Edward Hoare, M.A Part 4

I cannot speak too strongly, therefore, of the vast importance of our young men, when preparing for the ministry, devoting themselves to the careful study of theology. I see dear young men, full of zeal and holy earnestness, who seem, indeed, so zealous that they cannot wait to study; and they are to my mind like men who are in such haste to fire their guns that they cannot wait to put any shot in them! The result is that, when they are sent forth as ministers of the Gospel and as teachers of the truth, they are themselves ignorant of the clear definitions of the truth they are going to teach, and, while they can make fervent appeals, are utterly unable to build up others in great fundamental truths of the Gospel. It is not fervour only that makes a minister valuable, but a fervent exhibition of truth; and if we are to be able ministers, we _must_ be able ministers of New Testament truths.

I consider, therefore, that an immense benefit has been conferred upon the Church of England by the foundation of Ridley Hall at Cambridge, and Wycliffe Hall at Oxford. How thankful should I have been myself to have been under the teaching of either of the two able Princ.i.p.als of those Halls; and how earnest should we all be to secure to our young men the benefit of these inst.i.tutions, and not to let them go forth as evangelists or scripture-readers, to be giving _out_ before they have taken _in_, and to be teaching _others_ before they have learnt themselves.

At length the day came for my ordination, and I had the inestimable privilege of being ordained as curate to my revered and beloved uncle, Mr. Francis Cunningham, Vicar of Lowestoft and Rector of Pakefield. An ordination in those days was a very different thing to what it is now.

At that time Bishop Bathurst was Bishop of Norwich, and too infirm to undertake his own ordinations. He therefore gave his candidates dimissory letters to the Bishop of Lincoln.

I cannot say that much was done to deepen the impression on the minds of the candidates. As we all had to go to Norwich first for examination, and to Buckden for ordination, it was necessary to show some consideration for us, as there were no railways then. I often think that the Chaplain showed a great deal of good sense in his examination. It began on Wednesday morning, and he told us that he should give us hard questions at the beginning, that they would grow easier and easier during the three days of the examination, and that he should let us go as soon as he was satisfied. So we had a good stiff paper on various subjects at the first sitting, while he walked about the room and looked over the papers as we were writing, but having nothing to look over from a great many of the candidates. It was a great satisfaction to me, when that first sitting was over, to be told that I might go, and that I should find the necessary papers at Buckden.

Most of us Norwich men had to put up at Huntingdon, as the little inn at Buckden was full of the men from the Lincoln Diocese; and as I imagine that the Bishop did not like to have the Norwich men in addition to his own, he gave us no share of any of the privileges that his own candidates may have enjoyed. We signed our papers, etc., on the Sat.u.r.day morning, and were told that we Norwich men were not wanted any more till the next morning. Accordingly the next morning we were in the church at the appointed hour, and that evening, to my great joy, I read prayers at the parish church of Huntingdon. How wonderfully different is the careful pains taken by all our present Bishops ere young men are admitted to the ministry, and what a wonderful improvement has taken place in this respect!

Letter from Rev. E. G. Marsh, on his entering the ministry:-

"HAMPSTEAD, _February_, 1836.

"MY DEAR FRIEND,-Knowing with whom you are connected in the great work which you have now undertaken, I feel that I might fairly excuse myself from saying anything to you upon an occasion so interesting to all your friends; and my natural indolence would readily yield to the suggestion, and withhold me from interfering where others are more competent to advise. Yet on the whole I could not be quite easy if I suffered you to enter upon an office, far too high and holy to be approached by a sinner, but for that infinite condescension and love of our Saviour which has called us to it, without saying to you, in the words of St. Paul to Archippus, 'Take heed to the ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfil it!' This is indeed a solemn charge, even more so than that which you have just received from the Bishop. I can add nothing to its weight, and can only pray my G.o.d to forgive all our deficiencies, and to supply all our need, according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. Nevertheless there are one or two hints which I will venture to suggest, in case they should help you in taking a practical view of the obligations thus laid upon you. In the first place, although this is a work which can only be successfully prosecuted in the spirit of prayer and in the strength of the Saviour, it is very desirable that the greatness of it should not dishearten us, or render us insensible to the duty of doing what we can. My simple advice to you in the beginning of your ministry is this-never to let a day pa.s.s, if it be possible, without doing some act in fulfilment of it. I mean some act having respect, not to your own personal salvation, but to the salvation of those to whom you are an amba.s.sador for Christ: to your parishioners, while you are among them; to others, when you are absent. And this act, whatever it be, should be made the subject of special prayer. My second advice is to give sufficient time to each act, that it may be done properly, and rather to let many be neglected than to do any one perfunctorily, for on that which is performed indifferently and without due attention we cannot consistently expect a blessing. To do one thing at a time is the only way, either in spiritual duties or in temporal, to do many things well. Do not, therefore, attempt too much at once. Many break down and are discouraged by this error.

Again, I would say, 'Attend more to the living than to the dying.'

However important may be the clinical department of ministerial duty, we must always be greatly on our guard against encouraging the notion that the work of religion may be done, as doctors' degrees are sometimes taken, _per c.u.mulum_, or that anything can be done by a clergyman at the last hour which can reasonably be expected to produce a change in the spiritual condition of a person who has neglected to seek it before. Thus the ministry which you have received may be continually carried forward, independently of those occasional calls, caused by the alarm of sickness or the apprehension of death, which are most valuable seasons indeed, but on which too much stress may be easily laid, to the neglect of more hopeful opportunities. I hardly intended to say so much, and indeed, on what I have now said you may naturally ask me whether these have been my maxims in the course of my own ministry. But, alas! my dear friend, I do not propose myself as an example to you. I rather wish to see you avoid my errors and supply my defects; and happy shall I be if, in the arduous duties on which you are now embarking, you can derive the least aid from a single word of mine. Commending you to G.o.d and to the word of His grace who alone can make you an able minister of the New Testament,

"I remain ever, my dear friend, "Your faithful and affectionate fellow-labourer, "E. G. MARSH."

From Mrs. h.o.a.re to Mrs. Catherine Gurney on Edward h.o.a.re's first sermon:-

"_March_ 8_th_, 1836.

"I must send thee one line, dearest Catherine, to tell thee what a remarkable day of interest we pa.s.sed on Sunday. Our dearest Edward read the service in Well Walk in the morning and in the evening preached. It was deeply interesting, and I longed to have my heart melted in love and grat.i.tude. Such heartfelt satisfaction to have this dear child so devoted, and adorned with so childlike, lovely, and devoted a spirit, and thus enabled in our own chapel, amongst our friends and neighbours, to proclaim with grace and fervour the great salvation of the Gospel of Christ! This appeared to me to be remarkably the case with him, and, independent of a mother's feelings, his countenance and manner, his manly grace and childlike humility and simplicity, were striking. The congregation had, I believe, much fellow-feeling with us, and the expression of it from different friends has been touching to us. Never was I less disposed to boast, and deeply can unite in that expression 'Where is boasting?-It is excluded'; and yet I _long_ to say with the Psalmist, 'My soul shall make her boast in the Lord,' and in the blessing He has been pleased to vouchsafe. Of course we feel the prospect of parting with Edward; one of the many cheering points in the prospect is his vicinity to Earlham, and to thee and our dearest brother. How kind has Joseph been to him, and what an opportune visit was his last to Earlham!

"I went to see Anna Tooten yesterday at Tottenham, as I had left Upton before the arrival of thy letter. Catherine has been very much cast down lately, and I am but a poor helper. The dear babes are with me to-day, while their mother is in Devonshire Street.

"My dearest brother and sister, nephew and niece, and dear Rachel included, I know they will all unite with us in the interest of Edward.

"Your truly affectionate "L. H."

Autobiography (_continued_).

It was not long afterwards that I went to my curacy. Pakefield was a bleak village on the top of a cliff, and I never shall forget what the guard on the coach said to me as I was approaching it for the first time.

I had complained of cold, and he said to me, "Don't talk about the cold yet; wait till you get to Pakefield-there you catches it genuine!" And so we did. Aye, and I witnessed many a gale of wind, and during the year that I was curate, there were no less than fifty shipwrecks off the coast of my own parish.

But no words can express my thankfulness to G.o.d that He placed me at the outset of my ministry in that village. My dear uncle had laboured there for more than forty years. In his day there were none of the new plans for evangelisation; the high-pressure system had not yet dawned. He had worked hard with parochial work, and he had faithfully preached the old-fashioned Gospel. There was no particular brilliancy about him; his sermons were not equal to his character, but they were like himself, full of Christ, and he and his most remarkable wife lived such a life of Christian holiness in the midst of those rough fishermen, that the late Rev. Henry Blunt once told me that he considered Mr. Francis Cunningham and Mr. Haldane Stewart to be the two holiest men he had ever met with in his life. And what did I find in that village? I found large congregations of fishermen and their families; but more than that, I went diligently about from house to house, and was soon acquainted with every house in the parish, and there I saw unmistakable evidences of the blessing that had rested upon my uncle's ministry.

There were n.o.ble men among the fishermen, n.o.bly working for G.o.d and for the cause of truth, and there were refined and well-instructed women in the different homes, many of whom had been brought up in those schools.

There was a most marked and unmistakable difference between the converted and the unconverted, so that it was impossible for a young man to go from house to house without seeing with his own eyes the manifest results of a faithful Evangelical ministry. I have no words to express what the benefit was to myself. I learnt in that village what I was to expect, as well as what I was to do.

I saw in Mrs. Cunningham the most beautiful example of a clergyman's wife, and I saw in numbers of young women of the parish the conspicuous evidence of G.o.d's blessing on her work amongst them.

There were amongst those men fine, n.o.ble, rough, powerful fellows-men who, till Mr. Cunningham went there, had been living without G.o.d in the world, but now devout consistent believers, and splendid men for dashing through the surf to save life from shipwreck, knowing not what fear was, yet who would kneel together in devout Communion at the Table of the Lord. I never can forget one fearful snow-storm accompanied by a heavy gale. Two of these true men, Nath Colby and Robert Peck, brought in their boats through the gale, wet, cold, and half-frozen, but there I saw them at the service on the Thursday evening, drinking in the Word of Life, and evidently regarding it as their greatest pleasure to be able to be present on that occasion.

That was the last time I ever spoke to dear Robert Peck. He went out again in command of his large fishing boat, and early in the following week I heard that his boat had been found bottom upward. It was my solemn duty to walk through the village, where, everybody being so awed by what had happened, no one spoke a word, to go up to that cottage to tell the poor woman her husband and her son were gone. As I went up the alley where she lived, I heard voices in one of the cottages; turning in, I found some Christian friends a.s.sembled there, praying for the poor bereaved woman. I then went into her cottage, and I suppose she read in my face what had happened, and she said to me, ere I could open my lips, "Then they are both lost?" Then she added: "'A bruised reed shall He not break, and the smoking flax shall He not quench.' These were the last words that Robert spoke to me-and I am sure the Lord will never fail me!"

Oh that every young curate had the opportunity of learning as much from his Rector, and his Rector's family, as I did from Mr. and Mrs.

Cunningham! I do not hesitate to say that their example, and the blessing which G.o.d gave to their ministry, have given character to the whole of my own ministry for the last fifty-two years.

These were not the only advantages I enjoyed in Pakefield, for I was within easy reach of Earlham, the seat of my dear Uncle Joseph John Gurney. He was a very remarkable man, and his home was one of the most charming homes in England. He used to collect there many of the most distinguished men of the day. Nothing could be more delightful than the great gatherings under his hospitable roof on the occasion of the Norwich Meetings which were held every autumn.

I had a horse at that time which taught me a great lesson in practical life. It was a splendid trotter, but pulled like a steam-engine if I pulled against it; but if I treated it gently and with confidence it was as gentle as a lamb. How often have I seen the same effect produced amongst mankind! Try to force them, and they resist; deal gently with them, and they will be your most active and kindest helpers. So I used as often as possible to ride over to Earlham.

There I had three friends. There was my uncle, who was far in advance of the Quakers of his day in theological knowledge, being a good Biblical critic and well made up in the great doctrines of the Gospel. The great point in his conversations with me was the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour. It was he that taught me of the goings forth of the pre-existent Saviour with the Name and Attributes of Jehovah. Then there was Mr. William Forster, the father of the late statesman, who was most earnest with me on the importance of definite theology. He recommended certain books for my study, and at his advice I purchased Brown's "Natural and Revealed Religion," Guise's "Expositor," and Dwight's "Theology," which three books have been of the utmost value to me throughout my ministry. The latter book indeed has been made the text-book for my son's theological students in China. Thus is Mr.

Forster's advice being still acted upon in that far distant region.

Besides these two men was my very dear friend the Rev. Robert Hankinson, at that time Curate of Earlham. He was a man of remarkably sound judgment, as well as fervent piety; and never can I forget the profitable hours which I spent with him in the Earlham Parsonage, learning from him maxims of practical wisdom to carry home for my ministerial work.

But that was not all that happened to me at Pakefield; for while I was there it pleased G.o.d to take home to Himself my dearest mother. My dear brother Sam had died of consumption in the year 1833, and she deeply mourned his loss-nor could we wonder, for he was a n.o.ble young man, full of high principles, dutiful to his father and mother, and devoted to the Lord. His influence over us his younger brothers was of infinite value to us all, as we had ever before us a spotless example. He had married most happily, was settled in his home near to our father's house, when he was suddenly seized with haemorrhage, and very rapidly sank, full of faith in G.o.d. I remember well, when I sat up with him on the last night of his life, how he spoke to me of the bright hope of the coming Resurrection, how he exhorted those around him to be ready for their Saviour.

I believe it was the shock as well as the sorrow of parting with him that so deeply wrung my mother's heart. She was in his room with him on the morning of his death, and thinking that his dear wife required attention, she went out for a few minutes to see after her, and when she returned, to her surprise, he was gone. That was in the autumn of 1833, and for nearly three years we saw her gradually fail, till at length in the summer of 1836 the end came.

There was something most interesting in the character of my mother. She was not one of those who spoke much of present salvation and present peace; such subjects were not spoken of so much throughout the Church in those days as they are now. Good men in those times seemed to think more of the future than the present salvation. I am not sure that we have not drifted rather too much into the dwelling on the present, to the forgetfulness of the future life, and surely it is important for us to keep the balance. But while there was very little of the modern language of a.s.surance, there was in its most perfect form the great reality of the hallowed Christ. I can never forget the language of that dearest mother to me as I stood by her bedside during her dying illness: "I can reverently say, with the deepest humility, 'Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee.'" And she did love Him with her whole heart and soul. How well do I remember her words in the garden at Hampstead in the afternoon of her son's death! While she wept over his loss, she exclaimed, "How little it is in comparison with sin!" {66}

Pakefield Letters.

"PAKEFIELD, _June_ 20_th_, 1836.

"MY DEAREST MOTHER,-Having paid my bills and seen after the schools, I commence my usual Monday's letter... . As for myself, it is needless to give you my history, for you know it already, the life of a country curate not being subject to much external variation. The internal changes, however, are indeed numerous-more frequent and uncertain than those of our most changeable climate. I never had an idea how many ups and downs there are attendant on the ministerial work. At times it is delightful; all seems easy and pleasant, and the only difficulty is to keep within bounds. At others there is a deadness and barrenness which words cannot describe. I speak under a very vivid recollection of this low estate, for I was down at the very bottom yesterday. I fought my way pretty fairly through the morning sermon (on Isa. xxviii. 16), but in the evening I had a real trial of my faith. I had good notes, and had well considered my subject. But as soon as I began it all appeared to leave me. I was much in the position that Robert Hall was when he broke down, and I thought I must have stopped. There were my notes, but they seemed to tell me nothing, and I had the pain of going through my lecture hardly knowing while I was delivering one sentence whether I should ever find another to follow it. You may easily imagine, from such a description of the performer, what was the character of the performance. However, I can look back to it, painful as it was, with great thankfulness: for (1) I know that in weakness He is strong, and the good done may perhaps be greater than that which would have followed a clear and well-delivered lecture; and (2) if it did no one else any good, it was a fine lesson for myself, and one that I wanted. I knew I wanted to be kept down, and had prayed for it.

This was the appointed means."

Writing to his mother at various times upon his work at Pakefield there occur pa.s.sages such as these:-

"Preaching is becoming more and more a pleasure to me. The great difficulty of addressing people appears to pa.s.s away. The knowledge of all the congregation is partly the cause, and also the encouragement derived from visiting."

"You see there is a good deal doing here, but what is it all if the Spirit of G.o.d be absent?-a sounding bra.s.s and tinkling cymbal. It is there that the difficulty lies. Nothing is easier than to get through the duties of a parish, and to get through them, as man thinks, well; but to go to your work in the Spirit of Christ, carrying with you the unction from the Holy One, there is the difficulty. May G.o.d forgive my great shortcomings! Sometimes I dread Jeremiah xlviii. 10."

Upon the spiritual life he writes to his sister:-

"The characteristic of the new life is that we have fellowship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ; it must therefore follow that all interruptions will increase a deadness of faith, and total separation cause death. It is one of the privileges of my office that all my work is for G.o.d (though He only knows how little I keep this end in view), and therefore the busier I am the more I am compelled to pray. This, however, is not sufficient, though delightful. We cannot live without that 'freedom of speech,'

translated 'boldly' in Hebrews iv., in which we pour out our heart before Him. When we know that we know in truth that G.o.d is a refuge for us, this is the balm of Gilead that can heal every wound, the power that can say to the troubled waters, 'Peace, be still!' In order to the attainment of it let us allow nothing to impede our private communion with our G.o.d."

Writing one Sunday evening to his mother he says:-

"I have had somewhat to contend with in myself from very cloudy views of the doctrines I was preaching. At the same time I have found comfort in the recollection that the work is not mine nor dependent upon my own feelings. I began work at a quarter before nine by opening the boys' school; at ten I was really refreshed and humbled by just dropping into the prayer-meeting; there was a most beautiful spirit amongst them, and they were praying most delightfully for me.

I left them deeply impressed with the sense of their far greater fitness to teach me than mine to be their minister."

In the postscript of a letter dated August 1st, 1836, he writes: "Congratulate Uncle Buxton upon the glorious events of this day." An entry in his journal dwells joyfully upon it also-and well might his and every Englishman's heart be stirred by the thought that from that day every slave standing on British soil was free!