another place.  I therefore readily commend him to the Lord, and the word of His grace, and shall rejoice to hear that all our hopes are realized among the people of Kensington.”

Mr. Clayton was ordained in Hornton Street Chapel the twenty-first of October, 1801.  The Rev. W. Humphreys, of Hammersmith, delivered the introductory discourse, and the charge to the minister was given by his father, the Rev. John Clayton, pastor of the Church assembling in the ancient Weigh House, not far from the London Monument.  This gentleman, dignified and courtly, had come under the influence of Lady Huntingdon, and to the time of his death remained attached to the doctrines dear to the countess.  His dissent was of a moderate type, and he did not share in political views prevalent amongst his brethren; in that respect his son resembled him.  He cultivated friendships with evangelical clergymen, especially Newton and Cecil.  When I was about to enter college I received from him counsel and encouragement; and I remember well a discourse which he preached at Norwich fifty years ago, from the words, “Let us go again and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the word of the Lord, and see how they do.”  He had visited the place forty years before, and now came, he said, to see “how they did,” and to make inquiries relative to their temporal as well as their spiritual welfare.  “Have you made your wills?” asked the venerable patriarch, with his thickly powdered head.

“The charge he delivered at Kensington to his son was a most faithful and solemn exposition of ministerial duties, enforced with amazing vigour and pungency of expression; indeed at times there was a trenchant fearlessness of utterance almost amounting to invective against timeserving, hesitating, cowardly preachers who kept back the truth or proclaimed smooth things to gratify graceless spirits.” [29]

“I have not language [he said] of indignant severity sufficiently strong to express the contemptible cowardice, hypocrisy, and soul-murdering cruelty of those who adopt an indefinite phraseology in order (such is the plenitude of their prudence and moderation) that none may suspend their devotion, but that a heterogeneous mass of nominal Calvinists and real Arians and Socinians may be assembled (for united they cannot be) in one society.  Frost unites sticks and stones, moss, leaves, and weeds; the sun separates them.  Into the secret of that frosty liberality may you, my son, never enter, and to the assembly of its advocates never be thou united.

“Your testimony is to contain nothing but the truth.  Sermons should not consist in declamation, but be calculated to convey solid instruction.  You must teach, and not trifle away time in exhibiting fine thoughts or playing upon words.  Let not your testimony be encumbered with what is foreign.  Be like Paul, who could say, ‘Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have obtained mercy, we faint not; but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.’

“Your testimony should be borne with zeal, in the heat of which do not lay aside Christian meekness towards opposers.  At the same time, take care that you do not grow lukewarm and indifferent under the specious pretext of meekness.  An unfaithful, accommodating pastor, perhaps, applauds himself for carrying it fair with all sorts of people, whereas this peaceable kind of preaching, in neither condemning heretics and worldly-minded persons, nor being condemned by them, is no other than a sign of his being himself in a state of condemnation and death.  That person betrays the truth who ceases zealously to defend it, or to oppose its professed adversaries, either from fear of giving occasion of offence, or through a false love of peace.  The shepherd should not only feed the flocks, but also drive away the grievous wolves.”

When Mr. Clayton had spent a year and a half in the seclusion of what was then a rural hamlet, he met with an accident whilst riding on horseback, an exercise to which he was addicted throughout life.  The accident suspended his work for a while, and during that period his brother George helped to supply his lack of service.  There was considerable resemblance between the two brothers.  Each had a commanding appearance and a sonorous voice.  Both were accustomed to express themselves in measured, ornate sentences, the style of which was caught in a measure from their good father, who loved his sons, and discriminated between them by saying “John had the best stock of goods, but George had the best shop window.”  The attainments and mental abilities of the elder certainly were superior to those of the younger; yet perhaps the younger presented what he had to say in a manner more ingenious and with even more attractive diction than his brother John.  They became, as they grew older, types of a class at the time large and influential, chiefly known by their intense and popular evangelical ministrations, their exemplary discharge of pastoral duties, their zealous support of catholic institutions for the spread of the Gospel, their gentlemanly demeanour in society, and their large intercourse with ministers and people of all denominations.

Let me avail myself of the following reminiscences of Mr. Clayton’s preaching by my beloved friend, the Rev. J. C. Harrison, who attended at the Poultry when Mr. Clayton was minister there.  They will, with some slight modification, apply to his preaching at Kensington.

“He was an admirable preacher.  In the course of the year you were sure to hear all the main doctrines of the Christian faith clearly explained, or if not formally expounded, thrown into a fuller light by some practical appeal of which he made them the foundation.  When he took up a book of the New Testament, like the Acts of the Apostles, and founded on it a series of discussions, he would draw out the spirit of the narrative with great fidelity and effect, and would rise not unfrequently into real eloquence.  He was amongst his flock hearing the tale of their sorrows or their joys, their mental conflicts or their bodily sufferings, and becoming thereby acquainted with all varieties of life and experience, all kinds of spiritual disease, all phases of Christian character: seeking meanwhile how to meet difficulties and soothe sorrow, and correct morbid feelings, and turn tears of sadness into smiles of joy, and thus he got together the materials for portraitures of spiritual character drawn to the life, and these he wrought into the texture of his Sunday sermon.  It is difficult to imagine the help which such discourses afforded to all classes of true Christian hearers.  He mixed with all sorts and conditions of men, lawyers, doctors, merchants, tradesmen, mechanics; and as he was a felicitous and ready converser, he not only threw out shrewd hints and sparkling sayings for their advantage, but gained from them a vast amount of information respecting their mode of life, their opinions and practices, their weak points and strong points, their gains and losses, their desperate anxieties and temptations, or their exhilarating successes; and with these facts from life, in his memory, he spoke in his sermons, ‘not as one that beateth the air,’ but as one who had been behind the scenes, and knew whereof he affirmed.