_TUNBRIDGE WELLS_
But these bright and stirring days at Ramsgate were at length brought to
a close by Sir Charles Hardinge inviting me to undertake the living of
Holy Trinity, Tunbridge Wells, in the year 1853.
At first I thought very little of the offer, as I expected Sir Benjamin
Brodie to put his veto upon my removal from the sea. But when I went to
consult him upon the subject, I was not a little surprised by his saying
that, as in 1847 he had judged it necessary for me to go to the seaside,
so now he considered it very desirable that I should leave it. So that
impediment was removed, and I had to face the question whether I was
called to remain where I was or to remove.
It was a very difficult question, and I was greatly perplexed as to the
decision. But, according to Mr. Venn’s principle already referred to, my
thoughts were ultimately established, and I have never seen reason for a
single moment to regret the change. I can scarcely imagine a better
sphere for the ministry than that which I have been permitted to occupy
for nearly thirty-six years. I have had a large parish, which, after
four parochial districts have been taken from it, still contains more
than six thousand persons, the population consisting of a
well-proportioned mixture of gentry, tradesmen, and poor. I have had in
my church a stream of visitors from all parts of England, and not from
England only, but from India, Australia, and America. I have had very
many most kind, faithful, and affectionate friends ready to help me in
everything, so that, on the whole, I believe we have been able to keep
pace with the rapid growth of population; and I have had an excellent
church, which, though I do not suppose it would satisfy the
ecclesiologist, I have found to be most commodious for the worship of
God. There are three things in it quite at variance with modern fashion:
instead of an open roof to generate cold in winter, heat in summer, and
echo at all times, we have had a flat ceiling to protect us from all
changes of the climate; and instead of having the people spread far and
wide on the ground floor, there are deep galleries along three sides of
the church, containing nearly six hundred persons, all within ear-shot;
and instead of a low pulpit scarcely raising the preacher above the heads
of his hearers, there is an old-fashioned “three-decker” of sufficient
height to enable the preacher to see the whole of his congregation.
At Tunbridge Wells was much less to excite than at Ramsgate. There were
no shipwrecks, and no such activity on the part of the Church of Rome,
but there was a great increase of solid pastoral work, and I firmly
believe that our removal was of the Lord. In no period of my life have I
experienced greater mercies.
After ten years of happy work together, it pleased the Lord to take from
me my dearest wife, at which time He showed His abundant mercy in so
strengthening her faith, that she gave a glorious testimony to the power
of that Gospel which she had earnestly desired to teach, and which had
been the subject of our whole ministry. She was kept at perfect peace
through a long and suffering illness, and fell asleep in full and
unbroken trust in the blessed Saviour whom she loved. Shortly before she
died, she quoted to me the words of Mr. Standfast: “I have loved to hear
my Lord spoken of; and wheresoever I have seen the print of His shoe in
the earth, there I have coveted to set my foot too,” and He was faithful
to her to the end.
But, speaking of mercies at that period, I must not omit to mention the
help He raised up for me in my valued friend Dr. Richardson, and my
beloved sister-in-law Lady Parry. Dr. Richardson was the greatest help
to me in the management of my large family, and would come in again and
again as a friend to give me any advice he thought necessary, and tell me
whether he thought it important I should call in medical help, and again
and again has he told me that they wanted no more than their faithful
nurse could give them. As for my dear sister, she was everything that a
widower could desire, tender, wise, considerate, the best of counsellors
and the truest of friends. What she was to me at that time of my
bereavement no words can ever describe.
Then amongst my many mercies at Tunbridge Wells I must reckon the severe
illness which I had ten years afterwards, which I am thoroughly persuaded
my Heavenly Father sent me as a blessing. It called forth the same
unbounded loving-kindness from my parishioners and fellow-townsmen which
I am now experiencing while dictating this sketch of my history, and I
felt at the time that it brought us into a closer relationship with each
other than we had ever known previously. But, above all, it burnt into
my heart those words of the Apostle Paul in 2 Timothy i. 12: “I know whom
I have believed.” Those six words contained the whole of my religion as
I lay for weeks unable to think and pray, for they do not say, “I know
_how_ I have believed Him,” nor do they refer to any qualification in my
own faith, but simply to this qualification as taught in the following
words, “And am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have
committed unto Him against that day.” It was the entire persuasion of
His perfect sufficiency that kept my soul at peace, and has made me ever
since thankful to God for having brought me into the happy experience of
that sufficiency for one who, like me, was altogether insufficient in
himself. I enjoyed also many proofs of the Lord’s providential care, one
of which was so remarkable that I think it ought to be recorded.
After my degree in 1834, I continued to reside at Cambridge and took
mathematical pupils. One summer I took a long-vacation party to
Killarney, and in the course of our residence there a young man came over
from Cork to see me. He had a great wish to go to Cambridge, and having
heard that there were Cambridge men at Killarney, he came over in order
to obtain information. The result was that he came up the next October,
and I was glad to help him in his work, in which he made good progress.
But after some time he told me that the expenses had exceeded his
estimate and that he feared he should not be able to complete his
University career. If richness be measured by the proportion of income
to expenditure, I was a richer man then than I have ever been since, as,
in addition to my father’s allowance, I received a considerable income
from my pupils. I therefore told him that he must go on to his degree,
and with the help of my dearly beloved friend Henry Goulburn gave him a
cheque which he considered would be sufficient. The result was that he
took his degree and left Cambridge. After that I altogether lost sight
of him, and wondered what had become of him.
Thus twenty-six years passed by, and I was very much interested at
Tunbridge Wells in the erection of St. James’s Church, and had issued a
circular requesting that all subscriptions might be paid in by January
1st, 1862. But though the world gave us credit for being extremely rich,
my account at the bankers was so low that I found I could ill afford the
£100 which I had promised. That 1st of January was therefore to me a day
of real anxiety, and in the early morning I committed the matter solemnly
to God, and my Heavenly Father was “thinking upon me” when, after our
family worship, my letters were brought to me, and there was one from my
young Irish friend in which he said that, though I regarded the money
given at Cambridge as a gift, he had always considered it a loan and now
wished to repay it, so enclosed a cheque of £100. It was that cheque
that I paid into the bank with a thankful heart that morning, as my
contribution to St. James’s Church. So my young friend was employed by
my Heavenly Father to take care of the money until the time when I should
require it.
In addition to the deep interest of my own parish, the proximity to
London brought me into contact with various movements of a more public
character. This involved a conflict between my duty to the parish and my
duty to the Church of which I was a member. But I firmly believe that
the parish was the gainer, not the loser, by my interest in those general
objects, and nothing tends more to wither up a man’s ministry than such
an isolation as brings him into contact with his own limited
surroundings, and leads him to stand aloof from the general work of the
Church of God.
Then it has been my desire to attend as far as possible to diocesan
interests, those connected with the rural deanery, the archdeaconry, and
the diocese, such as ruri-decanal meetings, visitations, and diocesan
conferences. It has appeared to me that when, by our position, we have a
right to attend on such occasions, we ought to do so, and that if we hold
back from taking our legitimate part, we have no right to complain if
things are said and done of which we disapprove.
On the same principle I have attended Church Congresses, and have been
thankful for the opportunity of publicly maintaining those great
principles which are inexpressibly dear to my own heart. I have never
hesitated to state what I have believed as clearly as I knew how to put
it, and my experience is that, if a person will attend them in the Name
of the Lord and as a witness for Christ, and will speak without either
reserve or compromise, he will not only receive courteous treatment from
those in authority, but will find a grand opportunity of spreading the
truth through the length and breadth of the land.
I have myself received letters, from all parts of England, thanking me
for words which I was enabled to speak at one of the Church Congresses,
and I have known more than one instance in which words so spoken have
been blessed to the permanent peace of conscientious inquirers.
I have been deeply interested in the large lay and clerical meetings of
the Evangelical body. When I was quite a beginner I listened to an
address at the Islington Clerical Meeting, by the Honourable Baptist
Noel, which has affected the character of my whole ministry. He was
speaking on the subject of spiritual power, and said that, whenever any
attempt at ornamentation became apparent, power ceased. On those words
of his I have acted ever since I heard them, and I am persuaded that
those meetings are frequently the means of making permanent impression on
many of those who are brought together by them. Thus I have always
availed myself of every opportunity of attending such meetings. In the
course of fifty-four years I have missed the Islington Clerical Meeting
only three times, and then from no choice of my own, and they have led to
a very sacred relationship with many of my beloved and honoured brethren
in all parts of the country.
But I have known none that I have regarded as a greater privilege than
our own Aggregate Clerical Meeting at Tunbridge Wells. From that I have
never been absent, except when detained by severe illness, and nothing
can exceed the sacred privilege which I have enjoyed in those happy
gatherings. We have met as brethren in the Lord Jesus, as one in the
great privileges in which we live, as fellow-labourers in our happy
ministry, and as fellow-partakers of the grace of God. We have often
taken counsel together, and though in the course of thirty-four years
almost all the original founders have passed away, there is still the
same spirit of brotherly harmony, and the same loving interest in each
other’s welfare. I often wonder how it is that some dear brethren appear
to me to undervalue such gatherings of those who fear the Lord.
But of all the objects away from home there was none that called forth my
deepest interest like the Committee of the Church Missionary Society. I
do not know exactly how long I have been a member of it, but I was
invited by Mr. Venn when I was Curate of Richmond to join the Committee
of Correspondence, and as I left Richmond forty-three years ago, I
consider that I must have been at least forty-five years a member of that
body, and I regard that membership as one of the great blessings of my
life.
It has been the practice of its management to be always on the look-out
for men who had distinguished themselves and could bring to the Committee
their own experience of the work of the Gospel in those countries where
their lot had been cast, and the result has been that there have been in
that committee room a body of men, many of whom have filled highest
positions under the Crown, but who gladly gave their time and talents to
the patient consideration of the many difficult questions that have
arisen in the progress of the work.
I can quite believe that the business of the Committee might be conducted
with more despatch, and I have myself desired to see some changes in that
direction, but for calm, patient, and prayerful consideration of the
business before them, I have never known anything to exceed the conduct
of the C.M.S. Committee. I cannot express the confidence that I feel in
the fidelity of that Committee, and when I have heard men finding fault
with their decisions, I have often wished that, before finding fault,
they would attend our deliberations and see for themselves the prayerful
process by which they have been led to their decisions. Again and again
have I known them kneel down in the midst of their business, and plead
with God for His guiding hand. And although it would be absurd to
expect, upon every difficult question, forty or fifty independent minds
should think exactly alike, yet I do not remember ever to have known an
interruption of the unity of spirit, and there are few things that I have
felt more, since it has pleased God to lay me very much aside, than the
necessity of quitting my place in that committee room, and losing the
privilege of uniting with such a body of men in such a work as that of
the Church Missionary Society. I trust God will bless them with His own
rich and abundant blessing. They have a noble work before them, not
merely in spreading the Gospel amongst the heathen, but in uplifting the
banner of truth at home, and I trust it may never happen again that dear
brethren, in their earnestness for the maintenance of a pure Gospel, will
ever think of weakening the Church Missionary Society by forsaking it,
and so rejoicing the heart of the great adversary of souls.
* * * * *
With these words the brief Autobiography is closed, and it is
characteristic of the writer that his faithful heart, like the
compass-needle ever pointing to the North, should, after a brief
deviation to his personal affairs, turn finally to the contemplation of
the glorious work of that Society whose cause he loved to plead.
It is, however, impossible to close the volume at this point. The
forty-one years of ministry at Tunbridge Wells were the most fruitful and
important of his life, yet their events are barely noticed in the last
pages that he dictated. We must therefore devote some space to the work
and character of Edward Hoare in that sphere where he became best known,
in which he bore the greatest trials of life, and whence from pulpit and
press that teaching flowed forth by which the Holy Spirit blessed
thousands of anxious souls.
Extract from the Journal, May 1858.
_Thoughts about Personal Holiness_.—Nearness to Christ. Likeness to
Christ. Singleheartedness to Christ.
_The Whole Work of the Holy Spirit_.—In Christ. With Christ. For
Christ.
_Peculiar Importance to Ministers_.—Because we are acting under a strong
religious stimulus which may be mistaken for true holiness.
Must not expect to draw souls nearer to God than we are ourselves. “Be
ye followers of me.”
Because by-ends mar and impede God’s blessing. “My glory will I not give
to another.” “Ye ask and ye receive not,” etc. God has too much regard
for the minister to trust him with success.
By-ends strike at the root of faith. “How can ye believe?” etc.
Nearness to God carries a man humbly through success, and peacefully
through discouragement.
If we live in Christ we shall be carried through the dying hour.
_The Visible and Invisible Life_.—Men see Christ’s Gospel in us. We are
the visible representatives of an Invisible Presence. Thousands read us
who never read their Bibles.
_Questions_.
Is there the same desire for salvation of souls when others preach?
Is there never pleasure in finding others less than ourselves?
Is there real gratification in the progress and success of others?
* * * * *
“Search me, O Lord” (Psalm cxxxix.). “Cleanse the thoughts of our
hearts.” Lev. xxii. 2: “Profane not,” etc.
“Pardon iniquity of our holy things.” “Be ye clean, ye that bear the
vessels of the Lord.”
Pardoned sinners the only witnesses to converting grace.