John Thain Davidson
John Thain Davidson
A remarkable London ministry
The congregation of the English Presbyterian Church in Salford, Manchester, was very attached to its young minister, John Thain Davidson, and was growing under his ministry. But hearts were anxious. Davidson had received a unanimous call to a sister congregation in London, the Presbyterian Church of Islington. What would he do? The Islington congregation had been without a pastor for two years and was numerically very weak. Its building, described as “exceptionally dingy and dreary”, could seat over seven hundred and fifty but was currently home to little more than thirty. The situation did not seem an especially promising one. The call, however, was accepted and on August 5th, 1862, Davidson was inducted to the pastorate. It was the beginning of a ministry in London that lasted for more than forty years and proved to be remarkably fruitful.
A deciding factor in Davidson’s acceptance of the call was a letter from a friend, Dr. James Hamilton, minister of another London congregation, the Presbyterian Church of Regent Square. Fearing that reports of the Islington situation would discourage Davidson the elders had asked Dr. Hamilton to write to him and give him his “candid opinion regarding it”. It was as follows: “From what I know of the neighbourhood and of yourself, I know of no reason why you should not have next year a large and flourishing congregation. I own that the long vacancy has tended to scatter the people, but they are not far away, they are not alienated, and they will be easily brought back again…If you can keep up your own resolution in the trying circumstances of parting with your present flock…you will find a great door and effectual open and will, I am sure, have no reason to regret the translation”. And so it proved.
In a later post we will introduce ourselves to Dr. James Hamilton himself; in this one to the recipient of his letter, John Thain Davidson. John was born in the Scottish town of Broughty Ferry on April 25th, 1833. His father, David Davidson, was minister of the Parish Church and died when John was only ten. He was a friend of Robert Murray M’Cheyne, minister of St Peter’s Church in neighbouring Dundee, and survived him by only a few months. Not long before his death, along with almost five hundred other ministers, Davidson severed his connection with the Established Church and became a minister of the Free Church of Scotland. It was of the same Free Church that his son John became a minister, his ordination to the congregation of Maryton, a little north of Dundee, taking place in February 1857.
Early days
The practice of dedicating a son to the work of gospel ministry (subject to the Lord’s acceptance) may seem strange to twenty-first century Christians but in the Scotland of John Davidson’s day it was very common. Just such a dedication had been made of him. He writes, “I never elected to be a minister, I never chose a profession, I never had the smallest notion of any other calling. The destination to be a preacher seemed coeval with my birth. I was brought up from the cradle to believe that the pulpit was to be the business of my life”.
What of the Lord’s working in his life? In a sermon to young men, The Anchor of the Soul, he quotes the words from Ezekiel, “As surely as I live, saith the Lord, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that he should turn unto Me and live”, and says, “I remember how astonished and touched I was when I first saw this truth. I wept with emotion at the thought of God’s love, and His eager desire that I should be saved; and I ‘fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before me’”. No date or further details are given but from a letter to his mother written on his tenth birthday it seems evident that he had known the Lord since boyhood.
A two and a half year ministry in Maryton was followed by three years spent in Salford, Manchester. In both places the Lord’s blessing was enjoyed in no small measure. It was in London, however, that Davidson entered upon the principal work of his life. From 1862 to 1891 he served the church in Islington and then from 1891 till his death in 1904 St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Ealing. The story of his second London ministry is identical to that of the first. In each the numbers to begin with were tiny (fewer than thirty signed the call to Ealing) and in each the building rapidly filled with eager and attentive worshippers.
Special ministries
Six years after Davidson’ arrival in London, on October 4th 1868, a series of Sunday afternoon services began which continued for more than thirty years. They were known as the Agricultural Hall services and were held in St Mary’s Hall, Islington, part of the Royal Agricultural Hall complex. St Mary’s could seat three thousand people. Davidson’s daughter tells us that the meetings, which were evangelistic in nature, were started “in the belief that many who attended no regular place of worship would be prevailed upon to come to a secular building”. And they did. According to an early newspaper report, “It is evident the right sort of people are got at here, and that a very large proportion of those who attend are persons who belong to no church or congregation, and who have never turned to account their Sabbath hours”.
Davidson at first took responsibility for the whole meeting himself and continued to the end to lead the devotions. But with a morning and evening service in his own church in addition to the afternoon service in the Agricultural Hall, others were eventually enlisted to bring the message. The net was cast wide. “Men of every rank and of every evangelical communion…at different times assisted in the work”, says his daughter. “These huge gatherings”, one minister reminisces, “ultimately became one of the sights of London. They were heard of, not only in this country, but in a sense all over the world…The aim of Dr. Davidson in these services was neither to discuss theological problems nor to descant on social questions, but to convert sinners. Hence, in the selection of speakers, he was careful to choose those who could speak from the heart to the heart, telling men what God could do for their souls”. He adds, “The good that was done will never be known in this world; the day only will declare it”.
On September 8th, 1878, ten years after the start of the Agricultural Hall services, Davidson began a series of sermons to young men. He preached them on the second Sunday evening of the month for thirteen years – right up to the close of his Islington ministry. Many of these sermons were later gathered together and published under titles such as, A City Youth, A Good Start, Talks to Young Men, Sure to Succeed, and Forewarned, Forearmed. In one of these addresses he says, “There is no class of persons that so stir my loving sympathy as young men in a big city, especially if they are comparatively strangers and alone” (A City Youth, p.62). It was this sympathy and concern that prompted him to preach to them. He was acutely aware of the dangers and temptations young men faced in London but also of the blessing city life could be to them if they were Christ’s.
His success was marked. In A City Youth he says, “I have reason to know that, at these monthly services during the past year, many serious thoughts have been awakened, and many holy purposes formed. It has been my great privilege, month by month, to address a large body of young men: and I thank God for the evidence that has been afforded that these addresses have not been in altogether in vain; the Holy Spirit has been striving with some of you, and awakening within you the earnest desire to join yourselves to the Lord; some of you have done so, and found it the happiest step you ever took in life…” (p.83). The reach of these messages was great. Later in A City Youth he says, “I always look forward with special interest to the second Sabbath of the month, when I have an opportunity, not only of addressing so many of you in this place, but (through the help of the press and your hearty co-operation) of speaking words of counsel and cheer to hundreds outside of this building, away in the provinces, and in Scotland, and in the colonies, and in distant regions of the earth” (p.155).
Faithfulness and final years
Davidson’s sermons to young men were heartily commended by C.H. Spurgeon in his magazine, Sword and Trowel. There was a warm friendship between the two. In a memorial sermon preached after Spurgeon’s death Davidson says, “It was my privilege to enjoy Charles Spurgeon’s friendship for nearly thirty years. I always found conversation with him to be like a bracing elixir, while his letters were full of humour and brotherly love”. The appreciation was mutual. In her Reminiscences, published two years after her father’s death, Davidson’s daughter gives us the text of a letter that Spurgeon wrote to him at the time of the Down-grade controversy. It begins, “Dear Friend, – God bless you! Your note came when I stood in the face of the hurricane, I felt as if I must die with grief…Thank you a thousand times. The Lord do to you in any hour of darkness tenderly and thoughtfully, even as you have dealt with me”.
They were men of like mind. Here is what Davidson said to his congregation in 1882, reflecting back on twenty-five years of ministry: “The first thing I have to say…is this, that doctrinally I stand on precisely the same spot as at the beginning. I am not aware that in a single iota my theology is different from what it was then… [M]y doctrinal standpoint remains the same, even that which is expressed in the ‘Westminster Confession’… [W]hen in matters of theology men begin to speak of and to demand advanced thought, they forget that this Divine revelation is complete, and that the inspired apostles left us a creed from which nothing was to be abstracted and to which nothing was to be added… [O]ut of a profound conviction I stand today where I stood twenty-five years ago…Should I be spared as long again I want no other Gospel”.
The end came gradually – a growing weakness leading to the relinquishment of outside engagements, then of the duties of the pastorate. He died on the 9th of November 1904 at the age of seventy-three. His last address had been to a small gathering at a mid-week meeting; his theme, says his daughter, the one “he loved best to expound”, namely the breadth and length and depth and height of the love of God (Eph.3.18). These were his final words: “For breadth it is Immensity; for length it is Eternity; for depth it is Profundity; for height it is Infinity; this immeasurable Love”.