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| By Frank Holl Photo credit: Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives |
A previous article noted our ignorance of 19th century Reformed Baptists apart from Spurgeon and, thanks to Iain Murray, Archibald Brown. Having drawn attention to Samuel Morton Peto (1809-1889), we turn now to another Bloomsbury deacon, businessman James Harvey.
Biography
In 1900 a brief memoir From Suffolk Lad to London Merchant appeared. By Harvey's son Alfred James (b 1855), it is the main source for knowledge about him. A loving memoir not a critical biography, it includes the intriguing fact that while still relatively young he resolved not to spend more than one third of his income on himself and his family, not to save more than another third and to give another third of his income to religious and charitable purposes.
Suffolk lad
Harvey was born in Badingham, near Framlingham, Suffolk, then a village of 1800, now more like 500. Born May 16, 1816, he was the second son and youngest of seven. His farmer parents were good living people, if nothing more, who called him "Little Jems". Educated first in the village “Dame school”, a private elementary school, he went on to Heveningham, then Framlingham.
If the family were a good influence, parish rector Clement Chevallier (1765-1830) was not, having no interest in the way of truth. A new and better man came later but Harvey was ready to leave for London by then. His one positive experience of something better came, aged around 10 or 12, when a woman Methodist preacher preached on the village green, probably a Primitive Methodist, a nineteenth century movement seeking to regain the fervour of Wesley's day.
London merchant
On November 2, 1832, Harvey travelled to London by stagecoach to began work in a warehouse at the bottom of the old Holborn Hill (where Holborn Viaduct now stands). His High Calvinist employer Henry Bardwell (d 1845) dealt in woollen and cotton (Manchester) goods wholesale and retail. James started as a Junior assistant at £12 per annum, that soon rising to £20 then £32 then £40. He sent money home to pay off his outstanding school fees and help his parents.
By 1837 he was a Junior partner and when Bardwell died in 1845, joint head of the company alongside contemporary, Joseph Bartram (b 1815). By this time he had saved £2,500. Bardwell left him another £1,000.
Harvey's son comments that the secret of his father's success was twofold. First, he loved hard work. He had good health and never took long holidays. He was not obsessed with money. He was able to relax too enjoying "books of gristle" and foreign travel. He loved work for its own sake but was also driven by a strong sense of duty.
There was also the high principles of conduct that he espoused even before conversion. "Patient continuance in well doing" (Romans 2:7) was a motto text he often quoted. Early on, in a message called What traits of character are most desirable in a business man? he spoke of a proper degree of self-respect (business is not all about profit and loss. Even tradesmen are capable of higher feeling); honesty (the golden law must be recognised and is important); persevering industry; clearness of purpose ("virtue and industry shall never go unrewarded" is one of God's laws). Here was an upright, churchgoer. However, as we shall see, he had more to learn and experience.
James Wells
With no fixed convictions of his own, Harvey joined Bardwell at what was known, from 1838, as Borough Road Tabernacle and, after its first enlargement in 1850, Surrey Tabernacle, Southwark. He sat under the ministry of the leading London Strict Baptist, James Wells (1803-1872).
Hampshire born Wells grew up a godless man but, following an illness in his early twenties, he came under deep conviction and was converted through the witness of Hyper-Calvinists. He became a gifted preacher and had a large and loyal congregation, second only in size to that of his much younger neighbour, C H Spurgeon.
Wells (pseudonym Job) tangled with Spurgeon in the pages of the Earthen Vessel in 1854 and 1855. Spurgeon sometimes called him “King James”. The press called him “Wheelbarrow Wells” or the “Borough Gunner”.
Hyper-Calvinists say gospel invitations are not to be given to all without exception. Only the elect should be addressed. They say the warrant a sinner has to come to Christ is found in his own experience of conviction and assurance and human inability means a man cannot be urged to come immediately to Christ. They also deny God's universal love.
Most dislike being termed hyper, though Wells did not mind. Unlike others, he distanced himself from Calvin and would always mention election and reprobation, often attacking “duty faith” as they call it. Ian Shaw says (High Calvinists in action, 248)
Wells contended that although it was the duty of man to believe the Bible, to repent of his sins, and appear before the bar of God to give an account of his sin, he “dare not say it is the duty of any man upon the surface of the globe to believe to the saving of his soul”. He declared, in 1859: “I will have no fellowship, no personal friendship, with any duty-faith minister; I have no personal antipathy towards him, but I will have no personal friendship with him, because it leads to truth's compromise.”
He had a strong experiential emphasis. “Religion without experience is no religion at all”. A born controversialist, he weighed into controversies over Rahab’s lie, backsliding and against the Son's eternal generation.
Harvey sat under Wells 15 years. He was convinced of election and reprobation and tried to convince others but did not think he himself was elect. He was “unhappy and a stranger to the peace of God that passeth understanding”. Many others appeared to do so but Harvey did not find Wells' ministry helpful. Wells once wrote “I would rather keep a child of God out for seven years than let one hypocrite in, and so deceive the souls of men”. Perhaps that did not help.
On Harvey's piety, Richard Glover, in the memoir, calls it “meditative, intellectual, well-informed” and suggests he perhaps “owed more than he knew” to Wells' “exaggerated Calvinism”. “The gentler gospel which he reached by fighting” says Glover “he held with fuller conviction and deeper sense of its meaning ... the Fear of God was there, and that high Fear ennobled, restrained and strengthened him.”
Bloomsbury Chapel
On December 5, 1848, “the first Baptist chapel to stand proudly on a London street, visibly an ‘ecclesiastical edifice’” not hidden in a back alley, was built. Bloomsbury Chapel, situated strategically between fashionable Bloomsbury Square and the then slums of St Giles, is still there, though the impressive spires of its twin towers were removed in 1951 for safety reasons.
The chapel was built by Peto and the first pastor was William Brock (1807-1885) who, from a standing start, gathered a church of 52 members by July 1849. The church was so constituted that though “recognising no other Baptism but the immersion of professed believers” it would nevertheless “welcome to its fellowship all followers of Christ”.
Faith Bowers (Sense and Sensitivity of Dissent, Baptist Quarterly) wrote that “the term Baptist was deliberately avoided in the title. The Trust Deeds spoke of 'A Christian Church knowing only the Baptism of Believers'.” Brock could write in 1863, “No term of communion has been insisted on but personal religion ... Membership with Christ has been the only prerequisite for membership with our church”.
Born in Devon, of good nonconformist stock, Brock, a watchmaker, trained for the Baptist ministry at Stepney College. He succeeded Strict Baptist Joseph Kinghorn (1766-1832) in St Mary's, Norwich, controversially taking the church in an open communion direction. E C Dargan called him “an admirable pastor and a strong though not brilliant preacher”. Bowers says he was “unconventional, unaffected and warm-hearted, and ... always concerned to relate religion to everyday life”. Active in public affairs, especially the slavery question, he originally moved to London because of ill health but remained at Bloomsbury until 1872.
Harvey had been unimpressed when he heard Brock in Norwich in the late 1830s but he decided to attend the new church for six months, to “give the minister and the doctrines which should be preached a fair trial”. “The first month had not passed away” he came to write “before I found what I had long been seeking in vain. I was able to rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” He began to keep a diary, one of its first entries being made at 7 am on Saturday, December 30, 1848. He wrote:
This has been the most remarkable night of my existence, and the most precious. Not one wink of sleep have I had during the whole time, from 11 o'clock last night till 7 this morning. Last night, as has been my custom recently, I noted down the most important circumstances which occupied my mind during the day; and having had many very important and apparently difficult matters to arrange when I arose in the morning, which during the day were arranged in a way and manner much more satisfactory than my partner and I had been able to conceive of, I felt impelled to record my gratitude to God for so marked (as it appeared to my mind to be) a manifestation of His over-ruling all things to accomplish in the end His own purposes.
On retiring to rest I committed myself to God in prayer, with more freedom of speech than usual; and in pleading for the pardon of sins, and realising the bare possibility of their being forgiven and blotted out for Christ's sake, I felt overwhelmed and could not say another word. In bed, I desired the Lord to have mercy upon me and accept of my imperfect gratitude for His abundant mercies and from that time till 4 am my mind was occupied on matters of business with which I had been concerned during the day, and as I appeared to be at an end of my musings, knowing that today is our stock-taking, and that I shall be engaged in the warehouse till 12 o'clock at night, I again tried to go to sleep, and breathed a desire (which, if it be the Lord's will, may He grant) that He might enable me to be a benefit amongst those under our own roof both for their temporal and spiritual welfare. When in a moment I was arrested by an idea, and these words were fixed in my mind 'Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.' As a father! - 'as a father pitieth his children.' Never did I realise the pity and mercy of God in such a sweet and endearing light. I could but repeat, 'As a father pitieth'. Seest thou a father embracing his son? Seest thou a father whose son is in trouble, whose son is in danger? Seest thou a father bestowing his riches and honour on his son in all the love of his heart? So, even 'the Lord pitieth them that fear Him'. A man may pity a faithful dog, a favourite horse; but as a father pitieth his children.' While lost in admiration in the thought, came one more precious still. 'Because you are children, God hath sent His Spirit into your heart Crying, Abba, Father.' 'God my Father' in this sense, and with these endearing words, can it be to me? When, lo! 'If children, then heirs, heirs to God and joint heirs with Christ.' This was too much for my heart; my only language was, Oh, for faith to believe!' - and I could not possibly restrain my tears. I could only cry, 'Lord, help! Can it be my portion?' And I continued with this threefold text in my mind adoring its beauty though its blessedness seemed far too great for me; when again: 'Can a woman forget bet sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the fruit of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will not I forget thee.' I laid thus for some minutes, for my heart was full to overflowing, and enquired 'What does this mean?' Then came as an answer: 'The love of God shed abroad in the heart.' Then followed: 'God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' The words 'everlasting life' seemed fixed in my ears. There came as a climax: 'I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee.' I could hardly repeat the words. Then came back the thought, 'As a father pitieth,' but I could not repeat the words;' God, my father, who hast loved me with such a love,' I could not say them for several times trying. The thought returned: 'The love of God shed abroad in the heart,' and 'God manifesting Himself to me as He doth not unto the world.' I remembered that I had pleaded with Him for this, and it appeared as an answer to prayer. I then enquired, and do so now I am writing, What is all this that is done ? Is it not to prepare one for some coming trial or difficulty? And my answer from my heart was Come sickness, poverty, peril or death, I can meet them all with the love of God shed abroad in my heart by the Holy Ghost. I resolved to write it all down, if God enabled me, as soon as I arose ... If this which I am writing ever be read by any other being, I pray that he may experience the blessedness which I this morning, from the hours of four till seven o'clock, have been made to feel.
The article appeared in Refomation Today
