Review of Mr. Knill's Life and Character

In some of the paintings of the old masters there is the work of more hands than one. The more important and prominent subjects of the picture were elaborated by the artist who designed the piece, while the subordinate parts were left for others to finish. Something like this occurs in the memoir of Richard Knill. My friend, Mr. Birr ell, has given us the portrait, and has requested from me, as one who knew the original, to supply some of the fillings-in of the picture; and I could not feel at liberty, in the present instance, to decline this labour of love. The subject of the memoir was so well known to me, and, on account of his great devotedness and usefulness, held by me in such affection, esteem, and even reverence, that I feel honoured in paying this tribute of respect to his memory, and in recommending his example to notice and imitation.

The biographer has performed his office with ludgment and fidelity, and has given us a condcDsed account of one of the most useful ministers of his age. He has left him to speak for himself and tell his own story; and though we cannot but regret that he did not leave behind more details of the varied scenes through which, in his changeful and eventful life, he passed, yet more than enough will be found for admiration and direction. In this age of diluted biography, conciseness is so rare that we are content to take a work which is the essence of a man’s life instead of a weak solution. It will be found, even by those who knew some of the facts before, a work of deep and instructive interest; and it is so correct a likeness, that, had it been possible to conceal the name of its subject, it would, like one of those truthful portraits which are without inscriptions, have been recognized by all who were familiar with the original.

Mr. Knill was no ordinary man. His usefulness in the way of conversion of souls to God was perhaps greater, all things taken into account, than that of any other man of his day in this kingdom. Wherever he laboured, whether in the villages of Devon, in India, in Kussia, or in the various parts of England, he was instrumental in awakening the impenitent and careless to a deep concern for their eternal welfare. He entered every place with that object in view, and in very few instances left without having in some measure accomplished it. His usefulness lay not exclusively among the poor: many persons of education, intelligence, and station were brought, through him, under the influence of evangelical religion. How seldom has the individual been found, since Whitfield’s and Wesley’s time, of whom it could be said that there was reason to believe he had been the instrument of converting a hundred persons who, in one way or another, became preachers of the gospel! This, added to the multitude of other persons who by his instrumentality were brought to the Saviour of the world, is an amount of usefulness which rarely falls to the lot of any minister of Christ. It proves that he, above most, was “wise to win souls,” and that “God was with him.”

Surely it should become with all, and especially with the mioisters of religion, an inquiry by what means this amount of usefulness was accomplished. Such a man’s life should be a study; yet it is to be feared that, in this age of “intellectualism,” many will deem it beneath their notice. True, he had no splendid talents, no brilliant genius, no lofty imagination; he possessed neither scholarship nor philosophy; he was neither an acute metaphysician, nor an accurate logician, no, nor even a profound theologian. But he was something greater, higher and holier than all this, — he was a devoted servant of Christ, a hero of the cross, an eminently successful preacher of the gospel. He made no pretence to greatness; yet, if saving souls be a great work, he was great. He made no attempt at display; he coveted not, he attempted not to be philosophical or intellectual, yet he was master and preacher of the profoundest of all philosophies, and the deepest of all intellectualisms — the gospel of salvation. He was no orator, in the conventional meaning of that term, yet had he the power of rousing, fixing, and holding the

attention of an audience, far above wliat,most elaborate and intellectual preachers possess. He was no rhetorician, nor, if eloquence consists of great and original conceptions clothed with glowing imagery and splendid diction, could he pretend to this: his eloquence was that of the heart, gushing out in streams of impassioned feeling, which carried away his hearers on the tide of his own emotion — the eloquence of a man on fire with zeal for God, and melted into compassion for souls hovering on the verge of the bottomless pit — the eloquence of faith and love. Like Paul, he was a man of tears, and often drew forth the tears of others by the magic power of his own full eyes and faltering voice; or, like Paul’s Master weeping over Jerusalem, Knill would often weep over the audience before him. The minister who would turn from the delineation of such a man because he had no claim to be a genius, or a subtle reasoner, or an original thinker, or a poetic sentimentalist, or a dreamy mystic, and was nothing but an earnest preacher of the gospel, has reason to doubt whether he knows that the salvation of souls is the great

object of the Christian ministry, and is above all scholarship and all philosophy. It is much to be desired, then, that this work should be read by our whole ministry, to see what may be done even by a man of moderate abilities, whose heart is set in him to be useful, and who is inspired and moved by the purpose of saving souls.

AVe now take up the inquiry after the means by which he attained to so great a measure of usefulness. It is evident that it was, in a great degree, to be attributed to his intense desire after it. He set out in life with the adoption of that mighty, impulsive, and glorious word, USEFULNESS; and usefulness, with him, meant converting sinners. He yearned for the salvation of souls. It was, with him, not merely a principle, or a privilege, but a passion. For this he longed and prayed in the closet, wrote in the study, laboured in the pulpit, conversed in the parlour, and admonished, counselled, and warned wherever he went. It was his conviction, that his talent and temperament were more especially adaptel for the work of conversion, and thence his sermons contained invariably a large portion of the truths which conduct to it. They were to a considerable extent made up of first principles, and were not so much calculated for leading on a congregation to perfection. As regards the pastoral style of preaching, it is by no means necessary or proper that this should be its character to the exclusion of more instructive and profound teaching. Few of our congregations are mere nurseries for babes who are to be’ fed with milk; in most of them there are Christians of full age, young men and fathers, who require strong meat; and, therefore, Mr. Knill, though valued as a preacher, cannot be held up for indiscriminating imitation. What we desiderate is more of his simple, direct, earnest, heart-affecting method of address, grafted, as much as possible, upon a more enlarged and enlightened course of pulpit ministration.

It is, I think, an error into which many of our modern ministers, whose education has been carried to a high pitch, have fallen, that every thing is to be done by the head rather than the heart. We know very well that the

true method is to reach the heart through the head, and that men must be made to feel by being- shown why they should feel, and what is to make them feel. But in very many cases, especially in the least educated, the head is to be reached by appeals to the heart. We often hear the remark, “Yes, it was a clever sermon, but it wanted heart. It sparkled like the stars, or shone like the moon on a wintry night, but it warmed no one.” I have been sometimes struck, as every one else must have been, with the varying effect produced by different speakers at a public meeting; and how much more power over the audience, and how much more the object of the meeting has been accomplished, by a few gushes of simple eloquence from the heart of some earnest and ardent advocate, than by the elaborate but passionless pleader. The latter was coldly admired, and admitted to be an eloquent speaker; but the former melted and moved his audience by the depth and intensity of his own feeling. And as with speaking so it is with preaching. Mr. Knill often did with a few touches of genuine emotion what others could not do with great and lengthened elaboration.

It must be conceded, that the unction of a warm-hearted preacher depends, in considerable measure, on natural temperament; a man must have an emotional organization to be an emotional preacher; and it is, after all, a miserable exhibition when an excess of emotion is brought forward as a substitute for a deficiency of intelligence, and tears are made to supply the place of thoughts. I am not quite sure that our friend did not occasionally border on this deficiency. His tears, the fountain of which was always full and always open, like those of Paul, were a part of his power, and often gave irresistible effect to what he said; but now and then they enervated his address.

The usefulness of Mr. Knill, however, was not exclusively the result of his preaching. The passion for the conversion of souls which he manifested in the pulpit, and which led him to seek it with such earnestness there, he brought with him out of the sanctuary, and carried into more private spheres, as the great object of life and principle of action. Like the enthusiastic botanist, geologist, or entomologist, he was ever in pursuit of his object, 29^

and looking out for fresh means of gaining it. It was his felicity to have rarely to say, “I have lost an opportunity How few, how very few of us have attained to this watchfulness for occasions of usefulness! Our friend, no doubt, had a peculiar tact for this way of doing good — a talent which exists in various degrees in different persons, but which ought to be, and may be, cultivated by all. Whether it was the servant girl that waited upon him in the house of a friend, or the host and hostess themselves, or the fellow-traveller in the railway carriage, or the porter at an inn, or a person he casually met on the road, or a sailor on the sea-beach, he had a tract or a word — generally an ajjt word — for each. In every one, he saw an immortal being on his passage to eternity, and he longed to be the instrument of his conversion. Oh, what multitudes would be converted to God, and how changed would be the face of society, if all ministers and all Christians were thus set upon the work of saving souls! And why should they not be? True, they may not have Mr. Knill’s tact for the work; but they may do much if they have the heart to do it. Something, no doubt, may in his case be set down to natural temperament. He was impulsive, eager, active, and possessed of great sensibility. He had an ardent, and, if we may so say, an outgoing soul. Then there was dauntless moral courage and an unflinching boldness of address: witness his distribution of religious tracts, while yet a youth, to the North Devon Militia; his venturing into the company of ungodly and sneering officers in India, when lie knew their object in inviting him; and his occupancy of the theatre, and his preaching in a series of towns in his old age. He knew not fear in the service of his Master. This is a noble quality of soul, and an important aid to usefulness. We should all do more good if we had more of this spiritual heroism. Before. such a man the proudest spirits stand abashed and feel how awful goodness is.” Have we not all too often quailed before those whom we have felt afraid of assailing even with the weapons of argument, persuasion and love, and come away from -the company of some whom we should have tried to save, with the

shame and self-reproach of a spiritual coward? I am fully aware that it requires great delicacy and caution how we thus aim to do good by introducing religion to those whom we casually meet, lest we disgust and affront by our apparent rudeness, and rouse the prejudices of those whom we wish to conciliate. I am not quite sure that Mr. Knill was always judicious. There were instances, I believe, though rare, in which he was a little too abrupt in his address, and perhaps sometimes” cast his pearls before swine.*’ Yet he never merged the politeness of the gentleman in the zeal of the Christian; and there was an honesty, a frankness, a kindliness of manner in him — such an obvious benevolence of intention, such affection beaming in his looks, such a tone of tenderness in his words, such an unmistakable design and desire to benefit the persons he addressed — that it was almost impossible for any one to whom he spoke to be offended with him. ‘We must beware of a species of knight-errantry in religion, and of that spiritual garrulousness in which some very talkative professors indulge, who measure their zeal by their volubility, and who are regarded by all who know them as religious bores or Pharisaic zealots. But oh, what an enviable talent is tact in doing good by private conversation with those into whose society we are casually thrown! By many, I know, the introduction of religion in the way of personal address, especially if the person he treated as unconverted, is considered as a breach of good manners and a mark of vulgarity; and too many pious people, and ministers also, yield to this conventionalism, and pass through life without ever attempting thus to do good. But can this be right? Is it not a cowardly, guilty silence? If we have found the secret of happiness for both worlds, should we not in all proper ways seek to make it known to others?

There was another way in which Mr. Knill extended his usefulness, and that was by writing and publishing short, striking religious tracts, as well as reprinting some that had been written by others. His own contained no great depth of thought, and nothing that displayed genius; but, generally founded on some fact, they were eminently calculated to

engage the attention and to interest the feelings of the reader. They obtained, he tells us, a circulation of some millions were translated into several languages, and were greatly honoured for the conversion of souls. It was his own pithy saying, One tract may save a soul and in thousands of instances his, by God’s grace, have done this. The man who writes one good, popular, useful religious tract, has done a work worth living for, though lie did nothing else. There is a time coming when the author of The Swearer’s Prayer” will have more joy in his simple leaflet than Milton in the production of “Paradise Lost.” Why then do not Christian writers more frequently try to send over their own land, and over more lands than one, those winged npessengers of mercy by which, under the blessing of God, they shall convert souls while they live, and speak for the same purpose when they are dead? It must be confessed, however, that peculiar tact is necessary for such a work. The man who could write a large and learned volume would in some cases, find it difficult to write a good popular tract; just as he who could forge an anchor might not be able to make a jewel or a pin! But are there not many who could do so if they tried?

It is not always that such ardour in the way of doing good as Mr. Knill evinced is associated with and guided by such discretion as he generally manifested throughout the whole of his career. Impulsive and sanguine temperaments are always liable to erratic movements; and many a fervent spirit is set on fire and consumes itself by the velocity of its own unchecked motion. Zeal, like fire, needs to be watched and kept in its own place, or, instead of warming the house, it may burn it down. No one can read the foregoing pages without being convinced that Mr. Knill, with all his impetuosity in his useful career, was singularly guided by wisdom. Ever active, amid the jealousy of the Russian Government and the vigilance of the Greek Church, he never fatally committed himself. He knew well, what is not often the case with ardent minds, how to direct and when to Imiit his zeal. This, as well as his watchfulness for opportunities of usefulness, and his eagerness

to seize iliem as they presented themselves, was finely manifested in his exhumation of the Russian Bibles from the vaults in which they were buried, and fast going to decay; and also his extensive sale of Bibles to the Finlanders. He thus did an immense amount of good without alarming the fears or awakening the suspicions of the authorities. How important is it, in all our endeavours to be useful, to study the best luay of being so! Zeal should have eyes and ears as well as hands and feet; should keep both open, and make good use of their testimony.

What kept Mr. Knill thus active and ardent in his career of usefulness was his fervent piety. If he had a tongue of fire, it was because the flame of devotion was bright and ever burning in his soul. Few men in modern times entered more deeply into the apostle’s words, “The love of Christ constraineth us.” By this, as a torrent, which he was as little able as he was willing to resist, he was borne energetically and successfully along in his course. He lived within sight of the cross, and felt the “powers of the world to come.”

His diary exhibits the springs of his action, the source of his energies, and the secret of his success. He was eminently a man of prayer, and did everything in the spirit of prayer. His communion with God was close and constant. He came from the closet strengthened for his work in the pulpit and in the city, and went back to his closet, not only for repose and refreshment, but to be strengthened and prepared for further labour. This made him “strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.” And why are any of God’s servants feeble in action, but because they are weak in devotion? We live in days when Christians are far less in the closet than they should be. The study and the counting-house encroach upon the closet. We are preaching men and business-men, but not so much as we should be praying-men. What mighty men in prayer were our great ancestors, the Howes, the Owens, the Baxters, and the Henrys! How they must have wrestled in the closet to send forth such words as they did from the study! Where is their mantle? Doddridse and Watts found it, and dropped it again for such men as

Payson, M’Che3’’ne, and Knill. They, in their turn, let it fall. Would God we could find it! What is wanted among us is a deepertoned piety, a more devotional spirit. Oh, for a fresh baptism of the Holy Spirit — a revived ministry, and a revived Church — a race of preachers and of people whose whole character and conduct shall bear, in letters which every one that sees must read, the inscription on the mitre of the High Priest,” Holiness to the Lord We complain of a want of usefulness. Have we any reason to wonder that we should have cause to complain? Is our piety such as to make us burning as well as shining lights? Are we as intense in devotion as we are earnest in business and in study? We should all be more useful if we were more holy.

It will perhaps be asked, if I would hold up Mr. Knill as a standard by which all should be tried, and a model which all should imitate? In some things I would. In his singular devotedness, and consecration to his work; in his deep conviction and clear perception, that the salvation of souls is the great end of the ministerial office; in his intense desire and constant endeavour, in all ways, to reach this end; in the prevailing evangelism and earnestness of his sermons; in his eminent piety and devout spirit; in his loving disposition and kindly bearing; in his simplicity, fidelity, and courage, — in all these things I would commend his example as what we should endeavour to copy. Still it would be unfair and unwise to expect that all should in everything exactly resemble him. Most men have idiosyncrasies, and he had his, which do not belong to others, and should not be slavishly copied by them. The God of nature had much to do in the constitution of his mind and tendencies, as well as the God of grace with the sanctification of his heart. Very few could do exactly as he did. And is not the wisdom of God manifested in that variety of talent and gifts which is apparent in the ministers of Christ, so that as there are great differences of mental habitudes among the hearers of the gospel, there should be corresponding differences among its preachers? Let not, therefore, the readers of this memoir make comparisons between its

subject and their own pastors, and querulously and unthoughtfully say, “Ours are not as he.” Perhaps not, and yet they may be very good ministers still. Nevertheless, that his burning ardour for the salvation of souls, and his unwearied endeavours in that work, might and should be possessed by us all, is very true; and I am not without hope, that this volume has its mission to stir us up to a spirit like his own.

In the retrospect of a long life, now drawing to a close, during which I have watched, of course, the career, and observed the mode of action, of many of my brethren, I have noticed great diversity in the results of their ministry; and I have most assuredly seen, that where they have been intensely earnest for the salvation of souls, and have sought this by a style of preaching adapted to accomplish it, God has honoured their endeavours by giving them success. If, without impropriety, I may refer here, as I believe I have done elsewhere, to the service which, during fifty-four years, I have been allowed to render to our great Master, I may declare my thankfulness in being able, in some small degree, to rejoice that the conversion of sinners has been my aim. I have made, next to the Bible, Baxter’s “Reformed Pastor” my rule as regards the object of my ministry. It were well if that volume were often read by all our pastors, — a study which I now earnestly recommend to them. I sometimes venture to hope that it has kindled in me a spark — but oh, how dim! — of that spirit which actuated Mr. Knill. In regard to all that constitutes earnestness, I blush before his statue, as it rises before me in this volume, and confess my shortcomings in the work of the Lord. Standing, as I now do, in the prospect of the close of my ministry, of the eternal world, and of my summons to the presence of the great Lord of all, the salvation of souls, as the object of the ministry, appears to me, more than ever before, in all its awful sublimity. Everything else, as compared with this, seems but as the small dust of the balance; and though, perhaps, not altogether an idler in the vineyard of the Lord, it is now my grief and ray surprise that I have not been more devoted and more laborious.

Defects, omissions, and errors, come out before our view in the evening of life, and especially when it is spent, as mine now must be, in retirement, solitude, and suffering, which we did not perceive during the burden and bustle of the day. To my younger brethren I say, You are engaged in the greatest work in the universe; for in preaching for the salvation of souls, you are brought into fellowship with God in His eternal purposes of mercy to the children of men; with our Lord Jesus Christ in His redeeming work upon the cross; with the Holy Spirit in His mission to our world; and with prophets, apostles, and martyrs. Heaven, through eternity, will resound with the praises of your diligence, or hell with lamentations and execrations upon your neglect. Happy will it be for you, and happy for your flocks, if the perusal of this volume should help you to find and to wear the mantle of Richard Knill. J. A. J.

Septembeb, 30, 1859.