Being disposed beyond immediate pastoral duties to help in religious work outside, I found ample opportunities for doing it. Sir Culling Eardley was at that time zealous in the furtherance of village preaching. Coming to Windsor, he offered to help us in purchasing a tent for services in the neighbourhood. It was procured and employed, but with less success than had attended his enterprise of the same kind in Hertfordshire. I undertook, at his request, a fortnight’s tour in that county, and one evening preached near a wood, where John Bunyan, in days of persecution, addressed the neglected peasantry.
Revivalism at the period now referred to, attracted attention in England, in part owing to the circulation of American books, and the preaching of American divines. A great awakening occurred at Reading, Henley, Maidenhead, and Windsor. Streams of people might be seen on dark winter mornings, lantern in hand, on their way to the place of prayer. Chapels were thronged, ministers were in full sympathy with each other; all worked with a will. Looking back on the whole, I believe genuine good was done; yet in some instances the effect was transient. Conversion was insisted upon, and peace with God through Jesus Christ was offered; but whether moral improvement in the details of human life was proportionally emphasised, and practically carried out, I am not prepared to say. Certainly, appeals respecting holiness in general were not wanting. Rightly to adjust the balance, so as to guard against self-righteousness on one hand, and the neglect of personal responsibility on the other, requires vast wisdom. To induce people to look at themselves and to Christ also, cannot be accomplished without thought and discrimination in promiscuous gatherings. Whatever might be defects in the movement, assuredly they did not come from artificial arrangements. No one can be said to have “got up the thing.”
At all times in the course of our ministry “cases of conscience” occur. One in particular I may mention. I was once sent for to visit a dying person. The home, the people, the surroundings, excited revulsion, as well as a determination to improve a strange opportunity. I found a young woman on her deathbed, and another sitting by, who used phraseology indicative of evangelical sentiment. She offered to leave the room that the patient might unburthen her mind to me. It was obvious some secret of guilt lay on the sufferer’s conscience. I had no wish to be a father confessor, and pointed her to the only One who can pardon sin. At last the dying creature uttered a piercing exclamation, which seemed to me an acknowledgment of sin. What the secret was she did not disclose. Presently she entered “the silent land.” When I called again, I intimated to her attendant my surprise at what she had said, for I could not doubt that she was leading an immoral life. She frankly confessed she had fallen into vice, after expressing a belief that she had been converted, and had been a “child of God.” The incident was affecting, instructive, and admonitory.
Public questions interested me much, and I took part in those which belonged to philanthropy and religion. Amongst them at the time I speak of, negro emancipation stood foremost. From boyhood it laid hold on me. Speeches at Norwich, by Joseph John Gurney and others, had left an abiding impression; and when the great controversy became ripe for settlement, I threw myself into the struggle. The excitement throughout the nation was intense, and it laid hold chiefly of the religious section of the British public. Missionaries had been at work amongst negroes, and had seen the horrors of the system. The persecution of Smith, a missionary in Demerara, who died in prison, evoked passionate sympathy; and the appeal of Knibb, another missionary, who came over as an advocate of emancipation, struck the nail on the head, and drove it into the centre of this colossal wrong. Nothing is more manifest, to those who witnessed what went on in England half a century ago for slave emancipation, than that, however manifold the arguments employed, however numerous the methods and agencies in motion, it was Christianity which lay at the heart of the movement. Quakers were amongst the most zealous co-operators in this advocacy for freedom, and I much enjoyed the fellowship into which I was brought with followers of George Fox, early family associations strengthening bonds of friendship between us. Deputations went up to London to wait upon Mr. Stanley, Colonial Secretary, afterwards Earl of Derby, and I well remember the crowd gathered in a large room in Downing Street, to strengthen the hands of that gentleman in his chivalrous enterprise. The history of steps which led to the final victory it is not for me to tell in these pages, but I may mention the third reading by the Lords of the Emancipation Bill in August 1833. It filled multitudes with joy; and on August 1st, 1834, the Act took effect, when a solemn celebration of the event occurred in England, as well as the West India Islands. That day I preached at Windsor from Jer. xl. 4:—“And now, behold, I loose thee this day from the chains which were upon thine hand.”
In 1839 the Anti-Corn Law League took shape. I distinctly recollect the scene presented at a great bazaar in Covent Garden Theatre, in aid of Free Trade, when there was a wonderful gathering of notabilities and other folks. Stalls, articles, and ornaments, were varied and imposing; and as that exhibition appeared before the present age of bazaars was fully inaugurated, it had a more dazzling and bewildering effect than efforts of the kind can have now that they have become so common.
Dissenters’ grievances, too, were exciting subjects in those days. Certain disabilities had an irritating effect on those who felt them, and legislation was sought for their removal. No doubt, in the heat of the conflict things were said on both sides which, on calm review, cannot be justified; and I am in my old age more than ever convinced that union of the suaviter in modo with the fortiter in re, is the best method of conducting controversy.
My holidays, whilst I was a Windsor pastor, were spent in preaching; but there were two exceptions, when I broke ground as a tourist. Travelling in Nottinghamshire and the neighbouring counties, I visited Newstead Abbey with a fresh remembrance of Washington Irving’s description of the place. I had a gossip with an old domestic, who told me stories of Lord Byron, whom she knew as a boy, and used to carry on her back on account of his lameness. He pricked and otherwise tormented the patient creature, so as, on one occasion, to provoke her so much, that she boldly ventured on a rather amusing act of retaliation. Leaning over her shoulders to look into an old chest full of feathers, she, to use her own words, “copped him over, and he came out for all the world just like a young owlet.” What I then heard of his early days gave me an unfavourable idea of that child of genius, so caressed and tormented, so flattered and persecuted, so early thrown into unfortunate circumstances, and altogether so badly brought up. What a contrast between two poets, whose memories came vividly before me during this tour!—Byron and Scott, both of them lame for life; one a stranger to the other’s purity. Years afterwards I heard Dean Stanley preach a sermon to children, in which, with his characteristic felicity of thought, he spoke of the contrasted influences of physical deformity in these two instances—how the club foot of the first was an occasion of mortified pride and ill-nature, and the club foot of the second was borne with patience and contentment. The story of Byron’s club foot is now treated by some I hear as a popular delusion; but, at all events, he had something the matter with his foot which irritated his temper and made him disagreeable. Therefore the Dean’s moral lesson remains untouched. In connection with good humour and kindness, a physical defect may be only a foil to set off moral excellence.
After passing through Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumberland in company with my dear friend Harrison, we reached Edinburgh by coach at midnight to find ourselves in the morning amidst grand preparations for the Queen’s first arrival in the Scottish capital. The view at noon from Calton Hill, as the arrangements for receiving royalty had reached their acme, was most magnificent. Princes Street, from end to end, presented multitudes of people in holiday attire, military uniforms, tartan, kilts and feathered bonnets, gave rich plays of colour. The crowd waited and waited, but no Queen appeared. Night fell, and the expectants went to bed disappointed. Next morning every one was taken by surprise, for Her Majesty, having been detained at sea, landed at Leith, whilst the Lord Provost was still asleep. My friend and I afterwards went to Stirling, and identified historic points which dot the field of Bannockburn—then to Perth, Dunkeld, Killiecrankie, and Blair Atholl.
In the course of numerous journeys I had opportunities of seeing the real state of Nonconformity in rural districts. It was then much better than some people suppose. There were then families of influence identified with country places of worship, who have not left behind them sympathetic representatives. The revival of religion in the National Church has produced a considerable change in the relative position of ecclesiastical parties. Sunday evening services in cathedral and parish church, and the pastoral activity of incumbents and curates, with numerous missionary and other organisations, have produced effects very visible in the eyes of old people, who can look back on the religious condition of England during the first quarter of the present century.
My first Continental tour occurred before I left Windsor. I visited a family at Rotterdam into which a fellow-student had married, and had pleasant insights into Dutch life. After peeps at the Hague, Leyden, and Amsterdam, abounding in a gratification of antiquarian and historical taste, slowly proceeding up the Rhine, I felt all the enthusiasm incident to a young traveller as he first gazes on castle-crowned hills which line the river. Many and many a ramble since on those romantic banks have increased rather than diminished my admiration of the Rhine.