became the counsellor of hundreds who sought spiritual advice and assistance, chiefly of the upper and well-to-do classes, but he took care to avoid wasting time over these conferences, and when it came to mere talk would put people’s hats and umbrellas into their hands. There were also large Sunday-schools connected with his chapel, and taught by the members of his congregation, and these led to the first organization of a district visitors’ society, one of the earliest attempts of the slowly reviving English Church to show her laity how to minister to the poor under pastoral direction.
His father-in-law, Mr. William Wilson, had purchased the advowson of the living of Islington, and, when it became vacant in 1824, presented it to him, when he carried thither all his vigour and thoroughness. Church building was his first necessity, and he absolutely prevailed on his parish to rate themselves for the purpose, so that three churches were begun almost at once, and by the time his Life was written in 1860 the great suburb had multiplied its single church in thirty-six years into fifteen. At Islington the chief sorrows of his life befel him. He had had six children, of whom one died an infant and two more in early childhood. The second son, John, after a boyhood of great promise, fell into temptation at the University and led a wild and degrading course; ending by his retirement to the Continent, where he died in 1833, after a very painful illness, in which he had evinced great agony of mind, which softened at length into repentance and hope. The eldest son, Daniel, who attended him on his death-bed, had taken holy orders and succeeded to his father’s former living of Warton; and one daughter, Eliza, born in 1814, survived to cheer his home when his wife, after some years of invalidism, died in 1827. Zealous, resolute, and hardworking, he never allowed sorrow to interfere with his work, and was soon in the midst of his confirmation classes, and of a scheme for educating young tradespeople on a more thorough and religious system.
In the meantime he had always loved and urged the missionary cause, and had consulted with Bishop Turner before he went out. When the news of his decease was received (the fourth Bishop to die at his post within nine years), the appointment began to be looked on as a sentence of death, and it was declined in succession by several eminent clergymen. Daniel Wilson had anxiously watched for the answer in each case, and
was suggesting several persons to Mr. Charles Grant, when the thought struck him, “Here I am, send me.” A widower of fifty-four years old, of much strength, and with no young children, seemed to him the fit person to volunteer to fill the breach; and he wrote stating, that if no one else could be found for the post, he was willing to offer himself. The appointment was accordingly given to him, after an interval of nine months since the see had become vacant, and an infinity of toil and arrangements crowded on him. Islington was resigned to his son Daniel, and he was consecrated by Archbishop Howley on the 29th of April, 1832, “the day of my espousals to Christ my Saviour,” as he wrote in his journal; and on the ensuing 18th of June he sailed with his daughter for Calcutta. The ship touched at the Cape, which under the government of Sir Lowry Cole was by no means in the same hopeless state of neglect as when Martyn had visited it. Bishop Wilson there held an ordination and a confirmation, the first for himself as well as for South Africa, whose Episcopate was not founded till twenty-three years later.
He landed at Calcutta on the 5th of November, 1832, and took possession of the large unfurnished house that had at last been wrung out of Government. He found only just enough chairs and tables, placed there by the Archdeacon, to suffice for immediate use; and was answered, when he asked why his orders that the place should be completely fitted up had not been attended to, “I thought this would be enough to last for six months,”—this being the term for which a Bishop of Calcutta was thought likely to need earthly furniture. But Bishop Wilson was resolved to take reasonable precaution, and not to be daunted, or to act as if he were afraid. He furnished the place, and rented a pleasant country-house, called the Hive, at Tittaghur, where he spent a few days of every week; and, having been told that much danger was incurred by the exertion of visitation tours before the constitution had become accustomed to the climate, he resolved to wait for two years before making any long journey; and, in the meantime, he was able to collect a great amount of information, as well as attending to the regulation of matters at head-quarters. He kept up more formality and state than Bishop Heber had done; and, of course, as the one had been censured for his simplicity, so the other was found fault with for pomp and stiffness. But these
were minor points, chiefly belonging to the character of the two men, whose whole natures were in curious accordance with their prize performances at Oxford,—the one with all the warmth, fire, and animation of the poet of Palestine, sensitive to every impression, and making all serve to light his altar-flame; the other all common-sense, sincere, deep, and laborious, but with a narrower range of sympathies, and afraid of all that might distract attention from the one great subject. General literature had no charms for Wilson. He is believed never to have read one of Scott’s poems or novels; and the playful mirth that enlivened all Heber’s paths was not with him, though he had the equable cheerfulness of a faithful servant doing his Lord’s work. His daughter, soon after his arrival, married her cousin, Josiah Bateman, his chaplain (and biographer), and thus continued to be the mistress of her father’s house.
On the Whitsunday of 1833 the Bishop baptized one of those Hindoo gentlemen who are among the most satisfactory of Christian converts; they are free from the suspicion of interested motives which has always attached to the pariahs and low-caste people who hung about Serampore and its dependent stations, and, justly or unjustly, were accused of turning Christians when they had exhausted other resources of idleness and knavery. A curious instance of a thorough conversion happened the same year. A lad, educated like most other well-to-do Hindoos in the schools of the Church Missionary at Mirzampore, when about fifteen, became persuaded of the saving grace of Christianity, and determined to be baptized and openly forsake his idols. His parents persecuted him, and he fled to a friend, a Hindoo convert; but he was seized by his relations, and the case was referred to the Supreme Court, who decided that the father’s power over the son must not be interfered with; and the poor boy was dragged away, clinging to the barrister’s table, amid the shouts of the heathen and the tears of the Christians. The boy remained staunch, and three years later came again and received baptism; but his sufferings had injured his health, both of mind and body, and his promise of superior intelligence was blighted.
In 1834, the Bishop set off on his first long journey, which included Penang and Moulmein, where the Judsons had taken refuge after the Burmese war, and where he found, in the midst of half-cleared jungle and Buddhist temples full of
enormous idols, a school kept by an American master, so full of notions of equality, that, at the examination, he expected the Bishop to go to each class, not the class to the Bishop.
The Commissioner had built a church, the walls of teak slabs, and the pillars each a single teak-tree, and it was ready for consecration. After this and a confirmation, the Bishop went on his way to Ceylon, and then to the Madras Presidency, where he had already had a long correspondence with the pastors of the Christian congregations on the question of caste. Things had not prospered of late; and, to the dismay of the Bishop, he found that, in the course of the last year, 168 Christians had fallen back to heathenism, where, not having broken their caste, they could still be received and find a place. The truth was that, though caste might appear only a distinction of mere social rank, it was derived from a pagan superstition, and was a stronghold of heathenism. Schwartz was all his life trying to make it wear and die out, lest the violent renunciation should be too much for his converts’ faith. But his successors had allowed the feeling to retrograde; and Bishop Wilson found separate services, sides of the church allotted to the high and low castes, and the most unchristian distinctions made between them. He decided that toleration of the prejudice was only doing harm, and issued orders that henceforth catechumens preparing for baptism, confirmation, or communion, should be called on to renounce caste as a condition of admittance; and that, though the adult communicants should be gently dealt with, there should be no recognition of the distinction in the places in church, in the order of administering the Holy Communion, in marriages or processions, and that differences of food or dress, or marks on the forehead, should be discontinued. The clergy were in consternation, and made an appeal before they published the Bishop’s letter to their flocks; but they found his mind made up, and yielded. The lesser stations complied without much difficulty; but at Trichinopoly, Vepery, and Tanjore, there were many Soodras, the soldier-caste, professing to have come from Brahma’s shoulders, and second only to the Brahmins. They were desperately offended. At Trichinopoly, only seven Soodra families continued to attend the services, although the seceders behaved quietly, and offered no insults either to the clergy or the pariahs. At Vepery, on the