CHAPTER VI BOWDON "From art, from nature, from the schools Like light from many a shiver'd lance That breaks about the dappled pools."-TENNYSON. MACKENNAL'S name and work are so closely identified with Bowdon that something must be said as to the environment in which he found himself. In moving to Bowdon, he became successor to the Rev. Henry Griffiths. Professor Griffiths-for he had been the principal of Brecon College before becoming pastor of a Congregational Church in Liverpool—had brought to his ten years' ministry a cultured and scholarly mind, a touch of spiritual genius and great teaching power, and also a Celtic incapacity for managing men who differed in opinion; his gifts had attracted some able men, independent in thought and character, such as Manchester breeds, who were as yet not linked by any strong ties of church loyalty, or welded into united fellowship. The church had existed as a continuous Christian community since 1839, and had numbered among its ministers the Rev. Henry Christopherson, afterwards of New College Chapel, St. John's Wood, the Rev. H. T. Robjohns, B.A., now of Sydney, the Rev. A. J. Morris, of Holloway, and for short periods during Mr. Morris's illness the Rev. T. M. Herbert, of gracious memory. It had already enlarged its borders more than once. Beginning in modest premises at the foot of the Lower Downs, erected by the followers of a seceding Anglican clergyman, it had migrated in 1847 to a Gothic building standing in dignified seclusion back from the roadway on the Higher Downs. The old building had been used as a Sunday School till 1859, when new schools were built and made available as a day school under the "British and Foreign School Society." During the ministry of Mr. Griffiths, transepts and galleries were added to the church building, and its appearance greatly improved. Certain marked characteristics of the church and district should be kept in mind in order to understand the special nature of the work Mackennal had to do. Bowdon was an old-fashioned Cheshire village which was being gradually turned into the wealthiest suburb of Manchester. Altrincham, which marches so closely with Bowdon that only topographical experts can define the two parishes, is a market town of some 15,000 inhabitants. Between these two places and round Dunham Park the cotton magnates of Manchester had built themselves large houses, beautiful for situation, each standing in a garden which elsewhere might have served for a park. The secluding walls, high hedges, and self-contained houses which meet a visitor's eye are a suggestive symbol of the human characteristics with which Mackennal had to deal. The church was sometimes described as a "family church," from the fact that so large a proportion of its members were connected by ramifications of relationship and intermarriage. The men who gave it character were men of the best Lancashire type, thoughtful, serious, practical in their Christian habit of mind, generous in proportion to their wealth, alienated from the Establishment for conscientious reasons, and evangelical in training and creed; there were others of less common spiritual lineage, Swedenborgians, Friends, and the like. One of Manchester's ablest sons and most distinguished writers once said that "the only Epistle in the New Testament written for Manchester was the Epistle of James." The epigram, as usual, overstates the case, but the remark may help to throw into relief both the problem and the value of Mackennal's ministry. The invitation of the Bowdon Church was tendered by the deacons, Thomas Thompson, John Rigby, George Wood, G. Stanley Wood, W. A. Arnold, and Jesse Haworth, in December, 1876; and Mackennal replied in the following letter: To the Members of the Church of Christ meeting at Bowdon "MY DEAR FRIENDS, "I am now in a position to reply to two resolutions communicated to me by your deacons ; one of the 29th November, in which the members of the congregation concurred, expressing your desire that I should become your pastor; the other of the 13th December formally inviting me to the pastorate. Besides forwarding me these resolutions, your deacons have had two personal interviews with me, and I have obtained information from them which has materially helped me to a decision. "I need not assure you that such an invitation, involving as it does consequences so momentous to your spiritual interests and to my future as a servant of Christ and a minister of the Congregational denomination, has received from me grave and anxious consideration; and I have tried by earnest and prayerful thought to understand God's will and my duty in the matter. I have arrived at the firm conviction that I ought to accept your call, and I accept it with all my heart. Painful as it is to sever the bonds uniting me to an affectionate people in Leicester, and to deacons with whom any minister might deem it an honour to be associated, it is my unhesitating belief that I ought to do this, and this feeling of obligation outweighs all other considerations with me. "Two facts which have been urged upon my notice by your deacons have mainly influenced my decision, and I refer to them specially to illustrate the spirit in which I am coming among you and in which I ask you to receive me. people trained in strenuous and simple puritan homes and ready for larger service than the home church offered, Mackennal encouraged them to undertake work in the densely populated parts of Manchester. One member of the church, Mr. William O'Hanlon, was the recognised leader of the Heyrod Street Mission-an oasis of healing springs in the peopled desert of Ancoats-and he recruited the ranks of workers from the Downs congregation. When the Knot Mill church became derelict it was taken over by a band of workers led by Mr. Arthur Haworth, and turned into an effective mission station of the kind which is known as an institutional church. Out of this grew the Manchester and Salford Congregational Mission Board, which is now responsible for the maintenance of several similar missions. Mr. Frank Crossley, whose name will ever be fragrant in Manchester with the aroma of a consecrated life, was for some time a deacon at the Downs. At the Star Hall, which he founded in Ancoats, he made a serious endeavour to grapple with the problem of the slums, by himself going to live among the people whom he wanted to help. The experiment was made at a cost which he was not unwilling to pay-his own life. The Downs was for many years celebrated among Congregational churches for the liberality of its gifts to foreign missions. On several occasions the annual collection was over £1,000, and in 1900 the church's total contribution to the London Missionary Society was £2,057. The maintenance of giving on this scale over a number of years is only possible where the principles of the stewardship of gifts, and the obligations arising from it, have been accepted in Christian simplicity. It was natural that one whose religion had been thought and felt out in a convinced and awakened conscience should have little sympathy with religious impressionism. In early life Mackennal had made a decided stand against evangelistic missions of the Moody type, and, taking all risks, he had both written and spoken against them. One of R. W. Dale's published letters is a reply to Mackennal's criticism of the "revivals" of 1874 (“Life," p. 322). Dale urged that "there are many of us to whom the gift of doing very much in bringing men to God for the first time has not come; we may have the power of helping them when they have found Him, but our work needs complementing. On the other hand, I think there are men who have the power of awakening men who can do very little with them when they are awake-this work needs complementing, too." In 1879 Mackennal wrote again on the subject in a symposium in the "Congregationalist," somewhat modifying his attitude, admitting the truth of Dale's view, but on the whole urging that the harm done by reckless evangelising counterbalanced the good. His critical attitude was based on grounds as noble as the advocacy of many who took the opposite view: "Those who conduct revival movements are largely responsible for the mischiefs following them. Such evils are preventible. It is not piety, it is cynicism which treats the incidental evils of a good man's action as inevitable; much of what appears as reverence shrinking from criticism where God's Spirit is at work may really be traced to false and mean views of human nature. The ordinary ministry of the churches has its dangers, but we welcome candid criticism of our ordinary methods, and strive to amend them. Formality is the comparative and worldliness the superlative degree of the composure which characterises our regular church action. The excitement of a special mission has its comparative degree in exaggeration, its superlative in unreality. The recognition of special danger would not check revival, but it should make revivalists watchful, determined to do their work wisely as well as desirous of immediate effect. "The need of periodical spiritual revivals is generally sought in previous spiritual decline, and in that alone. In reality, the need has a far nobler, a far deeper source. Revivals are necessary to an A.M. G |