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Our English brethren have produced several able historians; as Crosby, Orchard, Mann, Robinson, Evans, Stokes, Jones and Ivimey. Not having room to speak of them all, a word may be said of JOSEPH IVIMEY, by no means the least in the list. He was born in Hampshire in 1773, and became pastor of the Eagle Street Church, London, in 1805. As a defender of the truth he was fearless, and won many souls to Christ, amongst whom was the late Dr. John Bowling, of New York. He baptized both his mother and father, the last at the age of seventy. His ‘Life of Milton,’ and ‘History of the English Baptists’ (four volumes), are very valuable works. His name is fragrant in all the English Churches. He died in 1830.

The strongest bond of oneness amongst the Baptists of Great Britain and Ireland has been the BAPTIST UNION. This body was originally formed in 1813, but its present Constitution was adopted in 1882. The following is its declaration of principles: ‘In this Union it is fully recognized that every separate Church has liberty to interpret and administer the laws of Christ, and that the immersion of believers is the only Christian baptism.’ It is practically a home missionary society, and most of the Churches and Associations are affiliated with it; but its scope of operations includes also an Annuity Fund for ministers, an Augmentation Fund (to increase the income of ill-paid pastors), and an Education Society. The last Report of the Union shows that there are in England, 1,998 churches, 2,817 chapels, 229,311 communicants. Sunday-school scholars, 386,726, and pastors, 1,416. [Note from Brother Cloud of Way of Life Literature: The Baptist Union was infected with theological modernism by the latter half of the 19th century, and Charles Spurgeon wisely separated himself from it in obedience to the Scriptures.]

MINISTERIAL EDUCATION has been earnestly fostered by our British brethren. During the first century of their history, the greater part of their leading ministers had been educated for the pulpits of the Episcopal Church, and were graduates of Universities. Others, like Gill and Carey, self-taught, were the peers of the best scholars of their times. The necessity for some plan of systematic training of ministers was early felt, and nearly two hundred years ago the academy at Bristol was founded, but in 1770 the Education Society was formed in aid of that academy. Numerous ministers had been trained here before, but then the work took on the character of permanence and a wider scope of study. The institution still exists under the name of Bristol College. Besides this, Rawdon College was established in Yorkshire in 1804, which still flourishes. In 1810 the famous school at Stepney was established, but in 1856 it was removed, and is now known as the Regent’s Park College, London. The Strict Baptists have a promising college at Manchester, which was founded in 1866, and is now under the presidency of Rev. Edward Barker. Besides these, there are the institutions of Haverfordwest, Llan-gollen and Pontypool, the College in Scotland and that founded by Mr. Spurgeon. Without the last named, there are about two hundred and fifty students for the ministry in these various schools. In view of these and many similar facts, Dr. Chalmers felt called upon to say of the English Baptists: ‘That they have enriched the Christian literature of our country with authorship of the most exalted piety, as well as the first talent and the first eloquence. . . . That, perhaps, there is not a more intellectual community of ministers in our island, or who have put forth to their number a greater amount of mental power and mental activity in the defense and illustration of our common faith.’

Our English brethren have produced many notable educators, but none more eminent THAN DR. ANGUS, the principal of Regent’s Park College, London. He was born at Bolam in 1816; entered King’s College, London; but went to Edinburgh, and in 1837 took his Master’s Degree there, after competing successfully for the first prize in mathematics, logic and belles-lettres; besides taking the gold medal in moral and political philosophy. At the close of his course he gained the students’ prize, open to the whole University, on the influence of the writings of Lord Bacon. He began to preach early, and before he was twenty-one became pastor of the Church so long presided over by Dr. Gill and Dr. Rippon. In 1838 Dr. Chalmers delivered a course of lectures in ‘Defense of Church Establishments.’ A prize of one hundred guineas was offered for an answer. Dr. Angus replied to his renowned tutor in divinity, and the examiners, Drs. Baffles, J. Pye Smith and Mr. William Tooke, unanimously awarded him the prize. For nearly ten years, 1840-49, he was Secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society; during which time there was a large increase in its funds. In 1847 he visited the West Indian Stations, to complete the independence of the Churches there. In 1839 he became Principal of the College at Stepney, now Regent’s Park, which has become a powerful institution under his management. Within the last twenty years a fund of ,12,000 has been raised as a fund for the support of students, besides a sum of ,30,000 for supporting professorships of Biblical Literature at the college. A Lectureship has also been founded to bear his name. He is a finished and prolific author. His series of ‘Hand-Books on the Bible,’ the ‘English Tongue,’ ‘English Literature,’ etc., are most valuable productions, being widely known and used, as are his many other works. He was a member for nearly ten years of the London School Board, and for an equal term he was an examiner in the University of London. He also served as one of the late revisers of the New Testament, made for the Convocation of Canterbury. Few men are more accomplished or exert greater influence amongst the literati of Great Britain.

JOHN FOSTER, the great essayist, was an honor to the English Baptists. He was born at Halifax in 1770; at seventeen he became a pupil at Bristol College, having been baptized by Dr. Fawcett, and was pastor first at Newcastle. His sanctity and originality in the pulpit were very marked, as his ‘Broadmead Discourses’ show, yet he was never a preacher of note, being singularly subdued, and peculiarly eccentric in his delivery, and so, seldom preached to more than a handful of people. The late Rev. William Jay, of Bath, who knew him well, thus speaks of him: ‘In preaching, his delivery all through was in a low and equable voice, with a kind of surly tone, and a frequent repetition of a word at the beginning of a sentence. He had a little fierceness occasionally in his eye; otherwise his face was set, and his arms perfectly motionless. He despised all gesticulation, and also all attempts to render any thing emphatical in announcement; looking for the effect in the bare sentiment itself, unhelped by any thing in the delivery, which he professed to despise.’ He writes thus of himself to Mr. Horsfall: ‘I have involuntarily caught a habit of looking too much on the right side of the meeting. ‘Tis on account of about half a dozen sensible fellows who sit together there. I cannot keep myself from looking at them. I sometimes almost forget that I have any other auditors. They have so many significant looks, pay such particular and minute attention, and so instantaneously catch any thing curious, that they become a kind of mirror in which the preacher may see himself. Sometimes, whether you will believe it or not, I say humorous things. Some of these men perceive it and smile. I, observing, am almost betrayed into a smile myself.’ He was pastor also in Dublin, Chichester, Dowend and Frome. His wonderful essays on character, romance, taste and popular ignorance, rank him amongst the first literary men of England. His thought is profound, his eloquence massive and his style very lucid. He died October 15th, 1843.

A race of singularly INFLUENTIAL LAYMEN have been raised in the British Baptist Churches, amongst whom may be mentioned Wm. B. Gurney, for his great missionary enterprise; Sir Samuel Morton Peto, for his rare piety and benevolence; Sir Robert Lush, late Lord-Justice of the High Court of Appeals, for his simplicity of heart and his professional eminence; and MAJOR-GENERAL HAVELOCK, for his skillful patriotism and consecration to Christ. His name has become so historic in connection with the late Sepoy Rebellion, that a fuller notice of him is desirable. This Christian hero was born April 5th, 1795, at Bishop-Wearmouth. His father was wealthy, and his mother was a very devout Christian, who daily gathered her seven children about her for prayer and the study of the Scriptures. He was educated at the Charterhouse, and read law under Chitty, at the Middle Temple. In 1815 he entered the army, and eight years afterward was sent to India. On the sea he consecrated himself to Christ, became a lowly follower of the Lamb, and at once made his Christianity felt upon all around him by preaching the Gospel to his fellow soldiers. He served with great distinction in Burma and Afghanistan from 1824 to 1851, when he became adjutant-general of the queen’s troops in India. He had been immersed on his trust in Christ at Serampore in 1830, and had married a daughter of Dr. Marshman, the great missionary there. His custom was to spend two hours alone with God every morning, whether in camp or campaign, and, as often as he could find time, to read and expound the Scriptures to his men. His biographer gives a touching account of an officer hearing hymns floating around a heathen pagoda, and on entering, finding Havelock, with about a hundred soldiers, reading the Scriptures to them by the light of the dim lamps burning before the idols. No wonder that the troops of this splendid Christian soldier were renowned for their prudence and bravery, even to daring, or that their invincibility was ascribed to the fact that they were ‘Havelock’s Saints.’ The general spent 1856-57 in Persia, but immediately, on the breaking out of the Sepoy Rebellion, hastened to the front, and gained many brilliant victories over Nana-Sahib, at Cawnpore, Lucknow and other places, subduing 50,000 drilled troops with 2,500 men. Parliament created him a major-general and a baronet, and gave him a pension of ,,1,000 a year. This thoughtful and pure servant of God died in India, November 22d, 1859, saying to Sir James Outram: ‘For more than forty years I have so ruled my life that when death came I might face it without fear. I am not in the least afraid; to die is gain. I die happy and contented.’ Then calling his eldest son to his side, he lovingly said to him: ‘Come, my son, and see how a Christian can die!’

HUGH STOWELL BROWN stood prominent amongst the most able and useful pastors of England. His father was a clergyman of the English Church, and Hugh was born in the Isle of Man, August 10th, 1823. The following interesting statement is taken from ‘Men of the Time;’ he was ‘nephew of the Rev. Hugh Stowell, of Manchester. He was educated partly at home and partly at the Douglas Grammar School, until he reached the age of fifteen, when he came to England to learn land-surveying. After spending about two years in mastering the drudgery and details of that business, his views underwent a change, and he repaired to Wolverton for the purpose of learning the profession of an engineer. This occupation he followed until he became of age, and he drove a locomotive engine on the London and Northwestern Railway for six months. It was his custom, after his day’s work at Wolverton was done, to spend four or five hours in reading and in meditating on what he had read; and his first classical exercises were written with a piece of chalk inside the fire-box of a locomotive engine. Resolving to become a clergyman of the Church of England, he entered as a student at King’s College, in his native town of Douglas, and studied there for three years. Doubts, however, came over his mind respecting the truth of the doctrines in the Liturgy and Occasional Services and Catechism of the Church of England. These doubts ultimately produced in his mind the conviction that the baptismal doctrines of the Establishment were at variance with Holy Scripture, and he accordingly became a member of the Baptist denomination. Having acted for a short time as a city missionary in Liverpool, he was appointed minister of Myrtle Street Chapel,’ as assistant to Rev. James Lister. In 1848 he became sole pastor, following this venerable man, who had served the Church above forty years. Mr. Brown’s ministry in the same congregation lasted for nearly the same period, and was wonderfully successful. No man in Liverpool possessed the confidence and affection of that great city more fully than he, and no man has done more to honor and bless it in all its forms of religious and benevolent life. His Church wielded a wide influence, and had grown under his pastoral labors from about three hundred communicants to almost a thousand, besides planting several branch churches and many Sunday-schools. As a preacher, Mr. Brown was strong, full of freshness and force and evangelical to the core. He was a sturdy Baptist, lovable, hospitable, generous to a fault, and without a tittle of cant in his nature. It would be hard to find a broader or truer man on earth, in all that makes true Christian manliness, than Hugh Stowell Brown. He died very suddenly at his home, February 24th, 1886, in the fullness of his strength. In person, he was large, very genial in his manner, racy as a conversationalist, true as a friend and eloquent as a preacher. His brethren loved to honor him, and in 1878 elected him President of the Baptist Union. His ‘Lectures for the People,’ which open all the elements of his character and genius, have reached a circulation of more than forty thousand, and it is in contemplation to erect a monument to his memory in the city which he so largely blessed.

ROBERT HALL, not the greatest scholar, theologian, or leader of the Baptists, stands probably at the head of the British pulpit as a rhetorician and orator. His father was pastor of the Baptist Church at Arnsby, near Leicester, where Robert was born in 1764, being the youngest in a family of fourteen. From his birth to his death he was feeble in body, sensitive and nervous; at the age of two years he could neither talk nor walk, and near the close of his life he said that he remembered few hours when he had not been in pain amounting to agony. But so precocious was he mentally ‘that his nurse taught him the alphabet from the tombstones of a neighboring’ church-yard before he could talk plainly. As a boy, he displayed a passion for books, and at the ago of ten is said to have read ‘Edwards on the Will’ and ‘Butler’s Analogy,’ with a clear comprehension of their contents. At fifteen he entered Bristol College, where he made rapid progress and remained for three years. While there he made several attempts at oratory, with perfect and humiliating failure. In 1781 he entered the University of Aberdeen, where he remained for four years. Sir James Mackintosh was a fellow-student, but Hall outstripped all his fellows in the classics, philosophy and mathematics. He took his Master’s Degree in 1785, and spent three years as classical tutor at Bristol, as well as assistant to Dr. Caleb Evans, pastor of Broadmead Chapel.

His eloquence won him fame, and the leading minds in that city were drawn around him in crowds, but his orthodoxy soon fell into question and not without reason. Consciously or unconsciously he was affected all his life by Socinian principles, not only on the Trinity and the personality of the Spirit, but on correlated doctrines. His admiration of Socinus was enthusiastic, as is seen on various points, and on none more clearly than in his novel views on baptism and communion, their relations to each other and to Apostolic Christianity. He not only rejected the federal headship of Adam, but he held the semi-materialistic view that ‘Man’s thinking powers and faculties are the result of a certain organization of matter, and that after death he ceases to be conscious till the resurrection.’ In 1790 he became pastor at Cambridge, successor to the distinguished Robert Robinson, where he remained fifteen years. There he stirred men of the highest mental powers and culture, and under the shadow of the University, with the reputation of ‘Prince of the Pulpit,’ he was stimulated to his highest efforts. In 1793 he published his great ‘Apology for the Freedom of the Press,’ which moved the whole country. Partial insanity overtook him, with entire bodily prostration, and he was compelled to resign his charge in 1806, not, however, before he had published his ‘Modern Infidelity’ (1801) and his ‘Sentiments Proper to the Present Crisis’ (1803), productions which, for their eloquence, carried his fame through the realm.

Recovering, from 1806 to 1819 he was pastor at Leicester. Here he published his ‘Terms of Communion’ in 1815, but in 1819 accepted the pastorate of Broadmead at Bristol, where he remained till his death, in 1831; when a post-mortem examination showed that his aggravated disease had made the last twenty years one slow martyrdom. His moral character and private life were delightfully attractive, but he was fond of controversy, in which he was extremely pertinacious and much given to the use of polished but keen satire. God had endowed him with all the native qualities of a great pulpit orator, and he had faithfully cultivated these as gifts from God. Though his health was so uncertain he had a powerful frame, which gave him that imposing presence which prepares the auditor to attach meaning to every word and action of a true orator. His voice was not remarkable for volume, but it was fitted by sweetness and flexibility to express every emotion. His style in spoken discourse was easy and graceful, every thought being clothed in its appropriate language, and, as is natural, was without that smell of the lamp which marks his published works. His attempt there to be always labored and dignified often falls into the pompous, stilted and artificial. His private conversation is said to have been adorned by brilliant wit and other forms of relief, but he never allows one stroke of this to appear in his writings; yet, inadequately as they represent his genius, they are full of splendid rhetoric and thrilling eloquence. His bias toward what is known as philosophical Socinianism was less apparent in his later life, and he even denied that it existed, with some show of reason, especially on the atonement. But in his view of the constitution of a Christian Church he is one with Socinus through and through, in that he confounds Church organization with personal Christian life, and sinks the first in the last for all practical purposes. Socinus, an Italian, born 1539, went into Poland, and in 1580 published his treatise on the question, ‘Whether it is lawful for a Christian to be without water baptism?’ He wrote other works on this and kindred subjects, making two Latin folio volumes of over 800 pages each; and this work occupies 30 pages, beginning at page 708, vol. i. He adopted a new position on the terms of communion, not only in opposition to all Christendom as it then existed, and had existed in all Christian history, but as it exists still; namely, that baptism is not a term of Church fellowship, and, therefore, that those who wish to enter the Church and share its privileges may do so in ‘perfect union’ without baptism at all. Socinus did not, with the Friends, reject both the ordinances, but held that the Supper is binding on the Christian, while baptism is not. This not only places the Supper in a false position, by making it of more consequence than baptism, but it forces him to deny that baptism is an appointment of Christ. Mr. Hall did not agree with him in denying that baptism is a New Testament institution, but, on the contrary, he held that it is and that it is only properly administered to a believer by his immersion; but they were entirely one in teaching that baptism was not essential to the reception of the Supper; therefore, that Churches should admit to the Lord’s table those who are not baptized, and whom they know to be unbaptized.

Any person who carefully compares Socinus and Hall, page by page and proposition by proposition, will be struck by the step-to-step movement which leads them to the same conclusion, and in many cases with an almost exact form of expressing the sentiment, as well as with the oneness of the sentiment itself. They both deny that baptism is necessary to full membership in the Church, and to participation in its discipline and government; they teach that there are essential and non-essential truths in Christianity, and that baptism, per se, ranks with the non-essential; they both maintain that Paul, the apostle, required Churches to tolerate the neglect of baptism, as an exercise of Christian liberty; they both deny that an external act, such as baptism, is to be exacted of a Christian in order to membership in the Church and a place at the Supper, for that true Christianity is governed only by the internal and spiritual, as if the Supper had no external character; they both claim that love and liberality demand the reception at the Table of the baptized and unbaptized alike; and they both insist on sincerity as the chief qualification for the Supper, in keeping with the altered ‘genius’ of Christianity and ‘the age.’ Hall’s position--in so far as they differ on the enforcement of baptism as an apostolic injunction--is more dangerous than the assumption of Socinus, that the Scriptures do not enjoin it at all; because it leaves the individual Christian as the supreme judge in the matter, as against the voice of the New Testament. It is this which makes his novel position so untraceable and yet beguiling. He tells as that ‘the letter’ of Scripture requires men to be baptized, and he holds that all who are not immersed are not baptized, and yet, that it is displeasing to God and uncharitable to require them to obey Christ to ‘the letter.’ He denies that baptism is necessary to salvation, but implies that the Supper is; and it is a matter for gratitude that no body of Christians has yet adopted his ground, either in theory or practice, excepting those who follow him in the English Baptist Churches.

CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON, whose name is a household word the world over, is the most remarkable minister of Christ now living, taking all things into the account. He was born at Kelvedon, Essex, June 19th, 1834. His father and grandfather were Congregational pastors. and his mother was an uncommonly earnest Christian, who took great pains to form the character and seek the salvation of her children. Charles’s aunt, whom he named ‘Mother Ann,’ loved him tenderly and fostered him as her own child. Early he had a passion for books and pictures, and at the age of six delighted in Bunyan. The likeness of Bishop Bonner, whom he called ‘Old Bonner,’ stirred his dislike because of his cruelty; and as a child he manifested great self-possession, decision, strong passions and will. His education was limited, being confined chiefly to a private academy at Colchester, kept by Mr. Leeding, a Baptist, and to a year in an agricultural school at Maidstone. His parents pressed him to enter Cambridge, but he refused, on the conviction that duty called him to active life. At fifteen he became deeply interested in his salvation, and was converted on hearing a sermon preached from Isa. 45:22, by an unlettered Primitive Methodist local preacher, in a little country chapel. He then became deeply interested in Bible baptism, and laid the matter before his father. Becoming convinced that it was his duty to be immersed on a confession of Christ, he walked from New Market to Isleham, seven miles, on May 3th, 1850, where Rev. Mr. Cantlow buried him with Christ in baptism. His mother mourned his loss to the Independents; and told him that she had prayed earnestly for his conversion, but not that he should be a Baptist. He replied: ‘Well, dear mother, you know that the Lord is so good, that he always gives us more than we can ask or think.’

At this time, he was a tutor in Mr. Leeding’s school at New Market, which school was removed to Cambridge, and young Spurgeon accompanied it there, becoming a member of the Baptist Church in St. Andrew’s Street, where Robert Hall had so long been pastor. That Church had a ‘Lay Preachers’ Association,’ for the supply of thirteen neighboring villages with preaching. Of this he became a member, preaching his first sermon in a cottage at Teversham. From the first crowds flocked to hear the ‘Boy Preacher,’ and at eighteen he became pastor of the Baptist Church at Waterbeach, a village of about 1,300 people. His fame soon reached London, and he was invited to preach at the New Park Street Chapel in 1853, where, by a unanimous call, he became successor to Gill, Rippon and other worthies. His success was immediate and wonderful; without parallel he sprang to the highest rank, but not without the severest trials. He possessed some youthful eccentricities, which to the eyes of many staid folk savored of boldness and self-conceit. On this plea, every sort of indecent attack was made upon him; he was denounced as a ‘young clown,’ ‘mountebank,’ etc., without stint, and the writer well remembers the time, when but two or three ministers in London treated him with common respect, to say nothing of Christian courtesy. But God was with him, and that was enough; his ministry has simply been a marvel, all the solemn nobodies notwithstanding. His talent for organization and administration is very large; his heart is all tenderness for destitute children, hence his orphanages; is all sympathy for poor young ministers, hence his college; and his head is a miracle amongst heads for common sense, hence his magnetic influence. Without starch, self-conceit or sanctimonious clap-trap, he acts on living conviction. As a preacher, he deals only in what Christ and his apostles thought worthy of their attention; tells what he knows about God and man, sin and holiness, time and eternity, in pure ringing Saxon; uses voice enough to make people hear, speaks out like a man to men, lodging his words in their ears and hearts, instead of making his own throat or nose their living sepulcher. He fills his mind with old Gospel truth, and his memory with old Puritanic thought, calls the fertility of his imagination into use, believes in Jesus Christ with all the power of his being, loves the souls of men with all his heart and acts accordingly. He carries the least amount of religion possible in the whites of his eyes, but a living well of it in the depth of his soul ; and the real wonder is not that God has put such honor upon him, for if his life had been very different from what it has been, even partial failure in the hands of such a man of God would have been a new and unsolvable mystery in the reign of a faithful Christ.

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