Daniel Allen: Pastor And Pioneer
Daniel Allen: Pastor And Pioneer
Compiled and edited by J Roe
© Jeremy Roe 1998
Compiled and edited by J Roe with the support of Ryde Particular Baptist Church 22 Blaxland Road, Ryde 2112 NSW, Australia
Posted with permission. Printed copies may be obtained from the Ossett Bookshop.
Preface
There is a class of early settlers of whom Australia is justly proud today. They pursued new avenues of discovery, lent their names to mountains and deserts, and set the standards by which their successors were judged. They possessed qualities of vision, energy, courage, and determination: the ‘true grit’ character which opened up the continent. These were the pioneers.
To attempt to include Daniel Allen within this class might be rejected as presumptuous and inappropriate. A pastor he was indeed, looked upon as a father in Christ by many; but a pioneer also? Surely an extravagant claim! Nevertheless, consider the description given above, and compare the following features to determine what spirit he was of. He pioneered, not in opening up a new country, but in formally establishing the Particular Baptists as a new identity in Australian religious life. The Australian Particular Baptist Magazine bore his name as its founder, and his prolific writing blazed a trail of distinctive truths for those that came after. As for ‘true grit’, he had it in abundance. He was a Caleb-type man: the bigger the challenge, the more he relished it in the spirit of faith (Joshua 14 v 12). Witness his pioneering preaching at the Ballarat gold diggings, a tough environment if ever there was one. Or consider the hostile crowds he faced in the Hyde Park open air ministry. Not to mention the hard and sometimes cruel upbringing he endured as an orphan. Does all this qualify him as a pioneer, at least among Baptists? Well, in one thing he is lacking, and that is recognition. His name goes unknown, uncelebrated, whilst those of lesser men go down in the annals of history. This memoir is therefore advanced in an attempt to set the record straight. Judge him for yourself – was Allen amongst the pioneers, or merely a pretender to that class?
The bulk of this booklet consists of an edited version of the original biographical sketch written by Frederick Beedel, who succeeded Allen in his pastorate in Sydney after his death. It was published in 1901, with its full title as follows: Letters and other writings of the late Pastor Daniel Allen, Particular Baptist Church, Castlereagh Street, Sydney, and minister of the gospel for over forty years in Tasmania, Victoria, and New South Wales. With Memoir. It is just the latter part which has been extracted here.
Allen did in fact begin a reminiscence of his early life, and this was included by Beedel as the first section of the book. It also forms Part 1 of this booklet. Parts 2 and 3 then roughly divide up Allen’s life into the period in Victoria, and the period spent in Sydney until his death.
It has been necessary to condense the original material slightly to fit the booklet format, but not significantly. The use of ellipses indicates where this has been done. Otherwise editing has been largely aimed at improving presentation. Hence, original chapter divisions have not been maintained, but paragraph sub-headings used instead. Place names now show their modern spelling. Metric conversions have been supplied after imperial units. Punctuation has been revised. There have been some editorial inserts where this is considered helpful, including an extract from the Earthen Vessel magazine. Except for the latter, which is clearly referenced, all inserts are either in italics or footnotes.
Some of the necessary acknowledgements take a familiar form. This is not to belittle their contribution, rather to show continuing appreciation of their help. Thus, thanks are due to the Gospel Standard Library for the loan of the original biography, and as a rich source of magazine information. The Gospel Standard, Earthen Vessel, Christian’s Monthly Record, Christian’s Pathway, and Gospel Magazine all carry references to Allen, as well as his Australian Particular Baptist Magazine. A number of the latter have been sourced in Sydney, both from Tom Evans’ private collection, and from the Library of Moore Theological College. David Woodruff and his wife, of the Strict Baptist Historical Society Library, have been helpful beyond the call of duty, especially for their research into Baptists in Suffolk. Laurie Rowston rendered kind service in digging out reports in the Sydney Morning Herald relating to the Hyde Park riots. Ben Wheatley must also be thanked for the photo and details of Collingwood Chapel.
As for general source books, they are listed as follows: Baptists in Victoria – Our first century 1838-1938 by F J Wilkin, Melbourne, 1939, for the Baptist Union of Victoria. Some fell on good ground. A history of the beginnings and development of the Baptist Church in New South Wales, Australia, 1831-1965 by A C Prior, Sydney, 1966, for the Baptist Union of NSW. Forty Years in the Wilderness, by J Chandler, Hartwell, 1893. Also A history of Calvinism in the Baptist Churches of New South Wales 1831-1914 by Dr M Chavura, 1994 (unpublished Ph.D thesis). Notice must be made of Macquarie University Library in Sydney, for supply of the latter.
In concluding, thanks must go to all the helpers involved in their different capacities, including those welcome but self-appointed ‘encouragers’ who have got behind this series and urged it onwards.
PART 1—First The Blade
Birth
His decree who formed the earth
Fixed my first and second birth;
Parents, native place, and time,
All appointed were by him.
[John Ryland (jnr), hymn 64 Gadsby’s Selection]I was born in the obscure parish of Brundish in Suffolk in the year 1824, February 14th. My parents were respectable, industrious, and in the middle position of society. My father was a member of a Baptist church in the village of Stradbroke, where the celebrated Dr [J C] Ryle has laboured in the Church of England for many years. I never remember hearing that there was anything remarkable about my birth but this one thing, that I was ‘born in sin and shapen in iniquity,’ and this fact I have most solemnly felt ever since I was nine years of age. This I have also confessed before my Maker thousands of times, that he might be clear when he judgeth and justified when he speaketh (Psalm 51 v 4). The first thing I can remember in my life was crying for my mother in bed, when they brought a few raisins tied up in a rag and put [them] in my mouth to stop my noise, supposing I should be contented with drawing at the plums instead of the breast. Thus my remembrance began with sorrow, in the felt need of a mother, and often since I have cried for the fulfilment of the promise, ‘As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem’ (Isaiah 66 v 13). The next thing I thought was, if my father ever lay down how can he ever get up again? I could not conceive how a great long man could ever get up if he was once down. This afterwards became a metaphysical question, very hard to learn, relative to my poor father, in which I have thought of a verse in a very old English prayer book, as follows:-
Only thy grace must be my stay, lest I do fall down flat,
Then being down of my own self, cannot recover that.
Early Loss
The next event I remember was being carried by an old lady to see my mother ill in bed, being but two years and a half of age. This was a kind of vacant sorrow, an uncomprehended calamity, the beginning of veiled affliction. What a mercy childish ignorance is; could I have compassed the stern realities of this calamity in my infant mind my heart would have broken, and I too should have gone the way of all flesh. With the child and with the aged how true are the words of Jesus, ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’ The other, God in mercy veils, and our ignorance in this is our bliss.
A few days after, the same old lady carried me in her arms to the house of my father, and all was strange, so very strange, I did not know what. The old lady took me up to my mother, being in a strange long box in the front room. I kissed her with a nervous kiss. That sweet face and last kiss has never been long at a time out of my mind. A death unknown, uncomprehended by me had closed the precious lips of my dear mother, so that I had no more sweet impressions from them. I only thought, how strange she sleeps, she won’t wake up and see me; how strange the box to sleep in. And they carried me away, no more to see her whom I so fondly love until our dust awake and put on immortality at the coming of the Lord.
We shall be with him when he comes
Triumphant down the parting skies,
And when his voice breaks up the tombs
Among his people we shall rise.
None but those who miss it know the value of a mother’s comfort and loving care. I mourned after my mother until I was nineteen, and then with broken spirit I mourned again. Isaac had his mother’s loving care for forty years, but Benjamin soon lost his, and God was glorified in both, and so he is in mine. I have been assured by those who were with my mother and able to judge of spiritual things that she died believing and rejoicing in the Lord Jesus Christ. This has been a source of much comfort and joy to me, for though we have been so long parted in mortal life, we have been long one in the Lord, and shall for ever be so, even in him ‘in whom the whole family of God is named, both which are in heaven and which are on earth.’ I remember being drawn from my mother’s grave in a hand cart with my only sister, a year older than I was. I often in after years went to see that grave and mourn my loss. I had no need to take the writing from the stone by a written copy: it is as plain always to my mind as if the stone was ever before me. It is thirty eight years since I saw it, yet there it stands so plain; every letter on it is as perfect before my eyes as when I first and last read it:
To the memory of
HANNAH ALLEN,
THE WIFE OF ROBERT ALLEN,
Who departed this life
July 20th, 1826
‘What I say unto you, I say unto all, watch.’
[Interestingly this inscription was checked by a correspondent of the Earthen Vessel magazine in 1892, and reported to be slightly different than stated here. The year of death was 1828 according to him, and her age was also supplied – as 61 years. Surely some mistake here! Stradbroke Baptist Chapel graveyard somewhere contains this mystery, but has the clue to it now been erased by time?]Thus rests that sacred dust, awaiting a glorious resurrection from death’s power into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. I must here say as an apology for dwelling so much on my dear mother, that I have ever since realised my human affections to be so intense where they fix that I never could control them. I have endeavoured to understand my poor frail existence in every way, but this part of my being remains a mystery which I must leave God and eternity to unfold. All I know is this, that there is a moving power, in which I would sacrifice worlds and lay down a thousand lives for the object upon which it fixes. This first fixed upon my dear mother, whose face I only once remember to have kissed, and that was in the sleep of death. As this works, in filial, friendly, social and parental ways, it has given rise to much sorrow and dreadful affliction during my life: treachery, deception, cruelty, and misjudgment have very nearly destroyed me sometimes, and I have wished God had not made me thus. However, the Lord has given me many sweets and much natural and holy pleasure in this department of my existence where iron-hearted men have had no delights. Therefore in my right mind I am content with the product of my great Maker’s hands. Not only have I had pleasures with these dreadful pains, but very much profit, since I have known the Lord Jesus in his wonderful pity and love. Oh, how many, many times I have rolled myself into the bosom of his love, the arms of his mercy, and the hands of his pity with the cry of anguish: “Lord Jesus pity me; Lord, save me,” and oh how sweetly he has loved me, pitied me, and blessed me. As one whom his mother comforteth, so the Lord Jesus has comforted me indeed, to whom be glory for ever and ever.
First impressions
Then cast upon this world of woe
A helpless child, forlorn;
Hither and thither made to go,
I wished myself unborn.
From my mother’s grave I was taken with my sister to the home of one of the deacons of the church where my father was a member, meeting for worship at the Chapel in the spare ground of which the dear dust of my mother was interred, as before stated. This good man’s name was Lot Smith, who kept a grocer’s shop in this little old town of Stradbroke. The only trouble I remember here was the terrible teasing by some attendant in the shop. As there was a large malthouse with a long dark wall and volumes of steam flying out of the cowl in the roof just in front of the shop where I now lived, this person told me that the place before us was hell, and that the steam was the smoke of their torments ascending up before God. He also said that a poor old woman who used to come out of the gate below the long wall with a red cloak and a great hood behind it was a messenger of hell. He said that into the hood behind she put all bad boys and carried them to hell-fire. I believed every word of this most horrid and iron-hearted lie, and there lived in constant fear, and when the poor dear old woman used to come to the shop for groceries I used to feel as if I should have died with fear. How I used to run away into any hole and corner to get away from the eyes and hood of this poor inoffensive woman! My first recollections began with the death of my mother, now hell followed death, reminding me of the consequences of being born in sin, going astray from the womb; all under sin, and death passed upon all, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Thus hell follows death, but mercy cries: “The guilty spare,” as Jesus’ blood atones. No God-fearing or sensible person will feel it necessary that they should be cautioned against telling poor children such shocking barbarous tales to make them good, but should these lines fall into the hands of a civilised barbarian, as the one I have referred to, let them know that God will bring them into judgment, and if they repent not, into something more than a maltster’s hell, even eternal fire.
We only stayed at this place a few months, and then were taken to our father in a gig fifteen miles (24km) in another direction, but I ought to say, with gratitude, that the dear deacon and his lady were very kind to us, and that the infernal story was by a shop underling whom I was too young to know; nevertheless God overruled this to my good and his glory, by my having deep impressions of mind about hell and the Saviour afterwards. Rendham (The original reads ‘Rendow’, but no place of this spelling exists in Suffolk. It seems Rendham is meant.) was the place we were next taken to, to an uncle with a large family, and our keep was to pay off an old debt due to our father. These people had enough to do to love and care for their own; no doubt they did the best they could. But I laid, sat, and rolled about in the road in the sun in the summer months, and on one occasion was within a hair’s-breadth of being run over: “But not a single shaft can hit till the God of love sees fit.” How wonderful is the providential preserving care of the Lord over his poor in childhood and youth, when they are in sin, ignorance and death, without friend or helper, and without hope and without God in the world. Thus God, whom I knew not, lovingly kept me, and cared for me with tender care. In this place there was a large Independent Chapel, of the old Puritan order, and to its Sunday School I was sent. This is the first I can remember of the house of the Lord, and all seemed wonderful, nice, and heavenly. So far as my childish ideas of heaven went, I thought this house of God was one of the mansions of heaven; teachers so kind. The solemn sounds of worship then for the first time struck my ears and lit upon the senses of my soul; the sights peculiar to the lower sanctuary [were] then drawn in by my eyes and thus first moved veneration, wonder and intellect, and by these made some secret cords of my heart vibrate in strange emotions to my Maker, whose knowledge then lit up the mind, and led my heart to fear his awful name. The peculiar way in which I received that first impression of the presence of the divine Being upon my natural heart and the senses of my brain, has left with me some idea of something unearthly, celestial and heavenly about that old Puritan Chapel on Rendham hill. How strangely all comes up now after forty five years have rolled into time’s past abyss. That sacred house, with heaven’s soft, silvery light first shining upon my senses, stands like my mother’s gravestone, an endless memorial in my heart and mind of a parent gone and an ever present God.
There I believed, though God I cannot see,
Yet from his sight I ne’er can be;
In childhood’s fears and trembling youth,
My heart has held this solemn truth;
When trouble’s clouds have closed me round,
Some balm in this my heart has found.
True and false
Before I leave Rendham, the place where I first received into my natural mind the knowledge of God, I must have some little more to say of this wonderful strange awe which fell upon my mind and feelings. There was illumination in my intellect and veneration in my heart, which some put down for conversion and change of heart, but they are awfully deceived. I have for many years seen this self-deception by many persons holding all kinds of creeds, from the lowest Arminian to the highest Calvinist. Therefore the Holy Spirit says, ‘Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith;’ ‘Lest any man fail of the grace of God.’ What then was it which struck my heart and mind with such peculiar force, producing amazing reverence, awe, admiration, and in a certain sense, love [of] the all-wise, all-good, and almighty, ever present God? I answer, it was that peculiar passing from, ‘Some men have not the knowledge of God,’ to that other, ‘When they knew God.’ It was the first dawn of the knowledge of God upon a child’s mind who had no conception of a divine Being before. I do not doubt but this is the work of God the Spirit to do this by the use of the means of grace, in the Sunday School, parental teaching, and the services of God’s house. Great moral, social, and national good is done by this operation of God in the means. This saves from Popery and other blasphemies which strive to blind the human mind so that this light should not dawn upon it. But this is not being saved from hell by grace. I must also here notice that it was not painted windows, gorgeous robes, and a splendid parade which struck my childish senses and filled me with reverence to God. I verily believe these toys of the devil so abundantly used by Rome and [the] High Church take the human mind far away from God, and produce contempt in the heart and frivolity in the mind rather than reverence to God. I firmly believe had I been taken into the gorgeous gaities of Rome and High Church follies, I should have been very pleased with the pictures, the silly trinkets, and the white-robed angels, but I do not believe the holy sense of God’s presence would have entered my heart as in the simple Chapel, where all was devotion and humble worship, awed and sanctified by the solemnising presence of God. Just as the natural taste has to be violated, vitiated, and corrupted before the child can drink brandy, rum, and gin: so must the human mind, or rather the senses, be violated, and corrupted, intoxicated and stupefied before it can drink in these stupid follies of Rome, as having anything to do with God. ‘God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things’ (Acts 17 vv 24, 25). We can find all these follies of Rome and [the] High Church in the facts and histories of pagan temples and priests of pagan ages and nations, but not one of them in the simple, holy, spiritual religion of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Old Pagan gods were hung around
With gaudy, glittering toys,
But Christ’s religion stands within,
And springs from heavenly joys.
The Kingdom of God stands in ‘righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.’
Motherly love
There is one thing more I wish to notice before I leave this place where I first knew God: that is, there was a poor, respectable aged woman who kept a little shop there. She seemed to have loved me, and sometimes put her arms round me and pressed me to her bosom. That was wonderful to me, like heaven almost to one who had no mother, no one to love me. I have been thankful to her ever since, and for her few kisses, hugs, and lollies how willingly would I have given her a hundred a year for life when I became a man, if I could have done it and knew where she was. I do hope she went to heaven long ago. Why cannot ladies spare a little love and motherly tenderness to poor motherless boys for the sake of this glory of their sex? Is it nothing to them that their motherly love shall never be forgotten when the child shall become old and grey, and they silent in death? Let me become a poor beggar for the friendless child, gentle woman. Love them, and you will engrave your name deep in a living monument, where death alone can obliterate the letters, and perhaps death itself shall not blot out the strokes which a child’s affections shall receive from your bosom, lips and hands. Luther said of the dear lady who took him in and fed him when he was starving in the street: “Earth has nothing more gentle than woman’s heart where pity reigns.” This is earth’s glory:
Woman, kind! God’s nurse to man,
To soothe his many woes;
She brings him forth, and loves him too,
And shields him from his foes.
Let such as these our glory be,
And share our constant love;
When they grow old and feeble too,
Let not your love remove.
This worthless tribute thus I pay
To her who was so kind,
And pray that all poor friendless lads
Such loving hearts may find.
A nomadic existence
From Rendham we were next removed to Horham, about fifteen miles (24km) back homewards, and only three (5km) from where my mother was buried. We were here put with another uncle, who was a member of a Baptist church very near his house. There were many homely Christians who used to come to his house to dine on the Lord’s Day, who came to the Chapel from a long distance for morning and afternoon service. These good people were all talk, talk about that God, the light of whose knowledge shone into my mind at the old Puritan Chapel at Rendham. They found mouth, and I found ears; they were at the throne, I sat at the footstool. How much of God or of Jesus, the Son of God, I took into my childish mind here I do not know. Nothing struck me with any special power, only the knowledge of the little mind seemed generally enlarged. Here I heard one of the very best men of God in Suffolk, Matthew Harvey, who was long a renowned preacher of God’s gospel at Horham.
[Matthew Harvey (1781-1853). Pastor of Horham Particular Baptist Chapel for 28 years from 1818. Under his ministry the Cause grew and prospered.]I was now about five years of age, and therefore could not compass much as to any distinct knowledge of men and things, and therefore I write of my afterknowledge of dear Harvey the preacher. Nothing remarkable happened here in the marked preservation of my life, or of the troubles of life; a sort of neither sad nor glad, sighs or songs, but a kind of filling up of the blanks of life, if it be right to say so, for certainly to be preserved of the Lord daily, and fed and clothed, was no blank, but a very positive mercy, for which we give thanks.
From this friendly home we were taken to the home of our father, who had not taken to himself another wife, but had hired housekeepers, and these were not mothers, no, not one of them. My father was not much at home, and I was mostly in trouble and at school. I remember sin now came up, and the new birth. My dear sister pointed out sin to me as we walked up Newton’s Lane, from my saying some bad word, and this sin, or the knowledge of sin, came into my mind with an awful gloom, just as the knowledge of God came into my mind like [a] bright shining. The new birth, I thought, must be turning into a babe again when you become very old, and that this would take place if I lived a holy life.
At this time I went to Laxfield Sunday School, at the same Chapel where the great good John Foreman first preached, who afterwards went to London, and was so blessed to many of the Lord’s people in that great city. My mind now gradually enlarged, and my teacher was so kind and took such pains to tell me about Jacob’s ladder and such wonderful things until I thought the very skies and earth were full of God’s great wonders. I seemed to have much delight in thinking and hearing about God’s great wonders. I can now remember many of the texts the good minister, Mr Tottman, used to preach from.
[James Tottman (1783-1871). NB. In the original his name is erroneously spelt ‘Trotman.’ He was pastor of Laxfield Particular Baptist Chapel from 1831-1858. The church here reformed with 29 members when he came. During his long pastorate he received 300 people into fellowship.]I could at this time join in singing the hymns, and began to read about the good and bad boy in the 15th chapter of Luke. I remember one day being in one of my father’s fields, and in the next field to it, belonging to the next door farmer, was a boy at work, and I commenced to talk to him of God, and Christ, and sin and hell (not the malthouse), and death, and heaven, and then I proposed to bring the lesson book, and that we should read and pray. I remember one day we talked of faith when I was gathering docks out of my father’s land, a very pernicious weed, and I said: “I wonder, if I ask God in faith to clear all the field of docks, will he do it?” I was so tired, and wanted to go home. My poor dear sister said: “He will.” But I dared not to kneel down in the field and ask him, for I thought it must mean that God would clear away sin, death, and devils out of our hearts, and not the docks which we could pick up. Now I can see how very kind and good it was of the ever-merciful Lord to give me all this useful knowledge of himself and his wondrous works in creation and providence so early as eight years of age. My dear mother had been gone five years; now God was about to remove my father from me after very great trouble, commotion, and sorrow. The preparations of God in his dealings with us are very wonderful, both in the world of providence and grace. I have sometimes asked: Why take my dear mother and give me but one kiss of filial love? Why deprive me of my father? Why let them turn me out in this dark, cold, cruel world? But then again I have been dumb with silence, because the Lord has done it. Why do I in self-pity ask? Faith and love says I must not ask of that great Monarch who gives no account of his matters. “I wait the great Teacher, death, and God adore.”
A legal wrangle
His providence unfolds the book,
And makes his counsels shine;
Each opening leaf, and every stroke,
Fulfils some deep design.
[Isaac Watts, hymn 4 Gadsby’s Selection]My last chapter left me with my mother dead, my father with my sister and myself, and a housekeeper, upon a farm of my father’s. He also had four houses of his own upon the side of the high road. Two of them had been lately built, and now arose some dispute about green rafters bending under the heavy pantiles upon the roof. Payment was stopped, law began; then bailiffs are in our house, and everything is turned upside down for twelve months. The Sheriffs overleap the protest, and all is sold off, crops and everything. An empty house, without a bed or a single pot or pan; farm entirely naked of stock or crop. Fire never did half the damage the lawyers have done. Mr Huntington thinks the verse he saw in some graveyard in London very nearly true:
Here lies one, believe it if you can,
Who, though a lawyer, was an honest man.
To him the gates of heaven were opened wide,
But shut to all other lawyers beside.
In selling us out of house and home, this high officer of the County of Suffolk had violated some knotty parts of the law, and my father’s lawyer pursued him. Thus law and lawyers, with about thirty witnesses and three counsellors, was the order of the day. Law and desolation were our companions for a long time. All these went to Bury St Edmunds, at the half-yearly Assize, a distance of thirty miles (48km). The first time the trial could not go on. The high men got it put off, to wear out the week. Six months more rolled on, and all off to court again: a most terrible- looking party passing through the villages to the Assize with vans, etc. What an awful difference between this and going up to Zion to worship the Lord of Hosts, as my father had used to do a few years before. Oh, Christian, leave and let the law alone. Ye lovers of the gospel, cleave to the loving sayings of Jesus, and leave vengeance with God. Well, the trial came on, and amongst the thirty witnesses I was one. A stern old wigged counsellor wanted to destroy my evidence, and began like a tiger, asking whether I knew the consequences of swearing to a lie; when I said: “I should go to hell, sir.” I just then thought of the malthouse and the poor old lady with her red cloak. The Judge, however, thought this a satisfactory answer, and rebuked the bully for his harshness. The high officer saw how the trial was going, and offered a sum to end it. My father was induced to accede to that offer, leaving him much worse than when he began; and all went home with ribbons on their hats, and we to begin life again. The crow was plucked, the goose had lost its tail, and the poor sheep its wool. Let crushed parents, desolate homes, and scattered children all proclaim, “Let law alone.” I do not blame my father for his proceedings with the Sheriff for illegally selling us out of house and home, but I think as a Christian it would have been best to have paid at first. However urgent the claim I have never touched law for any purpose of this kind, neither yet has it troubled me. The Lord in mercy let me so finish my days. I always ask lawyers for the charges before the work begins, and thus never have any dispute at the end. I do the same with cabmen, and have no disputation. As I have reflected rather upon the profession under consideration, I feel bound to say that I have met with many truly very excellent men in this profession: men who would scorn to wage the crow and goose-picking system, and such gentlemen ought to be very highly respected and patronised, as we know much business of their kind must be done, and clients, when they fall into the hands of such men ought to feel themselves highly favoured indeed.
Fatherless and friendless
In all this law and confusion my natural religion had been terribly shaken and shattered. I knew not what or how I felt; it seemed a case of confusion. My father struggled to go on again, stocked and cropped the farm, furnished the house, and proceeded to the usual course of action. But he was down, and one fall followed after another, until I, with my sister, farm and house, were left with an uncle, and my father off to these colonies. This brother of my father liked the houses, farm, stock and crops, but sought to push us children off. Oh! how much I suffered in body and mind. The Lord only knows the cruelty of this covetous uncle, who was a great professor of religion, and a Particular Baptist too, which made me stagger at religion. This man would skin a flintstone for a penny. I do not want to harrow up the feelings of humanity by relating what we passed through, poor parentless and friendless children, but my readers may guess a little when I say that we were put to the village hotel, while two parishes had a lawsuit to decide which we belonged to; as my father’s house stood on the line between the two, and they could not decide which we belonged to, so they could not decide which was to bring us up, as uncle had turned us out. I remember some man offered to take us at a price, a stranger from far with a cart. I have often thought we were near being two children in the wood with leaves to cover us, and little robin red-breast for our company, and berries for our food. But the bargain was not made, and we were not taken hence.
Preserved in Jesus when
My feet made haste to hell;
And there should I have gone,
But thou dost all things well;
Thy love was great, thy mercy free,
Which from the pit delivered me.
[John Kent, hymn 732 Gadsby’s Selection]What kind of a figure these monsters will cut at the judgment seat of Christ, I cannot tell; but why say I this when I wish the Lord may pardon them through Jesus’ precious pardoning blood? However, the lawsuit ended, and we were taken by the officer of our parish to the officers of the other parish, walking by the side of his horse all the way. Then I was doomed to toil hard, early and late, in the cold fields with flocks and herds, for two shillings per week with which I had to keep myself, and had to buy everything for myself, even to a candle to go to bed with. These were hard things for my feelings and combination of being. I felt the truth of the word of God where it says: ‘So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive. Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun’ (Ecclesiastes 4 vv 1-3). “Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.” Nevertheless, let me refrain from this reflection upon men, and let me view all these things designed of God permissively for my good.
All my times are in thy hand,
All events at thy command…
All must come, and last, and end,
As shall please my heavenly Friend.
[John Ryland (jnr), hymn 64 Gadsby’s Selection]Thus it was with me, for while I was calling upon the Lord as my Maker to preserve me, his desolate and most sorrowful creature, he led me to see myself, and solemnly to feel too, that I was a guilty sinner exposed to his just but everlasting anger. The word applied was, ‘The sacrifices of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord.’ This I felt applied to my prayers to God. I was led to see we were born in sin, and that we were all in sin, and all over sin, and that everything out of Christ was vile, prayers and all. I prayed for pardon, and promised to be good, but I seemed to rather bottom my prayers for pardon upon my promises to be good in the future, rather than entirely upon the merits of the death of Jesus. I felt something like the sentiment set forth in the following verse:
Lord, when thy spirit descends to show
The badness of our hearts,
Astonished at the amazing view,
The soul with horror starts.
The dungeon, opening foul as hell,
Its loathsome stench emits;
And, brooding in each secret cell,
Some hideous monster sits.
[Joseph Hart, hymn 310 Gadsby’s Selection]Here began my spiritual existence.
Further spiritual teaching
On thy kind care my God
My childhood’s cares were cast;
Thy hand protected oft my heart
From life’s tremendous blast.
I have often thought that this bitterness in the bud of my existence has given rise to much sweetness in my after life, for I never sat down to the table of bountifulness, which is mostly spread in these colonies, but I remember the wormwood and the gall of this my early English hunger and want. Many times my heart has overflowed with gratitude and praise, while others have sat over God’s bounties with murmurings and complainings. Another thing, the gospel is mostly associated with much need of hardness and endurance. The Lord thus prepared me for this. This trying part of my life was very necessary to give me a good and solid education in natural husbandry, for everything relative to farming, gardening, flocks and herds I can do, which has been very useful to me and many others of my people in these colonies, as they have begun life in these new discovered ends of the earth where God has cast their lot. And again, as much of the word of God is taken from these manners and customs of visible life, it has afforded me much advantage in expounding the word of God. Thus out of the eater has come forth meat, and out of the strong, sweetness. The bitter has become sweet, and the medicine, food. Praise the Lord! I daily toiled in weakness, cold, and want, and daily groaned under a sense of sin; mourned after my mother, lamented the absence of my father, and wept for the oppression by which I so much suffered. I tried to be holy every day, and yet knelt at my bedside every night and mourned over my manifold failures, and again sought pardon upon promises to be holy. I seemed like a feather in the air, tried with every blast. “The more I strove against sin’s power, I sinned and stumbled but the more.” No sweet Sunday School now, no kind teacher, no means of grace; all toil, toil. All I seemed to know was,
That awful day will surely come,
The appointed hour makes haste
When I must stand before my Judge,
And pass the solemn test.
To this solemn apprehension of the coming judgment I could very truly, from inward love to Jesus say:
Thou lovely chief of all my joys,
Thou sovereign of my heart,
How could I bear to hear thy voice
Pronounce the word depart?
If I could feel cheerful enough at any time to sing, it would be mostly this 107th hymn, 2nd book, Dr Watts’, to Mount Pleasant tune. And so acquainted did I become with this tune and hymn that I can always strike that off in a moment’s notice at the right pitch: and if I require ‘A’, I strike off this tune to get it to this day. This to me is of great historical importance.
For years I scarcely ever sung the verse following without tears:
Jesus, I love thy charming name;
’Tis music in my ear;
Fain would I sound it out so loud,
That earth and heaven might hear.
[Philip Doddridge, hymn 138 Gadsby’s Selection]And more especially the following:
Jesus, I’d throw my arms around,
And hang upon thy breast.
Without a gracious smile from thee
My spirit cannot rest.
A shepherd boy
In taking care of a small flock of sheep, as Jacob and David used to do, I learned much, very much, in summer heats and winter’s cold, which has been invaluable to me in feeding the flock of God. I had names for them all, and called them all by names. I named them according to their dispositions, tendencies, forms, colour, or habits. One was Happy, because she would hop over any ditch into mischief. Another, Wanderer, because she would go away from the flock. Another, Weak Eyes, because she could not see well. Another, Bow Legs, and another, Sandy, and so on. I have since seen that God calls his sheep by name in the same way: ‘Poor and Needy,’ ‘Weak Hands,’ ‘Feeble Knees,’ ‘Fearful Heart,’ ‘Meek,’ ‘Poor Man,’ ‘Worm,’ ‘Blind.’ “Ready to Halt,” Bunyan calls some of them, etc. Now all this is from some tendency, condition, manner, or disposition, or affliction or infirmity of which they are the subjects. This is a small sample of the educational advantages God gave me, which I had never from man, friend or foe. Then the lambs in May and June on the little hills, the sunny side of the May hedges: how they would leap and skip and run up and down; how sweetly they would turn their dear little heads to each other, as if they would push each other, but oh, so gently, so lovingly. People talk of the graces and gentleness, politeness and amiability and grandeur of manners. These things were never seen in the palaces of monarchs as they were played off by these lambs. O Lord how wonderful and manifold are thy works; in wisdom hast thou made them all. The substance of these lovely beauties is only to be found in the holy places of Zion, where young converts are brought under the powerful love of the living Saviour: where they dance in the joys of salvation and leap in the ecstasies of divine love and grace. They skip in the green pastures of truth. They run up and down the hills of gospel promises in the sunshine of the Lord’s heavenly countenance. How sweet the figure, how divinely amiable the spiritual substance. O, ye monarchs, princes, lords, and judges of the earth, ever know that you are vulgar mannered and unamiable, rude and coarse, in comparison with these sweet and innocent creatures upon which you feed as beasts of prey. If ye eat of their dainties and clothe you with their beauteous robes, manifest some of their gentleness, gracefulness, meekness, and tenderness. Ye lambs of Christ’s fold, go to these thy teachers in the Lord’s school of emblems, and learn how you should behave in the church of God, in the gospel fields of Jesus. Let not bitterness, revenge and anger disgrace your kind, and leave earth’s flocks to reprove you and put you to shame. When the tiger’s face appears in your anger, go to the sweet companions of my earliest days and learn the lamb-like love.
There was another lesson I learned in these my college days from a fine old ram. Some very mischievous fellows had provoked him and taught him to drive at people and knock them down flat. If I did not please him he would turn upon me and level me with the ground in a moment, and having humbled me he would be content and as pleased as possible. Sometimes he would knock me down backwards and sometimes forward. But as dear Trapp says, “It is better to fall forward in zeal than backward in apostasy or sloth.”
[John Trapp (1601-1669). Puritan divine and Bible commentator, famed for his quaint sayings.]So I found it always best to be knocked down forward from behind by this gentleman of the field. You will ask me what I think of this kind of amiableness of the flock? I answer it was vile man that taught the ram these bad manners. The heathen had mingled with him and taught him these ill manners and bad ways. And have we not some of these very naughty old rams in Zion’s fold? I have, as a shepherd in these folds, been knocked down backwards and forwards, right side and left side, but I think as my Master lifts me up again, “Ah, those bad fellows from below have taught them these bad ways, and so I try to bear it and get into the lamb side of the flock; they are so tender and kind.” Nevertheless, I felt it necessary to give him a rap on the head sometimes with my crook, and so it is in Zion. They must have a middling rap sometimes, as one must magnify one’s shepherdly office. Whenever I did magisterially correct this gentleman of the field for his impertinence in levelling me to the ground, he would take it much more patiently than I did when he used to floor me. Here there is a lesson for other rams.
My educational accomplishments were greatly advanced in lambing time. I would gently lead those that were with young. Like my brother David, God took me ‘from following the ewes great with young.’ He brought me to feed Jacob his people and Israel his inheritance; so I have fed them according to the integrity of my heart, and guided them by the skilfulness of my hands, (Psalm 78 vv 71, 72), as taught by David’s Lord and antitype. This was a time of great importance and much anxiety. There must be much solitude, attention, nourishment, and warmth; separation from the crowd, single cots, heads high, and let alone; no disturbance, no dogs about, nothing to frighten, all quiet and still; gentle help in extreme cases, tender, skilful help, salt, and the Balm of Gilead is all that is required in these winter lambings in Zion’s holy folds.
Sheep and dogs
There is one more lesson I took before I became qualified in this school. One of the house dogs once enraged some sheep, and the sentence was that he should be put into a small room with my pugilistic ram to receive his chastisement: and if that old ram did not make him scream enough, as one would say, to raise the dead! I really thought he would have broken every bone in the dog’s skin. I cried: “For pity’s sake let the dog out.” Well, now, did not that old Lutheran ram very nearly kill the priestly dogs of Rome? Did they not scream and frighten all Europe? Did not that old Augustinian ram make that old Pelagius quake again? He broke every limb in his body. The Athanasian ram knocked the breath out of the Arian dog. The modern Toplady, Hervey, Romaine, Gill, and Huntington rams have broken the five ribs of James van Arminius many times over. Other rams horned with Paul’s Epistle to the Romans still make the dogs cry out, “Pen and ink, pen and ink.” How very sublime, I have often thought, the following verse upon the spirited disposition of men of God in the defence of truth:
Hast thou a lamb in all thy flock
I would disdain to feed?
Hast thou a foe before whose face
I’d fear thy cause to plead?
[Philip Doddridge, hymn 1066 Gadsby’s Selection]These honoured servants are promised unto the church, for thus saith the Lord, by Isaiah (60 v 7): ‘All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto thee, the rams of Nebaioth shall minister unto thee: they shall come up with acceptance on mine altar, and I will glorify the house of my glory.’ And we know the dear Apostle said to those elders, ‘Feed the flock of God,’ and, ‘Beware of dogs;’ ‘Not sparing the flock.’ In all these things I received much instruction in these days of my childhood by these my toils in hunger, cold, and soul trouble, in which I seemed to gain no advancement in the divine life. Sinning and repenting, praying and vowing, concern and calmness, folly and wisdom, Christ and the creature, free will and free grace, seemed to have been the sad mixture of my mind and life. I made no profession of religion, no pretence; neither do I believe there was a boy in the whole parish that lived more morally correct. I had neither disposition, means, nor time to commit outward sin. But the plague within, manifesting itself in thoughts, feelings, words and ways, slew me every day.
Hard labour
The fictious power of chance
And fortune I defy;
My life’s minutest circumstance
Is subject to his eye.
[Charles Wesley (altered), hymn 70 Gadsby’s Selection]There was a little change in my occupation when I was about eleven years of age. They took me from the kind sheep and put me among the great rude rough horses, to drive them at plough and in carts about the farm. This brought me into danger of my life, as I was too small to manage them. What I have to say against the noble horse, one of God’s great gifts to man, must rather be understood to arise from my inability to manage them than from their viciousness. But still the horse is a vain thing for safety. On one occasion the Lord’s hand appeared very great in my deliverance after the following manner. There was a very vicious horse which the mischievous young fellows who taught the ram to fight had been teasing in the yard all one Sunday almost, so as to get the animal to run at them with open mouth; and not knowing this, on Monday morning I went to drive this horse into the stable, when he came at me with fury. I leaped into a bin, and so escaped with my life through the good hand of the Lord to a friendless lad. He declares himself to be ‘A father to the fatherless.’ For this mercy I praise the Lord. One of these great brutes used to try to tread upon me as I would be cleaning her, and she would sometimes strike my feet and give me pain for hours, and one of my large toes is crippled to this day with her stamping upon it; and on one occasion she took hold of me with her mouth and threw me into the manger, and would soon have killed me, but my God and Saviour, the guardian of the poor, sent a man at that very moment to deliver me.
Thy hand thus saved my life,
Kind guardian of my soul;
Thy watchful eye and covering wing
Has thus preserved me whole.
Now, let not my readers think I wish to startle them with wonders: by no means. I only wish to set forth the kind care of the Lord that godly parents may be hereby encouraged to leave their children with the Lord, who can and will preserve them always. I was once running a horse out of the field, by order, with a stick, when going too near, it lashed out and struck me in the eyebrow, and fractured the bone. They came and picked me up, and brought me to with water, put some sticking-plaster over the wound, and sent me four miles (6.5km) with butter and other things with the same animal that very night, with a handkerchief tied over my eye; it was wet and cold too. The next morning I was blind with both eyes. Then, as I could not be used for anything, they sent me three miles (5km) to a doctor, and my poor dear sister to lead me.
She had a little brother
Who had not an eye,
And all he could do
Was cry, cry, cry.
There was such pulling and oiling and feathering to get off the slips of sticking-plaster now sunk into the great swelling: I can seemingly feel it now. However, the Lord preserved me and blessed the doctor’s work, and the place where the bone joined is now very feeble in my eyebrow to this day. A very little lower, my eye would have been gone: a little higher, my head would have been opened. How true it is, verily true,
Not a single shaft can hit
Till the God of love sees fit…
He who marks the sparrow fall,
Looks with tenderness on all.
I can from the inmost feelings of my heart in grateful truth exclaim, ‘He keepeth all his bones, not one of them is broken.’ On one hot summer’s day, the flies so tormenting the horses, I was taking a load of stores with a spirited horse, and, coming to a gate was trying to stop it at its head, when it dashed against the gate and caught my neck with the shaft against the back of the gate. It seemed as if my head was off for the moment, but the Lord so ordered it that the clasp was only just on the point and thus flew off, and the gate flew open and I escaped. Again I saw the good hand of my ever-watchful Lord and most merciful Saviour. As I think on these things I feel I am the Lord’s, to love, serve, and obey him by a thousand obligations in his love, choice, redemption, calling, and preserving care, which have been so very great and seem to demand of me to bear these testimonies of it before I go hence. Perhaps some would doubt whether people in good old England could be so unfeeling, unkind and tyrannical. Well, I only say these are facts, and there have been millions more like them. The boys in these colonies ought to be put to work, [but] not to this tyranny.
Before I leave the noble though sometimes vicious horse, I must mention the wonderful kindness and cleverness of one. One cold winter’s night I had been sent to a village on the back of this creature, and became so numb and stiff with the frost that when we came to our gate I could not open the gate’s latch, and what would have come to me in that state I do not know; but just as I began to cry and pray in my simple silly way, the animal put her nose to the latch and pressed the gate open and took us safe home. The dumb ass spoke, and the milch kine took the ark of God in the right way to Israel under the influence of God, whose are the cattle upon a thousand hills and by whose voice the hinds are made to calve. Some will say some animals are more wise and kind than others. Very true, but who made them so? And who ordered me the kind and wise one this night? Let these cavillers know, who seek to reason away God’s divine providence and special care upon the premises of natural causes, that an uneducated boy could most gratefully see and acknowledge the invisible hand of God in the things which do appear, the unseen in the seen, and yet highly appreciate the excellencies of the creation in which they appear with very vivid feelings of reciprocating kindness.
God’s provision
I came now to a very marked turn in the events of my life in these juvenile days. My tyrant of a master would send me into the turnip field to grope in the snow for a load of them, after all the others had gone home from the day’s toil. This I saw and felt to be insufferable, and stood up before all the men and rebuked him sternly for his injustice. This provoked him to order me away, after keeping me waiting in the snow a long time for 1s. 4d. for four days’ work. This is the land, too, where they sing Britons never shall be slaves. However, I must not reflect upon my nation, but look above. I now thought that God was angry with me, because I had not kept my vows to be holy for six or eight weeks, at least which was the time I had set myself, from some cause or other. I cannot tell why, but I thought I must be holy so long before I could be pardoned. If my reader thinks this very silly, so do I now. Yet what is it but the very silliness upon which the Church of Rome and all Arminianism is founded? However, now I thought I was undone, and that God was come forth against me and I should be lost for ever. I prayed and vowed that if God would forgive me this time, I would be sure to be better ever afterwards. I seemed to weep and pray and vow all night. The Lord heard the voice of the child weeping when Hagar’s bread and water was gone, after she was turned from the home of Abraham: he sent the lad supplies. He heard the voice of desolate Moses in the reeds in the river, and sent great ones to his aid.
In the morning there seemed like a voice commanding me to go and spend my 1s. 4d. in the treasures of the sea, directing where and which way. I do not say it was a voice, but the communication to the mind was the same as if the words were spoken. I did as I was bidden, and the result was wonderful: much abundance in all good things, all the winter in all ease, comfort, justice and peace. Why should I be ashamed of this marvellous interposition of the kind providence of my God? Ought I not rather to glory in the kind care of him whose kind compassions fed so many thousands with a few loaves and small fishes, for which the very Son of God lifted up his holy eyes to heaven and gave thanks, and upon which he invoked the blessing of his and our heavenly Father? The great Son of God with his highly favoured few were often by the sea side, and there often sustained by the treasures of the deep. Did he not thus feed them when he said, ‘Children, have ye any meat?’ and, ‘Come and dine’? Shall my pride disdain in the deed that’s worthy of a God? I do here confess to the great wickedness of my proud nature in being often ashamed of this fishing dispensation. But as I see my dear Lord and kind Saviour so doing and so sustained, my heart rejoices in,
Following where he doth lead,
By rolling seas or in the dewy mead.
As I see him in this flash before me, my soul spits fire in the face of my nasty pride, and in the joy springing from a sense of his kind care. I will dash underfoot the carnal shame of my proud flesh, which would lead me to hide the wonders of my Lord, and thereby hide and withhold the breasts of consolation from his tried people. I remember being so emboldened in the Lord by this wonderful providence, for which I praised the Lord in my simple way, that when the son of my former tyrant met me one day and asked me how I lived, I replied: “Since I left you I have lived well, for I have had roast flesh three times a day.” This vexed and puzzled him, for this was more than he could say; but I had an eye to 1 Corinthians 15 v 39 when I said this.
Elijah’s example declares,
Whatever distress may betide,
The saints may commit all their cares
To him who will surely provide.
He ravens and lions can tame!
All creatures obey his commands!
Then let us rejoice in his name,
And leave all our cares in his hands.
[John Newton, hymn 276 Gadsby’s Selection]Human kindness
Early in the spring after the events last recorded, I met one day one of the principal gentlemen of that part of the country, and he enquired how I did, and after my welfare. And I frankly told him all the particulars, and he then bid me go to his house the next morning, which I did, and he requested me to enter his very excellent establishment as a lad of all sorts and master of nothing. Here I saw the Lord’s hand again, and tried in my simple childish way to thank him. I had a very strange way of thinking that God was angry or pleased with me, according to his acts of providence. If well, I thought him pleased: if ill, I supposed him angry. Nothing could be more incorrect: for the most abominable in his sight are prospered very often, and the most loved ones are often most afflicted, proving that this world is very seldom the place of retribution. Yet this error of my childhood is the same as that held by Job’s friends, and is the very foundation of Romanism and Arminianism, all which is antagonistic to the new covenant. But it must be remembered I was under the law in legal bondage; I spake as a child, I thought as a child, but when I became a man I put away these childish things, yet now they cleave close to my lower nature, and will as long as I am in the body.
Now in this gentleman’s home I found all manner of human kindness, which acted like magic upon my nature. I would fly like lightning at the kind words and acts of this lady and gentleman. No one unless they were made of my stuff can form any idea of the extraordinary emotion of my heart under this process of kindness. I thought of my mother, and almost reverenced the ground upon which this lady walked. When she required anything from the village it was not long in coming, for I could move smart in those days. They were frequently out to parties, and she would not have the servants kept up, therefore it fell to my lot to get up and open the door. She used to boast that she was never kept waiting in the cold. Often while she was yet calling me up, the door flew open. Tyrants are served with eye-service, but kind people are served with willing love. The one is law service, the other gospel service. Here was a good home, a long home, a loving home. I feel I could write volumes upon this lady and gentleman and their delightful establishment. They have corresponded with me in these colonies under my old boy name, ‘dear Dan.’ I have not heard from them for some time now. They sent my dear deceased sister’s children out to me. All the outer life was peace and plenty and good will, with much loving kindness from high and low, with whom I flattered myself I was in considerable favour. Now my readers will wish to know what became of my vows and promises to be holy. Alas! Alas! if such know what fallen nature is, what the plague of the heart is, they will know what became of them. God seldom saves a soul till these are smashed all to pieces, and devastation and utter ruin take their place, until the soul has no ground upon which it dares to make a vow or promise to be holy from the resources of fallen man, all over sin, no part whole, healthy or good. Oh! how truly vile, how horribly base! Though I so manifestly failed in keeping my vows, yet I loved the house of God where Matthew Harvey preached at Horham Baptist Chapel. I knew he was a man of God. I loved to get away to the village prayer meeting. I remember some of the sayings in those prayers now. I could sing, and loved to sing with them. My privileges were few of this kind; Church was the place to which I had to go, and I was disgusted with the fuss, and in satire made sport for the young people around me. When the parson gave out the marriage of parties, I answered, “I have no objection,” and hid myself. The people filled the Church with laughter. £1 reward was offered, but no one would tell of me. They would marry people and say, ‘What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder,’ and then the same parson would put them asunder a few weeks after at the union workhouse. I once saw almost all the people get up and go out of Church when one of these hireling parsons went into the desk robed up. I once heard our dear lady say as she came out of Church, with much warmth: “We want something more substantial than talking of poor people taking a few turnips in their hunger.” God bless the dear lady with that something in a precious Christ, namely, substance flowing from eternal love through pardoning blood.
Salvation! O the joyful sound!
’Tis pleasure to our ears,
A sovereign balm for every wound,
A cordial for our fears.
[Isaac Watts, hymn 213 Gadsby’s Selection]This brings to a close the autobiographical part of Allen’s life story.
PART 2—Then The Ear
Memories of Suffolk
‘He led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye’ (Deuteronomy 32 v 10).
We very much regret that our dear brother did not continue the story of his life from year to year and finish it, which from his own pen would have been very interesting; but even this we have was only obtained from him by the urgent request of his friends, and for their special benefit at the time he wrote it, though he afterwards consented to its publication with the hope that he might continue it: but it remained unfinished. He leaves off at a very interesting period, and the following years of his experience in England abounded with striking events and stirring incidents which we have often heard him relate, for the Lord was instructing him in those early days with a strong hand.
He left the land of his birth under very discouraging circumstances. Disappointment had well nigh broken his heart, to which he very touchingly refers in his letter to the church in Suffolk thirty eight years after:-
Sydney, November 1882
Dear kindred in Christ,
How much I was refreshed and delighted in my soul to see Ipswich on your letter. Thirty eight years…ago I sat in the middle of your meeting house to hear Cornelius Elven of Bury St Edmunds upon the Jubilee of the Baptist Missionary Society for the villages.
[Cornelius Elven (1797-1873). A Bury St Edmunds man through and through. He was born in the town, baptized there in 1821, in 1823 became the pastor of the Particular Baptist Chapel there, and finally died there.]There I sang from my heart with the people on that blessed day:
Blow ye the trumpet, blow
The gladly solemn sound!
Let poor insolvents know
To earth’s remotest bound:
The year of jubilee is come;
Return, ye ransomed sinners, home.
[Charles Wesley, hymn 59 Gadsby’s Selection]I went to dear old Stook in the morning, to yours in the afternoon, and to Globe Lane at night to Mr Elven. I gave all my money on that blessed day, and neither He nor I have forgotten it from that day to this. I was [nineteen] then, I am now fifty eight. I got a sweetheart on that day in your meeting house. Oh! what has passed since then! What has passed? Oh! yes, what? Oh! my dear God, ’tis easier thought than said. ’Tis fully comprehended in thy great mind: not half in mine. My own dear God and precious Lord blessed me in Ipswich forty years ago, and he has blessed me ever since with stripes in correction and marks of honour with sanctified sorrow and heartfelt joy, with deep convictions and precious absolutions, with instructing privations and heavenly communications, with teaching attacks of devils and the holy help of angels, with a view of death’s sting and the felt life of God, with a feeling sense of waves of guilt and the realisation of the ocean of his love.
What has passed since I was in your meeting house forty years ago? Sin, that stood before my face, and God has passed over behind his back, (Isaiah 38 v 17). He will not see it, he will not turn away his blessed face from me to look at that sin. It is drowned in blood, ‘as far as the east is from the west’ it is removed from him and me. He removed it in one day, (Zechariah 3 v 9). What has passed since I was at Ipswich? Forty years of shameful infirmities of my poor sinful flesh, so God-provoking and base that I blush to remember it, though I know my Lord will never once think of it or condemn me for it. What has passed?! Forty years of unbounded mercy, in inextinguishable love, amazing grace, almighty power, wondrous compassion, unbending fidelity, glorious wisdom, sublime counsels, heavenly condescension, inexhaustible forbearance, unspeakable favours, holy faithfulness, and infinite tenderness. He has blessed me like a God for ever; blessed be his most adorable name.
‘Bless the Lord, oh my soul.’ If I die when I finish this letter to you, I will, with my last mortal breath, declare he has been to me a God of inexpressible, unutterable love and grace, mercy and truth in and through the precious blood and righteousness of the Lord Jesus, to whom be all glory and praise for ever and ever. Amen. How the ancient Jew loved the land of his birth! In chains of captivity and soul-felt grief he wept, and could not forget the city of his fathers; and can I forget thee, oh Ipswich? Shall I not remember thee, oh Suffolk! No, no, sooner shall my hand forget its cunning if I remember not thy Zion hills above all earthly joy.
In Horham I heard dear Mr Harvey, in Laxfield dear Tottman, in Fressingfield dear Spratt speak of Jesus’ love when I was a poor little forlorn boy.
[George Denny Spratt, erroneously and perhaps unkindly called Splatt in the original! He was a builder as well as a local minister, and was responsible for the unique ‘coffin’ shaped Chapels of Suffolk, of which Fressingfield is an example.]When a youth I heard of him in your meeting house, and at old Stook, and at Globe Lane, and at Drury Lane by the old lovers’ walk. Yes, I heard of Jesus in these places… Thus I loved him in Ipswich, but I did not know that he loved me so as he does. He had not then said to me, ‘I have loved thee’ (Jeremiah 31 v 3). He has many times told me so since I left Ipswich. Now we two are so joined that he will not reign in heaven and leave me behind.
With unfeigned and inextinguishable love, you dear people of God in Ipswich, I am yours in the Lord’s inexpressible bonds of love,
Daniel Allen, Pastor.
A new life
Leaving England, he arrived in Sydney, NSW, in January 1845, stayed eleven weeks, and then left for Launceston [Tasmania]: and here it appears the Lord had some bright days in store for him. The time of love, the appointed time and place had come when the balm should be applied, and the oil and the wine poured into his troubled heart. Arriving on the Lord’s Day he went straight to Pastor Dowling’s Church, and there found his father, who was a member of the church there. How often we have heard him refer to this meeting as being the only time in his life he ever felt the warmth and strength of a father’s love, which to one of such a deeply sensitive nature as his meant so much. Then it was not long after his arrival here that the Lord manifested his parental love to his heart by the powerful application of the words, ‘Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world.’ This brought pardon and peace and liberty into his soul, and brought him into that sweet union and fellowship and nearness to God his soul had been longing for for many years. Our brother always considered this was a revelation of Jesus the Son of God to his soul. It was then in the fulness of his joy and peace his mouth was first opened to speak to the praise of the mercy he found. His usual way of expressing it was in the words of Watts:
O what immortal joys I felt,
And raptures all divine,
When Jesus told me I was his,
And my Beloved mine.
[Isaac Watts, hymn 266 Gadsby’s Selection]Here, too, he had the sweet enjoyment of the ministry of Mr Dowling, who was as a nursing father to him, and a near and close union and intimacy sprang up between them. And here too shortly after this, he, with Mr and Mrs Waller (both of whom were wrecked in the Dunbar on Sydney Heads some years after), Mr [Benjamin] Dowling and thirty others, was baptized by the venerable pastor and united to the church.
[The story of this gracious man of God and his pioneering ministry in Tasmania has been told in Booklet No. 1 of this series: Henry Dowling: Beyond all Bounds. It also contains the tale of the Dunbar tragedy, as the Mrs Waller mentioned was his daughter.]Here, too, our brother found a partner and companion in life, and was married by Mr Dowling in 1846, and went on to a farm and resided in Launceston until the year 1848. And now after four of the happiest years of his life, the Lord, having appointed another sphere for him and other labours, stirs up his nest. The day of adversity is set over against the day of prosperity, and reverses come and losses. His crops are swept away, his prospects here are changed and blighted, and he has to leave this spiritual home and go to Victoria. Arriving in Melbourne a stranger in a strange place, the first place of worship he attended was Collins Street Baptist Church, then being ministered to by a Mr Lush, and afterwards Mr Scott: but eventually he found out the church meeting in Lonsdale Street, then under the pastoral care of Mr John Turner. In the course of time our brother joined this church, though it was not to him what the pastor and church at Launceston had been.
It was during this period in Victoria that John Chandler met Allen, as recorded in his vivid autobiography ‘Forty years in the Wilderness.’
[Republished in an edited edition in 1990 by Loch Haven Books, Victoria. Also available from the publishers of this series.]
He feelingly recounts Allen’s kindness to his family, newly arrived from England. At a time when work was hard to come by, he employed Chandler’s father as a carter in a little haulage business he had begun. Later he helped him set up for himself in this line of work. Chandler also declares that Allen was actively involved in the construction of Lonsdale Street Chapel, built in 1850: hauling stone for it from the quarry. This was only the second Baptist place of worship erected in Victoria, and the first for the Strict and Particular Baptists. He describes Allen as “a kind, warm-hearted friend indeed.” In contrast, Chandler’s views of John Turner were less enthusiastic, considering him to be wise in his own conceit; certainly he had some rather singular views, as will be seen later.
Preaching at the gold diggings
Soon after this the diggings broke out in the Ballarat district, and our brother, with several other brethren, went to the diggings, and laboured there. It does not appear that he got much gold there any more than at other places, but the Lord had evidently a far higher purpose in his going there, for here he was led to speak in his name and preach the glorious gospel of the blessed God to the diggers in Ballarat, Castlemaine, and Sandhurst (places then opening), in tents, and in the open air, and under the shade of the trees, for at that time neither Church nor Chapel, nor any building or township was formed. Diggers’ huts, tents, and places for business of a very temporary character soon sprang up like mushrooms, and our brother claimed to have been the first to have preached the gospel in the now large, populous, and prosperous city of Ballarat. In a letter we have, he thus describes his going there, and his experience afterwards:-
“So far as I have ever heard, I was the first who ever preached or conducted a religious service on Ballarat diggings.
In the middle of August 1851, Mr Hiscock found gold at Buninyong. The newspapers were full of it, and every mouth in Melbourne was vocal with the wonderful event. Labourers of every grade, tradesmen of every kind, shopkeepers, lawyers, clerks, were all alike throwing down their tools and pens to be off to Ballarat for the gold. All the male portion of our congregation determined to go. I also agreed to go with them and conduct religious services, and dig. Mr E Wood (now a JP), of Preston; Messrs Tyler, Vincent, Barrett, and Chandler, gardeners and farmers of Preston and Pentridge, with Messrs Juniper, Osborne, and others, shopkeepers of Melbourne, were of my party.
[This specifically refers to John Chandler’s father, although he also went along with them, as a boy.]On [a] Monday morning in August 1851, we all met at Flemington at 9 am: seven drays with seven good horses, with cradles, tin dishes, spades, buckets, ropes, flour, tea, sugar, and such like, with about fifty men in all.
On we went, through mud, rain, plains, hills, creeks, rivers, and snow near Ballarat. The first night we slept on Keilor Plains. In the evenings I read the word of God by firelight, and gave out hymns from memory, and prayed in the dark. We did the same in the mornings, by daylight. I never felt my spirituality in the least lowered in that mission to Ballarat, notwithstanding the tremendous excitement of that period. The men saw that I was a good guide, and proposed that I should conduct and command them, so I went before and led the way. When we came to creeks or rivers, I ordered a long rope to each shaft, with fifty men to pull on the other side when the dray was lowered down, ten men with ropes on the higher sides of the side lines, to keep the drays from going over and ease them down into the water. All pulled in bogs, and pushed up hills.
Thus we arrived at Ballarat on the Saturday evening, after six days’ travelling as before noticed. In the falling snow of Friday and Saturday, our men were calling out: “Have you seen anything of Franklin up here?” Thus, with pushing and pulling, praying and singing, waking and sleeping, eating and drinking, reading and talking, raining and snowing, murmuring and grieving, hoping and fearing, up hill and down dale, through mud and over rocks, through scrub and over trees, frightening wild turkeys, kangaroos, opossums, and native cats, we got to the big black hill just off the Melbourne road by 4pm on Saturday. We pitched our tents, and made all snug and cosy for the Lord’s Day: when I conducted service in our usual way by publicly singing God’s praises, reading his holy word, calling upon his blessed name, and preaching salvation to guilty men through the precious blood and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ alone. This I did for four Lord’s Days, when our large tent was filled with worshippers and attentive hearers.
On the first Monday we fixed our cradles by the little creek that ran along the foot of the big hill.
[These were large sieves through which soil was washed to separate out the particles of gold.]We wheeled down surface [soil] from the side of a little gully, and dipped water from the creek, and worked away, surrounded with the dishes, ‘long toms’, and all kinds of schemes, to get the gold from the dirt. We got about 2 ounces (70mg) per man each week. Golden Point was swallowed up alive, as it were, every foot of it. Some there thought it necessary to be able to fight and swear well to keep your ground. But we kept off that ground, and dug in a harmless place. Hundreds got no gold, sold out, and returned with a bad report. The roads were lined from Melbourne and Geelong, and many strange and lively things were daily seen. But if a man’s heart was right with God, I bear witness that he could love, serve, honour, and praise him as well on Ballarat diggings in August 1851 as in any cathedral in the world.”
New beginnings in Melbourne
After a short stay he returned from Ballarat to Melbourne, where he had left Mrs Allen in the meantime; also to the church in Lonsdale Street. Soon after, differences arose between him and Mr Turner (the pastor), who it appears, objected to our brother’s preaching without permission while absent. Then at this time our brother’s disagreement with Mr Turner came out, in reference to the non-invocation and worship of the Holy Ghost. Our brother made a firm stand, demanding distinct and equal acknowledgement for the Holy Ghost, and insisting that to be consistent, whatever was withheld from the blessed Spirit should be also withheld from the Father and the Son, for the three divine Persons are equal in one undivided Godhead. This was the means of his writing one of his best works: A Defence of the Worship of the Eternal Spirit. These differences eventuated in a separation, when our brother, with nine other members, went and met together where they could worship the Triune God without the painfulness of jarring and difference of judgment and feeling which always prevails where there is want of union in the things of God.
Upon his removal to Preston, one of the brethren (Mr Woods) urged him to hold services in his house, which he did. And soon after this a large room was offered them by Mr Charlwood, bookseller, in Bourke Street, near the post office, Melbourne: which offer was thankfully accepted, and for nearly twelve months services were held here, during which time the brethren who had left Mr Turner’s with him and others were formed into a separate church. This step and the services held in this place were evidently owned of the Lord, and the following letter written by Mr Charlwood, appearing in the Gospel Standard in November 1852, will show the then state of things very clearly:
Melbourne, Port Phillip, May 27th, 1852
Dear Sir,
With pleasure I received a copy of [the] Standard for January 1852, from some unknown friend, who, I hope, will order its continuance by post, and I will get a friend at home to call and pay for it. I could not find anything like truth preached on my first arrival, but am happy to inform you that the Lord has now raised up a young man, a native of Suffolk, England, whose name is Allen. He preaches the truth faithfully, as advocated in the Gospel Standard. He had scarcely ever read any book until he read your father’s Glory of Grace.
[This letter was written to John Gadsby, who was still looking after the commercial side of the Gospel Standard magazine at the time. The reference here is to a powerful sermon preached by William Gadsby, contained in Vol. 2 of his Works.]We meet at present in a large upper room, three doors from the post office, and I do expect great things from our small beginnings, because they are real things. An insertion of these few lines on the cover of the Standard would be esteemed a favour by one who was for many years honoured of God to be an active agent in circulating the Standard in a dark part of England; and among the vast numbers that we expect the gold discovery will bring out, there will surely be some saints of God who will be glad to know where the blessed gospel is faithfully and affectionately preached, which the Lord owns by attending it with unction, savour, and power. I would not persuade anyone to emigrate who is getting a comfortable living at home, but if, like me, their way is hedged up, and the providence of God directs their removal, for the information of such I would add that there seems a good prospect for almost all trades, especially carpenters, bricklayers, and wheelwrights. Shoemaking in particular has been an excellent trade; harness making is very good; servant girls are hardly to be had at any price. Indeed there seems bread for all who will work for it,
Yours affectionately, for the truth’s sake,
A C
[Arthur Charlwood (1798-1860). A native of Norwich, England, he came out to Australia in 1851 to seek means to pay off a £300 debt. He brought with him the first complete printing press to be set up in Melbourne according to Dr Basil Brown (Some Victorian Strict Baptists, an address, 1989). For more information see also footnote to p 27 of Booklet No 2 in this series.]…In the course of time Mr Charlwood wanted the room for his fast increasing business, and the little company had to remove, first to the Mechanics’ Institute, and then to the Protestant Hall, as their numbers and attendances increased; and in the last-named place they continued meeting for seven years. It was while here that our brother held his discussions with a Mr Service upon the Conversion, Redemption, and Justification of Saints. The substance of these lectures was subsequently published under the title of Roman Catholicism Refuted by the Word of God.
While serving the church here his labours were much appreciated, so much so that they offered him a salary, which he declined to receive, being at the time in a prosperous way of doing, and having no need, and being a living witness of the truth of the words of the Lord Jesus, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive,’ a principle which characterised him through life. As the Cause increased they found it necessary to build, and at the end of seven years the church removed to a more commodious building, situated in Market Lane, Bourke Street, and which they had erected at a cost of £1600, which was opened in 1858, with Messrs Juniper, Rogers, and Matthews as deacons.
[These three deacons were right-hand men to Allen. John Juniper (1800-1871) came out from Brighton, England, in 1849. He was with the party on the Harpley which included John Chandler’s family, and was led by John Turner. They were all from Ebenezer Chapel, Brighton, and emigrated to take up an allotment of land on which they could establish a farming community of their own, exclusive to those of similar beliefs. This idea was abandoned on arrival however. It seems as if the long journey, spent in close company, had taken the gloss off all thoughts of permanent communal living! Charles Rogers (d. 1873). There is an account of him in the Earthen Vessel magazine Annual for 1873, on pp 278, 279. John F Matthews. ( See footnote to p 74, Booklet No 2 in this series).]Soon after this other churches were formed at Sandhurst and Ballarat, which our brother visited frequently; also at Greensborough, where another place of worship was built, and much blessing realised, as some still living can testify, who have told us of our brother’s arduous labours in their midst, after working hard in his own garden and orchard all day. He would then walk twelve miles (19km) to preach the gospel to them, and then twelve miles back again; no trams then.
Blessing at Greensborough
From our sister Mrs Jolley, at Greensborough, we have received the following:-
“As it is written, ‘I will give you pastors after mine own heart,’ we will give you, God willing, a short account of the late Pastor Allen, and what we know of him and his coming to these parts. It was in answer to prayer. We had been begging for years, and entreating the Lord to send the gospel; for we read, ‘How shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent?’
In August 1859, we met Mr Allen for the first time at Preston, (though we had heard of him as a preacher). There was to be baptizing there…and a relation, who was a member of the Pastor’s church at the time, took us and several others; and as there was no baptistry in the Church, it was carried on in Mr Wood’s yard. The two candidates came out from the Wesleyans, which caused no small stir. There were six Wesleyan ministers there. Mr Allen and one of the ministers had a controversy a fortnight after. There were a great number there that day, which gave the dear Pastor a good and great opportunity to exalt his holy Lord in his holy ordinance, which he also did. Magnify his holy name! One of the Wesleyan ministers was heard to say if he could see baptism was right, Pastor Allen should baptize him. But the Pastor gave this rebuke: ‘I won’t do it, sir, except ye bring forth fruit meet for repentance.’ After this the Pastor’s name was spread abroad. What we heard from our late brother’s lips on that memorable day was like balm to heal our wounds; what he said was so suited to us poor guilty sinners. We longed to hear him again, and so we got our relation to ask him to come to Greensborough. The answer received was, ‘Oh yes, God willing; if there is only one poor soul I’ll come.’ And the expression, ‘one poor soul,’ touched a very tender chord in my heart. I was at the time a broken-hearted sinner. He came, and preached in our friend’s house, and the message he delivered was from the 6th chapter of St John’s Gospel, 54th verse: ‘Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life,’ and explained what the eating of the flesh of the Son of Man was. To my astonishment, I found that I had been eating it. So he began to feed us with knowledge from the first; and by the help of the Holy Spirit he continued to come once a month. We had a very good attendance. The first Christmas Day after he began to preach, we held a great meeting in our friend’s barn, which we have not forgotten. It was a grand discourse. He continued to preach there till there was trouble in the church, and then he (our friend) closed his door against him (1860). But the Lord opened another door. The Lord put it into the heart of my brother-in-law to open his house for his wife’s sake, though he himself was a stranger to the glorious gospel. I am writing this for you to see the Lord’s most gracious hand in it: for the dear servant of God must have suffered, having just come into the village, where he had a good many anxious listeners, to have the doubt cast against him. These are some of the evil reports he had to go through. Blessed be God, it did not end here, for the Lord had gone before, and had broken up the fallow ground of some, of the barren soil of a few of the poor sinners’ hearts, and he could not be stopped from bringing his seed basket with the blessed gospel to the Lord’s own cultivation; and many were brought out of nature’s darkness into the glorious liberty of the gospel through his instrumentality.
The same year he came to my sister’s house to preach, it pleased the Lord to remove her by death; but my brother-in-law kept his house open.
In 1863 a little Chapel was built, my brother-in-law giving the ground. It was soon built. The Pastor was the architect and builder, the friends helping. It was opened Christmas Day, 1863, free from debt. While the Chapel was being built, one of his enemies was heard to say that if a crow flew over it it would fall – which gave him great cause for meditation. He had great encouragement from Nehemiah, 4th chapter 3rd verse: ‘Even that which they build, if a fox go up, he shall even break down their stone wall.’
In 1864 a Judas was found in the church; and when he was set aside he proved very angry, and tried to remove the Pastor from the Lord’s work. None of these things could move him from his post, though he lived the life of a martyr. No! for the Lord had opened his mouth, and it could not be shut. The servant is not greater than his master: ‘For him that eateth with me hath lifted up his heel against me.’ He was kept by the power of God, faithful unto death, and has gone to receive his crown.
Another thing, he was no gainer in worldly goods by his preaching tours: for he became poor for the gospel’s sake. Houses and land all had to go, for nothing was too much for him to sacrifice for his Master’s sake. He continued to come here through hot, and cold, and wet, through good report and evil, for ten years. We missed him very much when he left us. His afternoon visits were as good to us as his sermons. He was never more at home than when sitting in the midst of a few poor sinners, telling the old, old story of Jesus and his love. I well remember one time he came to my door. The first word he said was, ‘I am hungry: will you be kind enough to feed me?’ He had to walk eleven or twelve miles (19km), so he was weary and thirsted oft. Again, the Lord had bestowed on our brother a great measure of natural kindness: he was brimful of it. I once heard the remark made that it was no use giving him money, for if he met anyone on the road that put on a long face he would give it to them.
The Pastor continued with us in his labour of love till his Master called him to another part of his vineyard, but not till he saw a few of us safe in the Rock. He also had the pleasure of leading two through the waters of baptism to the Lord’s table before he left, and some of the others in after years. We are giving these things as they were, not as they are: for times and seasons change, we also change, and death separates us from our friends for a while. But the word of the Lord abideth for ever: ‘For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.’
Another thing can be said of him. He was no plasterer with untempered mortar. When he first came amongst us, while he was separating the precious from the vile, and speaking of the whole that need not a physician, all at once he shouted out, ‘Are you bad enough?’ The text in the letter, June Magazine, I remember hearing him preach from. I was at the time stumbling at the words, ‘Lead me not into temptation.’ Leave suited me best. The Pastor did not know I was the subject of error.
One of his extraordinary remarks I never forgot. It was at our first association meeting, held at Geelong in the year 1865. I thought at first he was going too far; he was getting very warm at the time. This is what he said: ‘Why, bless you, dear friends, Christ cannot do without me – no more than I can do without him,’ which startled me. But after a while he went on to say, the building would not be complete: there would be a hole in the wall. It was to me that day, and I think to some of the rest, as if the Lord had opened the windows of heaven and poured out such a blessing that there was not room enough to receive it.
The suffering of the dear servant was not unknown to his Master, for he sat at the helm till the time of his deliverance came. ‘Now will I arise, saith the Lord; I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him.’ No more puffing at him now; he is safe from all harm. And we are left below to wrestle with the powers of hell till Jesus bids us go.”
Further testimony and ministry
From another who was blessed under his ministry at this time (Mr W Newnham), we have received the following:-
[William Newnham (1830-1912). He was a brother-in-law to John Chandler.]“I was as far from God as a sheep could stray, and living about twenty miles (32km) from Melbourne, near to a mount that was called by the old residents Mount Misery [Approx 30km north west of Ballarat]. And it could not have had a more suitable name for me, for indeed it was misery – yea, it was hell begun on earth, and nothing but hell in the future for me. And the Tempter would have me rush into it, telling me to get all the pleasure I could now get in sin. He would suggest, ‘Have your fill of it, for this is all the pleasure you will ever have. You know you are condemned already, so make the best of it.’ But whenever I came where Mr Allen was preaching I used to go and hear him. I went once when under this temptation. He was speaking from the words, ‘We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad’ (2 Corinthians 5 v 10). And from this he showed that the greater the sinner, the greater would be the punishment. That stopped the Tempter with his ‘have your fill of sin’, and now we went to work fighting against sin, hoping to get a lighter sentence, and so a more tolerable hell, one that I could endure. But no refuge could be found. I could not be the good-living moral man that I wanted to be. Then again, on another occasion, I happened to go where Mr Allen was preaching, or I may rather say, he was praying. After reading Ezekiel, 37th [chapter], ‘The valley of dry bones,’ he used these words in prayer: ‘O Lord, if there is any of thy dry bones here, wilt thou gather them up?’ And there was such a gathering up that I stood upon my feet, a living man. A miracle had been wrought. No condemned criminal, if set free when on the scaffold, could have experienced a greater change. It was one lift – out of hell into heaven – in my feelings, which happened, I think, in the year 1865. His labours were greatly blessed, and there are many now living that were brought forth at that time. I find it impossible to write half what I have known of him, or to do anything like justice to him. But give God the glory.”
When the Annihilation heresy spread in the church at Ballarat from a Mr George Dyer, our brother boldly withstood him, and, as many said, annihi- lated his doctrine, both by his preaching and publishing a large pamphlet, in which the heresy was largely and faithfully dealt with and refuted.
It was while here, in the Market Lane Chapel [Bourke Street], our brother delivered a series of lectures upon the signs of the times and unfulfilled prophecy, which were afterwards published under the title of The Fulfilment of Scripture in the present European War, a work which shows great research, great acquaintance with scripture and church history, and which will well repay the reader.
[This possibly refers to the wars of the Italian Republic, and especially Garibaldi’s attempt to seize Rome from the French-backed Papal forces.]Again, in the controversy which arose out of Mr Baxter’s work, Louis Napoleon, Destined Monarch ofthe World, our brother delivered several lectures, pointing out the absurdity of it.
{Napoleon III of France (1808-1873) was indeed later defeated in the war against Prussia.]
Here, too, he lectured and wrote his Defence of Christian Baptism, and several other works which are still extant. And the church continued under his pastoral care in Bourke Street until the year 1868, when, owing to changes that had taken place in the neighbourhood, it was considered an unsuitable position for a place of worship, and, an opportunity offering for the disposal of it, it was sold, and a Chapel in Wellington Street, Collingwood, purchased as a temporary accommodation until a new Chapel (the present Ebenezer, Victoria Parade) could be erected.
[Sadly no longer present. However it continued until 1979 before finally closing as a place of worship. The building was sold, but the old church organ was retained, and is now used in the recently re-opened Hope Chapel in Penguin, Tasmania.]The Eaglehawk church
About this time the Lord was pleased to use our dear brother for a good work at Eaglehawk, which the following very interesting letter will show:-
Wellington Street, Kew, February 6th, 1868
Dear Brother,
As many are desirous of knowing the facts relative to the late outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon a goodly number of poor sinners at Eaglehawk, which has given rise to the origin of a church of our faith and order in that locality, I send you the following as the commencement of their church book, which, if you think well, you can publish for the good of Zion. I remain, dear brother, yours in Christ,
Daniel Allen
“The origin of the baptized church of Christ at Eaglehawk, Sandhurst, Victoria, was on this wise. During the years from 1864 to 1867, it pleased the Lord to pour out his Holy Spirit upon several poor sinners, by which they were, first, brought to see that they were lost and ruined by the fall, although most of them had been great professors of religion before this their final conversion to God. Second, they were brought to find mercy through the Saviour’s most precious pardoning blood. Third, they were brought to see the ordinance of Believers’ Baptism by immersion, and to walk therein in obedience to the Lord Jesus our King and Lawgiver, in order to be joined together in church fellowship. In response to their solicitation, the aforesaid minister met the friends in the temporary Baptist Chapel, Eaglehawk, on the evening of the 17th of January, 1868, at 7 o’clock. We commenced the service by singing a hymn and prayer, and reading Acts 2, as the model after which the church must be formed. The following names were then taken down from persons desiring baptism and church fellowship, if judged to be worthy. Brethren: John Moorhead, William Lelan, Thomas McGreehen, William Canleto. Sisters: Elizabeth Jones, Mary Matthews, Anna Bella Moorhead. Also the following who had been baptized before. [Brethren]: John Richards, Henry Johns, Thomas Jones, William Todd. Sister: Jane Simpson. All these gave a very satisfactory account of the Lord’s mercy to them, in convincing them of sin and pardoning them through the most precious blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Also they were of one accord in ascribing their salvation to the sovereign grace of God. All which gave great delight to the aforesaid minister of the gospel, and other brethren from the White Hills, so that we all magnified the Lord together and said, ‘What hath God wrought?’ After singing our ‘National Anthem’, Grace, ’tis a charming sound, our meeting ended at 11 o’clock at night. Praise ye the Lord.
On the following evening we baptized the seven brethren at the White Hills Baptist Chapel, kindly lent for the occasion, when we had a full house, and the Lord much blessed his people with his presence, love, and peace.
On Lord’s Day morning we met for prayer at 10 o’clock and at 11[am] we held a public service, when the apostle Paul’s charge to the elders of the church at Ephesus was considered, and the Lord gave us another token for good. At half-past 2 o’clock we assembled again, when, after praise and prayer, the latter part of Acts 2 was considered. The Articles of faith and order were then read, with the scripture proofs upon which they are founded. The brethren and sisters were desired to hold up their right hands if they were all of one mind and faith in believing them. All hands were then held up. The aforesaid minister then gave them all the right hand of fellowship into the visible church of the living God. After stating the difference between a church of living stones and that of dead earthly matter, and also the distinction between the invisible church of Christ as his spiritual body, and that of the visible church, or churches, designed for the maintenance of the truths of the gospel and its holy ordinances, the Lord’s Supper was administered to the church, when several other brethren from the Sandhurst church, of the same faith and order, communed with us, and the Lord was there to bless.
Public service was held in the evening, when the 4th chapter of Ephesians was read and expounded, and much exhortation given, upon the walk and conversation of the children of God, both in the church and in the world. This service was also much blessed to the children of God. After the service the church and congregation, by a unanimous show of hands, desired the aforenamed minister to stay another week, to which he consented, because the work was of the Lord.
On the same Lord’s Day night, Mrs Canleto and Mr D Moorhead desired to be baptized and join the church, and on Monday morning, Mr and Mrs Willie. And as these gave a good account of their conversion to God by the Holy Ghost, through the blood of Jesus, they were all baptized on Wednesday night, January 22nd, at the White Hills Chapel, again kindly lent for the occasion. These will be added to the church in due order. The choice of deacons is under consideration, etc.
On the Lord’s Day, 26th January, we had our public service at the beautiful Town Hall, with the use of which the town councillors of Eaglehawk obliged us, when we had the presence of the Lord, and from two to three hundred people to hear the Lord’s gospel, which we hope God has, and will, bless to the poor among men.
Our Brother Ousey is up for two Lord’s Days, to preach to them the truths of God. He writes good tidings of these people, as the children of the living God, upon whom is poured out the gift of the Holy Ghost. He informs his brethren and sisters in Melbourne that God is with him in their midst, and that they are making arrangements to build a Chapel at the cost of £300, and that the little church at Sandhurst are thinking of joining them in fellowship.
Brother [Samuel] Day, Pastor at Geelong, is to follow Brother Ousey, if the Lord wills, in preaching to them Jesus Christ the sinner’s Saviour and everlasting Friend.
When God makes up his last account
Of natives in his holy mount,
‘Twill be an honour to appear
As one new-born or nourished there.
[Isaac Watts, hymn 360 Gadsby’s Selection]This report was read to, and confirmed by the church, on the evening of the 23rd of January, 1868. Signed by the Chairman of the same.”
A change of state
Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill,
He treasures up his bright designs,
And works his sovereign will.
[William Cowper, hymn 320 Gadsby’s Selection]About this time Mr Allen paid a visit to Sydney, and preached to the church in Castlereagh Street, and returned again to Melbourne. And in the year 1868 [NB. 1862 quoted in the original is incorrect] he resigned his pastorate of the church in Melbourne and went to Tasmania, the cause of which is thus explained. He was requested to visit his late pastor, Henry Dowling, who was then in the eighty ninth year of his age; and it was not long after our brother’s arrival that it pleased the Lord to take his venerable servant home to glory: which was a very remarkable providence indeed. The dear aged brother had been too weak and feeble to attend to all the care of his flock for some years before his death, during which time others had scattered them; and our brother Allen was requested to assist in the work of bringing them together again. And believing this to be the Lord’s will concerning him, he severed his connection with the church in Melbourne, where he had laboured with much success for eighteen years. During this time of our brother’s stay in Tasmania he was brought into controversy. An Evangelical minister in the Church of England published a sermon on Regeneration, which so displeased a high church priest that he (the priest) wrote violently against it, and maintained the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, or spiritual birth when children are christened by a few drops of water. The Evangelical minister replied, but so feebly that our brother was urged to take up the subject, which he did by lecturing, and a controversy followed in the columns of the Launceston Examiner.
From the time of leaving Launceston in 1849 [NB. 1879 quoted in the original is incorrect] twenty years had now passed away, during which time a constant intercourse was maintained between the venerable brother and his son in the faith. Such unions as these are very deep, very sweet, and very rare, and we can well understand the effect it would have upon our dear brother Allen when his aged pastor and brother expressed his earnest desire that he would come to him, and what it would be to the dear old saint himself, and his family. Our brother remained with him constantly until he died…
A sizeable section containing Allen’s description of Dowling’s final days has been omitted here, as it is covered in Booklet No. 1 of this series, ‘Henry Dowling: Beyond all Bounds’.
After about nine months’ stay in Tasmania, during which time the Lord blessed his labours by adding to the church, he received an invitation from the church in Castlereagh Street, Sydney, to come to them with a view to the pastorate, which had become vacant by the retirement of the former pastor, Mr J B McCure.
[His foundational place in the history of Castlereagh Street Particular Baptist Church can be read about in Booklet No. 3 of this series, John Bunyan McCure: Arrival in Sydney.]This gave him great anxiety and conflict, and was the subject of much prayer, and he replied that he could neither say yea nor nay, but urged them to look to the great Shepherd: which they did, and repeated the invitation. He then called the elders of the church he was serving together, and laid the matter before them and sought their counsel; when, after much prayer and due consideration, they advised him, much against their own feelings and wishes, to accept the invitation, believing that the Lord was calling him to a larger sphere of usefulness. Many of his friends whose advice he sought came to the same conclusion, and by a very powerful application of Psalm 122 vv 8, 9, [For my brethren and companions’ sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee. Because of the house of the Lord our God I will seek thy good.’] the Lord settled his mind upon it, and the invitation was accepted, and, after a painful separation from his friends in Launceston and Victoria, he came to Sydney. But in order to ascertain more fully the Lord’s will, and to feel comfortable in his own mind as to the acceptance of the pastorate, he laboured among them for a year and four months before his election, during which time the Lord blessed him with much encouragement. The congregation greatly increased. Twenty were added to the church, some of which were seals to his ministry. During this time his family, which had remained in Victoria until he became somewhat settled, came to him, which added much to his comfort, of which he thus writes July 25th, 1870:-
“The dear Lord has been pleased to bring to me my dear wife and children, for which I thank him. I am also thankful to inform you that my dear wife and son (Joseph) and daughter (Martha) have given good and satisfactory accounts of their regeneration by the Holy Ghost, and have put on the Lord Jesus by baptism, and are now added to the church here. I praise our Lord. I am thankful also to inform you that, in all, nine have thus honoured Christ our King by thus obeying him, and three others have come unto us who were baptized before; and others are looking in this direction, and all seem to enjoy divine things as set forth by us in our feeble attempts to exalt the Son of God. Some who were breaking off are now united: so that I am now in the midst of love, harmony, and peace in Zion. I hope this will continue. But you know the ‘new man’ always makes a stir, and this soon passes away, and death is where life seemed to be. There are now about seventy five members and a congregation of about two hundred; but on the night of the baptisms there were more present, and it was a good time: praise the Lord. We are fully engaged day and night, so that I cannot write so much to my friends.”
A personal note
Our readers will pardon a little digression here, while we refer to our own first acquaintance with him, and how it was brought about.
It was about this time when he who has his own way and time of fulfilling his own designs concerning his servants, and all his children too, brought us together. We were then living in Araluen, about two hundred miles (320km) from Sydney, where, in the providence of God our brother had just come; and the Lord had just spoken pardon and peace to our own soul by the sweet word, ‘I will have mercy.’ After a long season of soul trouble, deep convictions, severe law work, fear and bondage, darkness and death, we were just enjoying the sweets of gospel liberty, and in the flush of our first love desiring to use the little talent the Lord had given us by teaching a class in a Sunday School. One day the superintendent said to us: “Mr Beedel, I am going to Sydney; is there anything I can do for you?” “Yes,” we replied, “if you will please call and see Mr Allen, and ask him if he can send me some books and pamphlets for my own reading and for distribution,” giving him his address, which we had providentially obtained from an Earthen Vessel. My friend called and saw our brother, who promised to do what he could, and in a few days a large parcel came to hand containing a number of useful books, etc, which were very helpful to me; and with them a letter from himself to me, wanting to know who the stranger was. That letter we shall never forget. It was the first of an experimental kind we had received from anyone, and in it he asked such deep and pointed questions that so fully entered into my experience that if his soul had been in my soul’s stead, he could not have known me better. With that letter our brother went into my heart, and there for ever afterwards remained. That day a knot was tied, never to be untied. Oh! with what pleasure did we reply; and then, for five years before we saw his face, an epistolary correspondence was kept up. And oh, how we did look for and value his letters! They were our meat and drink, and under God were the means of showing us the way of God more perfectly, and of bringing our mind into that form of doctrine and church order which, from that day to this, has known no variation, but only confirmation.
From this time it was our constant prayer that the Lord would bring us to Sydney, so that we might have the privilege of his ministry and fellowship in the gospel, which, in the Lord’s own time and way, was granted.
PART 3—Then The Full Corn In The Ear
Settlement in Sydney
…The following, from the Sydney Morning Herald of June 1st, 1871, records the recognition service of our dear brother as the pastor of the church in Sydney:-
BAPTIST CHURCH, CASTLEREAGH STREET
“Meetings were held last evening in the above Church for the purpose of welcoming Pastor D Allen, who, although he had since the departure for England of Mr J B McCure some sixteen months ago, had the pastoral oversight of the church, was but a few weeks back called by a unanimous vote of the church to take the regular charge thereof as minister.
A tea meeting was first held, attended by about two hundred and fifty persons. A public meeting followed, presided over by Mr Seth Cottam, who, after an address from Dr McGibbon, gave a statement of the circumstances that had led to the church calling upon Mr Allen to come to Sydney, and of the blessing that had attended the church while under the care of their present pastor by election. Although the accounts had not been balanced, he was in a position to say that the annual revenue of the church would quite cover the expenditure incurred. Mr Allen, in responding to his election by the church, expressed the gratification that had already been experienced by him in his relations with the members. Addresses were then delivered by Mr J Mills (Superintendent, Sunday School), Pastor J Hicks of Ryde, Mr Sheppard, Dr Wazir Beg, Alderman Goold, and Mr Theophilus Griffiths (YMCA). On the motion of Mr Allen, votes of thanks were passed to the ladies who attended the tea tables, the chairman, and the gentlemen who had addressed the meeting, which was brought to a close with the Doxology and Benediction”
The statement by Seth Cottam, deacon of the church, referred to in the above article, was recorded and appears later in a letter sent to the ‘Earthen Vessel’. It is worth appending here:-
Reasons behind call to pastorate
Christian friends, the object for which this meeting has been called is that of recognising in a public manner the call, by the unanimous voice of the church worshipping here, of Mr Daniel Allen to the pastorate. And as it will no doubt be a matter of surprise to those of our friends present that are not connected with the church or congregation, that we have only now called him to the pastorate – knowing that he has been ministering unto us in the holy things of God, for upwards of twelve months – it devolves upon me to give you a brief account of the circumstances that led to the call of Mr Allen to the pastorate of the church. You will then see that the delay has not been on the part of the church, but in accordance with Mr Allen’s own desire.
We first became acquainted with Mr Allen in a very casual way. One of the then deacons of the church received information from a person in Melbourne (who was aware of our late pastor’s intended visit to England), that there was a Mr Allen in that city, a thorough free-grace man, the pastor of a church, who, he thought would be very likely to render us some material assistance during Mr McCure’s absence. [He advised] us to send him an invitation for a month, as he was quite sure that Mr Allen was a man that we should like very much. Accordingly, acting upon this suggestion, shortly after Mr McCure’s departure in 1867, we sent an invitation to him to come and supply our pulpit for one month; that invitation he accepted, and came. I am happy to say, we found him to be all and more than report had said of him. So thoroughly satisfied were the people with him, and he with the people, that he remained with us two months. Again at the close of the following year, we ventured to send him a second invitation to assist us for a few weeks; and after some difficulty with his people in Melbourne, he obtained leave of absence for four weeks only, so that we had the benefit of his services a second time. And when he returned to Melbourne on that occasion we had not the remotest idea that we should so soon afterward be called upon to seek another pastor. But I will not now speak of those painfully afflictive circumstances, which ultimately led our late beloved pastor, Mr McCure, to resign his office and return to England, as I am sure they are only too well, and sorrowfully remembered by you. Suffice it for the present to say, that after much suffering, both in mind and body, and strong pleadings with God at the throne of grace, he felt there was no other course open to him but to resign. Accordingly he gave in his letter of resignation to the deacons in the early part of July 1869, and after acquainting the church with that fact, no further action was taken in the matter, until three or four months afterwards, in order that Mr McCure might have an opportunity of reconsidering his position, and of recalling his resignation, if he could see his way clear to do so, before it was submitted to the church for acceptance, or otherwise. In the mean time, the question that actuated the minds of the people was, Who can we get in Mr McCure’s place? And many were the enquiries made of the deacons as to the probability of getting Mr Allen. But though we felt that it would be very desirable to get Mr Allen, as the minds of the church and congregation were so unanimously directed towards him, we could not hold out any hope to them in that direction, as Mr Allen had been the settled pastor of his church for upwards of seventeen years, and they had twice refused to receive his resignation: besides, we thought there would be great difficulty in removing him from his residence at Kew [in Melbourne].
However, a few weeks previous to our calling the church together to consider the matter, a report reached us that Mr Allen had resigned his pastorate, and gone to Launceston in Tasmania, to supply the church there for three months. And just about this time, I had occasion to pay a visit to Smithfield, for the purpose of following the remains of a dear Christian friend (the late Mr Betts), to his last resting place. And while in the graveyard, I entered into conversation with our brother Hicks (of Kissing Point) with reference to the difficulties of our position.
[Kissing Point was near Ryde. James Hicks had been established as pastor of the Particular Baptist church in that suburb of Sydney for some years already, and would yet outlive his better-known ‘recruit’.]And he said, Well, if Mr McCure really does leave you, you must get Mr Allen: he is the man for Sydney, and I have reason to believe that his heart is there. I replied, But the great difficulty would be his removing from Kew. He answered, That might be, yet notwithstanding, I am fully convinced that he is the man to fill Mr McCure’s place: for I have thought a great deal over this matter, even since Mrs McCure’s death, and I can clearly trace the hand of God gradually opening the way for bringing Mr Allen to Sydney.
Questions
Well, dear friends, after leaving our brother Hicks, and turning the matter over in my own mind, I resolved upon writing at once to Mr Allen on the subject, which I did; and in my letter I submitted the following questions, requesting him to favour me with an answer to them as early as possible:-
1st. Have you resigned your pastorate at Melbourne?
2nd. If so, Is your present engagement at Launceston in view of the pastorate there?
3rd. If not, Have you any other arrangements in view at the termination of your present one?
4th. If not, Is there any difficulty in the way of your removal from Kew, in the event of your receiving a unanimous call from this church?
5th. Would you like to come to Sydney?
Answers
I will read you his answers to those questions, in the order in which they were submitted, from which you will see how entirely he desired to be passive in the hands of God, and to pursue whatever course it might be his will to command:-
“In reply to your questions, I have only to state:
1st. I have resigned my pastorate at Melbourne in favour of Mr Bassett, who is blessed to the people of my former charge.
[James Bassett moved from Adelaide to take over at Collingwood. Originally from the USA, he moved to London, where he was baptized by James Wells. Later he came out to preach in the colonies.]2nd. My engagement with the church in Launceston is for three months, now near expired, and they now wish me to become pastor. But I have thought it best to wait six months, leaving it quite open to the church and myself for the Lord to lead us, as to whether I become the pastor, or not.
3rd. Should I not become the pastor of the church at Launceston, I have other opportunities, but not at all engaged or decided: wishing to lay passive in the hands of my God, and know no will but his.
4th. There will be no difficulty in my removal from Kew, when it shall be the Lord’s holy will that I should do so: the Lord has only to command me where to go, and I will leave all to obey him, and by his grace, go through floods and flames to do his holy will.
5th. And lastly, I would like to come to Sydney if it would please my Lord and God to show me that it was his heavenly will, and put out to me his dear hand and lead me to you; but without this I am afraid to come, I dare not. Thus without promise or pledge I cast myself and you at the feet of our Lord, before the throne of his divine sovereignty, and say: Lord, do with us as shall seem good in thy sight. If you, as a church, desire me for a little shepherd, all you have to do is make it right with the great Chief Shepherd, and if he will appoint me to you, I will come like a young roe over the mountains and waters between us.”
A probationary ministry
Well, shortly after receiving this letter from Mr Allen, the church was called together to take into consideration Mr McCure’s letter of resignation, when, with a general expression of sorrow, it was accepted. And the secretary was directed by the church to communicate with Mr Allen to come and supply our pulpit for twelve months with a view to the pastorate; and in order to explain this request of the church, I will read to you another paragraph in his letter to me. He says:-
“Should the Lord so dispose of things, and order me to come to you, I should then like to be with you six or twelve months before I remove my family to you. It is a much more solemn thing to become the pastor of a church than many think, and I am not disposed to enter upon that relationship under twelve months trial of the people, and the people of me.”
…[It] is fully realised at the close of this, the first year of our union, that we love Mr Allen more fervently now than twelve months ago, which was thoroughly manifested on the evening of the 26th of last month, the evening appointed for the election, or otherwise, of Mr Allen to the pastorate. The number of bona fide members of the church is eighty one, but seventy four ballot papers only were issued, the remaining being beyond our reach by temporary absence, some in England, and some in the distant interior. And of the seventy four issued, sixty eight were given in on the evening of election: and on opening the ballot papers, there were sixty seven ‘yeas’, and one neutral, which Mr Allen says belongs to his wife. Thus, dear friends, Mr Allen’s call could not be more unanimous: which call we are justified in considering, that you do, by your presence here tonight, recognise and approve.
Reproduced from the ‘Earthen Vessel’ Annual for 1871 pp 272-275
A simple-hearted pastor
…By these unmistakable leadings of divine providence, with so many tokens of the Lord’s good pleasure, and amid such favourable surroundings, our brother commenced his ministry in Sydney.
We have not forgotten the first time we saw him in the Chapel, when the Lord brought us to Sydney in 1874. It was a Lord’s Day morning, and arriving early, the Sunday School which met in the Chapel were just then closing their morning service, and our brother was joining with them in singing the closing hymn. As we looked in and saw him, the words came to our mind, ‘Jacob was a plain man, dwelling in tents’ (Genesis 25 v 27), and this just described him, and the desire of our heart was to dwell with him in this gospel field. Yes, this was the tent, here was plainness and simplicity indeed, and a disposition to take the humblest and lowest place in the service of his Master, by which we felt drawn closer to him than ever. The School over, the congregation began to assemble, and at the appointed time the service commenced, and after the usual devotional part of the service he announced his text, Isaiah 42 v 4: ‘He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law.’ A very blessed Christ exalting sermon followed, upon the sure success of the dear Redeemer, and his kingdom in its true spiritual nature was set forth. The Lord was there; our heart responded to the precious truth, and could add a hearty amen to all that was said, and such a blessed seal was given to all that had previously passed between us by letter.
In reference to the Sunday School, our brother always took a great interest in this work, and for years had a class of young men, some of whom are now (thirty years after) filling good and honourable positions in life, and in some we hope we see the fruit of the precious seed then sown. His memory is still dear to them, and on more than one occasion they presented him with tokens of their esteem while labouring among them. He also commenced a ‘Mutual Improvement Society’ for young people, and gave week night lectures to them for some time. But we can scarcely hope to give a complete account of our brother’s many labours in the church, or to follow him in all the trials and struggles through which he went, of which we were witness, and in which we shared. This would require a history of the church during the twenty one years of his pastorate in Sydney, which is not our design. We must therefore be content if we can give some of the more prominent features of it; his record is on high.
A plain man’s ministry
Our brother’s ministry deserves a better hand to describe it. It was the first full gospel ministry we ever heard, and we were so content with it that we never wandered after another. It was sound doctrinally, experimentally, and practically; very discriminating and searching, and calculated to strengthen the weak, comfort the distressed, and to lead the seeking soul, and to build up the living family of God upon the one foundation of their most holy faith. Many were called out of nature’s darkness into the glorious light of the gospel by it, to all of whom he was a true nursing father.
In the pulpit he had a commanding appearance. He was always affectionate in manner, and lively in his deliverances, and very apt in illustration. His denunciations of error and all false doctrine were bold and unflinching, giving no quarter to Pelagianism, Romanism, or Arminianism, which he always put together as belonging to the Father of lies, which often gave great offence. Some have been wounded and healed too, killed and made alive by this faithful dealing with their souls. Whenever he came before the people he was never at a loss to know what gospel he was to preach; here he was fixed firm as a rock, though sometimes he might be in difficulty through pressure as to the text he should speak from, but very seldom. His preparations for the pulpit were very deep, very full, and very thorough. If a subject was laid upon his mind he would have no rest until he had mastered it in all its bearings, and was quite at a point as to the mind of the Lord concerning it. He would eat the roll, fill his belly with it, and then go and speak to the people (Ezekiel 3 v 1). His utterances were always to be depended upon: not given to aerial flights of imagination, though sometimes very eloquent. When his subject filled and warmed his heart, and the Lord was powerfully with him, words would flow, and his feelings too very freely, for his heart was in his words. He never aimed at speaking for effect, knowing how little all such influences are to be depended upon, but rather by simplicity and godly sincerity, commending himself to the conscience in the sight of God.
He always laboured to impart sound spiritual instruction and to lead his flock into an intelligent apprehension of the great truths of the gospel, which knew of no variation with him, so that one always knew where to find him. It was chapter and verse for everything; no speculating or going after new things, hobbies or religious fads and oddities for the sake of singularity, or making new tracks for the sake of a name and a following. He preferred the plain old beaten path in which all good and faithful men have gone before him, leaving it with the Holy Ghost to make the ‘old, old story’ ever new to the hearts of his hearers; always coming up out of the pastures where the Lord had been leading and feeding him, to feed the flock with such things he himself had first tasted, handled and felt of the blessed word of life.
His Master’s servant
He was not Mr Philpot, nor Mr Gadsby, nor Mr Warburton; neither did he attempt to imitate them, nor did he think because he was not these good men nor had their gifts and talents, he had no business to preach the gospel. Oh! no, wisdom did not begin with these servants of God, nor did it end with them. The gospel was blessedly preached before them, and is, and will be after them. Our brother was himself whatever he was, just as God made him by nature and by grace, and never thought to be, or wanted to be any other than himself, and was perfectly natural. All he wanted was grace, more grace, grace upon grace, to serve the Lord in the sphere in which he placed him, and to fill the high office to which the Lord had called him with honour to his divine Master, and to seek the good of his people everywhere and in every way: and this was given him to a very large degree. He loved the dear men of whom we have spoken; no minister was dearer to his heart than Mr [William] Gadsby, whose painted likeness ever hung in his study, and whose character as a servant of Christ he much admired. Yet because he was not the servile follower of these good men, he has been greatly maligned and misrepresented by some who have been: but our brother was superior to such prejudices and pettiness.
He had a natural hauteur and sturdiness of mind which never quite left him, though the principle of it was often corrected; and withal a sensitiveness which was often shocked by the words and manners of others, which few understood, and some could not perceive.
His Master’s cup
We have thought that his ministry in Tasmania, Victoria, and New South Wales was: first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear; we were favoured with the latter. But though a long and successful ministry, it was attended with trials and conflicts of no ordinary character. There is a changing restless spirit in man, though favoured with the privileges and blessings of a gospel ministry, though it be the best. Yea, under the personal ministry of the Lord Jesus himself, this was manifest. ‘He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me’ (John 13 v 18). Our brother had to drink of his Master’s cup, and to experience the truth that the servant is not greater than his Lord. Our dear Lord has also forewarned us that however faithfully the husbandman may labour in sowing the good seed, there will come another labourer of a very different character; and he will come in the night while men sleep, and he will come for mischief, and he will sow tares among the wheat. What need then of diligence and watchfulness and prayer in the church of God? Yes, we have seen those who today were in church fellowship with him and professing to be greatly blessed under his ministry, to whom he had been as a nursing father, and who could not speak highly enough of him and his ministry, and if it were possible would have plucked out their eyes and given them, as the Galatians to Paul; but tomorrow their countenance is changed and their tone of speaking too, and instead of the former pleasure and high esteem they are filled with bitterness. (Ah! ‘an enemy hath done this’). They are watching for something to take hold of, and they are finding fault with what he says and does, and eventually rise up against him. And the very same persons who before were to be found sitting at his feet, drinking in the precious truths proclaimed by him, are now suddenly grown wiser than their teacher, and want to teach him; persons, who for age and experience in the things of God are mere tyros or novices compared with him, yet they ride over his head: and after wounding his spirit and grieving his heart, then, in order to obtain their own ends, leave him and the church too, and taking away as many as they can gather (in sympathy with them), start a fresh Cause.
To divide for the truth’s sake, and for the maintenance of New Testament order is sometimes needful, and then it is commendable. But to divide for straws and to scatter the flock for self interest or for party ends is base, and the very spirit of schism, and among the works of the flesh (Galatians 5 v 20), and has the mark of reprobation upon it (1 John 2 v 19). How much did the dear Apostle Paul mourn over these things? Yea, with weeping (Philippians 3 v 18). Yet he tells us there must needs be schisms, ‘that they which are approved may be made manifest’ (1 Corinthians 11 v 19)…
The Particular Baptist Association
One of the first things our brother did after his settlement in Sydney was to strike out upon purely denominational lines, making a clear separation from the General Baptists, with whom the Castlereagh Street church had formerly been in union, and to make a decided stand upon Strict Baptist principles, so that our churches here should be recognised and our ministers separately registered as Particular Baptists. This action, though it caused a great stir and commotion at the time, was the means of forming the Particular Baptist Association of Australia, in which the several churches of New South Wales became first united, and in the course of time the churches in Victoria joined, and of which we have just held the 28th Anniversary. Our Brother Allen held the Presidency till his death.
It is possible that a mistaken impression might be given by parts of Beedel’s historical sketch here. At best it has to be seen as brief and simplistic. In fact it is quoted and objected to by Alan Prior in his official history of Baptists in NSW, written on behalf of the Baptist Union. He responds: ‘This statement is incorrect. The churches of the Baptist Association never were General Baptists and the Castlereagh Street church was never in union with them, although there had been fraternal relationships.’ [Some fell on good ground. A History of the Baptist church in New South Wales, Australia. A C Prior. Published by the Baptist Union of NSW, Sydney, 1966. p 98 footnote.]
Now in defence of Beedel, there was some ground for regarding those of the Baptist Association (later Union), as General Baptists. These churches, who reckoned to be Particular, had gradually allowed the term to lapse after claiming that there were no General Baptists in the colony. This may have been true regarding the old General Baptist denomination, long since vanished into Unitarianism. But supporters of the doctrine of a General atonement were by no means thin on the ground. Otherwise the minister at the open membership Bathurst Street Baptist Church, James Greenwood, would not have voiced the following sentiment in his inaugural address as President, when the Baptist Union was formed in 1870: ‘…the disciples of John Calvin and the disciples of James Arminius can meet [here] on common ground…’ [Some fell on good ground. A History of the Baptist church in New South Wales, Australia. A C Prior. Published by the Baptist Union of NSW, Sydney, 1966. p 111 footnote.] He confirmed this by making it clear that membership of the Union involved ‘no doctrinal test,’ and remarkable as it may seem, the basis of Union statement did not even insist upon baptism!
From the beginning, then, it was committed to association at all costs, and its subsequent history has only demonstrated how insubstantial was its claim to be Particular – that most calvinist of doctrines.
What is more beneficial, however, about Prior’s double objection above, is its positive reflection upon John Bunyan McCure. After all, he was the pastor of Castlereagh Street church immediately prior to Daniel Allen, at the time when Beedel’s unguarded words suggest there was compromise. In his book, Prior shows that there were proposals for an Association in 1867, which did involve the church in discussions. However, as McCure was absent in England raising money for the new Chapel from August 1867 until early 1869, any decision was deferred until he should return. In the meantime the Association went ahead without them. This fledgling organisation was quickly swallowed up in a turn of affairs when Bathurst Street church, the oldest and most influential Baptist Cause in the colony, was invited to join it. To satisfy their demands, the Association and its distinctive basis of faith were abandoned in favour of being formed anew as a Union whose doctrinal bankruptcy has been already noticed. McCure did not have anything to do with it, and neither would Allen when he arrived in Sydney. Allen in fact went one step further and promoted the rival Particular Baptist Association referred to by Beedel. He successfully put a case to the Registrar General of NSW in 1873, to have the Particular Baptists recognised as a separate and distinct denomination from the Baptists. Ministers could then be registered in this name to perform certain civil ceremonies, like marriages etc. Amongst the first to be registered were Allen, Beedel, and Hicks, plus a few others from the half dozen or so churches which were founder members of the Association.
Thus it may be rightly claimed that Allen marked out a line of clear denominational division from other Baptists. Legally, it was established as never before. Nevertheless it should be observed that the faithful gospel preaching of McCure in Sydney had gone beforehand to trace out the more essential spiritual separation of truth from error.
Protestant labours
…Mr Allen’s labours in the glorious cause of Protestantism were very many and very pronounced. He lectured frequently and in many parts of New South Wales, but perhaps the most important and stirring episode of his career has yet to be written, and then it will be found in connection with the Hyde Park riots, which was quite an historic event in the annals of Protestantism. For some considerable time our brother had held open air services in Hyde Park on Lord’s Day afternoons, within view of St Mary’s [RC] Cathedral, which were very numerously attended. [These] called forth much opposition from the Roman Catholics, as he in his preaching brought forth their idols, the Pope’s supremacy and infallibility, the immaculate conception, the worship of the Blessed Virgin, prayers for the dead, the celebration of the mass, image worship, purgatory, penance, auricular confession, absolution, monasteries and nunneries, transubstantiation, half communion, the wafer God, works of supererogation, and the ten thousand heresies wrapt up in the papacy. One by one he would bring them forth and demolish them before their eyes.
The Hyde Park riots
We shall never forget one Lord’s Day. Just as we had concluded the afternoon service in the Sunday School we were alarmed with a great noise outside, and, going to the door to see what was the matter, saw a heated crowd which had followed him from the park, and out of whose hands he had just escaped by returning home to his house adjoining the Chapel. Upon going in to see him, we learned from himself the cause: that, as he was holding his service as usual that afternoon, two men made their way up to him and insisted upon their right to use the very spot where he was standing and preaching, which our brother disputed, as it was his accustomed place, and there was the whole park for them, and he refused to give place to them. Whereupon a tumult ensued, and as the friends of our brother gathered round him and interfered, it then appeared that these two men were well supported, and from an early hour this action had been premeditated to prevent him from preaching. A terrific rush was then made by the aggressors, who were in the majority. Mr Allen’s friends formed a cordon around him and accompanied him to his home. By this time 5000 persons had assembled, and all the constables present were powerless to still them. Our brother only escaped being trodden to death by a miracle. This was but the beginning of the trouble, and all the following week was a time of great anxiety with us. What should he do? Shall he desist or continue, was the question uppermost in all minds. To desist would be to allow the enemy to triumph and yield the right of free speech, and to continue meant a sharp, a fierce, and a decisive battle. The Roman Catholics were determined to put a stop to his outdoor preaching if possible. It was rumoured that the priests had given it out that he must be put out of the way at any consequence. His best friends felt the gravity of the situation; they felt too that a crisis had come in the cause of civil and religious liberty, and while they felt his valuable life was in jeopardy, a stand must be made, and so they advised him still to go forward. Many false friends failed him here, and promises of support were disappointing, proving that an arm of flesh must fail in such a war as this. However, as in Peter’s case (Acts 12 v 5) prayer was made unceasingly by the church unto God for him, and in the strength of God our brother determined to go on the next Lord’s Day, March 17th, 1878.
Sunday, March 17th
After preaching as usual in the Chapel in the morning, a special prayer meeting was held after service, and at a quarter to three we went forth with him to the park, where there were assembled about 20 000 persons. Entering the park at the southern extremity, we saw men and boys up in the trees near the place where our brother was to stand. He usually had a little extempore platform raised about two feet (60cm) from the ground, which a good brother, since deceased, always carried there for him; and on this occasion some had said, “He will not stand upon his rostrum today,” instead of which he had it raised two feet higher than before. Arriving at the spot, our brother mounted his pulpit and engaged in prayer, then gave out a hymn, which was sung heartily by the vast concourse of people, then read a portion of the word of God, and announced for his text, ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty’ (2 Corinthians 3 v 17). He then traced this Spirit in Abel and the patriarchs, Moses and the prophets, the apostles and the one true church of Christ, the church of the first born, whose names are written in heaven, and as seen in all true believers as the evidence of their being children of God. And then the spirit of antichrist, as seen in Cain and all the false prophets and teachers, and in the church of Rome, as seen in her popes and priests and false doctrines, and in her cruel persecuting spirit. There was no toning down in his testimony, but like his platform his tone was somewhat raised for the occasion, and for an hour his powerful voice was heard distinctly by nearly the whole congregation, after which a verse of the National Anthem was sung, and the Doxology brought the service to a close. We had stood beside him all the time, and then escorted him to the park gate facing Macquarie Street, where, by arrangement, a cab was in waiting for him, and he was driven away to the house of our brother, Mr J Harris, Glenmore Road, Paddington, while the crowd was left to disperse. The ‘liers in wait’ who thought to have rushed upon him as he returned to his house were disappointed and enraged as he escaped thus out of their hands, and another terrible uproar ensued. The streets were impassable, mounted troopers assisted the police in clearing the way; Mr Fosbery (Inspector-General of Police) attended in person. The military, too, commanded by Colonel Richardson, were in readiness in the enclosure between the gaol and the Court House, Darlinghurst, fully prepared to assist the civil authorities in preserving order, but happily their services were not required.
Our brother returned for the evening service, and preached again in the Chapel that evening to an audience which filled every inch of sitting and standing room. Hundreds were unable to gain admittance; the Chapel was guarded all round; many were our fears, but the Lord was on our side.
If the description of the riots seems rather incredible, and the crowds exaggerated, it should be pointed out that both are vouched for independently. The ‘Sydney Morning Herald’ printed reports of both afternoons’ proceedings, and these agree closely with Beedel’s eyewitness account. In one thing only do they vary, and it is a testimony to the success of the plan devised by Allen’s friends to spirit him secretly away after his sermon in the park. Even the newspaper reporter failed to spot that he was not amongst the large group that apparently escorted him back through the crowd to his house next to the Chapel on Castlereagh Street!
Rights maintained
On the following Lord’s Day he went again. The attendance showed a falling off, and our brother spoke without interruption; and when the voice of the people was taken as to the continuance of the services, a perfect sea of hands were held up. Rome was thus defeated, and our rights maintained. As the outcome of this disturbance, several of the rioters were apprehended and convicted. Mr Allen also was taken to Court for preaching in the park (as was alleged) without authority, but the Magistrates found no offence. Not a stone was left unturned to incriminate, vilify, or silence him, but all their attempts were fruitless. Like him of old, they had to say, ‘We shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God’ (Daniel 6 v 5). His several appearances at the Court also turned to him for a testimony (Luke 21 v 13), in which he preached the gospel…
In the course of time preaching on the park was brought to an end by the authorities, and services of any kind on the Lord’s Day were no longer allowed. Our brother then, with his numerous hearers, retired to the large new Protestant Hall close by, and here he continued his Sunday afternoon discourses for over two years in peace, and with much blessing, in all of which it was our happiness to accompany him and to relieve him of every temporal consideration so that his mind should be quite free for his work. It was during this time that Pastor Chiniquy [The famous French Canadian ex-priest and author of Fifty years in the Church of Rome] paid us a visit, and preached in the Hall one Lord’s Day afternoon, after which it was our pleasure to hand over to him £25 for his Priests’ Home, as the result of the collection. Here too we held a service on behalf of the sufferers in Connemara, Ireland, [There was a severe economic depression in this rural farming area of County Galway in 1879-1882] and sent help to them, and though under heavy expenses all were met by voluntary contributions, and on one occasion our dear brother received an acknowledge- ment of £60 from his appreciative hearers as a token of their love.
Other public activities
Some time after he resumed his open air preaching in the large Domain, [The Domain is a large area of open parkland in central Sydney] and in describing these services he says:-
“The Domain gives us about five hundred people on Lord’s Day afternoons, who listen to the word of God spoken by us with much attention. We hope the Lord will bless it to many poor wandering sinners that they may be saved. Hundreds of Gospel Standards, Friendly Companions, Earthen Vessels, Christian Monthly Records, with my own Lectures against Rome, Infidelity, and Pelagianism are given away to the people, and eagerly received every Lord’s Day. We want our friends to empty their shelves and cast their stores of truth upon the Lord’s winds and let it fly abroad among men. Under the convoy of his Spirit, who can tell which shall prosper, this or that, or whether both alike shall prove a blessing? We classify them with notices. You who wish to know of Rome, go to this man, ie. the brother who distributes them. You who wish to try Infidelity, go to this one. You who wish the gospel straight, go to this man. Each one goes for what he desires, and all are gone in five minutes. I have been down to the place on Monday morning to see if any of the papers were torn up or destroyed, and have never found a page cast away.”
Our brother laboured hard, and gave many lectures in various parts of the colony, as well as in Sydney, upon Conventual Life, in which such direful exposures were made as were enough to arouse the whole nation to drive such abominations out of the land, but for the sound sleep Protestants are in. He also kept an advertisement in the Sydney Morning Herald for months, offering to give £100 to any person who could prove one of his statements false, after which he published in monthly parts his History of the Convents, which did not obtain the support it deserved. Notwithstanding a bound volume was sent to every Member of Parliament and every Magistrate in the colony, with the hope that something would be done to pass a Bill for the inspection of convents, as well as other institutions.
We firmly believe the day will come when this work will be better appreciated, as the shadows lengthen and the faithful fail from among the children of men.
Despite these sentiments, those who remember and respect the work of Daniel Allen today do so more for his positive gospel preaching, than for his anti-catholic agitation. It was the latter which got into the newspapers, and caused a stir in the politics of the day, but those ripples have long since died away. How much more gratifying it would have been if 20 000 people had been ready to hear him preach Jesus Christ and him crucified!
The beginning of the end
…In the month of October, 1888, our brother, having visited Smithfield and returning home, was overtaken with a stroke of paralysis, which was followed by two other attacks at intervals of a fortnight between. [This] greatly shook his previously robust and healthy constitution, the effects of which were visible in body and mind; his speech also became affected, so that it was feared he would have to give up preaching altogether, which was strongly urged by Dr Renwick, his medical adviser. However, by his going away to some quiet healthy suburb and resting all the week, and by the Lord’s blessing [returning] for the Lord’s Day, with the little assistance it was our privilege to give him at this time, he continued still to fill the pulpit…
After this he left Sydney to go away into the country for a month, which afforded him an opportunity of seeing his son Joseph and his daughter Louie (Mrs Harris), and their families, Mrs Allen accompanying him, and our brother Day from Geelong supplying the pulpit in his place. The following letters were then written:-
[Samuel Day. See Booklet No. 2 in this series, John Bunyan McCure: My Adopted Country p 74, for further references to him.]Broughton Creek, October 16th, 1888
“My dear brother in the Lord, and fellow labourer in the gospel of his grace,
Love, mercy, and peace unto you, and our dear relations in him in our part of Zion, in Sydney, whom we love in him and for his sake. When I last wrote you, we were at Moss Vale, detained in the rain. That day we were conveyed to our son’s house in a covered chaise by the Wesleyan minister of Robertson, and the next day it was fine again. I preached at the Chapel here, on Wednesday night and Lord’s Day morning and evening, repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Every seat was filled on Lord’s Day. Being thus a debtor to this young man and being much urged by him, and above all, being constrained of the Lord to go and speak from Luke 15 vv 7-10, I dared not refuse, for ‘Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel.’ The Lord made me well enough, also, to do it with ease. I do believe the Lord blessed the testimony also to some and stopped the mouths of others, so that none reviled. I never saw people more attentive to the gospel’s joyful sound. Oh that the Lord may, in mercy, gather in some of his own dear elect by such means.
I will not seek any engagement, but if urged by others, and moved by the Lord within, and enabled without, I do not see how I dare refuse. Reflection upon that refusal would really make me ill of itself; if I withhold the corn, the people would curse me, (Proverbs 11 v 26). Now, if any think that I have done wrong, then let them forgive me this wrong for Jesus’ and the gospel’s sake.
We left Robertson on Monday morning, and came down the great grand mountain to Kiama, and saw the glorious works of the Lord, whom we adore in the same:
All worlds his glorious power confess;
His wisdom all his works express;
But O his love what tongue can tell?
My Jesus has done all things well.
[Samuel Medley, hymn 410 Gadsby’s Selection]We thus came thirty six miles (58km) on our way to our daughter yesterday; thirty one miles (50km) today will reach her and her husband and child (DV). This is really a very grand country, and it is a very high favour to see it in this beautiful season and weather, praise the Lord.
My wife joins me in fervent love to you and every member of the church, and to Brother Day. We do hope the dear Lord did very much bless you all, in the gospel of his love, on Lord’s Day. We pray to him ever to do so for his great mercy’s sake, Amen.
I remain, in him, yours truly,
Daniel Allen, Pastor”
Another letter from the country
Wandandian, October 22nd, 1888
“My dear brother and fellow labourer in the gospel,
Love, mercy, and peace be unto you and the whole church from the Lord Jesus.
Another Lord’s Day is past, in profit to our souls, both in this place and in Sydney. I feel well in my body and spirit, wonderfully so, for which I do try to praise the Lord. The means used in this visit to the country is very much blest to my restoration by the Lord. We arrived here safely on the Tuesday after I last wrote. All were very glad to see us, and we are very happy in each other’s company, and our time is spent in peace and rest. I felt in the Spirit yesterday, and in spirit was with you. I sat, and kneeled, and stood before the Lord, from 11am till 12.30pm, and was much melted in my soul. I trust you were the same. I read Isaiah 54 and 55, with Hebrews 8; and the New Covenant was blessed to my soul very much, indeed so that I rejoiced in the Lord. You will see by my hymn what my thoughts were in relation to this blessed covenant. I then read that part of dear Colonel Gardiner’s Life, by Dr P Doddridge, which I cut out to send to you: it was so sweet to me.
[James Gardiner (1688-1745). The hymnwriter Philip Doddridge wrote this memoir of the remarkable conversion of a British army officer, who subsequently became his close friend, and who was later killed at the battle of Prestonpans in the Jacobite rebellion.]One minute’s bliss like it will be worth more than the price of a million books. The Lord bless it to you. It came in the course of my reading the work, from the beginning, at opportunities on my way.
Well, my daughter and her husband have told their neighbours that I am here, and numbers of them came from all parts. We had a large room full. Two hours were gone very quickly, in the most concentrated attention you ever saw. I gave them what the Lord gave me in the morning, with my hymn upon it. I did not flinch in the least, and they did not want me to flinch so far as I could see. One dear mother with a child on each knee all the time, came to thank me very feelingly for the sermon. Her husband had children with him also. My daughter says they were packed like fish in a case. Well, I do hope there were some good fish in our net. I did seem to revel in gospel glory.
My dear brother, do pray, with the whole church, that souls may be saved with the ingathering of the Lord’s elect, to the praise of the glory of his grace. I feel the gospel labours to be my health and strength, the very balm of Gilead to my body and my soul, where it is received in the love which none but the Holy Ghost can impart or inwork in the souls of men.
I am to be in the Union Church, Tomarong (DV), next Lord’s Day afternoon. There was quite a sensation when it was given out yesterday; they say it is expected there will be a houseful. I could not refuse the request of the trustees who entreated me so earnestly, and I am so well in my health. ‘Only one service,’ is the plea; my answer is, ‘Yes, if the Lord will.’
With fervent love to you, your brethren in office, Brother Day, and all the church (my dear wife joins me in the same),
I remain yours in the Lord,
Daniel Allen, Pastor”
Cancer
For some time our brother had a painful sensation and swelling in his lower lip, which gave us much uneasiness, and which eventually proved to be an epithetical formation, and for which he submitted to not less than three painful operations without the use of anaesthetics, which the doctors deemed his condition would not admit of and therefore declined to administer.
The Lord’s Day referred to in the following [letter] was a very solemn time with us. As we went down to the Chapel in the morning, we went in to the house to see him, and found him waiting for the doctors who were about to perform another operation, and he felt he was not equal to the pain and should insist upon the use of chloroform, which might have the effect of taking him away. However, his house had been set in order; his mind was perfectly calm, [he] asked us to pray with him; and he commended us to the Lord in broken accents and then showed us the following declaration he had written, which he thought might possibly be his last on earth:-
Lord’s Day morning, Sydney, October 13th, 1888
[NB. The original shows 1899, but this is clearly a printing error.]“As I am likely today to depart out of this vain world to my dear Lord in heaven, I die trusting alone in his atoning blood, and justifying righteousness for my acceptance with my Father and his Father. I die in the full belief and comfort of the gospel I have preached in his name. I declare myself to be the very chief of sinners and not worthy of the least of his mercies. I love his adorable name, and have done all I could to honour it. I love his church, and have laboured to my uttermost to serve her for his dear name’s sake.
The Lord bless his church and Brother Beedel, my colleague officiating, with all mercy, grace and truth. Amen! Fare thee well.
Daniel Allen, Pastor”
We thus left him and went into the Lord’s house, and spoke that morning from Jacob’s words: ‘I have waited for thy salvation, O Lord’ (Genesis 49 v 18). The doctors came, the operation was performed; our brother was sustained, and we are thankful to say the Lord mercifully spared and preserved him.
About this time the Lord’s blessing upon his labours was again made apparent to the church. Three had been again received into fellowship who had been members previously, and three others who had made application for membership had been before the church and approved, to be received after baptism. One of these, a weak brother, through fear and such a sense of his own unworthiness, did not come forward, but such was the delight of our brother at this prospect and such his desire to lead his spiritual children in the footsteps of their Lord and into the waters of baptism, that although his lip was still in plaster of paris, and he was cautioned by the doctor, he could not refrain, and with much prayer and looking to the Lord undertook the service. During the discourse upon the occasion his lip bled; still would he persevere, and could not desist until the ordinance had been administered. The next day we received the following from him:-
Sydney, November 26th, 1888
“My dear Brother Beedel,
Jesus’ love to you for ever. I hasten to tell you that the rush of blood from my mouth last night in my discourse was not the breaking away of the needles in my lip, as we feared, but the heaving of them up so as to let the blood flow, which has done good, the doctor says, and no harm, praise the Lord.
In the whole thirty seven years of my ministry I have never known Satan to stand in such violent opposition to Believers’ Baptism. You did all you could to make the pool watertight: five times its fulness ran away in spite of your toil. All the difficulties of a new one, on Saturday too, appeared: still the new one was prepared. You see, some of the candidates who have given most blessed evidences that they are the Lord’s dear people, have been driven to distraction with the feeling sense of their unworthiness to be baptized.
You know that since the operation upon my lip, blood has been rushing out at my nostrils, and Satan was at times tempting me to let it bleed, and so die and have done with trouble, and go to heaven. Whenever I was left in the dark, relative to the light of the Lord’s countenance, this was Satan’s rage for a whole week, as if hell was let out at large upon us to swallow us up alive. When my lip burst last night by your side, he said: ‘There, your lip is smashed up now; you are done for. Where is your God? Where is your promise that he would open your lips, that your mouth should show forth his praise?’ I could only answer: ‘He shall have now the best testimony I can give, though it be through bleeding lips.’ The result you know, and when my good and noble doctor came and examined me, he said: ‘It is alright; it has done you good. You have too much blood, you can spare much more.’ Then we all together blessed the Lord. Satan seemed to go off as if ashamed of his cowardly villainy.
Infant Baptism is the devil’s pet upon which he built Rome and by which he maintains her in every land. He is so furious that we should, by the truth of God, dash his idol to the ground. Hence the last week’s conflict with us.
Believers’ Immersion is Christ exhibited in his death, burial and resurrection, as a poor sinner’s representative before God, under law, curse, death, and damnation: out of all which he carries the poor sinner in his rising glory from the gates of gaping hell up into the paradise of God, where God is eternally well pleased with the sinner in his Son. The whole truth of God’s gospel is exhibited in a figure in the two ordinances of God’s house, hence this hatred of hell and Rome towards them in their New Testament order.
However, the conflict was not left to Satan and ourselves, but with our God, to whom we sing,
And devils at thy presence flee,
Blest is the man who trusts in thee.
We sang it in Zion yesterday:
Satan may vent his sharpest spite,
And all his legions roar;
Almighty mercy guards my life,
And bounds his raging power.
[Isaac Watts, hymn 94 Gadsby’s Selection]Thus we had some good lips in yourself, for which we give thanks to God; some fragments of lips in poor me, and many lips of praise in the dear people. Also we had the new pool and two dear children of God to be buried, and raised with Christ in it. Above all, we had the Lord’s presence, for which we adoringly praise and bless his most dear and holy name. In the fervency of his love,
I remain ever yours, in him,
Daniel Allen, Pastor”
Fervent prayer and its effect
…During this period much sympathy was called forth from his many friends on behalf of himself, his family and the church. And many prayers went up to heaven for his recovery, which the Lord was pleased to hear, and so far restored our dear brother that his strength was renewed, and it appeared as if the Lord had given him quite a new lip, so that he was enabled once more to resume his labours with pleasure; and this was a mercy so great that the church thought it well worthy of acknowledgement.
Accordingly it was decided to hold a tea and public meeting which should be spent in thanksgiving to God, which took place on March 14th, 1889. The Pastor expressed in very feeling terms the gratitude he felt to God for his restoration, and to his friends for the sympathy shown to him in his affliction. Letters of sympathy were read which had been sent from sister churches in this and another colony, and from various institutions in the city with which our brother was connected. They had arrived from the Lambton church (NSW), as well as the church in Adelaide. Also from the Sydney Ministers Union, the NSW Association for the Promotion of Morality and Social Purity, the Local Option League (ie. Temperance Movement), and the Newtown Loyal Orange Lodge.
…Brother Hicks, who personally represented the church at Ryde, expressed in a neat speech the sorrow they all felt upon hearing of the Pastor’s affliction, and the pleasure and gratitude they now felt upon his recovery. The Rev E Madgwick said he had met with and worked with the Pastor in several institutions of the city, had always admired his strong individuality of character, and willingness to co-operate in every movement for the welfare of the city. As a Christian minister he was not one of those whom the Bishop of Liverpool designated ‘Jellyfish Christians,’ but one possessed of a good backbone. Dr Renwick stated that after nineteen years’ acquaintance with the Pastor, whom he had an opportunity of seeing under a variety of seasons and times of trial, and perhaps in some things had a more intimate knowledge of him than any other present, bore testimony to the trying dispensation through which he had recently passed, and the fortitude with which he bore up: and expressed his high esteem and appreciation of him as a faithful witness of the faith once delivered to the saints. The Doctor gave us a good, telling speech, and received the thanks of the church and congregation for his long-standing kindness to the Pastor, and the former pastor of the church, in always attending them without fee or reward.
Mr Jessop, who represented the Grand Lodge of the Orange Institution, stated that, owing to want of time, he had not sent a letter from the Grand Lodge, as directed; but he came personally to give expression to the widespread feeling of sympathy which he knew pervaded the whole body with which he was connected, and which he knew went further than this into the churches of other denominations also. Our friend spoke very affectionately of the good feeling existing between the great body he represented and the Pastor, and wished to convey their deepest sense of gratitude for his recovery.
Wave upon wave
This same year [1889], after having experienced a little breathing time, our dear brother was called upon to sustain the most trying and painful affliction, in the loss of his beloved son Ebenezer. It happened on 9th November, when the Sunday School Anniversary was being held at the grounds of Mr Dickson at Bondi.
[Joseph Dickson was a trustee of the Castlereagh Street Chapel.]And in the afternoon, while the father was speaking to the children and endeavouring to impress them with the great reality of eternal things, his own son was being suddenly called into eternity.
As reporter to the Australian Star, he had gone that day to the Association Grounds and to the Aquarium, Coogee, both of which places [were] being greatly visited that day. And from thence, in company with a friend, he went up to the cliffs overlooking the sea to enjoy the breeze and the beautiful prospect, when a strong wind blew off his hat; and while endeavouring to recover it he went over and was precipitated to the bottom, a distance of forty feet (12m), on to the rocks beneath. He was taken to the hospital in a state of unconsciousness, and died the next evening from fracture of the skull. Never shall we forget the father’s agony of mind when this was made known to him, nor the earnest feeling with which he asked us to join with him in prayer for his son; and after a whole night and day in wrestling prayer to God for his son, he received this word from the Lord upon which he was enabled to rest: ‘I will have mercy.’ Precious words! They are the same the Lord spoke to the writer’s soul which gave him his first taste of gospel liberty.
Funeral sermon
On the following Lord’s Day, our brother being wonderfully supported, was enabled to preach the funeral sermon himself to a large and sorrowful congregation. He said:-
“I feel as a father would do under this stroke, but I can say with Job, ‘Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly’ (Job 1 v 21, 22). This is the sentiment of my heart at this time, under the bereavement we are called upon to sustain in this sudden cutting off of a son. Aaron’s sons were cut off much more terribly than mine, yet he opened not his mouth in complaint against the Lord, nor charged God with injustice, (Leviticus 10 v 3). Justice, grace, and mercy, forbid me to do so. ‘Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?’
What though I can’t his goings see,
Nor all his footsteps find?
Too wise to be mistaken, he,
Too good to be unkind.
Hereafter he will make me know,
And I shall surely find,
He was too wise to err, and O,
Too good to be unkind.
[Samuel Medley, hymn 7 Gadsby’s Selection]The sons of Eli were cut off in a more dreadful manner than my dear boy, yet he murmured not against the Lord, nor charged God with cruelty, but said, ‘It is the Lord,’ (1 Samuel 3 v 18). Who am I, that I should think hard thoughts of our dear God for his permission of the fall of my dear son? No, let me rather sing, in tears:
It is the Lord, enthroned in light,
Whose claims are all divine,
Who has an undisputed right
To govern me and mine.
It is the Lord; should I distrust
Or contradict his will –
Who cannot do but what is just,
And must be righteous still.
[Thomas Greene, hymn 261 Gadsby’s Selection]The child of David was stricken by the Lord himself, yet he did not charge his God with unmercifulness, but said, ‘I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me,’ (2 Samuel 12 v 23). Far be it from me to think otherwise of our Almighty Lord, our great Potter, when we are the clay. Of him my tears, sighs, and songs shall sing, in this dispensation of grief:
Thrice comfortable hope
That calms my stormy breast;
My Father’s hand prepares the cup,
And what he wills is best.
The fictious power of chance
And fortune I defy;
My life’s minutest circumstance
Is subject to his eye.
[Charles Wesley (altered), hymn 70 Gadsby’s Selection]…This is the parallel between Job and ourselves…Job’s sons had holidays, and parties, in which he supposed they took God’s name in vain. My son has had the same, and my fears have been the same. In this Job, with altar, sacrifice, and prayers, sought the Lord. I believe he was heard in mercy to them… Twenty six years we prayed for our son in health, and eleven hours after his fall may we not hope that the Lord has had mercy upon him, and made him his child? But still we pray, ‘Thy will be done.’ Again, Job’s children were all ten dashed to pieces and launched into eternity in a very short time: so was my dear son. Yet the Lord did it: ‘The Lord hath taken away.’ We cling to the old truth, in tears:
Sovereign Ruler of the skies,
Ever gracious, ever wise;
All my times are in thy hand,
All events at thy command.
Plagues and deaths around me fly;
Till he bids, I cannot die;
Not a single shaft can hit,
Till the God of love sees fit.
[John Ryland (jnr), hymn 64 Gadsby’s Selection]The Lord gave
Again, Job recognised God’s donation in his children: ‘The Lord gave.’ This was also his gratitude: ‘And blessed be his name.’ My son was given to us on December 8th 1862, in Victoria, not long after a dear child of his name had been taken away. The child then taken was evidently a child of God. The gift of this one dried up our sorrows in the loss of the other dear boy. Thus we gratefully received him, saying, ‘The Lord gave…blessed be the name of the Lord.’ We have had this gift of God twenty six years… With men, we return their loans with thanksgivings. Shall we not return God’s lendings to us with praise, such as ‘blessed be his name’? Job saw it to be God’s act: not the Sabeans, nor Chaldeans, nor the fire, nor the wind, no, but the Lord… I also realise the same; it was not the hat, nor the wind, but by permission: it was the Lord. ‘The Lord hath taken away.’ His acts stand approved in my believing apprehension of his holy character and merciful conduct. From my heart I must still affirm,
God shall alone the refuge be,
And comfort of my mind;
Too wise to be mistaken, he,
Too good to be unkind.
In all his holy, sovereign will,
He is, I daily find,
Too wise to be mistaken, still
Too good to be unkind.
[Samuel Medley, hymn 7 Gadsby’s Selection]My dear son had great knowledge of the plan of salvation, and there were thirty hours from the time he fell over the rocks on the 9th to his death on the 10th. Who can tell what the Saviour of the once dying thief mercifully wrought in his soul during that thirty hours? One glimpse of his person, one touch of his love, one application of his most precious blood, one view of his glorious righteousness, would qualify him for endless glory and everlasting joy at God’s right hand. Some, in the days of Jesus, were saved by the prayers of others. ‘Lord, help me,’ from a praying mother led the Lord Jesus to cast Satan out of her young daughter, and she was saved. He is so kind. I cried to him eleven hours for my son. I cried, ‘Lord have mercy upon us.’ He said, with a still small voice in my soul, in power, ‘I will have mercy:’ I will have mercy. Therefore I do most humbly hope my son is saved. I trust the gracious, kind Lord Jesus would not shut out our prayers for this poor sinner any more than he did the praying mother’s for her young daughter, (Matthew 15 vv 21-23). Some say, ‘Oh, but your son was dashed to pieces on the rocks.’ So were Job’s sons under the house; so Eli fell and broke his neck; so did Samson; and thousands more like these have fallen as they did, and yet they were the sons of God. Let us not in our puny judgment make hell too full, and heaven too empty.
My dear young friends, early seek the Lord Jesus, that death, sudden death, may not find you out of him. Seek a place in him, in his righteousness, under his all-sheltering blood, where no stroke can reach your souls, though your bodies may be crushed to dust in death. I entreat you to keep close to Job’s altar of family prayer and care. Attend the house of God, the means of grace. Leave them not, wander not into the death-paths of this vain world, where destruction walks on every side. Oh do keep reverently the Lord’s Day. Unto your preservation and salvation, may God in love, grace, and mercy bless this solemn removal of my dear son, for the Lord Jesus’ sake, and then God shall be glorified in our sorrow. Amen.”
Closing scenes
…We shall now conduct our readers to the closing scenes of our dear brother’s days on earth: of all scenes the most affecting to the writer and perhaps the most instructive…
It had been observable that his health was gradually declining for some time. The several afflictions he had experienced doubtless contributed to this. The sudden and painful loss of his beloved son, Ebenezer, and another great family affliction, together with the several painful operations he underwent with his lip, all tended to undermine his robust constitution, and to impair his general health. His medical advisers, Drs Renwick and Dixson, both certified that he had also been suffering from two chronic diseases of heart and liver, complicated with dropsy, either of which being sufficient to have taken him away at any time.
But the immediate cause seems to have begun on Wednesday, August 26th [1891], whilst paying his monthly visit to the Government Asylum at Newington for destitute, aged, and infirm women. These visits were always a great pleasure to him, and his labours were very acceptable. The poor old people looked for him, and heard him gladly… Well, as he was thus engaged in his loved employ, all of a sudden he felt as if something had burst internally, and he had to retire; and after some time, feeling only worse, he was conveyed in a cab to the steamer, and thence to Sydney, and again in a cab from the steamer to his home, and medical treatment sought.
Brother Woolgar, then on his way from England to New Zealand, conducted the prayer meeting for him that evening. During the three following days he seemed to recover. By the Lord’s blessing he answered to the medical treatment, and on the following Lord’s Day morning when we went down to the Chapel we found him in the vestry as usual, waiting and prepared for his work. But knowing what had transpired, and seeing the weak condition he was in, we said to him: “You are not equal to the work today,” to which he replied, “I should be very glad of your help today, dear brother. We have been yoked together for many years, and God’s yokes never break.” We asked him what he had laid upon his mind for the morning service. He said: “God’s great promise to Jacob, ‘I am with thee and will not leave thee until I have done all things I have spoken to thee of’” Genesis 28 v 15.
We went together into the pulpit, and after we had opened the service by singing and reading the chapter, and prayer (him resting the while), he rose and preached with unusual warmth, life, and power from the verse named. During the whole time we sat beside him, his whole frame trembled from head to foot, so that we had not been surprised if he had dropped at any moment. To him the words will literally apply, ‘He preached as one that ne’er might preach again, and as a dying man to dying men.’ Parting with him that morning, we noticed that his hands were cold as a stone, and advised him to try and get himself warm.
Going to Chapel in the evening, we found him again in the vestry waiting, and prepared for the evening service. He told me his mind had been led during the afternoon into, ‘Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated,’ to which we replied: “Then we’ll read the 9th chapter of Romans.” After opening the evening service with reading the chapter and prayer, he rose and delivered what proved to be his last sermon, from the [13th] verse, ‘Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.’ Never was anything more adapted to close up his life-long testimony: a testimony which had ever been God honouring, Christ exalting, yea, a Holy Ghost glorifying testimony. Nothing could have been better fitted for the close of his ministry than this his last testimony to the sovereign, rich, free, distinguishing mercy of our covenant God in Christ Jesus to his people, all of whom he has equally loved and blessed with the same spiritual blessings in Christ as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. All who heard him that night will not forget the masterly way in which the objections to this doctrine, ancient and modern, were handled. Just as they had been anticipated by the apostle himself in verse 12, and how effectively they were all met and answered by the words, ‘Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?’ (v 20). [He also] quoted largely from Calvin and Dr Gill from memory, their remarks to the same point. And how feelingly and tenderly he dealt with the weaklings who, though in heart assenting to this great truth, could not realise to their satisfaction their own personal interest in it; coming down to the lowest and smallest evidences of divine life in the soul, if it consisted in a true, heartfelt desire to love God, it was indisputable evidence that he has loved us according to 1 John 4 v 19. We thought it was the most powerful sermon we ever heard him preach, especially considering the circumstances under which it was delivered: for he was more fit to be in bed than in the pulpit. He was wonderfully helped, the Lord’s strength was made perfect in his weakness, and his voice was never better.
Retiring to the vestry afterwards, he said: “Well, dear brother, I have the consciousness of having given God’s mind in the scriptures in which we have been occupied today. It has been a good day to me:
The hill of Zion yields
A thousand sacred sweets,
Before we reach the heavenly fields
Or walk the golden streets.”
Bronchitis
We wished him good night. He went from the vestry into his house adjoining, by the back way. He seemed to have caught a cold, and had an attack of bronchitis through the night, and no sleep; but on the following day and Tuesday he went out a little. On the Wednesday evening, as we went down to the prayer meeting, we found him in his study with his feet on a hassock before the fire, warming them. They were a little swollen, but he seemed to take no notice of that, thinking it might have arisen from inaction. On the following day, when we went to see him, it was then for the first time we received the conviction that the end was not far off. To our great astonishment he was in his study, surrounded by his family. With his head resting upon his son Willie’s shoulder, his daughter Louie was rubbing his feet, and he appeared to be dying.
Seeing me enter the room, he reached out his hand, raised himself up, and seemed to gather strength. He then told me he had longed to see me, and to open his mind. He then began to express the confidence and the pleasure he had ever realised in our union from the first, and our mutual labours and co- operation in Zion. Also of the deep and abiding affection he had ever felt for the people of God, his Hephzibah, in whom he delighted; also for the people and the church in Sydney, over whom he had had the oversight for twenty one years. He then began to speak of his family, whom he regarded with the deepest solicitude and tenderest care. Then speaking directly to me, he said: “And now, dear brother, I am going, and you will remain. Glorify him, with all the ability he has given you. Glorify him, glorify him.” He sank back into his armchair, exhausted. We were all moved to tears, expecting that his end was near. We remained with him till late, and were with him every evening until he passed away, and felt how blessed it was to sit by his side and catch the precious words that fell from his lips at intervals when free from pain, and to see at times the glory of heaven dawning upon him. We seemed to be in the vestibule of heaven. We have the testimony of other witnesses of this also.
The last week
Our brother Miller, one of the seals of his ministry, who devoted a whole week, night and day, to see what assistance he could render to his pastor in his last hours, sent us the following:-
“Dear brother in Jesus,
I send you a few crumbs that dropped from our dear pastor: they are by no means all that he said in my presence, but may serve as a link.
On Sunday night and Monday his only desire was to depart and be for ever with the Lord, praying, ‘Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly, and take me to thyself,’ frequently repeating Dearly we’re bought, highly esteemed. Asked me to read hymns 992 and 993; third verse of 992 was particularly sweet to him.
[The hymn book referred to is Gadsby’s Selection, and the third verse of hymn 992 reads:-“Poor and afflicted;” yet they sing,
For Jesus is their glorious King;
“Through sufferings perfect,” now he reigns,
And shares in all their griefs and pains.]
He then requested us to read portion of 21st Revelation, ‘God shall wipe away all tears,’ etc. He gloried in the words, ‘I will never leave thee,’ and pointed to them on a text card hanging in the room, saying, ‘That is my stay, my rock, my flag.’ Asked me if I thought the cold water pads on his head were keeping him there? I said they might soothe and alleviate your suffering a little, but your time is appointed, and what we may do will not lengthen it, or what we neglect to do will not shorten it. ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed, ‘that is the wise point: that is the wise point, my brother, that is what I have been so tempted about. Then we will go on with the water, dear brother.’ Some time after he asked for a drink of cold water, and holding it in his hand, said he would drink it to God’s honour: ‘Many a time by the river’s bank, the rippling rill and the flowing stream, I have knelt on my hands and knees and supped and eaten my bread and cheese, lifting up my heart to God in thankfulness for his bounteous gift, and gone on my way rejoicing.’
Tuesday. Still crying, ‘Come, dear Jesus, and take me; I am under present obligations to the Son of God to destroy the Adam life in me.’ Asked us to sing Could we but climb where Moses stood. We then read the 91st Psalm, after which the dear sufferer poured out his soul in prayer, though somewhat broken and indistinct. We could gather that its burden was for God’s blessing on the church and all who were near and dear to him. He then desired me to pray for him, and in humble yet fervent supplication our voice went up to the mercy seat for God’s presence and support, praying that he would relieve him of all pain and take his soul away in peace and tranquillity. After this he slept for some time, and was much easier. He remarked: ‘The Lord heard your prayer, dear brother, and answered it.’
Wednesday, 2 am, found him very low. Wanted us to go and tell his family he was dying. He was imploring the Lord to take him. Looking to me he said, imploringly, ‘Hand me over to him, dear brother: hand me over.’ I said the old Adam would not let go. ‘Then the Lord make him let go; oh, dear Jesus, make him let go.’ He gave our dear kindred in Christ from the sister colonies a warm and loving welcome. Clasping Brother Yeo’s hand, he said: ‘The dearest and most faithful brother the Lord ever gave me. Thousands of times have your testimonies gladdened and encouraged my heart. Tell them at Ebenezer that I love them all for Jesus’ sake.’ …Henry Yeo had come up from his former church at Collingwood, Melbourne.
Thursday. Enquired about the prayer meeting. I said there were about twenty six there, and Brothers Yeo, Wickham, Quinnell, Boyes, and Beedel, were appointed as a deputation to wait upon the Lord in prayer, asking the great Physician to prescribe some soul medicine for his relief. ‘Ah,’ said he, ‘that is something like; that is what I want.’ I said Brother Beedel dwelt very sweetly upon the 14th of John, from the 16th verse: the promise of another Comforter. He was joyously interested and thankful. He was, indeed, a true pattern of godly patience, Christ-like submission, and Christian fortitude. But his own desire was to depart, praying, ‘Dear Lord Jesus kill the Adam life in me, and leave thyself eternally to dwell.’ Asked me to pray for him again that the dear Lord would stop those expectorations which so much pained him. Faith faltered a little at first, but the grain of mustard seed grew up quickly as the blessed Spirit inspired our supplication. Soon after he had a fit of coughing, but very easily after this the dear prayer-hearing and answering God gave him a long respite, and indeed, they never seemed so frequent and distressing. At one time he said: ‘Farewell, dear ones, all, be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind,’ etc (2 Corinthians 13 v 11). Sister Holdsworth told him she had a letter from home, and that they were praying that he might be raised up. ‘No, no, dear; oh, no.’ I suggested to him, up into the third heavens. ‘Yes!’ he exclaimed, ‘that’s it.’
[Lucy Holdsworth, up visiting from Geelong. She and her husband Joseph were old friends and correspondents of Allen.]There were many other precious words and sayings in answer to our ministrations which I cannot now connect, but which will dwell in my mind and point me back to the most solemn, yet happy week I ever spent in my life: to witness Jesus’ faithfulness to his dear dying servant, and to see how he sustains the soul in that most trying circumstance that man is ever called to pass through; indeed, it seems like a week at heaven’s gate. My soul was absorbed in sweet communion and meditations upon the dear Lord’s love and mercy, his purpose, promise, and faithfulness; the vanity and emptiness of the world’s toys. I longed to go also: nothing seemed too dear to me on this earth to leave behind. ’Twas Jesus only, and to behold him as he is in one unbroken fellowship above.
Yours in the bond of Christian love and fellowship,
A C Miller”
Dryshod over Jordan
Both of his medical advisers attended constantly upon him, to one of whom he said, in my hearing: “Doctor, I thank you for all your care. You have done your best to preserve what you thought to have been a valuable life, but which I think to have been a most worthless one. I have the greatest appreciation of your efforts, but they are all in vain: my time is come to die. I shall not run about after quacks, nor shiver and shake; I know in whom I have believed. May God bless you, and if you have any of his fear and love in your heart, we shall meet again.” He was ministered to by his family most devotedly, and sympathising friends were ready and willing to do all in their power for him. His sufferings were sometimes very painful, his breathing being difficult, and the fits of coughing at times like tearing him asunder: but all borne with the patience and meekness of a lamb. On the Saturday evening before he died he requested us to pray that the Lord would soon appear for his release. He also requested us to sing, and we sang Hark! the voice of love and mercy; Yes, I shall soon be landed; Thou dear Redeemer, etc, and himself commenced the Doxology. He seemed to have a desire that as we were singing his soul would be lifted up, and he would pass away; but he lingered through the night. And the next morning (Sunday), as I went in to see him before going into Chapel, he pulled me to him and faintly whispered in my ear in broken accents: “I am now standing in Jordan, where the ark of the Lord stood, and where all the Lord’s priests and levites will pass over with the ark dryshod. Dryshod,” he repeated, “not a wave of trouble rolls across my peaceful breast.” Calling in again in the afternoon after school, I thought it would be the last time I should see him in this world: which impression was correct, as he passed away that night, or rather on Monday morning, September 14th, at 3 o’clock. The last words that were heard to fall from his lips were: “Serve him.”
Press reaction
The next day his death was announced in all the leading Sydney papers, and paragraphs containing short accounts of his life and labours appeared, expressive of the high esteem in which he was held in the city.
We clip the following from the Protestant Standard and the Daily Telegraph:-
“The Rev Daniel Allen, pastor of the Particular Baptist church, Sydney, passed peacefully away at 3 o’clock on Monday morning, at the Chapel House, Castlereagh Street. The Rev gentleman took seriously ill some three months ago, when inflammation of the liver and dropsy set in, followed subsequently by heart disease. Drs Renwick and Dixson were in constant attendance, but their services availed little, and ten days ago they gave up all hopes of recovery. From then the Rev gentleman gradually began to sink, suffering acute pains at times, which he bore with wonderful fortitude. Three times the end was feared, but on each occasion he improved again slightly. The beginning of his illness is said to be traceable to a shock to the nervous system, caused some two years ago consequent upon the death of his second youngest son, Ebenezer. From that time he was never really in good health. He retained his faculties to the last, and never lost consciousness at any time during his illness.
The Rev gentleman was sixty seven years of age, and was a native of Suffolk, England. He reached the colonies in about 1845, and, after spending some time in Tasmania, proceeded to Melbourne, where he held the pastorate of a Baptist church until 1870, when he came over to Sydney to fill a similar position in the Particular Baptist church in this city, which he held until his demise. In the pulpit he was generally admitted to be a very original, eloquent, and heart-searching preacher, and it was often said of him that he was never wearisome. He always spoke extempore, the possession of a marvellous memory being an invaluable aid to him. His labours were numerous, and reached far beyond his own denomination, proving that he was not cramped to his own particular church. By his congregation he was looked upon in the light of a father, and his cheerful face and kindly voice will be missed very much. The deceased was Grand Chaplain of the Orange Institution of New South Wales; also Chaplain of No 4 Loyal Orange Lodge. He was a member of the Local Option Committee, in which he always evinced great activity; a prominent member of the Social Purity League; while he interested himself largely in the evangelical work of Sydney. He held the presidential chair of the Particular Baptist Association of Australia, and was the principal minister in the colonies of that denomination. For many years he contributed to the home religious journals of the denomination, whilst up to the time of his death he edited the Australian Particular Baptist Magazine.
[He began this magazine in 1884, which had its circulation largely amongst the churches affiliated to the Particular Baptist Association. Frederick Beedel himself became second editor after Allen’s death.]The Rev gentleman was essentially a self-made man, having fought his way in the world from almost his childhood. It will be remembered that Pastor Allen took a most prominent part in connection with the Anti-Home Rule agitation.
[William Gladstone, the British Liberal Prime Minister introduced the first Home Rule Bill for Ireland in 1886. He did so in response to prolonged agitation by (mainly Catholic) Irish tenant farmers, and republicans. Although the Bill aimed to allow a measure of self government, similar to that existing in Australia, it was defeated at the time by a Conservative/ Ulster Protestant alliance. Naturally, as an Orangeman, Allen also saw this as a constitutional threat to Protestantism in Ireland. It is curious, however, to see him in the role of a political campaigner, and it does not particularly suit him. After all, a Protestant throne had never shown any favours to those of the religious principles of Dissent at home, Baptists amongst them. Moreover, when has any State acted as a nursemaid to the church of God, and where are we taught to look upon the secular sword as the defender of his Kingdom?]At one time he was as well known as any man in the colony on account of his strong Protestant principles and the fact that he showed himself to be a vigorous fighter on the platform. His friends state that he died triumphantly in the truths he had preached so long. He leaves a wife and three grown up sons and a daughter.” – Daily Telegraph.
“We grieve to have to report the death, at the age of sixty seven, of our right trusty brother, Pastor Allen, of whom it may well be said that he never feared the face of man. He was one of the few who represented, in these degenerate days, the Old Puritan spirit. He was an indefatigable opponent of the influence and pretensions of Romanism. He will be missed both in the pulpit and in the home, and among the brethren at large.”
– Protestant Standard.
The funeral
…The funeral took place on Wednesday, September 16th. A short service was held in the Chapel, which was draped in mourning for the occasion. The body was brought into the Chapel and placed on a bier in the table pew, and was literally covered with wreaths. Every part of the commodious Chapel was crowded, many ministers of different denominations being present to express their sympathy. The various institutions in the city with which the Pastor was connected were very largely represented.
Pastor Hicks (Ryde) opened the service by giving out the 93rd hymn (Gadsby’s), Hark the voice, etc. Pastor [David] Young (Lambton) read most impressively that precious portion contained in 2 Corinthians 5 vv 1-10, and Pastor Hicks led us in prayer to the throne of grace, and as utterance was given him, expressed the sorrow and hope of the great assemblage, calling upon the Lord for present help. Another hymn, Why do we mourn departed friends, and Pastor [John] Bamber (Adelaide, South Australia) addressed the church and congregation from the words, ‘For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain’ (Philippians 1 v 21). …It was a most appropriate and impressive address.
The cortege then left the Chapel for the mortuary at the Redfern Station, thence by train to the Necropolis [at Rookwood Cemetery]. The hearse, drawn by four horses, was preceded by a long procession of Orangemen, followed by two mourning coaches containing members of the family, the deacons occupying the third, and two others followed bearing ministers of different churches; and a large number of carriages followed. Arrived at the cemetery, the body was carried to the grave by brethren of the Orange Lodge to which the Pastor belonged, the deacons being pall-bearers. The coffin was lowered into the family grave beside the remains of his departed son and daughter, the large concourse gathering round. Brother Beedel gave out hymn 463 (Gadsby’s), Sons of God by blessed adoption. Brother Bamber read part of 1 Corinthians 15, and offered solemn prayer. Dr Sutherland (Presbyterian) spoke over the grave. He claimed Pastor Allen as a brother in Christ, as one who belonged to the church of God, and who, from the first time he came to Sydney, had always shown him the friendship and affection of a brother. He referred to the various works in which they had been mutually engaged; as late editor of the Witness, how gratifying it had always been to him to have had the Pastor’s letters and correspondence which had always evinced such strong determination to keep truth to the front. Then in the endeavour to get the Bible into the State schools, and his warm interest in the temperance cause. Our friend spoke out of a full heart, and felt deeply the loss of a real friend and fellow labourer. Rev E D Madgwick (Church of England) spoke on behalf of the great institution of which the Pastor had been Grand Chaplain, and the sorrow they felt in his loss. It was also arranged for the Rev F B Boyce (Local Option League) and others to have spoken, but the shortness of time prevented. The service concluded by singing the hymn, Hear what the voice from heaven proclaims. The greatest solemnity prevailed throughout the service, as we left all that was mortal of our dear brother deposited in God’s acre, there to await the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God, the redemption of the body, and the liberty of glory.
On Sunday, September 20th, special services were held in the Castlereagh Street Church, and notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather, there were large gatherings. The morning service, at the request of the Pastor and family, was conducted by Mr Beedel, who commenced by giving out the 303rd hymn, Jesus, lover of my soul, and reading Matthew 17 vv 1-9… The speaker addressed a few words of sympathy to the bereaved and mourning family, condoling their mutual loss; and the service concluded by the choir singing Vital spark.
In the evening, Pastor J W Bamber preached a memorial sermon to a large congregation, taking for his text, ‘A faithful minister of Christ’ (Colossians 1 v 7), showing how that in the death of our beloved pastor we had lost one in whom the characteristics of a faithful minister of Christ were truly manifest…
The members of the church and congregation erected a tablet to the memory of our departed brother, which is placed at the back of the pulpit. The tablet is of Sicilian marble, mounted with an ancient lamp and frame.
IN MEMORIAM
Pastor Daniel Allen
His work is done and all his sorrows ended, But the grand truth he preached shall never die; And though his foes were with its light offended, Its power shall shine throughout eternity!
(Taken from some verses by William Winters, editor of the ‘Earthen Vessel’ magazine at the time of Allen’s death)
Daniel Allen (1824-1892) was a Strict and Particular Baptist preacher. He served as pastor for the churches meeting at Melbourne and Sydney, Australia.
Further Study
