The Revolutions of 1848 brought with them an immense amount of excitement in this country, as in others. The month of April in that year can never be forgotten. An outbreak was feared in London. Special constables were sworn in. On the Sunday before the 10th of the month my friend, Mr. Walford, preached a remarkable sermon in Kensington Chapel. His text was Isa. xii. 2—“Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and not be afraid.” Having unfolded the sentiment of the passage, he applied the principle to passing events, and spoke of the political excitement in this country at the time of the French Revolution, which he well remembered. He assured us that the excitement then surpassed anything which existed at the time when he spoke, and expressed his confidence in the rectitude and love of the Almighty, who maketh the wrath of man to praise Him. The preacher’s age, and his vivid recollection of what he had witnessed, gave force to his exhortations, as tears were falling from his eyes.
Trust in Providence, touchingly enforced by personal recollections, was honoured by what occurred on the following day. The meeting on Kensington Common, so much dreaded, broke up in confusion. Ringleaders were alarmed, the mob was scattered without the interference of soldiers who had been provided against an outbreak, but were concealed in public buildings, through the Duke of Wellington’s wisdom. A day which opened in fear was spent in peace and confidence.
During a visit abroad in that year, 1848, I reached Geneva, with letters of introduction to Cæsar Malan, Gaussen, and M. St. George. Merle D’Aubigne was from home. In company with friends, on the Sunday afternoon, I attended at Cæsar Malan’s little chapel. We had mistaken the hour, and, on our entering, he recapitulated the early portions of his sermon. Then, in his own pleasant parlour, he engaged in fervent discourse on his favourite tenet of Christian assurance. On parting he singled me out for the privilege of a double French kiss, and on my expressing a hope that we should meet in the Father’s House, he rebuked me for using the word hope. With him it was a matter of assurance. Then I reminded him of the difference between present and future, and quoted St. Paul: “For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.”
I parted from relatives, who had been my fellow-travellers, and made my way next morning alone by boat to Vevay, thence travelling to Basle and Strasburg. Traffic was interrupted, and relics of revolution were seen in marching troops and handcuffed prisoners.
In 1849 a movement occurred for meeting religious needs in Kensington. A chapel was much needed on Notting Hill, and one of my deacons, who lived there, promised a large donation for the purpose. A few friends met in Hornton Street vestry, and opened a subscription list, which at once secured £1500. With that we went to work.
At first, there was some notion of incorporating members of the two congregations in one Church, with a copastorate; and Dr. Vaughan, I think, indicated willingness to become my colleague. I should not have objected to such union, but feared lest the moral effect of our movement should be thereby impaired. The scheme might have been looked upon as one of self-aggrandisement, while it was meant as an act of self-sacrifice. The latter it proved to be, for we drafted off about fifty members, as the nucleus of a new Church. Also we missed about two hundred seat-holders, who took pews in the new edifice, and, of course, there arose a certain éclat around Notting Hill which left Hornton Street a little in the shade. But soon things revived; our chapel became as full as ever. Funds recovered, liberal things were devised, and one morning I found a handsome cheque on my library table. Everybody seemed to be growing in kindness, and Hornton Street rose to more than its previous prosperity. It was an illustration of the principle—true of communities as well as of individuals—“There is that scattereth and yet increaseth.”
In connection with my early residence at Kensington I may mention a circumstance which interested me. I observed several times, sitting near my pulpit, an old gentleman. Upon inquiry, I found it was the Rev. Michael Maurice, father to the Rev. F. D. Maurice, then at the height of his influence as author and preacher. I never had the pleasure of conversing with my venerable hearer, but I learned from different sources much relative to his character and career. Though descended from a thoroughly orthodox family, he was educated for the ministry under Dr. Abraham Rees, Dr. Kippis and Dr. Savage—the first two being Arian divines, and the last a moderate Calvinist. He became afternoon preacher at Dr. Priestley’s Meeting House; and after officiating in other Unitarian places of worship, retired from pulpit work altogether. But he habitually associated with orthodox Nonconformists during the time he lived at Southampton. He also joined the British and Foreign Bible Society, and spoke for it on the platform. I wondered he should worship in Hornton Street, but information subsequently obtained served to explain the circumstance. He appears to have been a devout man with a large measure of Evangelical feeling. I mention him as a type of no inconsiderable class of sincerely religious people.
I knew but little of his distinguished son, only having met him a few times at Dean Stanley’s, and at Baldwin Brown’s. I used sometimes, on a Sunday afternoon, to hear Mr. Maurice preach at Lincoln’s Inn, and was much struck with the earnestness with which he repeated the Lord’s Prayer. The difficulty he felt in making himself understood is amusing. Some of the principles, he said, which his friends attacked, were those he strongly objected to himself, and those which they held as against him, were just those on which he rested his own faith and hope. “I could not make them the least understand what I meant,” he went on to say; “and if I did they would only dislike me for it.” It was not obscurity of style, as many thought, which made him unintelligible; but obscurity or confusion of thought arising from complexity of perception. He saw so much that it puzzled him how to express it. I respected him greatly as an honest thinker, more anxious to commend himself to the Searcher of hearts than to his fellow-men.
It must have been, I think, in 1846 or 1847 that I received an invitation to preach the annual sermon on behalf of Newport Pagnell College, and thither I went in the month of June. The Rev. Thos. Palmer Bull, president, and his son, the Rev. Josiah Bull, were living under the same roof, their house and garden full of comfort and convenience, beauty and fragrance. The old gentleman had a good library, and in nooks and corners were MSS. and relics of Cowper and Newton, friends of his father, the Rev. William Bull. The father was the “Taurus,” and his son the “Tommy,” immortalised in Newton and Cowper’s letters. When I had fulfilled my public duty I intensely enjoyed conversation with my elder host, as he showed me letters written, and relics possessed by the two celebrities so closely connected with his father’s name. He told me how he used, when a boy, to accompany his father to Olney, where he dined with the poet; that when grace was said, Cowper would play with his knife and fork, to indicate he had no share in acts of worship; that he would cheerfully converse on a variety of topics, but shunned all reference to religion. Notwithstanding, he would sometimes join in an Olney hymn; and then check himself as one who had neither part nor lot in the matter. He would kindly talk with little Tom, who accompanied his father on those visits, and they, on their way to and from the now world-known town, would join in singing a psalm or hymn, to a familiar tune. The old gentleman, I was informed, sometimes indulged in the use of a pipe, as he drove along the accustomed road. Full of such memories, I made an excursion to Olney, stopped at the house near the park of the Throgmortons, saw the room in which the poet slept, traced his writing on a pane of glass, and thought of the despair to which, in that chamber, he was so pitiable a victim. Then I was taken to the unpretentious abode in the main street of Olney, where he cultivated a close intimacy with John Newton, and kept rabbits in his little garden,—which garden, at the time I think of, remained much in its former state. The summer-house, described by the bard, was still in existence. Here, pausing for a moment to gather up another memento of Cowper, I may mention, that a relative of mine pointed out a house in East Dereham, which was Cowper’s residence; and told me that he remembered when a boy peeping through the keyhole of a door, and seeing him sitting in his chair. Cowper died at the residence of his kinsman, the Rev. Mr. Johnson. A friend of his gave me a leaf, in the poet’s handwriting, from the translation of Homer.
Soon after my return from this excursion I was chosen to fill up a vacancy in the important Nonconformist Trust of William Coward, a London merchant, who appointed Dr. Watts, Dr. Guyse, and Mr. Neal, author of the “History of the Puritans,”—with another person who was a layman,—administrators of property which he bequeathed for charitable purposes. Much of it consisted of Bank stock; that having risen, the revenue had become very considerable.