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Principal When Pastor: P. T. Forsyth, 1876–1901

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Clyde Binfield*
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield

Extract

What marks a minister? Such a one, for example, as this, formed within Scottish Congregationalism but formative for and proved by English Congregationalism. Born 1848, died 1921. Born under Russell, died under Lloyd George. Or, from Palmerston to Asquith with Gladstone as the longest fact of political life. Born Aberdeen, died Hampstead. Born a postman’s son, died a college principal, lives a theologian. Formed educationally by Aberdeen, London and Göttingen and indirectly by Manchester and Cambridge. Culturally Pre-Raphaelite, a man for Rossetti and Holman Hunt and also G. F. Watts, for Ruskin and Giotto, for Wagner as for Hegel. Peter Taylor Forsyth, set apart by ordination in 1876; twenty-eight years, therefore, in preparation for ministry, twenty-five years in congregational ministry, twenty years in training Congregational ministers.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1989

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References

1 Miller, D. G., ed., P. T. Forsyth: The Man, The Preacher’s Theologian, Prophet for the Twentieth Century. A Contemporary Reassessment (Pittsburgh, 1981).Google Scholar

2 Thus his pupil, Cocks, H. F. Lovell, Expository Times, April 1953, p. 195, and in Miller, pp. 712.Google Scholar

3 Quoted in Bradley, W. L., P. T. Forsyth: The Man ani his Work (London,1952), p. 38.Google Scholar

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5 Miller, passim.

6 Jessie Forsyth Andrews, introduction to Forsyth, P. T., The Work of Christ (1938 edn.), p. xiv.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., p. xxvi.

8 Forsyth, P. T. and Hamilton, J. A., Pulpit Parables for YoungHearers (1886).Google Scholar

9 Forsyth, P. T., ‘Maid Arise’, preached in Shipley Congregational Church, 28 July 1878.Google Scholar

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11 Jessie Forsyth Andrews, p. viii.

12 Maid Arise, p. 12.

13 Ibid., p. 10.

14 Ibid., p. 5.

15 The Sunday School Chronicle, 13 December 1900, pp. 850–2.

16 Maid Arise.

17 Forsyth, P. T., Religion in Recent Art: Being Expository Lectures on Rossetti, Bume Jones, Watts, Holman Hunt and Wagner (Manchester and London, 1889).Google Scholar

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19 Bradley, pp. 63, 67–9, quoting Socialism and Christianity, p. 3.

20 ‘The Grace of the Gospel as the Moral Authority in the Church’, Congregational Year Book (1906), p. 97.

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23 Forsyth, P. T., Lectures on the Church and the Sacraments (1917), p. 176, quoted in Bradley, p. 240.Google Scholar

24 This section relies chiefly on Emmanuel Congregational Church, Cambridge, Church Meeting Minute Book 1892–1922, in the possession of Emmanuel United Reformed Church, Cambridge.

25 Hussey, Joseph (1660—1726), minister at Cambridge, 1691-1719 Google Scholar. Nuttall, G. F., ‘Cambridge Nonconformity from Holcroft to Hussey’, Journal United Reformed Church History Society, 1, no. 9 (April, 1977), pp. 24158.Google Scholar

26 Ward, James (1854-1925)Google Scholar, first Professor of Mental Philosophy and Logic, 1897, DNB.

27 Forsyth, P. T., God the Holy Father (reissued London, 1957), pp. 1415.Google Scholar

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29 Binfield, C., ‘Hackneyed in Hampstead: The Growth of a College Building’, Journal United Reformed Church History Society, 4, no. 1 (October, 1987), pp. 5868.Google Scholar

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34 Mrs. Neville Keynes, her sister and mother-in-law, were members; her husband was an attender. Her daughter, Mrs A. V. Hill, was married at Emmanuel in June 1913. A. S. Ramsey was a member, and became a deacon and church secretary. His wife was an attender. A. J. Wyatt was an Anglo-Saxon scholar and University Coach.

35 Glover (1869-1943), Fellow of St John’s 1892–8, 1901–43, became a leading Baptist layman and a pillar of St Andrew’s Street Baptist Church. In September 1892, however, he became an associate member of Emmanuel, which remained his Cambridge church for the rest of the decade.

36 Deacon, 1886–1900.

37 Green (1848-1914), FRS 1895. Venn, 3, p. 130; Woodhead (1855-1921), Who Was Who 1916–1028.

38 Forsyth, P. T., The Charier of the Church: Six Lectures on the Spiritual Principal of Nonconformity (London, 1896), p. 7.Google Scholar

39 Ibid.; Rome, Reform and Reaction: Four Lectures on the Religious Situation (London, 1899).

40 The Charter of the Church, pp. 58, 59, 60.

41 Ibid., p. 55.

42 Rome, Reform and Reaction, p. 167.

43 Ibid., p. 159.

44 IM, pp. 168–9.

45 The Charter of the Church, pp. 9, 10, 61.

46 Rome, Reform and Reaction, p. zi 2.

47 Ibid., p. 217.

48 Ibid., p. 219.

49 Forsyth, P. T., Theology in Church and State (1915), p. xiii Google Scholar, in Grant, J. W., Free Churchmanship in England 1870–1940 (London, n.d., c. 1952), p. 232.Google Scholar

50 Forsyth, Church and State, p. xviii, in Grant, p. 236.