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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Sir Henry Lunn (1859-1939), former Wesleyan minister and missionary turned journalist, ecumenical pioneer, and successful entrepreneur, wrote several volumes of autobiography in the first third of the twentieth century. Reflecting some fifty years later on the strengths and weaknesses of the Methodism of his youth in Chapters from My Life (1918), he wrote:
Our pulpits in the ’70s …. had largely lost touch with the Catholic idea of poverty as one of the great virtues. Some years earlier a much-revered President of the Wesleyan Conference had written two widely different books. One was a powerful assertion of the need for the Baptism of the Holy Spirit in Christian work. The other was a glorification of a rich Methodist tradesman. Both books had a large circulation.
The ‘much-revered President’ was William Arthur (1819-1901), President of the Conference in 1866, and his ‘two widely different books’ were Tlie Tongue of Fire (1856) and The Successful Merchant: Sketches of the Life of Mr Samuel Budgett, late ofKingswoodHill (1852). The Tongue of Fire, hailed as a spiritual classic in the nineteenth century and much reprinted then and thereafter, examined the role and importance of the Holy Spirit in Christian life and work. The Successful Merchant, written four years earlier and equally successful in publishing terms, was more controversial in subject-matter and message. As will be seen, it attracted mixed reviews, and some contemporaries shared Henry Lunn’s disquiet at the portrayal of the central character. Arthur himself dedicated the book ‘to the young men of commerce’, and claimed that his purpose was to meet the need for a Christian ‘Commercial Biography’, thereby encouraging informed reflection on the relationship between faith and work. This paper seeks to place The Successful Merchant, described by its author as ‘a friendly, familiar book for the busy, in context in the genre of Methodist biographical literature, in the social and ecclesiastical setting of mid-nineteenth-century Wesleyanism, and in the debate on work and wealth which has been a strand in Methodist identity, history, and historiography since the days of the Wesleys. First, however, some attention must be given to the book itself, its author, and its hero.
The research for this paper has been furthered by the staff and facilities of the Wesley and Methodist Studies Centre at Oxford Brookes University, and by the library of the Wesley Historical Society based at the W.M.S.C.
2 Lunn, Henry S., Chapters from My Life (London, 1918), p. 21 Google Scholar.
3 Methodist Times (London), 14 March 1901, p. 186; Methodist Recorder (London), 14 March 1901, p. 3.
4 Methodist Times, 14 March 1901, p. 184; George John Stevenson, Methodist Worthies, 6 vols (London, 1884–6), 3, p. 388; William Arthur, The Successful Merchant (London, 1852) [hereafter SM], title page and p. v.
5 Ibid., p. vii.
6 See, for instance, David J. Jeremy, ‘Introduction: debates about interactions between religion, business and wealth in modern Britain’ and W. R Ward, ‘Methodism and wealth, 1740–1860’, in David J. Jeremy, ed., Religion, Business and Wealth in Modern Britain (London, 1998), pp. 1–28, 63–9; John Walsh, John Wesley and the community of goods’, in Keith Robbins, ed., Protestant Evangelicalism: Britain, Ireland, Germany and America, c. 1750-c. 1950, SCH.S, 7 (Oxford, 1990), pp. 25–50; Michael R. Watts, The Dissenters, 2 vols (Oxford, 1978–95), 2: 327–46.
7 Stevenson, Methodist Worthies, 3, pp. 382–96; Methodist Recorder, 14 March 1901, pp. 11–14; Methodist Times, 14 March 1901, pp. 184, 186; DNB Supplement, January laoi-December 1911, 3 vols (London, 1912), 1: 64; Norman W. Taggart, William Arthur. First Among Methodists (London, 1993).
8 Methodist Recorder, 14 March 1901, pp. n-14.
9 SM, p. v.
10 DNB, 3, p. 226; Bristol Times and Bath Advocate (Bristol), 3 May 1851, p. 5; 10 May 1851 (2nd edn), p. 5; Watchman (London), 7 May 1851, p. 149; Wesleyan Methodist Magazine (London), June 1851, pp. 606–7.
11 Ibid., May 1855, pp. 471–2; John Telford, The Life of James Harrison Rigg, DD, 1821-lgog (London, 1909), pp. 105, 109–10; Methodist Recorder, 10 July 1874, p. 369 (family donations to The Leys School, Cambridge).
12 Gaskin, John, A Memoir of the Late Mrs Sarah Budgett, of Kingswood-Hill, Bristol (London, 1840 Google Scholar); Anon., Recollections of Mr Edwin Budgett, Late of Kingswood-Hill, near Bristol, by a Ministerial Friend (London, 1850).
13 SM, p. v.
14 Stevenson, Methodist Worthies, p. 388.
15 See the preface to the 43rd edn of SM, reprinted in the Author’s Uniform Edition of 1885, pp. x-xiii [hereafter SM(AUE)].
16 Methodist Times, 28 March 1901, p. 222.
17 Prefaces to the 1877 and 1885 edns: SM(AUE), pp. xi, xv.
18 Ibid., p. 450.
19 SM, p. 341.
20 Ibid, pp. 19–28, 107–16, 128–32.
21 Baptist Magazine (London), 44 Qan. 1853), p. 27; Christian Observer (London), 192 (Dec. 1853). p. 865.
22 Margaret P. Jones, ‘From “the state of my soul” to “exalted piety”: women’s voices in the Arminian/Methodist Magazine, 1778–1821’, SCH, 34 (1998), pp. 273–86.
23 Watts, Dissenters, 1: 168–79; Isabel Rivers, “‘Strangers and pilgrims”: sources and patterns of Methodist narratives’, in J. C. Hilson, M. M. B. Jones, and J. R. Watson, eds, Augustan Worlds: Essays in Honour of A. R. Humphreys (Leicester, 1978), pp. 189–201; Henry D. Rack, Early Methodist Experience: Some Prototypical Accounts (Oxford, 1997); Doreen Rosman, Evangelicals and Culture (London, 1984), pp. 184–93. Mason’s catalogue was bound in the endpapers of SM.
24 SM, pp. vi-vii.
25 SM, pp. 61–2, 341, 117, 53, 81, 46–7, 142–3.
26 Garnett, Jane, ‘Evangelicalism and business in mid-Victorian Britain’, in Wolffe, John, ed., Evangelical Faith and Public Zeal. Evangelicals and Society in Britain 1780–1980 (London, 1995), pp. 59–76 Google Scholar; E. J. Garnett, ‘Aspects of the relationship between Protestant ethics and economic activity in mid-Victorian England’ (Oxford University, D.Phil, thesis, 1986), esp. pp. 149–202.
27 Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, June 1855, pp. 481–9; Margaret Batty, Stages in the Development and Control of Wesleyan Lay Leadership 1791–1878 (Peterborough, [1988]), p. 120; W. & Ward, ed., The Early Correspondence ofjabez Bunting 1820–29 (London, 1972), pp. 162–3 and n.1.
28 Recollections of Mr Edwin Budgett, pp. 54–5, 59.
29 Smith, Gervase, The Chequered Scene: or, Memoriab of Mr Samuel Oliver, for some Years an Officer in the Twenty-First Regiment of Light Dragoons in Africa and India: with References to Protestant Missions on those Continents (London, 1853), pp. 116–29, 184—5 Google Scholar.
30 Baptist Magazine, 44 (1853), p. 27.
31 Eclectic Review (London), n.s. 3 (May 1852), p. 631.
32 Watchman, 7 Jan. 1852, p. 6.
33 Christian Observer, 192 (1853), p. 865.
34 SM, p. 355. Compare the conventional account of his illness and death in ch.10.
35 Watchman, 7 April 1852, p. no; 2 June 1852, p. 174; R[ule], W. H., ed., Religion, in its Relation to Commerce, and the Ordinary Avocations of Life (London, 1852 Google Scholar).
36 Garnett, , ‘Evangelicalism and business’, pp. 59–76 Google Scholar; Eclectic Review (1853), p. 631.
37 See, for example, R. B. Walker, The growth of Wesleyan Methodism in Victorian England and Wales’, JEH, 24 (1973), pp. 267–84; Clive D. Field, The social structure of English Methodism: eighteenth-twentieth centuries’, British Journal of Sociology, 28 (1977), pp. 201–2; idem, The social composition of English Methodism to 1830: a membership analysis’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 76 (1994), pp. 153–69; Watts, Dissenters, 2: 303–27.
38 Ibid., pp. 593–601.
39 SM, p. vii.
40 Jeremy, ‘Introduction’, pp. 13–28; Watts, Dissenters, 2: 327–46.
41 Walsh, , ‘Wesley and the community of goods’, pp. 35–6 Google Scholar, 44–50; Albert C. Outler, ed., The Works of John Wesley, vol 2: Sermons II, 34–70 (Nashville, TN, 1985), pp. 263–80.
42 SM, pp. 138–9. Wesley’s published sermons were part of the doctrinal standard of Wesleyan Methodism under the 1784 Deed of Declaration, until modified by the Deed of Union in 1932.
43 Etheridge, J. W., The Life of the Revd Adam Clarke, LL.D., 2nd edn (London, 1858), p. 167 Google Scholar.
44 Hempton, David, The Religion of the People: Methodism and Popular Religion c.1750-1900 (London, 1996), pp. 91–108 Google Scholar; idem, Methodism and Politics in British Society 1750–1850 (London, 1984), pp. 85–115.
45 Batty, Wesleyan Lay Leadership, pp. 117–50.
46 Hempton, Methodism and Politics, p. 198; Benjamin Gregory, Side-Lights on the Conflicts of Methodism 1827–1852 (London, 1898), chs 7–11.
47 Batty, Wesleyan Lay Leadership, p. 244.
48 Taggart, William Arthur, p. 76. Farmer was co-treasurer of the 1852 testimonial fund for Bunting and Robert Newton: Telford, James Harrison Rigg, p. 98; Thomas Jackson, The Life of the Revd Robert Newton, DD (London, 1855), pp. 324–39.
49 Gregory, Benjamin, Autobiographical Recollections (London, 1903), p. 400 Google Scholar.
50 Ibid., p. 434, comments on Gregory’s lack of business experience!