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Jews in Evangelical Dissent: The British Society, the Herschell Connection and the Pre-Millenarian Thread*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2016

Clyde Binfield
Clyde Binfield*
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
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Extract

I will add but one word. It is written, ‘Shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end; the words are closed up and sealed, till the time of the end’ ([Daniel] 12. 4, 9). If, then, the seal be now broken, the time of the end is at hand.

(Pergamos, ‘Prophecies of the Latter Times—Letter VI’, Voice of Israel, 2. 34 (1 February 1847), p. 167.)

Castle CAMPS in the twentieth century is a small, and in the nineteenth century was an entirely agricultural, village close to the borders of Cambridgeshire, Esssex, and Suffolk. It has a United Reformed church which was formerly Congregational and whose members at the close of the nineteenth century included the village shopkeeper. That was not unusual. What is less usual is that he was a Jew.

Type
Part II: Death and Salvation
Information
Studies in Church History Subsidia , Volume 10: Prophecy and Eschatology , 1994 , pp. 225 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1994 

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Footnotes

*

I must gratefully acknowledge grants from the British Academy and the Research and Foreign Travel Funds of the University of Sheffield towards the preparation of this paper. I am also particularly indebted to Dr D. Bebbington, Mr J. Creasey, Dr Jane Dawson, Dr S. Gilley. Mr F. Keay, Mr G. C. Lightfoot, Mrs S. Mills, Dr I. Sellers, and Mrs E. Wood.

References

1 Mark Harris (d. 1901), converted Polish Jew, baptised 1865, grocer and publican, church treasurer, and local councillor. Evans, Mabel, ‘Castle Camps—A Country Church 1813–1989’, Journal of the United Reformed Church History Society, 4, No. 8 (May, 1991), p. 484Google Scholar.

2 Yet was it so exotic even in Castle Camps? Rumour had it that the Brown and Goodman families who so dominated die Baptist and Congregational church life of nineteenth-century Huntingdonshire were of Jewish descent, like their famous connection by marriage, Henry Allon the London pulpiteer; and those rumours were more affectionate than malicious.

3 Parfitt, T., Tile Jews in Palestine 1800–1882, Royal Historical Society Studies in History, 52 (Woodbridge, 1987)Google Scholar.

4 See especially Martin, R. H., Evangelicals United: Ecumenical Stirrings in Pre-Victorian Britain, 1795–1983 (London, 1983)Google Scholar, particularly chapter 9, pp. 174–88.

5 Dunlop, J., ed., Memories of Gospel Triumphs Among the jews During the Victorian Era (London, 1894), p. 13Google Scholar.

6 One of the deputation fell off a camel’s back and was invalided home via Budapest.

7 Robert Murray McCheyne (1813–43), DNB.

8 In fact five of the nine ‘English’ ministers were Scottish; Mrs Ridley Herschell was Scottish; and £500 of the new society’s income of ¿927 in its first year was given by the Church of Scotland.

9 Lyons, Paris, Strasbourg, Frankfurt, Nuremberg, Breslau, Vienna, Tunis, and Beirut as well as London, Manchester, Birmingham, and Hull; already by 1867 the society was a Cook’s tour of gospel endeavour with twenty-three missionaries, eight of them in London. At various times Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Dresden, Marseilles, and Algiers also had agents.

10 Dunlop, , Memories of Gospel Triumphs, pp. 19—20Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., pp. 355–6, 336–40.

12 A notable exception was Edward Henry Bickersteth (1825–1906), later Bishop of Exeter, who joined the committee in 1856.

13 For this see Binfield, C., George Williams and the YMCA: A study in Victorian Social Attitudes (London, 1973)Google Scholar.

14 Dunlop, , Memories of Gospel Triumphs, p. 475Google Scholar.

15 Ibid., pp. 454–6.

16 Dunlop, , Memories of Gospel Triumphs, pp. 451–2Google Scholar.

17 His politically ambitious youngest son, Alfred Thomas Williams (1866–1908), a few years later tried to capitalize on East London’s anti-Semitism.

18 See Gordon, J. M., Evangelical Spirituality (London, 1991), pp. 137–8Google Scholar.

19 For chis section I am particularly indebted to the important paper by Dr S. Gilley, ‘Edward Irving, Prophet of the Millennium’, first given in Regent Square United Reformed Church, 9 December 1984; since revised, under the same title, and published in Garnett, Jane and Matthew, C., eds, Revival and Religion since 1700: Essays for John Walsh (London, 1993), pp. 95–110Google Scholar.

20 Gordon, , Evangelical Spirituality, pp. 121ff., 137–45Google Scholar.

21 Ibid., p. 139.

22 For Joseph Wolff (1795–1862), see DNB.

23 Who was in fact a Chilean Jesuit, Manuel Lacunza y Diaz. Gilley, ‘Edward Irving’.

24 Dunlop, , Memories of Gospel Triumphs, pp. 11, 36,31Google Scholar.

25 Ibid., p. 23.

26 Ibid., p. XII.

27 Alliott, Richard(d. 1863); Congregational Year Book (1865), pp. 217–18Google Scholar.

28 ‘Blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved.’ The orlier text was Luke 21. 24: ‘Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, UNTIL the time of the Gentiles be fulfilled.’

29 Dunlop, , Memories of Cospel Triumphs, p. 240Google Scholar.

30 Thomas Raffles (1788–1863), DNB.

31 The Pope, no Antichrist he, was about to pass a Jew who was having a seizure in a Roman street. To the horror of onlookers (‘He is a Jew!’) the Pope rushed to help (‘He is a man!’). Raffles then drew the moral: ‘Alas! we boast a purer faith, but had he fallen thus in the streets of London, how few there are who would have been disposed to go and do likewise.’ But then it was April 1848 and Pio Nono could still be seen in an amiable light.

32 Dunlop, , Memories of Gospel Triumph, p. 305Google Scholar.

33 Henry Allon (1818–92), DNB.

34 Dunlop, , Memories of Gospel Triumph, pp. 251–3Google Scholar.

35 James Bennett (1774–1862), DNB.

36 ‘The theme allotted to me … calls me to exhibit them as the visible monuments of God’s dis pleasure against their sins—but reserved for a display of sovereign mercy and final restoration to favour’. Dunlop, , Memories of Gospel Triumph, pp. 159, 161Google Scholar.

37 Thomas Archer (1806–64), ibid., p. 144.

38 James Hamilton (1814–67), DNB.

39 ‘They were not exterminated, and yet they have vanished. Merged in the nations, and mutually commingled, there is no precipitate which can decompose them and bring them out in their original distinction again.’ Dunlop, , Memories of Gospel Triumplis, p. 82Google Scholar.

40 That ‘city whose case is quite peculiar… though eighteen centuries have passed, and strangers still tread its hallowed soil, that city is still die magnet of many hearts’. Ibid., pp. 82–3.

41 Dunlop, , Memories of Gospel Triumphs, pp. 84—90Google Scholar.

42 Francis Augustus Cox (1783–1853), DNB.

43 Dunlop, , Memories of Cospel Triumphs, pp. 136, 139–41Google Scholar.

44 Henry Forster Burder (1783–1864), DNB.

45 Dunlop, , Memories of Gospel Triumphs, pp. 56–7Google Scholar.

46 Ebenezer Henderson (1784–1858): secretary of British Society 1842–58, DNB.

47 Dunlop, , Memories of Gospel Triumphs, pp. 73–6Google Scholar.

48 John Leifchild (1780–1862), DNB.

49 Dunlop, , Memories of Gospel Triumphs, pp. 268–9Google Scholar.

50 Sir Culling Eardley Bt (1805–63), DNB.

51 Dunlop, , Memories of Cospel Triumphs, p. 218Google Scholar.

52 DNB; the fullest source is Memoir of Ridley Haim Herschell, lale Minister of Trinity Chapel, by his daughter (Edinburgh, privately printed, 1869).

53 His intention was to read medicine. It is unclear how far he completed his course; it was certainly interrupted for prolonged intervals as only wandering students know how.

54 Herschell, R. H., ed., ‘Far Above Rubies’. Memoir of Helen S. Herschell By Her Daughter (London, 1854), p. 134Google Scholar.

55 Harrison, G. H. Rogers, A Genealogical and Historical Account of the Maitland Family (London, privately printed, 1869)Google Scholar.

56 She left £18,000 when she died in 1882; The Times, 5 August 1882.

57 Sir John Scott Butdon-Sanderson Bt (1828–1905), DNB.

58 The Times, 9 November 1895. Will dated 30 May 1891, proved 21 February 1895.

59 Walter Cunliffe, 1st Baron Cunliffe (1855–1920), DNB: Missing Persons (Oxford, 1993).

60 David Abraham Herschell (1823–1904), Cleal, E. E., The Story of Congregationalism in Surrey (London, 1908), pp. 305–9Google Scholar.

61 For Louis Herschell (1821–90) see Cleal, , Congregationalism, pp. 124–5Google Scholar; for the Holmes family, kin to the family of Ridley and Belfort Bax, see Thisdethwaite, B., The Box Family (London, privately printed, 1936), pp. 364–6Google Scholar; for George Herschell MD (1856–1914), see Who Was Who 1897–1916.

62 His English career can be deduced from Congregational Year Book 1854, p. 181; 1855, p. 194; 1857, p. 156. Stephens, T., ed., Album of The Northamptonshire Congregational Churches (Wellingborough, 1894), p. 107Google Scholar.

63 Venn, , Alumni Cantabrigienses, 3, p. 342Google Scholar.

64 Arnold Herschell (1872–1956), Chairman of the Lawn Tennis Association 1937, son of Adolph Herschell (d. 1913). I am indebted to Mr G. C. Lightfoot and Dr Ian Sellers for information about this branch of the Herschell family.

65 Memoir of R. H. Herschell, pp. 285–7.

66 Memoir of R. H. Herschell, pp. 285–7.

67 Samuel Roffey Maitland (1792–1866), DNB; Maitland’s work, much debated and canvassed at the Albury Park conferences, influenced both the emergent Catholic Apostolic Church and j. N. Darby.

68 Cleal, . Congregationalism, p. 306Google Scholar.

69 The fullest background is to be found in G. B.-S., Sir John Burdon-Sanderson: a Memoir (Oxford, 1911); this can be supplemented by Welford, R., Men of Mark Twixt Tyneand Tweed (Newcastle, 1895), 3, pp. 345–50Google Scholar for Richard Burdon-Sanderson (1791–1865) and pp. 352–5 for Richard Burdon-Sanderson (1821–76). See also Coad, R., A History of lhe Brethren Movement (Exeter, 2nd ed„ 1976), pp. 81, 181Google Scholar; Buffard, F., ‘James Castleden (1778–1854) Bethel Baptist Church, Hampstead’, Baptist Quarterly, 31. 3 (July, 1975), p. 118Google Scholar. Elizabeth Burdon- Sanderson (1823–1908), sister of Sir John, joined Lyndhurst Road Congregational Church, Hampstead, 2 April 1885 (Church Book 1880-; in Dr Williams’s Library).

70 William Huntington (17+5-1813), DNB; his marriage to Elizabeth, Lady Sanderson (1765- 1817), is racily described in Wright, T., The Life of William Huntington S.S. (London, 1909), csp. pp. 157–63, 223-9,301Google Scholar.

71 Lady Olivia Sparrow (d. 1863), daughter of 1st Earl of Gosford, widow of General Sparrow of Brampton (d. 1805) and mother-in-law of 6th Duke of Manchester (1799–1855).

72 This can be followed in Bell, H., A Jubilee Memorial of the Union Chapel, Houghton (Cambridge, 1890)Google Scholar; Brown, B., Reminiscences of Bateman Brown J.P. (Peterborough, 1905)Google Scholar.

73 Birth notes dated 3.6.1835 and 25.1.1836. The records of Witham Monthly Meeting are with Essex Record Office, Chelmsford. D/NF 1/1/9.

74 The progress of Trinity can be followed in Voice of Israel, I. 12(1 April 1845), p. 116, through to 2. 44 (1 December 1847), p. 288.

75 Far above Rubies, p. 43.

76 Far above Rubies, p. 4.

77 Ibid., pp. 15–16, 29–30, 113-14.

78 Ibid., p. 104.

79 Ibid., pp. 113, 110.

80 Ibid., pp. 112–13.

81 Far abo ve Rubies, pp. 116, 119.

82 Ibid., p. 192.

83 Memoir of R. H. Herschell, p. 133.

84 Herschell, R. H., ed., Jewish Witnesses thai Jesus is the Christ (London, 1848), p. 3Google Scholar.

85 Memoir of R. H. Herschell, pp. 207–8.

86 The Voice of Israel, 1.7(1 November 1844), p. 53.

87 Herschell, R. H., A Brief Account of the Present State and Future Expectations of the Jews (London, 5th edn, 1841), pp. 14–15Google Scholar.

88 Ibid., p. 39.

89 The Sure Word of Prophecy’, The Voice of Israel, i. 5 (2 September 1844), p. 33.

90 A Brief Account, pp. 23–4.

91 A Brief Account, pp. 128, 131–2, 148.

92 Memoir of R. H. Herschell, p. 75.

93 It is not clear which chapel this was; the circumstances fit neither the situation of New Road Baptist Church at that rime, nor what became George Street Congregational Church. Memoir of R. H. Herschell, pp. 92–4.

94 Dunlop, J., Memories of Gospel Triumphs, p. 17Google Scholar.

95 Memoir of R. H. Herschell, pp. 227–8.

96 There was a convenient belief in the Herschell family that they descended from Jews who after the Babylonian captivity, had moved to Spain, and thence to the Netherlands and Poland rather than back to Jerusalem. So they at least had no part in the events of the Crucifixion. None the less he wrote of his Palestinian visit under the title A Visit to My Fatherland: Notes of a Journey to Syria and Palestine (1844).

97 Published by Jacob Unwin of 31 Bucklersbury, the volume, bound bur uncut, belonged to George Unwin, and was included in ‘Mrs G. Unwin’s Donation’.

98 The Voice of Israel, 1. 7 (1 November 1844), p. 54.

99 Tlie Voice of Israel, 1.6(1 October 1844), p. 52; 1. 10(1 February 1845), p. 91; 2. 38 (1 January 1847), p. 215.

100 Ibid., 1. 13 (1 May 1845), p. 128; 2. 14 (2 June 1845), pp. 139–40.

101 Ibid., 2. 40 (2 August 1847), pp. 235–6; 2. 34 (1 February 1847), pp. 160–1; 2. 30 (1 October 1846), pp. 114, 118–19; 2. 28 (1 August 1846), pp. 92–4.

102 1. 16(1 August 1845), p. 156.

103 ‘An excellent illustration of amost anomalous state of mind …in which… we must under stand them to believe that Christianity is neither true nor false!’ Ibid., 1. 9 (1 January 1845), p. 71.

104 The Voice of Israel, 1.9 (1 January 1845), p. 73.

105 Ibid., 1.17 (1 September 1845), pp. 168–9.

106 ‘So far, then is it from being the case, that the world is gradually to slide into the Church, until it be entirely absorbed in it, that we find the wickedness of the world is to be most rampant, and its oppression of the children of God, most grievous, at the time when Christ comes to deliver his Church.’ 2. 22 (2 February 1846), p. 14. Also 2. 21 (1 January 1846), p. 1.

107 Ibid., 1. 4(1 August 1844), p. 31.

108 Ibid., 1. 9(1 January 1845), p. 70.

109 Memoir of R. H. Herschell, p. 140.

110 Memoir of R. H. Herschell, pp. 142–4.

111 Binney, T., Conscientious Clerical Nonconformity. A Discourse, Delivered at Chadwell Street Chapel, Pentonville, on Monday, April 15, 1839, On Occasion of Its Re-Openingfor the Use of RIDLEY hi. HERSCHELL, a Converted Jew (London, 1839), p. 4Google Scholar.

112 Baptist Handbook (1889), pp. 141–2, 146–7.

113 Farrer Herschell, 1st Baron Herschell (1837–99), DNB;sec also Hcuston, R. F. V., Lives of the Lord Chancellors (Oxford, 1964), pp. 85–127Google Scholar. The polirical Liberalism of the connection is worthy of note, given the presumption that the pessimism inherent in pre-millennialism might be conducive to conservatism. Esther Herschell’s nephew, William Fuller-Maitland, was on Asquith’s list of possible Liberal Peers should the 1909–11 Parliament crisis have demanded it: Jenkins, R., Asauith (1964), p. 542Google Scholar.

114 In 1876, Sommer, D., Haldane of Chan (1960), p. 47Google Scholar.

115 James Robert Alexander Chinnery-Haldane (i 842–1906): Venn, , Alumni Cantabrigienses, 2. 3, p. 192Google Scholar.

116 Will dated 7 November 1894; Knox, R. B., Westminster College, Cambridge: Its Background and History (Cambridge, 1979), p. 19Google Scholar.

117 Information from Mr G. C. Lightfoot.

118 Voice of Israel, 2. 34 (1 February 1847), p. 167.