. But God had honor in store for him, great and abiding, such as the world cannot give."
The pivot in Robert's story came when he was twenty. Elderly John Whitmore invited him to hear James Harington Evans. There his eyes saw the true grace of God and he was saved. Robert's experience shows that you need not have been a profligate vagrant in order to have a dramatic conversion experience. Despite Robert's outwardly blameless conduct, the change was startling. Soon he learned from the Bible that believers should be baptized. When he told brother Evans so, the cautious preacher said, "You will wait a while, and consider the matter."
"No," said Chapman, "I will make haste, and delay not, to keep His commandments." This eagerness to obey his God marked his long Christian career.
In April, 1832, when he was 29, Chapman left the legal profession (he had been an attorney of the Court of Common Pleas and at the Court of the King's Bench) and went to minister the Word in a Baptist congregation at Ebenezer Chapel in Barnstaple, County of Devon, England. He had been unhappy with compromises he felt he had been party to in the legal profession. In one case, he discovered that both the plaintiff and the defendant were believers, which, of course, is an obvious violation of 1 Corinthians 6:1. When Robert announced that he felt God had called him to take the message of salvation to the poor, friends said, "Robert will never make a preacher."
He answered, "There are many who preach, but not so many who live Christ. My aim shall be to live Christ."
So Robert stepped down the social ladder to labor in lower class Barnstaple. He would say, "We shall not escape the tongues of others, unless we first escape from self-love and self-flattery." One of the luxuries Robert left was his chauffeur-driven coach. Giving up these status symbols, he said, "My pride never got over it." Thereafter, his mode of travel to his daily preaching appointments was his shoe leather, regularly walking 20 miles in a day. Once in a letter he wrote, "I was obliged to use conveyances; but, oh! how much rather do I choose to travel on foot for the work of the Lord, and communion with Him!"
This move was in 1832, the same year that George Mueller and Henry Craik began to labor in Bristol. These servants of Christ would have a strong influence on the believers in Barnstaple and vice versa. Their close friendship would span 68 years. Chapman also came into contact with John Nelson Darby about this time.
The words "given to hospitality" (Romans 12:13) could have been written over the entrances at Numbers 6 and 9, on the short street called New Buildings.
Number 6 was Chapman's dwelling, a simple apartment "where any Christian, even the poorest, could come without hesitation." Chapman's open house was a rendezvous for workers from abroad. He greeted visitors with a warm, "Dear brother, if you come by invitation, you are welcome; if you come without invitation, you are doubly welcome."
Battle-worn evangelists like Anthony Norris Groves, George Brealey, David Rea, Alexander Marshall, and John Knox McEwen would resort there for counsel and rest.
The book, The Growth of a Work of God, tells about Hudson Taylor's private interviews "with the saintly Robert Chapman." "Saturday was the day Mr. Robert Chapman set apart for special waiting upon God, though it was his habit to rise always at or before daylight and give hours to fervent intercession--and this until he was well over ninety years of age. His 'workshop' claimed him, however, in a special way at the close of every week. It was his sanctum, containing little but his turning lathe and a shelf on which he could lay his open Bible. Here he spent hours at a time, denying himself on Saturdays to any and every visitor, and going without his midday meal that he might be the more free in spirit. The mechanical occupation of the lathe he found helpful to a connected line of thought; so looking at the Bible from time to time, or dropping on his knees in prayer, he would turn out plates and trenchers, his mind occupied the while with the eternal interests of the Kingdom of God. 'Dear brother,' he exclaimed on meeting Mr. Taylor again six or seven years later, 'I have visited you every day since you went to China.' Who can tell how much the Inland Mission owes to the prayers that went up from that hidden corner in Barnstaple?"
A lifelong bachelor, he made prime use of his time. In bed by 9:00 p.m., he would rise at 3:30 or 4:00 each morning. He decided that a servant of God should spend as much time in the Word and in prayer as other men spend at their work benches. He often spent his entire morning in such occupation. He said, "It is one thing to read the Bible, choosing something that suits me (as is shamefully said), and another thing to search it that I may become acquainted with God in Christ."
In later years, Chapman took breakfast with his house guests at 7:00 a.m., dinner being at 12:00. The tabletalk was happy and edifying.
After breakfast, Chapman commented on a chapter of Scripture--preceded by a hymn, and followed by prayer.
Chapman shunned backbiting. If someone told him of another's fault, he would say: "Let us go to our brother at once and tell him this."
This silenced most accusers. Once a sister came to New Buildings to say, "I am greatly distressed about the conduct of..."
Chapman listened and when she ran out of accusations, he asked, "Is that all?"
"Well, there is another thing."
"Then tell me all." Once the story was all out Chapman said, "Please excuse me," and walked out of the room. When he re-entered, he had on an overcoat. With Bible in hand, he announced, "I am going now."
"But, Mr. Chapman, I came for your advice!"
"I will give it," he replied, "when you come with me to call on the sister. You see, I never judge by appearances but always hear both sides." After a string of protests, he convinced her to come along.
When they came to the home of the accused, a remarkable change occurred. The complainer completely broke down in repentance, for she had been the culprit, and the Spirit of God convicted her of her unChristlike conduct. She was forgiven, and everyone rejoiced at the work of God in her heart.
After enduring a rather mediocre message, someone turned to Chapman and said, "I didn't think much of that, did you?"
"Let us tell him so," said Chapman, making as if to immediately confront the preacher. But seeing the critic was quite stunned, he then pointed out the uselessness and harm of such remarks behind the preacher's back.
Chapman refused any salary or financial arrangement with the congregation in Barnstaple or anywhere else. He never knew from week to week how the shelves of his pantry would be stocked.
Brother F. G. Bergin of Bristol related the following incident.
Captain Henry Chapman, a cousin, came to Barnstaple out of curiosity, to see what his cousin had gotten involved in. Puzzled by how such a large household was supplied, he peeped into the pantry and found it almost bare. He asked his cousin to do him a favor--allow him to order some groceries. Robert consented gratefully, but on condition that the order should be given at a certain shop that he named.
When the grocer asked where the goods were to be sent, and was directed to send them to Robert Chapman, his face changed, and he said he feared the order had been placed at the wrong shop. "No," said the Captain, "I wanted to make my cousin this little present and he specially directed me to come to you."
A tear came on the grocer's cheek: "I have heard of such things being done, but I never thought they really were. It was only last Saturday, at an open-air meeting, that I spat on Mr. Chapman's face!"
Frank Holmes told the rest of the story: "The man was completely broken down by this because he had for years made Mr. Chapman the target of his abuse and wicked criticism. In a short while he was at New Buildings, where Chapman's relative was amazed to see him lying prostrate before the man of God in tears and sincere repentance, asking for forgiveness, and yielding to Christ as his Saviour."
As before mentioned, the congregation at Ebenezer Chapel was denominationally affiliated when Chapman first came to Barnstaple.
Reception into the congregation was one of the early issues Chapman faced. Despite his personal convictions, Chapman did not insist on immediate change at Ebenezer Chapel. For a time he followed their ingrained practices. He himself gladly went where there was room for the whole Bible, but he would not acknowledge sectarian distinctions.
He treated denominational titles like the sound of fingernails squealing across a chalk board; their very mention grated upon his ears.
John Darby advised him to move more quickly to abandon the
Particular Baptist tradition. Chapman shared the same goal, but felt that the aggressive approach would lead to fisticuffs in the foyer. So he patiently prayed, persuaded, and taught. He later wrote, "When 60 years since I came to this place, I waited for unity of heart and judgment among the company who called themselves Baptists; and when, by the power of the Scriptures, the greater part of them were minded to throw down their wall, we waited on in patience for fullness of unity of judgment...What we now enjoy here of mutual love and the Spirit's unity would never have been our portion had any other course been taken."
Often confronted with potentially explosive issues, Chapman did not forget that "love is patient" (1 Cor. 13:4) and that God's servants must be "gentle" (1 Tim. 3:3). In one circumstance, a breakaway party demanded the possession of the auditorium that the assembly used. With Chapman's encouragement, when the building was yielded over to them, he commented, "Just as I should give up my coat to a man who demanded it."
When doctrinal problems surfaced at Plymouth in the 1840s, Chapman found himself in a disagreement with John Darby about how those problems should be addressed. The unhappy outcome was polarization.
This remained a lifelong sorrow to these brothers. Thereafter Chapman referred to those known as "exclusive" as "brethren dearly beloved and longed for," and as "brethren whose consciences led them to refuse my fellowship and to deprive me of theirs."
Likewise Darby respected his brother Chapman. The anecdote is told that Darby once heard some brothers speak critically of Chapman. He interrupted, saying, "You leave that man alone; he lives what I teach,"
and, "We talk about heavenly places, but Robert Chapman lives in them."
These difficulties, however, did not dampen his missionary zeal.
Chapman was especially burdened for the work of the gospel in Spain. He was fluent in both Spanish and Portuguese. (In all, Chapman could preach in five languages.) He visited Spain in 1838. Frederick Tatford summarized that mission: "...Accompanied by two brethren named Pick and Handcock. Although it was illegal and extremely risky, they took a number of Spanish Bibles with them and discreetly passed on the smuggled Bibles to interested persons. When they returned to England, Robert Chapman's prayers and his advocacy of the spiritual needs of the country aroused a considerable interest in British assemblies...At his next visit in 1863, he was accompanied by two workers, W. Gould and George Lawrence, whom he had encouraged to give themselves to the Lord's service in that country...They were pioneers in days of difficulty; it was five years before the first liberties were allowed, and they were faced by opposition and persecution in many places."
On his last trip to Spain in 1871, he was arrested for distributing Gospels at a train station. At the police station, he held up some money from his purse and asked, "Have I a right to throw this to the poor who beg at the station? Here is bread; have I a right to give this also?" Confounded, the police let the undaunted missionaries continue their journey.
The large-framed, erect gentleman looked a bit like old man winter with a smile. Called "the Patriarch of Barnstaple," he maintained a regular open-air preaching schedule until shortly before his home-going. The local newspaper editor so respected Chapman that he occasionally printed his entire messages.
His hymns, Jesus in His Heavenly Temple; No Bone of Thee was Broken; No Condemnation, O My Soul; Oh, My Saviour Crucified; Show Me Thy Wounds, Exalted Lord; The Lamb of God to Slaughter Led; and With Jesus in Our Midst, help us gauge Chapman's spiritual elevation. A. T.
Pierson (who had hoped that he could write Chapman's biography) said that Chapman brought to mind the words, "There were giants in the earth in those days."
J. R. Caldwell said, "Truly the memory of his visit remains with us as a precious illustration of how far God can reproduce in a believer even here the image of His Son."
Material for this article has been gathered from:
W. H. Bennet, Robert Cleaver Chapman of Barnstaple
Frank Holmes, Brother Indeed: The Life of Robert Cleaver Chapman, John Ritchie Robert L. Peterson and Alexander Strauch, Agape Leadership: Lessons in Spiritual Leadership from the Life of R. C.
Chapman, Lewis & Roth
David J. Beattie, Brethren: the Story of a Great Recovery, John Ritchie G. H. Lang, Anthony Norris Groves: Saint and Pioneer, Schoettle Publishing Books written by R. C. Chapman include:
Choice Sayings: being Expositions of the Scriptures, Gospel Tract Publishers Hymns and Meditations, John Ritchie Seventy Years of Pilgrimage: being a memorial of William Hake The Good Shepherd and His Ransomed Flock, John Ritchie
Henry William Soltau (1805–1875)
We are often told that right doctrine should have a practical effect. Henry William Soltau (1805-1875) lived to show us how that is done. He was the second son of George Soltau, a prosperous merchant of England's port city Plymouth. His father was a godly Anglican, and an energetic civic leader. He worked to establish the Plymouth Free School, where the Bible was taught as an elective, and while a member of the Town Council, George Soltau opposed the building of the theater.
He died at age forty-four. From his death-bed he had a vision of all his six children reaching heaven. Henry's mother was a resolute, pious, caring woman and Henry was devoted to her.
When preparing to go to Cambridge, Henry studied under a private tutor, Samuel Wilberforce. This was the future Anglican Bishop Wilberforce, third son of the man who successfully campaigned to abolish the slave trade in the British empire--William Wilberforce.
Entering Trinity College, in 1825, Henry took his degree in 1827.
In those years he often heard Charles Simeon and other popular evangelical preachers. But it seemed to him that "faith in the merits of Christ and doing one's duty" were so mingled that he never remembered hearing a clear presentation of the gospel preached. It was a period similar to our own when the evangelicals were so enmeshed in "cultural relevance" and "political reform" that Christ's agenda of rescuing individual souls from perishing in their sins was taking a sideline to social betterment. Henry did what he was told. He endeavored to "do what was right," observed formal religion, gave to charities, and read the Bible. But he had no peace.
He proceeded to study at Lincoln's Inn, and was afterwards called to the Chancery Bar. He read widely. Beside interest in the natural sciences, he studied Hebrew in order to understand the Old Testament.
But his concerns for his soul's future seemed to be swallowed whole by the attractions of London society. He was a lawyer, "a Cambridge man,"
with wealth and influence in high places. We don't know that he was ever a gross or base sinner. He was fascinated by "innocent amusements." He loved the opera. He was attractive, and witty. His sparkle and charm made him a walking social event, and he could think too. But all that being said, Henry Soltau was empty without Christ.
By January, 1837, he had grown weary of his round of pleasure. A letter from home said his mother was not well, and when a second letter came, Soltau packed his large traveling bag. The letter was not alarmist, but somehow he felt that his mother was really dying and he would not see her alive. As the coach journey ended and he dismounted at Plymouth, his uncle was there to meet him with the news that it was over. Faced with a stinging loss, he went to his home like a man being taken to his execution. Falling to his knees in front of his dear mother's coffin that night, he prayed as if he had never truly prayed before, "Lord, if Thou dost not save me, I am lost for ever!"
There had been a courtroom incident God used to awaken Soltau, but I do not know any of the particulars. Shortly after his mother's passing he heard Captain Percy Hall speak on the four leprous men who sat outside the gate of Samaria in 2 Kings 7. Hall was a startling man. He had risen to the rank of Navy commander but resigned for conscientious reasons. He was a year older than Soltau. "Of a very independent temperament, the Captain did nothing by halves. He sold all his valuable possessions, and had everything in common with the poorer brethren (Acts 4:32). He had been a 'dandy' in his unregenerate days"
so to show that fashion no longer ruled, he would purposely mess his hair and crumple his linen cuffs. At that time he was trekking through the region, preaching the gospel to the poor.
Hall led Soltau into the light of God's grace to bankrupt sinners.
The change was so great that a relative said: "You are like the man in the third of Acts, walking and leaping and praising God."
When he returned to London with his "peculiar opinions" his old companions politely shunned him. He soon gave up his legal practice and moved to Plymouth with his sisters. There he discovered other Christians like Percy Hall. Later, in his booklet, They Found it Written, he enthused about this movement that "has no parallel in the whole history of the Church of God, because in no other instance has the Word of God (freed from all tradition) been taken as the guide of those who have sought a revival in the Church of God."
In leaving the Church of England, and casting in his lot in 1837 with the believers at Ebrington Street, like many others in the congregation, Soltau was cut off from most of his family. It was a big step, and a high price. Unshaken, he applied his study habits to the Scriptures and was soon occupied in gospel campaigns to out-of-the-way hamlets of western England.
The superstition and ignorance that prevailed in those places is described in George Brealey's biography, Always Abounding. Soltau went where sin abounded, and saw how grace did much more abound. Soltau's son said, "Multitudes were saved, and gathered around the Word of God.
Schools were opened, and the Word of God had free course and was glorified." In 1838, Soltau and Mr. J. Clulow opened a printing and publishing company called the Bible and Tract Depot in Plymouth. They published The Christian Witness and quantities of literature were scattered abroad. It appears that in all the busyness of these days, Soltau was married.
Henry Soltau became a prominent Bible teacher and an elder in the growing Plymouth assembly. W. H. Cole described listening to him, "Mr.
Soltau was the first, I think, who taught the meaning of the types and sacrifices of the Old Testament*, and as he unfolded the teaching of those symbols concerning the manifold perfection of the person and work of the Son of God, a peculiar awe brooded over the assembly, impelling to the silent worship of Him of whom he discoursed. The strain was solemn, calm and clear; his voice a deep tone, yet melodious, as it seemed almost to sing of salvation and the glories of the Saviour. He was withal a great preacher of righteousness."
Between 1845 and 1848, a severe period of testing came to the assembly in Plymouth. Perhaps the most upsetting to Soltau was to discover that for several years he had been working closely with and supporting (sometimes defending) B. W. Newton and then to discover that Newton was a heretic. Paul told us there must be factions, that those "which are approved" may be recognized (1 Cor. 11:19). It appears that the shakedown in Plymouth caused Soltau to believe that his influence had been nullified by his mistake.
After publishing a lengthy confession of his errors, Mr. and Mrs.
Soltau moved to Exmouth, where they recuperated for three years from that morbid and unnerving time. In 1851, William Hake (R. C. Chapman's co-worker) offered Soltau a teaching position at the school in Bideford, where Hake was headmaster. The Soltaus then moved to nearby Northam, and continued there for ten wholesome years. One young man he tutored, William J. Lowe, would become an able Bible teacher and an assistant to John Darby in his translation work. Interestingly, Mrs.
Soltau had not been scripturally baptized (believer's baptism had not been unanimously taught at the Plymouth assembly) so when three of the girls were converted, it was Robert Chapman who baptized Mrs. Soltau and the girls in the river that ran through Bideford.
In 1861, they moved to Exeter where Henry Soltau produced his books that did so much to open up the biblical teaching of the tabernacle in the wilderness, the priesthood and the Levitical offerings. His books are "must reading," and most books on the subject published in the last century are heavily indebted to Soltau. But the little book, The Soul and Its Difficulties: a Word to the Anxious, was the one that he liked to hear about. It had a large circulation, and when reports came of how it was used by God, Soltau rejoiced. When he could not travel for health reasons, he would hear that his little book was constantly on the move.
In 1860, he began losing his eyesight, and even feared total blindness, but he recovered somewhat, and was able to continue travelling alone and reading a Bible with large type.
Soltau visited London, speaking at the Freemasons' Hall; Glasgow, Birmingham, Hereford, Teignmouth, and Dublin. In Exeter in 1866, he met the evangelist, Samuel Blow, who said of Soltau's preaching, "As I listened, each word seemed to fall like a hammer, leaving a lasting impression...I frequently came across persons who had been converted while listening to him preaching in the open-air or at riverside baptisms."
By 1867, his health was caving in. That autumn he preached in London, and on the last Sunday spoke six times. One of those meetings was in the open air, in Soho Square, within sight of the places that a fashionable young lawyer spent his time thirty years ago. Soltau pointed to where that man had lived, then how he was converted, and how life has since been filled with happy service for God. Shortly after that day he was paralyzed by a stroke. He never spoke again publicly.
In 1870, he moved to Barnstaple to end his days near R. C. Chapman.
When the end came, on the first of July, 1875, he had been unconscious for weeks, but at the last he lifted his head, his eyes opened, and the smile of heaven shone from his face. Without a sigh or gasp he made his exit.
In all, the Soltau's raised three sons and six daughters. All were converted at an early age, and later gave themselves to the Lord's service. He maintained an active interest in the Lord's work in the regions beyond, especially where his children worked. One was a leader in the M'Call Mission in France, Henrietta spent her life helping at the China Inland Mission headquarters in England. Son Henry went to Burma and China as a medical missionary and served with Hudson Taylor.
Henry was also an honorary Secretary of CIM. All of them were a credit to their parents. Henry Soltau was a wise and tender father. What he taught in public he practiced at home, saying "First yourself; then the home; then the Church; then the world."
Materials for this article taken from:
Pickering, H., Chief Men Among the Brethren, Loizeaux, 1918
Beattie, David J., Brethren: The Story of a Great Recovery, John Ritchie, 1939
Peterson, R., Robert Chapman: A Biography, Loizeaux, 1995
Books by Henry Soltau:
The Tabernacle, the Priesthood and Offerings
The Soul and Its Difficulties: a Word to the Anxious
The Stroke of a Stick, (which we have never seen)
The Brethren, Who are They, What are their Doctrines? also known as They Found it Written
James George Deck (1807–1884)
James George Deck (1807-1884) was born at Bury St. Edmunds,
Suffolk, England, where his father, John Deck, was postmaster. Their godly Huguenot heritage was carried forward in Mrs. Deck's piety. She "never punished her children without first praying with them." Every evening she set aside one hour alone with God to pray for her eight children, and her children's children, and she had the joy of seeing every one come to Christ.
When only a teenager, James went through officer's training in Paris under one of Napoleon's generals, and was then commissioned to India in
1824 as an officer in the East India Company, in the 14th Madras Native Infantry. Of this time he would write:
Alas! in mad rebellion,
I hoped there were no God:
I cared not for His favor,
Though trembling at His rod;
I wished His word a fable
That warned of wrath to come;
"No God," my heart would mutter,
"No future weal, or doom!"
And yet my mother taught me,
In tones so sweet and mild,
To know its holy pages
E'en when I was a child;
She read to me of Jesus,
Of all His grace and love;
And sought with tears my blessing--
His blessing from above.
Oh, why did I so madly
My mother's law forsake?
Oh, why did I so basely
God's righteous precepts break?
Oh, why did I so blindly
His warnings all despise,
And from the Friend of sinners
Avert my heart and eyes?
Under such conviction he tried to shed his burden by self-improvement. He took his moralism seriously enough, once even signing a page of resolutions with his blood. But Mount Sinai did not engender liberty. Stricken by cholera, he returned to England in 1826 as a sick and humbled young man. His ambition was to become a heroic soldier and to eventually represent his hometown in parliament. But the sickly nineteen-year-old on the stretcher did not look too gallant, or dynamic.
His sister Clara had recently been converted listening to an evangelical Anglican, and she brought James to hear him. There "he was brought under the power of the gospel" and was converted. Old things passed away, and all things became new, his life's ambition then being to follow Jesus and win souls for the kingdom. Three years later, he married a godly young lady named Alicia Field.
Returning to India, he made a bold stand, witnessing alongside other Christian officers, and several soldiers became believers through his work. There in 1833 he met Anthony Norris Groves who may have influenced him in a major life decision. Distressed by a conflict of interests he saw in the goals of the military and the goal of the Christian, James took a stand for non-resistance and resigned his commission in the army. He returned to England in 1835 with his wife and two children, intending to become a clergyman like his father-in-law, Samuel Field.
While staying with his father-in-law at the vicarage of Hatherleigh in Devon, his second son, J. Field Deck was "christened." In conversation, Field complained to his son-in-law about those troublesome Baptists. This stirred James' curiosity to go to the Word of God to find what it said about baptismal regeneration and the sprinkling of infants. What he found, or should we say did not find, turned him against the errors in the Prayer Book. How could he ever be ordained as an Anglican priest? He could never consent "to all and everything contained in the Book of Common Prayer." He told Alicia, "I have left the army to become a clergyman, but now see that the Church of England is contrary to the Word of God; what shall we do?"
She replied, "Whatever you believe to be the will of God, do it at any cost."
Leaving the Anglican Church and a future in a salaried pastorate, James and Alicia were baptized by immersion as believers. Once outside the auspices of the state church, he began to preach Christ wherever possible, all the while trusting the Lord to supply the young family's material needs. His son would later testify that his parents enjoyed "a trust never disappointed." James preached in the villages of Colaton, Raleigh, and Kingston. It was in Devon county that he contacted simple gatherings of Christians, and acquired both lifelong friendships and settled convictions about what the church is. Moving to Somerset county, he labored in the gospel in the little villages around Taunton.
This was a happy time of ingathering and upbuilding.
The rediscovery of the blessed hope so rejoiced the believers that in that part of England singing was a trademark of the awakening.
During this period (1838-1844), brother Deck penned his hymns, Abba!
Father! We Approach Thee; A Little While! Our Lord Shall Come; Lamb of God! Our Souls Adore Thee; and Jesus, We Remember Thee. The themes of worship, consecration, and our Lord's return are prominent. Hymns for the Use of the Church of Christ was published by Robert C. Chapman in
1837. In 1839, A Selection of Hymns by Sir Edward Denny appeared.
Deck's hymns were published as Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs in
1842. In 1838, George V. Wigram published a collection of hymns called Hymns for the Poor of the Flock. This hymnbook was the basis for A Few Hymns and some Spiritual Songs Selected for the Little Flock of 1856.
The most common edition in use was edited by J. N. Darby in 1881. The Little Flock hymnbook has forty-four hymns by J. G. Deck and one by Deck's sister, Mary Jane Walker. Mary's husband, Edward Walker, was responsible for introducing Deck's hymns to the church at large by publishing The Psalms and Hymns for Public and Private Worship in 1855.
This excellent hymnbook went into several editions. It contains the best of Darby, Denny, and Chapman's poetry.
The Decks moved on to Weymouth in Dorset county. Some time after
1846, he began to work closely with Henry Dyer, who had come over from Plymouth. For a time, young Henry lived with the Deck family, and helped run a school. Henry had a remarkable gift in personal evangelism, as he and James preached from street corners to audiences smothered beneath the pretensions of high church traditionalism. Souls were won for God and assemblies of saints spontaneously formed. This was strenuous, but more taxing still was the rift among assemblies that occurred at that time called "the Bethesda Question." A poem he had written in 1838 had been cited by B. W. Newton as teaching the same doctrine that had caused the rift. Deck immediately issued a public retraction of the questionable lines. Beside this embarrassment, many of Deck's close associates, such as William Dyer, Henry's older brother, had been too closely involved with the controversy. It was deeply upsetting to see assemblies Deck had worked with, such as in Taunton, alienated from neighboring congregations.
Deck's physical health wore so thin he backed off entirely from public ministry and shut down his schoolwork. Medical advisers thought a sea voyage might be the needed catalyst for his recovery. Whether Deck's problem was physical or emotional, we are not told. What we do know is that Deck's solution was to emigrate with Alicia and their eight children to New Zealand in 1852. Years later, J. N. Darby suggested in a letter that the reason that Deck left for New Zealand was that he "had fallen under the influence of Bethesda." Darby freely acknowledged that Deck was blessed by God in his evangelistic efforts, and was "of gentle spirit and godly," but he immediately added, "he had not the courage to investigate the matter, and fled." Was it that Deck had less courage than Darby, or did he possess more discretion? That will all be manifest at the judgment seat of Christ. What does seem apparent is that Deck did not enjoy the smell of the arena.
Deck purchased land and settled with the family at Waiwerro, near the village of Motueka, in the Nelson province of the South Island. The climate seemed good, and it appeared that James might rebound when the family took another severe blow. Only three months into their new home, Alicia fell sick, and after a brief illness was ushered into the Lord's presence. Despite this shock, Deck's health was restored enough for him to resume his gospel labors.
In 1855, he remarried and his second wife bore him five children, but after the birth of their fifth child, both the baby and mother died when they contracted measles. This second shock occurred in the midst of fruitful gospel efforts. In the 1860s, he had begun to reach out to the Maoris near his home. Many of these Polynesians responded to the gospel and were baptized. Deck was a great impetus to the believers of European extraction to cross over cultural boundaries in order to preach the Lord of Heaven and Earth. Deck also promoted the distribution of literature and arranged for the translation of some of Charles Stanley's tracts into Maori.
In 1865, he moved his family to Wellington, and saw a happy, vigorous assembly raised up. The work spread out and several other meetings sprang up in the district. The hymn writer in Deck reappeared, too. He penned the baptismal hymn, Around Thy Grave, Lord Jesus, and the classic:
The veil is rent, lo! Jesus stands
Before the throne of grace;
And clouds of incense from His hands
Fill all the Holy Place.
This poem appeared in Deck's Hymns and Sacred Poems, published in
1876. It has one-hundred-and-one hymns and sixty-five poems. Deck's contribution to the hymns of the church is not in any poetic innovation. His style is not so different from Isaac Watts or Charles Wesley. It is the subject matter that has earned Deck a lasting place in our hymnbooks. His hymns are written as worshipful expressions directed to God. Deck would not approve of the way popular evangelistic lyrics put words into the lost sinner's mouth. He felt that the song of the redeemed should be sung by the redeemed, directed to God.
G. V. Wigram visited New Zealand in the 1870s and John Darby also made the voyage in 1875, spending at least seven months ministering to the assemblies. According to Darby, Deck returned to the fold of exclusivism at the end of his life, although many of his descendants have not done so.
Paying a visit to his son, medical doctor J. Field Deck, in
Invercargill, Deck found a dozen saints meeting in his home to break bread. The aged patriarch stayed on to help the fledgling assembly.
Needing a rest from his exertions, he returned with his family to Motueka. But this time he was not going to recover. For the next two years he was a complete invalid. It was in August of 1884 that he entered by practical experience into what he had taught so many to sing:
Soon the bright glorious day,
The rest of God, shall come,
Sorrow and sin shall pass away,
And we shall reach our home.
Then of the promised joy possessed,
Our souls shall know eternal rest.
As Martin Luther taught the theme of the Reformation in hymns, and Charles Wesley taught the doctrines of primitive Methodism by song, so Deck gave popular expression to the hope of the Church and the heavenly citizenship of the Christian. David said, "Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage." God's children not only believe the doctrines of God's Word, we sing them!
Material for this article taken from:
Louis F. Benson, The English Hymn, Its Development and Use in Worship, Hodder & Stoughton (1915)
Jack Strahan, Hymns and Their Writers, Gospel Tract Publ. C. Knapp, Who Wrote Our Hymns, Loizeaux Bros.
J. N. Darby, Letters of J.N.D. (1868-1879), vol. 2
Thomas Newberry (1811–1901)
The Englishman, Thomas Newberry (1811-1901) could thank God for a mother and older sister who were both spiritually atuned and able to communicate the gospel clearly. Through their consistent Christian testimony, he was tutored in the holy Scriptures from childhood. At an early age he was born again by the incorruptible Word of God, which lives and abides forever (1 Pet. 1:23). So from start to finish his Christian life was characterized by respect and love for the Scripture.
About Newberry we could say, God's words were found, and he ate them, and God's Word was to him the joy and rejoicing of his heart (Jer.
15:16).
He was a hearty soul, but the fire burned under the surface.
Throughout his long and active life, he was a man recognized as being "mighty in the Scriptures." (Acts 18:24) In an era of explosive church growth, colored by flamboyant and eccentric evangelists, Newberry was a steady, reliable, and profitable expositor of the Bible.
He had always been a regular reader of the Word of God, until his twenty-ninth year. Before then, he read the Bible for comfort and direction. But in 1840 he determined to read the Scriptures in the original Hebrew and Greek.
We know almost nothing of his family life, financial circumstances, or when he came into assembly fellowship in the English coastal city of Weston-super-Mare. What we do know is that it was diligent Scripture study that led Newberry to link up with the assembly that met in a small hall on Meadow Street in the early 1860s. Like so many other Bible students, he came to see that the common ecclesiastical set-up was not in harmony with the Word of God. His complaint with the surrounding congregations was that "many of the customs were based upon expediency rather than conformity to 'the law and the testimony' (Isa.
8:20); that principles and practices (which were plainly recorded in the Epistle to the Corinthians and other Scriptures) as characteristic of the churches of God as founded by the apostles, after the Divine pattern given to Paul ('the wise masterbuilder', 1 Corinthians 3:10), were not being observed, although 1 Corinthians 1:1-2 said they were binding upon 'all that in every place call upon the Name of Jesus Christ our Lord.'"
(Chief Men Among the Brethren).
The conclusion forced on Newberry was that he was not able to preach, teach, and practice all that he found in God's Word as long as he tried to work within the ecclesiastical machinery of the day. The Word of God was being violated and/or ignored at too many points, compelling him to seek out a group of believers who would keep the ordinances of the Lord as they were "delivered" (see 1 Cor. 11:2).
Those were days of evangelistic reaping. There certainly was clamor and excitement enough to keep an army of Christians busy from dawn to dusk. When ten different needs are all tugging at your time, you need to know what your mission is, and hold to your course. Evidently Newberry knew how to secure large blocks of solitude, and to use that time efficiently. He did just that.
In 1863, friends in London gave him a copy of Tischendorf's transcription of the New Testament according to the Codex Sinaiticus.
Meticulously, he neatly handwrote his notes throughout the edition. Two years later, he commenced what would be the best memorial of his vigorous life. As the editor of The Englishman's Bible (since his passing, it is known as The Newberry Study Bible), he produced a monumental study aid that stands alongside G. V. Wigram's Englishman's Concordances to the Greek and Hebrew, and W. E. Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words.
In 1866, a tall, forceful nobleman (some might say domineering)
named Granville Waldegrave (Lord Radstock) came to Weston-super-Mare for evangelistic meetings on the invitation of the Earl of Cavan. A German educator by the name of Dr. Frederick Baedeker attended one of these meetings. One night as Baedeker was slipping out of the auditorium, Waldegrave laid his hand on his shoulder and said, "My man, God has a message through me for you tonight."
Baedeker followed the evangelist into the anteroom and Baedeker's biographer writes, "In presence of the crowd he did so, and the two were soon on their knees. During those solemn moments, a work was done in Dr. Baedeker whereby the accumulated infidelity of years was dissipated forever. God was acknowledged, the Saviour trusted, and the joy of salvation soon filled his soul. The experience of that memorable night would be by himself thus tersely expressed: 'I went in a proud German infidel, and came out a humble, believing disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise God!'"
Who were the men who mentored the new believer? There in his home assembly, he would weekly benefit from the thorough, serious exposition of Thomas Newberry. Weston-super-Mare is not far from Bristol, where another German lived and labored. That man, George Muller, soon made contact with Frederick Baedeker. Here was an ideal combination:
Waldegrave's evangelistic abandon, Muller's prayer life, and Thomas Newberry's deep Bible teaching. Under these influences, Baedeker made long strides in his Christian life. Already by 1874 Baedeker was translating for Lord Radstock as he preached in Europe. Thereafter Baedeker made missionary trips into Germany, and from there into Russia, where he carried on an extensive, fruitful, and far-flung ministry.
Content to stay in the shadows of anonymity while others blazed on in their missionary exploits, Newberry quietly pursued his calling.
Locally his ministry nourished the now flourishing Weston-super-Mare assembly, and neighboring meetings. He was not a brother who whiled away his time wondering what his spiritual gift was, or gadded about to a conference here and a seminar there to hear symposiums on "How to Discover the Will of God for Your Life." He had a definite sense of God's hand on him.
Under Newberry's carefully editing, the new study Bible was taking shape. Using special markings to indicate features in the original languages which did not show in English, he was making a way to help English readers understand the precious treasures God has given in His Word.
The Englishman's Bible was published in five or six editions between the late 1870s and 1902. On the title page on one of the earliest editions of the Old Testament we read, "The Englishman's Hebrew Bible, Shewing the Urim and Thummim, the Lights and Perfections of the Inspired Original on the Page of the Authorized Version, a Fac-simile of the Hebrew Scriptures in English."
Newberry's study Bible has been issued in three sizes: Library or bold type; Portable, or middle size; and Pocket size. Today the portable Newberry is published by Kregel publications, and John Ritchie publishes the pocket-size. The Newberry is prized by Bible students.
There is a learning curve to overcome, but once ordinary readers know Newberry's markings and notations, it will become one of the best helps to enable ordinary readers to delve into, and wonder at the beauties of the Scripture in the original languages.
In the February 1889 issue of The Bible Treasury, William Kelly included this review of Newberry's Companion to the Englishman's Bible:
"This slender quarto consists of eleven chapters, meant to illustrate and explain the value of his Englishman's Hebrew O.T., and Greek N.T., as far as can be for those who do not know the original tongues. The reader will find in the work not a few profitable hints conveyed in a clear and compact manner. Mr. N. is not a little attached to the Text.
Rec. and the A.V., and indisposed to go with the Revisers in their admiration of their own work."
Scholars such as F. F. Bruce admired Newberry's immense labors:
"Newberry had no axe to grind. He was a careful and completely unpretentious student of Hebrew and Greek texts, whose one aim was to make the fruit of his study available as far as possible to Bible students whose only language was English. His procedure tended to make the Biblical text self-explanatory as far as possible; he had no thought of imposing on it an interpretive scheme of his own."
In his final years, thousands profited by Newberry's lectures on the tabernacle and Solomon's temple. He designed a fine model of the temple. Those who saw it said it was "quite unique in its design and workmanship."
He ministered the Word alongside Robert Chapman, Henry Dyer, and George Muller, expounding the Scriptures around the British Isles, contributed Bible teaching articles to The Witness and other magazines, and conducted an extensive correspondence with Bible students across the world. Frederick Tatford tells us that Newberry was used by God in establishing an assembly in Nice, France, among many Italian-speaking residents in 1895.
Fresh and alert for God right to the end, he lived long enough to prove the words of the Psalmist, "They shall still bear fruit in old age; they shall be fat [fresh] and flourishing." He went to be with Christ from Weston-super-Mare on January 16, 1901.
Near the end, he wrote: "As the result of a careful examination of the entire Scriptures in the originals, noticing and marking where necessary every variation of tense, preposition, and the signification of words, the impression left upon my mind is this: not the difficulty of believing the entire inspiration of the Bible, but the impossibility of doubting it....The godliness of the translators, their reverence, the superiority of their scholarship, and the manifest assistance and control afforded to them by the Holy Spirit in their work, is such that the ordinary reader can rely upon the whole as the Word of God."
Books written by Thomas Newberry
Notes on the Temple
Notes on the Tabernacle
Outlines of the Revelation
Solar Light as Illustrating Trinity in Unity
The Expected One
The Parables of Our Lord
The Perfections and Excellencies of Scripture
The Song of Solomon
The Temples of Solomon and Ezekiel
Types of the Levitical Offerings
Materials for this Article are taken from:
The Bible Collector Jan.-Mar. 1966, No. 5
Hy. Pickering, Chief Men Among the Brethren, Loizeaux
David J. Beattie, Brethren, the Story of a Great Recovery, Ritchie F. F. Bruce, The English Bible, Oxford
William Trotter (1818–1865)
William Trotter (1818-1865) was born again in 1830 under the gospel preaching of Methodist preacher, Billy Dawson. In the book, Chief Men Among the Brethren, Henry Pickering claims that Trotter had "done the work of three lives" in his 47-year race through life. The statement seems true enough. He did triple duty as evangelist, pastor, and teacher.
There in the north of England, he was saved during a spiritual harvesttime. At the age of 14, he was already testifying and exhorting in the Methodist class meetings, and when 19, Trotter was officially recognized as a preacher in the Methodist New Connexion. The Methodists had been quite strong in that part of England. We get an idea of the scope of the work from Hudson Taylor's biography.
The Taylors lived not far from Trotter's hometown. Hudson Taylor was a fourth generation Methodist from the town of Barnsley in Yorkshire.
Hudson's great grandfather was an early convert (he was privileged to house John Wesley when he came to preach). When the older Taylor first began preaching in that mining town, "drunkenness, licentiousness, and gambling" were rife. William Bramwell said, "Scarcely any people raged against the Methodists or persecuted them with such ferocity as the people of Barnsley." Mrs. Geraldine Taylor tells us that the church buildings were deserted and "the ale-houses overflowing, with what results may be judged from notices such as... "Drunk--a penny:
dead-drunk--two-pence: clean straw for nothing."
But Yorkshire did not stay that way. The gospel came "in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance." Perhaps you can better appreciate the force and vastness of the work of God in those days when you realize that by the time of John Wesley's death in 1791, in methodical fashion he had organized one hundred circuits in Great Britain alone, which were traveled by three hundred itinerant preachers and more than a thousand local "exhorters."
It was very likely that Wesley was in the Taylor home when he made the entry in his journal, dated Friday, June 30, 1786: "I turned aside to Barnsley, formerly famous for all manner of wickedness. They were then ready to tear any Methodist preacher to pieces. Now, not a dog wagged its tongue. I preached near the Market Place to a very large congregation, and I believe the truth sank into many hearts. They seemed to drink in every word. Surely God will have a people in this place."
Wesley's words were prophetic. But what he did not know is that God's people would not always go under the banner of Methodism. After Wesley's death, a leadership vacuum occurred, resulting in splinters such as the New Connexion, Primitive Methodists, Wesleyan Methodists, Free Methodists, Methodist Protestant Church, etc. Of course, these factions did not occur all at once, and the movement was still quite vigorous well into the 1800s. But an autocratic style was Wesley's ghost to haunt the movement.
William Trotter was active in a revival at Halifax at the same time when Hudson Taylor's father, James, was seeing remarkable fruit in the nearby town of Barnsley. I do not have a record of it, but I imagine that the two knew each other since they were both active itinerant evangelists. This was one of the happiest periods of Trotter's career.
From Halifax, the young Trotter was assigned to work in metropolitan York, an industrial center of that time. God was again at work converting the lost. It was just at this time that Trotter's eyes were opened to the mischief of being controlled by the New Connexion's yearly conference. There he was surrounded by the eager young converts in York in 1841, when he received the shocking news that the conference had decided to transfer him south to work with a sickly congregation in London, with, as Pickering put it, "the result that his mouth was virtually closed in his ministry."
At this time, Trotter delivered two messages that were afterward published, that demonstrate the man's personal devotedness and willingness to stand by his convictions. As any worldling knows, "He that pays the fiddler calls the tune." Trotter saw that to whatever degree men of God entrust their welfare to financial institutions, to that degree they will be tempted to allow their message to be trimmed, clipped, and shaven. To pass from being the Lord's freeman to being man's hireling is a step too easily taken. In a Lecture on the Use of Money, he argued against hoarding resources, and in a second pamphlet entitled The Foolishness of God Wiser than the Wisdom of Men, he answered objections to the first pamphlet, and explained the positive side of how our money should be used for the legitimate needs of our family and to supply the needs of the saints and to help the poor. But in this second pamphlet, he made forceful statements against benefit societies and all other forms of insurance. It wasn't hard for his fellow Methodists to see how his words applied to the Minister's Benevolent Fund. Shortly thereafter, a brief report was issued saying that Trotter had been "discontinued from the ministry."
Trotter was not alone in his concerns. An estimated 29 congregations, with a total of more than 4,300 members, withdrew their membership from the New Connexion. The unique feature of this exodus is that the principle leaders had no intention and made no attempt to form a new sect.
Once on the outside of the New Connexion, Trotter went back to Halifax and joined fellowship with a congregation of saints there. He also came into contact with J. N. Darby.
There were others, such as George Brealey and W. H. Dorman, who came out of Methodism and were remarkably used of God at that time. Not far from Halifax, in south Yorkshire, William and Thomas Neatby also left their Methodist memberships, as did J. Hudson Taylor, and began to meet in a more scriptural way. Sad, but so often true, that the very movement that had carried the torch of testimony in a previous generation, would become "the system" from which devoted souls would have to separate.
For a few years, Trotter edited the paper, The Christian Brethren's Journal and Investigator, which recorded the "little companies of earnest men who began to meet in the early part of the nineteenth century in various parts of the country, unknown to each other, and under no human leadership... the inception of this movement arising from a new illumination of the Personality of Jesus Christ, and of the essential unity of all who believe in Him, under whatever name they were differentiated."
His close friend, J. N. Darby, advised him that: "The secret of peace within, and of power without, is to be occupied with good; ever and always to be occupied with good." Trotter would quote Darby's advice and claim that he had made this his aim. This is curious, considering that the one who said it was so often engaged in critical and controversial debate, and Trotter was also no stranger to literary combat.
He wrote about the difficulty in 1848 between J. N. Darby and George Mueller in The Whole Case of Plymouth and Bethesda. His account carried considerable weight when it was published in 1849, but the pamphlet has since been both scrutinized and castigated. For those aware of the conflicts of that time, I can only submit that men like Darby and Trotter had legitimate concerns. And by comparison to other controversies (not that we are justified by comparing ourselves to others) at least Darby did not murder his opponents, in the way the Reformers had hunted down and persecuted the Anabaptists. All said, this period was not Darby's or Trotter's finest hour.
But when we look at the whole of Trotter's writings, perhaps he had found the secret of how to face off with an enemy and still keep his eye on Christ. He did not become jaded. There is a freshness in his writing that reflects a high level of intimacy with Christ. Eight Lectures on Prophecy and Plain Papers on Prophetic Subjects dealt heavy body blows to the post-millennialists. For sane, clear teaching on prophecy, Trotter has never been excelled. And his Five Letters on Worship and his paper called Heaven were the sort of cheering, other worldly writing that disarmed his assailants. His opponents so admired the man that their opposition sounded very hesitant. J. Grant wrote an expose of the dangerous tendencies of those people called Plymouth Brethren, and admitted that Trotter was, "one of the very ablest and best in every respect." W. B. Neatby said he was "highly spoken of by everyone who knew him." And again, when describing another eminent saint--G. V. Wigram--Neatby says, "Perhaps no leading member of the community left behind him a higher reputation for personal sanctity, unless it were William Trotter."
One final note: Trotter could sing. Two of his hymns are in the Little Flock Hymnal: "Behold the Lamb Whose Precious Blood," and "Farewell to This World's Fleeting Joys," to which the following lines belong:
Farewell to this world's fleeting joys,
Our home is not below;
There was no home for Jesus here,
And 'tis to Him we go.
And has this world a charm for us,
Where Jesus suffered thus?
No! we have died to all its charms
Through Jesus' wondrous cross.
Farewell, farewell, poor faithless world,
With all thy boasted store;
We'd not have joy where He had woe--
Be rich where He was poor.
His promotion to higher service came when he was only 47 years of age. It was a heavy loss that the saints felt they could scarcely afford.
Much of the material for this article was taken from:
Brethren: The Story of a Great Recovery; Beattie
Chief Men Among the Brethren; Hy. Pickering
Hudson Taylor In Early Years; Mrs. Howard Taylor
The Origins of the Brethren; H. H. Rowdon
A History of the Plymouth Brethren; W. B. Neatby
The History of the Brethren; N. Noel
William Kelly (1821–1906)
William Kelly (1821-1906) was born into an Episcopalian family from Ulster, Northern Ireland. As a young boy he was left fatherless. This misfortune did not rob him of his buoyant sense of humor, but did spur him to diligence in all areas of life. A hard worker and a vigorous student, he graduated at the top of his class from Trinity College, Dublin, where he studied classics.
At age 20, on the isle of Sark, he was shaken out of a religious slumber by reading Revelation 20:11-12, "And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God..." Years later, Kelly commented on the verses that God used to give him assurance of salvation. "'For three are those that bear witness, the Spirit, and the water and the blood, and the three agree in one'--three witnesses, but for one united testimony. 'If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater.' (1 John 5:8-9) May I recall the divine relief and deliverance these words gave more than sixty years ago to a soul converted but harassed and deeply exercised through a sense of sin which clouded his soul's rest on Jesus?...It is not my seeing as I ought the efficacy of the blood, but resting by faith on God's seeing it, and God's valuing it as it deserves."
Soon after conversion, Kelly left the established church and threw in his lot with a small fellowship of believers. For the next thirty years, he lived in and near Guernsey, and for the last half of his pilgrimage he lived at Blackheath. Kelly's first wife was a Miss Montgomery of Guernsey. His second wife was the daughter of a clergyman named Mr. Gipps of Hereford. She was a clever linguist with a scholarly bent, giving able assistance in her husband's work.
To measure the caliber of Kelly's learning, consider the massive contributions he made in written and spoken Bible teaching. His expertise was so expansive that when men listened to his lectures, they became convinced that he had actually read all of the 15,000 books in his library! At least he seemed to know what they were about. The titles of Kelly's own writings fill nearly ten pages in the British Museum catalog.
He aided Samuel P. Tregelles in his textual work. For two years he edited a magazine called The Prospect, and then, in 1856, Kelly became the editor of The Bible Treasury which he edited for fifty years. His work with The Bible Treasury brought him into correspondence with keen thinkers across the English speaking world, many of which dreaded what they branded "Plymouthism," or "Darbyism." But despite their prejudices, they admitted that if they wanted to read something which was free of the destructive "higher criticism" which attacked the inspiration of the Bible, and if they wanted ministry that dealt with the serious issues of the Word in a reverential way, The Bible Treasury was what they read. Kelly wrote commentaries on most of the books of the Bible. David Beattie says of Kelly, "His writings, largely in the form of expositions of Scripture, are especially helpful as being at once profound and simple." Some of Kelly's readers will contest the word "simple." Reading him does require some powers of concentration.
The Swiss medical doctor, Henri L. Rossier (1835-1928), was Darby's collaborator across the channel who prepared Darby's Etudes Sur La Parole, which Kelly in turn translated into English as Darby's Synopsis of the Books of the Bible, a work every Bible student ought to have close by. Besides this, Kelly labored for years collecting, editing, and at times translating Darby's Collected Writings, in thirty-four volumes, most of which had appeared in The Bible Treasury.
Kelly saw a grandeur in Darby's works, but was also honest enough to admit that Darby could be unintelligible. Those who have been helped by reading Darby can thank God that there was ever a man named William Kelly to decipher the code. Right to the end of his long life, Kelly would exhort young Bible students to "read Darby!" He had; and it had done him good. Darby once teased Kelly, "Kelly, you write to be read and understood. I only think on paper."
William Kelly varied from Darby on the topics of baptism and some issues of assembly government, but agreed with Darby on most things, so much so that some called him "Darby interpreted." It was Kelly who gave a final defense of Darby's character when an American author tried to link Darby's prophetic teaching with Edward Irving and the prophetess, Margaret Macdonald. In Kelly's excellent article, The Rapture of the Saints: Who Suggested It? (p. 314 of vol. N 4, The Bible Treasury).
Kelly draws a comparison from Acts 16, saying that the notion of John Darby deriving his views of future events from Margaret Macdonald's ecstatic utterance would be similar to saying Paul received his teaching of salvation from the slave girl who had a spirit of Python at Philippi. Did she not say, "These men are servants of the Most High God that announce to you the way of salvation"! If we follow the reasoning of contemporaries like Dave MacPherson, who have labored hard to resurrect this old slander, then Paul's doctrine of salvation might also be an "incredible cover-up."
The cultured linguist, textual critic, and expositor shunned the limelight. Often identifying the author of his articles as simply "W.
K.," he hid behind Christ. When his nephew attended university, his Greek instructor was impressed by the young man's facility in the language. When told about his reclusive uncle, the professor made his pilgrimage to Kelly's home bearing an offer to join the faculty in Dublin. Besides the prestigious position, he would "make a fortune."
Unhesitatingly, Kelly replied, "For which world?"
C. H. Spurgeon said Kelly was a man "who, born for the universe, narrowed his mind" by Darbyism. It is hard seeing how such a large-hearted brother as Spurgeon could write such jarring things about men like Darby, C. H. MacIntosh and Kelly. Spurgeon reviewed thirteen of Kelly's books in his book, Commenting on the Commentaries so one has to wonder, if Kelly was so tainted, why did Spurgeon bother to read so many of his books? It is amusing to us today to read Spurgeon's remarks about Kelly's Lectures on the Minor Prophets. "Mr. Kelly finds in the Minor Prophets a great many things which we cannot see a trace of. For instance, he here discovers that we shall lose India. It is a pity that a man of such excellence should allow a very superior mind to be so warped." We can only suppose that Spurgeon thought it was not only warped, but also unpatriotic to tell an Englishman that Britain would lose India. Shocking indeed.
Unlike so many prophetic teachers, Kelly was a Bible student, not a news commentator. This fact enabled Kelly to make many statements about Israel and the nations which were unimaginable at the time of their writing, but have since been proven correct.
Besides exposition, Kelly was enough of an Irishman to engage in the controversial. He even answered the Pope's Encyclical with a forceful rebuttal. Thereafter, H. W. Pontis reported that a number of "interesting cases of converted priests, monks, and others of education and high place have come before him [Kelly] both at home and in France."
When running the marathon, a grueling race of more than twenty-six miles, experienced runners talk about "the wall." Somewhere after the twentieth mile it will hit them. They began to hurt miles ago, and yet they ran on in spite of the pain, through the pain, and beyond the pain. But then they came to "the wall." For instance, in the annual Boston Marathon, toward the end of the course, the runners take a turn and as they do they see an incline rising before them. It has been dubbed "heartbreak hill." Those who make it beyond to the finish line have said it was as though they were not the ones running anymore. They could not run. Their legs refused to cooperate. It was as though something or someone else took over.
How many of God's choice saints met "the wall" as they neared the finish line. And our brother William Kelly was not exempted. All his Christian career he had been a controversialist of the first order.
Critiquing the work of the most brilliant scholars of that period.
Kelly took on all comers. But would he expect to be attacked by the ones that should have been his closest allies? Yet, in 1881, while John Darby's health slipped away, some of Darby's loyalists took Kelly in hand.
Kelly foresaw this misery. He was increasingly alarmed by an attachment to external forms and practices among the assemblies that he and Darby labored with. A kind of uniformity was being insisted on that tolerated no diversity. Then a disciplinary action was taken at the Park Street assembly in London, and Kelly objected to the action.
Explaining his position, Kelly wrote, "Surely our Lord has said, when the preliminaries are done in obedience, 'Hear the church;' but is this His voice when they were not? Has He not also called him that has an ear 'to hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches'? To idolize assembly judgments as necessarily right is condemned by His Word" (from Why Many Saints Were Outside the Park Street of 1881).
When Darby realized that his own devotees had given Kelly an ultimatum, either to bow to the Park Street decision, or be excommunicated, he was mortified. Darby's last letter ended: "I do add, Let not John's ministry be forgotten in insisting on Paul's. One gives the dispensations in which the display is; the other that which is displayed. I should particularly object to any attack being made on William Kelly."
But that plea was not heeded. Kelly was excommunicated from the fellowship of so many assemblies which themselves owed a huge debt to him. He was not being shunned because of any serious doctrinal error or moral problem. Rather, he was put out because of ecclesiastical "independence." Perhaps the finest and most able Bible teacher then living heard a host of doors slamming shut against him.
Sorrow upon sorrow came when, in 1884, his beloved wife and collaborator was taken from him. But even then, as he attended her sickbed, he took time to write brother Heyman Wreford, to encourage him in his evangelistic work. Himself suffering from insomnia, Kelly did not allow himself the luxury of wallowing in discouragement. Others would have assumed that it was time to convalesce. But it was during these turbulent years that Kelly's most fruitful work was beginning.
After doing and enduring so much, he was not ready to hang up his shield and sword. In the last fifteen years of his life, most of his written ministry streamed out.
With brother Wreford's help, an energetic work was in progress in Exeter. Wreford preached the gospel in Victoria Hall where throngs came to hear him. David Beattie, in Brethren: the Story of a Great Recovery, tells how in "those stirring times, it was not unusual to see an audience of one thousand people at the Sunday evening service. The work was abundantly owned of God, and it is no exaggeration to state that hundreds were led to the Saviour through his preaching."
For twenty-two years, Kelly gave annual series of lectures in the Queen Street Meeting Room and in the Victoria Hall. These lectures were taken down in shorthand and eventually went into The Bible Treasury and are now available in individual volumes.
The man with the small spectacles, an occasional shrug of the shoulders, and a steady smile that seemed engraved into the lines of his sunny face, stood at the door of the doctor's home in Exeter. His barbed witticisms and outgoing ways were still the same, but the spring was lacking from his step. Weary from sleeplessness, a drawn-looking man stepped into Dr. Wreford's home in 1906. Heyman Wreford would take care of brother Kelly till he died. In his last days, as two of his daughters attended his bedside, his conversation was an outpouring of worship and praise to God. It could be said that in his last days he prayed without ceasing. Looking up from his bed at Mrs. Wreford, he said, "The light of my heart is Christ."
Brother Wreford stepped up to the bed and said, "How do you feel, dear Mr. Kelly?"
"Weak enough to go to heaven," he replied.
One of his last expressions became the outline of one of the messages preached at his funeral. "There are three things real--the Cross, the enmity of the world, the love of God."
May God help us not to lose sight of these realities.
Material for this article has been taken from:
A Historical Sketch of the Brethren Movement by H. A. Ironside A History of the Plymouth Brethren by William Blair Neatby Brethren: the Story of a Great Recovery by David Beattie Chief Men Among the Brethren by Hy. Pickering The Autobiography of a Servant by A. C. Gaebelein John Nelson Darby: A Biography by Max S. Weremchuk Life and Last Days of William Kelly by Heyman Wreford The History of the Brethren by Napoleon Noel
Charles Stanley (1821–1890)
Charles Stanley (1821-1890), of Rotherham, England, was left an orphan at the age of four. At seven, he had to earn his living in the summer by working in the fields. With his energy he could have been a rascal. But it was his legal guardian who stopped the precocious little fellow and, with a firm hand on his shoulder, foretold, "Charles, you will either be a curse or a blessing to mankind."
By the mercy of God, "C.S." became a blessing to thousands.
Converted when fourteen, that year he preached his first message. One Sunday, the preacher had not arrived, and so young Charles opened his Bible to John 3:16. God's hand was upon him. The quick-witted youth would be like that anonymous Christian that Paul spoke of: "We have sent with him the brother, whose praise is in the Gospel throughout all the churches."
At age twenty-three, with meager capital, he had begun his own hardware business in Sheffield. Then the businessman met Captain Wellesly, (the nephew of "the Iron Duke" of Wellington). Under his gracious teaching, the Bible became a new book to him. It was his daily study, and "he grew in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."
As a salesman, he crisscrossed England, at the same time doing "the work of an evangelist." Forty years after, he said, "Seldom in those days did the Lord open my lips without some soul being converted. Not that this appeared at the time, but I have met them everywhere, ten, twenty, or thirty years after." His favorite Old Testament story was of Mephibosheth, the orphan who was tragically crippled. Speaking of his message on Mephibosheth, he remarked: "I believe the Lord rarely ever led me to preach from Mephibosheth without souls being converted." D.
L. Moody told Stanley he had preached it in almost every city in America, and, he thought, never without souls being brought to God.
"C.S." expected the Lord's special and direct guidance. He pitied the Christian who did not enjoy looking to the Lord every day for directives from the Holy Spirit. His own record abounds with the mystic and subjective. As an example, he would be deeply impressed that he ought to go to specific places to preach the Gospel, often where he had never been. "Three of us felt led to go to Leamington. We had a small notice printed, asking the Christians of Leamington to come together in the Music Hall at three o'clock for prayer for the Lord's blessing on the Word to be preached in the hall that night. About two hundred came together, and oh! what a cry of united, expecting prayer went up to the Throne of Grace. At seven, the large hall was filled. That night God answered prayer. It was the birth-night of many precious souls. It was said some hundreds found deliverance and blessing that night." By the riverside, in railroad cars and steamboats, at balls and races, in halls and chapels, in kitchens and drawing-rooms, theatres and concert halls, Charles Stanley confidently witnessed to the grace of God.
On one occasion, he was leaving Bristol, where he had been preaching, for Tetbury. A stranger to that part of the country, he said "On arriving at Wootton-under-Edge, I had some time to spare. It was about five o'clock on a hot day in the midst of harvest. There was scarcely a person to be seen in the little town. I was very distinctly impressed from the Lord, that I must preach the Gospel there that afternoon, yet there appeared to be no people to preach to. Nearly all seemed to be out in the harvest field. Yet the conviction deepened, that I must preach."
Taking a handful of tracts, he began hunting for a congregation, great or small. He was standing in a little shop, speaking to a woman about her soul, when from up the road, a man puffing with exertion, perspiration streaming off his face, charged into the shop, and said, "Please, sir, are you a preacher of the Gospel?"
"Yes," he admitted, "I am, through the Lord's mercy, but why do you ask?"
The man, who was the town bellman (town crier), said, "I was working in the field, and a woman came past and told me someone was distributing tracts in Wootton, and it was just as if a voice had said to me, You must run, and there must be preaching in Wootton today. That is why I left my work, and came immediately."
As he was the bellman, Stanley involuntarily put his hand into his pocket to give him a shilling. "Oh, dear no, sir," he said, "I don't want the money; I want souls to be saved." In half an hour he had washed himself, publicly announced the preaching, and they were on the way to the preaching location.
Just outside the town, they were passing a house on the right when, wrote Stanley, "the Spirit of God stopped me, and distinctly directed me to stand on that doorstep, and on that end of it nearest the town."
The crowd that gathered was not large. Stanley wondered what the purpose was in preaching from that place, when after the message the husband and wife who owned the house opened the door from behind him.
They had been standing behind the front door and had heard every word.
The man was openly weeping as he told Stanley: "We have never heard these things before." Stanley went in and spoke to the man, his wife, and his invalid mother, who had also heard the entire message from an upstairs window. All three trusted the Lord Jesus Christ.
A wave of spiritual awakening had reached Scotland. William Trotter had been to Glasgow, and saw hundreds of souls coming to Christ. He told Stanley of the wonderful works of God. "A remarkable sense of the Lord's presence came over me," said C. S. "I felt moved by divine power to go at once to Birmingham. A strength of faith and expectation that souls would be saved, such as I had never had before, filled my soul."
The large room in Broad Street was crammed night after night. At the after-meetings, nearly all stayed. The preaching was devoid of emotional string-pulling or psychological manipulation. Stanley did little inviting, or pleading with sinners. He spoke almost entirely of the righteousness of God in justifying the sinner, and of justification in the risen Christ. "Indeed, I have always found the more God is revealed in Christ in preaching, the more lasting the results. There must also be undoubting confidence in the Word of God: that all who are brought by the Holy Spirit to believe God, are justified from all things."
While these meetings were held in Birmingham, a brother in Christ came over from Stafford. He believed that God was about to bless souls there. He returned, and asked some brethren to come together to cry to God, at six o'clock the next morning. A number prayed for blessing on the Word there that same night. But when this brother borrowed chairs, so as to seat every available space in the large meeting room, some doubters smirked.
But at 6:45 P.M., the large room was packed. Several were fainting, but could not be taken out. The danger from the crush was so great, that a gentleman stood up, and offered the use of a large church building nearby. Then it also was quickly filled. One drunk man unexpectedly lurched in and the solemnity of God's presence had him sobered in a moment. With many others he professed to be converted that night.
Stanley was not interested in tallying numbers. He viewed the results of his Gospel preaching with caution. Looking back at a very encouraging Gospel campaign, he would say, "Many professed to be saved, some fell away as stony-ground hearers; but the day will declare what was of the Spirit of God."
Charles Stanley was called from his earthly home in Rotherham, to his Heavenly Home on March 30, 1890.
Stretching beyond his preaching, perhaps his greatest Christian work has been the "C.S." tracts. A brother asked, "'Why don't you print some of those incidents of the Lord's work in the railway cars? I am sure the Lord would use them.' I said I had never thought of it. He urged me to do so. How little did I think at that moment that the Lord would use them in so many languages." The goal in writing the tracts was "to look to God to give me to write just what He pleased, and to enable me to write it plainly without any adornment. To never allow me to write with a party feeling, but to write for the whole Church of God, or Gospel to every sinner. In every incident related to give the exact words as near as I could recollect."
His counsel to Christian workers should be heralded among believers across the continent: "I have always found blessing and results in proportion to communion with Christ in His love to the whole Church, whether in writing or preaching; and no Christian can prosper in his own soul unless he is seeking the welfare of others."
FURTHER READING:
Incidents of Gospel Work: Showing How the Lord Hath Led Me, by Charles Stanley, G. Morrish Chief Men Among the Brethren, by Hy. Pickering, Loizeaux Bros.
Donald Ross (1823–1903)
As a youth, Donald was "as proud as a peacock, and as empty as a drum," and yet he "said" prayers night and morning, for fear that God would smite him if he didn't. Then one day while Ross was walking alone among the mountain heather, returning home after visiting a dying brother, he saw the light of the gospel in John 18:8: "If ye seek Me, let these go their way."
Ross was born in Rosshire, Scotland in 1823. Twice each day his God-fearing parents gathered the family to read Scripture and pray for God's blessing. Ross was the fruit of their prayers. For the first five years following his conversion, Ross was a member of the Church of Scotland. He left during what was later known as "The Disruption of
1843," when Thomas Chalmers split from the mainstream Presbyterians to start the Free Church of Scotland.
In 1847, Donald married Margaret Leslie. He moved his new family to Edinburgh a few years later. There Donald and Margaret heard Mr. Tasker ministering God's Word. After work, he engaged in evangelistic work. It was during this time that Tasker urged Ross to superintend a mission to coal miners in Lanarkshire. "This," say his biographers, "he positively refused to do--not from unwillingness to serve the Lord with all his might--but because he did not wish to be dependent on preaching for his support." But Ross changed his mind a while later, when his employer terminated his position, He did not know how to preach. Tasker said, "You preach into your own heart, and you will be surprised how many other hearts your preaching will fit." And so it was that Ross, from
1858 to l860 preached the gospel to the miners.
In 1859, Thomas Rosie began a gospel outreach called the "North East Coast Mission" to reach the 57 Scottish fishing villages between Thurso in the north down to Ferryden in the south. From these villages, the fishermen sailed and rowed boats that were little improved from previous centuries. Their livelihood was always tough, and occasionally dangerous. The men who would preach Christ among these fishermen, said Rosie, needed to be no-nonsense people.
Rosie asked Ross to be his secretary and superintendent of The North East Coast Mission. The Mission had no money and little manpower. So Ross started from the ground up, making the city of Aberdeen his headquarters.
In his first annual report for the Mission, Ross wrote, "At Bervie, Gourdon, Downes, Cove, St. Comb's, Inverallochy, Cairnbulg and Broadsea, the blessing has descended. Waters have broken out in the wilderness and streams in the desert." Ross soon had a band of twenty aggressive evangelists helping him in the work. Those interested in joining the Mission had to pass an interview with Ross. He asked all candidates the same opening question: "When and where were you born again?" If the candidate could not give an immediate, certain answer, the interview ended. Ross had high standards for his preachers. "Were they godly? Had their preaching 'teeth'? Had they the power of God with it?" If a man's preaching lacked "the revival fire" it was "neither good for man nor beast." Of weak preaching, Ross would remark, "It wouldn't kill a mosquito," and of weak preachers, "He has not the smell of God." He talked about "feeling a preacher's pulse" by his prayers, and enjoyed hearing a message that "shaved close."
John Ritchie, one of Ross' biographers, sums up Ross' view on preaching and preachers: "It is necessary to emphasize the need of godly care in encouraging or authenticating as preachers all who may wish to leave their employment to go out as evangelists or missionaries at home or abroad, lest those uncalled and unsent, be helped into a path that they have neither gift nor grace to fill. The Scriptural principle in all such public service is, 'Let these first be proved' (1
Tim. 3:10), which can be best done in the sphere in which they live by those who see their lives and have their testimony and service before them from day to day. Being 'well spoken of' (Acts 16:1-2) by those who know them best, and with the fellowship of the assembly in which they are (Acts 13:1-4), they may then be heartily commended to the Lord, and go forth followed by the prayers of His people. Very different is the not uncommon practice of restive, often unspiritual young men, who have no great love for honest labour 'becoming evangelists,' and setting forth in their self-chosen path, only to do mischief, until they break down and dishonour the Name of the Lord."
Ross' letters to younger workers were sometimes harsh. But if he saw the right attitude, he became a father to them. John Campbell, James Dewar, John Gill, Donald Munro, and John Smith all had Ross as their mentor. Ross said, "All were not equal in gifts and graces, but there were in the Mission the choicest spirits and most devoted men we ever met--godly, self-denying, and successful."
From 1859 until 1870, a great reaping of souls occurred, especially in the villages along the Moray Firth and the Aberdeenshire coast. The work in Ferryden, Cairnbulg and Inverallochy was remarkable. In 1869 at Footdee "the power of God was so manifest, that for many weeks no fishing boats went to sea. Meetings were continued day and night."
"Men, women, and children were seen at all times of the day dropping on their knees--on the snow-covered ground, crying for mercy." Six hundred professed to be saved at Footdee. The evangelists did not know of any holdouts in the town.
Alexander Marshall said, "Duncan Matheson and Donald Ross gathered numerous sheaves of golden grain for the Lord of the harvest. Duncan Matheson and Donald Ross were men of kindred spirits, and were splendid Gospel pioneers. Matheson spoke of his friend as 'that Caledonian warrior.'" Matheson (1824-1869) was Ross' mentor, and closest friend.
Matheson called him "the walking Shorter Catechism" and would say, "I have given you the stories; he will give you the doctrine. His name is Donald Ross."
Ross always spoke of him as "dear Duncan Matheson." They were both Presbyterians, and Mathesan sympathized with Ross' grief over the clergymen. But until his death in 1869, he advised Ross to endure the Free Church denomination. Ross said, "As a rule, we could get the people of the coast to hear us, but this aroused the jealousy of the clergy, to a fearful exent in some cases. Then their complaints poured into headquarters of the sayings and doings of the missionaries in their parishes and districts." As long as drunkards were reformed and church membership increased, Ross' society was a true "auxiliary of the church."
But Ross was not content to only warn the disreputable. He wrote, "Gradually it became our settled conviction that the clergy were the greatest hindrances in the country to the people's salvation. This staggered us, and we often asked ourselves--'Can this be they that Christ ordered?' Another thing was made plain to us then, that is, that nearly all the church members in the Established Church were absolutely unconverted, and that only a sprinkling of the Free Church people were born again. We were convinced that something was radically wrong with the churches. For ourselves we were beginning to think over the question whether it was our duty to have no more fellowship with that which was simply an agency for the devil to deceive souls. This gradually ripened into positive conviction and led to the first steps on the way to a complete separation."
As Ross searched his Bible, he decided to end his service in the North East Coast Mission. In 1870, he started the Northern Evangelistic Association. Some evangelists joined him, but soon afterwards that society dissolved, and Ross ceased being connected with any society or denomination. This was a frightening step for a husband and father. He knew it might bring privation and loneliness. But the thing he feared more than the frown of his peers was the frown of God. Was he a clean vessel? He felt sure that if he walked with God, "there would be porridge in the bowl." These situations helped him see that God does not measure out His grace in ounces and small measures. "No, no;" Ross said, "God is a great God, and must act like Himself in all the greatness of His character."
During the summer of 1870, Ross studied baptism. "What about baptism?" he asked himself. "If you saw it in the Word of God, would you be willing to obey?" Ross had been a proponent of infant sprinkling. All his thirteen children were "christened." But now his Bible reading did not back up his opinion. And so it was that, not long afterwards, Ross was baptized in the River Dee at five o'clock on a Saturday morning, at the Public Baths in Crooked Lane, Aberdeen. His obedience influenced many others, and the baths were used to baptize large numbers of believers for many Lord's Days following. That summer many of Ross' religious prejudices were overturned.
At this time, a Mr. M'Intosh, a licensed minister in the Free Church, was commissioned to warn the people about this heretical movement. A booklet, The New Prophets, was published and widely circulated. The newspapers echoed the misrepresentations in the booklet, and the villages around Aberdeenshire received such slanderous reports that the evangelists needed next to no advertising for their meetings. Ross and his co-workers and converts were gradually "squeezed out."
In 1871, he started a monthly paper, the Northern Evangelist and Intelligencer, afterwards called the Northern Witness. After 1888, it became The Witness, and had a worldwide circulation of 30,000 monthly.
In August of 1871, he was invited to the shipbuilding town of Jarrow to "sound an alarm."
There he met James McGregor, an upstanding churchgoer who had for five years been "troubled about his soul." Ross listened at length while McGregor discussed his many merits. Then interrupted, "James, if that is all you have, you may consider yourself on the road to hell."
James was the first one to be saved that fall.
By November of 1871, "the table of the Lord was spread in the simplicity of early times." James Campbell joined the meeting at that time. "It was a beautiful sight to us indeed. We had never heard of such a meeting until we saw it with our own eyes." Several New Testament styled gatherings sprang up. Ross had his mandate: Preach the gospel, baptize, and see the saints gathered into assemblies. Ross did not realize the reaction these new steps would bring. Under pressure, Ross moved his family to Edinburgh, where "the work was carried on amidst much to discourage."
In 1876, he visited the United States. He often said the Lord never got anything out of him except by squeezing. God squeezed him into repentance, squeezed him into going into the Lord's work among the coal miners, squeezed him out of the Free Church, and now squeezed him out of Scotland into America. Upon his arrival, Ross evangelized in Boston, New York and in country districts in Canada. In 1879, he moved his family to Chicago. There he and three other men began to remember the Lord in the breaking of bread in a tent, also used for evangelistic purposes. That assembly grew so that several others in the Chicago area hived off from it.
Caleb Jason Baker worked with Ross in planning the first Chicago area Bible conference with Ross. Baker cautioned Ross about the expense of the conference, but Ross was undaunted. Baker described Ross' reaction: "'Oh,' he said, 'do it for God, man; do it for God.' 'Do you mean,' I said, 'that you would not charge anything?' 'That is just what I mean,' he replied. 'But,' I said, 'This would cost about $200 for the four days.' His reply was, 'I never knew anything undertaken for God in God's way, but He would look after the expense. Invite everyone to come; let there be the regular collection at the breaking of bread, and let each give as the Lord may lead.' This was somewhat startling to me, and I said I would have to pray and think more about it before I could decide. I did pray, and it seemed to me that it would be honoring to God, and a great blessing to the poor of the flock...the expenses were
$199, but the collection was $204. Since then, all, or nearly all, of the numerous conferences on this western continent have been run on this plan, and always with the most satisfactory results."
While in Chicago, Ross started a tract depot in his own house, keeping a stock of tracts, Bibles, and books for Christians. For some twenty years he issued the monthly magazine, Our Record, and for a number of years edited a gospel paper.
In 1887, he visited California with James Goodfellow to labor in San Francisco and Oakland in tent meetings and home visitation. By the end of that summer, fifteen were baptized and an assembly of thirty begun.
That October they held their first Annual Bible Conference. Donald Munro often spoke at that conference, and during one visit had a direct hand in leading to Christ a teenager named Henry Allan Ironside.
In 1894, Ross made Kansas City his base. From there his gospel campaigns ranged in all directions. He wrote, edited periodicals, and preached there until 1901 when he returned to Chicago, to be with his son C. W. Ross.
Alexander Marshall described Ross "as essentially a gospel preacher.
He was more than a preacher and an exhorter. He was a laborer, and he toiled for the perishing; at fairs and races, in tents and halls, in barns and chapels, in music halls and theaters, in cottages and in the open air, he sounded out the wondrous story." Ross was fearless. He led by example. With his co-workers, Campbell, Gill, Marshall, Munro, and Smith, they saw about 400 assemblies established in the US and Canada.
Ross moved to Savannah, GA, shortly before he was promoted to higher service on February, 13, 1903. Near the end, he said: "I will be eighty on the 11th February, and if I had other eighty before me I would spend them in this gospel of God's grace. There is no other work of such importance in the whole world. All other investments amount to nothing compared with this."
Materials for this article taken from:
1. Hy. Pickering, Chief Men Among the Brethren, Loizeaux
2. C. W. Ross editor, Donald Ross, Gospel Tract Publ.
3. J. Ritchie editor, Donald Munro, GTP
4. J. Ritchie editor, James Campbell, GTP
Uplook Ministries Used by Permission
Frederick William Grant (1834–1902)
Frederick William Grant (1834-1902) was born into a God-fearing Anglican home in the Putney district of London, England. Presumably in his teenage years he became a believer while privately reading the Bible. He went on to King's College School, in order to be groomed for a position in the British defense department. But getting those positions often required inside connections to pull the necessary strings. Disappointed, at the age of twenty-one, Frederick went to Canada.
In the 1850s the Church of England was aggressively opening parishes in the Canadian frontier. Frederick was examined and ordained as an Anglican priest, though he never attended their standard seminary training. About the same time he also delved into medicine. Whether this was his first profession, or a sideline, we do not know. But he patronized a pharmacy owned by a believer who had a literature rack.
The pharmacist fellowshipped with an assembly, which Frederick had assumed was a place to be warned against. But reading the literature, he became convinced that the authors were not in a dangerous sect, but rather, were faithfully presenting the Word. He and his brother, Robert, who had also come over to Canada, and had become an Anglican priest, left the "systems of men" as they referred to them, around 1860 after embracing the truths they had discovered. F. W. lived in Toronto before moving to the United States, where he lived in Brooklyn, New York and then in Plainfield, New Jersey.
Amid all his labors for the saints of God, he did not shirk that lofty responsibility to be a godly husband and father. The Grants were the happy parents of four children, Frederick, Robert, Frank, and Hattie.
Samuel Ridout states, "His place in the hearts of the saints rests...in his identification with the Word of God. Unknown to many in the flesh, who have profited by his ministry, with little of what may be called popularity, or the magnetism supposed to be so essential in a leader, he is lost sight of in the precious truth which it was his joy to unfold."
Grant's emphasis on numerics has received mixed reviews, and it is probably safe to say that most Bible students do not read his The Numerical Bible, issued in seven volumes, for his notes on numerics, but rather for his devotional comments. When C. I. Scofield worked on his notes for the Scofield reference Bible, he had Darby's Synopsis and Grant's Numerical Bible on his desk. Grant's large book, Facts and Theories as to a Future State, was recommended by C. H. Spurgeon, who said it was "the last word on the right side of every question discussed" about the state of the soul after death. It is not as readable as Sir Robert Anderson's book, Human Destiny which was written on the same topic, but it is far more complete. Anyone who is seriously studying this topic should get Grant's book. It is perhaps his most important work. As with William Kelly and J. N. Darby, Grant was engaged in issues confronting the whole Church. These men were not playing church in a pinched circle of devotees, trying to be the big fish in a little pond. Their work shows their burden with the issues that all saints faced, regardless of affiliation. They wrote about big issues for a wide audience.
Grant hated denominationalism. When he saw saints dividing and circles of assemblies forming, each circle unreconciled to the next, he mourned, "Our shame is public. It requires no spirituality to see that exactly in that which we have professedly sought we have failed most signally. 'The unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace' is just most surely what we have not kept.'"(Ephesians 4:3) Ironically he was perceived as the guiding spirit behind the "Grant party" in North America.
The telling of how this happened is also the telling of Grant's darkest hour. H. A. Ironside devotes a chapter in his book, A Historical Sketch of the Brethren Movement to this painful ordeal. Of course H. A. I. was quite biased in favor of brother Grant. There he says that "In America F. W. Grant had become by 1880 the leading figure among the exclusive Brethren. His platform gifts were not of a high order but as a teacher he was unexcelled. Many consider him, to this day, the superior of Darby himself in accuracy and spiritual insight, but he always held himself as but a disciple greatly indebted to J. N.
Darby. Up to the last, the two were fast friends, though for a number of years there had been slight doctrinal differences between them."
To look in the best light at why these "slight differences" fueled such debates, we need to lift ourselves out of our present era. Today it is easy to become comfortable with sloppy, haphazard, and careless Bible teaching. We are surrounded by many who assume that doctrine doesn't matter. But Grant lived in the golden era of biblical exposition. Scholarship in general, especially in England, had reached a high water mark in the 1880s. To those who do not bother their heads about accuracy and truth, the discussions and controversies of that day seem painfully trivial, as they divided over the north and south side of a hair. But these brethren engaged in debates brought on by a zeal for biblical accuracy.
In 1881, John Nelson Darby spoke for the last time at the Bible conference in Croyden, England. He spoke from Romans 7, and referred to the new birth and the sealing of the Spirit. F. W. Grant listened to the entire message, but was "perceptibly upset" by some of the doctrines promulgated that he stood up before the meeting was adjourned and walked out. This was noticeable enough that brothers J. B. Dunlop and Major McCarthy spoke with brother Grant at length to arrive at some resolution of the issue.
In the magazine, Helps By The Way, which Grant edited, he printed his brother Robert's spirited article on the topic. Back in England it was viewed as an attack on Darby's teaching, and they told Grant so. We cannot go into a blow-by-blow account of what happened to F. W. Grant at this time. The score cards seem fairly diverse, depending on if you are listening to H. A. Ironside or Napoleon Noel. We do know that shortly before Darby died in 1882, he wrote a booklet about the sealing of the Spirit, answering Robert Grant. But F. W. was so cautious, that by the time he finally published his own booklet, to answer his accusers from across the waters, Darby was with the Lord.
The timing was not in Grant's favor. To publish just then appeared to be an attack on a dead man who, of course, was not present to defend his position. The English hymn writer, Lord Adelbert P. Cecil, told Grant that his manuscript was inflammatory, and pled with him not to publish it; if he did, division would follow. He answered, "If the truth will divide us, the sooner we are broken to pieces the better."
Grant's statement was partially reported, leaving the first phrase out, "If the truth will divide us..." The impression left was that Grant was bent on causing division, truth or no truth. Grant's motives were judged, and his words inaccurately reported.
In 1883, Grant published the booklet. Cecil's warning was not idle.
A breech followed in 1885 which affected hundreds of assemblies and thousands of saints. To seal these proceedings, in 1889 Cecil was returning from a visit to Native American believers when he lost his balance and fell out of a small boat in the Bay of Quinte, off Lake Ontario. Hearing the news, F. W. wrote his brother, "Dear Cecil is drowned and with him goes all hope of healing the division." With evangelist Alfred Mace, Cecil was seen as Grant's chief disputant.
After F. W. Grant's homegoing, brother Mace wrote a letter to Grant's widow, apologizing for his part in this sad division. With sorrow Mace confessed to others that "we came over to get Mr. Grant."
Grant's maturity in the grace of God shows through the dark times of
1881-1885. He had been blind-sided by the enemy. The painfulness of it was that the instruments used had been some of his most cherished friends. If those times seem like dense velvet, remember that Grant continued to mine rare and beautiful jewels from the depths of God's Word to lay against that background. These gemstones sparkle in his own writings, and in the spoken and written ministries of the Lord's servants that he influenced, such as John Bloore, Inglis Fleming, Robert Grant, B. C. Greenman, J. B. Jackson, P. J. and Timothy Loizeaux, R. J. Reid, and Samuel Ridout.
Ridout was privileged to care for brother Grant in his final days, and he also wrote the sketch of his life in Hy. Pickering's Chief Men Among the Brethren. Ridout says, "The passion of our brother's life, the desire that consumed him, was to make Christ more precious, to make His Word more loved, more read, more studied. He made a significant utterance shortly before his departure. Propped in his chair, with the Bible open in front of him, as was his custom through the days of weary, helpless waiting, he turned to the writer of these lines, and with a depth of pathos, glancing at his Bible, said: "Oh, the Book, the Book, the BOOK!" It seemed as though he said: "What a fullness there; how little I have grasped it; how feebly expressed its thoughts." Thus he passed to be "with Christ" at Plainfield, New Jersey, on 25th July,
1902, on his sixty-eighth birthday."
Harry Ironside visited the venerable Donald Ross in Chicago just after word came that brother Grant was with the Lord. Ross himself was just two months short of his own homegoing. "Mr. Ross was a patriarchal figure with long flowing beard. He sat in a big chair, and when his son Chas. Ross mentioned that I was with exclusives, he asked sharply
'which branch?' I replied, 'With those who refused the judgment against F. W. G.' 'Oh,' he said, 'I'm glad of that.' Then after a moment or two of silence, he exclaimed, 'Frederick Grant is in heaven!' 'Yes,' I replied, 'He is with the Lord.' 'Frederick Grant is in heaven!' he declared a second time with peculiar energy. Again I answered as before. Almost fiercely he exclaimed, 'I tell you Frederick Grant's in heaven! Aye--and they were glad to get him there! A little clique of them tried to cast him out of the church of God on earth. They let him die, so far as they were concerned, in the place of the drunkard or the blasphemer. But oh, what a welcome he received up there! And he's with Cecil now and the two are reconciled. Soon I'll be there too--and we'll all have fellowship together at last.'"
Donald Munro (1839–1908)
Donald Munro (1839-1908) was born in the county Caithness, in the far north of Scotland. His parents, James and Hannah Munro, held the "old Puritan theology of the highlands that conversion is a necessity, the new birth a work of the Spirit in the soul, and the gospel the means used to effect it." They gathered their children daily to read from the Gaelic Bible and to pray. In the Disruption of 1843, James took his family out of the Established Church of Scotland and joined the Free Church which was more evangelistic. But despite his parents' godly example, Donald was resistant to the gospel.
His older brother Charles was the first of the Munro children to make a clear profession of salvation. Charles witnessed to his younger brother on a long walk, but Donald "didn't want to be spoken to in that way again."
In July of 1958, while working as an apprentice cabinetmaker in the town of Wick, he went to hear Hay MacDowall Grant, the laird of Arndilly. He spoke from Romans 8:1, and seemed to talk directly to Munro. "Young man! You may have read your Bible and said your prayers this morning, but did you pray? I warn you now before God, who knows you thoroughly, that if you are not in Christ, you are under condemnation."
Six weeks later, he went to speak privately with Brownlow North, who laid the facts before Donald in a way he had never seen them before.
Later that night, he looked to God in faith. Immediately, he wanted to tell his roommate that he had been converted, but was afraid. Finally waking him in the middle of the night, he told the whole story, and the roommate also trusted Christ.
Early in his Christian life he contacted James Dewar, who was preaching under Donald Ross' Northeast Coast Mission among the fishing villages. After working hours, Donald would accompany Dewar. This was harvest season along that coast. Dewar's success owed nothing to any brilliance or natural persuasiveness on Dewar's part. Rather his proximity to God and the throne of grace gave him influence among men.
He would spend protracted periods in secret prayer, sometimes cloistering himself for days seeking God in private.
Munro was simply a helper to Dewar. Then, one night James announced to the congregation that there would be two meetings going on at the same time the next evening. Donald knew Dewar would speak at one of them. After the meeting he asked who would be preaching at the other meeting. "You will," Dewar answered.
In 1865, Donald Ross invited Donald Munro to join in the gospel outreach of the Northeast Coast Mission. Donald worked mainly in the far north, in Sutherland shire. He also helped in the awakenings along the Moray Firth and in Aberdeenshire, lending a hand in the reaping of souls at Cairnbulg, Inverallochy, and at Footdee. Where the power of God was manifested, the meetings continued day and night.
As Ross searched his Bible, he decided to end his service in the Northeast Coast Mission. In 1870, he started the Northern Evangelistic Association. Munro was one of the first evangelists to join. It seemed a risky step, but Munro reasoned that if God was leading them out, then God would supply their needs. "His pot will be big enough to hold porridge for me." Soon the new mission society dissolved, and the men discovered that their relationship of co-laboring did not need the artificial bands and ligaments of some society or denomination.
At Inverurie there was strong opposition, but Munro was an overcomer. At their second gospel meeting, "few were present but scoffers, and such an exhibition of the devil, I never did see before anywhere. There were about thirty scoffers. During the time of prayer they hissed, cheered, and shouted so, that one could not hear his own voice." Munro took heart, knowing that sometimes the devil's roars are his admission of defeat, and that he leaves his victims to "wallow foaming" (Mk. 9:20). At the conclusion of the week, they saw twenty saved, among them an eighteen-year-old named John Ritchie, who went on to serve Christ with his tongue and pen, forming what is now John Ritchie Publishers.
In 1871, after a strenuous twelve months of gospel campaigns, Munro took a break to visit his brother Charles in Parkhill, Ontario. He also hoped to witness to his unconverted brother, William.
Mr. Munro reported on the progress of the work. His letters were printed in the Northern Intelligencer, and the Northern Witness, and became seeds of interest to bring other gospel preachers such as John Carnie, John Smith, Donald Ross, and Alexander Marshall over to Canada and the United States.
At this time, Ross was in Scotland examining the issue of Christian baptism, while Munro did likewise in Canada. Ross corresponded with his friend, saying that he saw the matter clearly, and was baptized in the River Dee one Saturday morning. Donald Munro sailed the ocean to have Ross baptize him at Aberdeen on December 31, 1871. Thereafter, believer's baptism was a key element of teaching to the new converts.
Munro also saw a bold step being taken in Scotland. In November of
1871, as James Campbell recalled, "the table of the Lord was spread in the simplicity of early times...It was a beautiful sight to us indeed.
We had never heard of such a meeting until we saw it with our own eyes." As New Testament-style congregations sprang up, the opposition sprang up, too.
Munro discovered the meaning of that saying, "Endure hardness...do the work of an evangelist" when a Mr. McIntosh published the inflamatory booklet, The New Prophets. The scoffers felt that they had the support of the established church, and all restraint against violence and public ridicule was removed. At the meetings in Huntly, a clergyman stood up to disrupt the message with railing denunciations.
Donald Ross said the mockers gave "savage, cruel, and brutal treatment, worthy of the palmy days of the Inquisition...God's truth had laid bare the sores, and they were very sore."
At a packed Sunday evening meeting, the scoffers turned the lights out and tried to cause a panic, but the Christians remained calm--even some of the scoffers were saved! At the climax of that meeting, the opposition rushed onto the platform, threw the preachers to the floor, and told them to desist or they would be murdered. The devil must have been quite worried about losing hold of Huntly. Rightly so! Thereafter it became the birthplace of a number of missionaries and Christian workers.
In October of 1872, Munro returned to Ontario. In 1873, he was joined in the work by James Campbell and John Smith to campaign in Chatham, Dundas, Forest, Galt, London, Orillia, St. Catharines, Stratford, and Toronto. The Word went out in power. Numbers came to the Saviour, and congregations were established.
The opposition persisted. A clergyman in Forest, ON warned, "Mr.
Munro is all right so long as he keeps at the gospel, but I warn you against his Bible readings. They are sure to lead you astray."
One night in 1873, Munro visited the town of Shakespeare, near Stratford. "We can never forget the first time we heard the voice of Donald Munro preaching on the street in Shakespeare...Nobody spoke to him, and when he had finished he returned to Stratford. He came again the following night, preached in the open-air, and obtained permission to have meetings in the schoolhouse. There he was joined by Mr. Smith, his fellow-laborer. They preached the Word simply and faithfully each night, and God gave blessing. Sinners were saved, and those who were the Lord's revived."
But the Presbyterian minister was not so encouraged when he noticed some of his sheep straying over to the schoolhouse. He set in motion a cycle of abuse. Munro and Smith lost the use of the schoolhouse, and every place they rented or stayed at was vandalized. Windows were broken, and stones smashed against the doors of private houses. One day a property owner stood looking at the work of a mob on the previous evening, when an elder of the church which was the most guilty of the violence walked by. While embarrassed by his fellow parishioners, he made the lame excuse, "The truth must be upheld at all cost, even if stones have to be used." On hearing this, John Ritchie remarked, "Very likely the murderers of Stephen would have given a similar answer." Yet in the spring Munro baptized twenty-five from Shakespeare.
At Clyde, ON, Munro, Smith and Carnie preached for five weeks. A brother McPherson hosted Munro. "His godly life in our home and his earnest prayers had a wonderful effect on all. He often retired alone to the edge of a wood to pour out his soul in prayer to God, continuing for a long time. He was the first to open up the Word of God to us, and we never knew any who could do it so simply and plainly as he did. In one day Mr. Munro baptized fifty believers in a pond near Clyde."
In June of 1874, Munro and Smith came to Hamilton, ON. They preached six weeks of gospel meetings and decided that the meager results dictated that they should pack their bags. But on the last night, a young man named Thomas Muir was saved. Munro and Smith were heartened, and decided to stay a little longer. They unpacked their bags. Two nights later, Thomas Muir leaned over to a distressed young man and asked, "Have you eternal life?" "No, I have not, but I wish I did have." A few minutes later, the man, William Faulknor, trusted Christ.
Sitting behind them, Kenneth Muir listened, and he was saved. Faulknor would eventually go to Angola to serve in mission work with Fred Stanley Arnot, while Muir became a missionary to the metropolis of Detroit.
In Toronto, Munro became a frequent guest in the John and Sophia Ironside home, along with his co-worker, John Smith. A ten-year-old named Henry Allen Ironside would never forget the men who "carried with them the atmosphere of eternity." "One of them was very tall, and wore a long brown beard. His name was Donald Munro. The other was quite short; his beard was long also, but it was black, and his eyebrows were bushy and very shaggy. Harry used to enjoy watching him clip them." The shorter man's name was John Smith (but privately nicknamed "Hellfire Jack"). As they came down the stairs for breakfast, one of them asked, "Harry, my lad, are you born again?" In defense, Harry reported on his tract distribution efforts, Bible memorization, and Sunday School attendance, but the interview ended with a bearded preacher saying, "O laddie, you may give out tracts and still spend all eternity in hell.
'Ye must be born again,' Harry, boy."
When Harry's widowed mother moved the family to San Francisco, Harry thought that those preachers would never button-hole him again, but he was wrong. The next year, 1886, Donald Munro married Miss Helen Dorr, and the Munros settled in Toronto. Meanwhile, in 1887, Ross saw an assembly established in the San Francisco Bay area. That October, they held their first annual Bible conference. And who else would Ross invite to such a conference, but his comrade Donald Munro?
In the late summer of 1889, Munro again appeared. The fourteen-year-old was returning home from school when Mrs. Ironside said, "Harry, who do you suppose is here?" He guessed, by her excitement that it was uncle Henry. "Guess again," and without waiting for another wrong guess she enthused, "It's Mr. Munro!"
Donald greeted him, "Well, well, Harry, lad, how you have grown! And are you born again yet, my boy?" Ironside never could hide his blush.
Speechless, Harry was eyeing the floor, when his uncle Allan interjected, "Oh, Harry preaches himself, now," referring to some Sunday School and Bible club work Harry had started.
"You are preaching, and yet you don't know that you're born again! Go and get your Bible, lad."
As his biographer put it, Harry was so eager for an excuse to leave the room that he "flew up the stairs. He knew he had to come down again, but he took as much time as he possibly could to do so. When finally he could stay away no longer without being rude, he descended with his Bible in his hand. The first thing that Mr. Munro asked Harry to do was to turn to Romans 3:19. The boy did, and Mr. Munro said: 'Now read it aloud.' Harry complied: 'Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.' He had scarcely begun reading when Harry knew why his catechist had chosen the passage. 'Harry, lad, have you ever been there?'
"'What do you mean?' the boy countered.
"'Well, I understand that you have got your mouth pretty wide open trying to preach to other people. When God makes a preacher, He stops his mouth first and then, when he sees his lost condition, God leads him to put his trust in the Lord Jesus. When he trusts, he is born of God and his soul is saved. Then God opens his mouth. You've been putting the cart before the horse, haven't you?'
"Maybe I have,' Harry replied."
That interview with Munro gave him emotional whiplash. In six months he still suffered from the jolt. One Thursday night in February of
1890, he again read from Romans 3, then John 3. That night H. A.
Ironside looked to the One who was lifted up on a cross for him.
Campbell, Carnie, Gill, Marshall, Munro, Ross, and Smith, "toiled for the perishing." They led by example. Besides the provinces of Ontario and Manitoba, Munro evangelized in Boston, Chicago, Kansas City, New York, and Philadelphia. He made ten trips to the west coast.
The years 1905-1906 were perhaps Donald's busiest, but then his health gave in. Donald and Helen made visits to his many children in the faith, hoping by this to recoup his strength. Donald felt like Gideon, "faint, yet pursuing." (Judges 8:4-5) At the age of 69, having walked with God over fifty years, he passed to glory in 1908.
Material for this article was taken from:
1. Cameron, H. A., Reminiscences of T. D. W. Muir, G. F. P.
2. Hawthorn, J., Alexander Marshall, Gospel Tract Publ.
3. Ritchie, J. Ed., Donald Munro, Gospel Tract Publ.
4. Ross, C. W. Ed., Donald Ross, Gospel Tract Publ.
5. English, E. Schuyler, H. A. Ironside: Ordained of the Lord, Loizeaux Bro.
Caleb Jason Baker (1840–1918)
His mother penned this in her Bible, "July 22, 1840. This day delivered of a son, Caleb Jason. The Lord have mercy on my son."
At seventeen, a defiant Caleb Jason Baker (1840-1918) left
Sussex, England for America. But the God who hears and answers prayers is not stymied by the distance from Hailsham to Chicago. In 1869, walking down the street with twelve dollars in his pocket, he stopped in front of a window shaded by a tattered awning. He made some measurements, went to the ship chandler to price out canvas and proceeded to rent a treadle sewing machine for 75c per month. After making a modest earning from his first awning, he said, "Well, I could do that, I'm going into the awning business."
His sister Emma was his sole employee and seamstress. Baker was salesman, delivery boy, and installation artist. Soon they were ordering canvas in 500 yard bales.
In the path of the Chicago fire, October 8, 1871, he wrapped his sewing machine in canvas, tied a rope around it and dropped it out the window of his riverside apartment. He then rolled his three bales of canvas in likewise. The rope was tied to a post, and he ran. After the fire passed, he pulled his murky inventory out of the river. A sidewalk in the remains of "the metropolis of the mid-west" became his factory.
The soggy canvas was stretched out, dried and sewn into tents for the homeless. Baker immediately went to Western Union to telegraph his closest supplier, in Austin, Texas, to send bales of canvas, lots of bales.
In that tragedy God was good to C. J. Baker. Some time in 1872, he knelt down in his room and trusted Christ after reading His words, "Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out."
We know little about Baker's first marriage. He had a daughter, Margaret. Then, in December of 1877, he married a widow named Eliza Roe with a nine-year-old daughter named Grace. This marriage was in the Lord. C. J. was attracted to her because of her involvement in evangelism, and no doubt she was a great help-meet. Together they may have run Chicago's first rescue mission. He rented the floor of a building on South Desplaines Street and hung a sign outside the door:
"Clean beds--5c" Inside were two hundred cots and two huge stoves.
There was no bedding. The men just slept with their clothes on. The Chicago news reporter who wrote a large piece about the mission was as amazed by Baker's generosity as he was by the squalor of the mission's guests. The men might get a meal at night, and certainly a gospel message, and Baker's friends said if someone didn't have five cents, "he usually supplied the nickel."
We have no record that Baker ever labored with or knew D. L.
Moody. John Darby also visited the area, but we have no record that they met. But we do know that he met a Scottish evangelist named Donald Ross (1823-1903).
Ross labored in the revival times of 1859-60 among the miners of Lanarkshire, Scotland. Ross was a fearless Scot. A leader of a band of gospelers, in military mindset they assaulted enemy citadels. Andrew Miller said of those sweeping days, "In country districts and in fishing villages, in towns and cities, the heralds of the Cross were busy. Brownlow North and James Turner, Hay-M'Dowall Grant and Reginald Radcliffe, Lord Kintore and Richard Weaver, Gordon Forlong and Harrison Ord, Duncan Matheson and Donald Ross, gathered numerous sheaves of golden grain for the Lord of the harvest. Duncan Matheson and Donald Ross were men of kindred spirits, and were splendid gospel pioneers.
Matheson was accustomed to speak of his friend as 'that Caledonian warrior.'"
In the awakening, workers and converts found that the Spirit of God tended to either transgress or ignore their denominational scruples. Some, like Ross and his co-workers in the Northern Evangelistic Association, found themselves disconnected from any denomination. As they consulted Holy Scripture, they discovered that many of their practices lined up with New Testament teaching, and were therefore legitimate for today. Ross had his mandate.
Donald Ross came to America in 1876, and in 1879 he moved his family to Chicago. He and three other men began to remember the Lord in the breaking of bread in a tent, which was also used for evangelistic purposes. They knew of a well-to-do Englishman who claimed to have met in similar fashion back in the old country. They invited him to join the fledgling assembly. After the breaking of bread, he looked at the tent, and remarked, "This is indeed 'without the camp,'" and never returned. Ross seemed oblivious to discouragement. He did what true evangelists do--he preached, and prayed and plugged away.
Baker wrote, "I believe it was the summer of 1879 that I first met our brother Donald Ross. He, with James Goodfellow, of Canada, had pitched a tent in Chicago, on the west side, opposite Union Park. I was then engaged, four nights of the week, in a mission hall, and in spare evenings I went to hear him preach. I remember distinctly how impressed I was with his forceful, energetic preaching and his apt illustrations, also with the fact that he was proving his points with the Word of God, which was not at all the case with the preaching that I had been listening to in other places. I became much interested immediately...one Sunday morning, I went to see them remember the Lord in the breaking of bread. Brother Ross invited me to participate with them, which I did; and six or seven of us altogether remembered the Lord in this, to me, novel way."
In August, Eliza Baker gave birth to Jessie Mae who would marry William Sommerville. In the fall of 1879, Baker offered Ross the use of his mission hall for evangelistic meetings. The nightly meetings continued until May 1, 1880. It was only after a full year of nightly gospel meetings that Ross conducted their first baptism, in which several went down into the water. The breath of God was felt in the windy city. A vigorous and devoted congregation was established.
This had all created tension with Baker's Baptist pastor. The pastor already felt endangered by Baker's evangelistic outreach to children in the slums. Besides the mission work, Baker was the superintendent over about 20 Sunday School classes. A divide came when the irked clergyman notified the Sunday School teachers: "Don't go there any more," and Baker suddenly had no Sunday School. Baker abominated such pettiness. He knit in with Ross. Thereafter the Presbyterians, Baptists, and any other Protestant group became to him part of "the sects."
In February of 1884, daughter Marion was born. She would became Mrs. Walter Lewis Wilson. Wilson is the author of the Moody Press books, The Romance of a Doctor's Visits, Doctor's Casebook, etc., and became himself a useful evangelist and Bible teacher.
In 1886 Baker published one of his two charts, Two Roads and Two Destinies, or Life and Death: Hades or Sheol, which taught dispensational truth. These visual aids were accompanied by books or study guides, and were widely used and really blessed. Baker also wrote several gospel and prophet booklets and tracts. The imminency of Christ's coming was big in Baker's thinking.
Baker's new views, practices, and associates embarrassed his brother-in-law and business partner, Mr. Murray, so that their relationship was becoming, shall we say, tense. Still their tent and awning business was prospering. Baker said, "Now look, we're sending a great many tents and a great many tarpaulins to Kansas City; there seems to be a big market down there. Let's do this: either I stay here in Chicago and you go down to Kansas City and set up a business, or you stay here and I will go to Kansas City. We'll just split up the business." Did he learn his diplomacy from Abraham, who gave Lot the first choice? Murray wasn't crazy, and immediately said he would stay with his half of the business in Chicago.
Baker then selectively approached seven or eight employees and invited them to come with him to Kansas City. He wanted capable tent and awning workers, but it appears that the chief qualification for going to Missouri was their agreement with him on spiritual matters, and their abilities in gospel outreach. Several were excellent singers.
One of the men's wives, Mrs. Rendall, was an outstanding children's worker.
An assembly in Kansas City began the day they arrived in 1887.
They found a place for a factory, and the congregation met in the main room.
Kansas City was the last outfitting station for the settlers pulling their wagons to a fork at Gardiner. From there, wagon trains branched out to Santa Fe, California, Oregon, or Oklahoma. Their trains could be 90 wagons long and they all needed canvas coverings. Situated in Kansas City, Baker had a virtual monopoly.
Those were busy days, but Baker was vigorous; he did not tire.
Lines of wagons three city blocks long would be waiting for their canvas in a day. One of the ladies who worked for him pled, "Oh, Mr.
Baker, we're so tired. Give us a little rest some time!"
His answer? "There's plenty of rest in heaven; we need to be working down here." Newspaper articles talked about the man who worked all day and preached for two hours each night. Saturday was the night for the open-air gospel preaching at the corner of Eleventh and Grand.
Mrs. Charles and Mrs. Rendall's singing voices could be heard two blocks away. Clerks would pause and whisper, "Doesn't that sound beautiful!" If the preaching was good, the singing was better. People in the audience called out, "We want to hear that lady sing." When Mrs.
Charles was told that singing above the bustle of the streets would ruin her voice, she said, "What better place is there to do it? Where am I going to use my voice; what am I going to use it for? What good is it if I don't use it?"
Down Kansas City's main street (then a dirt road) they rented a vacant building at Fourth Avenue to start a Sunday School. Baker told Mrs. Rendall, Miss Jamison, and a few others, "You're Sunday School teachers; now go get yourself a class." They fanned out in a ten-block radius, looking for street urchins to invite in for a Bible lesson.
Busy days became fruitful days. Baker was soon employing three hundred workers, and the assembly had about 150 in fellowship. Baker was a media event. Curious news articles appeared with headlines such as this piece on December 27, 1894 (at the time of their annual conference):
On factory walls, large Bible texts taught gospel fundamentals, and at noontime an evangelistic meeting was available to all workers.
In the year 1894, Donald Ross moved and made Kansas City his base of operations. Alfred Mace described Ross "as essentially a gospel preacher. He was more than a preacher and an exhorter. He was a laborer, and he toiled for the perishing; at fairs and races, in tents and halls, in barns and chapels, in music halls and theatres, in cottages and in the open air, he sounded out the wondrous story."
From Kansas City, Ross ranged in all directions in his gospel campaigns. He wrote, edited his periodicals, and preached there until
1901 when he returned to Chicago.
A year or two before his death, C. J. Baker approached his son-in-law's father, William Sommerville, and gave him a job as a janitor on a floor where more than a hundred women worked at sewing machines. He said he didn't want him to spend much time pushing a broom, "the less the better." Instead C. J. Baker instructed the evangelist to linger at the ladies' work stations and witness for Christ. Baker was never accused of showing favoritism to his believing workers. At times he employed almost 500 workers. The large government and automobile industry contracts did not intimidate the evangelist.
His trade catalog had more gospel content in it than many so-called gospel tracts do.
All the officers and stockholders of the tent and awning company were Christians. At one annual meeting, Baker said, "Look, the Lord has given us all of this money in our hands. All of you that work here have received your salaries; you don't really need this money. Why don't we just turn over the entire profits of this business to the Lord's work?"
It was amazing that he suggested such a thing--and more amazing that the men followed through with the suggestion. Baker provided large tents, free of charge, for pioneers in Argentina, China, Venezuela, and here among the savages of Canada and the United States. J. J. Rouse, William Williams, and Ross wore out several of those tents.
C. J. Baker died of pneumonia two weeks after his dear friend William Sommerville was taken home. Hundreds wept at his passing.
Kansas City newspapers were emblazoned with HIS RICHES TO THE POOR, Gave Away His Riches. The copy read: "With this big business, however, Mr. Baker did not die a rich man. He made it the rule of his life to give away all that he made except the amount needed in the business and for his own personal expenses."
What was his secret? Baker knew the truth of 2 Corinthians 5:1, "For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
Materials for this article taken from:
1. Hy. Pickering, Chief Men Among the Brethren, Loizeaux Bros.
2. C. W. Ross editor, Donald Ross, Gospel Tract Publications
3. H. Sommerville, Reminiscences of His Grandfather Baker, 1994
4. W. Sommerville, Reminiscences About Our Family, 1977
Walter Thomas Prideaux Wolston (1840–1917)
Walter Thomas Prideaux Wolston (1840-1917) was born at Brixham, Devon, in the far south of England, on the Channel, 40 kilometers from Plymouth. He was evidently surrounded and nurtured by godly influences.
Around those parts at that time an F. Prideaux and an R. W. Wolston, probably related to Wolston, were active Christians in assembly life.
He had childhood recollections of his father inviting preachers, such as Charles Stanley to stay in their home. He said he had "a pious mother." "It is an inestimable boon for a man to have a praying mother and much, I know; mine prayed for me. But for twenty years I knew nothing of the grace of God, nothing whatever!"
According to his own testimony, he had been "about the most thorough-going young worldling you could have met." When preaching he would say, "There is not a man in this hall tonight, who was more deeply immersed in the world, in its pleasures, its sin and its enticements, nor a more downright, out-and-out slave of the devil, than the man who speaks to you tonight. Yet in one hour God saved me. Hence, I love to sing—
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wand'ring from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood."
While he never went far into the details of his career in sin, he did mention that he had lived for trifles, without a thought about God.
On leaving home, he entered a lawyer's office in his native town, intending to follow the legal profession. After office hours, "There was not a ball or a concert, a regatta or a cricket match, or a worldly entertainment of any kind, within twenty miles of where I was staying, that I was not in, if I could get to it."
On December 4, 1860, he left his country home in Devonshire for London to pursue his legal studies, planning to return home before Christmas to fulfill several engagements in his Glee Band. The first Sunday after reaching London his roommate suggested, "What do you say we go and hear Richard Weaver. I see in the papers he is going to preach in Surrey Theatre tonight." The coal miner turned preacher was an instant legend whose rousing preaching attracted huge crowds and won thousands to Christ. Henry Pickering heard him and said,
...a greater God-made preacher has not been known in living memory.
The moment he began to speak—at least in his palmy days—he sent a power and reality through the hearts of the thousands who thronged to hear him. You felt God was there. The Spirit was working. The bleeding Lamb, of whom he loved to sing, was the center, and eternal issues were at stake.
Wolston could not have listened to a more dissimilar man. Wolston was an educated and cultured man. The preacher was an uneducated brute of a man who had been a feared boxer. His nickname was "Dauntless Dick."
Wolston's conscience took a beating that night. If he before had thought he was a sinner, now he also felt it. From Monday to Saturday, instead of spending the evening ranging the streets in search of the outer parameters of London's excesses, Walter and Tom went home early and prayed together and read from the Bible.
The following Sunday evening they went to hear Charles Stanley preach the gospel from the story of Solomon building the temple. The meeting concluded and Walter turned to his roommate, "What are you going to do?" Tom answered, "I am going home to have it out with God."
"Well," Walter said, "you can go home; I shall stay and speak to Charles Stanley." In the vestry he met Charles Stanley, Mrs. Andrew Miller and her son Tom. Mrs. Miller had been watching for Walter.
People were being converted all around, and polite Englishmen kept asking, "Are you a Christian?" and then, "And would you like to become one?"
After a lengthy conversation, Tom Miller finally brought Walter to James 2:19 and there the light dawned. Walter Wolston entered by the door.
Recognizing that "a promise made is a debt unpaid," and that every Christian should honorably pay his debts, he wrote a letter to the conductor of the Glee Band, letting him know that since leaving home he had been converted to Christ. The Lord had put a new song into his mouth, and while he was willing to fulfill his legitimate engagements, he could now only sing about the Saviour who had done so much for him.
Needless to say, he was relieved of his obligations.
Thereafter he took up the study of medicine. In 1864, sensing the Lord's call to Scotland, Wolston left behind lucrative possibilities in London and went to Edinburgh. He was appointed House Surgeon to the Old Infirmary after he had established a large private practice there. Dr.
Wolston was a combination of professional ability, spiritual depth and personal warmth, "universally acknowledged to be a skillful and kindly Christian doctor." He always found time amid his busy practice to tell the old, old story. He also rented halls and theaters for gospel preaching. Few professional men in Scotland were privileged to present the gospel to so many. He had a drawing influence with young men, and frequently lectured Edinburgh University students on spiritual subjects.
In 1872 he began to edit God's Glad Tidings. The cover called it a "Monthly Magazine—Purely Gospel, for Free and General Circulation." It was twenty to thirty pages long and had no graphics. Some of the anonymous contributors were really Wolston's wife who would just leave one curious initial at the end of the article, such as the gospel appeal, Boast Not Thyself of Tomorrow by "X." She was his match in evangelistic zeal. They both veiled references to themselves in their articles, but we gather by reading closely that many of the conversion stories in the magazine are from their own way of life witnessing. Of course, as a medical doctor, especially in those days before sophisticated pain management, the medical doctor witnessed genuine soul trouble at the bedside of suffering and sometimes terminal patients. Wolston enjoyed great freedom to deal with souls. Their magazine, later retitled The Gospel Messenger, continued for forty-five years (the year of Wolston's death), and many of Wolston's gospel exhortations first appeared there.
An interesting encounter with the evangelist Donald Ross occurred sometime between 1874 and 1879. Ross had personally trained under Duncan Matheson the evangelist during the revival times of 1859-60, and in turn Ross had trained a corps of men in pioneer evangelism along the northwestern coast of Scotland. When Ross pulled out of the Free Church of Scotland he was vilified, the worst treatment coming from the unconverted Presbyterian ministers. Ross wondered where he should next go. "We were being much exercised about what was to be done. We had heard of 'Brethren,' but only as bad, bad people, and we resolved to have nothing to do with them. Our information, however, came from the parsons."
This was a deeply trying time to Ross. He had a large family to support and many new converts looking for direction. Donald's son, C.
W. Ross, writes,
During this time of isolation he was approached by the Exclusive Brethren, who sought to win him to what they regarded as the Lord's way. He was invited to take tea in the house of one of them, and there met two of their leaders. The question was gone over quite fully, and, although, as he stated to the writer often since that time, the temptation was very great in the circumstances to cast in his lot with them, his difficulties were many, and nothing they could say removed them. It was the very same question with them as he was then contending with others about, the right on the part of any body of believers, great or small, to determine the lawfulness or otherwise of assemblies of the Lord's people. He had encountered the 'Exclusive' system soon after leaving the Free Church, and was not enamored of it then. And, although in this time of trial he was perhaps more disposed to listen to what they had to say than before or since, yet his mind ever rejected their pretension to be able to draw a circle in Christendom, inside of which only were meetings that could be recognized, and outside of which nothing was to be owned in the way of assemblies of the Lord's people. And we may add, when this pretension was adopted by others he was just as decided in rejecting it.
We have heard that W. T. P. Wolston was one of those men who met with Ross. Interestingly, between the years 1902 and 1908 Wolston himself would find the shoe on the other foot when the influences of F.
E. Raven would send packing many evangelically-minded men.
Wolston cannot be termed a controversialist. Most of his writing is on evangelistic and devotional themes. He dearly loved to present the gospel. Regardless of the subject matter of his discourses to Christians, he would unswervingly finish by preaching God's salvation.
Walter's brother Christopher injected himself into several controversies. Christopher was also a medical doctor. He is mentioned visiting John Darby shortly before Darby's death. The doctor asked the old man if he had any special thoughts as he viewed his death. Darby replied, "There are three things which I have dwelt much upon: God is my Father, and I am His gift to His Son; Christ is my righteousness; and Christ is my object in life, and my joy for eternity."
It is sometimes said that the so-called Exclusive Brethren are strong on Bible teaching but weak on evangelism, but this was not so in Wolston's day and in many branches of that movement it is not true today. Although keeping a low profile and shunning ostentation, men like Andrew Miller, Charles Stanley, George Cutting, C. H. Mackintosh and W. T. P. Wolston were all men who shone in the gospel. Paul spoke of a fellow traveler with Titus, "the brother whose praise is in the gospel throughout all the churches" (2 Cor. 8:18). Stanley, Cutting, and Wolston would have all fit that description.
It appears that Wolston tried to stay clear of several church controversies that arose after John Darby's passing in 1882. In the fall of 1896, he stood by a grave in Cheltenham Cemetery and read Genesis 25:8-10 and Hebrews 8:10. The body being lowered into the ground belonged to Charles Henry Mackintosh. He must have wondered, as the true men of spiritual stature among them either died, or were being pushed out.
Finally, church problems between 1902 and 1908 caused WTPW to write a paper called "Hear the Right." He was an impassioned man who eschewed hypocrisy.
He gave up his medical practice in 1909, and thereupon answered invitations to visit Australia and New Zealand. He later visited Norway.
During the second visit to Norway in February, 1915, he had a stroke, and was brought home paralyzed to Weston-super-Mare. He lay helpless for two years. His wife testified that the helpless man was "happy in the Saviour's love." Those who nursed him never heard him once murmur. A few weeks before the end he had another stroke and passed into a coma. On March, 1917, at the age of seventy-six, the good doctor made his appointment with the great Physician, who forgives all our iniquities and heals all our diseases.
Years previously, Wolston had declared,
I truly confess, beloved friends, that the day when I say 'good-bye' to the earth, I shall say, from the bottom of my heart, 'Thank God.' If the Lord came tonight, we should break out, as we left the earth behind, into that noble paean, 'O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ' (1 Corinthians 15:55-57)...I would not be anything but a Christian for ten thousand worlds; and if you are not one, it is high time you became one."
Books by Wolston:
Another Comforter: Thirteen Lectures on the Operations of the Holy Spirit Backsliding and Restoration Behold the Bridegroom: Ten Lectures on the Second Coming and Kingdom of the Lord Jesus From Egypt to Canaan Handfuls of Purpose: Let Fall for Eager Gleaners Night Scenes of Scripture: Seventeen Bible Night Scenes Forty Days of Scripture Rest For the Weary: The Gospel from the Book of Ruth Seekers for Light: Fourteen Addresses to Edinburgh Students Simon Peter: His Life and Letters The Call of the Bride: and Other Gospel Papers The Church, What is It?: Ten Lectures on the Church of the New Testament Young Men of Scripture: Nine Addresses to Young Men We understand that W. T. P. Wolston also compiled a hymnbook which was reprinted at least seven times. A total of more than 88,000 copies were published by 1933. These hymns are included in the hymns database on the Truth for Today's Bereans CD-ROM.
Materials taken from:
W. T. P. Wolston, How I Found the Lord: the Conversion of W. T. P. Wolston, Gospel Tract Publications, Glasgow Napoleon Noel, The History of the Brethren, Chapter Two, London Harry Ironside, A Historical Sketch of the Brethren Movement, Loizeaux Bros., Neptune, NJ Uplook Ministries Used by Permission
Sir Robert Anderson (1841–1918)
Then said Great-Heart to Mr. Valiant-for-Truth: "Thou hast worthily behaved thyself. Let me see thy sword." So he showed it to him. When he had taken it in his hand and looked thereon a while, he said, "Ha! it is a right Jerusalem blade." -- The Pilgrim's Progress Sir Robert Anderson (1841-1918) was one of the few who could engage in controversy without being contentious. Many wish they could "convince the gainsayer" but, unable to keep a cool head, they instead confirm the gainsayers in their heresies. The homey saying remains true, "If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen." Robert Anderson was one of those rare Christians who did not become blistered under attack.
He called himself "an anglicized Irishman of Scottish extraction."
Born in Dublin, Anderson, as a youth, learned that no one who has not been converted can be a child of God. He wrote, "As time went by, my conviction deepened that I had not been 'converted.' But owing to my early experience and to the restraints of a Christian home, I continued to lead 'a religious life.'"
The year 1860 saw sweeping revival in Northern Ireland. New spiritual longings were awakened by the conversion of one of his sisters through attending meetings which J. Denham Smith was holding in Dublin. "The fact of my sister's conversion still held me, and I cherished the thought that the next Sunday services in the kirk might bring me blessing. But the morning service left me more discouraged than ever; and I made up my mind that if the evening one brought no relief I would give up the quest, and seek to enjoy life again as best I could.
"The evening preacher was John Hall. He boldly proclaimed forgiveness of sins and eternal life as God's gift in grace, unconditional, to be received as we sat in the pews. His sermon thrilled me. Yet I deemed his doctrine unscriptural, so I waylaid him as he left the vestry and on our homeward walk tackled him about his
'heresies.'"
Hall met Anderson's challenges by quoting Scripture. Having answered every question, he faced Anderson on the pavement and solemnly repeated his appeal: "I tell you as a minister of Christ and in His Name that there is life for you here and now if you will accept Him. Will you accept Christ or will you reject Him?" Anderson later said, "After a pause, I exclaimed, 'In God's Name I will accept Christ.' Not another word passed between us, but after another pause he wrung my hand and left me. And I turned homeward with the peace of God filling my heart."
Anderson was soon preaching the Gospel himself. The revival spread to Sligo, and when George Trench went there to carry on the work, he asked Anderson to join him. The clergy were unsympathetic and the evangelists were treated to a crusade of ridicule in a local newspaper which accused them of being impostors, preaching for filthy lucre's sake and getting their salaries from a committee in London. One issue published a letter (said to have been picked up on the road), in which they were taken to task for embezzling the contents of their money boxes! Worse still, there appeared a seemingly genuine account of their getting drunk at a picnic! When Trench had to return home owing to ill health, some doggerel verses described the quarrel which led "the Trencher" to desert his pal, "Handy Andy." The attacks only advertised the meetings. Many attended out of curiosity or looking for amusement, and spiritual power was continually manifested in conversions.
Around this time, Anderson was called to the Irish Bar but was soon redirected into secret service work in connection with the "Fenian"
terrorists. This led to his crossing to England. First in the Home Office, then at Scotland Yard, and finally in retirement, he remained a Londoner for the rest of his life.
Duty made him a relentless tracker of criminals. But "the dynamiters" would have been more than surprised had they known that the man who hunted them down was author of many books on the Bible and the Christian life. No less amazed would have been many a burglar had he come upon the Central Intelligence Department (CID) Chief giving a Gospel appeal in some mission.
Anderson became the director of Scotland Yard just as the "Jack the Ripper" murders were taking place. Sir John Moylan in his Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan Police states that "the period 1890 to 1900 proved to be one during which there was an almost continuous decrease in crime
... By signal successes in sensational murder cases such as that of Neil Cream, the poisoner, and Milsom and Fowler, the Muswell Hill murderers, and by steady achievement in the less advertized, everyday business of dealing with rogues in general, the CID built up in the
'nineties' a world-wide reputation for efficiency in crime detection... Crime reached a low watermark in 1899." The period of Sir Robert Anderson's service as Chief of the CID was 1888 to 1901.
Anderson was deeply concerned about prison evangelism, and was considered an authority on prison reform. Up to that time, most prisons followed the dungeon pattern -- thick, iron bars, slits of windows, faulty ventilation and semi-darkness in the cells. As is still true, the prisons created far more criminals than they cured. One bit of Anderson's sage advise was this: "The restitution of stolen property ought to be insisted on. A burglar should not be set at liberty until he had disclosed what he had done with his booty. This would go far to abolish the market for stolen property and even put an end to stealing.
If necessary, the thief should compensate the individual robbed by work done and paid for in prison."
Some of his books such as Criminals and Crime, The Lighter Side of My Official Life, and Sidelights on the Home Rule Movement may never be reprinted. But his writing on things eternal continue to bear fruit. C.
H. Spurgeon said the book, Human Destiny, was "the most valuable contribution on the subject I have seen." This volume deals with denials of the biblical doctrine of eternal punishment, important because currently certain evangelical leaders have adopted these denials.
His book, The Silence of God, was a great comfort to perplexed souls, especially during the First World War. The Coming Prince contains one of the clearest studies available dealing with the seventy weeks of Daniel's prophecy. Others of his books are, In Defence, Daniel in the Critics' Den, The Hebrews Epistle, The Honour of His Name, The Bible and Modern Criticism, The Entail of the Covenant, Misunderstood Texts, The Lord from Heaven, Forgotten Truths, and Redemption Truths.
He enjoyed warm fellowship with such eminant servants of Christ as Horatius Bonar, James Gray, A. C. Dixon, and C. I. Scofield.
Anderson abhorred irreverence and levity in the things of God. He wrote, "We may come down to our own level, as it were, when reasoning with others about their conduct or their attitude to the dread solemnities of life. But no one of a reverent spirit can fail to be distressed by the flippant language in which 'the glorious Gospel of the blessed God' (2 Cor. 2:17, Weymouth) is sometimes 'huckstered.'"
A friend described Sir Robert Anderson this way: "On the platform, he appeared warrior-like; in conversation, he was professor-like; in friendly intercourse, brother-like. Throughout his life, he bore the true test of Christian manhood: the better known, the better loved."
Further reading:
Chief Men Among the Brethren, by Hy. Pickering
The Life of Sir Robert Anderson, by A. P. Moore-Anderson
Charles Frederick Hogg (1859–1943)
Charles Frederick Hogg (1859-1943) used his outstanding gifts to raise the standards among the Lord's servants and the church in general. Born into a godly family in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in the year that revival swept the country, he was converted at the age of nineteen. Soon he was preaching on the streets of that city.
Ever a cautious Bible student, he disparaged a sloppy, nonchalant approach to holy things. How obvious it was to him that cajoling people into a lukewarm profession of Christianity did harm and not good.
Preaching the gospel was more than saying, "Come to Jesus or you'll go to hell." He labored to present the scope of the true gospel in its glory and grace.
At the age of 25, he went as a missionary to China under the China Inland Mission to pioneer in various provinces, as far as the borders of Tibet. The severe climate and conditions wore out many strong men.
He married a Miss Sarah Muir in 1887. Of their six children, three are buried in China.
In 1893, he moved his family to Shihtao, in Shantung province where he labored in the gospel. That year he also left the China Inland Mission to begin laboring with seven other couples who worked outside any formal mission organization, but had simply been commended by their home assemblies to the work of God. On the shore of the Yellow Sea, Shihtao is at the foot of one of the province's highest peaks, almost
6,000 feet, making it look like scenic Norway. But the picturesque setting had not immediately transferred to the hearts of the locals.
The city was to the missionaries "like Ephesus before the gospel came."
There were some 80 opium shops in the community. Charles bemoaned how void of sincerity the citizens were. "Deceit was the rule without exception, both in theory and in practice."
The missionaries' medical help was welcomed by the people, but their spiritual assistance was often ignored or ridiculed. In time they discovered that certain vile, immoral practices leavened the whole city and surrounding villages. It was a hard eight years spent there, but Hogg determined to "go on preaching the gospel of love, in love, to a very unlovely people."
The Boxer Rebellion occurred in the summer of 1900. Most of the martyrdoms of missionaries occurred in Shansi province. In Peking the most brutal mass slaughter of Chinese believers occurred. There are only estimates of how many Chinese were murdered. Of foreigners, 135 missionaries and 53 children died. The word "slaughter" is not used loosely. Severed heads hung in wooden cages from city walls to warn sympathizers of the "foreign devils." As the Christians died, there are numerous reports that their hearts were torn out and examined to discover the secret of the martyr's courage.
How this news affected the missionaries in neighboring provinces.
Co-workers, friends and converts, swept away! When Charles and Sarah returned to England in 1901 for health reasons, they must have done so with exhaustion, remorse, and considerable disappointment. It was at such a time that they discovered how real is the saint's undergirding.
We in fact do have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed-- always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. (2 Corinthians 4:7-10)
For the work in Shantung province, the reaping would be left to national believers, such as the gifted Hsia Ch'en Mu commonly known as "Summertime." Charles called him the "most intelligent preacher of the gospel as well as the most natural" that he had met in China.
Summertime became a hugely successful evangelist across the whole province of Shantung till his homecall in 1923. One sowed and another watered, and after all our work is done, it is God who gives the increase. By 1930, an awakening and gospel harvest time swept the province.
Charles had done what he could. He authored several Chinese tracts and contributed articles to magazines, and in collaboration with others, brought out a catechism as well as writing a book, The Golden Compass, written in Chinese.
Back in England he was received as a veteran, an acquaintance of legends such as C. T. Studd, the British athlete-turned-missionary, and D. E. Hoste, the successor to Hudson Taylor. From their home at Weston-super-Mare, Bristol, he worked diligently among assemblies, preaching and teaching.
C. F. Hogg's writings are being widely circulated today, thanks to the coattails of a certain schoolmaster named William Edwy Vine (1873-1949). Around the year 1905, Hogg teamed up with Vine to conduct The Exeter Correspondence School of Bible Study. These studies between
1908-1911 were later published in commentaries on 1 & 2
Thessalonians, and Galatians. F. F. Bruce calls these two volumes, "The two outstanding commentaries in which Mr. Vine had a hand." According to Bruce, "These two teachers made an ideal combination. They were basically agreed in their interpretation of the great biblical doctrines, and when Mr. Hogg's theological penetration and command of felicitous and forceful English were united with Mr. Vine's special gifts, the result was hard to match, let alone to surpass. For the student of the English New Testament these two commentaries will long remain standard works."
Several pieces of C. F. Hogg's written ministry are tucked into Vine's collected writings. Of course W. E. Vine's great contribution to the Church of God is his Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words.
English-speaking Bible students are in his debt, and Hogg was there, as a peer, confidant, and encourager for much of Vine's ministry.
Besides work in the United Kingdom, Hogg travelled to New Zealand, Australia, and made several visits to the U.S. and Canada. He also went to India and Central Africa.
Sarah Hogg passed into the presence of the Lord in 1935 at their home in Highgate, London. In early 1936, he married a Miss Amy Burwick of London. The last seven years of his life were in South Africa. He went there to visit, but war conditions detained him there, and the assemblies in the Capetown area then received the blessing. His ministry was fresh and in the Spirit: it was clear cut and definite. He once told a young missionary named T. Ernest Wilson that the three rules of good Bible teaching were, "accuracy, accuracy, accuracy." In
1939, he toured Central Africa and wrote a book, What We Saw in Africa which was laced with valuable counsel on missionary principles. One of the missionaries there said, "Few visitors have helped us as Mr. Hogg has done."
As a Bible student and teacher, he shone. His zeal for careful statements and his firm grasp of Bible doctrine came out in conversational Bible readings. Privately he was a fatherly counselor that missionaries, elders, and preachers sought out. What he knew about mission work caused him to strenuously advocate a rigorous inspection of candidates for commendation to the work of evangelism here and abroad. "Possibly there would be fewer workers, but possibly compensation in power, and those who are called and fitted would be better furnished."
Four days before his sudden homecall, he wrote, "Friends in New Zealand urge another visit to them and a week ago a letter from U.S.A.
suggested our returning there with the hope of going to China! It is no small mercy from God to have so many loyal friends in many parts."
On November 14, 1943, he was taken suddenly ill. Despite his wife's loving attention, he was soon "absent from the body and present with the Lord." (2 Corinthians 5:8) His ministry spanned 60 years and was fresh to the finish line.
Material for this article was taken from:
1. P. O. Ruoff, W. E. Vine: His Life and Ministry, 1951, Oliphants
2. R. Rendall, J. B. Watson: A Memoir and Selected Writings, 1957, Pickering & Inglis
3. W. E. Vine, The Collected Writings, 5 vol., Thomas Nelson
4. James G. Hutchinson, editor, Sowers, Reapers, Builders: A Record of Over Ninety Irish Evangelists, 1984, Gospel Tracts Publ.
5. C. F. Hogg, W. E. Vine, The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Thessalonians, with Notes Exegetical and Expository, 1914, Pickering
& Inglis
6. C. F. Hogg, W. E. Vine, The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Galatians, with Notes Exegetical and Expository, 1922, Pickering &
Inglis
7. C. F. Hogg, J. B. Watson, On The Sermon on the Mount, 1933 Pickering & Inglis
8. C. F. Hogg, J. B. Watson, The Promise of the Coming, Pickering & Inglis
9. C. F. Hogg, W. E. Vine, W. R. Lewis, The Ministry of Women, Pickering & Inglis
10. C. F. Hogg, W. E. Vine, Touching the Coming of the Lord, 1919, Oliphants
11. C. F. Hogg, W. E. Vine, The Church and the Tribulation, 1937
12. C. F. Hogg, What We Saw In Africa, 1939
ï
Edmund Hamer Broadbent (1861–1945)
Edmund Hamer Broadbent (1861-1945) was the tidy-looking English gentleman with a bookish side who discovered ways of slipping into and out of countries that others just assumed were "closed doors." He was not a big man, and his pleasant, easygoing manner would not have conjured in your mind the picture of the fearless missionary.
Evidently God called just such a mild-mannered ambassador to witness for the Prince of Peace in the uncertain days that led up to the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and to Nazism in Germany.
G. H. Lang indicates that brother Broadbent was converted in his youth, and began traveling with Frederick W. Baedeker when he was in his twenties. Early in his travels, he made a thorough study of German and French. His studies took on real earnestness after he arrived in Germany and realized that he did not know how to order a cup of coffee.
Most of his preaching in Europe was in the German or French tongues. He was fluent in them, and in conversation could move effortlessly from one language to another. In his extensive travels he also learned some Russian. On one occasion in Germany, someone wondered if the speaker who was to preach at the gospel meeting would be "the Englishman."
"No," was the answer, "it is not the Englishman." The fact was, the speaker was E. H. Broadbent.
Broadbent was an encourager. You cannot consider his ministry without noting those he helped. Whether serving the aging F. W.
Baedeker in those extraordinary errands across Russia, helping W. H.
Bennet in Germany, or teaching the Bible to Professor Ferenc Kiss, the renowned anatomy professor at Budapest University who spent months in prison for his gospel work in Rumania, Broadbent was a true help.
Whether advising James Lees about open doors in Poland and Lithuania, or comforting the converts in Baku on the west shore of the Caspian Sea (where Patwakan Tarajanz and his wife and ten children became not only survivors, but also bold witnesses for Christ during the fierce Armenian massacre in 1916), to all these the polite man with blue eyes and a sunny smile became their servant for Jesus' sake.
E. H. Broadbent frequently visited the assemblies in Poland along with Adolphus Eoll, Ransome Cooper, and George Goodman. This became one of his most encouraging fields of labor. In 1922, Broadbent wrote, "In Eastern Poland, about 800 new assemblies have been formed within the last two years, and the work goes on increasingly. In Western Poland also, there are districts where there is great blessing. Throughout the country the openings are innumerable. Some fifteen men are desirous of giving all or much of their time as evangelists."
Meeting places were often packed. The first problem was to get everyone squeezed in and quieted down. Then the next problem was to keep from fainting. Perhaps their municipalities were rationing bath water in those days; whatever the cause, the proper Englishman had to quickly adjust to new and strange smells. One meeting in Poland was so crowded that the little flames in their kerosene lamps sputtered for lack of oxygen.
Ransome Cooper related how "E. H. Broadbent told me once, when we were travelling together, of one such conference which had lasted the full twelve hours. At 9 p.m., a number of workmen came to him and said,
'We are not due in the factory before 7 o'clock tomorrow morning; will you give us a Bible Reading through the night on the book of Daniel?'
And he did.
"Only special grace can keep a man going on year after year along such lines, ministering God's Word in one of three languages, submitting to the limitations of interpretation, always fresh and gracious in spirit, always receiving the inflow of spiritual power to guarantee a fresh outflow."
One observant brother explained it this way: "Well, you see, he prays much, and talks much with his Father in heaven. Have you not noticed how often he snatches occasions to be alone with his Master, and then how fresh he is afterwards to talk with us, all crowded into a little cottage for hours!"
One of the preachers who went into eastern Europe with Broadbent told about being shown his lodging for the night. The house was small, but the bed was very large. He went to bed, and not long after, his host came in and climbed into the same bed. In another few minutes the hostess tiptoed in and climbed in next to her husband.
Broadbent encountered so many surprises, and in them the only change on his face would be that smile peaking out shyly from behind his mustache. He ate their food, slept on their rough beds, discussed their farming methods, and played with their children. And when the sun went down and the lamps were lit, "the Book" was opened and in a clear, kindly way, the Scriptures became understandable and living to his hearers. Many quickly saw the contrast with the village priest who "always made everything obscure and difficult, and seemed to be irritated and vexed when anyone came to him with questions." One brother, as he listened to brother Broadbent, whispered to his neighbor, "How all this makes one long and pray to be a better Christian!"
In the Balkans, a young brother was in a "stormy, muddled, hotheaded meeting" to deal with a local problem. On and on this miserable meeting went until the young brother rose, weeping, and said, "Oh, my brothers, do we not need Mr. Broadbent with us! How different everything would have been! Can you not realize, can you not picture how he would have handled things tonight!"
E. H. Broadbent had an ability to travel and not unravel. He trained himself to sleep in odd places and positions. In jarring coach rides, he would relax every muscle until all his limbs would hang limp.
It would be difficult to retrace Broadbent's journeys. Most of his personal correspondence was unfortunately destroyed before he died. We do have some general idea of the extent of his ministry. Besides Belgium, Poland, Germany, Austria, the Baltics, Russia, and Turkey, he also preached in Egypt, and North and South America. One of his most farflung journeys was to Turkestan. Broadbent went in 1900 and in 1907, visiting the major cities of Uzbekistan, preaching the gospel. On his first visit, he related how he stood in crowded bazaars, being jostled by the turbaned salesmen as they carted their merchandise about. Beside the rows of camels, mules, and horses, he could identify Jews, Hindus, Afghans, and Muslims all mingling together. Every other religion was represented, but he could not see any witness for Christ, or any evidence that any had ever existed there.
Is it legitimate for a family man to travel? Obviously, most believers are not called to a traveling ministry. One can wonder what might become of the local churches if the believers were all gadding about hither and yon, from week to week. So, though most of us are not called too far beyond the county line in our spiritual ministries, still there are others who can say, as our Lord once did, "I must preach in other cities also."
Dora Broadbent accompanied her husband on many of his journeys. But most of her ministry involved raising their eight children and being hostess in their home at Gislingham, England, where it was not uncommon for the Broadbents to serve eighteen around their supper table. Their home at times served as a wayside stop for beleaguered brethren (such as the Russian Mennonites) who fled the persecutions and travelled to a friendlier North America. Whether Edmund Broadbent should have conducted his travels differently I cannot tell. We are told that he and Dora were in full fellowship in his work, and that Dora's children rose up to "call her blessed." (Proverbs 31:28)
Brother Broadbent was especially burdened about setting local congregations on the firm footing of New Testament doctrine and practice that would prepare the saints for persecution. It was a critical matter to know biblically how to respond to the governing authorities. In Bavaria, the attitude was so oppressive that laws were instituted prohibiting unauthorized Christian meetings, especially those meeting for prayer.
Broadbent had been in such illegal meetings; in 1913 he wrote that the framers of those laws perceived that there was a power in prayer whose influence they wished to avoid. In Germany, assemblies were asked to form a confederation that complied with state requirements. But worse than the imposition of a denominational structure were the horrors of genocide. Many of Broadbent's hearers died under state persecutions in Russia and in the Nazi death camps. Passages such as Romans 8:35-39 took on an urgency in Broadbent's ministry.
As Broadbent neared the end of his ministry, he was constantly grieved to see that the truths he had labored to teach to the scattered saints in Europe were being systematically denied back in the United Kingdom. Broadbent was convinced that the New Testament pattern for missionary work and church order was being undermined by unscriptural missionary and funding organizations. His concerns are fully expressed in his book, The Pilgrim Church, which is a classic treatment of the history of Christian gatherings which have remained true to New Testament doctrines since Pentecost.
At the time of Broadbent's death, G. H. Lang penned a sixty-page review of his life, in which he says, "The simple fact is that in central, eastern, and south-eastern Europe there are (or, at least, there were before the late devastating war) hundreds upon hundreds of such Christian churches as he regarded as of a New Testament type which came into existence through his journeys. Not that he founded them all, of course; but it was he who visited regions where there were no such churches and taught children of God the principles of the Word, which by following, they were enabled by the power of the Spirit of God to multiply, and to survive the opposition of the world and of apostate religious systems."
Much of the material contained in this article is taken from:
Edmund Hamer Broadbent--Saint and Pioneer by G. H. Lang
That the World May Know, Volumes 8 and 9, edited by Fredk. Tatford, Echoes of Service Dr. Baedeker and his Apostolic Work in Russia, by R. Sloan Latimer Recollections of Reginald Radcliffe by his wife James Lees--Shepherd of Lonely Sheep in Europe by Ransome W. Cooper The Stundists, Bible Truth Publishers The Pilgrim Church by E. H. Broadbent, Marshal Pickering Jeremiah by E. H. Broadbent
William Edwy Vine (1873–1949)
What kind of man would write an "Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words"? Would he spend his existence cloistered away in an ivory tower, surrounded by heaps of books, and seldom, if ever, descend to the streets below? Perhaps we imagine that there is a hidden community of such people, and they are the ones who give us those cumbersome bookends called lexicons, concordances, encyclopedias and dictionaries.
No doubt there are many authors who appear so detached. They approach the Word of God in a purely academic and theoretical manner.
Indeed, it is rare to find Christian scholars who have not fallen into the snare of stale, sterile intellectualism. But William Edwy Vine (1873-1949) was not one of them. To him, becoming a theoretical Christian, and not a practical one, was a dreaded fate.
Upbringing and Family Life
Through the teaching of his godly father and mother, he was converted in early boyhood, and at the age of fourteen, he was baptized and received into fellowship with the assembly meeting in Fore Street, Exeter, England.
W. E. Vine's father had a boarding school called Mount Radford School, in a suburb of Exeter. At the age of seventeen William became a teacher in his father's school, at the same time pursuing an education at University College of Wales at Aberystwyth, and later at London University. Those years were part of a golden era in English scholarship that have never been surpassed. Academic giants roamed the land, strict mental disciplines were enforced, and keen minds stretched.
In 1899, he married Miss Phoebe Baxendale, who kept pace with this versatile worker for fifty years. In the mercy of God, they lived to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary about three months before he passed away. They raised five children.
Vine had a schoolmaster's air about him. But at home his children saw a man of wit and whimsy who delighted to burrow ingenious tunnels for his children's sand castles, or to construct a tower of building blocks that reached to the ceiling of the nursery. His children testified that he could be stern at times, but never harsh. Vine left his evenings for his family and would often play the piano and sing children's songs in his mellow, tenor voice. And when the house was full of visitors, Vine would entertain the young people with a violin or piano and have them laughing so hard they would cry.
Vine was a short, athletic man. He felt that getting regular, fresh air and exercise was part of his Christian stewardship. A powerful swimmer, he once rescued his son Edwin and two other boys in a choppy sea. Every year they would vacation at the seaside, swimming, rowing and sailing with the family.
Spiritual Habits
Early rising and regularity in Bible reading and study were hallmarks of W. E. Vine's life. That should not surprise anyone who has read his work. But the fact that Vine could go in for a subjective and even mystical approach to the Word of God is unique. Cautious Bible students often disparage the subjective. But Vine could see that God can, and often does, guide His servants in a very personal way. "The meek will He guide in judgment: and the meek will He teach His way" (Ps. 25:9). One example of this was in 1909. Mr. Vine was waiting on God for guidance about leaving the school where he taught with his brother Theodore and going to Bath to take responsibilities with the missionary magazine, Echoes of Service. He had an appointment at Cardiff, and on the Saturday morning while in prayer, with the Bible open before him at Deuteronomy 31 for his daily reading, he was confronted with verse 7: "Thou must go with this people." He was so struck with these words that he underlined them in his Bible. At the same time, his brother was to preach at Crediton on the Sunday. After being shown into his room, with his mind on his brother's moving to Bath, he decided to kneel in prayer before going downstairs. After rising from his knees, his eyes met a combination of texts on the wall:
"I was left... With good will doing service as unto the Lord" (Isa.
49:21; Eph. 6:7).
When Mr. Vine went to the school at Exeter on the morning after his return home, his brother greeted him with the remark, "I'm afraid you are going to leave me." Asked why, he told him about the texts he had seen on the wall. Mr. Vine then remarked how extraordinary it was that such texts should have confronted his brother, for he himself had been given the text that same day, "Thou must go with this people." Vine later related that through a series of seven small but connected circumstances, God definitely led him to take on the responsibilities at Echoes of Service.
Missionary Statesman
It was in December, 1909, that Mr. Vine was asked by W. H. Bennet and R. E. Sparks of Echoes of Services, to join in the work at Bath.
Echoes of Service is a monthly record of missionary efforts by laborers from the British Isles. The editors not only corresponded with hundreds of missionaries but also channeled funds from their home congregations.
Vine handled as many as sixty to seventy letters a day, many of them he personally answered, or dictated to his secretary. It was one of his remarkable characteristics that from early rising in the morning until late retirement at night he would fill every moment of his day with varied activities. During this time, he became a counselor and confidant to scores of workers who faced grave perplexities. Vine continued this work until his homecall in 1949.
Literary Contributions
Mr. Vine was constantly preaching the Gospel and teaching the Scriptures. Around the year 1905, Mr. C. F. Hogg teamed up with Mr.
Vine to conduct a correspondence course of Bible study. These studies in 1 Thessalonians and then in Galatians moved W. E. Vine into a wider sphere of influence. Thereafter his writing ministry expanded. His collected writings fill five large volumes (published by Gospel Tract Publishers of Glasgow). But surely his greatest contribution to the Church of God was his Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words. W.
E. Vine has put all English-speaking Bible students in his debt. The English reader with little or no knowledge of Greek has, of course, concordances and lexicons. These provide a skeleton: Vine clothes it with the flesh and sinews of living exposition, and in so doing makes available for the ordinary reader the expert knowledge contained in the more advanced works. In a preface to the dictionary, W. E. Vine wrote:
"In any work in which we engage as servants of Christ, His word ever applies, 'When ye shall have done all those things that are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which was our duty to do' (Luke 17:10). So with the reminders given by the Apostle Paul, 'it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful...
and what hast thou that thou didst not receive?' (1 Cor. 4:2,7). We ever have reason for humbling ourselves before God, for none of us knows yet as he ought to know, and at the Judgment Seat of Christ 'the fire itself shall prove each man's work of what sort it is' (1 Cor.
3:13)."
Harold St. John (1876–1957)
Harold St. John (1876-1957) preferred to have his name pronounced sin-jun, feeling that the title of "saint" was too superior sounding.
But if anyone wanted an example of saintliness, they could have pointed in Harold St. John's direction.
His father had a government position as the treasurer of Sarawak, a state in Malaysia. Later his family would also spend time in Germany and Belgium. After his mother, Blanche, became a believer, she quickly applied the principles of Christian child rearing to her home. By God's grace, Harold and his five siblings came to know and love the Lord Jesus. In their stays in England, the St. John family had Bible teachers such as W. J. Lowe around the tea table, and Harold recounts paying visits to old veterans like Charles H. Mackintosh.
Harold was eighteen when he definitely came to know Christ.
I remember the day--I shall never forget it, when I saw my Saviour with the giant's head in His hand, unchallengeable proof that the work of salvation was eternally finished, for He had destroyed him that had the power of death, and, through fear of death, had imprisoned those who all their lifetime were subject to bondage. And since that day, when I knew my Saviour had destroyed the giant and broken his power forever, and carried the witness of His victory up to the City of God--since that day, I have never known the slightest challenge or fear in my heart as to my eternal security in the Lord Jesus Christ...He has triumphed, He has gone up to God, and by His mercy I am going there, too.
About this time, he secured a position at a London bank. His normal workday lasted nine hours, after which he would catch a quick tea and march off to a preaching appointment. Vacation time was given to helping Lord Radstock in his evangelistic work on the continent. To mix in with the highbrow element would have been natural for this oh-so-proper Englishman. But he had already set his course, and his brush with aristocrisy did not turn his head. Percy Rouff worked at the bank, too, and said that he never saw him dawdle, on the street or in life. Together they would descend to places like "The Mile End Waste"
to preach in the open air. Ada Habershon also did personal evangelism among the street people of London and Harold helped. He was willing to do this kind of work, but it did not come naturally to the upscale bank employee.
Many nights he preached in the open air, or in flop houses, but was disturbed by the way his less fortunate audience took to his message:
When I was quite young I used to go down to the slums of London. I would go into a common lodging house on a Sunday night dressed in a frock coat and a silk top hat and I would stand there with a Testament in my hand and preach and preach, and be very much surprised that the people did not listen to me. I was enormously impressed at their iniquity! Here was a young man in a frock coat and a silk top hat, and they didn't even listen to him! Then I discovered the reason why they would not listen. I got hold of the oldest suit I could borrow and in the pocket of that suit I placed the sum of four pence. In the evening I went, with the ragtag and bobtail of the district, to that lodging house where two or three hundred men were to sleep for the night.
I sat where they sat, and the fleas that bit them bit me; the same crawly things that crawled on them crawled on me. I spent some nights in that dreadful chamber silently listening to their needs and woes.
Then at six o'clock one morning, when they were getting their breakfast, I arose and began to speak to them. Now I found there was not the slightest difficulty in obtaining their attention. I understood how the seas of life were buffeting them, and they were perfectly willing to listen to a man who had sat where they sat.
The greatest day in our history was the day when it came to the heart of God to draw closer to us than He had ever done before, after forty centuries of dwelling in cloud and thick darkness. But He did not send His Son to start preaching some code: when our Lord went into the business of Redemption, for thirty years He never said a word of public ministry. For thirty years He sat where men sat and listened to their thoughts and experiences. For thirty years He knew hunger, weariness, poverty, and the cares of that little home. Then He began to speak. And the world has been listening ever since.
The Lord Himself had become his objective, and thereafter a mediocre Christian experience could not be tolerated. He complained about delivering "a dispiriting lecture to a handful of resigned looking people. London is a freezing place spiritually." But in that chill atmosphere Harold overcame. The intensity of his early Christian life shows in his diary entries.
"Jan. 8. Hall full and prayer meeting after. Is revival beginning? O God, give me purpose in prayer. Guard my lips from folly and open them for testimony.
"Jan. 15. Hall full, but, oh for power! True teaching and natural freedom useless. Why is it withheld? More prayer and obedience to the will of God. A watch tells time if in harmony with the universe.
"Jan 29. Hall well filled. By grace some power, but it is not revival. Oh, let it come; my heart breaks for it. I haven't begun to live the Christian life. I need ways directed by the Word and sympathies in harmony with the mind of Christ.
"Feb. 24. Spent all night in prayer with M.G. Preaching next day, voice failed and spirit, too. Wonderful stories of revival in Wales.
Why not here?"
In April of 1905, Harold enjoyed a taste of that longed for revival in a fishing village of St. Ives in Cornwall. He had taken his Easter vacation to hold gospel meetings with his older brother Arthur when the blessing fell.
"11th. Crowds at first meeting. Fifty more came in at 9:30. Five cases of conviction. Left the hall at 11:00. I sorely need wisdom to direct.
"13th. Five to ten cases of conviction. I spoke on 1 Corinthians
14:34. Rowdyism in the meeting. Stayed till midnight with backsliders.
Two young men confessed grandly. One dropped down on the floor crying,
'If that's the gospel, I accept Christ.'
"14th. T.C. broke down and came out well for Christ. A fine brother's meeting re converts. Several more till midnight. Beginning of real opposition.
"Wed. Reaping day. Nine cases of conversion. One said, 'I needn't go upstairs; I received Christ here.'
"Thur. Landlord of the Inn closed his pub, saying, 'I can't serve God in this business.'
"Fri. Huge overflow; many turned away."
At the close of those meetings three hundred people came out to see the St. John brothers off on the train. Decades later, they still spoke of that season of blessing. Can we attribute these results to natural talents? Percy Rouff said, "St. John, with his powerful voice and fluent tongue, drew and held the crowds with his graphic word pictures and his youthful, ruddy appearance. Either alone or with one other, he would go to Hyde Park and preach to the crowds." Yes, there was natural ability. But we judge by the fruit that there was an immense hidden root system in his life that drew on God's supernatural powers.
Once St. John stood in the private chapel of Keble College, Oxford, viewing a copy of Holman Hunt's masterpiece, The Light of the World, when some tourists sauntered by. The guide intoned, "The original of this picture was sold for #5000." Before the words had died on the air, St. John's own voice announced: "Ladies and gentleman, may I add that the true original of this picture was sold for thirty pieces of silver." Only silence followed Harold's words. The stunned tourists lingered long enough to let this message penetrate, and, with new reverence, filed out of the chapel.
In 1913, he astounded his superiors by resigning from the bank in order to pursue missionary work. His manager asked, "How will you live, and who will provide for your expenses, since you are not going out under any recognized missionary society?"
Harold answered, "I'm going out to do God's work. God is sending me, and God will provide."
"Well, St. John, I wish I had your faith."
In July of 1914, he married an equally devoted Christian, Ella Swain, and that fall they sailed to Buenos Aires, Brazil. Harold's experiences among the slum dwellers was good training. Their home there was infested with beetles and other creeping things that would immerge from the cracks and crevices at night. The legs of their camp beds stood in pans of kerosene to deter the ones that could not fly. There Ella learned to share a kitchen with four other families. Such were the St. John's romantic missionary beginnings.
When expecting their first child, Ella received news that her father was gravely ill back in England. They elected to have Ella sail to England, to be with her father and wait to deliver her first child.
This disruption to their family life was worsened when Ella and baby Hazel could not return to Brazil because of World War I. Harold and Ella accepted these awkward and difficult situations as a part of God's will in their lives. The love and spiritual reality that reigned in the St. John home by all accounts was true.
Harold had linked up with Homer Payne and gone on extended missionary trips into Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina, often by horseback and on foot. Then in 1917, he and Stuart McNair began a more localized teaching ministry in Carangola, with a Bible School, stating, "Our chief desire is that there may be an atmosphere of prayer and spiritual power, in order that, while progressing in study, there may be still more progress in the knowledge of God."
In 1921, he left Brazil for a trip to British Guiana, and to pursue an expansive itinerant ministry. From there he extended his ministerial confines beyond South America to the Northern Hemisphere, the West Indies, Europe, North and South Africa, Palestine, Australia, and New Zealand. He co-labored with many honored servants of Christ, including E. H. Broadbent, Harold P. Barker, C. F. Hogg and W. W. Fereday.
Fred Mitchell, the home director of the China Inland Mission, was a dear friend who said that St. John "knew his Bible better than anyone else in Britain." His extensive studies in God's Word have recently been made available by Gospel Tract Publishers of Glasgow in 2 large volumes (available from Uplook Ministries). Reading them, we can see why F. F. Bruce referred to St. John as "The Maestro" and said: "For detailed acquaintance with the text of Scripture he had few equals."
Evangelist Eric Hutchings wrote: "Mr. Harold St. John has been one of the greatest spiritual influences of my life. It was he above all others who inspired me to get down to a detailed study of the Bible, to seek the plain and obvious meanings of the words, rather than to attempt to see typical meanings, sometimes abstruse and remote, in everything. By this sane, prayerful approach, the true typical teaching of Scripture emerged. In other words, he taught me that it was necessary to go to the Scripture first and let the Word of God unfold itself, rather than to get hold of some dispensational or typical outline and force the interpretation of such a meaning. He stayed with us in Manchester many times during the years 1935-1945, and even when he was not staying with us, we would lunch together once or twice a week to discuss the things of God. My last meeting with him was typical...It was the last time I saw him...his face radiant with the glory of God."
This word "radiant" was used repeatedly to describe the currents of joy that friends saw in him. There was a luminous quality about his face. He was tall, his hair had turned a clean white, and a rosy shine seemed to come from beneath the skin of his face. A man who enjoyed a long walk to his preaching appointments, he would stride along, his lips moving in what he called "perambulatory prayer," arms swinging, oblivious to passersby. Once in the pulpit, he stood before the saints and, without looking at his Bible, would recite from memory the passage to be studied.
His final year was spent in Abergele, North Wales, where Ella's sister was headmistress of a girls' school. Brother St. John's closing Bible teaching was to the pupils. Nearby in Malvern was the Gospel Hall where the family met with the believers and where he had baptized all of his five children.
In a letter to Ella he wrote, "Take plenty of time for peace and quiet, and keep a good wide margin for giving thanks for the children.
We have been so terribly happy in all five--and in the three daughters-in-law. You met me at the foot of the hill, and I am nearly at the top, but oh! what a lovely climb it has been, and what a world of wealth and music they have brought us--and what a joy that we are all, without exception, one in Christ Jesus."
To the end, Harold St. John kept himself in the sunshine. From his deathbed he said, "I am too weak to pray, I am too tired to love Him much, but I'm just lying here, letting Him love me." In and out of consciousness, he would murmur, "When I go in to see the King it will be very bright...the King in His beauty...pure, cloudless joy...it's all gone, all my sins, all my fears...only Christ now...I'm the happiest man alive...It's all bright, all bright!"
â
Joseph Barnes Watson (1884–1955)
Joseph Barnes Watson (1884-1955) came from the sheep-herding hills and marshy flats of Cumberland, Scotland. There, in the village of Wigton, the gospel entered the home of John and Jane Watson. Their marriage was another proof that opposites attract. Jane was a calm, cautious homemaker, while John had a heavy dose of that impetuous, loud, jovial impulse that kept village life interesting. John left school for work when only nine years old, and only in adulthood learned how to read from his wife. But those disadvantages did not slow his fervor. Preaching in cottages and in the market place, he helped the local chapter of the Y.M.C.A. (which at that time was an aggressive evangelistic organization), and also joined hands with a simple gathering of believers.
After Wigton, the young family moved to Workington, where John and Jane Watson joined themselves to an assembly. There, the curious young Joseph observed God's people gathering in simple New Testament fashion.
Speaking about those hallowed sessions spent around the simple memorials of our Lord's death, Watson later said, "These are minutes when the soul realizes the presence of the Lord in a measure beyond all other hours. Then it is that the love of Christ melts our hearts and causes our eyes to overflow. Then it is that we look at the Man of Calvary. Then it is that we stoop to kiss the Conqueror's feet. Then it is that we see afresh the wounded hands, feet, and side, and say with Thomas, 'My Lord and my God!'" (John 20:28)
It was not the sophistication of the surroundings or the attendees that left such impressions. The saints were respectful, but not ornate.
There were no multimedia special effects to induce an attitude of worship. But as a musical Scottish tongue raised the hymn, and the congregation joined in, the honest observer could only say that those people said and sang truths which they personally had seen and heard.
Another lasting impression on young Joseph was the direct approach in communicating Scripture. As in military life, the maxim is: "an order that can be misunderstood will be." So, in telling the truths of God, J. B. Watson did not allow his hearers any loopholes. His father dreaded the obscure sermon. Once in a Bible study, after a tedious discussion of a single verse, John felt that the study was less than unfruitful and quietly suggested that they move on to the next verse.
"But John," one of the learned brethren protested, "we've not exhausted this one yet."
"Nay," answered John, "But thoo's exhausted me."
Those youthful impressions were strong. But people do not enter into the kingdom of God on impressions. Joseph was climbing his way up the academic ladder, excelling in the physical sciences, showing a deft hand as an illustrator, and then in the off hours achieving some local reknown in the Workington Cricket Club as a promising left-handed batsman. Still, between his athletics and temporal attainments, the nineteen-year-old attended a Sunday School where a faithful old warrrior named Jacob Dixon trained his crosshairs on the wavering young man. Jacob tracked his prey down at John Watson's workshop in Workington in April of 1903. There he pointed Joseph to John 20:31, "But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name." It was a bullseye.
Brother Dixon was not like Mephibosheth's nurse who dropped the child. In the years that followed, before and after Joseph's move to London in 1905, brother Dixon had a dominant influence. Dixon was the tutor who showed him the practices of a consistent Christian life.
After Joseph moved to London to become a Government clerk in the customs office, he kept a careful diary. "Jos. B. Watson, born:--September 26th, 1884--Born again, April 25th, 1903," he wrote, then at the head of the first page, in his tidy writing style:
"Day by day the manna fell"
Diary of Scriptural Studies, Spiritual Thoughts, and Gospel Outlines, 1905.
Motto for the year:--"Enoch walked with God"
( Gen. 5:24 )
Joseph's spiritual progress is outlined in this journal. Though not without initial crisis in his Christian life, the studious young man at the clerk's desk was himself a warrior in the making. He reminds us of Dwight Eisenhower, who, before World War II worked on the staff of General Douglas MacArthur. Steadily rising in the ranks, as we know, Eisenhower went on to command the allied invasion of Europe. General MacArthur was visibly miffed that he had been passed up for that job, and derisively said that Eisenhower was "the best clerk I ever had."
But Eisenhower was unable to take this as a complement, and retorted that under MacArthur he "had studied theatrics."
Joseph saw God's hand in his daily employment, and by night either went out to preach himself, listened to Bible teaching, or studied in private.
To the end, J. B. Watson maintained a keen interest in the gospel, and complained about those who seemed satisfied to hold polite, but poorly attended, gospel meetings. In his July 31 journal entry for
1905, Watson wrote: "Every assembly should be a center from which radiates an active living testimony to the saving power of Christ...The snug gospel meetings where we sing pretty hymns and listen to a popular preacher from a distance have none of the true ring of testimonies for Christ. We get much too narrowed into ourselves and our own comforts, we forget too often in our own safety that all around us are thousands--teeming thousands--going heedless to endless woe...We need to bestir ourselves and no longer sit in our comfortable seats, praying God to condone our laziness by sending sinners in to the message, but be up and with holy zeal carry out the message of life to the sinner.
What saith the Scripture? 'Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.' (Mark 16:15) 'Go ye into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in.' (Luke 14:23) 'Go, work in My vineyard.' (Matthew 20:1-7) 'He that goeth forth, and weepeth, bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again rejoicing.' (Psalm 126:6) 'A sower went forth to sow.'" (Matthew 13:3)
Within a few years, he was well-known in London as an effective preacher. His biographer, Robert Rendall, said of his ministry, "A flowing river cuts out a bed for itself." By 1908, his gift as a Bible teacher was becoming evident. That year he gave a lecture series on the difficult topic of "the Levitical Offerings."
In 1910, Joseph Watson was joined in marriage to Miss Caroline Jeffery. Their home was a proof that the church still has its Priscillas and Aquilas, and their natural children (two sons and two daughters) were also among their numerous spiritual children.
The Watsons settled on the east side of London, and in 1911, Watson joined hands with two other able workers in an evangelistic work in Leytonstone. Leyton had been the work place of such notables as Lord Radstock, William Groves (known as "Happy Bill") and Gipsy Smith. About thirty believers from area assemblies joined together and began meeting at Green Grove Hall. Robert Rendal writes about the assembly that was raised up there: "In ten years the company had increased to some 114 persons in regular fellowship. Although he had many openings for ministry in other London districts--which he filled as occasion offered--he firmly believed that those who ministeed the Word in what he used to call a peripatetic ministry should do some solid work in their own assembly, as this would keep their ministry in touch with reality. He not only believed this, but practiced it, and so came to learn from personal experience the problems and joys that are associated with the congregational life of a local church."
A close co-laborer of forty years in the work said that Watson felt his first duty to the assembly at Leytonstone, then to the greater London area, and then to a wider sphere. Evidently he had seen more than one roving expert who reminded him of Solomon's proverb: "As a bird that wandereth from her nest, so is a man that wandereth from his place" (Prov. 27:8).
Eventually Watson would travel as far as Africa in his teaching ministry, but he remained like the skylark of Wordsworth's poem, That soar but never roam, True to the kindred points of heaven and home.
In the work at Leytonstone, he was often called on as a conciliator.
One journal entry says, "Assembly mending. We were helped in bringing the differing parties to one mind. Got home at 1 a.m." How difficult it was for a preacher like Watson to hold his tongue we can only imagine.
If he had wanted to, he could sharpen his tongue to a keen razor edge and then cut a man to ribbons with it. Once, at the London docks, he saw a cruel man abusing a carriage horse. He intervened to apply what the English call "a proper dressing down." After Watson had put his verbal rapier back in the scabbard, the driver stood motionless with his whip hanging limp at his side and exclaimed, "Lor', guv'nor, and yer ain't used one swear word!"
Watson was an intense man, with fiery eyes. But this incident with the horse driver was not his normal mode of expression.
When John R. Watson wrote about his late father, his language is so effusive that we have to wonder if such a man could have ever lived in this century. Every one of us can pray that we will so live Christ before our spouses and children that they will feel the same way about us. J. B. Watson was the hero of his home, who set aside his Saturday afternoons for his family. He lived a busy life; at his prime he was speaking 200 times a year, besides working five and a half days a week as a customs officer, and an early riser besides. But he was not too busy to play a prank on his youngsters, inspect their school work, or teach them a poem. When he prepared to preach, he would sometimes consult his youthful board of advisers, and then at the preaching place his delighted children would hear their father insert into his message the very words of advice given him from his children. No one else in the auditorium would know why the speaker would flash a smile just at that point.
But every message he preached was not a sensation. As his journal entry for January 8, 1925, reads, "Late through train delay: spoke on 1
Samuel 7. A poor affair. I was 'off' after the rush from train to meeting. On reaching home conducted the funeral of the domestic cat--a sad day!"
Watson continued to work in customs right through the difficult and stressful years of the war. In the evenings, he would move about the dangerous streets on his pastoral errands. Then in November of 1945, after 40 years and nine months as a civil servant, Watson retired.
Watson's enduring contribution to us is his writing and editorial work with The Witness magazine. In the 1870s, Donald Ross began a magazine which became The Witness. J. R. Caldwell was the next editor who made it a recognized forum for sound teaching. After him, Henry Pickering took it on, and in 1941, Pickering passed on the editorship to J. B. Watson with the advice, "When considering articles, remember those rows of miners' cottages!" For instance, he was the editor of the excellent The Church--A Symposium of Principles and Practice, which includes articles by other able men such as W. E. Vine. But Watson was first a preacher, and secondarily a scribe. Watson's speaking is reflected in his writing--direct, clear, and giving great attention to the details of Scripture. Whether speaking in the open air at Hyde Park, or addressing 2,000 in the Spurgeon Tabernacle at the Sunday School Teacher's Convention, he was consistently on the mark. One friend said, "His addresses, brilliant models of the preacher's craft, were delicately chiselled in thought and phrase. Not for him the slipshod preparation of heart and mind."
In the months before his homegoing, Watson's health curtailed his preaching. Writing to a friend, he confided that this was a great trial. "Rutherford wrote in the time of his imprisonment of the trial of his 'Dumb Sabbaths': I am tasting the same experience. I think of myself as like the priest Zachariah, dumb but still able to use the writing tablet. (Luke 1:63)
"I know that trials work for ends too high for sense to trace, That oft in dark attire He sends His ministers of grace."
Watson's long friend, Ransome Cooper, visited him in the hospital and heard his last words. Ransome was reading to him about the translation of Mr. Valiant-for-Truth in the Pilgrim's Progress. "I read out slowly and distinctly the words, 'Ye know in all your hearts and in all your souls, that not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord your God spake concerning you.' Feebly but clearly he repeated, 'Not one thing hath failed.' Then I read from Bunyan, from the paper marking the verse, 'I am going to my Father's; and though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am.'
"So I left him: but the memory remained with me of the triumphant words that follow in that little extract from Bunyan: 'My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles Who now will be my Rewarder...So he passed over and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.'"
Materials for this articles are taken from
Brethren: The Story of a Great Recovery by D. J. Beattie
J. B. Watson: A memoir and Selected Writings by R. Rendal
W. E. Vine: His Life and Ministry by Percy O. Ruoff
Books by J. B. Watson include:
The Sinless Saviour
On the Sermon on the Mount [with C. F. Hogg]
The Church--A Symposium of Principles and Practice [edited by J. B. Watson]
The Promise of His Coming [with C. F. Hogg]
Leonard Sheldrake (1885–1952)
The cheer that brightened the simple English cottage where he was born fled early for Leonard Sheldrake (1885-1952). He was six, his sister eight, and his brothers four and two when tuberculosis claimed their mother. Never a strong child, he once overheard a neighboring housewife remark, "Poor laddie, he's not long for this world." When he was eleven, his father also died of tuberculosis.
Leonard said, "I remember my father going to church on Sunday once.
There was no thanks given at our table. My father never read the Bible.
My grandfather (who took care of us when my father died) used to read a chapter out of the Bible on Sundays. Still I had religious inclinations. I used to be scared at the thought of hell."
His Baptist relatives convinced him of the rightness of immersion, so "on the first day of the New Year the ice was broken and I went down into the water a dry sinner and came up a wet sinner."
As superintendent of the Sunday School, he preached when the minister was absent. "I was put on the local platform and spoke in different places. Some of my father's old friends came for miles to hear me preach just because it was me. Still I was troubled because I had no definite experience of conversion. One old lady told the whole story of her conversion every time she visited us. Something said to me again and again, 'There's something wrong; you have no experience like that.' I went to the minister, but he put me to sleep again. He told me it was just a gradual thing with some people...The Lord had to take me across the Atlantic to save my soul."
Leonard's first months after immigrating to Canada in 1905 were crucial. "For about six weeks I put in a miserable existence on a farm.
I used to get in the hayloft and read my Bible with a heavy heart. I felt so alone, no one cared whether I lived or died, and I had no assurance of my soul's salvation."
In Toronto, a clever atheist, armed with Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species, and The Descent of Man, almost persuaded Leonard of his "infidel notions." Meanwhile, another friend, was urging Leonard to delve into Toronto's nightlife. He nearly succeeded. Leonard got as far as the entrance of a theater. "I stopped and then turned back. Had I gone, I might have gotten a taste for it and lost my interest in my soul."
One night his roommate, a Christian, said, "As Jesus lay in the tomb, the question was, 'Was God satisfied?'" That moment the truth of Christ's resurrection connected in his mind. God was satisfied; He raised Him from the dead. Later, Leonard stated, "I could understand what he said. I wondered, 'Can that possibly be true that the Lord Jesus died for me as though there wasn't another soul in the world? Can that possibly be true?' Then he quoted, 'For by grace are ye saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast.' Right away I knew it was true. That was my introduction to the Lord Jesus and ever since I have known Him as mine." The marvel of that introduction was never lost on Leonard.
Telling his story years later he could say, "The Lord Jesus is just as precious to me tonight as He was then. I believe He is even more precious than He ever was before."
Soon Leonard discovered the Broadview assembly in Toronto. Two of the elders were not satisfied with Leonard's story because he failed to pinpoint the date of his conversion, but R. T. Telfer acted as a Barnabas on his behalf (Acts 9:26-28). He met there for several weeks before he cast himself into a new work in the east end of the city, now known as Danforth. Assuming the duties of caretaker, he often walked miles on prayer meeting night to open the door, light the fire, and greet the saints.
Of those early days, brother James Gunn said, "He was one of the few men left whom I seemed to have known practically all my life, at least from Sunday School days until the present, and I loved and appreciated him more all the time."
Vacation time was spent distributing gospel leaflets, preaching in the open air and visiting isolated assemblies. On one excursion in 1909 to South River, he met Ada Pearl Clapp, the daughter of a pioneer preacher. Leonard had discovered a gem in that tiny, struggling, assembly.
Shortly after, he was transferred to Winnipeg. Though having a good position with a large mail order house, it was the work of the Lord that took first place in his life. In 1911, the assembly in Winnipeg commended him to the work of the Lord. He came east and married Pearl on September 20 of that year.
The newlyweds' ambition was to serve the Lord in China, but when they saw that they did not have enough money to pay the fare, Leonard took that as the Lord's direction to stay and work on the home field.
This of course was hard to explain to the saints in Winnipeg. Leonard had strong convictions about not begging for money, which included not letting his needs be known. The saints wondered, after they commended them to the work in China, why they were not going. Evidently that young Englishman had changed his mind! Strange. Instead, he began to bring the gospel to remote lumber camps in Ontario. Often it involved traveling all day, partly by sleigh, but mostly by foot, sometimes when it was 50 degrees below zero.
In 1912, he made trips over the border to help David McClintock in a tent in Negaunee, Michigan. After the final series he located in the American Sault with his wife and daughter. After two years in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, the family moved to Standish, where they spent five years. In November, 1920, they moved back to the Sault. He pioneered in Michigan with many of the Lord's servants including George Shivas, John Govan, Fred W. Mehl, and F. W. Schwartz.
In the Sault, brother Sheldrake bicycled across the city and surrounding country. He was a truly exercised brother, peddling from farmhouse to farmhouse with tracts. A tract enthusiast, he went from giving them out to writing them, and then to publishing them in monthly gospel papers he edited, called Words of Peace and North American Evangelist.
At the Bay City conference he met young William J. Pell, an inexperienced possessor of a primitive hand-operated printing press.
Bill Pell offered to print the paper in 1923 and Words of Peace became the first publication of what would be Gospel Folio Press.
In 1927, his contacts with foreign missionaries led to the publication of Look on the Fields. At the end of one year's circulation, a report was given accounting for the stewardship:
$1952.00 had been sent to the Lord's servants in China, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Mexico, Venezuela, Romania, India, Sweden, Italy, Argentina, Africa, Spain, Paraguay, British Guiana, Brazil, and Barbados. He did not travel to China, but his letters could. The man who did not have the money to pay the fare had a ministry of sending generous gifts all through the Depression years. These gifts increased; on some days our brother wrote twenty letters, each with encouragement and a sweet savor of Christ. By his service he purchased "a good degree, and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus" (1 Tim. 3:13).
Some of brother Sheldrake's articles in Look on the Fields occasioned severe criticism, such as Causes of Banishment which was written to correct severe tendencies among some assemblies and missionaries. Anything but a literary pugilist, he eschewed controversy for controversy's sake. Early on he passed the editorship to Peter J.
Pell and the little publication was changed to The Uplook. In 1933, Dr.
H. A. Cameron took over as editor, renaming it Assembly Annals. and merging it with Our Record.
In print and in person Leonard lived out Solomon's statement, "The righteous are bold as a lion." Once Tom Wilkie and Leonard were at a city park, where a band concert played on Saturday nights. The band was done, so Leonard stood up to preach and soon an officer interrupted, "Mister, you have to stop that! You have got to get out of here!"
"What do you mean? Do you want to stop me from preaching the gospel?"
"That is exactly what I mean."
"Officer, I want you to take me to your boss."
"I would be happy to do that." And so the three marched to the police station.
Explaining his case to the chief of police, Leonard said, "Sir, we were not bothering anybody. The concert was over and we were just preaching the gospel of the love of God through Jesus Christ when this officer stopped us."
The chief of police turned and said, "Officer, take this man back to the park, and I want you to see that no one disturbs him. And I want you to stay there and protect him as long as he speaks."
Tom Wilkie once said Leonard was "the boldest man I ever knew."
Doubtless this boldness grew out of his prayer life. One occasion to trust God came after Pearl looked through his wardrobe one Saturday.
"Leo, you can't get up on the platform again until you get a new suit. That suit is a mess. It is a disgrace. It is not honoring to the Lord Jesus to look like that," she said.
Leonard did not disagree, but felt he did not have money to buy a new suit. He had forty dollars and that was just a little more than what he needed to pay the rent. He never bought anything on time or borrowed as a matter of conviction. He reasoned that if he didn't have the money to pay for it, that the Lord did not want him to have it. But with Pearl's persuasion he went to J. C. Penney's and saw one suit for
$23.88. He decided that the Lord would have him buy that suit for the next Sunday.
That day a check came in the mail for $23.88. Who had ever sent a gift of $23.88? To Leonard and Pearl's five children, who all came to love and serve the Saviour, these experiences became part of the family folklore. So more than forty years later Leonard's son was relating this story when a man from across the room said, "And would you like the second half of that story?"
"Well, yes, I would."
"Then I'll tell you how your father got that check. A half dozen preachers were invited to the annual conference at Robert's Memorial Hall in Chicago. On the Lord's day an offering was taken, to be distributed to the preachers who had spoken at the conference. We counted the offering and divided it five ways but had $23.88 left over.
Someone asked, 'Now what should we do with $23.88?' I spoke up and said, 'Let's send it to Leonard Sheldrake; he was invited to come and couldn't make it.'"
In 1940, the family moved to Kansas City, MO, where Leonard helped the Troost Avenue assembly. After he was no longer able to pitch a tent or hold a strenuous series of evangelistic meetings, he loved to minister Christ in the out-of-the-way assemblies.
He suffered a heart attack in Phoenix, on March 10, 1952, having preached four times the previous day. The Lord took him home on May 8,
1952. It was fitting that he received his homecall in the morning. He daily expected the return of Christ as the Morning Star. Years before some saints predicted the Lord's coming at the time of the Jewish feast of Trumpets. The morning after, he said, "Well, the Lord didn't come yesterday," and then turning to the calendar read, "Yet a little while and he that shall come will come and will not tarry." From that time he longingly looked for the Lord's return every day.
Books written by Leonard Sheldrake:
Our Lord Jesus Christ, A Plant of Renown
Tabernacle Types and Shadows
The Other Side of the Wall (not extant)
Roy Littleproud (born 1889)
Roy Littleproud was born in Forest, Ontario, on February 21, 1889.
His parents were both Christians, meeting with those gathered to the Name of the Lord Jesus in that place. Under these circumstances he grew to young manhood, knowing the atmosphere of a home where Christ was recognized as Lord. In later years, he often referred to the godly character and life of his father and mother, and their influence on his life.
From his youth he seemed to be especially qualified as a student, and as a young man commenced his career as a teacher in a country school in that district.
When about seventeen years of age, he became awakened to the need of his soul's salvation. About this time he became acquainted with a young woman, Miss Hilda Vance, who was very faithful in speaking with him about eternal things, and it was through her instrumentality he was later pointed to Christ through the truth of that wonderful and well-known word, John 3:16.
Five years later, this same young woman became his wife on April 19,
1911. Hilda Littleproud was a true helpmeet to him through the 30 years of their happy married life, and those who knew them often heard him pay glowing tributes to his beloved wife.
After eight years teaching in the Munsey Indian Institution, he moved his family to teach in London, ON. He later became a vice-principal. During these years two boys, Hugh and Donald, were born.
In 1926, he received a government appointment to the position of Inspector for the Penny Bank of Ontario, which resulted in his taking up residence in Toronto. In this position he was particularly successful in his task of encouraging the careful handling of money among the children of Ontario.
On coming to Toronto, Littleproud made his home in the east end of the city, where he became associated with the Swanwick Assembly, where he continued until his death.
His moving to Toronto brought him into contact with a considerably larger number of the Lord's people. As he became acquainted in the different assemblies, his exercise and ability in the gospel, among young and old, soon manifested itself. His kind and sympathetic nature made him many close friends, while his knowledge of the Bible, coupled with his ability to minister, soon put him in great demand among the Lord's people.
In 1927, Mr. Littleproud was exercised about helping some of the young men in his assembly. They arranged to meet in his home every other Saturday evening to study the Word together. These meetings commenced with about a dozen, but the numbers soon increased until his home became too small.
As some of the young men attending were coming from the west end of the city, it was felt advisable that a central location be found. The Central Hall brethren offered the basement of their building. For 14 years it was carried on through fall and winter, with 100 or more attending regularly. Other brethren assisted Mr. Littleproud in this work, but the main responsibility of the class rested on him. He was untiring in his labors, preparing regularly detailed notes of all the studies taken up. These were given to everyone attending.
Some of the subjects taken up during those years included: the Doctrine of God, of the Lord Jesus, and of the Holy Spirit; the Tabernacle; Prophecy concerning Israel; the Tribulation and the coming of the Lord. One of his most intensive studies with the young men was the "Principles of the Christian Assembly." These studies lasted through a number of seasons. They were published in book form under the title of "The Christian Assembly."
Four years after the start of the Toronto Bible Class, Littleproud became associated with some other brethren interested in the promotion of the gospel among the young. He edited the Sunday School Teacher's Lesson Manual, which has been wonderfully used by God in developing a systematic scheme of lessons throughout various assembly Sunday Schools, as well asproviding helpful instruction for the exercised Sunday School teacher. Much of this material was incorporated into the present curriculum of the Modular Bible Lessons produced by Gospel Folio Press.
His writing in the Manual were deeply appreciated. The publisher of the material, William Pell, said of his contributions: "Mr. Littleproud was one who, like Nehemiah, sought the welfare of God's people (Neh.
2:10). Oral ministry demands time; written ministry demands more time, and to both he gave himself willingly. Someone has said: 'Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully,' and the latter was true of Littleproud. Not only had he choice thoughts, but he sought to find acceptable words (words of delight, marg. of Eccl. 12:10) in which to couch them, and every detail of composition and punctuation was done with the greatest exactitude. Thus those who labored with him
'in the service of the Best of Masters' (as he often ended his letters to fellow-workers) felt inspired to do the best things, and to do them in the very best way, for 'as iron sharpeneth iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend' (Prov. 27:17).
James Gunn also worked with Mr. Littleproud. At the time of
Littleproud's passing he made this comment: "He was a true fellowservant. He would not only share the work, but he would most gladly share the honor. In fact, he would help you in the work, and then commend you because it was well done."
Mr. Littleproud was also a great help in his ministry at Sunday School Teacher's Conferences. Many addresses of a devotional character were an inspiration to discouraged teachers; but particularly his instructions in the art of teaching were invaluable.
His work as the Inspector of the Penny Bank of Ontario took him out of town a great deal, and on most of these business trips he drove his own car. On January 17, 1941, he left Paris, Ontario, to start for home. Suddenly the steering in his car broke and it swerved from the road, going down a 15-foot embankment, and crashed into a tree. The car was a complete wreck, and he was pinned in his seat by the steering wheel so that it was necessary to use a hack-saw to finally release him. He was taken to a nearby hospital. As well as cuts and broken bones, he suffered severely from shock, and it seemed a miracle that he had not succumbed to these injuries at the time of the accident.
For several weeks he was in a very weak condition. However, he gradually gained in strength, and was greatly encouraged when able to read a little. In fact, in the latter weeks of March he began preparing material for an address that he had been asked to give at the Sunday School Teachers' Conference in May, hoping he might be able to attend.
The first week in April he was finally able to have his leg taken out of the harness, and he was living in great expectation of going home. But on April 7, an X-ray revealed that a fracture in his upper leg had not healed properly. It was decided after consultation that an operation should be performed, enabling him to be moved home within a week or so.
His wife was with him on the following day when the operation was performed. The doctors assured them that everything had gone well, and apart from feeling very tired and weak, Mr. Littleproud seemed in satisfactory condition when his wife said good-bye to him at the hospital on Tuesday evening. He was left in the care of a special duty nurse.
The nurse advised that he slept off and on during Tuesday night but about 6 o'clock Wednesday morning he asked for a drink of water, saying that "he felt a little faint." A moment later she turned to give him the drink, but he was at Home with the Lord.
His funeral, shared by Hugh McEwen, Peter Hynd, and William Pell, was attended by more than 600. Peter Pell, a co-worker with Littleproud, received news of his passing while preaching in western Canada. He wrote, "'The doctor promised he could come home by Easter.'
This was in the letter I received shortly before the notice of our brother's homecall...'Home by Easter!' Yes, but far better than his expectations. It is good by His will to be here, but better by far to be there."
August Van Ryn (1890–1982)
August Van Ryn (1890-1982) wrote of his birth, "My arrival in Haarlem (Netherlands) on May 15, 1890, created no particular sensation (unless it was one of dismay, for already there were seven Van Ryns ahead of me--with five more to come after). So my birth was nothing special to others, though it was to me."
His mother was from Switzerland. On several occasions when J. N.
Darby passed through Switzerland, he visited her parents' home. She recalled being held on his lap while he told her stories. August's mother was deeply spiritual. "I can still see her on her knees as I passed her bedroom, and hearing her pray. She brought us daily before the throne of grace on her knees; at other times, she brought us to terms across her knees."
One of the thirteen children died at birth, but the remaining twelve (nine sons and three daughters) were saved by God's grace. The family would walk four-and-a-half miles to meetings on the Lord's day. Going to an evening meeting meant 18 miles.
When still a teenager, August determined to go to America. Settling in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where his sister and two brothers preceded him, he attended a Christian assembly there, though he was still in his sins. "I was just interested in my job, in social doings, but certainly not in eternal verities," he said.
One Sunday night, after a stirring gospel message, a friend named George Vandermeulen "buttonholed" him. George was about six feet, seven inches tall. His big hands held August's coat lapel as he urged him to receive the Lord Jesus. "I didn't hear a word he said. I wanted to get away, but I couldn't get away without being rude. Finally he did let me go and I made my way home. But all of a sudden I stopped. It seemed to me as if a thunderclap rooted me to the spot. A voice seemed to say,
'Did you notice that all the time that young man was speaking to you, the tears were rolling down his cheeks? He is no relation to you; he has no special interest in you, yet he is weeping over you because you are on the road to hell and you yourself don't care. It's time for you to wake up!'" That night August's brother, Louis, spoke to him from John 3:16. He believed. It was May 1, 1910. He was baptized May 8 and was received into the assembly May 15.
With young believers, August began by evangelizing in Grand Rapids.
People crowded to hear the street corner orators. On Saturdays, they went to surrounding towns to preach (often to hundreds) and give out tracts. In a few years, the brethren told him they felt the Lord was calling him to full-time preaching.
When August said, "I couldn't even talk," he was being honest. His thick accent was strange, even to his fellow Dutch immigrants. He looked awkward. Those ears, balancing themselves on the sides of his head, seemed to wag at his audience. Besides this, from infancy he had poor eyesight. He had almost no light in the right eye; the left eye was "nothing to boast about."
When 24 years of age, he was informed that he might soon lose his sight altogether. He decided to memorize Scripture so he could continue in the ministry of God's Word. He used otherwise wasted moments for eleven years and memorized the New Testament, large portions of the Old Testament from Genesis, Exodus, and Isaiah, the whole book of Psalms, as well as the Little Flock Hymnbook. Needless to say, memorization accelerated his spiritual progress.
With the invitation of Robert Stratton, August saw an open door in the Bahamas. He sailed from Miami to the Islands in 1916. Brother Stratton and his wife, Lilah, received August with joy. There he met Miss Persis Roberts, sister to Lilah. He intended to visit for a couple of months; instead he married, and stayed for thirteen years. Together brother Stratton and August carried on itinerant gospel work, using Evangel, a 52-foot yacht which they built.
The year 1926 had two outstanding events: one a mountaintop; but the other a dark valley. In March and April, the Lord poured out streams of blessing. At Cherokee Sound on the island of Abaco--near the Van Ryn home in Marsh Harbor, the Lord worked.
"We would talk to anxious souls till late at night and again early in the morning, besides the regular meetings. A number confessed the Lord. And then, toward the end of two weeks, the fishing fleet came in.
Long before the boats reached shore, the men aboard were waving their hats and shouting. When we finally heard what they were saying, it was,
'There's been a wonderful revival on our ships; lots of men have been saved.'" While the Lord moved hearts on their boats, unknown to them, He had saved children, wives, sweethearts, or parents back home. What rejoicing! About one hundred were saved in that little town.
Soon they left for Spanish Wells. When those there heard about the awakening in Abaco, they said, "We hope we'll see something like that here."
The meetings all that week were full, but there was no remarkable response. Then on Wednesday night, the other preacher and August were walking home when they passed a little group. An old Christian lady was sitting in her wheelchair, while her son was on the curb, with three young girls. August asked the young man, "What are you sitting here for--tired of pushing?" Immediately he sobbed, "I just can't walk any further. I am so troubled about my soul, I have to be saved right now."
All four trusted Christ.
Five o'clock the next morning, someone banged on their bedroom window, shouting, "You better get up; there are anxious souls all over town." When they reached the gate, an older sister in Christ walked up and said, "I couldn't sleep all night. I am so troubled about my youngest son. I prayed for him all night that the Lord will save him."
While she poured out her predicament, the woman's son came from the other direction and threw his arms around his mother, crying, "Oh, mother, the Lord saved me last night!"
By eight o'clock that morning, 35 souls had been saved while alone in their own homes! The meetings continued and about one hundred were saved. From Spanish Wells, the work spread, "God working without any human preparation, or methods or machinery."
This took place, in March and April of 1926. That same year violent storms struck, two did a lot of damage. It was the third one that hit the island of Abaco, where the Van Ryns lived. One balmy evening in October, a report had come that a hurricane was on its way. Awakened at midnight by a roaring wind, the force increased beyond anything they had ever felt.
At 7 am, an eerie calm fell. They were in the eye of the hurricane.
The storm was moving ahead at 15 miles per hour. August's father-in-law informed him that the winds would come again, but from the opposite way.
"Well, if the gale comes from the ocean this time, won't it bring the sea with it?"
"No," he replied, "we've never seen any amount of water." But he had never seen a tidal wave.
In half an hour, the wind drove in a six-foot wall of water. It smashed against their house, breaking the front door and windows. The water on the main level was too deep for the children, so they gathered on the stairs to the second floor. Their children ranged from seven years to the five-month-old baby. August held the baby. The three others stood between Persis and August. In minutes, the real tidal wave rolled in. They heard its deafening roar before they saw it; it was twenty feet high! Seeing it bear down on their home, they kissed each other and August said, "Good-bye darling; we'll see each other in the glory."
The wave exploded the house. Evidently thrown through the glass window on the stairway (for his left leg was badly cut), the next thing he knew, he was lying on a piece of wreckage. Having been knocked unconscious, the infant had been swept from his arms. Persis was in the raging waters further inland, with the three small children clinging to her. Grasping bits of wreckage, they were unhurt.
When the undertow from the tidal wave came, it carried every bit of their property back into the Atlantic Ocean. August built the house himself--and it disappeared in fifteen seconds. This deeply impressed the Van Ryns. All they had on earth--gone. As if they had not already made this determination, they renewed their commitment to live with eternity in view. What a night of weeping that was, having suddenly lost their dear Pearl Eleanor, but God was with them to comfort. The town had been decimated, but amazingly few lives were lost. Their boat--Evangel--was the only vessel which came through without any damage. Its anchor had held it secure, and so did theirs ( Heb. 6:19 ).
In 1929, they moved to Michigan, but went south again, to the Miami area in 1933. From that base of operations he ministered the Word in the U.S. and Canada. When Emmaus Bible School was in Toronto, August taught there each spring for three years. While teaching those classes, he began publishing his comments on Ephesians, then the Gospel and Epistles of John, Proverbs, and the life of Elijah. August also sent out a monthly letter, Words of Encouragement. Some of these were put into book form, entitled Words of Encouragement, and Bread Enough and to Spare.
After 56 happy years serving together, the Lord took Persis home in July of 1974. August was called home eight years later.