ANDERSON, CHRISTOPHER. — This
excellent divine, who, in spite of many obstacles by which his career was
attended, and his position as minister of a sect little noticed and scarcely
naturalized in Scotland, won for himself a respected name both as an author
and minister, was born in the West Bow of Edinburgh, on the 19th of
February, 1782. His father, William Anderson, iron-monger in Edinburgh, was
not only prosperous in business, but esteemed for his piety and integrity.
Being of delicate health, Christopher was sent in childhood to Lasswade,
where he was reared in a comfortable cottage, and educated in the village
school; and on his return to his native city, being intended for business,
he was first apprenticed to the trade of an iron-monger; but not liking this
occupation, he was subsequently entered as junior clerk in a thriving
company called the Friendly Insurance Office. Hitherto he had been of rather
a gay and thoughtless turn of mind, and was attached to those meetings for
music and dancing which, at this time at least, and in such a city as
Edinburgh, could scarcely be attended by the young with impunity; and this,
with the religious training he received at home, produced within him that
struggle which often constitutes the turning-point of the inner and
spiritual life. "In the early part of 1799," says his biographer, "when
about seventeen years of age, he was sometimes alarmed at the course he was
pursuing, and shuddered at the thought of where it must end; but would not
allow himself to think long enough on the subject, lest it should cost him
those pleasures which he knew to be inconsistent with a godly life." This
state did not continue long. He was in the practice of attending public
worship at the Circus, lately opened by the Independents, and there the new
style of preaching by Mr. James Haldane, the pastor of the church, as well
as that of Rowland Hill, Burder of Coventry, Bogue of Gosport, and other
distinguished English divines who officiated there during their occasional
visits to the north, aroused his inquiries and confirmed his scruples. He
abjured his former indulgences as incompatible with the Christian life, and
joined in membership with the congregation meeting at the Circus. Scruples
soon rose in his mind upon the views on Christian baptism held by the
Scottish Baptist church, with which he could not wholly coincide, and
conceiving that those of the English Baptist churches were of a more
enlarged as well as more scriptural character, he was baptized into that
communion in March, 1801, at the age of nineteen. A few others of the Circus
congregation joined him in this step, and for this, he and they were
excluded from the membership of their church as followers of divisive
courses, and left to follow their own devices.
To a mind so sensitive, and so
much in earnest as that of Christopher Anderson, this event was of paramount
importance. He had shown his sincerity by forsaking the allurements of the
world, and joining a cause so new and unpromising in Scotland as that of which
the Haldanes were the leaders; and now he had made a sacrifice perhaps still
greater, by foregoing the privileges of their communion, for the sake of certain
convictions which he regarded as of Divine authority, and therefore not to be
concealed or tampered with. He and the few who had seceded with him, stood
solitary and apart, although surrounded by thousands of professing Christians;
and while the multitudes crowded to churches where congenial ordinances awaited
them, their only remedy was to retire to "an upper room." This they did, and
amidst these meetings for mutual prayer and religious conference, in the absence
of a regular ministry, the humble efforts of Christopher Anderson were
peculiarly acceptable to the little flock. The result was easy to be guessed at;
here was a minister in embryo, as well as the nucleus of a congregation. Mr.
Anderson, indeed, had previously been so far prepared for the assumption of the
sacred office, as to have resolved to devote his life to the work of a
missionary to India; but the verdict of his medical advisers, who convinced him
that his constitution was utterly unfit for an Indian climate, and the growing
necessities of that small community with which he was connected, naturally
turned his thoughts into another channel. The emergency was evidently at home,
and to find his field of labour he had only to cross his own threshold. With
this conviction, he resolved to become the spiritual pastor of the small flock
with which he had allied himself; and in so determining, it is not easy to
estimate the full value of the sacrifice. At the age of twenty-one, he must
reverse his habits, commence a life of study, and encounter the difficulties of
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, although he had neither liking nor natural aptitude
for the acquirement of languages. And when all this was done, he must
deliberately devote himself to a life of poverty and self-denial, for the people
of his ministry would in all likelihood be too few and too poor to afford him
that decent subsistence which is justly deemed so essential to the clerical
office. He commenced with the necessary step of relinquishing his clerkship in
the Insurance Office. "Were I to continue in my present situation," he writes,
"I should in all probability succeed to an income of £300 or £400 a year, but
this is of no account in my estimation compared with being more immediately
employed in the service of Christ. * * * Emolument in this world I freely
forego. The riches of it I neither have nor want; may I be but of some
service to God before I go to the grave!" He entered the necessary studies at
the university of Edinburgh in 1805, and as his time was brief, and the case
urgent, he attended during a single course the classes of Greek, Logic, Moral
Philosophy, and Chemistry. As it was judged necessary that his theological
training should be conducted in England, and under the community to which he
belonged, he repaired to Olney, and afterwards to Bristol, in which last City he
attended the Baptist college. The course of education he now underwent was of
that practical kind which the dissenting bodies in England have for the most
part adopted, in which their students are employed in itinerating and preaching
while attending the several classes. In this way Mr. Anderson acquired
experience in the duties of his calling over an extensive field of action, and
the acquaintanceship of many of those eminent divines with whom English
dissenterism at this period abounded. As little more, however, than a
twelve-month was occupied with this probation, it may be guessed how few
his opportunities must have been for the study of theology as a science,
especially for the service of such a hard-headed reflecting people as the Scots;
and how much was still to be learned and acquired by his own
unaided application.
In 1806, Mr. Anderson returned to
Edinburgh; and having engaged a small meeting house, called Richmond Court
chapel, he there assembled the litt1e flock, who had been waiting for his
coming. Still, a congregation was to be gathered, for while on the forenoons of
Sabbath his stated audience mustered from fifty to seventy persons, those in the
evenings, when chapels in Edinburgh, as elsewhere, are commonly crowded, were
not above two or three hundred hearers. As for the real congregation who
would have joined in membership out of this miscellaneous assemblage, they did
not amount to more than fourteen or fifteen. "I cannot as yet decide," he writes
in this state of matters, "as to whether it would be my duty to settle here for
life. A sphere of usefulness is what I desire, and it still must require time to
ascertain whether it is such a sphere. I think another winter will show
me how I ought to proceed, if it does not appear sooner." This hesitation on
account of the doubtful state of affairs was increased by the avowed wish of
many of his friends in England to secure his services among them as their
pastor. At length he received a regular call from his congregation to be their
minister at the close of the year, and although it was signed by only thirteen
persons, he felt it his duty to comply, and his ordination took place on
the 21st January, 1808. Thus brought to a decision, he laboured with diligence
and faithfulness; and although slowly, the cause to which he had engaged himself
continued to grow and prosper, so that in ten years the handful over which he
originally presided had swelled into an attendance too numerous for the small
chapel to contain. In 1818 he accordingly moved from Richmond Court to Charlotte
chapel, a larger building, formerly belonging to the congregation of Bishop
Sandford, which he purchased, and altered to his own taste and convenience.
While his ten years’ labours had been so successful, his cares had not been
exclusively confined to the city of Edinburgh. His missionary zeal, through
which he had originally devoted himself to the ministerial work, still continued
unabated; and although he could no longer hope to traverse the opposite side of
the earth in the conversion of Hindoos and Parsees, he found that there were
people within the limits of the four seas equally benighted, and in need of his
apostolic labours. The success, too, which had attended the evangelistic
enterprises of the Haldanes and John Campbell in Scotland, encouraged him to
follow their example, more especially as a lull had succeeded, so that the good
work needed to be renewed. With all this he had been impressed so early as the
period of his ordination; and, on accepting the ministry of the congregation of
Richmond Court chapel, he had stated to them his purpose of itinerating from
time to time as a preacher in his own country and in Ireland. Accordingly, his
first tour for this purpose was to Perthshire, in March, 1808, and his second to
Ayrshire soon after. In August and September of the same year, he made a
preaching tour through Ireland; and in 1810 another in the north of Scotland as
far as Dingwall. Finding, however, that the length and frequency of these
journeys were likely to be prejudicial to the interests of his own congregation
in Edinburgh, he organized a home mission for the support of a few itinerants in
the Highlands, the expense of which, in the first instance, and the
responsibility in after years, rested wholly upon himself. This society, which
existed for seventeen years, and was productive of great benefit to the more
remote districts of the Highlands, had found in Mr. Anderson so generous a
benefactor, notwithstanding the limitation of his means, that at the
closing of its accounts, his pecuniary advances to it as secretary, amounted to
£240, independently of his periodic liberal donations. The sum above-mentioned
was a fourth of the society’s whole expenditure. A still more distinguished
achievement was his originating the Edinburgh Bible Society, the plan of which
he adopted from that of the British and Foreign Bible Society. He had visited
London in May, 1809, and being struck with the efficiency of the parent society,
and the harmony which it promoted among the various divisions of Christians by
whom it was supported, he was anxious to form a similar institution for
Scotland, which he happily accomplished in 1810.
Although a minister of the
smallest, the latest, and the least influential of all the sects in Scotland,
Mr. Anderson was now acquiring note and influence in the religious world, which,
however, he valued only as the incentive to further action, and the means of
opening a wider sphere of Christian effort. He was, therefore, encouraged to
enter a new field—that of authorship, by publishing a "Memorial on behalf of the
native Irish, with a view to their improvement in moral and religious knowledge
through the medium of their own Language." This work, originally a small
pamphlet, the result of his observations during a prolonged tour in Ireland in
1814, afterwards expanded into a duodecimo volume. Another similar effort was in
behalf of the Highlands. At the meeting of the Edinburgh Bible Society, on the
22d of March, 1819, he laid upon their table a MS., entitled, a "Memorial
respecting the diffusion of the Scriptures, particularly in the Celtic or
Iberian Dialects." This statement deservedly elicited the following resolution
of the society’s committee:—"As the facts contained in these pages are such as
should come before the eye of the public, and must be of service for some time
to come, in regulating, as well as increasing, the zeal of those who desire the
general diffusion of the Word of God throughout our native country; that
the manuscript be returned to Mr. Anderson; that he be requested to prepare the
same for the press and immediate circulation, and that the first copy of this
memorial be transmitted to London, for the committee of the British and Foreign
Bible Society." The commission Mr. Anderson gladly fulfilled; and, after the
publication of his work on this subject, the diffusion of Irish and Gaelic
Bibles from the stores of the British and Foreign Bible Society was beyond all
former precedent. Before this, however, he had made every effort that such a
boon should not be useless, by having the poor Highlanders taught to read. His
tour throughout their country, and especially beyond the Grampians, in 1810, had
shown him not.only the spiritual, but intellectual destitution of the people,
while his benevolent heart was impatient until a fit remedy was applied.
Accordingly, as soon as he returned from his tour, he opened a correspondence
with Mr. Charles, of Bala, the originator of the "Circulating Day-Schools" in
Wales; and having learned from him the educational plan pursued in that
principality, and the benefits with which it was attended, he saw its fitness
for the Highlands of Scotland, where the population was still more widely
scattered. To draw out a benevolent plan, and proceed to execute it, was one and
the same act with Mr. Anderson, and accordingly he convened a meeting of the
friends of the Highlands, in the Edinburgh Exchange Coffee-house, presented his
views and proposals, and was rewarded by seeing them carried into effect by the
formation of "The Caledonian Society for the Support of Gaelic Schools,"
afterwards called "The Gaelic School Society." To this interesting institution
his paternal cares were devoted for several years until it was firmly
established, by an annual journey through the Highlands, for the inspection of
schools, and attending to the applications made for schoolmasters.—The condition
of Ireland once more occupied Mr. Anderson’s attention, and, in 1814, he again
made a missionary tour in that island. On his return, he published on the
following year, a "Memorial in behalf of the native Irish." The effect of this
work was startling: such was the amount of new information which he produced on
the subject, the force and truthfulness with which he detailed it, and the
cogency of his reasoning and appeals in behalf of unhappy benighted Ireland,
that several benevolent societies in behalf of its people owed their origin to
this production, while other similar societies, already in existence, were
taught from it to alter and improve their rules according to the real state of
circumstances. As this work was solely in reference to the education of the
Gaelic-speaking Irish, he found it necessary to write a second upon the subject
of preaching, and this he did in 1819, by his "Diffusion of the Scriptures in
the Celtic or Iberian Dialects," afterwards enlarged by many additions into a
volume, entitled "The Native Irish and their Descendants." Until these works
were published, the British public was not generally aware that of the 196
islands composing part of Ireland, 140 of these, inhabited by 48,000 souls, were
in a miserable state of spiritual destitution and wretchedness. The length of
interval that occurred between these publications was too mournfully filled up,
as the following extract from one of his letters to his talented and
distinguished correspondent, Charlotte Elizabeth, will sufficiently explain:
"But why, you will say, were the Sketches of 1828 so long delayed? Ah! that is a
tender question; but since you also have been in affliction, and apparently much
of it, I feel the less reserve, and can therefore go on. Did you observe a book
advertised at the end of the Sketches? If you have ever chanced to see
it, the dedication will explain more than I can now repeat, and yet it does not
explain the whole. A beloved wife and three much-loved daughters are there
mentioned; but ah! my friend, this was not the end. Two sons survived—but they
also are gone, and the father to whom they were so much attached was left to
plough the deep alone. But no, I am not alone, for the Father is with me, and I
am often, often, a wonder to myself. The truth is, these two volumes,
particularly the first, were composed amidst many tears—often fled to in order
to keep the mind from falling to staves, and the Lord Jesus himself alone hath
sustained me. The first volume was never read by the parties to whom it is
dedicated; and as for the second, I often yet see my last, my beloved sole
survivor, only four and a-half years of age, running into the room, and saying;
‘And are you writing to the poor Irish yet, papa?’ ‘Yes, love, I am
writing for them.’ ‘Oh, you are writing for them!"
The pressure of these numerous
and heavy domestic bereavements, which his sensitive heart felt so keenly, that
at their height they had suddenly whitened his hair and furrowed his brow with
the premature tokens of old age, compelled him gradually to withdraw from the
toil of public business, and betake himself more closely to the retirement of
his study. It was not, however, for the sake of indulging in melancholy, or even
in literary indolence, for his work, entitled "The Domestic Constitution," was
written during his attendance on the sick-chamber, and finished after his third
visit to the family grave. Of this volume a new edition was subsequently
prepared, with the following enlarged title, by which its bearing is better
understood: "The Domestic Constitution; or, The Family Circle the Source and
Test of National Stability." But the chief subjects of his study and research
during the remaining period of his life, were the materials for his principal
production, "The Annals of the English Bible." This voluminous work, like many
in similar cases, originated in a single and temporary effort. The third
centenary of Coverdale’s translation of the Bible having occurred in 1835, Mr.
Anderson preached upon this subject on the 4th of October; and as he had made it
for some time his particular study, the historical facts he adduced in the
pulpit were so new, and withal so interesting to most of his hearers, that they
earnestly requested him to publish the sermon. It was printed accordingly, under
the title of "The English Scriptures, their First Reception and Effects,
including Memorials of Tyndale, Frith, Coverdale, and Rogers." So cordial was
its reception by the public, that he was advised to prepare an enlarged and
improved edition; but on resuming his investigations for this purpose, new
fields successively arose before him, so that not merely days, but whole years,
were finally needed for the task. In this way, many a pamphlet has unexpectedly
expanded into a folio. The very difficulties, however, as they grew and
multiplied, only endeared the task to the heart of Mr. Anderson, and stimulated
his enterprise, so that after he had fairly embarked in it, the great purpose of
his life seemed to be unfulfilled until it was fully and fairly finished. He had
previously, indeed, contemplated a history of all the translations of the Bible
that had been made previous to the nineteenth century; but as this would have
involved the history of almost every country, and been too much for any one mind
to overtake, he contented himself with the English department of the subject,
which he soon found to be ample enough. From 1837 to 1845 all his studies were
devoted to it, while his researches extended through the library of the British
Museum, the Bodleian at Oxford, the Univeisity library and others at Cambridge,
the Baptist Museum at Bristol, and many private libraries and collections, from
whose stores he filled whole volumes of note-books, which he arranged and turned
to account in his study at home, after each pilgrimage of research. The result
was a most voluminous publication, which the impatience of the general reading
public scarcely cared to encounter, and therefore, when it appeared, the demand
for it was, as it has still continued to be, extremely incommensurate with its
merits and importance. But still, the "Annals of the Bible" is one of those
works which possess a strong and lasting, though silent and unobtrusive,
influence. Upon a most important subject it has gathered together those
materials that hitherto were scattered over the whole range of English history
and antiquarianism, and were only to be met with incidentally; and it serves as
a store-house to the theologian, in which he finds ready to his hand what would
otherwise have cost him whole days or weeks of tiresome investigation. In this
way, it will continue to be reproduced in a variety of forms, and be conveyed
through a thousand channels of religious public instruction, where even the name
of the work itself, and its diligent meritorious author, are either passed
without mention, or utterly forgot.
Amidst all these labours as an
intinerant preacher, founder and secretary of religious societies, correspondent
of foreign missionaries, and earnest pains—taking author, Mr Anderson’s
diligence as a minister continued unabated; and it was rewarded by the increase
of his little flock into a numerous congregation, and the esteem of the most
eminent religious characters in Britain of all the different denominations.
Annoyances, indeed, not a few he had to encounter among his own people during
the decline of life, when the love of change had introduced new men and new
measures among them; but into these congregational misunderstandings we have no
desire to enter, not only as they were so recent, but so exclusively confined to
the denomination among whom they originated. They were sufficient to darken his
closing days with sorrow, and make him complain of the ingratitude of those to
whom his life and labours had been devoted. But still the promise given to the
righteous was verified in his case, for his end was peace. He died at Edinburgh
on the 18th of February, 1852, within a single day of completing the seventieth
year of his age. |