Edward Hoare, M.A.: A record of his life based upon a brief autobiography

by Edward Hoare

But my Pakefield curacy was soon to terminate. Whether it was the cold, or whether it was the pressure of ministerial interest, which I have often known to break down young men in the outset of their ministry, or whether it was the death of my dearest mother, or the three together, I cannot say; but I had a bad cough, and I went away for a time to my father’s home to nurse it. I had no idea at the time of leaving Pakefield, but my kind and valued friend the Rev. J. W. Cunningham, brother to my Rector, recommended me, without my knowledge, to the curacy of Richmond, Surrey.

He was a true friend to me and to my family. He was a very different man to his brother; he had taken a high degree at Cambridge, and he was a polished scholar, one of the best writers of the English language that I ever met with, an admirable friend as a scholarly critic to a young man entering the ministry. I am much indebted to his advice, and only wish I had followed it more carefully. It was his doing that introduced me to the Rev. W. Gandy, Vicar of Kingston and Richmond; and through him the curacy was proposed to me.

I must say that it was a desperate experiment on his part, for there were peculiar circumstances connected with the position, and I had never run alone in the ministry, but always had the friendship and counsel of my beloved Rector.

The position of the parish was this. There were four parishes lying together along the banks of the Thames—Kingston, Petersham, Richmond, Kew—all in the gift of King’s College, Cambridge. It had been thought desirable that there should be only two Vicars instead of four, and therefore it had been arranged to group them, two and two. Of course the most natural arrangement would have been to have put together the small parish of Petersham and the large parish of Kingston to which it was adjacent, and the small parish of Kew and the large parish of Richmond which also adjoined. But in those days there used to be a good deal of jobbery, and, for some reason or other which I never could explain, it had been decided to unite together the two large parishes, Kingston and Richmond, skipping over Petersham; and the two small parishes, Petersham and Kew, skipping over Richmond; so that the Rev. Mr. Gandy was Vicar of Kingston and Richmond, while another gentleman was Vicar of the other two smaller ones.

Mr. Gandy was a man altogether incompetent to have the charge. He was a most interesting man, and a deep student of Scripture—a man of heavenly mind, one in fact who seemed so occupied with heavenly views that he was unfitted for the practical business of this lower world. Mr. Simeon once said of him, “All of us are going stumping along on the surface of earth, but Mr. Gandy rises right into Heaven!”

It may easily be imagined that he found his great double charge far too much for him, so Mr. Cunningham advised him practically to give up Richmond into the hands of some trustworthy curate, who should find his own assistant, and undertake the entire responsibility of the work. This was the charge to which I was called by the providence of God in those early days of my ministry. I have just said it was a desperate experiment, and looking back to that time I can see plenty of mistakes, and I learn from my own experience that it is a possible thing to mistake the irritation produced by our own blunders for opposition to the Gospel which we preach; a man may be true to the Gospel, but he may not infrequently make very great mistakes in his mode of putting it forth.

In looking back to those days I am thankful to believe that I went to Richmond true to my Master, and I am profoundly thankful for the help given me; but I should make a great mistake if I were to lead anybody to suppose that, in my earnest desire to exalt my Saviour, I never did anything to irritate. At one time I had great difficulty with one of the churchwardens, which led to a considerable correspondence. I kept that correspondence carefully, and after ten years I looked it over. That revision taught me a great lesson, for I found that in the heat of the controversy I had written very differently to what I should have done in the calmer review of ten years afterwards. That was one of the lessons I learnt at Richmond.

That which I look back upon with the greatest thankfulness is a confirmation by my Richmond experience of the great lesson I learnt at Pakefield respecting the results to be expected from the ministry. Mr. Gandy had been Vicar for some twenty-five years, during which time he had appointed a series of curates, the first of whom was the Rev. Stephen Langston, who resigned the curacy about twenty years before I was appointed. But when I set to work in the parish, the first thing that met my observation was a body of Christian men and women who owed their conversion, through God, to Mr. Langston’s ministry. There they were living consistent lives and most truly glorifying God, in some cases under sharp opposition, and the twenty years that had elapsed since Mr. Langston left only tended to confirm their faith and establish their character.

Both in Pakefield and Richmond, therefore, it was my unspeakable privilege to see the effects produced by the faithful ministry of the Word of God. And yet the two cases were entirely different. Mr. Cunningham was an admirable pastor, but not a particularly interesting preacher; Mr. Langston was a poor pastor, but the grandest preacher I ever heard. I have heard many able men preach many excellent sermons, but there was a richness, a fulness, a power about Mr. Langston’s such as I never met with in any other to whom I have listened. The two instruments, therefore, were entirely different, but God made use of them both. They were both blessed by Him; and it taught me the lesson that I must be prepared to meet with great differences of administration, but in the midst of those differences it is our privilege to look for a blessing. God did not withhold from Mr. Cunningham His blessing, because he had not the preaching power of Mr. Langston; nor did He withhold His blessing from Mr. Langston, because he had not the pastoral zeal of Mr. Cunningham.

The lesson taught me was not the only blessing bestowed upon me through the friendship of those excellent people. I had in it the enormous advantage of the ripened experience and tried wisdom of some of the most excellent Christian people living. Never can I forget the friendship of Sir Henry and Lady Baker, of Dr. Julius and of Mrs. Delafosse, to whose loving sympathy and Christian counsel I used continually to resort; and amongst the humbler classes there was Mrs. Abbott, a grand old Christian who had loved the Lord before she heard the preaching of the Gospel, and the moulding of whose faith was drawn from the Prayer-Book. She often used to express to me her astonishment that when people were brought to Christ it did not make them love their Prayer-Book more.