Abstract

ONDON Baptist life of 1853 presents few exciting features. Somnolence rested on most churches. Extension proposals aroused little enthusiasm. Ministers fed their fl'ocks with solid, soul-satisfying doctrinal sermons, and buried them to the accompaniment of funeral orations of wearying length. In the main members were faithful to their churches and the means of grace; albeit, those on whom the responsibility of church membership sat lightly were no more unknown than they had been unknown eighty years earlier or are unknown to-day, eighty years later. The London Association of Particular Baptist Churches was slowly dying a painless death, and the Baptist Metropolitan Chapel Building Society, formed the preceding year "to erect and aid in the erection of commodious chapels," was having a hard struggle to collect the funds to build the one chapel that ·was erected under its auspices. A drought was in the churches ; refreshing dew and rain had been absent; but, in the closing days of that year, the aged deacons of one historic church, wearied with their looking again and again, wondered if they saw " a. little cloud out of the sea like a man's hand." Before the passing of another year they knew that