Who Was William Jay? The Stonemason's Son Who Preached 60 Years
William Jay was an English preacher who lived from 1769 to 1853. He was the son of a village stonemason in Wiltshire, began preaching at sixteen, and spent more than sixty years as pastor of one congregation, Argyle Chapel in Bath. He was one of the most popular preachers of his day, heard by rich and poor, Church of England people and Dissenters alike. Today he's best remembered for his daily devotional, Morning Exercises for the Closet, which Christians still read a page at a time over breakfast.
Here's the story of his life, what he taught, and which of his books to start with.
A stonemason's boy at Tisbury
Jay was born on May 6, 1769, in Tisbury, a village in Wiltshire, England. His parents were poor and plain people. As a boy he learned his father's trade, and the two of them worked as masons on the building of Fonthill, the grand house of the wealthy William Beckford nearby.
The gospel came to Tisbury through a man named Thomas Turner, who had grown up in the village and wanted to bring preaching to it. He licensed a house for worship, and young William went to the first meeting. Jay later told his children what it was like to hear that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. He said the message was like rain on mown grass, and that he "scarcely slept that night for weeping, and for joy."
He was careful not to make his conversion sound more dramatic than it was. He'd been kept from open wickedness as a child, and he thanked God for it:
Restraint from evil is a mercy, as well as sanctification and good works.
The Autobiography of the Rev. William Jay, Letter III
The boy preacher
Cornelius Winter, a minister who had worked with George Whitefield, came to preach at Tisbury and noticed the lad. He took William into his small school for ministers at Marlborough in 1785, when Jay was in his mid-teens. Jay was "little more than sixteen" when he preached his first sermon, at Ablington, a village near Stonehenge. His text was "If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious." His first lesson to his hearers was simple:
The best way to know this grace is by tasting it.
The Autobiography of the Rev. William Jay, Letter V
People flocked to hear the boy preacher. Before he turned twenty-one he had preached close to a thousand sermons. Rowland Hill invited him to fill his pulpit at Surrey Chapel in London, a large congregation where Jay would return to preach every year for decades. After short stays at Christian Malford and at Hope Chapel near Bristol, he accepted a call in 1791 to the Independent church in Bath, which met at Argyle Chapel.
Sixty years at Argyle Chapel
Bath was a fashionable spa town, full of visitors who came to take the waters. Jay's chapel drew many of them, along with the working people of the city. He said he never felt settled anywhere until he came to Bath, and he stayed for the rest of his working life. He preached there more than sixty years and retired early in 1853. He died in Bath on December 27 of that year, at eighty-four.
Just before his ordination at Bath he married Anne Davies, the eldest daughter of the Rev. Edward Davies, an evangelical clergyman. He wrote that she had given him his high view of what a Christian woman can be, and that she "possessed every requisite that could render her a helpmate." They had six children. Their eldest daughter, Anne, married an American and moved to the United States with her family, a parting Jay called one of the greatest trials of his life.
His friends included many of the leading evangelicals of the time: John Newton, William Wilberforce, Hannah More, Rowland Hill and Robert Hall. His autobiography ends with a long set of sketches of these people, which is one reason historians still read it.
How he preached
Jay was known for plain, lively, well-ordered sermons. He loved clear divisions, and he used pictures and stories, because he believed the Bible itself teaches that way. He thought ordinary people had to be moved before they would listen, and he worked hard to be understood in country villages as well as in town.
He also kept his sermons short. He thought long preaching was one of the commonest faults of ministers:
If it be a good one it need not be long; and if it be a bad one it ought not to be long.
The Autobiography of the Rev. William Jay, Letter XV
He wasn't against good order, but he had a sense of humor about committees. Writing about a badly arranged preaching tour, he said:
Had the ark been built by a committee, it would never have been finished.
The Autobiography of the Rev. William Jay, Letter XV
What he taught
Jay was an evangelical Dissenter. He preached the grace of God in Christ, the need of the new birth, and a life of daily, practical godliness. He didn't write for scholars. He wrote for the Christian at home, the parent, the servant and the shopkeeper, and he cared a great deal about the family. His Prayers for the Use of Families was written to help fathers who found it hard to lead prayers in their own words. His Thoughts on Marriage urges Christians to marry "only in the Lord," and his lectures on the women of the Bible draw lessons for home and church life from Hannah, Lydia, Martha and Mary and many more.
His devotional writing is warm and pithy. On the first morning of the year he wrote:
A family without prayer is like a house without a roof.
Morning Exercises for the Closet, January 1
And on what it means to belong to God:
You will never be truly your own till you are his.
Morning Exercises for the Closet, January 1
Why he's still read
Jay's Morning Exercises, and its companion Evening Exercises, were read in Christian homes on both sides of the Atlantic through the 1800s, and they're still in print. Readers keep coming back to them because each page is short, full of Scripture, and practical. He wrote for people who had a few minutes before work, and he never wasted them.
His autobiography is still read too, for its picture of a long, faithful ministry in one place and for its memories of the great Christians he knew.
Where to start
TheWay Library has five of William Jay's books, all free to read. Start with Morning Exercises for the Closet, one short reading for each day of the year. If you want his life story in his own words, read The Autobiography of the Rev. William Jay, written as letters to his children. For home and family, try Thoughts on Marriage or his Prayers for the Use of Families. For Bible study, his Lectures on Female Scripture Characters are a fine place to begin.
Our guide to William Jay's books describes each one, and our collection of William Jay quotes gathers his best lines. All his books are on the William Jay author page.