24 September: Boreham on Charles Simeon

Born to Blush Unseen
The life of Charles Simeon, whose birthday we mark today, represents a miracle of modesty. Some people make history noisily. You hear, far off, the clanging of their hammers, the tearing of their saws. Circumstanced as they are, it is the only way in which the work can be done. The time is ripe for violent methods and resounding blows. The iron is hot and the anvil stands ready. But whilst the village blacksmith works in one way, the village artist works in quite another. There are men who make history as the sun makes daylight. Their influence is as silent as the dawn. Of that quiet but effective company, Charles Simeon is the most distinguished representative. His name is seldom mentioned; his works are never read. Yet, as all the historians of his time agree, he stands as one of our most important epoch-makers. To few men do we owe more than we owe to him. He never attained to any exalted rank or dignity; he never achieved any thrilling or romantic exploit; his is not one of the names that was sent echoing about the world.

As a young man leaving college, he was appointed to the charge of Holy Trinity, Cambridge, and, when death overtook him 54 years later, he was still ministering unostentatiously to that same inconspicuous congregation. "But," as Lord Macaulay says, "if you knew what his authority and influence were, and how they extended from Cambridge to the most remote corners of the land, you would realise that his sway was far greater than that of any Primate." And Sir James Stephen, that most illustrious, most penetrating and most critical of personal chroniclers, declares that the splendour of a bishop's mitre pales before that nobler episcopate to which Charles Simeon was elevated by popular acclaim. His diocese embraced every city of his native land and extended to many of its most distant dependencies.

Resistless Magnetism Of A Noble Character
Simeon captivated everybody by the serene calm of his tremendous passion. It was his restrained but deadly earnestness that so profoundly impressed men like John Wesley and William Wilberforce. Mr. Wesley was an old man of 82 when he first met Charles Simeon, then a stripling of 26, but he was immediately captivated by the cultured fervour and resistless intensity of the young Cambridge minister. It was twelve years later that Simeon and Wilberforce met. They were of about the same age. Wilberforce was simply magnetised; he left the meeting desiring above all things to be just such a man as Simeon; and, whilst still in that exalted frame of mind, he applied himself with fresh energy to his crusade for the emancipation of the slaves. Among others who fell under Simeon's spell was Henry Martyn, whose name has been immortalised in prose by George Eliot and in poetry by Macaulay. Martyn used to say that he owed everything to Charles Simeon, at whose feet he conceived the idea, and gathered the inspiration for his adventurous life work.

Combining extraordinary charm of personality with the broadest human sympathies, Simeon made everybody feel that, on the still altar of his soul, a sacred fire was burning. At that flame torches were lit that dispelled the darkness of distant continents. The students of the university, thronging his church, said little but felt much. And, as all the world now knows, they carried the contagion of those quiet services into all the enterprises and audacities of the heroic lives that they afterwards lived. For Simeon's supreme triumph came through the awakening—partly as the fruit of his own efforts—of a world consciousness in all the churches. He took people of narrow vision to a lofty pinnacle and spread at their feet a panorama of continents and archipelagoes.

Differing Strategies To The Same End
On that January day in 1788, on which Captain Arthur Phillip dropped anchor in Sydney Cove and inaugurated the drama of Australian history, there were, in England, two outstanding and representative men. The one was John Wesley, a veteran of 85, lamenting the swift failure of his amazing powers. The other was William Carey, a young cobbler of 27. Although they did not recognise it at the time, they typified two momentous eras. Wesley represented the age of world revival; Carey represented the resultant age of world conquest. Within a few years of Capt. Phillip's historic exploit, all our great missionary societies sprang into being, including the Church Missionary Society, of which Charles Simeon was a founder. In the shaping of that new era, two men—Thomas Chalmers in Scotland and Charles Simeon in England—conceived ways of promoting by strategy the new world movements. Chalmers relinquished his magnificent pulpit in Glasgow in order that, as professor at St. Andrew's University, he might fire the imagination of the students with missionary ideals. In consequence, some of the men who went to the ends of the earth under his inspiration, have inscribed their names indelibly in the archives of missionary adventure. This was the Scotsman's strategy; the Englishman's was no less effective.

Simeon decided to give a weekly tea party. He coaxed to his rooms some of the most brilliant students of his day. From that tea table there went forth men who, on all the continents and islands, have won deathless renown. As an old man of 70 Simeon glanced over a list of the names of the men who, during the 40 years between 1789 and 1829, had rendered devoted and self-sacrificing service in India alone. "Why," he exclaimed with delight, "they are all of them my tea party men!" On his deathbed, eight years later, he referred to his famous tea party with faltering voice and moistening eye. Cambridge has never witnessed such a funeral as his. More than 1,500 gownsmen joined the procession to the grave. Every great country and every great cause was represented.

F W Boreham

Image: Charles Simeon