Thus commenced the longest pastorate with which the Church had yet been favoured; for Mr. Toller continued to labour amongst them until February 26th, 1821, making forty-five years and five months from the time of his first preaching at Kettering until his death. It was a ministry of much acceptance, extended influence, and great usefulness. It restored peace to a divided people; it preserved them in unbroken harmony through all its course; the congregation having often a crowded appearance, and the Church being generally in a prosperous state; not so much perhaps by the numbers added to the Church, as by the advancing piety, devotion, consistency, and intelligence of its members.
There were 221 members added to the Church during the course of Mr. Toller's ministry. These members, we have no doubt, might have been greatly increased, had the methods adopted in some places for bringing forward candidates for the communion of the Church prevailed under the ministry of Mr. Toller. We should like to convey some idea to the mind of the reader of the nature of that ministry with which the congregation at Kettering were now favoured. It was in his stated services amongst his own people that the peculiar excellencies of Mr. Toller were developed. It was our privilege in early life to sit under that ministry, but we think we shall fail to present a correct view of the impression we have on our mind as to the distinguishing features, the peculiar beauties, of that ministry; and if we were to do this, the general reader would think it too highly coloured, as our first impressions of sacred things, our deepest and most lively emotions of a religious nature, in connexion with all that we may since have known or attained, appear to us to have been derived, under God, from the ministry of Mr. Toller. His person was above the middle stature; his appearance in the pulpit venerable and commanding; his voice deep and powerful; his manner all his own, and of such a character as to chain the attention of the audience—always earnest, sometimes most fervent and impressive, rising to a high degree of impassioned eloquence when his assemblies were crowded, as on the afternoon of the Sabbath. His language was always clear, forcible, and plain, suited to the manner of his preaching; his sentiments most decidedly scriptural, evangelical, and practical, with a considerable portion of experimental piety. His ministry presented a full exhibition of the Christian temper. His discourses were distinguished by great conciseness yet fulness of matter, presenting often the most familiar but beautiful illustrations. Some of his most impressive sermons were formed entirely on the applicatory plan—some of them founded on Scripture inquiries, such as, "What think ye of Christ?" "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?" &c. During a very large portion of his ministry he delivered expository discourses on the morning of the Sabbath, which were distinguished by great beauty, variety, and richness of improving remarks. The afternoon sermon generally rose out of the morning exposition; not so frequently from a text taken from the paragraph expounded as a passage suggested by the main subject of exposition. But the prayers he offered in the stated services of the sanctuary were perhaps the most remarkable of the whole—the manner was so solemn; the tone so devotional; the adorations so sublime; the confessions so abasing; the petitions so full, fervent, and appropriate; the thanksgiving so expressive and exalted; the surrender so complete and unreserved; the whole placing us so much in the presence of God, leading us to feel what we were before him, what we needed from him, what provision was made for us, what we were receiving, and what services we should render; often leading us on to the dying hour, and to the opening grandeurs of eternity. The value of such a ministry was apparent in the many cases of eminent piety that appeared amongst those that were trained up under it. Much of the Christian temper, the spirit of devotion, lively faith in the Redeemer, and the power of practical religion, were manifested in a considerable number of cases, considering the size of the place. There were "living epistles of Christ, known and read of all." We remember an eminently pious female member of the Church, of whom the pastor said, when improving her death, "He should esteem it an honour to be permitted to hold up her train in the heavenly world." While this showed the deep humility of the pastor, it showed the high estimate he had formed of the devoted member.
In the year 1799 Mr. Toller received invitations from the congregations at Carter Lane, London, and at Clapham, to become their minister, with an offer of great pecuniary advantages; but such was the attachment felt to him by his people at Kettering, as manifested in their great anxiety on the subject, and in the affectionate addresses presented to him on this occasion, that he gave a decided negative to these urgent and repeated solicitations.
In an address he delivered from the pulpit, in answer to those which he had received from his people, he bore a noble testimony to the kindness with which he had ever been treated by them; observing, "Twenty-four years ago I came to this place, under considerable and peculiar disadvantages, arising from extreme youth, inexperience, and the then critical and disjointed state of the congregation. I entered upon the station with fear and trembling, and with scarce a peradventure of being able to give any general or lasting satisfaction. During this interval, I have gone through many trying afflictions, some of which you have known, and others, some of the most trying, you have never known. I have many faults to remember this day before God, much coldness of heart, many neglects of duty, and much unfruitfulness in my office; but I will do you the justice to say, that I have no injuries from you to enumerate, no personal ill behaviour from a single individual in all this time to complain of; and if you had all treated my great Master with a regard proportioned to that I have received from you, I should have been the happiest and most blessed minister on earth," &c.
He closed his days and his ministry together. Apoplectic seizures had weakened his frame, and at length had rendered him incapable of fulfilling all the duties of his office; while they indicated to him that his end was drawing nigh. In a letter written to his people, he intimated his wish to have an assistant. They invited the eldest son of their pastor, then preaching at Wem, in Shropshire, to become assistant to his father. This invitation he accepted; but before he entered on this new sphere of duty, the earthly career of his beloved and venerated father closed in death. "He preached on Lord's-day morning, February 25th, 1821, with much of his usual animation, from Isaiah lxiii. 7-13, and remarked at the close of the discourse what encouragement this passage affords the widow and the fatherless to put their trust in God, finishing his last public discourse with these lines of Doddridge:
"To thee an infant race we leave,
Them may their father's God receive;
That ages yet unborn may raise
Successive hymns of humble praise."
He spent the evening surrounded by his family, and conversing with his children in a strain of cheerful piety; and after a night of sound repose arose as well as usual the next morning. About noon, leaving the parlour, he was found a few minutes after in an apoplectic fit, or a seizure resembling apoplexy. Several medical men repaired to the spot, but life was extinct.
His remains were interred in the ground belonging to the Meeting House on Thursday, the 8th of March. On that occasion Mr. Horsey, of Northampton, read the Scriptures and prayed, and Mr. Edwards, of the same place, delivered the funeral oration. Mr. Hall, of Leicester, preached the funeral sermon on the same day from Heb. xiii. 7—a sermon which presented a most impressive representation of the responsibility attaching to a people that had been favoured with such a ministry, and the tremendous consequences that must follow the misimprovement of such advantages.
Mr. Toller only published during his life a sermon on the "faithful saying," entitled "A Plain and Popular View of the Evidences of Christianity"; a sermon occasioned by the death of the Rev. Samuel Palmer, of Hackney, Mr. Toller's most intimate friend, from 2nd Timothy i. 10—in which occurs this striking passage:—