AMONGST the immediate disciples of the founder of the new community, the most active apostle of the principles of Vegetarianism, William Metcalfe, to whom reference has been already made, claims particular notice. Born at Orton in Westmoreland, after instruction in a classical school kept by a philologist of some repute, he began life as an accountant at Keighley, in Yorkshire. His leisure hours were devoted to mental culture, both in reading and in poetic composition. Converted by Cowherd in 1809, in the twenty-first year of his age, he abandoned the flesh diet, and remained to the end a firm believer in the truths of “The Perfect Way.” In the year following he married the daughter of the Rev. J. Wright who was at the head of the “New Church” at Keighley, and whom he assisted as curate. His wife, of highly-cultured mind, equally with himself was a persistent follower of the reformed mode of living. Sharing the experiences of many other dietary reformers, the young converts encountered much opposition from their family and friends, who attempted at one moment ridicule, at another dissuasion, by appealing to medical authority. Unmoved from their purpose, they continued unshaken in their convictions.

These experiences, it is scarcely necessary to remark, in the lives of followers of reformed dietetics, have been not seldom repeated.

In the Academy of Sciences, instituted by Dr. Cowherd, Metcalfe was invited to assume the direction of the “classical” department (1811). In the same year he took “Orders,” and, at the solicitation of the secessionists from the Swedenborgian Communion (which, with some inconsistency, seems to have looked with indifference, or even dislike, upon the principles of akreophagy), he officiated at Adingham, in Yorkshire. By the voluntary aid of one of his admirers a church was built, to which was added a commodious school-room. He then resigned his position under Dr. Cowherd, and opened a grammar school in Adingham, where he was well supported by his friends.

The United States of America, however, was the field to which he had long been looking as the most promising for the mission work to which he had devoted himself; and in this hope he had been sustained by his Master. In the spring of 1817 a company of forty-one persons, members of the Bible Christian community, embarked at Liverpool for Philadelphia, They comprised two clerics—W. Metcalfe and Jas. Clark—twenty other adults, and nineteen children. Of this band only a part were able to resist the numerous temptations to conformity with the prevalent social practices; and the vast distances which separated the leaders from their followers were almost an insuperable bar to sympathy and union. Settling in Philadelphia—for them at least a name of real significance—Metcalfe supported his family by teaching, while performing the duties of his position as head of the faithful few who formed his church. His day-school, which was attended by the sons of some of the leading people of the city, proved to be pecuniarily successful until the appearance of yellow fever in Philadelphia, which broke up his establishment and involved him in great difficulties; for upon his school he depended entirely for his living. He had many influential friends, who tempted him, at this crisis of his fortunes, with magnificent promises of support, if only he would desert the cause he had at heart—the propagandism of a religion based upon principles of true temperance and active goodness. Both moral and physical superiority pointed him out as one who could not fail to bring honour to any undertaking, and, had he sacrificed conviction to interest, he might have greatly advanced his material prospects. All such seductions he firmly resisted.

Meanwhile, through the pulpit, the schoolroom, and, more widely, through the newspapers, he scattered the seeds of the gospel of Humanity. But the spirit of intolerance and persecution, of self-seeking religionism, and of rancorous prejudice, was by no means extinct even in the great republic, and the (so-called) “religious” press united to denounce his humane teaching as well as his more liberal theology. Nor did some of his more unscrupulous opponents hesitate, in the last resort, to raise the war-cry of “infidel” and “sceptic.” These assailants he treated with contemptuous silence; but the principle of moral dietetics he defended in the newspapers with ability and vigour. In 1821 he published an essay on Abstinence from the Flesh of Animals, which was freely and extensively circulated. For several years his missionary labours appear to have been unproductive. In the year 1830 he made two notable converts—Dr. Sylvester Graham, who was at that time engaged as a “temperance” lecturer, and was deep in the study of human physiology; and Dr. W. Alcott. Five years later, the Moral Reformer was started as a monthly periodical, which afterwards appeared under the title of the Library of Health. In 1838–9 the Graham Journal was also published in Boston, and scientific societies were organised in many of the New England towns. The Bible was largely appealed to in the controversy, and a sermon of Metcalfe’s had an extensive circulation through the United States. With all this controversy upon his hands, he was far from neglecting his private duties, and, in fact, his health was over-taxed in the close and constant work in the schoolrooms, overcrowded and ill-ventilated as they were. In the day and night school he was constantly employed, during one half of the year, from eight in the morning until ten at night; and Sunday brought him no remission of labour.

In the propagandism of his principles through the press he was not idle. The Independent Democrat, and, in 1838, the Morning Star, was printed and published at his own office—by which latter journal, in spite of the promise of support from political friends, he was a pecuniary loser to a large amount. The Temperance Advocate, also issued from his office, had no better success. Several years earlier, about 1820, it is interesting to note, he had published a tract on The Duty of Abstinence from all Intoxicating Drinks; and the founder of the Bible Christian Church in America can claim the merit of having been the first systematically to inculcate this social reform.

In the year 1847 the Vegetarian Society of Great Britain had been founded, of which Mr. James Simpson had been elected the first president. Metcalfe immediately proposed the formation of a like society in the United States. He corresponded with Drs. Graham, Alcott, and others; and finally an American Vegetarian Convention assembled in New York, May 15, 1850. Several promoters of the cause, previously unknown to each other (except through correspondence), here met. Metcalfe was elected president of the Convention; addresses were delivered, and the constitution of the society determined upon. The Society was organised by the election of Dr. William Alcott as president, Rev. W. Metcalfe as corresponding secretary, and Dr. Trall as recording secretary. An organ of the society was started in November, 1850, under the title of The American Vegetarian and Health Journal, and under the editorship of Metcalfe. Its regular monthly publication, however, did not begin until 1851. In that year he was selected as delegate to the English Vegetarian Society, as well as delegate from the Pennsylvania Peace Society to the “World’s Peace Convention,” which was fondly supposed to be about to be inaugurated by the Universal Exhibition of that year. The proceedings at the annual meeting of the Vegetarian Society of Great Britain, and the eloquent address, amongst others, of the American representative, are fully recorded in the Vegetarian Messenger for 1852. On this occasion Joseph Brotherton, M.P. presided.

Two years later he suffered the irreparable loss of the sympathising sharer in his hopes for the regeneration of the world. Mrs. Metcalfe died in the seventy-fourth year of her age, having been, during forty-four years, a strict abstinent. Her loss was mourned by the entire Vegetarian community. By far the larger part of the matter, as well as the expenses of publication, of the American Vegetarian, was supplied by the editor, and, being inadequately supported by the rest of the community, the managers were forced to abandon its further publication. The last volume appeared in 1854. It has been succeeded in later times, under happier circumstances, by the Health Reformer which is still in existence.

In 1855 Metcalfe received an invitation to undertake the duties attached to the mother church at Salford. Leaving his brother-in-law in charge of the church in Philadelphia, he embarked for England once more, and the most memorable event, during his stay in this country, was the deeply and sincerely lamented death of Joseph Brotherton, who for twenty years had represented Salford in the Legislature, and whose true benevolence had endeared him to the whole community. Metcalfe was chosen to preach the funeral eulogy, which was listened to by a large number of Members of Parliament and municipal officers, and by an immense concourse of private citizens. Returning to America soon afterwards, at the urgent request of his friends in Philadelphia, he was, in 1859, elected to fill the place of President vacated by Dr. Alcott, whose virtues and labours in the cause he commemorated in a just eulogy. His own death took place in the year 1862, in the seventy-fifth year of his age, caused by hemorrhage of the lungs, doubtless the effect of excessive work. His end, like his whole interior if not exterior life, was, in the best meaning of a too conventional expression, full of peace and of hope. His best panegyric is to be found in his life-work; and, as the first who systematically taught the truths of reformed dietetics in the “New World,” he has deserved the unceasing gratitude of all sincere reformers in the United States, and, indeed, throughout the globe. By all who knew him personally he was as much loved as he was esteemed, and the newspapers of the day bore witness to the general lamentation for his loss.[264]