The Life And Ministry Of S. T. Belcher

Earthen Vessel 1891:

Mr. S. T. Belcher, Pastor, Homerton-row, London

Blessed is the man of whom it may be said, “From a child thou hast known the Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation.”

But this blessedness belongeth not unto me, for my parents, like Galleo, “cared for none of these things.” What little religious teaching I ever had was from an aged grandmother, when but a child, who taught me the Lord’s prayer and a few of the collects, and the first chapter of John.

I was born in Warwickshire in 1843, and at an early age began to realise my share in Adam’s lot: “Of the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread;” for to this day I have never been allowed to eat the bread of idleness.

My life has not been altogether uneventful. When a child of four an accident to my foot rendered me a cripple for many months, the village doctor declaring that nothing but amputation of the foot would save my life, but an old woman undertook to cure me, and did.

Twice I was saved from falls, once from drowning, once from fever, once from violence, and once, by grace, from the pit of hell; once I was lost in London, and found in Marylebone Workhouse; once I was lost in the ruins of the fall, and found by Him who came to seek, and to save them that were lost. Once I was dead in sin, but now, by the grace of God, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

The fortunes of my early life were very stern. My father was a passionate man and of a roving disposition, consequently frequently out of employment, and to obtain fresh would go from town to town, and when settled, my mother and family (myself the eldest) would shortly follow.

The hardships entailed by these periodical freaks of my father caused me many a heartache in my early days, which left their indelible marks on a delicate constitution and a sensitive nature.

My father was a sawyer, and when I was but eight years of age he took me to work with him in the sawpit as a wedge boy, then in the sawpit as a pullty, and subsequently, when but 12 years of age, I was master of the pit, and worked as bottom sawyer in the place of a man.

On my father leaving for the Crimea, having joined the Army Working Corps, I worked as a pitman with a man, until I got so disgusted with his drunken habits that I left him, and obtained a situation at a wholesale grocer’s, where I remained for five years, during which time my scanty earnings were the chief support of our home.

When I was 19 years of age my father died, and twelve months after my mother married again, and I married too; and we were both married at the same time, at the same church, and by the same clergyman. This was the best day’s work I ever did. For the Word says, “Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and shall obtain favour of the Lord.” Twenty-eight years’ experience has proved that I both found the one and obtained the other. But, no thanks to me. To God be all the praise!

Shortly after my marriage I obtained a good situation in a West-end establishment, my present situation at Millwall arising out of that, the proprietors being the same until some eighteen months ago, when the business changed hands.

I have already alluded to the hardships of my early life. But it would be strange indeed if the darkest life had not known some sunny days of childhood; for who can forget their innocent glee when gambling in the meadows, gathering the buttercup and the daisy, and welding chains of dandelion links—links so tender that even a pinch might sever them; links which remind us of the after chain of life, welded to all appearance by the cords of deep affection, but which, alas! are snapped with the most relentless force by our sometime seeming friends!

Life is balanced by light and shade; it is not all light, and, thank God, it is not all shade. 

The eight years’ experience which followed my removal to the west of the city stand in vivid contrast to the first eight years of my life; for the one was light of childhood’s innocence whatever I may have suffered, while the other was the darkness of sin in the valley of the shadow of death. Being of a cheerful and vivacious disposition, and thrown by my new occupation into lively society, I soon became a favourite with a certain clique as an aspirant for theatrical honours. Nor was this all. Satan has so many attractions for lively souls, and sin is garbed with such varied hues, that their fascinations become to the soul what the candle’s flicker is to the moth, until its wings are singed, and it falls a victim to the remorseless flame.

Amongst my multiform pleasures the stage was the chief attraction, and I was about to enter the theatrical profession when a fever brought me near to death: but God, who is rich in mercy, spared me. During my illness I hid many serious impressions about my soul, but my recovery proved that they were but impressions, for “being let go I went again to my own company,” where I remained for a few months only, when the Lord mercifully stopped me in my mad career by the fulfilment of His own promise: “A little child shall lead them.” Our second daughter, a child of about six years of age, had been for an outing with her grandparents in the country, who were God-fearing people; and on the Sunday morning following her return I had breakfasted, and was preparing for sundry jobs such as I usually performed on the Lord’s-day, when suddenly the dear child ran up to me, threw her arms around me and shaking and tugging away at my knees, exclaimed in a winning plaintive strain: “Oh, dada, dada, why don’t you take me to chapel on Sundays? Ganpa always does when I’m in the country! Why don’t you take me, dada, eh? Dada, why don’t you take me?”

Any attempt to describe my feelings accurately at this particular juncture of my life is beyond my powers of description. I trembled and shook like an aspen leaf. I was petrified with astonishment. Tears would come to my eyes, and a big lump in my throat, and the dear child, in her persistent simplicity, would keep tugging away at my knees, plying the same query, “Dada, dada, why don’t you take me to chapel?”

I tried to resist the appeal, fighting for the moment against my better feelings. But what was I that I could withstand God? for surely the Lord was in the place, and I knew it not. Hitherto the strong man armed had kept his palace, and his goods were in peace—even the peace of death; but now the stronger than he had come, and was about to spoil him of his goods.

I cried and laughed by turns, and tried in vain to hide my shame; but still the child kept tugging and plying the same plaintive strain, “Dada, dada, why don’t you take me to chapel? Ganpa always does when I’m in the country!”

My nerves were now unstrung. I clasped the dear child in my arms, and covered her face with kisses, and ejaculated with broken accents, “Yes, yes, my child, I will, I will;” and, turning to my wife, I said, “Does not the Word of God say, “Train up a child in the way it should go, and when it is old it will not depart?” and “God helping me, I will do so, even though I should go wrong, and be damned for ever!”

In less than an hour I, with three of my children, was found in the last seat, in the left-hand corner of Carmel Chapel, Pimlico, whither my wife was frequently in the habit of attending. While memory holds her seat I shall never forget that day, that preacher, that text, and that sermon—the preacher, the late Henry Wise; the text, ”He shall be like a tree;” the sermon, a graphic and faithful description of the good and bad, and their fruits. So marked was the description of human depravity that even my thoughts of that morning were depicted, and so personal did everything seem to me, that I left the chapel in a rage, declaring that the whole thing was a concocted plan to get me there and to insult me.

On reaching home I found, to my surprise, my wife’s father, who had come from the country for the express purpose of giving me what he called a bit of plain English anent the life I was living, and the sorrow which I caused to his only daughter; and you may judge of his joyful surprise when he learned what had happened. The Lord was not in the whirlwind of a father’s righteous indignation, but in the still small voice of a sweetly simple child.

I need scarcely say that from that time my outward life begun to amend, and each succeeding Sunday found me with the children in the last seat of the left-hand corner of Carmel Chapel, Pimlico. I did really wish to be good, and even tried to be good, but, alas! I frequently found “old Adam too strong for young Melancthon.”

Hitherto I had been an utter stranger to the way of salvation, and the work of the Holy Ghost in the soul was a thing which I had to learn in much patience and affliction. My old companions were at first a great terror to me. But when once the resolution was formed to be rid of them, the task was easy and firmly accomplished; and even in after years I met a man, who told me he traced his own conversion to the determined manner with which I withstood him, alleging. as he did at the time, that Christianity must be something very real to change a man like me.

But my greatest trouble was that which was going on within me. I was amazed, and even startled at the wickedness of my sinful heart, for

“The more I strove against sin’s power,

I sinned and stumbled but the more.”

The more I resolved to live a quiet happy life, the more my wretched temper would blight my dearest hopes. My fellow-servants gibed me with madness, and nearly drove me to it, for oft I would go for days in sullen, brooding silence. Having no knowledge of the Bible, and a great desire to obtain it, I took to pieces an old Bible, carrying a section thereof about with me, reading as I went my daily rounds, until by this means I had read the Bible through. This continuous course of Bible reading brought before me much which astonished me, comforted me, and frightened me. Election seemed an awful thing, and in my mind too repugnant to be of such a good and merciful God as I had conceived He ouqht to be; but there it stood, in spite of all reasoning: “Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God.” “Whom He did foreknow, them He did predestinate.” “Jacob have I loved, and Esau have I hated.” “That the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.”

These and sundry other texts were proofs enough as to the truth, but alas! alas! if this be true (and it is), it must be a foregone conclusion that I am for ever lost. The anguish of my soul became intense, and I wished myself dead to know the dreaded worst. Being one day in the shop of my father-in-law, I found John Bunyan’s ”Grace Abounding,” “Imputed Righteousness,” and Philpot’s “Heir of Heaven Walking in Darkness, and Heir of Hell Walking in Light,” the reading of which gave me no comfort. The one puzzled me, the other startled me, and the other frightened me, and made me more miserable than ever, for if I had a ray of light, I concluded that it was from hell.

I was now a member of the Bible-class at Carmel, conducted by brother J. P. Barradell, who appeared to take some considerable interest in me. One day, in opening the class, he called upon me to pray. This was awful! for me to pray while I knew not how! I trembled from head to foot, and thought I must sink through the floor. However, I responded to the call, and arose, though what I said I cannot tell. I can but trust it was a prayer of faith, which God in His mercy heard and answered. This work continued to grow in intensity, and I was for some time the subject of many fears, that I sometimes thought hell itself was in me. I would weep and pray, and pray and weep, and then give way to deep despair.

A few pages of Paine’s “Age of Reason,” which I had read while standing in a second-hand bookseller’s, was bearing fearful fruit, and telling heavily upon me. But by this time I had committed to memory the 13th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, and the parable of the stony-ground hearers had made such an unpression upon me that I well remember ]ooking up to heaven and saying, ”Lord, hast Thou given me this portion of Thy work to be as a lifeboat to me in after-life, lest I should be like those who hear only and have no root in them and perish; if so, Lord, do let it cleave to me as long as life shall last, that it may keep me, lest I fail and hold not, lest I perish; for they only shall be saved which shall endure to the end.” Thank God, that till this day He has answered that prayer, and proved one line from His own Word was worth ten thousand “Ages of Reason,” and a beautiful, powerful antidote for carnal reason and unbelief.

By this time the pastor had left Carmel, and the Church was having supplies, and though I had profited under Mr. Wise’s ministry, I do not recollect anything very special attracting my soul’s attention like the first sermon. I always listened well, and heard the Word with joy, when one Lord’s-day the pulpit was filled by Mr. John Bennett, and his text was, “Thine eye shall see the King in His beauty,” and of a truth the promise was fulfilled to me on the spot. The preacher was wonderfully helped to preach so full and precious a Christ that my heart was filled with joy and gladness, and, like Elijah, I did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat for many days.

Subsequently Mr. Bennett received and accepted a call to the pastorate. During his probation I was much encouraged; I was enabled to see that not only was I a sinner by original sin and actual guilt, but that Christ died to save such, for, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us; but still the great problem I wanted solved was—did He die for me? The Word said, “He that believeth hath everlasting life.” My heart and conscience said, Yes, and “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God;” but Satan, who seemed to track me everywhere, said, “Yes! and the devils believe and tremble, and you may have all this faith, all these tears, and all these fears, aye, and believe all Scripture, and yet be damned, for your heart is sinful still.” That my heart was sinful I was quite convinced, but that I should perish as a believer I felt must be a lie, and I argued the devil thus. Jesus says, “None can come except the Father draw him.” I come, therefore I must be drawn. “Him that cometh I will in no wise cast out.” Shall I believe Him, or you? “Yes,” he answered, “but your sinful thoughts, your hasty temper, your recent unbelief that God exists, all prove you wrong.” And I replied, “Ah! perhaps they may; but God knows me better than you. He knows I’m a sinner; He knows I want to be saved; He knows I’ve done my best to be the best, and yet I find myself the worst. What else can I do but simply trust in Jesus Christ? This is all I can do now, and all I mean to try, so if I’m damned at last it shall be as a believer, for I’ll simply sit at Jesu’s feet, and He shall be my all in all, and take me as I am.”

On the following Saturday, while musing on these important matters, and filled mth doubts and fears, these words came suddenly to me: “Have I been so long a time with thee, and yet hast thou not known me?” And I stood still in the street and said, “Yes, Lord, yes, I see it all now. “I believe; help Thou my unbelief.” From that time peace, like a river, flowed into my soul.

The next day being Sunday, I was much blessed under the Word, and especially in the singing of that hymn—

“If I die with mercy sought,

When I the King have tried,

This were to die, delightful thought,

As sinner never died.”

Shortly after I applied for Church fellowship, related my experience and was led through the ordinance of believers’ baptism by brother John Bennett, the late pastor of this Church.

My Call To The Ministry

Before my conversion, I was totally ignorant of the way God saved sinners, though from my earliest days I had a dread of God, and often thought I saw Him in the clouds in shape like unto a man. I was a dreadful coward whenever I thought of death, and feared to sleep in a railway train lest an accident should cast me suddenly into God’s presence with—as the poet said—

“No reckoning made, but with all

My imperfections on my head,”

and with no time to prepare myself. But now that the Holy Spirit had taught me that the work of preparation was His, and that that preparation was on the grounds of the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ, it all seemed so beautiful that I desired to know the way of God more perfectly, and to this purpose began to commit to memory many portions of the sacred Word.

I had but few books, little time for reading, and little inclination to read anything but the Bible, from whence I can truly say that I learned the truths I hold and preach this day, though I received much assistance from my wife. But I had a fellow-servant whom I valued and esteemed as much as any man on earth; he belonged to the Bible Christian community, and was an out-and-out Arminian, who rejoiced in my conversion, but grieved over my doctrines. Nothing pleased me better than when holding controversy with him on the doctrines of grace. These controversies naturally caused me to study the Word more closely, and frequently inspired within me a desire to preach the truths I held so dear.

One day our brother Barradell had come to see me, and we were discussing somewhat warmly as to the merits of two preachers; he preferring the one and I the other; and finding that I was very stubborn in my own opinion, he told me that I ought really to know better than I did, seeing that I was half a preacher myself. This remark touched a chord that has never ceased to vibrate. I—half a preacher, and brother Barradell to think so! Then, why not a whole preacher? The Lord had used men quite as sinful as I, and why not me? And so I sought by prayer to know His will in the matter. I could not attend the evening services on account of my long hours of business, and I felt this to be a great deprivation. But a City missionary, who held his services later, pressed me to attend his meetings, and on one occassion I did so, when, to my surprise, he called upon me to address the meeting.

I shall never forget it—the preaching fever left me in an instant, and in its place a palpitating heart, a sheepish confusion, and a knee fever ensued.

I had had during the day some sweet meditations on Isa. 53:6, and though I trembled very much I spoke for about twenty minutes. The next Lord’s-day found me preaching by the old pump on Chelsea Broadway, from whence I was quickly hustled by another City missionary, who said I was trespassing on his territory, and I went away cast down, but not destroyed.

The late pastor, Mr. H. Wise, was once making some observations on the leadings of God, during which he said that a friend of his, a brother in the Lord, was working in the City Mission, waiting for a call to the ministry. This remark often came upon me with much force, and I thought if that was the way for one brother it might also be for me. Thus influenced I made application to the society, passed the necessary examinations, was accepted, and sent to a district at———. But the reverend gentleman who was to be my superintendent refused to allow me to work in his parish (which, marvelous to say, was at Homerton) because I was a Strict Baptist, saying “there were already too many Dissenters around him!”

The reminiscences of 61⁄2 years of work as a city missionary might be interesting, but not convenient to-day. Suffice it to say that the whole time was one long chronicle of domestic affliction, my dear wife bearing the brunt of the suffering. But while it was evident the Lord had called me to “kiss the rod,” yet gave He grace to learn such lessons as will never be forgotten—lessons of sin, of self, of the corruptions of Christendom, of the grace of God, and the power of the Holy Ghost; lessons which could never have been learned in a pastor’s college, some from books, but many more from human depravity, some which I never wish repeated, but which, having learned, I have never regretted learning.

The Lord was pleased to give me many souls for my hire, but clerical intolerance was the bugbear of my life, till I got so disgusted with the whole thing that I resolved, come what would, to seek again for secular employment and renounce all ideas of missionary or ministerial work. I then accepted a reengagement with my old employer, at no small sacrifice, and left the mission. The secretary, desiring to retain my services, offered me the choice of three other districts; but having once decided nothing would move me, and thus I left, honourably and respected. This was in March, 1881. Six months after I had removed to Millwall, I with my wife and family were walking across the island. We inadvertently entered into a mission-hall, and took our seats near the door. It was on a Sunday evening. The good brother in charge came and spoke to us, and we soon got into a lively chat about the good things, during which he said he had been very ill and felt very unfit for the evening service, and as he believed the Lord had sent me there, he would be very glad if I would preach for him. After some hesitation and sundry nudges of disapproval from my wife, I consented. I had a good time. Thus the old chords began again to vibrate with earnest desires to preach the Gospel of Christ.

Shortly after I joined the Strict Baptist Ministers’ Association, and our brother Archer sent me to preach at Grays, on the Christmas-day, 1881, being on a Sunday. I next went to the room at Acton, where I preached to a congregation of three. From there to Courland-grove, which was the first pulpit I had entered, and I have recently heard that the savour of that day remains till this day. Within a few months I became fully engaged; our brother Noyes and my pastor, the late J. S. Anderson, taking no little interest in my goings out and comings in. I had several calls to supply with a view. Two I accepted and served, Bexley-heath for nine months, and Rushden for six months, and though the calls were unanimous at either place I declined.

In May, 1885, I went to Watford, where I received a call, which I accepted, and remained until the end of last year. Soon after my settlement the little chapel was thought to be too straight, and it was decided to enlarge our courts, and so marvelously conspicuous were the providences which opened the way that ground was bought and a chapel erected at a total cost of about £2,600, £400 only of which was owing when I left.

At the end of 1889 and beginning of 1890 I had pressing requests to settle at Watford, but as I received no indications from the Lord that I should do so, I thought in all honesty to the Church I would resign my pastorate and make way for one who would go. In February I tendered my first resignation, which was refused; but shortly after, my business weighing heavily and my health giving signs of failure, and having since February lost all confidence in the pulpit, and feeling that my work was done, I resigned and left. But I visited all my sick, buried all my dead (save one), wrote several essays, compiled my “Order of the Faith,” conducted all services except Mondays, managed a manufacturing business, preaching and speaking at various places in town and country, without so much as a fortnight’s holiday.

In conclusion, I may say the presence of so many of the friends today encourages me to hope that my labours were not in vain, and that I still have a place in the affections of the people.