[Picture: Rev. John Clayton]
IT was in the month of May, 1801, that the members of the congregation
united in a very earnest call to Mr. John Clayton to become their
minister. As no fewer than a hundred names appear as signatories, we may
infer that considerable progress had been made under Mr. Lake’s ministry.
Mr. Clayton was still formally unordained, though he had been assistant
minister to the Rev. John Winter at Newbury for one year since leaving
college. He was barely twenty-one years of age when he came to
Kensington to take up the work of the pastorate. The portrait of him
that adorns the Deacons’ Vestry, and which is here reproduced, was
clearly taken in the maturity of middle-life. He maintained admirably
the traditions of the Clayton family. His father, the Rev. John Clayton,
was a well-known divine, of the most approved style of pulpit manners.
We read with a kind of awe of his “thickly-powdered head” and his general
magnificence of demeanour. Both his sons, George and John, inherited
their father’s ideal. We have heard it said that the Kensington
congregation has never assembled punctually on Sunday morning since John
Clayton’s day. It was part of the service to watch the procession of
their minister from the vestry to the pulpit. Young as he was, he bore
himself so bravely, in full canonicals, with gloved hands and dignified
movements, that it is no wonder the congregation conceived a great
admiration for his person. No one can look at his portrait without
perceiving that he was a man of commanding presence; and we surely cannot
wonder if he knew it, and utilised it to the best advantage. And it is
only just to him to add, that the effect of his preaching was by no means
due solely, or mainly, to his striking appearance. He was a man of great
mental abilities, and had had considerable culture. He was thus
admirably adapted in many ways to the sphere he was called to occupy.
With a liking for the best society, and a distinguished appearance, his
courtly habits of speech and carriage gained him a deference that was not
commonly paid to Dissenting preachers. If the assiduous cultivation of
these personal characteristics had tended to make him less alive to the
spiritual necessities of his people, we should have been justified in
depreciating them. But it had not that effect. One has only to read the
energetic charge, which his father delivered to him at the ordination
service at Kensington, to see that the fastidiousness of outward manner
and apparel of the elder Clayton were not incompatible with a directness,
incisiveness, and even vehemence of speech, that the warmest partisan
might covet. It seems probable that John Clayton took his father’s
advice not to be an “unfaithful, accommodating pastor” in its most
literal sense. He had been told in the ordination charge not only “to
feed the flock, but to _drive away_ the grievous wolves”; an exhortation
which permitted of a mischievous application. The writer of this sketch
dare not indulge in comments on the impatience of youth, and there is
very little evidence of any kind in the Church records. But what there
is is all in John Clayton’s favour. The Church was by no means clear of
the commercial spirit. The only view of its functions still held by many
was that it was a society for managing certain business in connection
with the expenses of public worship. That such questions must inevitably
arise, and that they should be discussed and answered from a Christian
standpoint, is beyond dispute. But it says much for John Clayton that
the constant intrusion of the merely financial element, and the failure
of those in authority to realise the spiritual mission of the Church,
caused him such concern, that he felt compelled to resign his ministry.
Possibly he was unprepared for the necessarily slow and difficult work of
permeating a society of characteristically business men with the deepest
religious spirit. The membership of the Church stood still. Mr. Clayton
said that he found his sentiments on many subjects, but especially that
of the Lord’s Supper, opposed to those of many of the members. He was
not himself a man who would be easily carried away with a rush of
enthusiasm, and hence he did not carry away others. God was, even then,
preparing just such a man to break down the unspirituality of the
congregation, and to build up a higher form of Christian society in
Kensington; and this man was still at college when John Clayton’s
resignation was accepted in December, 1804.