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.