Increasing Popularity

Mr James always referred to the temporary occupation of the old Meeting by the Carr’s Lane congregation, at the end of 1812 and the beginning of 1813, as signalising the termination of his early years of disappointment and comparative failure. But a little before that time there had been some very unequivocal indications that he was about to become a very successful public speaker. His friend the late Mr Thomas Wilson, the treasurer of Highbury College, invited him to take his turn among the regular preachers at Hoxton Chapel, which in those days was filled Sunday after Sunday with crowded congregations, attracted by the most effective preachers that Mr Wilson could find in the provinces. “I believe,” writes IMr James, “that my services were acceptable there, as I could not be ignorant that they were favourably received by the public.” Soon after he first preached in London, and before his services at Hoxton had won him any great reputation, an incident occurred, over the telUng of which he often laughed himself, and, the humour of his manner heightening the absurdity of the story, never faUed to make his friends laugh too. This is how he tells it in his autobiography: —

“One of the congregation at Hoxton Chapel being much taken with my preaching, and supposing that everybody was as much struck as himself, persuaded me to preach a sermon in some chapel

LIFE OF JOHN ANGELL JMIES.

in the city, which he would procure, for the benefit of the Missionary Society. Whether this arose from a deep interest on behalf of that institution, or a wish to bring into public notice a young preacher whom he admired, I cannot say. In both ends, however, he failed; for to my good friend’s inexpressible mortification, much more than to my own, he waited a considerable while for a congregation, which at no time during the evening amounted to more than fifty people. When the plates were brought in, they contained a few shillings, and the promoter of the scheme comforted me with the intelligence that there had been deposited a bank note, which, however, as the wind was rather high, had been blown away and could not be found. I hope the good man did not soothe my mind by a sacrifice of truth. My popularity was then all to come.”

Soon after this he made his first speech in London on behalf of the London Missionary Society. The annual meeting that year was held in Silver Street Chapel. He was in “prodigious trepidation” after he had consented to speak, and says, — “I was about to throw up my brief, when my friend Mr (now Dr) Bennett, who was sitting next to me, endeavoured to calm my perturbation, and suggested some topics on which I might enlarge. It so happened that I was rather happy in my speech, which elicited some very encouraging terms of approbation, at which I was as much surprised as gratified. From that time I commenced my career as a speech-maker — a business of which, though I have not been unsuccessful in it, I was never very fond.”

It was his impression that he had spoken at the annual meetings of the London Missionary Society more frequently than any other man, having taken part in them not fewer than a dozen times; “more shame both for them and for me, — they ought not to have asked me, and I ought not to have consented.”

In April 1812, he had delivered a very effective speech at the annual meeting of the Birmingham Auxiliary to the British and roreigTi Bible Society, which was afterwards printed by the London Committee and circulated by thousands, in order to explain the objects and enforce the claims of the society. He refers to it in his autobiography as being the “best oration which on any occasion” he ever delivered. In this judgment no one who ever heard any of the vigorous speeches of his maturer years will concur. The impression it produced on the audience, of which I have often heard old men speak with something of the enthusiasm they felt whUe listening to it, its publication by the London Committee of the Bible Society, and his own kindly liking for it six-and-forty years later, are curious illustrations of the prevailing taste of that day.

The public mind had been corrupted by the inflated style of a race of speakers, preachers, and writers, who had been dazzled by the stately and splendid diction of Burke, Gibbon, and Johnson, and aspired to the same regal grandeur. No speech coidd be overladen with elaborate antithesis, sonorous climax, and glittering metaphor. It seemed to be supposed that ambitious bombast was the truest and highest type of eloquence. In the violent reaction of the last twenty or thirty years perhaps simplicity has degenerated into rudeness, ease into vulgarity, and speakers in trying to avoid pompous pretension have sacrificed refinement and dignity. How greatly the general taste has changed since 1812, the following extracts from this admired speech will sufficiently indicate. The sound sense only makes the false rhetoric the more surprising.

“Sm, — When I recollect that the Bible Society, like the Bible itself, has no more to fear from the weakness of its friends than it has from the power of its foes, I am emboldened to give utterance to feelings which it would be impossible to resist, and difficult to conceal The Bible, sir, is on its march to the seat of universal empire, led in triumphal pomp by this excellent society; and I esteem it one of the greatest honours, as well as one of the highest fehcities of my life, to join the splendid procession, if it be only with the surrounding throng to cry, HosannaL If, sir, we would befriend our species by exercising towards them the most enlarged and efficient benevolence, we must bestow upon them that volume, which, while it soothes the sorrows and removes the imperfections of the present world, opens to the eager and exploring eye of instinctive expectation the bright visions of immortal bliss. This blessed book, while it pours a flood of heavenly radiance on every subject that views man in his connexion with

LIFE OP JOHN ANGELL JAMES.

eternity, recognises his relation to time, and prescribes its necessary duties; its absence, therefore, must be a negative cause of misery to man. Who without a weeping eye can survey the various forms of wretchedness which infect the vale of tears in which man for a season is destined to dwell 1 The body of human society lies prostrate in the dust, bleeding at every vein, convulsed in every limb, thi’ough the wounds inflicted by its own hand during the frenzy of its depravity; and though general philanthropy may do much to stanch its blood and bind up its wounds, it is Christianity alone which can restore that moral sanity, without which man must be still the suicide of his own peace. Wretchedness is but the shadow of wickedness, and to dispel the shadow, we must remove the substance with which he intercepts the rays of infinite benignity. Imagine, sir, what would be the results if the Bible were circulated through the whole earth, its dictates everywhere obeyed, and its spirit generally imbibed. There would neither be tyranny in the prince nor rebellion in the subject — there would be neither fraud nor violence, neither injustice nor oppression, neither war nor bloodshed — nation would no longer rise against nation, and the art of war being no longer practised, the dreadful artUlery of human destruction would be no more seen, excei)t among the antiquities of a museum; or, rather, men, ashamed of these memorials of their violence, would convert their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks. Human legislation would universally proceed on the principles of Revelation, and whatever were the size or the shape of its legal body, equity tempered vidth mercy would be its living soul; for to what can it be attributed that the British jurisprudence is, on the whole, so richly impregnated with justice and wisdom, but because it has flowed over the bed of inspired truth? Then, also, would the fetters of bondage, melted by the warmth of Chiistian piety, dissolve from the limbs of the wretched slave, and the captive, lifted from his degraded prostration, would be taught that he carries in his bosom a soul that 25 human in this world, and may be angelic in the world that is to come. In short, were the Bible universally circulated, believed, and obeyed, every ill that renders man a foe to others and himself would be removed, and the whole fanuly upon earth harmonised into order and happiness.

“Such, sir, is the benevolent object of the British and Foreign Bible Society. It desires and attempts to transplant to every clime that tree whose leaves are for the heaUng of the nations.

“To accomplish this godlike object, it has associated the love and zeal of all denominations of professed Christians, that by such a union of their strength a mightier shock might be given to the throne of darkness, and that their scattered rays of light and love, converging

INCREASING POPULARITY. in this focus, might be dispersed vdih greater energy over the thick gloom of a benighted world. It is wisely determined, that -when the object of their exertions is to bestow upon mankind that book whose design it is to vmite men to each other and to God, to enforce the acceptance of the gift by exhibiting one of the grandest instances of its harmonising tendency that men or angels ever witnessed. We all know that there is a method of conferring a benefit which will draw towards it a greater degree of attention and regard than it would otherwise receive; and, in my humble judgment, if anything can procure for the Bible a readier reception, or insure to it a more serious attention from those on whom it is bestowed, it is the circumstance of all denominations uniting to confer the precious boon. Our diversity of opinion, in such a case, so far from obstructing our desire to draw the eyes of the human race to revealed truth, will tend rather to promote its success, by teaching that, however we may differ in opinion concerning the meaning of particular parts, we are united in the great importance which we attach to the general whole. By this association we are also furnishing to the nations a lesson, which, if we may judge from the concurrent testimony of all history, is small neither in value nor necessity, that men, without any danger to the community, may be left to form their Own reHgious opinions, unawed by the tortures of intolerance, since diversity of opinion has no necessary connexion with alienation of heart.

“It is time for me now to glance at what the society has accomplished. Although it has existed but eight years, it has done, what, for extent, must excite the surprise of every reflecting mind, and, for utility, the gratitude of every pious heart. Its operations and their success can be compared only to the events which transpired in the first ages of Christianity, when so mightily grew the word of God and prevailed, that the most formidable opposition served but to form a cataract in its course, over which the torrent, impeded for a moment, dashed with greater violence, and rolled forward with more resistless impetuosity.

“The grandest effort of this noble institution is, however, to be seen in those vast regions of pagan idolatry, where, overwhelmed with the blackness of moral darkness, ar more millions of immortal beings than there are individuals in this large assembly. Over those frightful scenes, shocking alike to humanity for their cruelty, to reason for their absurdity, and to religion for their impiety, the Bible Society, this chariot of the moral sun, is directing its bright and benevolent career. That man’s heart must have certainly been petrified to stone, under the perpetual droppings of selfishness and irreUgion, who can hear without rapture that this institution is promoting the translation of the Scrip-LIFE OP JOHN ANGELL JAME^

tiires into five-and-twenty languages, which never yet contained the glorious gospel of the blessed God. And let it be remembered that these are the exertions of its comparative infancy. What, then, may not be expected from the maturer age to which it is advancing, with the mighty purpose of never considering its object entirely accomplished while one language of all that prevail on the globe shall not be the vehicle of inspired truth, or one individual of all the countless millions that inhabit the earth shall be unblessed with a smooth access to the water of life issuing from the fountain of Kevelation! Noble resolution! whether it be ultimately followed by failure or success. Failure, did I say? The very mention of the word, in connexion with the British and Foreign Bible Society, is a species even of impiety; compounded of such a disbelief in Divine prophecy, such a misrepresentation of providential smiles, combined with such a miscalculation of the tendencies of human events as seldom occurs in the annals of scepticism itself. If Religion desponds of its success. Infidelity does of its failure, and must be ready, in the madness inspired by desperation, to flee from the only refuge she has long enjoyed, — a miserable ruin of demolished argument.

“It must not be omitted, that the exertions of this society derive an additional degree of interest and importance from the general circumstances of the age in which they are carried forward.

“We must, sir, be possessed of minds in no common measure beclouded by ignorance or benumbed by stupidity, not to discern that we live in one of the most astonishing eras which has ever yet transpired. Providence seems to be disclosing some of the grandest scenes of its sublime and universal drama. Jehovah, arrayed in the garments of vengeance, has come forth to shake the nations and punish the inhabitants of the earth. The storm which had been long collecting its forces in the dark clouds of corrupted Christianity and the most daring infidelity, has discharged its yet unexhausted stores of fury upon the continent of Europe. Nor has the tempest rolled at such a distance that we could but just discover upon our political horizon the faiat reflection of its destructive flashes. No, sir; we stand at this moment amidst the wrecks of nations shivered at our side. We ourselves have entered the cloud; and though we are yet spared, who will pretend that we have been without the most appalling apprehensions? One spectre of national calamity has scarcely vanished from the pubKc eye, before another has risen from the terrifying gloom. At such a period, when the safety of our much-loved country seemed to place under just and necessary requisition the whole stock of public feeling and property, the British and Foreign Bible Society was born. It appeared an inauspicious moment for it to commence its existence, for if not blasted by the lightnings that played around its infant head, one should have thought it must soon have perished through neglect; for where shall be found the leisure, the prbperty, the anxiety necessary to cherish its life and promote its growth? But amidst the loudest thunders of war, its infant cries were heard. British liberality and British piety flew to its assistance, adopted the babe, increasing in generosity as they have increased in poverty. The child grew in -^visdom and in stature, and has been seen sitting among the doctors in the temple, asking them questions, refuting their objections, and confounding their most ingenious arguments. What, sir, can be inferred from this singular conjimction of national calamity and national benevolence? May we not hope that while the offended Governor of the world is passing through the kingdoms pouring out from one hand the vials of His wrath, He is preparing in the other for their consolation the cup of salvation, and that the shaking of the nations is but preparatory to His coming, in whom the desire of all nations shall ultimately centre. Of that spiritual and glorious event, I think we behold in this institution the forerunner, who already begins to exclaim, ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord, that his glory may be revealed, and all flesh see it together.’ May we not also hope that Jehovah, by making Britain the ahnoner of His boimty, intends to make her the object of His care? Far be it from me to minister fuel for national vanity, or to prefer claims of merit upon the goodness of God; yet, arguing both from the testimony of revelation and the analogy of the Divine government, I think it may be regarded as an auspicious omen for any people, when, according to the declarations in the Apocalypse, they carry their glory and their honour within the walls of the holy city, and consecrate upon its altar the fruits of their bravery, their commerce, and their learning. If pagan Babylon, under the reign of the proud and impious Nebuchadnezzar, was rewarded with the spoil of Egypt for service unintentionally done for the cau.se of God, (being the instrument of His vengeance in the destruction of Tyre,) we may humbly hope that when He marks the nations for ruin, and gives to the destroying angel His commission. He will mcrcifidly regard this and similar institutions as our national passover.

“And thou, Britannia, whose real gloiy we delight to uphold, go on to transmit, from thy rocky seat of majesty in the middle of the ocean, that sound to the kingdoms of the earth, ‘Behold your God 1 ’ till every nation shall respond, ‘Lo! this is our God; we have waited for him; we will rejoice and be glad in his salvation!’ Then shall commence, led by our beloved coimtry, the grand hallelujah chorus of all kindreds, people, and tongues; when the multitude of isles shall unite with the continents; when the Nile and the Ganges, the Niger and the Euphrates,

LIFE OF JOHN ANGELL JAMES,

shall join in concert with the Thames, the Rhine, the Danube, and the Mississippi; when the Pacific, the Indian, and the Frozen Oceans shall swell the thunder of the Atlantic; and heaven, resoundifig the strains of earth, shall exclaim. Hallelujah! Salvation! The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth; King of kings, and Lord of lords; and He must reign for ever and ever.”

That he was capable even then, of far better things than this, appears from the sermon he preached before the StaflFordshire Association of Churches and Ministers in 1814, reprinted in the first volume of his Collected Works. This sermon, though not altogether free from the blemishes of the speech, has excellencies of a very high order. It contains a large amount of just and admirable thought; the illustrations, which for the most part are apt and beautiful, are kept in their proper place; there is fervour in the style, but no rant; and though occasionally the worthless rhetorical spangles which had dazzled the meeting of the Bible Society offend a cultivated taste, there is far less of artificial glitter, and the brilliancy is generally tempered and subdued. The following extract wOl justify these observations: —

“Let no one, however, imagine that he can do anything acceptable unto the Lord in the way of zeal, except his zeal be the offspring of true faith. Our first duty is our own salvation. We must first ’ give our own selves to the Lord.’ To attempt to do His work tiU we are reconciled to God by the blood of His cross, is but to thmst ourselves among His servants while we are yet His enemies. The exertions of an unconverted man in the cause of Christ, with whatever benefit they may be attended to others — for we deny not that in some instances God employs the instrumentality of the wicked — will to himself be profitless and vain. There is just ground of apprehension, that in an age happily characterised by an enlightened and vigorous activity, not a few win be found guilty of the ruinous inconsistency of contributing to send the gospel to others, while their own hearts are strangers to its influence, and thus resemble the workmen of Noah, who helped to bmld an ark for others, but perished in the flood themselves. No hberahty, however difinsive, no zeal, however ardent, can be a substitute for ’ repentance towards God, faith in Jesus Christ, and that holiness without which no man shall see the Lord.’ Should we ultimately peri.sh for want of these great and necessary prerequisites for heaven, will it assuage the agony of the deathless worm, or allay the fury of the quencMess fire, or render the bottomless pit more tolerable, to remember that we had been the means of plucking others from the place of torment? Oh no! even in the presence of Satan we shall blush for the hypociisy, and curse the folly of choosing heaven for others and hell for ourselves. A personal and experimental acquaintance with the gospel must be the starting-point in the career of religious benevolence.”

It will be remembered that when Mr James came to Birmingham, there was the strongest antagonism between the Carr’s Lane congregation and the seceders who had adhered to Mr Brewer and founded a new church in Livery Street. For eleven years after the secession, the mutual hostility continued, and no attempt was made to remove it. How friendly relations were at last restored, is thus explained: —

From the time of the disturbances and separation of the church AutoWoupon Ml- Brewer’s misconduct, there had been no intercourse” between the two congregations or their ministers till about the year 1814, when a deputation from the London Missionary Society, consisting of Messrs Bogue, Burder, and John Townsend — I think these were the gentlemen who composed it — came to Bii’- mingham, on their way to some other place, to see if the alienated churches could be so far harmonised as to unite in missionary operations. The two ministers and some of the influential members of each congregation met the deputation in the vestry of King Street Chapel, and there agreed, without entering into any explanation of past affairs, to form an Auxiliary INIissionary Society, the rules of which were moved by Mr Brewer, and seconded by myself. The chasm between us was thus bridged over, and it ought to have been done before, and might have been, had some such party mediated. My friends, I am bound to say, were a little too unrelenting. Mr Brewer had acted very badly; but he had professed repentance, and had made no second slip. But how difficult it is to heal an old sore, that has been long opened and neglected!

All parties were happier for the reconciliation, as is always the case. In the spring of next year a Sunday-school Union was formed in Birmingham, and / was appointed to preach the first

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Autobio- sermon to the assembled body of children and teachers. The grapiiicaL ygg^yg yy LiverjT Street Chapel, the place of Mr Brewer’s ministrations. It was, of course, the first time I had ever appeared in that pulpit. Mr Brewer was now breaking down under a heavy load of domestic affliction, and this union of the two congregations, so far, was a source of consolation to him in his rapidly accumulating infirmities. Being asked on the Sabbath following how he was, “Oh,” said he, “I have had neither pain nor ache since last Tuesday;” alluding to the service which had been held in his chapel when I occupied his pulpit.

The address delivered on that occasion to the Sunday-school teachers was printed; the first edition was soon sold, and a second called for. Upon reviewing it for the press, I perceived that it admitted of great amjilification, and I therefore expanded it into a little volume, entitled “The Sunday-school Teacher’s Guide.” This work has had a very considerable circulation, being now I think in the twentieth edition.

Early in 1815, an attempt was made to remove Mr James from Birmingham to London. Mr Thomas Wilson, who had just built Paddington Chapel, was very anxious that he should be the first minister. His friend Dr Bennett advised him to accept the invitation. The London Missionary Society, in which he was deeply interested, and to whose affairs he would be able to give more personal attention if he removed to the metropolis, was a strong reason for yielding. Although by this time Carr’s Lane was full, the chapel was stUl comparatively small, and London has always had strong attractions to a young and effective preacher. By what considerations he was induced to remain in Birmingham, does not appear. However wise his choice may have been, I am inclined to think it was the heart rather than the judgment which detcrmuicd it; for in 1815 he could hardly have foreseen the great and prolonged success which lay before him at Carr’s Lane.